The Actor Read online

  THE ACTOR

  Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Douglas Gardham.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  ISBN: 978-1-9389-0866-8 (s)

  ISBN: 978-1-9389-0867-5 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906695

  Contents

  Prologue

  Act I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Act II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Act III

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Act IV

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  To Laura, Zach and Sammi

  without whose love and support

  The Actor would not have been possible.

  Prologue

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players:

  They have their exits and their entrances;

  And one man in his time plays many parts.

  —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

  Ethan’s Timeline

  October 1991—Redondo Beach, California

  The elevator door was open as he entered the lobby of the apartment building that had been his home for the past several months. He’d been wary of an open elevator after finding a mutilated cat in the compartment a few weeks back. Nothing had ever happened again, outside of a sleeping drunk, but he still hesitated. As he slowly approached from the side, he found the compartment empty. He pressed the button to the eighth floor, just as an attractive blonde woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses joined him.

  “Hi,” he said as the elevator door closed. “What a great day!”

  She turned and looked at him for an instant, as if he was a drifter begging for money, and then her stare returned to the closed elevator door.

  He didn’t allow her reaction to bother his mood. He wanted to share his news with the world, but she was the only person in his presence. She was going to hear about the contents of his envelope whether she liked it or not.

  He was perspiring from the heat outside and his hasty walk up Bronson Street. He never lacked for energy, and today was no different. He moved with the frenetic energy of a child on a sugar high. In his hands, he held a manila envelope containing the fulfillment of a dream he’d had for as long as he could remember. It was all he could do to stand still. “Ethan Jones,” he said as he thrust his free hand toward the woman. Her faded Levi’s were frayed to threads around the back pockets and seams. Her white cotton T-shirt was only partially tucked into her denims, yet she stood erect with perfect posture. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she turned to face him. Startling blue eyes glared at him from behind the pink-framed glasses. There was something strangely familiar about her. “Katharine Davenport,” she replied, her voice calm and professional, with a why-are-you-bothering-me edge to it. She squinted at him as the hint of a smile curved her lips. Her hand was petite, soft in his but surprisingly firm. “So you won the lottery?”

  Ethan combed his fingers through his light brown hair, something he did unconsciously in moments of anxiousness. “No, better than that,” he spoke excitedly. “I’m gonna be a movie star.” It could have sounded like he had his head in the clouds, but to Ethan it was as real as the clothes he was wearing. He held up the manila envelope, now stained by his damp fingertips. “And in here is the script that’s gonna take me there.”

  It took willpower for him to suppress screaming right there in front of this unknown woman. On many levels, this surpassed winning a lottery. This was a ticket to the dreams he’d fought to achieve for so long. His insides were ready to explode.

  “I’m happy for you,” she replied, maintaining her professional air, but her face brightened, reflecting his enthusiasm. “Maybe I’ll get to see your movie sometime. What’s its title?”

  “Browning Station. Oops—I’m not supposed to tell you that. I’m the bad guy.”

  “Browning Station,” she repeated. “I won’t tell a soul, even if I see it. How’s that?”

  The elevator stopped as the number eight lit up the panel above the sliding door and the bell rang.

  “Suspend your disbelief until I see you again,” he said, smiling and ignoring the slight, “but remember Ethan Jones, whom you met in an elevator before he was famous.” He laughed at his words and stepped out of the elevator. He normally wouldn’t have started a conversation with a stranger, but today was different—he was on a high after finally winning a big character role. “Nice meeting you, Katharine Davenport,” he said, exaggerating a bow as the heavy elevator door tried to close. It knocked him sideways and then retracted.

  “You too, Ethan Jones,” she replied, smiling at his awkwardness. “I’ll watch for you.”

  Eighteen months ago, he’d left a secure job in Canada, even when all of his friends told him he was crazy. (“California, Ethan? Have you lost your mind?”) Well, if he had, he’d found it at last.

  Ethan walked quickly toward his apartment, his feet barely touching the threadbare carpet. He share
d the apartment with his girlfriend, Christa White. His roommate from university, Robbie, who had helped bring him to California, was staying with them, as he was between jobs. As Ethan approached their apartment door, he noticed it was ajar. His hesitation was brief as a smile formed on his thin lips—Christa must be home early. He didn’t notice the slash of red above the doorknob or a similar spot on the carpet just inside the door.

