Lena’s passenger remained unconscious the entire ride to Hollywood. An hour before dawn no one was on the streets and Che suggested dumping the stranger on the Church of Scientology lawn.
"They know how to take care of people like him."
"I'll take care of him." Lena had plans for 'the man from nowhere'.
"Suit yourself, just drop me at my house." Che didn't say another word
Upon arriving at her bungalow she got out of the car and slammed the door, as if to wake the man in the back seat.
His breathing was the only sign of his not being dead.
Che cleared the blonde mane from her face and asked Lena, "When will I see you again?"
"Here's my number." Lena scrawled the info on a fast food wrapper.
"Sherri won't mind me calling?"
"You and me. We're just friends?"
"So far." Che kissed the young actress through the window of the LeMans. Their lips melted whatever faults they possessed between them. "You be careful of that man."
"I can handle men." Lena looked over her shoulder. The man was dead to the world and almost dead men weren't trouble. "Call me."
Lena drove over to the freeway. Traffic was light, but a heavy rain lengthened the drive over the Hollywood Hills.
Lena shut her eyes. It had been a long drive from Las Vegas.
Car horns woke her and she opened the window. The cold wet air revived her long enough to get home, where she parked the LeMans in the sheltered garage and got out of the car.
"Mister?"
The man was out cold.
"Mister, I can't carry you." She shook his arm for several seconds, then slapped him in the face.
"Where are we?" His hands covered his face.
"LA." To Lena he seemed a million years old. She figured his age for 40. "Can you walk a little?"
"Maybe." The man pulled himself off the seat and Lean helped him out of the car.
He smelled of dust and old clothes. His blonde hair rubbed stiff against her skin and felt, as if it had been stolen from a brush. She picked up her bag and led him to the elevator. without locking the car. It was safe. No one else lived in the condo building which had been condemned after an earthquake.
"Don't fall down," Lena told the man.
"Where we going?" His words stuck like mush in his mouth..
"Someplace safe." The elevator stopped on the 4th floor and the man in the black suit sagged against the wall.
He wasn't drunk.
He wasn't on drugs.
Someone had beat him into this state.
Lena knocked on the door to her apartment.
"Sherri, open up. It's me."
"Did you forget your keys?" Sherri asked opening the door.
"No."
"Who is he?"
I'll tell you later. Help me carry him into the guest bedroom?"
"Are you crazy?"
No, just do it."
The two women dragged the man to the back bedroom and dumped him on the single mattress. For all intent purposes he was dead to the world.
Lena stripped off his bloodstained clothes and bundled them in a ball. The swelling bruises to his head suggested that he might be suffering from a concussion and Sherri checked the unconscious man's pulse. It was strong and steady. Lena went out into the bathroom and returned with their medicine kit.
"He's going to live."
"Good." Lena tended to the naked man's cuts. "Because I have plans for him."
"What kind of plans?" Sherri surveyed the pale stranger's body and pointed to the ancient tracks from a needle. The older woman wore the same tattoo. "You don't get these for graduating from a seminary."
"I know, I know.” Lena threw the covers over him and explained about finding the blonde man on the highway without mentioning Che Chasta. "I wanted you to see him."
"Why?” This stranger didn’t belong inside their home. No man did.
"You don’t see what I see.”
"No, I don’t.” Sherri could only see a man. “Plus this wasn’t the deal.”
”What deal?”
”What you and me? I said ‘no men’.”
"I didn't sleep with him and I have no intentions to sleep with him." Lena cleansed the wound on the man's neck. He was too far gone to feel the sting of alcohol. "But you said I could bring home strays."
"I meant a cat not men?"
"I couldn’t leave him to die in the desert?"
"A dead man in the desert sounds better than a dead man in my house."
"He asked for my help." Lena reached up to stroke her lover's hair.
Sherri pushed away the gesture.
"I can understand that, but why didn't you dump him on the sidewalk like he asked? Plenty of people get their start out here like that. I want the truth."
"I told you I had plans for him."
"Like what?"
"I see this man in the desert and I think SIMON OF THE DESERT.”
”He looks nothing like the saint.”
