David Brin: A Stage of Memory

Who knows? Derek mused. Maybe they’ll offer me a part in the play. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

High overhead, a big Boeing 787 growled across the sky. At one time Derek had thought he might want to be a pilot, or an astronaut. Now he watched the plane cynically. That was patsy’s work. There had to be something better—something that would make people want to pay him just to be himself…

He smiled as he thought of Jennifer. The sunshine was warm on his well-tanned back. He felt, as he often did, on the verge of a great adventure. Anticipation was delicious.

“Oh, Derek! You were wonderful!”

“Was I really?”

“You heard Mrs. Abell. She’s rewriting the male lead so he has a broken arm! And you pretend you aren’t interested.”

“Oh, sure I am.” He laughed. “Only right now I’m interested in something else even more!”

Jennifer giggled and took his hand. “Come on. I know a place by the boat sheds.”

“Mr. Blakeney, you owe four months’ payments on your condominium. If you don’t remit within a week, we’ll be forced to finalize the foreclosure proceedings…”

Derek slammed the door in the attorney’s face. “I’ll send some money when my next royalty check comes in!” he shouted through the door. Then he turned away and forgot the matter. He had more important problems than some jerk worried about late rent.

He had run out of Time-Jizz. And Barney, his supplier, had jacked up the prices beyond what he could afford. “It’s the Black Chemists,” the dealer had complained. “They upped the price on me. I gotta pass it on.”

Derek knew what he had to do. He would go to the new government drug rehab center on Eighth Avenue. They were bragging about how they’d maintain a junkie and give him food, just to keep him “out of the cycle of crime and death.”

Okay, he told himself. I’ll just go down there and see if they mean it.

He didn’t even notice that he had crossed the line to calling himself a junkie.

“Hello. I am Dr. Melniss Bettide. I’ll be supervising your case, Mr…” The small dark man peered at the name on the chart.

“Good heavens!” he gasped. “You’re Derek Blakeney!” The physician pronounced the name as if he were making a rare and stunning diagnosis.

Derek forced one of his famous, confident smiles. “Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swoln…” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Would you like an autograph, Doctor?”

“Honey! It’s Derek’s agent on the phone! He says Derek has won the part!”

They thought he was asleep. His father had finally sent him to bed, rather than let him continue pacing, hitting the walls. But that didn’t keep him from waking the instant the telephone rang.

“Are you sure?” He heard his father’s voice, muffled by his bedroom door. “I don’t want to wake the poor kid with rumors if he’s just going to be let down.”

“Well, come and talk to the man yourself, then… Just a moment, Mr. Pasternak. My husband is coming to the phone.”

Derek overheard murmured talk of allowances and percentages, of shooting schedules and tutors to make up for lost schooling… His father was being boorishly insistent about the latter, but Derek didn’t really mind.

He remembered the auditions—all those poor kids being dragged around by their crazy stage mothers, and he had won the part!

Why, Mom didn’t even care if I made it. She just thought it would be fun to try! Dad too had been helpful in his gruff, skeptical way. Derek let them have their moment, fussing over the phone with the agent. His turn would come with the new day.

“Hollywood,” he sighed in false cynicism. “Oh, well. It’s not Broadway, but it’s a start.” He couldn’t help grinning under the covers… wondering if California girls were all they were supposed to be.

I’ll find out, he thought. Real soon.

I’m going to be a star.

Making friends with a movie dog… learning the ways of the back lot… sailing a catamaran on location in Papeete… fencing lessons in Beverly Hills—and other lessons from a beautiful older actress at night in her apartment…

His first drag of reefer… two years dodging teenage girls who swooned at the sight of him while he played Dobie in Orbit on TV…

Singing and dancing up a storm in the Broadway version of Borgia!

… getting plastered with friends…

…pulling crazy stunts…

getting an Academy Award nomination for his role in Another Roadside Attraction .

Somehow, he managed to find a place in a fleabag hotel where the rent was cheap. The landlady had loved his movies and seen every one of his plays. The people at the condominium complex held his awards and his furniture in bond for payments due.

They let him take the lavalamps.

Derek didn’t care. Between the serving of the eviction notice and moving into the dingy little room, he had relived ten of the best years of his life. It wasn’t a bad deal at all.

He replayed that year when he had led the cast of Potemkin at Midnight … and had begun to hear those muttered complaints—that he was becoming self-indulgent, for instance, and intractable in his interpretations. He spurned the critics and went his own way, of course. If the reviewers groused, let them! The marks were happy. And there was always somebody eager to send out for a little more champagne—a little more coke.

Fagin’s Boys, and Girls closed early, but that was because of bad directing and a flawed script. He never much liked musicals, anyway, except for the chicks in the chorus line, of course.

That Three Vee pilot for a series based on the cartoon writers of the fifties was an interesting project, but the cretins botched it with endless rewrite. It ran three months. No matter. There would always be something else.

Two weeks after moving into the fleabag, he met Melissa for the first time, again… not in this life, but in his memory.

He took her home to the Fifth Avenue condo. Her laughter was sweeter than music. Her wit was sharp and brilliant. He had had many lovers with dancers’ bodies, but hers was special.

In her he found not just pleasure, but joy.

“Derek, honey, please wake up.”

“Hmmmph. What? Liss, what is it?”

She held the phone to her breast. There were tears in her eyes.

Derek looked up in a fog. He had had one too many nightcaps.

“Liss? What’s the matter?”

“It’s Frank Furtess. He was up early and heard it on the radio. He figured we’d want to be told, and not find out in the morning papers.”

“Derek, the Divine Terror Alignment has struck again… Honey, they’ve nuked Albany.”

Her voice was stark. Hollow with sadness. It took a moment for the words to soak in.

Albany ?

“Blown… up? The whole town?”

“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.”

At first all he could think of were buildings —the library, the high school, the drugstore in his neighborhood, all tumbled to the ground and smoking. The park, the capitol, his parents’ house.

“Mom!” he croaked, sitting up. “Dad!”

He reached out, but not for the telephone.

Melissa held him while he sobbed. It had been almost a year since he had seen either of his parents in person. The last time he had been so casual… he had even left without bothering to say good-bye.

This is no good, Derek thought as he came down from that particular memory trip. I’m reliving the bad stuff, now. I’d better get some advice on how to get control over this drug… learn how to force it to draw out only the memories I want. Maybe I’ll talk to that guy Bettide.

No. This just won’t do at all.

He dreamt that night. Real dreams, not memories. He dreamt about smoke and fire and guilt. And he wept because there was nobody there to hold him this time around.