Free Beginnings and Ends (Short Story) by Suzanne Brockmann

Chapter One
     
    From
Shadowland
, Episode 60, “Eighth of Nine Lives”
    Starring Robin Chadwick Cassidy as Joe Laughlin
    Los Angeles, present day
    Richie West ambushed me. The meeting is supposed to be about my contract for the next Pierce Cane movie, but I realize within seconds of walking into his office that this is about my past few weekends and the current rash of rumors
.
    “Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin! Thank you for coming in! Close the door, Maureen, close the door! It’s hard for me to meet for lunch these days.” Richie gestures grandly to the cast on his ankle, his foot elevated on a stool with a maroon velvet cushion.
    I turn to see Rich’s assistant expertly keep Billy and Freedom and the rest of my entourage out of the room as she closes the door behind her, leaving me alone with my manager for the first time in years.
    It suddenly occurs to me that Richie went to Aspen with the intention of breaking a bone, purely so that he’d have a reason for this closed-door private meeting
.
    “Sit down, sit down,” Richie continues, but I stand because now that I’m here, I know what’s coming.
    “Skip the bullshit,” I say. “What the fuck
is
this?”
    His smile vanishes and his eyes turn hard as he glares up at me. “An intervention.”
    I do sit down then, leaning back in the chair to further telegraph my disdain. “Fuck you.”
    “You’re pushing your luck,” he tells me sternly. “Harder and farther, every year. It’s getting out of hand. The rumors—”
    “There’s not an A-list actor out there who isn’t surrounded, twenty-four/seven, by a cloud of rumors—”
    “But with you, they’re all true.”
    “Not all of them,” I counter with a shrug even though my heart is racing. “I’ve never used heroin. And I’ve never killed anyone. At least not intentionally.”
    “Skip the bullshit, Joe.” Richie intentionally throws my own words back at me. “You know damn well which rumor I’m talking about.”
    I gaze at him across the wide expanse of his desk, daring him to say what neither one of us has uttered, even though he’s worked for me for over five years.
    “I know that you’re gay.” He doesn’t say it, but I don’t have to search too hard to see the judgment and condemnation in his eyes. Or maybe I’m imagining it
.
    “We need to strategize,” he says instead. Gently. Quietly. “You need to let me help you get this nightmare under control. Your mistake was in going this alone. What, do you think you’re the first? You’re not. And you’re not the last, either. Far from it. It’s just not that big a deal. I’ve written a press release. That,plus you making a brief statement, will end this shit for once and for all. And then—”
    I can’t take it anymore. I’m up and out of my chair, but I don’t run to the door. I go to the liquor cabinet that makes up one entire wall of his massive office. I don’t bother with a glass. I just grab the whiskey and take a long hit, straight from the bottle. It burns, but it’s a familiar burn so I have some more.
    Richie, for once, just sits and silently waits for me.
    This is surreal. I never dreamed that this day could come, not in a million years. A press release and a brief, personal statement and the bullshit that is my miserable charade of a life will be over? Once and for all, he said. If Richard West really believes that the world has progressed to a point where an A-list action star can come out of the closet, and it isn’t a huge fucking deal, then things are better than I ever imagined
.
    And maybe it’s that particular thought that brings me back to the real world—the angry, ugly, hate-filled one in which we really live
.
    I turn back to Richie, bottle still in hand. I don’t put it back because I’m pretty sure I’ll need more. “Read it to me.”
    “What?”
    “The press release,” I order him, fighting to keep the panic from my voice. “Fucking read it to me.”
    He shifts some papers around