Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Page 33

  “Nobody has land lines anymore. You can’t cut the cord on a cell phone.”

  Cindy’s pretty brow furrowed. “Okay. These three teenagers accidentally run over some old geezer—”

  “Too original. Hollywood’s playing it safe these days because of the economy.”

  “How about a remake? Something with sorority girls and butcher knives?”

  “Now you’re talking. I’ll have my people set up a pitch meeting.”

  Cindy’s eyes widened. No doubt she was imagining herself lying there on the bed in her underwear, fake blood dripping from a dozen wounds. The only question was whether she would be Kill Number Three or Kill Number Five, and it would probably come down to the lead actress’s hair color. If the lead was blonde like Cindy, then Cindy would have to die much earlier to avoid audience confusion.

  Dempsey followed her to fall fashions. “So, I hear you’re hosting a Halloween party.”

  “Yeah,” she said, distracted, as if the biggest social event of the semester was now as tedious as a Pepsi commercial. “Wanna come?”

  “I’d like to see how you work a crowd. That can make a difference when awards season rolls around.”

  “I didn’t mean like a date, because I asked—”

  He held up his hand and lied again. “Hey, hey. No casting-room couch here. I don’t mix business and pleasure.”

  She gave a half smile, half listening. “Not that I wouldn’t. But I need to see the script first.”

  Even in Parson’s Ford, they think they’re smarter than the writer.

  If only they knew Dempsey rarely used a script, because that would slow down production. Better to encourage the actors to ad lib and act naturally. The amateurs he’d roped into his movies couldn’t remember their lines anyway. If only he had more talent like Royce, he wouldn’t be waiting around for that agent to return his phone call.

  “So, this party,” he said. “Is it okay if I film my new project there?”

  Cindy almost dropped the stone-washed denim jacket she was considering. “Wow. I’ll be a shoo-in for Homecoming Queen after that.”

  “Gotta quit thinking small, Summerhill.”

  “I know, I know, first the cans film festival and then Sunset Boulevard.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘Con,’ like a con job,” he said. “French, so the s is silent and you say the n like you’re annoyed.”

  “Thank God for subtitles.”

  “I know you have a boyfriend, but I’d like you to meet an actor I’ve worked with. I think you two would have good screen chemistry together.”

  Cindy’s supreme confidence wavered only slightly, and then it was back in place like the stray lock of hair she tucked behind her ear. It was a fetching gimmick, and Dempsey would have made it her signature mannerism. Too bad she was just a bit part.

  “I’d like that,” she said. “Can you bring him to the party?”

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Dempsey’s cell buzzed in his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said, giving his “Showtime” shrug.

  Leaving Cindy to add a few more items to her cart, he fished his cell out in the underwear section. “Dempsey here.”

  “It’s Irwin Goldmyer, Demps, how’s it going?”

  Dempsey swallowed hard and punched a pack of tube socks. Be cool. The best deal is one you can walk away from.

  But THE AGENT HAS CALLED!

  “Great, Mr. Goldmyer.”

  “Hey, I’m no ‘mister.’ Call me ‘Irwin.’ Better yet, make it ‘Ir.’”

  “Yes, sir, Ir.”

  “Because that’s the kind of relationship I want us to have. Demps and Ir, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ve been talking to some people—some very, very, very well-placed people—and they like the sound of what you’re talking about.”

  “Did you show them my reels?”

  “Demps, that’s not the way we do things here. That’s all back end, the tech stuff. Boring. First we go with the pitch, see what ideas people want to get behind. Pictures are pictures, but ideas—that’s what separates the people in the opening credits from those that show up after everybody’s left the theater.”

  “How about the scripts? You said yourself that Meat Hangover was a no-brainer.”

  “No brains. Right. The deal is, get in the room, then see which way the wind’s blowing. But they like those i-n-g things you do.”

  Dempsey’s brow furrowed. A woman with a beehive hairdo and yellow sunglasses pushed past him to check out the bikini briefs. He lowered his voice. “I’m building up Royce Dean just like you told me to. I even gave him a speaking part in the next project.”

