Deja vu All Over Again Read online

Nate snickered a bit too loudly. After all, that was the future for everybody in the place. Acting, writing, producing. He had been there. Sadly, the future was always the future and never the present. He eased away as one of the women acknowledged him with a nod, and he saluted her in turn with a wink and raised his glass. A slight smile turned into the tiniest scowl on her face. God. He had forgotten about the bruise over his eye. It must be hideous. In fact, everyone was staring at it.

  Next he noticed a line of bass from the sound system thumping the room. It was enough to shake the walls and rattle even the dentist’s perfect molars. Did someone suddenly turn up the volume on the music? He eyed the stairs on the far side of the room where Woody was fingering the curls of the blond owl. Nate hadn’t seen anything resembling a master bedroom so far, so it had to be at the top of the stairs. He hoped it was cooler up there. This room, filled with bodies sweating their egos, was hotter than the devil’s skivvies in August. The artwork decorating this level suggested a feminine touch. Pillows on the couch, embroidered with pictures of kittens, had tassels at the corners. That meant there was a woman of the house, and not just any woman but one who knew how things should look, including, he was sure, her own appearance. There must be makeup on the property, and that meant a way to cover the bruise that now had everyone’s attention.

  Oh, he was brilliant. He had never felt so smart. He had never been so smart. Was it the Ecstasy? Some said the drug brought on mental clarity, but he knew that only your average three-toed sloth would have needed pharmaceutical help to connect the dots that led him to the master bathroom upstairs. And he was no sloth. Not tonight. He was brilliant. Just ask the smartest man in the room if you doubted it. Wait, that was him. Oh, well, take his word for it.

  “Bingo-rama.”

  Not one. Not two, but three deep drawers in the bathroom vanity. They held enough facial creams, body lotions, concealers, highlighters and implements of beauty construction to outfit an entire chorus line of Vegas showgirls. But too many choices made him want to cry. His bruised eye teared up and he lowered his chin to his chest.

  “Try the Harvest Wheat,” a voice said. Nate tried to ignore it before he realized it wasn’t just in his head. He was leaning against the vanity with his back to the door cupping a bottle of tan liquid in his hands. In the mirror he saw the smallish woman he had saluted downstairs. Her hair was half-blond and half-electric-blue and she was peering around his shoulder making eye contact with him in the mirror. She circled to face him, and then she giggled. “Are you stoned?”

  She wore dark-rimmed glasses that perched on an upturned pussycat nose; their lenses were the size of teacup saucers and dominated her face. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in a plain Jane sort of way. Nate fell in love with her instantly. He wanted to take her home and cuddle the night away.

  Dopey, he said, “It’s a little new to me, I haven’t done...Ecstasy before.” He lowered his eyes to follow his right hand as it dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the second hit Woody had provided. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, but instead of a drunken blur, his hand, the bathroom, the light, that god-awful watercolor on the wall over the towel rack signed by Aunt Kitty and the woman all had a peculiar sharpness he marveled at. It was like seeing everything in 3-D when, in reality, it was.... well, reality was 3-D. “I have some to share if you’d like.”

  Once upon a time, he didn’t need to get drunk or high or get a girl drunk or high to wind up in bed for incredible, mind-blowing, soul-sharing, hearts-beating-as-one sex. At least, that’s how he remembered the sex back then.

  “Molly? Oh, I love that. But…another time, maybe? I was leaving and just came up here to get my coat and bag.”

  “I came up here to get some makeup. I tangled with someone, or something, that I shouldn’t have this evening. I must have been scaring the natives downstairs, wandering around the party like something out of one of my movies. What’s your name?” he asked.

  She told him it was Marci, and she had done a stint at the makeup counter at Macy’s in Fresno. She had Nate sit on the toilet while she rummaged in the vanity drawers. “Movies, huh?” You wouldn’t happen to be a producer or somebody important, would you?” She used a foam square to apply thick beige liquid from a bottle. Nate shook his head and Marci quickly clamped her hand on his jaw.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “I’m just a writer,” he said.

