The Plan

Chapter 4.

RYAN STOOD OUTSIDE THE CENTURY CITY HIGH-RISE, shaking. He had just spent fifty minutes in therapy and he was a wreck.

Ten minutes later, Elizabeth finally pulled up in her Karmazin Ghia with the top down and beeped her horn. He moved quickly across the sun-cooked sidewalk and got into the car.

Elizabeth had been his secretary for almost ten years. She was a good worker with a sense of humor, in her mid-forties. She must have been a striking-looking woman once but took no pains with herself now, tying her long brown hair back with yarn, wearing sack dresses without style. She was divorced with no children. Lately things between them had changed-a shift in power more than friendship. She sensed his weakness and had been taking advantage of it. He was no longer in charge.

She made a turn on Pico and headed up on the 405 freeway.

"Elizabeth, I can't take the freeway. I told you. Go through Culver City, will ya?"

"This is nuts, Ryan. People use the freeway every day. My mother's coming over for dinner. I have a gazillion things to do. If I go on surface streets, I'm nevergonna get home."

She stayed on the 405 to Santa Monica as he held the armrest and battled a panic attack. He didn't know why the freeways had started scaring him. For the last two months, he had been incapable of driving his own car. The minute he got into his Mercedes and turned on the engine, he was filled with such bone-numbing fear that he couldn't get out fast enough.

Just a year ago, he'd been in control not only of his life but most of his relationships. He'd won Writers Guild awards and two Emmys. He'd been lionized by the press.

Then Matt died and everything went wrong.

They were scooting off the end of the Santa Monica Freeway and heading up the Coast Highway. As a kid, he had surfed this whole coast in the summer, cruising the black ribbon in his VW convertible.

In college he'd been an all-conference wide receiver at Stanford University. He'd been too small for the pros, but football and his blond surfer good looks made him a king on campus. He'd won the school lit contest in his senior year. Against his father's advice, he began writing TV scripts on spec instead of taking an entry-level job flipping Happy Burgers at one of his father's Happy Boy restaurants.

Two years later he sold his first script and moved into a small office at Universal Studios. Nobody could chum out work faster or better, and he'd gotten a big reputation. He'd made enough to marry Linda, his college sweetheart. She was as beautiful and blond as he was handsome and popular, and it took them a long time to find out that they weren't in love with each other as much as they were in love with the image they could create together. It was cool being half of somebody else's fantasy. But the envy of others failed to sustain them. And after Matt died, the lights went out for Ryan.

They roared out of Santa Monica. Elizabeth hadn't asked about the fiasco at NBC. She had to know. Probably one of the secretaries over there had called with the news and it was already spreading like wildfire, scorching his reputation, driving lies and half-truths ahead of it like fleeing animals. In show business, failures clung like wet clothing.

"You didn't ask about the screening," he finally said, to take his mind off a red pickup that was beside them. A big, burly six-pack, with heavy tattoos ringing his biceps like African jewelry, was crowding the passenger door of the Ghia.

"I heard you threatened to beat the shit out of Marty Lanier and called him a Jew faggot."

"I never called him a Jew faggot." His stomach did a slow porpoise roll.

"Well, that's what they say. It's all over the lot." "You gotta call people, say it's not true."

"I already tried, but these things have a life of their own, Ryan."

Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth pulled the Ghia up in front of his condo north of Malibu. It was a Spanish complex with arched doors and red-tiled walks. He got out, and she started to back out of the drive, in a hurry to get home.

Ryan's condo was on Broad Beach, amid heavy sand dunes. Inside, the apartment was more to Linda's taste than his-lots of French floral prints on overstuffed chairs. Linda had taken the big house in Bel Air and he was out here. He preferred the beach. He couldn't bear the upstairs hall of the Bel Air house, with all those pictures of the three of them before Matt drowned. The faces stared at him from behind antique lacquer frames. What had they been thinking… smiling at the base of a ski lift… or on the back of the Linda, his fifty-foot sailboat named after his ex-wife? The pictures seemed to be of three strangers. So he'd left the house with its framed reminders and moved to the beach.

He saw his message light was on. He hit the playback.

His own voice, tired and lifeless: "Hi, this is Ryan. After the tone, leave your message."

Beep.

"Ryan, this is Jerry. What the fuck went wrong at NBC? I got six calls already. Call me. I can't deal with this shit."

His agent. Great! There were no other messages. It was as if he'd already been thrown off the Hollywood bus.

Why was this happening? Ryan looked out at the ocean… at the white foam, skipping playfully ahead of the green water. Then he picked up the channel changer and absently turned the TV on.

"… not a matter of employment or even deficit reductions," the man on television was saying. 'This is hardheaded economics… not the pabulum President Cotton tried to make us swallow." Cotton, plagued by ill health, had decided not to seek a second term.

It was Senator Paul Arquette on a taped weekly news show. The United States senator from Nevada had been getting more airtime lately than any other presidential hopeful. He had not announced yet, but he was obviously about to. Ryan remembered him from twenty years before, when Ryan had been just fifteen and had visited Mickey Alo at Thanksgiving. He hadn't been in touch with Mickey since Matt died. Then he remembered Mickey's dog Rex, running ahead of them, snapping at the air. And he remembered Rex lying on the grass. Headless. Dead.*

Ryan turned off the set and went out on the porch to watch the sun go down, painting the Pacific with greens and reds. And then, for a brief moment in his mind's eye, he saw a seven-year-old redheaded boy. He was on a swing, pumping his legs to make it go higher. He didn't remember ever seeing him before, but somehow the memory of the boy was familiar. Then, almost before he could focus on him, the image was gone, leaving him with a feeling of dread he couldn't comprehend. Ryan had no idea who the boy was. He sat in the reclining chair and put his head back.

He fell asleep, and again his dreams were dark and deadly. He was swimming with Matt. There was a black shadow in the water next to him, and as always, it terrified him. It was after Matt, but Matt was laughing. As the shadow beast swam past, Matt climbed on, riding its back. And then the giant blackness swerved and came at Ryan… A beast he couldn't make out or identify but which seemed to contain all the evil in his imagination. His dead son was laughing. "Here we come, Daddy." For a second he glimpsed the huge monster's eye, rich with red and green markings-a paisley eye-then the shadow was ripping into him, eating his flesh. Matt was still laughing. "Does it hurt, Daddy?" And Ryan woke up. For almost a minute he didn't know where he was, then realized he was on his deck.

Shaking, he went into the house and lay down on his sofa.

Ryan was bone-tired but too afraid to close his eyes.