”Shave the saint." Lena pointed to the man. "Now you see what I see?"
"You’re kidding." Sherri had to admit the man on the bed met the physical requirements for her road film’s lead.
"Not at all. This is the Man from Nowhere. Look at him. He has been screen-tested by the road. When I saw him, I saw the last man on Earth."
"He's a complete stranger." At this point in Sherri’s life most men were little else.
"ADAM AND TWO EVES will never be completed, unless we find a man for this role and who better to play a man from nowhere than a man from nowhere.”
”They are actors.”
“And you’ve rejected them all.”
"I hate men."
"I know you do. I've heard you and your friends talk about a world without men. -50% one of them called machocide. I respect your beliefs, but we'll never finish ADAM AND TWO EVES without a man. This is our 'Adam'." Lena could sense Sherri’s wilting to her suggestion. The final push had to come with cautious reason. "We do not have to love him or even like him. All we have to do is act in a few scenes with him. Maybe you are a little jealous of this man?"
Not jealous, but he could be a rapist or a murderer."
"He does not look the type." Lena stood over him with a bemused smile.
”What’s so funny?”
”If I drove past that spot in the desert two seconds earlier and I wouldn’t have seen him.”
”And a second later you would have killed him.”
”Life’s a question of timing.”
”He still could be a killer.
”Not him.”
"And how can you tell?"
I have been with enough men in my life to know the difference between the good and the bad." She searched his pockets, uncovering a stack of hundred-dollar bills, five wallets, cold French fries, and an Irish passport..
"What are you doing?" Sherri half-expected the man to wake during this frisking.
"You want to know who he is." Lena opened the wallets and examined their IDs. Only the passport matched the man’s face. She handed it to Sherri.
"Sean Collan of New York."
"At least now he has a name."
"That doesn't prove whether or not he's dangerous." Sherri flipped the passport onto the suit in the corner.
"Maybe to himself, but not us," Lena stated defiantly, yet she had to demonstrate that she wasn't buying this 100% and examined the wallets. "He might not be a killer. A pickpocket. A thief. But that doesn't change his looks?"
"Are you sure you want to use this man?" Sherri dropped the wallets on the floor.
"Yes, he is better than some stupid actor pretending to be the real thing."
"Everything in my body says get rid of him.”
”And everything in mine says he’s perfect.”
”This is crazy, we don't even have any money to shoot the film."
"Yes, we do."
Reaching into her backpack, Lena poured Isaac Conti's money from an envelope.
Seeing the banded stacks of $100 bills, Sherri asked, "And where'd this come from?"
"Your uncle gave it to me last night at the award ceremony. He wanted you to use it to finish ADAM AND TWO EVES."
"My uncle."
"Another man."
"I can't keep them out of my life." Sherri started to cry, until Lena caressed her cheek.
"Don't be scared, baby. You’re the one always saying we have to do this film. How ADAM AND TWO EVES can save me from whatever happened to you. It would be easy for me to keep thinking it was a dream and nothing else. I have had a lot of those in my life, but I believe in you and believe in this film. I think ADAM AND TWO EVES can be something great, but we need a man to finish it. If not him, then nobody.’ Lena stared at the still form on the bed. No man was harmless other than in this condition and even unconsciousness was no guarantee of safety. “You got me, remember that and nothing else."
"How can I forget? Without you I'd be like everyone else in LA. Wake up, drive my car to work, come back home, watch TV, sleep alone."
"You might have a lover sometimes."
"Strictly for sex."
"And what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing."
"So let's finish the film.” Lena pulled Sherri out of the back bedroom into the living room, where they lay on the sofa. The young girl's jade eyes gazed up at her lover, as she arched her back to get closer.
“You have the money. You have the actor. You have me. What else do you need?"
"Nothing."
ADAM AND TWO EVES could bring Lena and her to another world away from having sex on film. She could visualize them film on-screen with the man in the distant background. Sherri wrapped her arms around Lena, as if to protect the young actress from all the harm she had ever experienced as a woman. A last fear arose and she asked, "What if he refuses?"
Lena trembled with anticipation of her lover's caressing her secret places.
"Everyone wants to be in the movies."
And that was no lie.
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