  “You’re a genius, Demps. Do you know how many people fly into LAX every day with a stack of videos and paper? Enough to cast a Cecil B. DeMille remake. But when you’re packaged with a star, you write your own ticket.”

  “You mean like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp?”

  Irwin Goldmyer hesitated, and it sounded as if he were speaking to someone else for a moment, then he returned to the conversation. “Royce Dean and Dempsey…uh, what’s your last name again?”

  “Van Heusen.”

  “Household names for sure.”

  “I understand the commercial considerations, but I’m a little worried about the artistic integrity of using subliminal messages. I mean, ‘Coke adds life’ is one thing, but ‘In Royce we trust?’”

  “Stars are made, not born, Demps. You’ll understand, once you reach the inner circle.”

  “I don’t see why I’m wasting my time in Parson’s Ford when—”

  “Today Parson’s Ford, tomorrow the world.” Irwin Goldmyer let out a devious cackle, as if his 10 percent of the world was practically in the bank.

  “All right, Mr. Goldmyer—”

  “Ir.”

  “All right, Ir. I’ll keep pushing product here and building an audience.”

  “The devil’s in the details, Demps, and you leave the details to me.”

  “Yes, sir, Ir.”

  “Who’s that?” Cindy said, startling him. She was holding a red blouse and bell-bottom jeans.

  He secretly clicked the button to kill the connection and pretended like he was still talking to someone. “And you tell Mr. Spielberg I expect total artistic control,” Dempsey said into the cell phone, and then he made a big show of flipping it closed. “These Hollywood types,” he added casually.

  “Wow. Have you ever met Robert Pattinson?”

  “You remember Royce, the one I was telling you about?”

  “The actor?”

  “Once you see him in action, you’ll forget all the rest. Just watch the videos I gave you, okay?”

  “As soon as I try these on,” she said, holding up the clothes.

  “Fine. I’ve been talking to some very, very, very well-placed people, and they like the sound of you.”

  “The sound of me?”

  “As an idea. In the room.”

  She nodded and glanced toward the dressing room.

  He pointed at her as if he were sighting down the barrel of a pistol. “We’ll talk.”

  He sauntered out of Old Navy like a star on the rise, a dude with dreams, a man with an agent. Even the dreary gray tiles of the Parson’s Ford Mall, and the algae-scummed fountain in the center court with its broken waterspout, and the “For Rent” signs in the empty storefronts couldn’t get him down.

  He was walking past Gamestop when he saw his gang, gathered around a video screen where Snake was thumbing the controls.

  Only a day until Halloween and these clowns are wasting time on interactive media?

  Dempsey swept into the store and clapped his hands. “Okay, people, what have you done for me lately?”

  They turned in unison, eyes glazed. “In Royce we trust,” they said.

  “It’s the big push,” he said. “I just got off the phone with some very, very, very well-placed people—”

  “When do we get to meet Royce?” Willar
d said.

  “He’s a busy man. You have to get his publicist, and that means dealing with his publicist’s agent, and—”

  “Royce,” Snake said.

  Dempsey playfully slapped him on the shoulder. “I know, and he appreciates it, let me tell you. Come Halloween—”

  “Halloween,” they said in unison.

  “Yes. Come Halloween , you’ll get to find out for yourself. But first we need to get my movies into every house in town. That’s going to take some word of mouth.”

  “Royce,” Lacey said.

  “Good. You’re catching on. Come by my apartment and pick up some more tapes. Snake, you hit the library—”

  “They took away my library card.”

  “You’re checking in, not checking out. Sneak a few copies into the video section. Lacey?”

  “Royce.”

  “These well-placed people, they like the sound of you. See if you can get your drama teacher to show The Bloodening to the class. Tell him it’s an example of post-modern cinema verite.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Neither does he, but it sounds impressive. And Willard?”

  “Royce,” he said.

  “Did you take Cindy Summerhill to the prom last year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you score?”

