This is a work of fiction, very, very loosely based on the real person, Russell Crowe. I wrote it for my own entertainment, and entertainment is its only purpose. No insult or injury is intended.
This story is for readers over the age of 18 only, and contains explicit adult language and sexual references.
Meant To Be
(or not meant to be, that's the question!)
A Quentin Finch story
©2007 by: Jackie
Chapter One
Who am I?
I'm a London-based editor who was stupid enough to write a book.
Where am I?
I'm in Australia, at a farm, under a tree by a guest cottage, typing away at my little laptop.
Why am I where I am?
Now that is going to take some time to explain.
So I wrote this book. It took me a long time to write it, in the late hours after my stressed-out working days, but when it finally was done, it took off like a rocket. I was sort of hoping that it would be good, (when you're in the book biz you usually know when something's good, but somehow it's different when it's your own writing) but I never counted on it being… well…
A hype. That's the only word that would describe it correctly. The book had some sort of Dan Brownish, Illuminati-type organization in it and I had gone to some lengths to describe the secret rituals and 'teachings' this organization applied, stuff that supposedly would give you control over the world around you. The idea is simple: if you want something, you 'harmonize' yourself with the thing you want, you let it go and you wait, and then what you want happens to you, eventually. To a certain extent, it is actually true, but of course not to the extent that I put in my story. After all, it's a story. Duh.
But, you see, people believed the book. They believed it more than they had believed The Celestine Prophecies – it was almost scary. I guess it came at the right time or something, it answered a need. They wanted to believe and I didn't exactly mind, of course, being desperate to get out of the office and to be able to work as a writer full-time. So I built myself a website with an email address and a bulletin board; visitors, emails and discussion threads started pouring in and my book started to pour out. Of the stores, that is.
Now why, you may wonder, am I saying that I was stupid enough to write this book, when it was such a huge success? The answer is pretty simple, as are most answers at the end of the day, but I'm afraid I will have to do a lot more talking to explain my current predicament. My current predicament, you see, is a 5'11'' Australian, a brilliant, Oscar material, 25-million-dollar-a-movie actor, of whom I hadn't even heard about a year ago. Well, that's not completely true, I had actually heard his name once or twice, but I never saw any of his films or undertook any efforts to follow his career. And now I'm stuck with him. And all his problems. And for the life of me, I can't bring myself to leave. Now why would that be?
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let me first tell you a bit more about what came before. You see, the book's success meant that I had to go on a book tour, to promote the damn thing. And I hate travelling, too. But there was no help for it: I had to leave my flat and get on a plane. So, at one point, I was packing, got bored or frustrated or stressed out with the travel jitters and I decided to check my emails. There was one from Texas (announcing its origin in the subject header in capitals), several from other places in the US of A, a couple more from the UK, one from my pal Alison in Edinburgh and one from someone named Jo in Australia. I was really happy with the Oz one: I hadn't yet gotten any email from that part of the world.
It read:
From:
jo.nana@eaia.com.au
Sent: 10 March 2007 18:15
To: tarynarcher@nixiecycle.com
Subject: The Nixie Cycle
Dear Taryn,
I live in Australia and I would like to let you know that The Nixie Cycle has inspired me greatly.
We have had some family troubles and I have been really worried and, well, downright depressed, but reading your book and practising some of the teachings has helped me to feel better, and to have hope again that we can work through this together. I feel strong enough now to support my loved ones, and I want to thank you from the deepest of my soul.
All best,
Jo
It wasn't the first email of its kind, but for some reason it spoke to me. So I sat down for a couple of minutes to write Jo a real reply instead of the standard two sentences, sending my thanks in return and mentioning my signing schedule when I would reach Australia – perhaps I would see her there. I wished her all the luck and love in the world and signed off. And thought about it for a bit. And a bit more.
I got some images of her pretty quickly: a lady roughly the age of my mother, with a very friendly face, dark hair…, struggling through a rough patch, brave, sometimes desperate. Poor Jo. I really hoped I'd get to see her in Australia.
