Breach of Promise (19 page)

I woke up the next morning thinking of Nikki McNamara. She was there in the fading landscape of my dreams, hanging on despite the onrush of consciousness. As I showered and shaved, I kept replaying the scene from
Hamlet
and wondering what she was thinking today.
I wanted to call her. Now. But I sensed she needed room to breathe, so I put it off until later.
What I needed to do now was salvage the rest of my life.
Acting had been everything to me for the past ten years. Becoming a star was what I was about. Every year I’d watch the Oscars and see myself up there someday.
I thank the Academy for this honor, and all the people who helped me along the way.
There would be dinners at Spago and interviews on E! network and major movie deals the rest of my life.
Somewhere in there was a real love of acting, too. Because you could assume a role, play somebody else. For some reason, I found that appealing.
But now I wanted nothing more than Maddie in my life. And I knew that being a struggling actor was not the best profile for a soon-to-be single father.
So where did that leave me?
As I sipped morning coffee, I made a mental list of options. Baseball coach maybe, at some high school. Not real glamorous, but it could get me back in touch with the game. Maybe I could look up the coach at Cleveland High and offer my services as an assistant.
Or maybe I could reach higher. What about being a lawyer? Do what Alex did. Help fathers with their custody battles.
Only problem. I needed to go to law school. And to do that, I needed to go to college. I’d gone straight into baseball after high school. I was not a great student to begin with. From where I sat now, at thirty-four years old, actually doing the whole college thing seemed like a huge mountain to climb.
But challenges were part of sports, and I’d never backed away from those.
So I finished my coffee and drove over to Cal State Northridge and picked up some admissions information. What the hey? The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I’d made it half a step anyway.
Shortly before noon I called Nikki’s cell phone.
“Hi, Hamlet here.” Trying to sound as positive as I could.
“Oh hi. How are you?”
Very much in limbo. “Fine. You want to have lunch?”
Pause. “I would like to see you, but you don’t have to—”
“Done. Let’s pick a spot.”
“I really don’t think lunch is a good idea.”
The air was suddenly heavy with intrigue. “You have to eat.”
“Can we maybe meet at 1:30 at the church?”
Not the place I had in mind, but . . . “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
I arrived at 1:15, and waited in the courtyard. A gardener was cutting some shrubs with big clippers.
Shick shick shick.
Made me think of the death of a thousand cuts. The only other sound was the 101 Freeway and the traffic rushing by the church grounds. Sunlight dappled the courtyard through the tree leaves. The church seemed to be straining to be an oasis in the city wilderness.
Nikki arrived looking so good I almost fell off the bench.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said.
“Are you?” I had lost all track of time.
“A little. Been waiting long?”
“No, just watching the clipper do his work.”
She gave a quick glance at the gardener, then sat down on the bench. “Thanks for coming out here.”
“No prob. I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened last night.”
“Me too.”
“Want me to start?”
“Maybe I should.”
“Okay.”
She paused a moment, took in a deep breath. “Mark, I don’t think it’s a good idea to do the scene together.”
My stomach knotted a little bit. “Why not?”
“We got a little too involved in it.”
“That’s Method acting!”
My attempt at humor brought only a polite smile from Nikki. “It was more than that.”
You’re a man, you try to read a woman’s face. You try to pick up signals in voice and tone. Sometimes you just plow on through, doing what you want to do, hoping it’s the right thing.
I took her hand. “I know it was more.”
She gently but firmly pulled her hand back. “Wait. This is like a train, things are going so fast.”
“Hey, let’s enjoy the ride.”
“I can’t. We can’t.”
Shick shick shick.
The sound of the clippers filled the silence. “Why can’t we?” I said.
“You’re married.” She looked at me as if that were bad but undeniable news.
“But my wife is divorcing me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nikki said. “You are still married.”
“Not for long.”
“It isn’t right for us to get involved.”
“Why not?”
“I just told you.”
“That doesn’t make sense to me. You like me, I know it.”
“Yes, that’s what’s hard about this.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
She shook her head. “Mark, God looks at marriage as sacred. You’re married, we just can’t see each other.”
“Not even to do a lousy scene?”
“It won’t be for just the scene. We both know that.”
Boy did I. “I want to keep seeing you.”
“I know. But we can’t.”
“What if I won’t stop?”
“Please, Mark.”
“I mean it.”
“What do you mean not stop? Even if I want you to stop?”
Shick shick shick.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m being a real jerk here.”
“No.”
“Can I still come to church and the Bible study?”
“Of course. I’d like us to stay friends.”
For a short moment, the sound of the clippers stopped.
“Why do you have to be so mature?” I said.
She laughed.