  Willard blushed a little. “I spilled Dr. Pepper on her dress.”

  Dempsey nodded. “I figured as much. But you know where she lives, right?”

  “Highland Drive, where all the big houses are.”

  “I got a job for you.”

  After the group disbanded, mumbling “In Royce we trust,” Dempsey got in his Prius and drove home. The plan was going perfectly, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do about Crystal. The flirting had softened her up a little, but she was a little too loyal to that doofus Pettigrew. And when Dempsey had tried to bring Pettigrew over to the dark side with a chance at stardom, the guy seemed too worried about what would happen to his tow truck if he had to fly to Hollywood.

  Luckily, Minerva Aldridge would be in no position to stop them. Royce had seen to that, sneaking into her trailer and swapping out her silky swallowwort elixir with terrier pee. When she tried to concoct a formula to close all the Orifices on Halloween night, she’d actually be making them wider. His agent said “Royce and the entire entourage” would be coming through, and then the cast party would begin.

  Dempsey wasn’t sure what “the entire entourage” included, picturing hairdressers, personal trainers, and a voice coach, but he figured there was plenty of room on the Royce train.

  And the director would be engineer. And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to…Dempsey Van Heusen!

  The grin was still frozen on his face when someone behind him blew a car horn. He found himself in the parking lot of his apartment complex, idling with the car in “Park.” He waved at the person behind him—Pushy jerk, just wait until the entourage gets here—and eased into a spot.

  He went into his apartment and opened the closet that held his personal inventory of videotapes. He took out a copy of The Cheesening, found an adhesive address label, and stuck it over the title on the side of the tape.

  With a black Sharpie, he wrote, “The Best of Julie Andrews.”

  Then he went upstairs and leaned the videotape against the door to Mrs. Vickers’ apartment. He would have hit the doorbell in a classic “Ding dong ditch,” but he was soon to be world famous. She’d be telling the local papers about the polite boy downstairs who worked so hard on his picture-making.

  She might even do it without inadvertently saying “Royce.”

  He was still smiling long after he’d returned to his apartment.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The bathroom smelled of Comet and that mildewed, under-the-sink funk. The previous night’s smoke still lingered in the background like a ghost’s body odor.

  “You got boy trouble?” Momma asked Crystal, arranging the rows of green glass bottles.

  Crystal groaned inwardly. Here came The Talk, as if Momma knew the first thing about either boys or men. “Not any that I can’t handle.”

  “Good, because you got other trouble.”

  Does she know about Bone? Crystal had kept the secret because necromancy was against the family code. Plus it was plain bad business.

  Momma had once tracked down an old lover, and even after finding out he was dead, she couldn’t resist. Three potions, a séance, and a literal blind date later, she’d had a visit from a filthy, long-bearded wino in an Elmer Fudd cap. Crystal never knew what the visitor said, but shortly after, Momma had given a lecture on never raising the dead.

  “I know, I know,” Crystal said, feeling the shield slide up a little. “I have to help stand guard on Halloween. At the same time I have to go to the lame Summerhill party. And probably write a research paper, too. Want me to add ‘Clean the bathtub’ to the list?”

  “You’re of age, Crystal.”

  “That’s what you said when I had my first period.”

  “That made you a lady. Now you’re a woman.”

  “You don’t get to be a lady in a trailer park.”

  Momma’s face drew in on itself and tiny bats fluttered in Crystal’s stomach. Low blow. It’s not her fault we’re poor.

  Momma thumbed the stopper on the Salamander Squirt, which Crystal had helped harvest during a Rocky Knob snow-melt spring. Momma gave a slight nod and rueful grin. “There’s an old story.”

  Here we go ...

  “A toothless wizard was walking through the enchanted forest where men were hard at work, sawing and cutting trees for the king. His apprentice was at his side, taking in the destruction.”

  Let me guess—he looked a lot like James Dean.

  “Trees had been taken to stumps, as far as the eye could see. But one ugly, gnarly old tree still stood among them. And the old wizard asked one of the woodcutters, ‘Why did you leave that one?’ And the woodcutter answered back, ‘Too ugly and knotty. Ain’t worth dulling a blade over.’”