  “Me, too. Like, what do you write? Anything I know?”

  “Nothing you’ve heard of. But it’s a living.” If you liked living on the meager payments for stories that never got produced. He would save that information for their second date.

  She asked him his name. “You’re right. Never heard of you. There. That’s better.” Marci gave him a thumbs-up and went to the bed to scrounge through the pile of coats. Nate followed and asked about her writing.

  “It’s a little complicated. It’s paranormal historical fiction romance with futuristic themes.”

  “Totally get it,” Nate said. He had no clue what that was. “It’s sort of like...”

  “It’s like Twilight meets Jane Austen on Mars.”

  “Exactly. That’s how I’d pitch it, too.”

  It was the kind of thing that would have made him puke if one of his students had tried it back when Nate still had the teaching gig at the community college. Creative Writing 101. But on that night, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, it sounded perfectly plausible.

  “It’s got a murder mystery in there, too.”

  “Why not? Sounds like a winner.” He turned and opened the sliding glass door to a narrow balcony overlooking the ocean. Damn, he was burning up. He was high but what the hell. He needed fresh air. The ocean breeze was a godsend. Buzz from the party rose from well below and mixed with the harmony of the distant surf. He leaned on the balcony railing. The patio of the mansion where Entertainment X-S had set up the interview tent for Mary Grant and Ruffles the crime dog was three stories of house and a rock wall below him. A good leap, he mused. “Your story. Maybe I could read it over for you and give it to my agent for a look-see.”

  “Really? Oh, that would be so totally awesome.”

  Marci stood in the doorway and pulled a white stationary box out of a large backpack. The box was heavy with manuscript. “This is it, huh? You brought it with you?”

  “Just in case, you know.”

  “Well, it worked. I’ll pass it along to my agent.” He smiled knowing it wouldn’t do much good. His agent, Jack Hewitt, constantly threatened to drop Nate and was only available occasionally when Nate called. Only the steady drips and drabs of royalties, for which Jack took his fifteen percent cut, kept their relationship on life support.

  “I really appreciate it,” Marci said. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.

  Nate slipped a hand to the small of her back and pulled her body close while gently brushing his lips against hers.

  “I hope you don’t, you know, want me to, well, you know. Fuck you so you’ll read this.”

  Actually that hadn’t occurred to Nate. Though given the situation, it should have been at the top of his to-do list. Bartering his Hollywood connections would be the quickest way to get Marci in bed. If that was a possibility.

  “Besides, you remind me of my grandfather. He’s cool like you and all. But I mean, that would be weird, right?”

  “Of course.”

  She left him the manuscript, gathered her coat and stopped at the doorway. “But, you know, if you had expected me to put out to get you to take this to your agent...”

  “Would you have?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Then Marci fanned herself. “Christ, I should have taken the X. It always makes me so horny.”

  She was gone. That hurt. He couldn’t get laid even if he paid for it with a legitimate agent hook-up, the most valuable kind of coin in the Hollywood universe.

  “Fuck me.” Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. He wiped them off and flicked th
em away with a finger.

  He looked to the stars and flipped off God. “Fuck you, too.” He started to cry and then stopped. What was going on? He started to scream and then stopped. He stomped the concrete patio floor and wrapped his arms tightly around his sides, throwing a fit like a child. His skin tingled like a bad sunburn and he was dizzy. The Ecstasy had kicked in but it wasn’t working. Wasn’t it going to protect him from feeling all this shit? He didn’t have an answer and that drove him even deeper into depression.

  He couldn’t get a woman to love him for even a few minutes. Worse, he couldn’t get a wife to love him in twenty-something years of marriage. Moonlight danced on the ocean and anger squeezed his soul. He had spent his life letting other people and circumstances run the show. In fact, he thought if anyone made a movie of his life, he would only have a bit part, a character who didn’t even have a name in the final credits. Schmuck number one, it would say. He tracked down his phone and hit the speed dial. Valerie answered after the sixth ring. She must have recognized the caller ID, Nate supposed, and struggled with whether to answer or not.

