Page 12 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Nine

Charlotte’s head throbbed with a flurry of memories. “California, mostly,” she said, forcing herself upright on the sofa to smile.

“You don’t look tan,” Kathy observed.

“I was mostly in the editing suite,” Charlotte said. “Working and working and working.”

“Sounds like it paid off.”

It was true that Charlotte’s documentary film about the bars that Charles Bukowski had frequented in Los Angeles had been accepted to the festival that weekend, her first-ever success story after two years of struggle.

Charlotte had opted never to use her grandfather’s last name to support herself in the film industry, which was something she often regretted.

Plenty of people used nepotism to get ahead.

Why did she think she was so special as to not?

But in the official film world, she’d registered herself as Charlotte Whitmore—Benjamin Whitmore’s daughter rather than Jefferson Albright’s—so she’d decided to stick with it.

She didn’t want to fully acknowledge what her mother had done, especially now that she knew about her father’s brother, Ronald. Benjamin lost his best friend, and Francesca turned on him.

That night, Kathy and Charlotte went out in Greenwich Village, drinking beers in a cozy dive bar and watching the snow fall gently on the sidewalk outside.

It felt strange to see such a peaceful scene in a city that such a violent attack had very recently hit.

Charlotte woke up in California to watch the news and called Kathy immediately to check on her.

When Kathy hadn’t answered, Charlotte had collapsed in tears and been unable to work till she was sure she was okay.

“How long are you in the city this time?” Kathy asked.

“I want to stay as long as I can,” Charlotte said. “Maybe six months? If I find a good place to live.”

Kathy said she knew of a few apartments in Manhattan that were being leased exclusively to artists. Charlotte said she’d set up a few viewings after the film festival. “I’m too stressed to deal with it till after,” she explained.

“I get it. Focus on this weekend. You can crash on my couch as long as you like.”

Charlotte’s film was set to premiere on Saturday afternoon at three thirty.

Afterward, there would be a question-and-answer session lasting anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.

The film festival organizers had booked her film for a medium-sized theater because, apparently, they expected a great deal of interest in Charlotte’s documentary, given the subject. Everyone loved Charles Bukowski.

At least, that was what Charlotte assumed.

But when she reached the theater, dressed in all black and her red lipstick pristine, all fired up for her premiere, she found only a few people streaming in from the lobby with popcorn and drinks.

Immediately, her heart stopped with fear.

There were maybe a hundred fewer people in the audience than she’d anticipated.

Maybe everyone would come all at once right before it began?

Perhaps they couldn’t find the theater? She returned to the lobby to wait, wondering if she should go out onto the street and usher people into the theater.

The last thing she wanted was to watch her film with the nine or so people who’d shown up.

It was too intimate. It was too embarrassing.

Charlotte had given a year and a half to the documentary, interviewing what felt like over a hundred patrons of various bars, residents of Los Angeles, ex-bartenders, and even a few semi-famous writers, some or all of whom had known Charles Bukowski.

She’d worked herself to the bone in the editing suite, frequently forgetting to eat anything.

She’d hardly made a single friend on the West Coast, choosing to put aside her personal happiness in honor of her artistic quest.

She’d done all this—and gotten into a festival. But that didn’t mean anyone cared what she’d made. It was disheartening, to say the least.

Charlotte waited till the very last minute to slip into the theater.

She sat in the very back row and tried and failed not to count the number of people.

Twelve. Twelve people had come. It was mortifying.

Was it proof that she should stop making documentaries altogether?

That she should give up her dream and go back to Tuscany—like her mother and sisters wanted her to?

And where was Kathy? If only people knew who my grandfather was, she thought.

They’d be here in droves. Just when Charlotte was sure nobody else would come, Kathy burst into the dark theater, waving her hand and saying a brief and raspy apology.

She sat down and squeezed Charlotte’s knee and said, “This is so exciting!” Charlotte couldn’t smile.

“Are you okay?” Kathy asked.

Charlotte shrugged as the theater darkened.

A few seconds behind Kathy, another man came into the theater and found a seat in the middle.

It meant there were fourteen people in a one hundred-plus auditorium.

Charlotte shifted lower in her seat and prayed that everyone would leave before the question-and-answer session.

She couldn’t take it, thirteen pairs of eyes upon her, thirteen pairs of eyes echoing their pity.

Charlotte had seen her documentary upward of two hundred times, it felt like.

She had memorized every sound bite, every expression someone made.

Even still, watching it like this was excruciating.

In the middle, someone got up and left, and Charlotte was sure it was because the film was crap.

The fact that they came back a few minutes later after probably just using the bathroom did little to ease her mind. Charlotte clamped her eyes closed.

When the film finished, one of the film festival organizers came to the front of the audience and smiled.

Everyone was applauding. Charlotte thought they were surely faking it, especially when it seemed like they were itching to leave.

Charlotte tried to gesture to the organizer to tell him that they needed to cancel the question-and-answer session, but he was already calling her forward.

“We have quite a treat for you today,” he said. “The director of this fine documentary is here today, and she’s eager to answer all of your burning questions.”

Three people in the audience bolted to their feet and hurried out. Charlotte’s cheeks burned with embarrassment and self-hatred. Maybe this was her first and last documentary, her only effort in the film world. Perhaps she could take the train directly to the airport and fly back to Italy.

On shaking legs, she took herself to the front and turned to face the “crowd.” The festival organizer handed her a microphone and said, “Amazing work, Miss Whitmore.” After that, even he disappeared through the double-wide doors, presumably because he had something better to do.

Charlotte thought she was going to throw up.

Gripping the microphone with both hands, she gazed out at the crowd and sputtered, “Um, thank you for coming out. It’s a real honor to be featured in this festival, and, yeah.