  “I got the part!” he shouted, pushing the door open and slipping off his worn deck shoes. No answer. Not a sound. The apartment was dim. “Hey, anybody home?” he called, his voice at once losing its excited edge. Something wasn’t right.

  A trace of Christa’s Givenchy fragrance hung in the air. He grew anxious as he connected the open door and her absence—but maybe she’d only stepped out and inadvertently left the door open.

  Later, his memory would fail as to what happened next. In the dark, his hand swept the wall and hit the light switch but not before touching a wet tackiness on the switch plate. As the apartment lit up, he saw the crimson substance on his hand. Blood? He felt light-headed as he grabbed at the wall to stay upright. His heart pounded in his throat. It can’t be real, he told himself. Such foolishness. It can’t be blood. Not here. You’re in a nightmare, Ethan. Wake up!

  As he looked around, however, his heart nearly stopped. Their apartment was a sea of destruction. Shards of glass from their full-length mirror were scattered everywhere. A lamp lay broken on the floor, its shade crushed like an extinguished cigarette. The doorframe to Robbie’s room was cracked and splintered, the pieces of wood askew. The bookcase was upended, its contents strewn across the parquet floor. The television screen was smashed. And the blood … it was everywhere—on the walls, the doorframes. His feet moved of their own volition. He stepped around the shattered remnants of an antique vase that Christa had bought with money they didn’t have—she’d been so pleased at the deal she’d struck for the piece.

  He walked slowly past the partially open door to Robbie’s room. Blood splatter was on the walls, the bedspread, the bureau, and the mirror.

  Ethan stepped backward, afraid of what he would find on entering, and nearly tripped over the white plastic deck chair near the doorway. In horror, he looked into the bedroom he shared with Christa. He heard himself repeating her name again and again, like a sacred chant. His own voice was unfamiliar to him, as if coming from a distance. Through the doorway his glazed eyes fell on Christa’s feet, naked but for the small gold toe ring he’d given her.

  His feet stopped moving as his eyes caught a full red handprint on the wall beside the bed, directly above the word he’d written to inspire himself: Act.

  Another step forward and he saw the rest of her—or what remained of her. A vibrant crimson filled the bed where Christa lay motionless in the center, her broken hands held behind her head in what looked like an attempt at protection. Her long, beautiful brunette hair was a mixture of coagulating blood and bits of bone and skin. Ethan prayed for the strength to turn away, yet his body remained rigid. His eyes were transfixed on the disfigured head he no longer recognized—the partially torn scalp, the white skull bone. God, please.

  He dropped to his knees at her bedside. His whole body screamed, unloading in shocked grief. He reached out to touch her, hoping, praying for a sign that by some miracle, life might still be inside her broken body. She just couldn’t be gone.

  “God!” he screamed in agony as his life crumbled before him. “You can’t take her away! Not now!”

  Sobs wracked his body as the room swirled about him. Books and clothes were scattered everywhere. His prized book of Homes and Cars of the Stars lay in shreds at the foot of the bed. He was numb to the broken glass on the floor that cut his knees.

  He had no memory of how long he remained with Christa’s lifeless form. Somehow, he managed to struggle back through the living room to dial 911. Later, he would recall little of what happened before the LAPD’s arrival on the scene. The police found him at Christa’s bedside, her lifeless fingers entwined in his own.

  There were many questions with few answers. The constant motion of emergency personnel taking charge overwhelmed him—mass chaos to his grief-stricken mind. One officer, noticing Ethan’s disorientation, pulled him out to the hallway, away from the scene and further trauma. Ethan’s only response was to say, “It should have been me.”

  Paramedics arrived moments after the police had secured the apartment. Ethan sat on the floor in the hallway with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Shock and a strong sedative kept him calm and listless. Ethan slowly raised his head as someone came off the elevator. He stared in disbelief as Robbie approached.

  “Ethan?” Robbie shouted from halfway down the hall. His face strained with concern. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Ethan looked up, recognizing Robbie. He reached forward and touched his friend’s shoulder. Robbie was real. “But I thought …” Ethan shook his head, confused. “Christa’s dead, Robbie,” he sobbed, embracing his friend and sorrowfully adding, “How could he hate her that much?”

