“It’ll happen, Des,” he said encouragingly. “You just have to be patient.”
“Damn it, doughboy, don’t you ever get tired of being so supportive?”
He didn’t respond. Just gave her back a big dose of stung silence.
Now she sat there cursing her bad self. When she was frustrated she could go bitch cakes and then some. All the more reason she should be alone tonight. “That’s exactly what Professor Weiss told me,” she acknowledged. “He said I’d get it, and that the process would make me stronger. But it’s just not happening.”
“So why don’t you talk to him some more about it?” Mitch said, his voice a good deal cooler than it was before she bit his head clean off.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? Who is he, the Dalai Lama?”
“I have to figure it out myself, that’s all. I just wish I knew how. I keep, I don’t know, thinking this bolt of inspiration will strike me or something.”
“Tex in the stamp stalls, sure.”
“Tex in the what?”
“In Charade, when James Coburn is walking through the stamp stalls in the Paris park and suddenly, kerchunk, the whole plot falls right into place.”
“Damn it, Mitch, this is not some fool movie!”
“I do know that,” he shot back. “And I know something else- that I’ve already had my bellyful of childish, self-absorbed, pain-in-the-asses today, thank you very much.”
Des drew her breath in, stunned. He’d never spoken to her this way before. Not ever. “You’re right, baby,” she said. “My miss. I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”
But she was too late.
Mitch Berger, the kindest, sweetest love of her life, had already hung up on her.
CHAPTER 5
Mitch was not happy that Des wouldn’t come with him to the beach club.
In fact, he was so not happy that he decided he’d better get off the phone awfully damned now. His jaw ached. His mood was vile. And he didn’t want to say anything that he might really regret. He found it hard to believe she was so self-centered she couldn’t see that he was in the midst of a monstrous professional crisis and that he needed her by his side-not going on and on about her damned trees.
His situation could not have been more of a nightmare. The twenty-four-hour cable news channels were already broadcasting video highlights of The Fight by the time he got home to Big Sister Island. The digital photos of Tito with his hands wrapped tightly around Mitch’s throat were out all over the Internet. There was Tito astride him like a wild beast, teeth bared, ready for the kill. There was Mitch pinned helplessly underneath him, looking like some form of slow, terrified water mammal.
It was America Online’s top news story of the day. The headline on the service provider’s main screen read “Tito Lowers Boom on Highbrow Critic.”
The arts editor of Mitch’s paper, Lacy Mickerson, had e-mailed him twice and left an urgent message for him on his phone machine. Dozens of his fellow critics from around the country had sent e-mails as well, many humorous. He would respond to them at some point, but right now he was too busy fending off calls from one media outlet after another. Everyone wanted a comment, a quote, something, anything. The very same tabloid TV vans that had been following Tito and Esme all around Dorset were now pulled up on Peck’s Point at the gate to the Big Sister causeway, desperate to getout there and film him. Mitch was having none of it. He did not want to comment. He did not want to appear on camera.
He was not an entertainer. He was a critic.
Or at least he used to be.
He sat at his desk, an ice pack pressed against his jaw, and called Lacy back.
“Honestly, Mitch, I thought your review was gentle compared with a lot of the others I’ve seen,” she said after he’d given her his version of what happened. Among her many attributes Lacy was fiercely protective of her critics. “Hell, this film has been positively trashed by everyone. People are walking out in droves. Why did he pick on you?”
“Because I was there,” Mitch grunted, adjusting his ice pack. It didn’t help with the pain, but it gave him something to do. “He’s a genuinely talented actor. I feel sorry for him, actually.”
“Well, I don’t. I’ve seen these so-called bad boys come and go over the years.” Lacy was in her late fifties and claimed to have bedded Irwin Shaw and Mickey Mantle in her youth, not to mention Nelson Rockefeller. “They all have talent. It’s what they do with it that counts.”
“What do I do, Lacy? What’s my next move?”
“You shut it down,” she said firmly.
The two of them cobbled together a brief statement that would be posted immediately on the newspaper’s Web site-just as soon as Lacy ran it past someone with a larger office and, possibly, a law degree. It would also appear on the lead arts page in tomorrow’s paper. The statement would serve as Mitch’s one and only response to the attack:
This newspaper’s chief film critic, Mitchell Berger, and the actor Tito Molina engaged in a spirited creative disagreement yesterday afternoon in a popular eating establishment in Dorset, Connecticut. Mr. Berger feels the matter is fully resolved. He believes that Mr. Molina is a gifted artist with a wonderful career ahead ofhim and he looks forward to his future film work with as much excitement as ever.
After he and Lacy were done Mitch swallowed three Advils and spent the rest of the afternoon ducking phone calls. His phone machine got quite a workout that day.
He did pick up when Dodge called. And was pleased that Dodge wanted to broker a peace deal at the beach club. It seemed like a genuine solution. Dodge was smart and tactful. He’d make the perfect intermediary.
As for Des, well, Mitch hoped she’d figure out what she needed to figure out-and soon-because when she was stuck in the deep muck she had a way of dragging him down there with her, whether he felt like going or not. And that could be awfully damned hard to handle sometimes.
Not that love was ever supposed to be an easy thing.
When it came time to leave he dressed in a white oxford button-down shirt, khaki shorts, and Topsiders. He had a welt on his jaw and red finger marks around his throat, otherwise he looked fit, casual, and terrific. It was a warm, hazy evening with very little breeze. The sun hung low over the Sound, casting everything in a soft, rosy glow. He threw a pair of swim trunks and a towel into the front seat of his truck, then moseyed over to Bitsy Peck’s garden with a galvanized steel bucket to pilfer a dozen ears of corn.
It was Will who’d taught Mitch the best way to cook corn-plunge the fresh-picked ears directly into a bucket of water, soak them for at least a half hour, then throw them on the grill to steam in their husks.
Bitsy was busy digging up her pea patch with a fork, dressed in cutoff overalls and a big, floppy straw hat. She was a round, bubbly little blue blood in her fifties with a snub nose and freckles, and just a remarkably avid and tireless gardener. Hundreds of species of flowers, vegetables, and herbs grew in her vast, multileveled garden. Actually, Bitsy’s garden looked more like a commercial nursery than it did somebody’s yard. When Mitch first arrived on Big Sister shehad gleefully stepped into the role of his garden guru. The lady was a fountain of advice and seedlings and composted cow manure. Mitch liked her a lot.
Although lately she hadn’t been nearly as upbeat as usual. Not since her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Becca, a ballet dancer, had come home to mom and the massive three-story shingled Victorian summer cottage where she’d grown up. Becca had gotten herself addicted to heroin out in San Francisco, and had just finished a stint at the Silver Hill Rehab Clinic in New Canaan. Mostly, the two ladies kept to themselves. Hardly left the island at all, and seldom had guests. Bitsy went grocery shopping every couple of days. Otherwise, Mitch would find her toiling diligently in her garden refuge from dawn until dusk.