Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

Jackie performed the remarkable feat of smiling broadly at the crowd and ignoring them at the same time, hunching her head down and forward and clinging to my arm as if I was the last chunk of crumbling riverbank and the only thing keeping her from being swept away to her death. I tried to shield her as much as I could while still moving forward, but it was impossible to cover all of her, and I could only hope she wasn’t taking the kind of casual, accidental beating I was getting from the star-crazed fans.

Somehow we made it to the door of the theater through the wildly waving forest of arms, and as the crowd finally thinned and then fell behind us, the first thing I saw clearly was three ushers, holding the door and grinning at us. “Thanks for your help,” I told them. They didn’t even look at me; all their attention was on making sure Jackie got through the door without fatally injuring herself on a hinge.

Once they got us safely inside, the ushers stood and smiled proudly, as if they had just saved Jackie from certain death. I felt like conking their heads together; they had done nothing but watch smugly as the crowd tried to rip us to pieces, and now I had a tear in my brand-new guayabera. But Jackie just nodded at them and said, “Thank you,” and gave me her arm. I led her into the theater.

It took a moment to recover from the savage love of the crowd, and as we walked through the ornate lobby and into the Olympia itself, I found a second hole in my shirt, three scratches on my arms, and at least two spots on my ribs so tender they would certainly turn into bruises by morning. And yet, somehow, improbably, it had been exhilarating. Once again I found that I liked the frenzied attention of a crowd of strangers. I knew they had barely seen me, that their focus was all on Jackie, but that was fine. It was even more intoxicating to know that the center of all that adoration was with me; she had actually kissed me, and the crowd could never have that from her. But along with that smug delight, I found that I had to push away a rising bitterness that this had to end, and so soon.

I looked at Jackie’s profile; somehow, even after the pounding and pulling of the crowd, her hair was still in perfect order, and she was every bit the Goddess the crowd needed her to be-a Goddess who had kissed me, and I still didn’t understand why.

She swung her head my way, and locked her violet eyes on me. “What?” she said.

“Oh,” I said, suddenly embarrassed, and not sure why. “Nothing. You know.”

Jackie smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Really, it’s nothing,” I said. “Just … the crowd. And you …” I meant to say, You kissed me , but somehow, what came out of my mouth was, “You look so … perfect.”

“About time you noticed,” she murmured, and then we were inside the theater itself and she looked up. “Oh, look at that! It’s beautiful!” She stopped in her tracks and stared upward, but my eyes were drawn to the curve of her neck, and I looked at that for a long moment before I looked at the ceiling, too.

I suppose the ceiling of the Olympia really is beautiful. But I had seen it before, and I’d read in the paper too many times that it’s gorgeous, wonderful, a treasure of restored glory, and so on. It’s just not the kind of thing that really moves me. But Jackie needed a few moments to take in the golden swirls and the faux night sky, and I stood there politely while she goggled.

“Wow,” she said at last. “Beats the hell out of the Chinese Theatre in L.A.”

Down in the front of the theater, in the third row, Deborah turned around, saw us, and stood up. But before she got to us a well-dressed young man came in from the lobby and hurried over to us. I watched him carefully for any sign that he might be a sniper, or a zombie, but he just smiled and said, “Miss Forrest?”

Jackie tore her gaze away from the gaudy ceiling, and the young man beamed at her. “Hi, I’m Radym Reitman,” he said. “Mr. Eissen wants you to come back to Renny’s dressing room-they’re shooting the preshow stuff?”

“Of course,” she said, and then Deborah joined us.

“What the hell happened to you?” Debs said, eyeing the tear on the front of my shirt.

“The adoring public,” I said. “I guess somebody recognized me.”

Deborah snorted and turned her attention to Jackie. “Not a mark on you,” she said.

“Lots of practice,” Jackie said.

“I have to meet Rita in the lobby,” I said to Deborah. “Can you stay with Jackie?”

“Sure,” Debs said, and Reitman cleared his throat. Deborah gave him a really good Cop Look, and he fell silent and just fidgeted. “Oh,” Jackie said. “I have to go backstage for a minute-okay?”

“Sure,” Debs said. “But I got us a couple of beers.” She nodded toward the seat she’d been in when we entered. “Lemme grab ’em first.”

“Oh, good, thanks,” Jackie said, and with a final smile and a pat on the arm for me, she followed Debs and Reitman away toward the front of the theater.

I watched them collect their beer, and then follow Reitman off to a side door. When they were gone, I looked at the stage. There was really nothing to it, except for a backdrop of a nighttime cityscape. Hanging from the top of that was a bright and spangly sign about eight feet tall that said, RENNY. In front of that, close to the edge of the stage, was a stool with a bottle of water on it, and a wireless microphone on a stand. No glitz, no gimmicks; it was all up to Renny.

I looked at my watch; miraculously, it had not been torn off my arm or smashed to pieces by the crowd, and it was even still working. The time was seven twenty-eight; I was supposed to meet Rita in the lobby at seven thirty, so I sauntered back up the aisle and into the lobby.

Based on Rita’s past performance, I was quite sure I would have to wait for fifteen or twenty minutes; she lived on Cuban Time, even though she was a blond Anglo. She had never been less than twenty minutes late for anything in all the time I had known her.

But I had reckoned without her girlish obsession with all things Hollywood, and as I moseyed into the lobby, I stopped dead, stunned at the sight that met me. It was Rita, already there and pacing nervously as she waited for me. She reached the far end of the lobby and turned, and the filmy almost-negligee she wore swirled around her. Even at this distance I could see the worry lines on her face, and she was nervously rubbing the back of her left hand with her right. Then she saw me; her face lit up and she practically sprinted across the floor.

“Dexter, my God,” she said. “I think I just saw Andy Garcia? And they said the mayor- Is that your shirt?” She put the palm of her hand on my guayabera and stroked it, as if she could turn it into something more acceptable. “Oh, Dexter, there’s a hole in it right on the front -is that really what you’re wearing?” She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and looked worried.

I bit down on the impulse to tell her that no, it wasn’t my shirt; it belonged to Andy Garcia, and I was just about to change clothes with him, right here in the lobby. “It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “This isn’t a formal ball-it’s a comedy show.”

“Yes, I know, but really, it’s a hole ,” she said. “And another on the back-and what’s this on your sleeve?” With a frown, she rubbed at something, and I realized it was the lipstick from Jackie’s kiss that I had wiped on the sleeve.

“Oh, it’s just, you know,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Somebody in the crowd or something.”

Rita shook her head and, happily for me, didn’t seem to hear how feeble my answer was. “The whole shirt is- You’re a mess, Dexter-and it doesn’t even go at all with what I–I mean, now I look like some kind of- How much time is there until- If I really … I could change into-”