“Let’s talk about your anger for a while,” Sutton Hallard said. Great. It was Friday, and I was in for another interview with him—I felt like the proverbial dog jumping through hoops—and now we were on my weakest point. What I was busting to ask him was whether he’d talked to Paula or Maddie. I knew he had. I also knew he wouldn’t tell me boo about it.

“I know I have a problem with anger,” I said, being up front and confessional. I was going to be so even tempered that Sutton Hallard would want to put me up for a humanitarian award when we were finished. “But I feel I know about it and can manage it.”

“What makes you say that?”
“Just what I’ve seen in myself the last few weeks.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Sure.” I tried to think of one and ran with the first thing that

popped into my mind. “The other night I was talking to my father.” Hallard looked at the paper in front of him. “That would be Mr.
Reid?”
“Right. He came over, wanted to talk or something, so he came
up to my apartment and I made some coffee. We talked for a while,
then he said some things that I thought were out of line. We got
into sort of an argument, and I told him he needed to get his act
together.”
“In what way?”
“Just plain old growing up. He’s still acting like a kid. Not being
responsible about his job and stuff like that. Well, I told him that,
then he says to me, ‘Look who’s talking
.
’ And I start to get hot and
ask him what he means. He says I can’t even hold my own family together. That was below the belt, and my first thought was to take
a punch at him. But I didn’t. And that’s what I’m saying.” “Why don’t you think you took a punch at him?” Should I tell him about the voice? Or would that put me in a
whole new category in Sutton Hallard’s eyes?
N
for nutcase. “I just didn’t. I held back. I could feel myself holding back,
not wanting to do it.”
“And you have no idea why you didn’t?”
For some reason I’ll never fully understand, the next voice I
used was Peter Lorre’s. “Who knows the depths of the human
mind?”
Sutton Hallard stared at me like I was, in fact, a nutcase. “That’s my Peter Lorre imitation,” I explained. “Just to show
you my acting side.”
“Very amusing.” Hallard tapped his pencil on the fleshy part
of his palm.
“No, but seriously,” I said, using the familiar segue, “I truly
think I’m becoming a better person. I’m not just lashing out.” “People don’t simply change, out of the blue. There is some
sort of stimulus and, if you look hard enough, you can usually find
it. If we can do that now, it may play an important role in this aspect
of the case.”
Important role? I wondered what he meant. It sounded like a
verbal clue, almost like he was prompting me to give him something he could work with. Maybe like he was on my side a little bit.
Feeling sorry for me? I didn’t care. I’d take any bone Sutton Hallard wanted to throw my way.
“Maybe there is something,” I said.
“Please.”
“Church. I’ve joined a church. I’m really trying to look at things
from that perspective.”
“A Christian perspective?”
“Yeah. I mean, the Bible and all that. I’m in a Bible study
group; we meet on Wednesday nights, a lot of actors in it. Good
people. I feel like I can talk about anything with them.” “What church is this?”
“Gower Presbyterian, in Hollywood.”
Hallard jotted a note. “Tell me more.”
That had to mean I was on the right track with him. Good. Ride
this train to the end. “For instance, the other night we’re all talking about how frustrating the acting business is. And I say, ‘Amen,
brother.’ And the guy leading the study, who is doing pretty well I
might add, says, ‘How do you handle it?’ And I say I have no clue.
And then he opens the Bible and reads about not having any anxiety, but by praying to God and being thankful for what you
do
have, you can have peace. That really helped me a lot.” “You pray regularly?”
“I’m trying to get in the habit.”
Hallard scribbled another note. I wanted to see what he was
writing so badly I almost snatched the paper.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Hallard asked when he was finished. “What?”