Now that we're talking about it, I guess I 'd better explain: I have this sort of sixth sense thing. I pick up on people's emotions really easily, even from letters, emails and photographs from time to time. Most times when this happens, I get a notion of what sort of person they are, and I feel a reflection of what they feel. Sometimes I actually see them in my mind's eye.
It can be a bitch at book signing gigs: I have to really shield my mind from the folk around or I get odd mood swings from all the extra input. Imagine feeling like crying your eyes out all of a sudden because the girl across the table from you is going through a confusing phase in puberty and just broke up with her boyfriend. Not funny.
I guess I never used to, like, DO something with it, you know? I always knew I had the sixth sense thing going on (somebody once told me that it's called clairsentience) but I never got into any healing or anything. Back at the publishing house, I could sometimes sort of hear in my head what people were going to say before they actually said it, which was fun at editorial meetings, but that's about as far as it got.
Until recently. Until I came face to face with Quentin, who embodies the emotional equivalent of a stack of amplifiers with the volume wide open, at least to a mind like mine. But no, hang on, there's more stuff I need to tell before we get to the meeting of Quentin.
So, anyway, off I went on my dreaded book tour. From bookstore to bookstore, from hotel room to hotel room. And practically every time I switched on the tv in whatever hotel I was staying in, there seemed to be some news item about this brilliant actor with this terrible attitude problem. He had fallen in love with some actress who was married at the time, and this relationship seemed to calm him down and make him happy. He stopped punching gutter press photographers, for one thing, and wasn't in a bar brawl for at least six months. However, the affair effectively broke up the woman's marriage - a shaky thing to begin with - during a brutal public scene in a restaurant in Hollywood. Classic stuff, really. The media ate it all up, blaming the actor as the marriage breaker, and the love affair came under so much stress that he did something really stupid, got caught up in a court case in the USA and the end of it was that he couldn't work in the States any more. That roughly put an end to his international acting career, and it brought back the bad temper.
He began touring with his band in Europe and Australia – wasn't he from Oz originally? - and news of him being in fights, storming off stage in mid-gig, being steaming drunk and generally out of control came in on a regular basis. Then came the stories of endless strings of affairs – interlaced with moments where the actress seemed to come back into focus, only to be followed up by another rough break-up and more alcohol abuse. Venues turned down his band because they were afraid he would wreck the place, hotels held their breaths when he was in town.
So, I was sitting on my hotel bed in a T-shirt with a big Z on it, looking through my itinerary – next stop Sydney – when the television announced to the room that Mr. Thingy (he had sort of a bird name which, at the time, I always forgot the second after I heard it; hell, I wish I'd paid closer attention now) had broken off his tour and was shipped home to wherever he lived for detoxing and general calming down. I changed the channel, being intensely bored by Mr Thingy's antics, watched some more nonsense which I can't remember and went to sleep.
The next day was themed waiting. Waiting to get on the plane, waiting for it to take off, then waiting until it reached its destination and landed again, waiting to be allowed off and into the airport building… waiting for border control… waiting for a coffee… waiting for the next plane to get on to and the whole thing starting all over again – I felt like a transatlantic sheep, shuffling forward in a never ending line. I was flying business class, but the waiting didn't get any less and I managed to catch a six hour delay, which meant that I had just enough time to drop off my bags at the hotel where I was staying and I would have to be off to the book store for the first signing gig. I had slept a little on the plane, but by the time I got there I was bleary-eyed and dehydrated, too tired to be sleepy and downright miserable.
~*~
I got through the two-hour signing slot on coffee and dreams of sleeping off the jet lag. Just before the ordeal was over, someone approached the table with a copy of the book and an expectant smile on her face, and I immediately knew that it was…
'Jo,' I said. I felt like I had known her forever.
'Um, yes, how did you know?' She gave me a sweet smile, just like I had imagined, and handed me the book.