  “I got a question for you.”

  “Nate, you sound like you’ve been drinking. I am going to hang up if that’s the case.”

  “Worse, I’ve been thinking.”

  “I hate it when you do that. You should know better.”

  “Valerie, listen to this.” He climbed on the low, adobe wall around the balcony and balanced on the outer edge. It was time to become the hero of his own tragic story. “Wife, have you ever wondered what it sounds like when you kill somebody?”

  “Nate, what in the world are you talking about?”

  “This is what it sounds like.” Nate did his best Superman leap into space.

  He regretted it immediately.

  Not for what was about to happen; he could die with that. It occurred to him that this would make a killer (pun intended) of a movie scene, the greatest scene he had ever come up with, and now he’d never get the chance to write it. It was a touching, Oscar-winning bit of cinematic emotion. Dialing for Death, starring Nate Evans. Produced by Nate Evans. Directed by Nate Evans. Given the chance, he would shoot the scene in slow motion very much like this, and text on the way down instead of calling Valerie. Maybe a Twitter post. A two-hundred-eighty-character suicide note. Very cool.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Déjà vu

  The dream came to Nate when he was still in his mother’s womb. Try as he might through years of random reflection, he had no other explanation. It had always been with him. Even at fifty-five, it was the most vivid of any memory in the bank of his brain.

  The Girl stood three steps above him framed by the large oak door at the entrance to their elementary school. She wore a plaid jumper of navy and gold over a white blouse with a broad collar. And on the short white socks at her ankles? A tiny blue ribbon bow dressed the fold at the top above shiny black shoes. As The Girl smiled down at him from her concrete pedestal, she fingered the stem of a single white carnation in one hand. Her other hand rested gently, for balance, on the black metal railing that drew a line leading up to the door and served as a minor, but not insurmountable, divide between them. And it was there that Nate professed his undying love for The Girl. She owned his heart. She would always have his heart. He told her so.

  “You’re the one I love, not anyone else.”

  What did that mean? Whenever the dream escaped into Nate’s consciousness, the words were the same. He was too young to understand them, but those were the words he used. He knew that much and he knew how it made him feel.

  Squooshy.

  And warm.

  Like a handful of macaroni and cheese.

  The dream was so natural he simply took for granted it was part of who he was, like the tiny birthmark behind his right ear or having large feet that he’d never quite grow into. For the first six years of his life, he gave the dream no more thought than to accept its existence. The dream hid in some recess of his soul as he grew from a chubby rug rat into a precocious little human. He didn’t notice it through his formative years as he learned to talk and connect dots of comprehension, to make sentences and express feelings. It surely was there in the background as his emotional neurons clashed and sparked, clinging to one another for survival, shaping into a personality. Nate never fully understood its significance until he was much older and much wiser.

  At age six.

  Nate recognized The Girl the moment he saw her in the flesh for the first time. Déjà vu didn’t come calling with a simple tap on the shoulder. No. Déjà vu lifted Nate by his scrawny shoulders and tossed him with all its might into that familiar dream onto the sidewalk at the bottom of those steps in front of the school on the day he started first grade. He didn’t know déjà vu from Scooby-Doo, but he knew for certain he had been there before. He had lived that exact moment. There he was again with those words on his tongue.

  Déjà vu. Nate wouldn’t learn it had a name for years, but no matter. On that day, he only knew it wasn’t a dream after all. He felt it. He breathed it and it smelled like, well, it smelled like Girl. It was all there.

  Trouble breathing? Check.

  Sweaty palms? Check.

  Heart pounding in his throat? Check and double check.

  And those words “You’re the one I love,” they danced on the tip of his tongue sweet as the first lick of ice cream. Nate knew he would say those words to her.

