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  Fred looked frightened. “I can certainly wait in the hotel room.” His slight Italian accent made the words sound like a poetry recitation. He frowned, probably realizing he had no idea where the hotel room actually was.

  “Hey, no way, dude” was Justin’s quick over-the-shoulder reply as he headed for the kitchen. “We’re gonna build a gym and exercise center for the foster kids, and basketball courts. I want you to see the plans.”

  Fred stood a little straighter, having just been promoted from food police to foster shelter consultant. “Only certain types of exercise are appropriate for the developing body.”

  Justin waved over his shoulder. “Right, yeah. Exactly. You can talk to the guy about it.” He’d disappeared through the kitchen door by the time I got out of my chair and waited for everyone else to rise and filter in separate directions. I caught a bewildered look from Lauren on my way past. Someone please tell me what’s going on, the look said. Not a good indication, considering she was the one in charge of getting the horse to wear a necktie and use a table fork.

  If only she knew how typical all of this really was. “Take good care of Fred,” I whispered, leaning close to her ear. “He doesn’t get out of LA much.”

  “I kind of guessed that,” she admitted, then sidestepped so Fred could pass by. The two of us stood temporarily pinned in interestingly tight quarters. Her gaze found mine, and the space suddenly felt just right. “Is it just me or is all of this a little nuts?”

  “It’s just you,” I said, and won a reluctant smile. For a moment, I had an odd kind of tunnel vision. I sort of … forgot there was anything else in the room but her.

  My mind went adrift, as the writing mind is often prone to do. I was thinking there was something … different about her, and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The question piqued my curiosity.

  Then again, maybe she just had pretty eyes and a great smile and I’d been living in a cabin in the woods for too long. …

  “Hey, y’all,” Frank called as he pushed a chair under the end of the table.

  I was suddenly aware that everyone had moved toward the door and I was still standing there with Lauren. We were just … looking at each other.

  I blinked, pretended to be busy fishing out a tip and tossing it on the table for Imagene. My hair fell in my face, and I combed it back. I needed a haircut. Lauren probably thought I looked like a beach bum. “Uhhh … see ya back at the ranch.” That was smooth.

  We went in separate directions as Lauren’s father, Willie, and Mimi started out the front door with Fred trailing uncertainly behind, like the Incredible Hulk awakening in a John Wayne flick.

  Passing the cash register, I entertained the random thought that Justin hadn’t done anything about paying for the meal. “I’ll get the bill.”

  Imagene waved me off. “Oh, hon, don’t worry about it. Bob’ll just put it on Justin’s tab. Won’t ya, Bob?”

  Bob grimaced and cleared his throat. “Uhhh … sure.” The meaning was pretty clear. Justin probably already had a huge tab here, and most likely at other places around town, as well. No doubt it hadn’t occurred to him that if he was going to sneak off without his personal assistant and live like regular folk, he’d have to pay his own bills. “I’ll remind him about it,” I said, then headed out the back door to catch up.

  Leaving town, I pointed out to The Shay that, normally, business owners expect to receive money before the customer walks out the door.

  “Yeah, that’s what Marla’s for,” he said, his attention largely devoted to keeping the monster truck in one lane as we turned onto a gravel road near the Buy-n-Bye convenience store. On the rough surface, the balloon tires bounced and ricocheted, so that we moved along like a giant Super Ball. Any traffic going the other way would be in mortal danger—if there were any traffic, which there wasn’t. Lucky thing.

  “Marla’s not here. You left her at home, remember?”

  Justin ground it into third gear. “I brought you.”

  “I’m not your PA, dude.” Sometimes he could be incredibly annoying. “I listened to you snore all night, and that’s as far as I go. You can pay your own bills.”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. They love me here.” Strangely enough, he was right. The people in this little town did seem to have a genuine affection for The Shay.

  “Wake up, Justin. People need you to pay your bills.”

