Chapter 7

A limo was waiting for us and we had reservations at the Westin at Times Square. There was some kind of traffic foul up so the trip from the airport to the hotel ended up taking more than an hour, but we were swept right through check-in and brought up to the two-bedroom suite in short order.

The suite was nice, very nice. It had a great view of Time’s square, a plush lounging and sitting area, and two large, well-appointed rooms, each with a sumptuous private bath. We had two rooms on the same floor for the security team, though one person would be in the suite at all times.

Dinner was in the restaurant downstairs and, after I made phone calls to Sophia and the twins, to Christine and Lucy and to Angela, we turned in early since we would be up at five in the morning.

Up at five and Cassidy was as chipper as ever. She burst into my room while I was standing there in my boxers, gave me a cheeky wolf whistle and went straight to my closet, grabbing one of the new suits, a brand-new shirt and selecting a tie.

“Come on, David. We have to get a move on. Breakfast will be delivered by room service in twenty minutes, then we have to get to the studio for makeup, a walkthrough and so on. Your segment is scheduled from seven to seven fifteen, though it may start later if something runs over.” she chattered as she pushed me back onto the mattress. Once I was seated, she was holding open my trousers and looking up at me expectantly.

Something about how she was kneeling down and looking up at me triggered a response that I really, really didn’t want to display, and I must have blushed because she giggled and shook her head.

“I see you finally figured out I was a woman.” she teased, licking her lips and winking at me.

“I’ve always known you were a woman, Cassidy, and a very sexy one too, but I have been trying to be a professional.”

“It’s okay, David. We can’t spend this much time together without getting closer. Now, I am not going to jump into your bed, I prefer my playmates to have breasts, so I will just take it as a compliment that you, um, respond to me. Just ignore it and let’s get a move on.”

She guided my feet into the trousers and had me stand up so she could fasten them, sliding belt through the loops but not buckling it. Next came a new t-shirt and a new button down. Tucking the shirt in she brushed against my erection and I saw her complexion go pink, but I pretended not to notice.

She expertly tied my tie for me and helped with my shoes, tying the laces for me as well.

“This is why you need a personal assistant slash valet slash keeper.” she joked.

Once I was presentable, she carried my jacket out into the central area and laid it over a chair just about the time a knock sounded at the door.

Beth was the security person on point this morning and she was at the door in an instant, her hand on her holstered pistol and was peering through the peephole.

“Room service.” she announced, letting her jacket cover the gun as she cracked the door open. She checked the hall first to make sure it was a single person with a cart and then let him in.

Beth was being careful and very serious as she checked the cart while Cassidy signed the bill.

The rest of the security team arrived just a minute later, as the room service waiter was leaving, and we all sat down to eat while we discussed the itinerary.

Live with Kelly was first, but we should be out of there by eight. Then it was a trek over to the Tonight Show studio for our interview with host Jimmie Fallon, and that was scheduled to last two hours. The rest of the day was free.

The Saturday Night Live performance scheduled was not until Saturday, of course. We were expected to arrive at the studio by six thirty, with a dress rehearsal at eight. The rehearsal was filmed in case something came up, but the show actually began at eleven thirty and the cast (and guests) had to be back in the studio by ten. It would make for a long evening.

We had elected to stay overnight Saturday and take a morning flight on Sunday, so we had to be to the airport in time to catch the ten-fifty flight Sunday morning, arriving back in Chicago at five after eleven with the time change.

When we arrived at the studio for the Live with Kelly show, I was rushed into makeup where a nice, older woman slathered who knows what on my face and making me wear a bib, all the while keeping up a running monolog on why I had to wear makeup at all. It was obvious she had been doing this for years and, while nice and polite, had her patter down pat.

Then it was off to the ubiquitous Green room, which isn’t green, by the way. It was a lounge area where several guests were sitting. I had no idea who any of them were though one had an entourage of a half dozen while another sat and quietly chatted with the third guest. There was a buffet laid out and several large screens showing what was happening at that moment on the show.

The two guests without followers both smiled at me, and I gave a little wave. There was a shared smile between them and they got up to introduce themselves to me. One was an actor, Jeremy Renner who I belatedly recognized from his movie in the Bourne series. He was a genuinely nice guy with a good sense of humor.

The other was a country singer, not a genre that I ever listed to and I was embarrassed to say that I didn’t recognize her. She was a cute blonde, or at least I think she was originally blonde. She had multiple colors in her hair, but that didn’t detract from the spray of freckles on her nose and her winning smile. Her name was Cassadee Pope and she was here to promote the release a new single.

The guest with the entourage was a rap star, or so they told me. It was another genre that never resonated with me and even after they told me his name, I had no clue who he was.

Kelly Ripa never made an appearance while we waited and chatted, but her guest star this week was Johnny Galecki from the television comedy show, Big Bang Theory. It was a show I had seen and enjoyed, a favorite of the twins. I was not much of a television watcher at the best of times, but I had spent quite a bit of time in front of the tube when I was laid up.

Johnny Galecki was just as funny in person as he was in his show, and he spent a while chatting with us before being called to the set. It was as he left that he said something that surprised me.

“Looking forward to seeing you again when we film next month!”

I turned to Cassidy, who was chatting with Cassadee (and made a mental note to tease her later) and asked about the actor’s parting words.