  Crystal would have preferred something poignant, like they’d teach in school on Earth Day. Maybe that the woodcutters had seen the environmental consequences of their actions and decided to embrace a more sustainable world and take a conservation tax credit.

  “The wizard took his apprentice over to the tree,” Momma continued. “Up close, they could see the tree had survived fire, lightning, blight, and a million chewy little chipmunks. The wizard rapped on the trunk with his staff and said to the apprentice, ‘Be more like this tree. The tall, proud ones got took. This one is lowly and worthless. If you don’t get noticed, you can work your magic in peace.’”

  “That’s real heart-warming, Momma,” Crystal said. “Now, if I were a dogwood, that might mean something.”

  Momma yanked the cork stopper out with her teeth. After clearing her mouth, she said, “The point is you’re an Aldridge and I’m an Aldridge, and this is the way the Aldridges have been since we come to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Maybe even before then, on back to the King Henries, maybe even the Druid Priests. If I conjured up a million dollars, people would talk. And when they talk, they stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

  Momma took a deep sniff of the Salamander Squirt. “Ah, fresh as February in the high granite.”

  “I don’t want to be real rich,” Crystal said. “I’d settle for a new iPad and a car that runs, and maybe a winter wardrobe.”

  Momma dolloped two drops into a glazed clay dish. “If wishes were horses, you’d need a bigger shovel. Now pay attention, this is important.”

  Crystal glanced past the potion-making and into the mirror, where her own reflection pouted back at her. Am I pretty enough to be a movie star?

  Not as pretty as Cindy Summerhill, but prettier than Bone. Yet Dempsey hadn’t asked her about starring in a picture. He’d gone to Pettigrew first. And Pettigrew was hunky, or at least tall, but not the kind that made most girls twist their necks on the sidewalk.
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  “Crystal,” Momma said. “Your turn.”

  Crystal reached out for the tin of parched cloth, rumored to have come from a witch’s bonfire in Denmark. She didn’t know if any Celtic Aldridges had been burned at the stake, but she wouldn’t be surprised, given those glittering, ice-blue eyes that ran in the family. Momma called them “diamond eyes,” but that made them sound like somebody would want to pluck them out and sell them on the black market.

  The parched cloth crumbled in her fingers. She rubbed her fingers together and the chaff floated into the dish and rested on top of the concoction. Salamander Squirt, parched cloth, oil of elderberry, and bloodroot were now mixed in the dish, and all that remained was the conjure spell.

  Momma held out her hand and Crystal took it. In the olden days, when covens were more tolerated in the back country, a group of witches could hold hands and chant in a circle. But now it was only half a circle, and the bathroom was crowded, and Crystal didn’t trust the recipe.

  Something about that cloth seemed a little off. Maybe the fibers were a little too coarse and pulpy.

  But if she expressed any hesitation, Momma would start from scratch and another hour of her life would swirl down the drain. Pettigrew was due to come by and say he was sorry. She wasn’t sure if she’d accept his apology, or even sure that he’d done anything wrong, but an Aldridge had nothing if not stubborn pride.

  Momma nodded and they chanted together:

  “Mixy, mixy, in the dish,

  Grant forsooth a favored wish.

  When midnight spreads its starry wings

  Bring to me the troubled things.”

  “There,” Momma said in her normal, scratchy voice. She lit a candle and then caught a piece of flash paper afire. As she tossed the burning paper into the dish, Crystal realized why the parched cloth hadn’t felt like cloth at all. It had been coarse paper instead.

  Too late.

  The recipe sizzled and sputtered, then erupted in a beautiful green-and-blue blaze.

  “Uh ...Momma?”

  Momma was gazing blankly into the fire and its flickering threw cerulean rainbows across her eyes. “Mmm?” she said absently.

  “The parched cloth—”

  “Come down the Appalachian Mountain chain in 1749, compliments of Daniel Utter and—”