I smiled warily, I usually don't talk about the clairsentient thing but I guess tiredness had made me careless. Better to let it lie and pretend nothing had happened. 'I'm really happy you made it here, Jo. I could do with a friendly face, I'm so tired!' I said, grimacing, trying to sound normal. I opened the book and looked at the pristine fly-leaf, then looked up at her. 'But how are you? Has it been a little better for you since you emailed?'
'Well…' she said, a little hesitantly, 'yes and no I guess. My son's come home, so I don't have to worry so much about him, but he's, well…' She sighed and gave a little shake of her head.
There were just a few more people waiting in line, and I stole a glance at the clock. Ten more minutes and I'd be done. For some reason I felt like this, Jo I mean, was important, and I had something to do here; can't explain it any better. So I gave her a conspiratory look and hoped no one would overhear what I whispered to her.
'Listen Jo, I'm almost finished here, maybe you want to go get a coffee or something with me, when I'm done? If you can hang around just another couple of minutes I'll be off. I really feel like we've met before, like we're friends already, I'd love to sit down and chat, if you want to.' I know it's an odd thing to say to a total stranger, but hey, that's what it felt like, and truth is, after all, stranger than fiction.
'That'd be great!' she whispered back. 'I was hopin' you'd want to do that, but I didn't reckon I should ask.'
I drew a coffee cup and a smiley in her book, signed with my initials and gave it back to her, then put on my neutral friendly book signing face and greeted the next customer.
Next thing I knew, Jo and I were in a nice little place across the road, amiably slurping coffees and digging into huge chunks of apple pie.
'I shouldn't eat this,' she said with an unmistakable look of delight on her face, 'I'm big as a house as it is.'
'Ahh,' said I, 'but you enjoy it! That means you actually should eat it, because enjoyment is better for you than fat and sugar are bad for you.' I contemplated the ungrammaticality of that for a while, then added: 'Erm, am I making sense?' I scratched my head, playing confusion.
Jo laughed and agreed; after all, any excuse will do. 'Did you have a good trip over?' she asked.
'Mmm, well, yeah, it was o.k. I guess. It took forever and I haven't slept, but I suppose I'll live.'
'Well you're young. How old are you, Taryn? Or d'you think me rude to ask just like that?'
'Naw; I'm thirty,' I said around a mouthful of pie, 'going on three hundred, the way I feel. I had never imagined this promotion thing could be so draining. I'll be glad when I'm done here and I can go home, you know? Sleep.'
She nodded and looked out the window. Thinking. Something painful seemed to sweep over her face; I felt I shouldn't be talking about myself, I should ask her about her problems, I should probably be honest with her and tell her what I had seen. Perhaps I could help her.
'Jo? Can I have your ring for a moment?' I pulled my pendulum out of my jeans pocket and swung it in the air.
'What, are you going to douse me?' she gave me an incredulous yet intrigued smile.
I nodded. 'Unless you don't want me to. But, you see, I get these insights from time to time, that's actually also how I knew it was you when you came up to the table in the bookstore, and I thought maybe I can help you a little, help you find some sort of closure for whatever it is you're struggling with.'
That came out rather lame, I thought. But I did have good intentions, honestly. Actually, I never ever did this for other people, only for myself from time to time. What on earth was I thinking? Shit. I must have been crazy. Nevertheless, here I sat with my pendulum at the ready. I couldn't back out now. Sometimes, you know, sometimes life takes you by the hand and all you need to do is follow through.
'Oh. Er, yes, please, um, swing away I guess,' she said, suddenly embarrassed. She shrugged apologetically and gave me her wedding ring. Inside was engraved 'Jo – Leo' and, presumably, a date, but I couldn't read it. I held it in my left hand, pendulum – which works as an antenna, I imagine - in my right, and concentrated. Well, concentration is not exactly right, it's more like paying the right kind of attention, but let's not get into details.
Images came flooding in, and I started talking. 'You're very happily married, aren't you? You have children… two boys… well, men, more like. And you love your husband and your children very much. You have a granddaughter?'
She nodded.
