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  Hence the Red Sofa comment. Some brain blips you never outgrow completely.

  The girl looked confused and slightly mortified. I guessed she didn’t have much of a sense of humor, but she also didn’t have a camera around her neck, so at least there was the satisfaction of knowing I’d been right about her all along. She was just a hotel guest, going about her business with no particular interest in Justin. He’d hate that—it made him wrong and not the center of attention, all at once. There was an attractive female in the room right next door, and she wasn’t waiting in the hall for an autograph. Ouch.

  “You and Elvis sleep all right?” Well now, Nate, that was stupid, too. You’re zero for two this morning. Must be the lack of shut-eye. Sleeping in a room with Justin was like curling up in a cave with a hibernating grizzly.

  The girl blinked and blushed another shade. “I really apologize. I drove in late. This is my aunt’s hotel, but I didn’t want to bother her in the middle of the night. The hide-a-key wouldn’t work, and I was just … well … stranded. I hope I didn’t scare—” In the Precious Moments room, The Shay snorked, caught his breath, and let out a rumble that probably registered on an earthquake monitor somewhere.

  “Don’t tell the media,” I joked. “The snore is an insider secret.”

  She smiled, so she did have a sense of humor after all, and a nice laugh. Beautiful eyes. I debated a minute on what I’d call that color if I were writing her in a story. Green, maybe hazel, with little gold streamers toward the center. She’d be the pretty freedom fighter in war-torn Greece or at the battle of the Alamo, the one with the olive skin and ringlets of dark reddish-brown hair, slightly ethnic in her features, a little vulnerable, naturally pretty but too preoccupied to flirt.

  When Justin woke up, he would like her. He would want to know who she was.

  It occurred to me that the early bird gets the worm, and thanks to Justin’s snoring, I was the early bird. “Nate Heath,” I said, by way of beginning introductions.

  “Lauren Eldridge.” She offered her hand a little tentatively, the way women do when they want you to know the boundaries right up front. I checked for a ring on her other hand. It’s always reassuring when a purposefully noninterested woman is married. Then you know it’s not you she doesn’t like. The circumstances just are what they are.

  I looked around for a place to set my plate or my coffee, or both. Lauren waved off the handshake. “Oh, hey, don’t bother. It’s all ri-ight.” She had a nice little Texas twang—not the whole southern drawl thing like Amber’s, but just the slight stretch of a few words here and there. Cute.

  Justin snorked again. The sound echoed into the hall, and the building seemed to shift. The walls crackled, and a gust of air moaned in what I’d concluded was a dumbwaiter that went to the first floor. Downstairs, the turn-of-the-century lobby had been converted into a beauty shop and health club—at least that’s what the sign on the front window said. Daily Hair and Body. There wasn’t anyone to ask and the lights were still off, but food had appeared on the buffet table and the cookie basket was gone. After listening to Justin tell spooky hotel stories, I could only guess that the ghosts of bygone Dailyians had baked breakfast and left it for those of us who could still enjoy a good sweet roll.

  Lauren gaped at the door to our room. “Does he always do that?”

  “Pretty much,” I said, yawning into my sleeve and blinking because my eyes were grainy.

  “You must’ve been up all night.”

  “I slept quite a bit on the plane.” Which was good planning on my part, because Justin talked half of the night, as usual, then when he finally decided it was time, he downed a couple of sleeping pills, conked out, and commenced snoring. I bedded down on the antique, stiff, and lumpy sofa thing, which incidentally was red, and lay there remembering the old days, when Justin and I shared a set of bunks at Mama Louise’s. I kept a pile of things on the top bunk to throw at him when he got too loud, but most nights I gave up, and since the rules prohibited wandering around the house after lights out, I sat up with a book to read or a notepad to write on. I did most of my sleeping in math class, which was probably why I was now a writer and not an engineer designing the next international space station. “You get used to it,” I said, patting myself on the back for being cavalier so early in the morning. No sense making her feel bad about stealing the Elvis room.

  Her lips twisted to one side in a way that seemed mildly flirty. I experienced a blip on my man-radar. She had a cute little dimple when she did that.

  “Okay, you don’t really get used to it,” I admitted. “I stayed up and read the rest of the script.”