  Déjà vu. The sensation was a fact even if its cause, its very essence, was a mystery that scoffed at every psychologist, philosopher, paranormal expert, MRI-toting brain scientist, reincarnation disciple, wino and wacko with a theory about it. You couldn’t get déjà vu; it got you. Some believed it was nothing more than wishful thinking of an overactive imagination. Buddha might suggest it was one of our past lives nudging the present. Regardless of whether the sensation was a random clash of memories and desires, a spark of loose wires in the brain or past lives visiting the present, if déjà vu ever needed a poster boy, Nate came to believe it picked him, and it picked him that moment in time when he was six.

  He had dawdled the morning away on the first day of first grade. His mother rushed as she dropped him at the curb and pushed him toward the front door. She had given him a single white carnation, a gift for the new teacher. He paused at the bottom of the steps, turned and waved to his mother as she climbed into the car and drove away. Nate sucked a bit of the cool September air and studied the tips of his black dress shoes, below the cuffs of his new brown corduroy pants. That was part of the school uniform at Saint Christopher of the Cross Catholic School. Chriscross Elementary to those who hadn’t confessed the sin of irreverence to Father Dean and done penance for excessive whimsy.

  Nate was scared and excited, nervous and filled with the wonderment that only the promise of adventure could offer. A ten-foot-tall nun in her black habit, gathered at the waist by a belt of rosary beads, held open the front door and clanged a hand bell. She called to the stragglers. Stop loitering. Come inside. Grow up and get educated. It’s time.

  Nate was lost in absorbing the moment and scarcely felt the awkward bump that caused his world to stop.

  The Girl had raven, wavy hair to her shoulders and dark brown eyes that twinkled like Fourth of July sparklers whenever she laughed. Through the years, she would laugh easily and often when Nate was around. That day, in first grade, The Girl was just as he had dreamed, right down to her smile. It was a toothy smile with a shadow of a gap between the front two and a mouth that was thin on the corners with full, round lips dead center.

  The Girl knelt down and picked up Nate’s white carnation that had fallen to the sidewalk. When she stood, he was certain she had recognized him, too. Her eyes were wide until shyness forced her to look away. The nun clanged her bell. The Girl skipped up the stairs. At the top, she paused with one hand on the railing. Nate waited until she turned so he could say the words that had been with him since birth. But The Girl did not turn and smile down up
on him as he expected. She passed by Sister and disappeared into the building still clutching his carnation. That wasn’t the way things ended the first time this had happened, though he couldn’t recall a definitive end to his first encounter with The Girl.

  The difference confused him only enough to pause before he bounded up the stairs and down the hall after her with the aid of a stern but kindly cuff on the back of the head from Sister. A few minutes later, after being led to their desks in the classroom, each one tagged with their first names printed in big block letters on a strip of paper taped to the top, the students took turns standing and introducing themselves to the teacher and to the class. The Girl sat at the head of the second row, and Nate sat two students behind her in the last desk. When it was her turn, The Girl stood, tugged at the sides of her skirt and toed the floor. Her voice was soft but determined, and from three desks away, Nate heard her tell all the world that she loved him, too. Her exact words?

  “My name is Julie Cooper.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Julie Cooper

  The light filtering through the blinds was weaker than any tenth grader’s alibi for cutting PE. Julie Cooper-Finch wouldn’t have to put up with any of that nonsense today. It was Saturday. The sun was barely up; she could go back to sleep if she wanted. She sighed and smiled. The best part of sleeping late was the joy of being awake enough to enjoy it, like she was the one playing hooky.

  She scooched under the blanket toward the empty side of the bed, reaching for his pillow. Nope, not there. She wished he could have stayed through the morning to wake up with her. Noooo, he would rather spend the day scratching his privates, stroking that big aluminum bat he named Suzie Blue after his first wife, hanging with his teammates, swearing and spitting. To him, the game was more important than a morning of extra cuddles. After all, as he had explained in a tone she thought was far too serious the night before, the last softball tournament of the year only came around, well, once a year. This one was all the way out in Modesto, so he had bounded from bed at oh-dark-thirty to meet his team, the Master Batters, at their home bar, where they would be carpooling out at sunrise. His loss.