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AT A loss for what to do with himself, Bill retreated to Moira’s house and returned to bed. He didn’t think he would sleep, since he hadn’t been up all that long, but sleep he did. In no time he was sound asleep and slept for hours.
He roused sometime later when he heard voices downstairs. He once again had to look around for a minute to try to remember where he was. When he remembered, he rose from the bed, peed, and went downstairs to find the source of the voices.
“Where’ve you been?” he heard someone say when he entered the kitchen.
Figuring out that the voice had been Moira’s, he tried to take the words apart to ferret out their meaning. Oh, right. Question. Questions required answers. “Sleeping.”
“You must have been tired.”
“Huh?”
“Not quite awake yet, are you?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you better finish waking up pretty quick.”
She turned on the television in her kitchen. He hadn’t even noticed that there was one there until she turned it on. Finding the channel she wanted, they sat at the counter together and watched the news. How long had he slept, anyway? Oh crap! It was six o’clock already.
The lead story, in fact the only story that made it on the first ten minutes of the local news that night, was what Moira had been working on so determinedly for eighteen hours. In a very orderly fashion, using the information she had fed to them all day long, the news program opened with the “shocking” reversal and retraction on the story that everyone had run so energetically just a few days earlier about Derrick St. James’s new “boy toy”.
Point by point, the news reporter outlined the flaws that had been discovered with the story, including a careful demonstration of how the photographs had been falsified, showing the picnic photograph side by side with the original photograph. Yep. No mistaking that that one was a forgery. The other photo showing him at the café was also clearly a forgery when it was shown that the color of the skin on the face and the hand of the person purported to be him were quite different: one was black and one was white. Didn’t work that way, except maybe on an old Star Trek episode.
Bill’s photograph from the set showing the members of the crew appeared on screen next, and a circle was drawn around one face. As his identity was given, other photos of him from his previous days in Hollywood were added to the screen. Again, no question. Same guy.
The real clincher, though, was the next piece of video footage. The guy that Bill had known to be the sound guy on the movie set was shown sitting at a table, looking especially scruffy, being questioned by someone. He admitted to the photos being falsified. He admitted that he knew of no evidence to indicate that Derrick St. James was anything other than what he said he was—namely, heterosexual and happily married.
When that video clip ended, another face appeared on the screen. This one Bill recognized from his time having dinner with her—Derrick’s wife. With camera flashes going off every second as countless photographers all snapped the exact same photo—really, why did they need so many?—Derrick’s beautiful wife, a famous actress in her own right, spoke to the cameras. “I am appalled and embarrassed by the actions of my estranged father in trying to besmirch the reputation of my husband. Derrick St. James is my husband and I love him, as he loves me. We are happily married, something that my father has never approved of since the beginning. But to have the man go to such lengths to discredit Derrick is infuriating.
“By his own admission, he set out to ruin my husband. I will never understand why he felt he had to do what he did. He lied to all of you, and I am profoundly unhappy that so many have been harmed by his thoughtless actions. I have spoken with my husband, who is at the moment on a plane on his way back to the United States from an overseas filming. He and I together want to offer our profound apologies to the innocents who have been harmed by the insane actions of one man. We extend our public apologies to Bill and Mark for any damage my father’s actions have caused you. You are both totally innocent, and just got dragged into this nightmare unawares. Derrick and I are sincerely sorry for any harm you have suffered, and we thank you for your continuing friendship and loyalty to us. Your friendship means the world to us. Thank you.”
The talking heads recapped what everyone had just told them, pulling all of the pieces together from the various clips and reports and interviews they had just shown. After a commercial break, the first one in more than ten minutes of coverage, the same talking heads came back and once again recapped what they had just recapped not more than sixty seconds earlier. Other talking heads were introduced who added commentary and analysis about how a rumor had taken such hold and how many people had missed several very obvious, glaring mistakes in the photo doctoring.
“You’ve been busy,” Bill said admiringly to Moira.
“I’m good too.”
“No argument. I wonder if Mark saw this, though? We don’t… well, we didn’t have a TV before I left.”
“I don’t think that’s changed while you’ve been gone. He was supposed to work after class today, so maybe they’ve had the news on while he was working. Doesn’t matter. I’m recording all of this here and at my office, so we can show him when he gets home.”
“If he’ll listen.”
“He’ll listen. He may not hear it at first, but he’ll listen, and eventually he’ll hear.”
“I wish I had your confidence, but sadly, I don’t.”
“I’ve been around a lot longer than you have and seen a lot more than you have.”
“I don’t know if I want to live anymore if he doesn’t….”
“Don’t you dare! Do you hear me?” she yelled at Bill. “Don’t you dare to even think about something so stupid! I lost one son! And I’ll be damned if I see another good kid….” She stopped, looked away, turned her back for a moment to collect herself.
“I’m sorry, Moira. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of….”
“You both remind me of him every day. In a way it’s been like he’s alive again after all this time.”
Moira dealt with a bunch of phone calls that started as soon as the broadcast ended. Bill didn’t have anything to do, so he paced from room to room, window to window, from one end of the house to the other and back again. He paced. Moira talked.
Bill still had a headache that had been hounding him for days. Realizing that he was hungry, he went into the kitchen to look around for anything easily edible. He wondered why he was so hungry, when it hit him that he hadn’t eaten anything in something like twenty-four hours. No wonder he was hungry. Duh!
He wasn’t comfortable going through someone else’s refrigerator, even when they were right in the room, so he grabbed a banana off the counter and started with that. A banana helped but wasn’t nearly enough. Seeing what Bill was up to, Moira pointed to a bag on the counter near him. He opened the bag and found a sandwich from one of his favorite take-out places. If he hadn’t been so hungry, he would have wondered how the woman knew so much about them, but at the moment he was hungry, and there was heavenly food within inches. Questions could wait for later.
Even though the taste was as wonderful as he remembered, Bill was starving, so he wolfed down half the sandwich without really taking the time to savor the taste. Pausing before he ate any more, he looked out the kitchen window just in time to see me drive in and get out of my car. I unlocked the door and went inside my house.
Bill tapped Moira on the shoulder and pointed. “Mark’s home.”
She ended her phone call, popped a disk out of a machine he hadn’t seen, and walked out the back door saying, “Wish me luck.”
“I wish you all kinds of luck.”
If he thought he had been restless and anxious before, that was nothing compared to how he felt now. Now, when something was happening within a few hundred yards of his present location, he was ten times, no, a hundred times, more anxious. He stood at the kitchen window and watched until he couldn’t bear to stand still any longer. He paced back and forth from one window to the next and back again. He had given up on any thought of food at the moment. His entire being was seemingly twisted into a terrible knot as he waited anxiously to see what was going to happen.
A few minutes later, Moira exited the apartment and walked back to her house.
Before she was even inside the door, Bill asked, “What happened? Did he watch the recording? Did you show him? What did he say? What was his reaction? How did he look? Can I go out there? Does he want to see me? Is he still mad at me? Please tell me!”
“Well, if you’ll shut up for a minute I will.”
“Sorry.”
“I showed him the recording. We watched it all the way through, and then we watched it again. Then I answered questions. I don’t know what he’s thinking. He told me he needed time to think.”
Further conversation was interrupted when they both heard the sound of a car in the driveway. They looked out the window to see the SUV driving down the driveway and out of sight. “Where’s he going?” Bill asked, a touch of desperation in his voice.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about going out. He probably wants to go somewhere, walk and think for a while.”
“What’s there to think about? He saw the story, didn’t he?”
“I told you that he would listen, but that it might take a little time before he could hear.”