Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

Neither spoke for a while.

“I thought about you,” said Ronny. “Did you think about me?”

“Of course I did.”

“I’ve seen all your movies. Even the awful ones,” he smiled. “Sam was all over me for never mentioning you. She was flattered too — you know, that she got the man who got Dusty Wilding.”

“The man who turned me gay?” They laughed.

“I told her that we had a little thing. She pried it out of me.”

“She’s pretty amazing, your wife. She’s beautiful.”

“Hey, don’t make a move on her. She might go for it.”

“Ha.”

“She’s tough,” he said, admiringly. “Wouldn’t have got through half my crazy shit without her. You know, when I saw you on talk shows, and on the covers of magazines… I was actually really proud. Not just about your career but how you’ve conducted your life.” She laughed again at the irony of that, and cried some more too. He drew her close. “I used to trip on what things would have been like if we’d hooked up and got married. I mean, even with the gay thing. How my life would have been different. You know — Mr. Hollywood! Then I’d think, Naw, that wouldn’t have worked . ‘That ain’t me.’ Oh, I had the whole deal going on in my head though, for real. Even included a few kids.”

“Are you serious?” It touched her.

“Maybe my life wouldn’t have been so different after all. We’d probably have hung in there a while because of the… children , then split up. I’d have let you have custody—”

“How kind of you.”

“—even though the judge would have sided with me because of the, you know, the gay thing. Times were different then.”

“You’re too much.”

“Maybe you’d have thrown a little palimony my way… ho ho ! Then I’d’ve probably walked into a bar somewhere and met my Sam. You know what’s funny? In my head, the kids we had were all boys, you gave me sons. And I was tripping on that before I had my girls. That was always the fantasy. It’s fuckin’ amazin’ —these thoughts we have, and they’re all bullshit! ‘I think this, I think that. I’m fantasizing this, I’m fantasizing that.’ All these years I’m tripping on us having sons, but we made a little girl together, no lie. You know, I did think about trying to get in touch with you. Just to say hey. But you were rich and famous and I guess I thought it might be too weird. What would I say, anyway? What would I have said? I’d have felt like the world’s biggest loser. Which I was, for a lotta, lotta years. You had this big life and at the time, mine was kind of falling apart. I was a drinker. Bad drinker. But then I met Sam and got sober, got ‘in the middle’ of A.A. I have twenty-three years now — it’s crazy. There’s a guy I know in the program who walked out of his son’s life. Knocked a girl up and vamoosed. When he turned forty, he decided to find him so he could make amends. His sponsor said, Don’t do it . ‘Don’t you dare.’ What he meant was, you fucked up his life once and you don’t have the right to step in and maybe fuck it up again. Let him find you . Otherwise, let it go.”

Dusty wondered if that story was for her — or just a story. Then she said, “Hey, Ronny. Think we can fish?”

“I know I can,” he smiled. “Can you?”

They waded in. He caught one right away. He held it and stuck a small plastic siphon into its mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“Pumping its stomach.”

“Oh shit, it O.D.’d!”

“I want to see what’s on the menu today.” He pulled out the tube and squinted at the bugs in the see-through pump. “What they’re hungry for — sometimes it’s the usual, and sometimes it’s a little more exotic. You think they’re eatin’ hamburgers but they managed to find caviar. If they’re having caviar , they won’t bite if you’re baiting the hook with a Big Mac. You’ll be here all day and go home with nothin’.”

He reached into one of his boxes and pulled out a nymph. He put it on the line and showed her how to cast the lure. In less than a minute, he shouted that she had one (Dusty wouldn’t even have known), then talked her through as she reeled it in. She held the fish in her hand while he removed the hook.

“I’m going to find her, Ronny — dead or alive. I’m going to find out what happened to her. I owe her that.”

It sounded like a line she once said in a movie, and he responded in kind. “I believe you will, Dusty. I believe you will.”

He told her to put the fish back in the water and she watched it swim away. When they reached the truck, he helped her out of the waders. They sat in the cab and finished what was left in the thermos.

“Will you… be there?” she said plaintively. “If I need — to talk? If I need you?”

“You know I will.”

“I’m so sorry, Ronny.”

“It is what it is. I just hope she’s alive. That your mother didn’t do that terrible thing.”

“Thank you.”

“And that’s a beautiful name—‘Aurora.’ I didn’t tell you that.”

They drove off. Dusty got weepy again. “You were just a boy but you were so good to me. I think I even finally told you about being in love with Miranda! I was crying all the time when she left and you kept asking what was wrong, so I told you… I can’t believe I did that, but it shows how much I trusted you. You cared about me.”

“I loved you.”

“And you didn’t judge. You were like a man that way. Or how a man should be.”

It was cold and beautiful and the sky looked so heavy. He suggested they go for breakfast.

“Ooh, bacon!” she said. “But hey : we shoulda kept that ol’ trout and caught some more. Coulda fried ’em up.”

“In this part of the river, we throw them back.”

“Oh! That’s cool. I love that.”

“‘Catch and release.’”

—

Before Dusty left for Utah, Allegra told her about the nightmares she’d been having about the miscarriage. Her wife suggested a support group but Allegra was reticent. Then why don’t you try Skyping with Ginevra?

The therapist was in her early fifties, chicly Euro, kind of hot. (Allegra didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it wasn’t that.) At the beginning of the call, Ginevra informed the young woman that because Dusty was her client, this would have to be a one-off — but she was happy to help in any way she could. Allegra already knew the ethical drill and wasn’t looking for a shrink anyway.

“So how are you doing with everything that’s going on?”

“Oh! I think I’m actually doing okay. But there’s a lot . There’s a lot going on. I mean, man , the whole daughter thing with Dusty … she’s so amazing . She’s been through so much . And I know she likes to — not really minimize , that’s not the word, the right word — but diminish , or whatever, her mother — her mom’s death. I mean, even though she hated her, Reina was just so big in her life, and I think that her death, it just — oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“You’re saying — what I think you’re saying — is that grief is complicated and it’s important to honor all of its aspects.”

“I guess … though it’s been so hard for me personally to get to that place. But the whole thing with her daughter — trying to find her — is more about — not more about, but — I think on some level she’s just so angry with herself —totally not that she should be! But you know she kind of pointed the finger at her mother all those years — and Reina was a total monster and I’m totally not judging Dusty — but I think she maybe knew her mom was going to die? Sensed it? And that if she didn’t try to find her kid, there wouldn’t be anyone left to blame but herself? So she finally put it all in motion to, you know, finally go looking for her. Because I think that was something she wished she would have done a long time ago. So what she’s doing now is so amazing and incredibly brave . I try to put myself in her place and just can’t imagine. I don’t think I would have had the courage.”