Free Winter Oranges by Marie Sexton

unlikely.”
    Ben’s laugh was distinctly lacking in humor. “Is that how it seems to you? Because I’ve been waiting for more than a hundred and fifty years for somebody to find me. It seems to me like it’s about darn time.”
    It was a horrible thing to consider—being trapped for so long with nobody to talk to. But as miserable as it sounded, Ben shook it off and leaned forward with a smile. “Now, your turn. Start talking. You’re an actor?”
    Jason groaned. “Sort of.”
    “‘Sort of’? How can you ‘sort of’ be an actor?”
    Jason hated to get into it. Then again, Ben had shared his story. It was only fair that Jason do the same. “My parents pushed me into acting when I was a kid. I did a couple of cereal commercials, but then, when I was eleven, I landed a part on a sitcom. It was a family thing—mom, dad, three kids. I played the only son. It did pretty well for five seasons, but then the star decided to try his hand at movies and quit, so the show ended. But by that time, I had something of a fan base. Mostly teenage girls. I was . . . Well, I guess I was a bit of a heartthrob.” His cheeks burned at the admission. “One of the cute boys they always talked about in those teenybopper magazines.” Ben frowned at this, clearly confused by the allusion, and Jason waved it off. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I had enough of a name that some TV executive decided to put me in a leading role. So when I was seventeen, I starred in this TV show called Those Darn Kids . It was about four teenagers—two boys and two girls—who ran around solving crimes with their dog.”
    Ben wrinkled his brow. He started to speak, but no sound came out, and Jason realized the globe had run down. He wound it up enough to allow Ben to ask his question. “Isn’t that copying Scooby-Doo ?”
    Funny how even Ben, who’d been trapped in a snow globe all this time, could see it. “Yeah, well, that’s what the lawyers thought too. A lawsuit shut us down after five episodes.” Being only an actor, the suit hadn’t included him. It’d been aimed at the writers and the producer, but it had also ensured that those five episodes never again saw the light of day. No cult following or modern-day revival for Those Darn Kids . But that was where he’d met Dylan, so he’d never considered it a failure. “After that, I landed a supporting role in another TV show, but it only lasted one season. I had a couple of small parts in films that went nowhere. Then I did a slasher movie. Do you know what that is?”
    Ben shook his head.
    “Have you heard of Scream ? Or Final Destination ?”
    Another head shake, and Jason realized he was talking about his own era. But Ben hadn’t watched a TV in twenty-five years. “How about Friday the Thirteenth , or Nightmare on Elm Street ? Or maybe Halloween ?”
    Ben considered, then nodded. “I remember some of the commercials, but I’ve never seen one.”
    “Well, this one was called Alley of Blood , and it wasn’t worth seeing. I mean, when I first read the script, I thought it sounded like fun. And it should have been, but the director was a nightmare. He kept firing actors and screaming at the sound crew and making the writers change the lines. And everybody knew he was banging one of the actresses, and so—”
    He caught Ben’s frantic hand wave. The music box had run out again, but he was able to read Ben’s single-word question on his lips. Banging?
    “Sorry,” Jason laughed. “He was having sex with one of the actresses, and so he kept changing things to give her a bigger part. She was scripted to die about mid-film, and I was supposed to be the one person who survived. But by the time it wrapped, she was the star and I was the nameless victim.”
    In hindsight, it shouldn’t have mattered. The director’s idiocy had caused their biggest-name actor to fall behind some dime-a-dozen D-cup blonde, losing them any chance of a run in theaters. Jason should have shrugged it