Read Online Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights by Mary Ellen Courtney - Free Book Online Page A

watched as the action unfolded. She chewed-up the scenery. Like the rest of us, she did not want to go out a pathetic rubber-outer. Unlike the rest of us, she had an agent to make sure that didn’t happen. We were getting ready to take down the sets for good. The landlady was scheduled to die the next day; then we’d pack up her doilies and send her to storage.
     
    I got home and called Steve. He planned to take Anna and Eric to dinner. I read scripts by the fire. Steve’s was set along the border with Mexico and revolved around drugs, money, and humans dodging rattlers, cactus, and rubbing bad aftershave against cheap perfume.
    Margaret’s took place in 16th century India as the Mughal Empire was in ascendance. It would be a lush period piece that spun around an arranged marriage and palace intrigue. The wife ended up dying for cheating on her husband.
    One sounded depressing as hell and involved a lot of gun-toting sadistic assholes with metal-tipped boots, half of them wearing badges; and one conjured silk and incense swirling around people who were depressed as hell with their partner assignment, hapless hoards, and one depreciated woman dying at the hands of sword-toting sadistic assholes. At least the swords were jeweled. I was in a foul mood.
    I jumped naked in the dark pool and put in some half-hearted laps before getting in bed with Steve’s script and my laptop. I would be working as an assistant to their guy. I didn’t know him, so overall feel was all I cared about at that point. I was really drawn to working in India with Margaret; she’d never treated me like a peon, even when I was one. But the New Mexico project meant being with Steve, which meant keeping our relationship, which I still hoped meant getting rubbed out one way or another before too long. I was deep into the so-called war on drugs when the phone rang, A. Watts.
    “Hello Stroud.”
    “Hello Spring.”
    It was quiet. There was a charge, even in the silence pinging off three satellites in the cold black space of night.
    “I’m coming your way,” he said.
    “When?”
    “I can pick up my load early Sunday. Drive up.”
    “We’re burying Grandma on Sunday now. But we could have dinner after.”
    “Is there a place to park my rig?”
    “I guess you could park it down on Mulholland. That’s what movers do.”
    I gave him directions and told him where the key was hidden under the Buddha head by the front door. So obvious I figured a burglar would forget to look. So he was coming. The wild animal licked her chops.

F OUR
    Karin called early the next day to say she wouldn’t be in. Both kids were puking their brains out. It was no problem. All we had to do was kill off the old lady and we were wrapped. I told her about Stroud, but said there would be no meeting. I didn’t want Steve to hear about him from one of her loquacious kids.
    I got home to a link from Steve for the place in Hawaii; it was very high-end. I called him and told him I’d decided on New Mexico.
    “Good,” he said. “It will be good to work on a project together, before puking kids complicate the picture.”
    “Kids? We haven’t talked about kids.”
    “Don’t you want kids?”
    “I don’t know. There’s so much pressure from my mother, I haven’t really had the space to think.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “It would be complicated with a fallen Presbyterian. Do they even know we’re dating?”
    “They will when the time comes.”
    “Do we have to decide now?”
    “No,” he said. “Hawaii will be good for us.”
    We said good night. I looked past the fire and the hot red flowers to the turquoise pool. We’d never talked about getting married and he was leapfrogging to kids. Apparently before breaking the news to his family that he was seeing a somewhat Presbyterian. We needed to figure out what we were doing before things went much further.
    I spent Saturday cleaning house, washing sheets, shaving my legs, and food shopping. I checked in with