“She was?”
“They desperately need tutors over at the Youth Services Bureau. All sorts of subjects-history, English, math.”
For weeks, Dodge had been trying to convince Mitch to join up with some local organization or another. Already, Mitch had turned down a chance to become recording secretary of the Shellfish Commission. Not the sort of thing he could see himself doing. It seemed so Ozzie Nelson. But Mitch was coming to understand that getting involved was part of the deal when you lived in a small town. Will Durslag served on the volunteer fire department. Jeff was a literacy volunteer.
“We have a bunch of really talented kids in this town, but they’re just not motivated. Would lighting a fire under one of them be your kind of deal?”
“Maybe. I mean, sure.”
“Great. I’ll get you an application.”
This man was relentless. Still, Mitch greatly admired his commitment. Mitch could hear a helicopter zooming its way toward them now across the Sound, moving low and fast. A news chopper from New York. All part of the Esme-Tito circus. Another day, anotherbreathless new inquiry. Here was yesterday’s: Did she or didn’t she just have a boob job? Inquiring, very small minds wanted to know.
Mitch sped up so as to pull alongside of Dodge, the other two falling in behind them. “I wanted to give you a head’s-up,” he told him, puffing. “My review of Tito’s new movie is in this morning’s paper. I panned it. I hope that won’t be awkward for you.”
“Don’t worry about Tito. He’s much more levelheaded than people give him credit for. Besides, I’m sure you were your usual tactful self.”
“Tactful is not exactly the word I’d use.”
Tito’s movie, Dark Star, was in fact Hollywood’s hugest, loudest clunker of the summer, an ill-conceived $200 million outer-space epic that the studio had held back from its Fourth of July weekend opening because preview audiences were laughing out loud in all the wrong places. It was so disastrously awful that Mitch had called it “The most unintentionally hilarious major studio bomb since Exorcist II: The Heretic.” He went on to say, “Tito Molina has such a pained expression on his face throughout the film that it’s hard to tell whether he wants to shoot the aliens or himself.”
“I really like this kid,” Dodge said. “I didn’t expect to, not after everything I’d read about him. But I do. And I don’t just say this because he’s my son-in-law. He has a broken wing is all. Can’t fly straight to save his life. That doesn’t make him a bad person. You’d like him, Mitch. I sure wish you’d reconsider my invitation.”
Dodge wanted him to join them for dinner one evening. Mitch didn’t think that socializing with performers was a good idea for someone in his position. “I’d love to, Dodge, but it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Sure, I understand. I just think you’d enjoy his company. He’s one of the most intuitively brilliant young men I’ve ever met.”
This in spite of Tito’s famously troubled childhood in Bakersfield, California. Tito’s father, a Mexican migrant worker, was killed in a bar fight when Tito was seven. His Anglo mother, a schizophrenic, was in and out of state mental hospitals until she committed suicide when he was thirteen. He took to living on his own after that, oftenin abandoned cars, and survived by dealing drugs. His big break came when a Britney Spears video was being shot at the Bakersfield high school that he’d recently dropped out of. A girl he was dating auditioned for a bit role. He tagged along with her. The video’s director was looking for a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks to play the bare-chested object of Britney’s sweaty affections. One look at Tito’s intense, smoldering good looks and he got the part. The video was such a hit on MTV that Tito shot straight to teen dream stardom, acting in a succession of edgy teen angst dramas-most notably the highly successful remake of the greatest teen angst drama of them all, Rebel Without a Cause, in which he stepped into James Dean’s almost mythic shoes and, somehow, made them his own. It was Esme who was cast in the Natalie Wood role. They fell in love on the set, fueling the picture’s on-screen heat, and married shortly thereafter.
Inevitably, critics were labeling Tito as his generation’s James Dean. Mitch was not one of them. He believed that labels were for soup cans, not artists. He only knew that when Tito Molina appeared on-screen he could not take his eyes off him. Tito had an untamed animal quality about him, an edge of danger, and yet at the same time he was so vulnerable that he seemed to have his skin on inside out. Plus he had remarkable courage. Mitch was completely won over after he saw him conquer Broadway as Biff Loman to John Malkovich’s Willy in an electrifying new production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. As far as Mitch was concerned, Tito Molina was simply the most gifted and daring actor of his generation-even if he had just stumbled badly with Dark Star.
“He and Esme are like a pair of special, golden children,” Dodge said. “When I see them together, hand in hand, I think of Hansel and Gretel on their way through the woods to grandmother’s house. They absolutely adore each other, and she’s been able to help him some with his rage. And their publicist, Chrissie, really does try to put a smile on his public face. But it’s a challenge. He’s just such an intensely unhappy person.”
“He’s an actor,” Mitch said.
“So is Esme, and she’s not like that. She’s a sweet, big-hearted girl. A total innocent. I just… I hope he doesn’t hurt her. He isn’t faithful to her, you see.”
“How do you know this?” Mitch asked, glancing at him.
“I just do. You can always tell-like with Martine,” Dodge said, lowering his voice confidentially. “She’s not faithful to me. She has a lover.”
“I’m so sorry, Dodge,” Mitch said, taken aback.
“These things happen over the course of a marriage,” Dodge said, his jaw set with grim determination. “I sure wish I knew what to do about it. But the unvarnished truth is that I don’t.”
“Well, have you spoken to Martine about it?”
“Hell, no. What good would that do?”
“Communication is a positive thing, Dodge.”
“No, it’s not. As a matter of fact, it’s highly overrated.”
They were nearing the tip of Peck’s Point now. The osprey stands that the Nature Conservancy had erected out in the tidal marshes were no longer occupied. The ospreys had nested and gone for the season. Mitch did spot two blue herons out there. And the two rare, precious dun-colored piping plover chicks were still in residence in their protective enclosure, tiny as field mice and nearly invisible against the sand.
He and Dodge inspected the cage and warning fence as Jeff and Will caught up with them. A fence stake had worked its way out in the night. Dodge pounded it back down with a rock as Mitch swabbed his face and neck with a bandanna, wondering why Dodge had chosen him to confide in about Martine. Why not Will? The two of them were so much closer.
Mitch opened his knapsack and got out the mugs and plastic milk bottle, his stomach growling with anticipation. From his own knapsack Will produced a thermos of his finest fresh-brewed Blue Mountain coffee and a bag of croissants he’d baked before dawn. Will was up every morning at four to oversee his extensive baking operation. The beach constituted his only break from the punishing fourteen-hour shifts he worked.
There were two driftwood logs with plenty of seating room for four. Jeff filled the tin mugs from the thermos. He and Will took their coffee black, Mitch and Dodge used milk. Dodge passed around the croissants. Then they all sat there munching and watching the killdeer and willets poke at the water’s edge for their own breakfast.
Mitch chewed slowly, savoring each and every rich, flaky bite. His diet restricted him to one croissant, and he wanted to make the most of it. “Honestly, Will, you’re a true artist. What’s your secret, anyway?”