Forever and Always Read online

  By the time the writer had been told this part, his mouth was hanging open in shock. Laughing, the man told how Adam had been attracted to the young virgin the psychic had helped him find, but he knew he couldn’t touch her or she wouldn’t be able to read the mirror.

  In his book, the writer told the story of how Adam Montgomery had staved off the many sexual advances of the young woman as he heroically tried to find his sister. The book described Darci’s obsession with money. There were silly scenes like the time that Darci, malnourished all her life, made a racket with a candy machine as Adam was trying to search the underground tunnels where the witch was said to be hiding.

  By the end of the book, the reader felt that Adam Montgomery was a saint who had single-handedly, in spite of all Darci Monroe could do to thwart him, rescued his sister and saved several children who had been missing for months. The kicker was that on the last page, the reader learned that Adam had married Darci.

  Of course the Montgomerys sued and the book was taken off the stands. But that just made people more anxious to read it and almost immediately it was available in its entirety, for free, on the Internet. The Montgomerys’ attorneys made sure that what money the writer received from the book went to pay lawyers’ fees, but that didn’t matter. He wrote three other books in quick succession and they sold millions based on his name.

  I read the book about a year after it came out. Alanna’s copy was old and dog-eared, passed from one hand to another. Like everyone else who’d read it, I had a hard time understanding it. Why in the world had a man like Montgomery married a dingbat like Darci Monroe? In the midst of their adventures did he take her virginity and, like some hero of old, feel he had to marry her? They’d had a daughter soon after they were married. Was the pregnancy why he married her?

  Not long after the book came out, Adam and his sister, Boadicea, got on a small airplane, with Adam piloting, and were never heard from again. They had left a flight plan but it was soon discovered that Adam had not followed his charted course. His plane had been seen by the control tower at an airport two hundred miles in the opposite direction, but when the spotter tried to contact them, there was no answer.

  About three days after the disappearance, a tabloid printed a full front sheet photo of Darci laughing, a drink in her hand. The headlines said that Adam’s widow would inherit nearly a billion dollars. The implication was that party-girl Darci had had a hand in her husband’s disappearance.

  Once again the Montgomerys sued, but the tabloid had been smart. They hadn’t accused Darci of anything. That the photo had been taken before Adam disappeared was not their fault, they said; it was the only one they had. In the end, the paper agreed to publish a retraction, not in the back but on the front page.

  The next issue of the paper wrote, “We apologize. She inherits only two hundred million, and this photo was taken before he flew away forever.” The photo had been reprinted, uncropped, this time showing that Darci had been dancing with a man who was not her husband.

  Sometime during all of this, Darci was dubbed the Hillbilly Honey, and it was the general consensus of the world that she’d killed her husband for the money.

  None of this had touched my life. During the day I was fighting with my producers to change my role, and during the night I was fighting with Alanna. I wanted a couple of kids; she wanted to do four films a year.

  Two weeks ago Jerlene Monroe was a guest on Missing. Of course I’d seen her work. She’d seduced Russell Crowe in one of those extravagant epics he got to star in because he was white and had that voice. Sorry. My role envy is showing. He got those parts because he deserved them. Great actor.

  Anyway, Jerlene Monroe was to do a guest shot with us and we were all foaming at the mouth to get to meet her. Every critic alive had agreed (now there’s a cover story!) that Jerlene had stolen the movie she’d been in with Crowe. When Crowe had to kill her in order to save the world from her treachery, the audience cried right along with him.

  None of us could figure out why she agreed to do a TV show, so as we gathered around her, it was one of the questions we asked. “I promised someone,” she murmured in that silken voice of hers.

  It was hard to believe, but she was more beautiful in person than on screen. One thing you soon find out in this business is that an actress without makeup is pretty ordinary-looking. She’ll show up for work with frizzy hair jammed under a baseball cap, skin like a teenager’s after a grease-eating spree, and wearing ratty old jeans and a T-shirt. You look at her and think, She made how much on her last film?

  But not Jerlene. She arrived looking like little girls thought movie stars should look. She never lorded it over anyone, never demanded anything, but we all ran to do whatever she even hinted that she wanted. She smiled dazzlingly at the cameraman, said nothing, just smiled. The SOB made her look better than he’d ever made any of us look.

  On the show, Jerlene played the wife of a rich man who’d been murdered, and at the end, we found out she did it. The script, like all the others, had us handcuffing her and leading her away. You know, we were smart and she was dumb.

  On the second day of shooting, Jerlene said, “What a shame to incarcerate her. Her husband so very much deserved to die.” She didn’t complain, just voiced that one opinion and the next second the director was head-to-head with the writer.

  The script was completely rewritten; Jerlene’s role got bigger. The new story was that she got together with three of her husband’s discarded mistresses and together they killed him. They alibied each other. We cops knew Jerlene had done it, but as we uncovered disgusting facts about the man, we were ready to kill him ourselves.

  Toward the end of shooting, Jerlene said, “Perhaps it would help the story if I were to enjoy one of the men.”

  We were all dumbstruck. What did that mean? “Enjoy”? Have sex? With one of us? The entire male cast (and two women) stood up straighter, eyes wide. Silently, we were shouting Me! Me! Me!

  “Perhaps him,” Jerlene said and pointed to Ralph Boone. Short, old, beer-bellied, chain-smoking Ralph? He’d had one triple bypass and when Jerlene pointed at him he started coughing so hard we thought he’d be back in the hospital by evening.

  Politely, the director said,“How about Linc?”

  She didn’t look at me, just turned away and said, “Perhaps.”

  She was acting, but then I soon learned that Jerlene Monroe was always acting. In her mind, she was always on camera.

  We didn’t have an affair for real. Not because I wasn’t willing to but because she said no. Sexily, prettily, she said no. I was fighting a lot with Alanna then and she punished me by withholding sex. The result of having two women tell me no was that Jerlene and I played some pretty hot sex scenes. So hot, so realistic, that that show and Jerlene’s performance were considered Emmy material. I’m ashamed to say that I told people I thought I should be nominated, too. Ralph, my costar, said, “Everyone could see you weren’t acting. Not for a minute.”

  One thing good about my skin color is that it’s hard to see when I blush.

  Anyway, because of our on-screen affair I ended up spending some time with Jerlene. Okay, so I admit it. I told her we needed to rehearse in her dressing room—which was bigger than mine and had been freshly painted just for her.

  It was during the first day I was alone with Jerlene that the Best Boy knocked on the door and handed me a letter. He said it was from my agent, which surprised me. When had Barney learned to write?

  I opened it. “Your kid’s missing,” it read.

  For a moment I just sat there looking at the note and couldn’t think what it meant. My kid? I don’t have a kid. Slowly, I remembered. Oh yeah. Connor. Or was his name Conan? She’d named him something to do with Schwarzenegger. That woman loved movies—which had caused the whole thing in the first place.

  When Jerlene took the letter out of my hand, I didn’t protest. She read it and for the first time I saw a genuine expression cross her beautiful face. “You