  “The script? For The Horseman?”

  Ahhh … she knew about the script. So she wasn’t a completely disinterested party after all. The mystery deepened. Who was the cute girl from the Elvis room and why was she giving me the hawkeye? “That’s the one.” I stopped just short of adding, Sure cure for insomnia, let me tell you. By five a.m. I could have drifted off with a freight train in the next bed.

  “You have the script?” Was it my imagination or was I suddenly twice as interesting? Maybe she wanted a part in the movie. She didn’t seem the type.

  “Yes.” If you can call it that.

  “Can I see it?”

  “The script?” All righty then, what’s going on here, Nater? The random girl in the alley isn’t so random after all. …

  “Yes.” She glanced impatiently toward the room, where Justin had finally rolled over and quit snoring.

  “It’s not … ” fit for public consumption. If the screenplay (with Justin’s idiotic notes in the margin), in its present befuddled, impractical, confused condition leaked out, Justin would look like the world’s biggest idiot. “It’s … uhhh … it’s in the process still. It needs … ” to be burned “some work.”

  Lauren seemed to sense that there was something I wasn’t saying. Odd, because I’d always been pretty good at keeping people from getting a read on me. Old habit from life with Doug, and a skill that had served me well over the years in LA. When ego is everything, it’s best not to let people know what you really think.

  We stood silent a moment, and I had the weird, uncomfortable feeling that the little Texas girl was tunneling right through me. Her lips pressed together in a skeptical line that wasn’t unfriendly, exactly, but there was an astute look in her eye. The blip on my man-radar vanished like a ship in the Bermuda Triangle. Clearly, we were talking business here.

  She barricaded herself behind crossed arms, and I sensed that we were about to level with each other. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, which is usually what people say right before they’re going to take a shot at something that isn’t nice, either. “But I’m wondering what in the world is going on here.”

  “Here?”

  “Here,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the broader here, as in, in the general vicinity at this particular time. “With this whole … movie thing. Who would want to film a movie in Daily, Texas?”

  “Good question.” I liked this girl. She was just spunky enough to be fun, just confusing enough to be a challenge. What was her interest in the film, anyway?

  “Why?”

  “Why is it a good question, or why does The Shay want to do a film here?”

  Her chin tilted emphatically. “Both.”

  Just to provide a moment of suspense, I pretended to be thinking about it. “No idea.”

  “How can you have no idea?” She edged up the volume as if to tell me we weren’t playing anymore. For whatever reason, Lauren Eldridge, whose aunt owned the hotel, was heavily invested in The Shay’s filmmaking plans. But the less information floating around the better. When this harebrained project collapsed, as it inevitably would, and Justin had to renege on whatever promises he’d made to his new friend, Amber Anderson, and the rest of the locals, there would be less fodder for a lawsuit or a media smear campaign. Even now I could imagine the headline—Heartbreak in the Heartland:Superstar Sells
Big Plans, Leaves Behind Broken Dreams.

  “Is there going to be a movie?” Lauren met my eyes. I had that annoying feeling she was reading me again.

  Maybe I didn’t like this girl after all. She was … irritatingly direct, without really revealing her interest in the matter. This was much more than a casual inquiry, more like a grilling, actually.

  The door to the Care Bear cottage opened and Justin stumbled out, squinting through one bloodshot eye, sporting a case of bed head, and wearing nothing but those girly-looking silk boxers he thinks make him look hot when the tabloids catch him in his underwear.

  Lauren blinked, then turned away, either shocked, appalled, or amused, or some combination of the three.

  Licking sleep-jam from his teeth and smacking his lips, The Shay scratched his stomach while trying to focus. “What’s with the noise out here?” Funny question, coming from the guy who’d just been shaking the building off its foundation.

  “Yeesh, Justin, go put on some clothes. You’re in a hotel.” Which wasn’t to say that ever made much difference. Home, hotel, Malibu house with glass on all sides … Justin did pretty much what Justin wanted to do. Being the center of the universe has its privileges.

  He shrugged and continued across the hall into what I’d figured out this morning was the bathroom, since there wasn’t one in our room. Sort of an old-fashioned concept, but it’s not every day you get to shave with a life-sized cardboard John Wayne for company. The Duke was a bit one-dimensional, but we looked great in the mirror together. I took a picture with my cell phone. I thought I’d show it to my landlord when I returned to Mammoth Lakes.