” She cleared her throat. “I’m supposed to open the floor to your questions. Does anyone have one?”

At first, nobody flinched. Kathy finally raised her hand and asked, “Can you tell us a bit about your process? How did you arrive at this topic?”

Charlotte wanted to curl up into a ball.

Instead, she took a breath and, to the best of her ability, answered Kathy’s question.

As she did, she stared straight ahead at the back wall, unable to make eye contact with anyone in the audience.

She dared any of them to get up while she was talking and leave, adding insult to injury.

When she finished, she shrugged and said, “Anyone else have a question?” She expected there to be another minute of silence before she’d free all of them.

But that was when a man stood and raised his hand.

Although it was dark, Charlotte remembered him as the man who’d snuck in at the very last second.

At six foot or so, he was broad-shouldered and formidable and nothing like the typical “film guys” Charlotte knew from film classes and other screenings.

“Why Bukowski?” he asked.

Charlotte felt a stab of recognition. That voice. It dropped her back into the ocean of her memories. It made her ache with the past.

“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte asked, her voice breathy.

“Why did you choose to fixate on Bukowski?” he asked, stepping forward so that his face glowed in the light that came from the bulbs up above.

Charlotte was stricken. He didn’t just sound like him—he looked like him, too.

He was just like Jack.

But it was impossible. Jack had died on the night of the fire. He’d died on July 4th, 1998—three and a half years ago, during a far different era. This fake Jack was nothing more than a coincidence, a “ghost” brought into Charlotte’s life to confuse and distract her.

Why, then, was he looking at her like that, as though he were playing a game with her they’d begun as children in the eighties? Charlotte’s mouth was as dry as sand.

“Bukowski?” Charlotte said into the microphone, her heart opening. “Well, he’s a complicated figure, isn’t he?”

“He sure is,” the man who looked and sounded like Jack said.

Charlotte had lost her will to sound intelligent in front of these people. Even Kathy looked at her, now, as though she was worried Charlotte was having a breakdown.

Charlotte shook her head and smiled at the man. “What is your name?” she asked, because she couldn’t resist.

“Is that important for your answer?” he asked, his eyes glinting.

“You look like someone,” Charlotte offered, her cheeks steaming.

“Do I look like Charles Bukowski?”

The few people remaining in the crowd chuckled.

“No. I mean.” Charlotte cleared her throat and willed herself to answer, telling him that she’d selected Charles Bukowski because her father, Benjamin Whitmore, had been a longtime fan of the poet.

“My father died in a tragic fire when I was nineteen years old,” Charlotte said, continuing to fixate on not-Jack.

“I suppose I’ve been trying to make sense of him, of who he was and what he loved, ever since.

And when I started to read more of the poetry of Charles Bukowski, something clicked for me. ”

“Can I ask what that was?” the man asked.

Charlotte wet her lips. She couldn’t help but feel as though she and this “stranger” were hiding in the White Oak Lodge horse stalls, listening as Francesca called them in for dinner and giggling because she would never find them. They wouldn’t let her.

“Charles Bukowski echoed a sorrow I never knew my father had,” Charlotte said finally, taking a small step toward not-Jack. “I was never allowed to know my father’s inner life, because I was maybe too young for him to show me.”

The man in the audience offered a sad smile and said, “I wish you had put more of that into the documentary. I would have loved to feel that.”

Charlotte was immediately rattled. More than that, she was struck with the realization that he was right. She should have made the documentary more personal, more about her singular connection with Charles Bukowski and with her father. Maybe the documentary rang hollow. Perhaps it felt blank.

Was she actually a crappy documentarian? Was she pursuing a field she should have stayed clear away from? Had her grandfather lied to her about her talent?

Or—was she simply unmoored after such a difficult few years?

After that, Charlotte didn’t have the strength to continue the question-and-answer session.

She told the crowd that she had a migraine and thanked them for coming.

As she turned to put the microphone on the table beside her, she realized that the man who looked like Jack was one of the first to dart out of the theater.

Before she could stop herself, Charlotte raced after him, her thighs burning.

Why was she chasing him? Did she want to ask him something more about her documentary, about what he’d wanted from it?

Or was it something else she was after? When she reached the lobby, not-Jack was already at the glass door, speeding into the cloudy afternoon.

Charlotte couldn’t let him go. But what do I want him to say?

When Charlotte bolted out onto the sidewalk, she heard a familiar and glorious sound: Jack’s laughter.

The man who couldn’t possibly be Jack was howling with it, glancing back as Charlotte chased him down the road and around the corner.

Charlotte laughed, too, feeling as though she were twelve years old, chasing her ten-year-old brother along the beach.

Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe none of this was real.

Finally, she spotted him as he slipped through a dark door and into a dive bar. Charlotte shot in after him, terrified of what she would find on the other side. Probably, she’d realize this man was crazy, that he’d lured her into a trap.

But there, standing at the bar, was a man who could only be Jack Whitmore. He grinned broadly at her, his eyes glinting with joy and mischief. Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. “It can’t be,” she whispered, shaking her head.

Jack pressed his finger to his lips and wagged his eyebrows. “My name is Seth Green,” he told her firmly, before extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Charlotte Whitmore. You’re really quite a talented documentarian.”

Surprising herself with her own volatility, Charlotte pressed her hands to his shoulders and pushed him against the bar. He laughed, throwing his head back on impact.

“I don’t understand,” Charlotte whispered. Tears fell swiftly, now.

“Sit down. Let me buy you a drink,” Jack-as-Seth-Green said.

Charlotte could do nothing but sit down, her legs shaking so violently that she might have fallen anyway.