  He lowered his eyelids, giving me the look that sent assistants, sycophants, makeup artists, and grips sniveling from his presence. I really didn’t care. If he wanted to get mad and tell me to blast off his planet, then fine. “Don’t chap me. I’m having a good morning.”

  “People need the money,” I said.

  “If you need money, Nate, all you gotta do is tell me.” The engine revved as he hit the gas and we rocketed down a hill and toward a creek, where a culvert covered by a lumpy strip of pavement provided a one-lane low-water crossing barely wide enough for Justin’s new ride. We went airborne as the truck bumped onto the makeshift bridge, bouncing both of us toward the roof, then back down. “This thing is so cool.” Justin ground the gears, throwing gravel as we hit the end of the crossing.

  “I don’t need money, Justin.” Talking to him was like trying to carry on a conversation in a foreign language. The words never meant what you thought they would mean.

  “Well, dadgum, then what are you on my rear about?”

  I was stunned. Dadgum and rear? What was with all the G-rated language? Normally, Justin specialized in the hard stuff. “You know what, I’m just trying to help you out. People need you to pay for things when you get them. Not everybody’s got a pool of cash sitting around. They need the money for stuff so they can buy more stuff to sell to other people.” So turn the wheels of commerce, big fella.

  The Shay seemed to have a moment of dawning awareness. Other people in the world have needs, too. Focusing on the truck temporarily, he reached into the console and pulled out an envelope with an auto dealer’s logo on it. “Remind me to call the guy about the truck.” He handed the envelope to me, then added, “Okay?”

  “All right.” Apparently, the Horsemanmobile wasn’t paid for, either.

  We drove along in silence as Justin contemplated the idea that They love me here was a two-way street. “Nate?” he said finally.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for doing this project with me.”

  “I’m not committing to doing this project. I’m just here.” The one thing I’d never done was lie to Justin. I’d kept my mouth shut a lot of times when I should have said something, but I’d never flat-out lied to him. “I think the project is a mistake. You’ll never get the studio to go for it.” And when this thing falls through, all these people who love you now won’t love you anymore, and you’ll hit bottom so hard I’m afraid you won’t get up.

  “I’ll get the studio to go for it.” If he was the least bit shaken by my lack of confidence, it didn’t show. “I’ve got M. Harrison Dane coming here a week from Monday. Once he sees the project, and the place, and me with the horse, he’ll agree to take it on. With him attached as director, the money men will be in the bag.”

  My mouth went dry. M. Harrison Dane? The M. Harrison Dane? Four-time Oscar winner, who hadn’t done a project in five years because nothing was worthy of his time, M. Harrison Dane? “You’ve got Dane coming here? How’d you manage that?”

  “I called in a few favors.”

  “Those must have been some seriously huge favors.”

  He shrugged as in, No problem for me, I’m The Shay. “You just gotta speak people’s language, Nater. That’s how it’s done.”

  Speak people’s language? Since when did Justin bother to speak anyone’s language?

  He slowed the truck as we neared an old-fashioned white clapboard church that was tucked into a grassy valley beside a creek. “I need a detailed treatment to put in front of Dane—key scenes, synopsis, character cast, you know the drill. Not all of it. Just the proposal and maybe
some of the scenes with the whisperer and the horse. Maybe the big love scene with the chick, and the one where the autistic kid gets lost before they go to the big race.” He stared at the church, thinking heaven knows what. Maybe he was praying for a miracle, since that’s what was needed here.

  A fine sweat broke over my body. M. Harrison Dane. M. Harrison Dane. The name repeated over and over in my mind, growing louder and louder. I was going to write horsey scenes that would be placed in front of M. Harrison Dane. If they weren’t right. If the dialogue didn’t ring. If the action was flat, the characters plastic, the motivations contrived in any way, he would spot it immediately.

  If I didn’t believe in what I was writing, how could I make someone like Dane believe it?

  “I know you can do it, Nate.” Justin’s voice came from somewhere beyond the storm of self-doubt. I was vaguely aware that the truck had stopped in front of the church. The engine rumbled at idle as he looked at me. “You’re a lot better writer than you give yourself credit for. This time, the whole world’s gonna see it.”