  As soon as The Shay was gone, Lauren got back to the question at hand. “So, is all of this for real? There is going to be a movie?”

  I knew that by not answering right away, I was answering. It would have been more convenient to just say, Yeah, sure, of course. The Shay said we’re going to film The Horseman, and we’re going to film The Horseman. Yee-haw. Saddle up there, cowgirl. But in the back of my mind, in the farthest reaches of my memory, there was my grandfather, sitting beside me on the farmhouse steps as my mom’s car wheezed up the driveway with Doug, my stepdad to be, in the driver’s seat. Be a good boy, Nate, Gramp said, just before I left the farm to move into Doug’s house. Remember your Sunday school lessons. Do the right thing, even if it’s hard.

  The bathroom door opened, and Justin stuck out his head. He answered Lauren’s question, saving me from an inconvenient moral dilemma. “You bet there’s gonna be a movie.” Was it my imagination or had he grown a Texas accent overnight? “Nate’s gonna make this thing sing Golden Globe like you wouldn’t believe. Aren’t ya, Nate?” The door closed, and he popped out of the conversation as quickly as he had popped in.

  Lauren turned her back to the bathroom door, waiting for me to answer.

  “Hooow-dee!” a high-pitched, yet startlingly robust call echoed up the stairs, and I seized the distraction. “Hey up thay-er, anybuddy hu-u-un-gree this mornin’?” The words stretched in the air, playing a twangy, tinny rhythm, like an old guitar badly out of tune and a little too lively so early in the morning. “Hel-lo-o-oh, every-buddy decent?”

  The stairs squeaked, then stopped like someone was waiting just around the corner. When I glanced at Lauren, she was what Mama Louise would have called three shades of pale. She looked like she was considering making a run for the front stairs at the other end of the hall. What was up with that? Maybe all that jazz about this being her aunt’s hotel was just a cover. Maybe she was an interloper—a reporter for the entertainment tabs, a mentally disturbed Justin Shay fan, a spy from Randall’s office. That would explain all the questions about the film plans. …

  The next thing I knew, she’d bolted through the door into Suite Beulahland, leaving me standing in the hallway, alone with my sweet rolls.

  “All-ri-ighty then, last warnin’. Cover up, ’cuz there’s ladies comin’.” It occurred to me that the proprietors, and anyone else who frequented this hotel, had probably been treated to the startling vision of Justin in his silk boxers before.

  There was chatter on the stairway. “Are you sure he’s decent?”

  “Well, he’s up, Imagene, I know that. I heard water goin’ down the pipes.”

  “That don’ mean he decent.” The third accent was foreign— Chinese, Japanese, Thai, something like that. “In Coli-forna they go to beach not decent.”

  “Oh, Lucy, for heaven’s sake. They do not.”

  “I see it on TV.”

  “Pppfff! That stuff gives people ideas. Pretty soon it’ll be everyone runnin’ around in the altogether.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Donetta. Lucy was makin’ a observation. People in California do things different.”

  “Folks hadn’t oughta run around the beach in the altogether. The other day I was showin’ the Sunday school kids them websites about our cruise, and there was a woman in a thong bathing suit in the picture. Looked like a plucked turkey in a smokehouse hangar.”

  The stairway broke into a raucous chorus of giggles. I’d concluded there were three people around the corner—Donetta and Imagene, whose first language was Texan, and Lucy, whose first language was something other than English. “Oh, mercy, if that ain’t a picture,” Imagene said finally. “I think you need one of them swimsuits for the cruise, Netta.”

  “That’d clear the beach!”

  “How’d we get to talkin’ about the beach?”

  “I can’t recall, actually.”

  “We talk about Mit-ter Shay. He don’a look like pluck turkey. He look like Yoga With Yahani show.”

  The bathroom door opened, and Justin came out with a Jimmy Stewart towel wrapped around his waist. He was just in time to hear himself being lauded from the stairway.

