Read Online A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Dee
Tags: General Fiction
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face on a billboard. “Holy shit,” the hick said. He gave the guy a smile that was like slapping a book shut, threw a twenty on the bar, and got into the truck again. There was still a ways to drive, apparently, in order to get outside of where he was.
With the windows down, the noise and the heat were tremendous, but still he saw and felt his cellphone convulsing across the front seat beside him. He hadn’t even realized he’d brought it along. He thought for a moment about throwing it out the window, but then somebody would find it and figure out who it belonged to, and then that was a shitstorm of a whole other sort. He tucked the phone in his shirt pocket so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore.
In the next bar it started vibrating again, right over his heart. He took it out and flipped it open and looked at the text on the screen: Hamilton? Where R U? It was from someone named Katie, which didn’t ring a bell. He asked the bartender to pour another shot and leave the bottle. They actually still did that out here. They did it in L.A. too, but then at the end of the night some guy came up to you and handed you a bill for a thousand dollars. When the phone went off again—the bar was so quiet you could hear it buzz in his pocket—he answered.
“Hamilton? This is Katie Marcus from Event Horizon—we’re handling the PR for A Time of Mourning ? I don’t know if you remember, but we met on the set at one point?”
“Of course I remember,” Hamilton said. Hollywood was carpeted with young, borderline-attractive, overeager, callow young women like he imagined this Katie to be—on the set, at the studio, in your agent’s office, working at the club or in the restaurant or any other business of any description that you might have reason to go into—and he could not tell one of them from another. But that didn’t mean you shouldn’t conduct yourself like a gentleman.
“Really?” Katie said. “Wow. Well, I’m calling just to remind you that you have that interview with The New York Times this afternoon. You got our reminders about that, right?”
She had such a young voice. They got younger and younger. “Remind me again?” Hamilton said.
“The Times wanted to talk to you for a profile they’re doing of Kevin.” Kevin Ortiz was the director of the last film Hamilton had shot. A movie was over, to him, on the day shooting wrapped and he could fly out to the ranch and slowly slip out of character; it was always a surprise to him when a few months or a year later the whole thing came back to life in the form of something strangers could buy tickets to see, and everyone wanted to talk about it all over again, expecting him to remember it, never knowing how much had gone into the effort to leave it behind in the first place. But Kevin he remembered. Kevin was a brilliant young artist, and a great running buddy. He would not have been at all out of place in this bar. “We told the Times they could have just five minutes on the phone with you, just to talk about what it was like to work with him. I don’t know if you remember, but we cleared this all with you, and you said it was okay, which we really appreciate. It should really help the film out a lot. But if you’ve changed your mind about it, we can—”
“No, Katie, that’s fine.” The bartender was walking toward him. “What time does it start?”
“It actually was scheduled for an hour ago? But we can work around whatever you want to do.”
“I’m sorry about that, Katie,” Hamilton said. The bartender stopped in front of him. “Just have the guy call me any time.”
“Well, we don’t do it that way, because we try hard not to give outyour cell number. So we left it that you would call him. Do you have a pen?”
“Do you have a pen?” Hamilton asked the scowling bartender, who handed him a pencil. He wrote down the New York phone number on his shirtsleeve, hung up, and smiled apologetically as he handed the pencil back.
“We
With the windows down, the noise and the heat were tremendous, but still he saw and felt his cellphone convulsing across the front seat beside him. He hadn’t even realized he’d brought it along. He thought for a moment about throwing it out the window, but then somebody would find it and figure out who it belonged to, and then that was a shitstorm of a whole other sort. He tucked the phone in his shirt pocket so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore.
In the next bar it started vibrating again, right over his heart. He took it out and flipped it open and looked at the text on the screen: Hamilton? Where R U? It was from someone named Katie, which didn’t ring a bell. He asked the bartender to pour another shot and leave the bottle. They actually still did that out here. They did it in L.A. too, but then at the end of the night some guy came up to you and handed you a bill for a thousand dollars. When the phone went off again—the bar was so quiet you could hear it buzz in his pocket—he answered.
“Hamilton? This is Katie Marcus from Event Horizon—we’re handling the PR for A Time of Mourning ? I don’t know if you remember, but we met on the set at one point?”
“Of course I remember,” Hamilton said. Hollywood was carpeted with young, borderline-attractive, overeager, callow young women like he imagined this Katie to be—on the set, at the studio, in your agent’s office, working at the club or in the restaurant or any other business of any description that you might have reason to go into—and he could not tell one of them from another. But that didn’t mean you shouldn’t conduct yourself like a gentleman.
“Really?” Katie said. “Wow. Well, I’m calling just to remind you that you have that interview with The New York Times this afternoon. You got our reminders about that, right?”
She had such a young voice. They got younger and younger. “Remind me again?” Hamilton said.
“The Times wanted to talk to you for a profile they’re doing of Kevin.” Kevin Ortiz was the director of the last film Hamilton had shot. A movie was over, to him, on the day shooting wrapped and he could fly out to the ranch and slowly slip out of character; it was always a surprise to him when a few months or a year later the whole thing came back to life in the form of something strangers could buy tickets to see, and everyone wanted to talk about it all over again, expecting him to remember it, never knowing how much had gone into the effort to leave it behind in the first place. But Kevin he remembered. Kevin was a brilliant young artist, and a great running buddy. He would not have been at all out of place in this bar. “We told the Times they could have just five minutes on the phone with you, just to talk about what it was like to work with him. I don’t know if you remember, but we cleared this all with you, and you said it was okay, which we really appreciate. It should really help the film out a lot. But if you’ve changed your mind about it, we can—”
“No, Katie, that’s fine.” The bartender was walking toward him. “What time does it start?”
“It actually was scheduled for an hour ago? But we can work around whatever you want to do.”
“I’m sorry about that, Katie,” Hamilton said. The bartender stopped in front of him. “Just have the guy call me any time.”
“Well, we don’t do it that way, because we try hard not to give outyour cell number. So we left it that you would call him. Do you have a pen?”
“Do you have a pen?” Hamilton asked the scowling bartender, who handed him a pencil. He wrote down the New York phone number on his shirtsleeve, hung up, and smiled apologetically as he handed the pencil back.
“We
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