'You live in a beautifully green place, I see lots of plants and animals and, well, family,'
Jo, nodded again and smiled. But then, at the edge of the vision, a darker shadow lurked. I didn't want to, but I had to go there in order to find out what her pain was made of.
I went ahead hesitantly: 'your ssson... there is something there. He 's a source of worry for you?' I waited.
'You saw that? Strewth, that is something!' She looked at me with big round eyes. I kept silent and looked back at her, waiting.
'My, erm, my youngest son is a bit of a wild bloke. He's great, he's my special boy, talented but intense and, well, troubled. He's been running from one bad situation to the next and he just doesn't manage to settle down. I know,' she sniffed and wiped impatiently at her eyes, dismissing even the hint of tears. 'if he were to marry and have a family, he'd be o.k., but, apart from me,' and here she gave me a 'Duh' type look, which made her smile again. 'up until now, the girl who can calm him down and make him happy just hasn't surfaced. For a moment I thought that, maybe… but… Oh well, I just can't seem to stop worrying for him…' she trailed off and looked out the window.
'It looks to me that you need to let go of him, in your mind,' I said after a while, still carefully circling the darkness in the vision. 'For your own health – he's a grown-up, how old is he? Oh hang on,' I dug deep, 'I get, ah, 39, is that his age?' At this, Jo nodded, and I went on, smiling: 'A dangerous age, indeed, but a grown man, responsible for his own actions. So Jo, listen, haven't you always put a part of yourself on hold for him?'
She nodded.
'But,' I went on, 'you know, everybody has to make their own mistakes. Everyone has to do the things they have to do in their own time. We want to protect the ones we love, but if we don't give them our trust, and freedom, we only end up tying them down.' I looked at her. 'You know what I mean?'
She nodded, tears in her eyes again. 'I wanted to, you know,' she whispered. 'for years I wanted to feel, uh, selfish again, but I just didn't dare to. I just always felt like the world wasn't ready for him, and I should always be there for him, catch him when he falls, you know? But now he's finally come home and I can't even begin to ease his pain. I'm totally useless.'
She's a proud mother, I thought, proud and full of love. But it's time she let go. 'You need to do something for you, you know,' I said. 'For you alone. As a gift, a present, to celebrate the fact that you're a beautiful, wonderful, giving woman. You won't be able to help anyone if you stay in this frame of mind, let alone your son.'
She nodded, then seemed to think about something for a long time. Finally, she sort of nodded again, apparently to herself, and spoke. 'Um, would you, er, like the idea of coming over for a visit to the station, the farm, where we live? When you're done with your tour here in Oz? Or are you booked for somewhere else?'
'No, I'm, er, no,' I said, totally taken by surprise.
Her face was falling.
'Oh, no, I mean I'd love to, I've got to change my ticket though; I'm supposed to leave from Melbourne. Australia is the last leg of the promo tour and I've got bookings for the week, but after that I'm free as a bird. God, Jo, how kind of you to ask me!' I gave her a wide grin. 'But I'll be terrible company though; I'm so tired and worn out from all this travelling, I feel like a dish rag.'
'Oh, never you mind, love, just a couple of days at the farm and you'll be right as rain. Maybe you can do some writing, whatever you feel like.'
'Are you sure that I'll not be any trouble, I mean shouldn't you discuss this with the rest of your family or something?'
'Oh FUCK them!' said Jo, heartfelt and loud, the f-word ringing in the little coffee bar. She cringed and looked around self-consciously but nobody paid her any attention, then she grinned a wicked little grin. 'You just said it yourself that I should do something for me. Well, I've just invited my new friend to come stay with me, and I don't care what the rest of the clan has to say about that.'
And that was that. She gave me the address, written on a paper napkin, and her mobile number; I asked the girl behind the counter to call me a taxi and off I went.
Little did I know, of course, what I was in for, but… on the other hand… These things that seem to spontaneously throw us off course usually have some sort of purpose to them. Like I said: life taking you by the hand and all that. I guess I'll need to hold out a bit longer and find out where exactly it's taking me. In the mean time, let me just tell you how I ended up where I am now.
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