  He slicked his hair back and posed. “Good mornin’, ladies,” he called, then checked the towel. I guess he figured that was decent enough. “What’s for breakfast?” Leaning close to me, he grinned. “I love this place. Isn’t it great?”

  “Are ya decent?” A nest of tall, red—really red—hair peeked around the corner, followed by a face that was a cross between Carol Burnett and Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke. “Well, mornin’, mornin’, morning!” Donetta topped the stairs followed by, presumably, Imagene and Lucy. Imagene, with roller-curled gray hair, round cheeks, and thick glasses hanging partway down her nose, awakened some memory of my grandmother I couldn’t quite put a finger on. My grandmother walked like that, for one thing, sort of shuffling from one foot to the other with her head poked cautiously out in front.

  Lucy reminded me of the lady who used to run the convenience store down the block from Mama Louise’s. She was a nice lady—from someplace in the Philippines. When we tried to lift candy bars, or drink part of a soda, then top it off again, she ran us out of her store, cussing in a language we couldn’t understand and wielding a broom, but she was kind enough not to call the police. She just wrote it down and charged us for it the next time we came in with money. “No flee-bie,” she’d say and shake a finger at us. “No flee-bie. You owe, you pay.” Good life lesson. I wondered if Justin remembered No flee-bie. I’d have to ask him the next time he was yammering on in the middle of the night about things that didn’t matter.

  Donetta (Miss Kitty) gave Justin a big smile. “Well hay thay-er. Ya brought yer friend. You two have a good ni-ight? Were the rooms all ri-ight and everythin’?” The trio proceeded up the hall. Donetta stuck out her hand and introduced herself to me. “Hi, hon, I’m Donetta.”

  “Nate Heath,” I said, and she yanked me into a hug, then let me go, and held me by the shoulders.

  “Aren’t ye-ew just as cute as a speckled pup! Justin’s just told us all about ye-ew. He says yer the best movie writer there ever was. He said you was gonna write the script for The Horseman, and when you get done with it, why, it’ll be a sure-fire bet for the Academy A-ward. We sat right down there in the beauty shop and talked all about it, not … when was that, hon?” She glanced
at Justin, who shrugged helplessly. For Justin, most things were a blur. “Well, not more’n a month or two ago, anyhow,” Donetta went on. “Willie Wardlaw sent that script to my brother, Frank. Two of them are old friends. Willie’s been tryin’ to get it made into a movie for a while, and he thought maybe since Frank’s helpin’ with some of the work out at Justin’s ranch, well, maybe he could get Justin to look at it. Frank ain’t much of a reader, and he ain’t the pushy type, either, but I don’t have a problem with either thang, so when Justin called and said he was comin’ last time, I had the script ready and a’waitin in the room, and the rest is history. It’s a real good story, and the movie bein’ made’ll mean a lot to Willie, and to Daily. It’s a real good story, don’t you tha-ank?” She ended with a definitive nod, and I had the feeling I was being sold something—a bill of goods, deep fried with sugar on top. A script fritter, so to speak.

  All three women stood with their hands clasped expectantly, waiting for me to say something.

  No comment. “I haven’t … read it … all … yet.”

  “Well, it’s got horses, and a cowboy, and a lonely little boy with no daddy. He’s autistic. And a love story, and a big horse race all in one. Picture shows don’t get much better’n that. I got some ideas for ya, too, when yer ready, a’course. I spent a lot of hours lookin’ in the shop window and thinkin’ about some ways the movie write-up is different from the book, and I had a … well, sort of a revelation. Sometimes, when I’m lookin’ in the shop window I have … well, I guess you’d call ’em visions.”

  Imagene nudged Donetta, knocking her off balance. “Donetta, for heaven’s sake, you’re gonna make him think we’re all one biscuit short of a panful. I bet he knows how to write a movie, anyhow. That’s what he does for a livin’.”

  “I was just bein’ conversational, Imagene. He might like to hear my idea.” Swiveling my way, she raised penciled-on brows, waiting for confirmation, or an invitation. “Now, I got a big table all reserved down at the café. Frank’s downstairs, and Willie Wardlaw and his girlfriend, Mimi, are on the way here. I thought we could go on over and get us a real breakfast before I open up the shop— have one of them Hollywood meetin’s just like on that Studio 20 TV show.”