  Call me a wimp, but I didn’t share his faith—in the project, or in what I could do with it. Maybe somewhere in the world of literary genius there was a writer who could make magic from The Horseman, breathe life into it, perform script CPR, but I wasn’t the guy. I couldn’t even create a magnum opus while sitting in a cabin in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, with all the time in the world, no restrictions and no pressure. How could I possibly put together something that was good enough for M. Harrison Dane … in a little over a week?

  Deep down, I knew it was futile even to try. When you took away the royalty checks and the glitzy premiers, the nice cars and the A-list parties, I was just a guy who got lucky because I knew the guy who hit it big. That kind of loot trickles down. It gets you into restaurants without standing in line. It makes you look like somebody when you’re not. Underneath it all, I was exactly what Daddy Doug always told me I’d be—a pain in the butt my mama didn’t really want, a kid who’d never amount to anything. A loser.

  You hear it enough times, it’s in your brain, no matter how much you try to block it out. It’s part of your DNA. I had about as much chance of writing an Academy Award–winning screenplay as Justin had of getting nominated.

  “Big ideas get you busted down”—direct quote from Doug. “Sooner you learn that, better off you’ll be.”

  “ … get out there and put my tools back where they go.”

  “ … I say you could touch my stuff?”

  “ … touch my stuff again, I’ll break your arm, you little brat.”

  “ … What? You think you’re somebody special? You gonna cry to your mama now? Come on, stand up and act like a man. Take a swing. I’m right here, you little snot-nosed son of a … ”

  Doug faded as we moved on to the next place past the church, where an aging house trailer sat in the shadow of a new home being built. The trailer looked like someplace my mother would have lived. Last time I saw her, she was shacked up in the back of an RV park and working at a convenience store next door, while Doug collected workman’s comp—something to do with a leg injury. I asked her if she needed anything. Doug told me to buzz off, more or less, and she just stood there. I hadn’t been back since.

  Amber came trotting out of the trailer with a half-grown boy following her. They slipped out the yard gate, shooing away chickens, a couple of lambs, and a few dozen cats. Except for the underconstruction new house in the background, she seemed about as far from American Megastar as she could possibly be.

  The little boy, Amber’s brother, judging by the family resemblance, dashed past her and climbed up to the driver’s side door as Justin rolled down the window. He wanted to see the truck. Justin was quick to oblige. He popped the hood and hopped out to show off the engine.

  I exited the truck and helped Amber climb in. “Thanks, Nate,” she said cheerfully. “How’re you this mornin’?” We exchanged a few niceties during a search for the middle seatbelt.

  While we waited for Justin, she talked about the recent American Megastar tour and the difficulties of adjusting to life on the road. She wasn’t complaining, really, just stating facts. It was hard making the transition from small-town girl to up-and-coming singing sensation. She missed her family, her youngest brother in particular, Avery, the one now making engine talk with The Shay.

  “Justin’s been a real good friend.” Amber leaned down to peek through the gap between the truck and the hood. “I can call him from wherever I am and get advi-ice, and sometimes he’ll just hop in the plane and fly there. One time, he went by Daily and picked up my family and brought them all the way to New York so they could see the American Megastar concert in Times Square.”

  “That sounds like The Shay.” Justin was known for lavish, though often impractical, gift giving. “In Morocco, he bought me a water buffalo.”

  “He’s been just like a big brother to me.” Amber smiled fondly in the direction of the engine.

  “Justin’s not really the big brother type.” It sounded harsh, but I felt the need to warn Amber that this good-behavior period with Justin wouldn’t last. “When he spends time with someone, Amber, it’s because he wants something. I’m not knocking him, but that’s the way he is.”

  Amber turned pointedly to me. “People can change.”

  For the space of an instant, gazing into her wide blue eyes, I almost believed it. I could see why Justin was enamored with her. She had the mesmerizing glow of a true believer.