  Act I

  It was the best of times,

  It was the worst of times.

  —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  Chapter 1

  November 1983—Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada

  Ethan realized he’d made a grave mistake. It wasn’t the sort of mistake you go back and erase, like spelling a word wrong. There was much more at stake than that, like the rest of his life.

  Attending university had been as much of an assumption in his life as marriage or buying a car might be to others. It wasn’t a question of whether he wanted to go or could afford it. Postsecondary education was simply expected, a part of his destiny. His parents didn’t see education as just important; it was a requirement for life. They knew the privileges of education and had fought too hard without them. They weren’t about to let their only child suffer through those same hardships.

  His parents were distraught when school became secondary to a rock band he’d formed with a few of his buddies. He’d been groomed for adulthood and a successful career since preschool and was expected to know better. University required good grades that weren’t achieved by staying out all night strumming an electric guitar to a drunken audience. So when his band broke up in the final days of his high school senior year, no one was as happy—maybe ecstatic was a better word—as his mother and father. “Things always work out for the best,” he later recalled his mother repeating more than once at their dinner conversation. His father, in a strange reinforcement of his mother’s words, added something like, “I never thought you were any good anyway.”

  The breakup was devastating for Ethan. He’d loved the band. Nearly all his hopes and dreams had gone into its creation. He loved writing songs, creating something from nothing. There was magic in playing songs they’d created themselves. What could be more exciting than making a living doing what he loved? He would remember forever the fateful Monday night of their breakup. They were sitting around the pool table that supported their eight-track mixing board in Greg’s parents’ basement. Greg was their drummer. After a couple of beers and shootin’ the shit, Greg announced he’d been accepted at MIT. Ethan’s jaw dropped.

  “So what the fuck does that mean?” Ethan demanded, his disappointment displayed in anger.

  “It means that I’m fuckin’ outta here, come September,” Greg answered, shaking his long black hair and raising his bottle in celebration.

  “I thought we were a fuckin’ band, man,” Ethan shot back, upset by the obvious betrayal. “What’s the deal? Fuck.”

  Greg proceeded to unload a barrage of faults that insulted everyone—they’d never made money, they’d never recorded, they didn’t sound any good, and Ethan couldn’t sing. They had to get on with their lives. On and on he went. If it wasn’t wrong before, Greg found a way to make it wrong by the time he finished. Ethan
could still remember standing in stunned disbelief beside someone he’d called his friend.

  “Fuck, Greg, if you felt this way,” he cried, not far from taking a swing at him, “why the fuck did you hang around so long?”

  Greg shook his head. His decision was made. There was nothing to talk about.

  They never played again as a band. From then on, Ethan floundered. Some quick decisions got him into university and four months later, he was on a bus to Ottawa.

  The most difficult part of the university experience for Ethan was never feeling connected. Like an outsider, his mind was always on something other than the point at hand. The engineering curriculum was rigid and demanding—it had to be; the world didn’t need bridges and buildings falling down, or planes falling out of the sky, or ships sinking.

  Engineering was his program of choice because of his flair for mathematics and love of the automobile—two reasons that were as good as any.

  Mid-November in Ottawa found bare-branched trees and grass covered with leaves. Ethan’s roommate, Robbie, had come back to their dorm room after breakfast and invited him to play touch football in the commons. Ethan had refused to get out of bed. He wasn’t feeling well and was trying to sleep off the bug. In truth, he was depressed over the decision he’d made to be there. His pain was due to his foolhardy reasoning that university was a lesser evil than facing the wrath of his parents if he dropped out. He spent the entire day in bed, attempting to escape the inevitable dreariness that lay ahead. It was dark when he finally got up and dressed. Being a Sunday night, there was little action in the quad. He decided a walk was in order and left the dorm for the briskness of the mid-November evening.

  It was just past seven when he stepped off the cement steps of the entrance. With little in the way of destination, he headed toward the bridge over the Ottawa River. A sense of calm settled over him in the darkness of the night. Utterly alone, no one knew who or where he was. He gained a sense of power, knowing he could do as he pleased without interference. The night belonged to him.