“Anyone romantically?”
That was a bolt out of the blue. But I guess he had the right to
ask, and I had to wag my tail and jump through the hoop. “No,” I said. “No dating?”
I thought of Nikki McNamara and was glad now we hadn’t gotten into anything. I felt it was better for me if I played the role of
spurned husband, wanting to keep the marriage together. Did I? If Paula suddenly called it quits with Troncatti, would
I even want her back? I didn’t know at this point.
“Do you have any plans in that area?” Hallard said. “No,” I said, truthfully. “What I want is my daughter. And it
was my wife who started fooling around with another man. I didn’t
do a thing.”
“Not anything? You are claiming this is all a one-sided situation?” “All I know is things seemed pretty good until Paula left to do
that movie. Meanwhile, I stayed back here and took care of Maddie while she got to go and make herself into a movie star.” “Let’s talk about that part of it for a moment. Your wife has
done exceedingly well in the last few months, has she not?” “Yeah, she has. She’s being made into this major star.” “While your career has not exactly gone upward.” What a great psychologist this guy was. Knew how to make me
feel like absolute dirt.
“No,” I said. “But that’s another thing.”
He raised his eyebrows in a signal to continue.
Should I tell him what I knew? Or what I thought I knew? “You were about to say?” Hallard blinked at me. “Just that my career was set to have a major boost. I got cast in
a new show with John Hoyt, on NBC. But then it was yanked out
from under me. And I know why.”
Sutton Hallard waited.
“The producer got pressure to drop me,” I said, trying to
sound as objective as possible. “I found out about it through a
friend who works at the company. I did a little snooping and found
out it was Antonio Troncatti’s agent who put the pressure on. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Especially after I saw Paula’s mother
meeting with him.”
“Meeting with whom?”
“The agent, a guy named Leonard Remey.”
Hallard tapped the end of his pencil on the desk, making dull
thud thud
sounds. “Do you have any corroboration of this?” “I only know what I saw and heard.”
“What
you
saw and heard?”
He wasn’t buying this. And I knew what it must have sounded
like. The paranoid ravings of a spurned husband. Grasping at
straws. Flinging mud at my wife.
“No, there’s Lisa, my friend at the production company. She . . .”
I stopped. I had promised her I wouldn’t say anything. “Can you get a letter from her, addressed to me, setting forth
these facts?”
“I just don’t know. I told her I’d keep it confidential. She has
a job . . .”
Sutton Hallard’s face became vaguely skeptical.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said weakly.
“Please. Until then, I can’t consider this in my report. What I
need are facts and supporting documentation. You understand that,
I’m sure.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“But getting back to your acting career—”
“Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that lately, and
I want to tell you that my number one concern is Maddie, being
able to be a good father and support for her. I’ve been looking into
going back to school, getting my degree, getting something more
stable going.”
“You’re thinking of leaving the acting profession?” “If that’s what it takes to be a good father, then yes. I don’t care
about acting more than I do my own daughter.”
“If you go back to school, money will be tight, will it not?” How was I going to deny that? “But people do it all the time.” “Who would watch the child when you’re in class?” “I’d work that out, like other people work it out.” “You would need money to pay for daycare then, wouldn’t you?” “Yeah, I suppose.”
Hallard wrote something on his paper.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Dr. Hallard, did you talk to Maddie yet? Did you ask her about the moon dance?”
He stopped writing. “You know I cannot answer that.” “You can’t tell me anything?”
“It will all be in my report.”
“When is this going to end?” “Soon.”