  “That’s why I asked him to think about makin’ The Horseman instead’a that Davis VanHarbison movie his manager wants him to be in. Justin showed me the script for that movie when we met up in New York City. It’s all about the worst things people can do to each other—shootin’ and killin’, and all the reasons people hate other people. If you watch enough of that stuff, you start thinkin’ that’s the way the world is supposed to be. You lose faith in people.”

  “The world’s a cynical place.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” The dewy look was gone from her eyes, replaced by a purposeful regard. “Justin needs ye-ew to believe in this movie, too, Nate. He knows you’re the only person he can count on to really tell him the truth. All the rest of them people— Marla, and that manager of his, and the so-called friends he hangs around, they just want him to make money so they can get some of it. They don’t care if he gets drunk all ni-ight, pops pills to sleep, and pops more pills to wake up. They buy it for him and wave it ri-ight in his face.”

  I suddenly felt trapped in a place too small. I’d been down the rehab road with Justin before—so many times I couldn’t count. Each ended in a painful crash landing. He always found someone— his personal assistant, the janitor at the rehab center, the limo driver—to get him what he needed. “It’s been that way a long time.”

  “That doesn’t make it ri-ight.” Amber’s words had the lofty idealism of youth.

  “True,” I agreed. “But it is reality.”

  “Don’t you think that way deep down he wants somethin’ more?” The question burrowed in, unearthing the lost remnants of a dreamer I thought I’d buried years ago. “Don’t you want somethin’ more for him?”

  “He doesn’t want anything more for himself.” I felt slightly unsteady, as if I were being dragged out to sea inch by inch and I lacked the strength to fight it. I didn’t have the reserves to mount another campaign to save The Shay from himself. I was busy trying to get my own life straight.

  “He doesn’t drink when he’s in Daily,” Amber said. “Not a drop.”

  The hood slammed shut, Amber’s little brother trotted back to the yard gate, Justin rejoined us in the truck, and my conversation with Amber ended abruptly. Both of us cast embarrassed looks in Justin’s direction, but he didn’t seem to suspect that we’d been talking about him. As Amber waved good-bye, Justin began cheerfully briefing her on the plan for the day.

  “Guess what,” she said when he was finished. Her eyes were bright
with anticipation. She looked like a little girl waiting to announce that the tooth fairy had just left a dollar under her pillow.

  “Hmmm?” Justin was preoccupied with trying to get the truck into reverse.

  Amber paused to show him how it was done. “This way.” She pushed the stick over and down. “We had one like this at the feed store once. Anyhow, guess what.”

  “What?” I said, when Justin didn’t answer right away. Something about Amber pulled you in, whether you wanted it to or not.

  She shifted so that she could swivel back and forth, delivering news in both directions at once. “I just talked to my friend J. Carter Woods down in Austin, and he’s willin’ to write some songs for the movie. Isn’t that great? With him writin’ the songs—oh my gosh—the sound track’ll be so big. Country songwriters don’t get any hotter than him. He’s headed off to Acapulco to get married next week, but he said send him a script and he’ll get busy as soon as him and Manda come back. Isn’t that awesome? If I’d called an hour later, he woulda already been on the plane, headed for Acapulco, but I caught him at just the right time, and he said yes. I truly believe God’s been pavin’ the path for this movie every step of the way.”

  Fortunately, Justin answered before I had to. “Cool,” he said, then put the truck in forward gear, and we rattled off in the Horsemanmobile, three peas in a pod, headed for a movie miracle, or an inevitable disaster, depending on who you asked.

  Chapter 9

  Lauren Eldridge

  I opted to drive myself to the ranch rather than cramming into the back seat of my father’s crew-cab pickup with Willie’s girlfriend and Justin Shay’s Italian exercise guru. Mimi and the personal trainer had struck up a conversation on the way to the car, and I didn’t want to be the third wheel while they discussed abs, buns, and body mass index. Mimi was proud of hers. Frederico invited her to come along next time he did an on-air exercise segment for LA Morning. Mimi was thrilled.