Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

“Ben Webster,” I said to Jackie as we left Victor’s Presence. “Wasn’t he an Elizabethan playwright?”

Jackie patted my hand. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’re not nervous about this, are you?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Not at all.

She turned those huge violet eyes on me and gave me a crooked smile. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

In fact, I was not really worried about acting. After all, I had been acting my whole life, playing the part of a human being and a very nice guy, two things I certainly was not. And since I had never yet been flung in jail or shot dead, I have to say I must have been doing a pretty good job.

We got back into the wardrobe room in time to see Cody helping Sylvia run the tape measure down Renny’s arm. Renny stood there, shirtless, and I do have to say, it was not an awe-inspiring sight. He was not fat, but he certainly wasn’t in the kind of shape Robert had flaunted. His muscles were all soft and rounded, clearly the body of a man more interested in eating than exercise.

“Miss Forrest?” said a musical voice at my elbow, and one of Sylvia’s assistants was there.

“Yes?” Jackie said.

The assistant smiled. “Hi, I’m Freddy? By the way, I love your work-and Sylvia wants me to get you fitted, for the dress blues? For the funeral scene?”

Jackie nodded. “And whatever Sylvia wants-”

“Sylvia gets,” Freddie finished. “Believe me, I know, I work with her a lot? Anyway …” He smiled and waved toward the small hallway. “If you could come with me?”

Jackie turned to me and said, “This might take a while-there’s coffee over by the couch?” Then she smiled and walked away with Freddie.

I walked over to check on Cody. He looked up at me and nodded, which was the equivalent of a face-splitting grin from him. “Dexter,” Renny said. “I knew you’d show up if I took off my shirt.” He flexed, or tried to; there wasn’t a whole lot to work with. “What do you think?”

“Hold still,” Sylvia said, slapping his arms out of the pose and back where they belonged.

“I think you should put your shirt back on,” I said.

“I know, too much temptation, right?” Renny said. “I get that all the time.”

I let him have the point. “How is Cody doing?” I asked Sylvia. “Is he talking your ears off?”

She glanced at me, and then snapped at Renny, “Raise your arm. Your left arm.” She continued to measure as she talked. “Cody is a wonderful boy and he is being a very big help,” she said, and she gave Cody that awful, unnatural smile again. “But he hasn’t said more than three words.”

“If he said even three, it’s a good sign,” I said. “He must like you.”

Cody glanced up without expression. “Where’s your sister?” I asked him.

He jerked his head at the main door to the suite. “Robert,” he said, and he put several paragraphs of disapproval in that one word.

For no logical reason, I looked toward the door. It didn’t speak, and it didn’t even open. I had been with Jackie and Victor for about ten minutes; I didn’t see how looking at makeup could take that long-but of course, I was not an eleven-year-old girl, or an aging gay actor. Although, come to think of it, I had a piece of paper in my hand stating that actually, I was at least an actor now. I wondered if I would automatically become interested in makeup-or in Robert. It hadn’t happened yet.

In any case, if Astor could spend this much time examining rouge and eye shadow, it was clear that she had gone completely over the edge into her fantasies of being an actress. I didn’t see any harm in it; when this show was over there wouldn’t be a whole lot of other chances for her to peek into the glamorous world of showbiz-unless, of course, I was so devastatingly moving in my cameo part that it launched me into an acting career of my own. It could happen, but it didn’t really seem like the most probable outcome.

Still, for the moment Astor could look and dream, and I could take advantage of one of the small perks of the trade. So I went over to the coffee urn, grabbed a doughnut, and poured myself a cup.

Somehow, I survived the afternoon, and eventually we rounded up Astor and Cody and sent them on their way with their aunt Deborah. It had been a trial, made worse by the way Jackie smirked at me far too much when she caught me in the role of Daddy Dexter. Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny, and I was relieved and happy when Debs finally led them away, and Jackie and I headed back to the hotel for a late lunch, and then to get ready for Renny’s show that night.

Jackie was expected to do a bit more than sit in the audience and laugh for the camera. The network planned a few minutes of Behind the Scenes with the Stars, and she was a part of the plan. She’d been told to show up a little early for this, so we arrived at the Gusman at seven oh-five. The Gusman is actually the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts and, not to be too picky, the theater part of it is, in reality, a restored silent movie theater from the 1920s, the Olympia. The marquis on the front of the building says, OLYMPIA, and tonight, under the big bright letters, it said, TONIGHT ONLY! RENNY BOUDREAUX!

There was quite a crowd stacked up on the sidewalk. A churning sea of faces all turned expectantly to the Town Car as it pulled up in front of the theater. I reached for the door handle, and Jackie grabbed my arm.

“I’m scared,” she said. “It was in the paper that I would be here tonight, and he could … He might be in the crowd, waiting for me.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, and to be candid, I was a great deal more certain of that than I let on. “But if he is, I won’t let him get to you.”

She looked at me, her gaze clicking back and forth from my left eye to my right, as if she thought she might find reassurance in one of them but wasn’t sure which. I had the uneasy feeling that I should say something even more reassuring, so I dredged up a line from some old movie, looked right back at her, and said, “He’ll have to get me first.”

Jackie looked at me for a few seconds longer, and then, quite suddenly, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.

“I believe you,” she said.

My mouth was filled with the taste of her lipstick, and my brain was filled with numb shock. I couldn’t think at all for what seemed like a very long time, and when I finally got out one coherent thought, all that came out was, “I, um, I’ll get out. And check …” And then I saw myself jerk into motion like a clumsy teenaged robot, fumbling the door open and stepping out into the street.

The crowd had been watching the car and holding its breath, and there was a large sigh of indifference when I climbed out. Of course it hurt, but after all, they hadn’t seen my cameo yet. I wondered if they had seen Jackie kiss me. I looked back at the car; the tint of the windows was too dark to see through. That explained it; if they had seen her kiss me they probably would have cheered.

I went through the dumb show of checking the area for any signs of Patrick. I found none: no seaweed, crabs, or drag marks from an anchor chain, so I went back to the car and opened the door. “All clear,” I said, and Jackie held out her hand and slid across the seat.

“You have lipstick on your mouth,” she said softly, and smiled. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and took her hand, helping her out onto the sidewalk. There was a two-second pause in which we managed to get a full step toward the front door before somebody yelled, “Jackie Forrest!” and then there really was something to protect Jackie from. The crowd surged toward us, humming like a beehive on steroids. Dozens of cameras flashed right in my face, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything but wildly jiggling purple dots. I blinked, and my sight came back just in time for me to duck as a barrage of hands shot out at us, clutching programs to be autographed and fluttering like rabid birds, and cries of, “Jackie! Jackie!” battered our ears in every possible accent, from Cuban and Haitian to redneck.