“No telling,” Esty replied. “But I’d like to see us finalize contract negotiations by this summer. If it all falls into place, we can start preproduction right away, and you’ll have a contract.”
Johnny heard footsteps in the hallway. “Okay, I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up to find Madeline staring at him from the doorway with a frosty look on her face. Five three with dancer’s legs and pert little breasts, she was built just the way Johnny liked them. Her jaw was set and she didn’t look at all happy to see him.
“You’re back early,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t expect you home until tomorrow.”
“I got home last night, just in time to find a woman named Brenda slipping a note to you in our mailbox.”
“Who?” Johnny asked.
“Brenda,” Madeline repeated, handing Johnny the opened letter.
“Did you talk to her?”
“No, she left before I could approach her. But I read her little note. She wants you to call her when you get home because she was worried about you in Santa Fe. Did you really tell her that your father had a stroke?”
“I don’t know what this is all about,” Johnny said, scanning the note, knowing that he’d been busted.
Madeline scoffed. “From what Brenda wrote, she appears to be smitten with you, Johnny. Those earrings you gave her made quite an impression.”
“I can explain everything,” Johnny said.
Madeline stepped to his desk and dropped a business card on the table in front of him. “No, you can’t. The movers will be here in the morning to pack up all your personal possessions and get you out of my house. Here’s their card. After you check into a hotel for the night, I suggest you start apartment hunting.”
“Can’t we talk this out?”
“We just have,” Madeline said, her hand outstretched. “Give me your house key.”
Johnny smiled sadly, looked crestfallen, spread his arms wide in a gesture of supplication. “Look, sweetie pie, I’m sorry. I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t. Pack an overnight bag, leave my house, and don’t speak to me again.”
He dropped the key in Madeline’s hand and watched as she turned on her heel and left. He checked his wallet for cash, pulled out his last bank statements of his personal accounts, and studied his balances. He could rent a place and get by for a month or two before he would be forced to use his credit cards to cover his business and living expenses.
The thought struck him that maybe Brenda would put him up. She had an extra bedroom he could use as an office. That way he could cut his overhead in half and save a chunk of money. He worked on a story to tell her as he dialed the phone.
“Hey, sweetie pie,” he said when she picked up, “I got your note.”
The following morning the script Johnny had promised arrived, and Kerney spent his lunch break at his desk reading it. The story was a good one, with some interesting plot twists. The climax to the film occurred during a working cowboy rodeo held at the end of the cattle drive, which turned into a free-for-all after the cops showed up to arrest the rancher and his friends for trespassing on government property. Although set in present time, it had the feel of a classic Hollywood Western.
He put the screenplay away. Tonight, Sara, his career-army wife, would be flying in with their son, Patrick, for a long weekend break from her current Pentagon assignment, which was scheduled to end in the fall. For the past two months they’d been debating how to spend the thirty days of leave Sara would take before her next posting. Mostly she’d talked about just wanting to settle in at their Santa Fe ranch to nest and relax. Would she consider giving up a large portion of her vacation time so that Kerney could work on a movie?
Last night he’d called Dale Jennings to get his take on Johnny’s offer. Dale told him that Barbara and the girls were excited about it, the money was too good to pass up, and it would be fun to see firsthand how movies got made.
Dale’s enthusiasm had made Kerney think more positively about signing on. But in the end it would be Sara’s decision to make.
A worried-looking patrol commander who knocked on his open office door made Kerney postpone any further thoughts about the movie. He smiled, wrapped up his half-eaten sandwich, dropped it in the waste basket, and invited the officer to enter.
Usually a good traveler, Patrick was restless on the flight to Albuquerque. Sara tried, without success, to distract him with a picture book and the toys she’d brought along, a set of small plastic barnyard animals that ordinarily kept him occupied for hours. Today the book and toys held no attraction. He squirmed in his seat, kicked his feet, twirled his favorite toy animal in his hand, and repeatedly asked when he would see his daddy.
Patrick’s question made Sara’s heart sink. Her son had reached the age where he needed a full-time father in his life, and her long-distance marriage to Kerney made that impossible.
At the terminal Patrick spotted Kerney waiting near the escalators behind the passenger screening area and ran full tilt to him, his face breaking into a big smile. Kerney scooped him up and hugged Sara with his free arm. On the drive to Santa Fe, Patrick’s fidgetiness vanished. He sat calmly in his toddler car seat and soon fell asleep.
They talked quietly about their workweeks. By design Sara avoided two issues that were troubling her: Patrick’s need for a full-time father and her next duty assignment. She’d just been told that she would be posted as a deputy military attache to the U.S. embassy in Turkey. The assignment came with the promise of a fast-track promotion. If she turned it down, her climb up the ladder would stall and she’d never get to wear the eagles of a full bird colonel.
“Did you know that the first movie made in New Mexico was filmed in 1898?” Kerney asked.
“You always have such interesting bits of trivia to share,” Sara replied, grateful that Kerney was making small talk. “Tell me more.”
“It was made by the Edison Company and ran less than a minute,” Kerney said. “In 1912 D. W. Griffith filmed A Pueblo Legend with Mary Pickford at the Isleta Pueblo south of Albuquerque, and later Tom Mix, the early cowboy movie star, made twenty-five movies up in Las Vegas.”
“Where did you learn all this?” Sara asked.
“In a book I’m reading on New Mexico filmmaking.”
“Why the sudden interest in movies?”
Kerney slowed to let a semitruck pass. “I’ve been asked to serve as a technical advisor on a movie to be shot here starting in September.”
“Is it a shoot-’em-up or a cop caper?” Sara asked.
“A bit of both.”
“How did this happen to land in your lap?”
“By way of an old boyhood acquaintance,” Kerney replied.
He gave Sara the lowdown on Johnny Jordan and the movie. He told her that Dale Jennings had signed on to be a wrangler and planned to bring Barbara and the girls with him. The more he talked about the idea the more animated he became, particularly when he described the cattle drive and the rodeo that would be filmed in the Bootheel. He was grinning from ear to ear when he finished.
“You sound like you want to do it.”
“Not without you and Patrick,” Kerney said as he signaled his turn off the highway onto the ranch road.
“Let’s talk about it some more.”
Soon the ranch house came into view. Tucked into a saddleback ridge, it looked out on the Galisteo Basin, with the Ortiz and Sandia Mountains in the distance. Sara sighed as the car climbed the long hill. It was paradise, and the thought of spending a month at the ranch before heading off to Turkey was more than appealing to her. But the movie idea did sound like it could be a fun adventure, and Kerney was clearly drawn to it.
“There’s one more thing,” Kerney said as he pulled to a stop outside the house.
Sara gazed at the pasture and the horse barn across the field from the house. Four geldings were in the paddock, their heads up, ears forward, alerted by the sound of the car. To the west the sun was low, behind a thin bank of clouds, spreading a pink glow over the Jemez Mountains.