“I told you that we had you up for a guest spot, but it was only confirmed this week that the Big Bang Theory had a script you would be perfect for. You are filming in LA next month, though it won’t air until Spring. Perfect for us because the buzz for the movie should be starting about then for the fall premier.” she explained, then turned back to her conversation with the country star.

I just shrugged. Another example of my life spinning out of control. Jeremy Renner just smiled at my expression and shook his head.

“Let me guess, you are feeling a little overwhelmed? When I moved to LA, I felt the same way, but you get used to it. You might not ever like it, but you get used to it.”

Jeremy was called to the set first, then Cassadee. I was third on the schedule, I guess to split up the musical guests, with the rapper guy last.

I watched his interview, taking notes about how relaxed he was and how he was looking at the hosts and the audience, but I never saw him look at the cameras.

Cassadee did the same thing, though I noticed that her accent on camera was decidedly more country than it had been in the Green room.

The interview was ... a bit of a letdown. My first experience in front of a camera except for the lights and the audience, which I tried to block out lest I freeze up, just came down to a conversation about my life and the aftermath of the attack. The one question that threw me for a moment was about my personal life.

“So, David, if we could get personal for a moment, I learned from our producers that in addition to being severely injured in the attack and trapped for a week, you also suffered another, very personal loss. Your fiancé, Nancy was killed, is that right?”

I was totally not prepared for that and it took me a second of fighting to hold back the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me.

“She had come to visit me at work that morning. She was starting a new job as a broker for an investment firm and I worked on the trading floor for my firm. She wanted to see what her counterparts would be doing when she put in an order for a client.” I told them, avoiding the emotional pitfalls.

“It must have been a severe blow on top of all the rest. How have you been coping? Do you foresee a time when you might consider dating again?”

“It has been difficult to say the least. The memories of that day come back at the strangest times. The sights, the sounds, the memory of her as she walked through that front door just before the bombs went off. They will stick with me for a long time. As for dating, I have a circle of friends that have been unbelievably supportive and I think that is all I want or need for now. Maybe someday that will change.”

After they last question, they cut to commercial and Johnny gave me a sympathetic look but Kelly just walked off, not even bothering to introduce herself. I was escorted back to the rear of the set where I could clean up and Cassidy was waiting.

“Cassidy, I want approval of all questions being asked in the future. I will not be ambushed again.” I told her, furious.

She looked chagrinned and just nodded, laying her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, David. That wasn’t on the list of questions they provided me ahead of time.”

I felt bad for snapping at her, but I hated being blindsided. “Look, I shouldn’t take it out on you, but let’s try to make sure that doesn’t happen. I don’t want to discuss Nancy on television, okay?”

Cassidy just nodded.

“David!” I turned and Cassidee Hope was rushing down the hall towards me. I looked at Cassidy, but she seemed as surprised as I was.

Cassidee came to a halt and put her hands on my shoulders. “When I met you in the Green room, your name sounded kind of familiar, but I thought you were another actor like Jeremy. I didn’t know what an amazing man you are and I just wanted you to know that I am so glad I got a chance to meet you.” She paused, smiling at me, then kissed me on the cheek. She turned and ran back down the hall again, calling over her shoulder, “Good luck with the movie!”

Cassidy looked at me and cracked up and I had to do the same. That was as good a tension breaker as anything I could imagine and just about as unexpected. I shrugged, showing her I was bewildered, and she ushered me into the makeup room to get cleaned up.

As we left, Cassidy told me that the Studio had called and they had the wrong time for the Tonight show taping. We had to be to the studio by four, for a taping at five so that left us most of the day free.

It was only half past eight in the morning, so we had about six hours to waste. I had visited the city several times when I was younger and Cassidy had actually lived in New York for almost a year, so rather than play reluctant tourists, we went back to the hotel.

I got on the phone with the writing group to find out if they needed anything from me, and ended up spending until noon in a web-based collaboration session and answering questions about character interaction. I was impressed with the way these folks were fleshing out the concept I had given them, but I still had a lot of work to do laying out dialog.

The team only had a chance to interview Angela and Selene so far, but they had appointments for next week with Sophia & the twins, and for Lucy. Christine was tied up with work, but she promised to give them some time in a couple of consecutive evenings rather than a large day-time block.

In the meantime, they were interviewing first responders, witnesses, hospital staff and the families of the victims that they could find and that were willing to help with the story.

I ordered room service for lunch and we ate in my suite, then I changed and went down to the exercise room and pool, trailed by Charlotte and Drew.

I got a lot of looks using the routine we had designed around my loss of an arm and the weakness in my legs, but I was used to it by now. The swimming pool was small, but at this time of day it was practically deserted so I got to get some laps in. It was about the only leg exercise I could do without really hurting, though the ‘really’ part of that was variable.

Back in the room, I napped until three and got up, showered and shaved. Cassidy was waiting as I walked out of the bathroom and this time I had nothing on at all.

“Gee, Cassidy, I thought you weren’t interested.” I joked as she blushed and turned around.

“Crap! I didn’t realize, I mean, I didn’t mean to, well, you know.” she muttered, refusing to turn around until I promised I had something on.

She helped me get dressed, never quite ridding herself of the blush, but I didn’t tease her any more.

Another studio and another Green Room, this one actually had one wall painted green! Jeremy Renner was here as well, and gave me a friendly wave, but continued talking to a guy I recognized from a kids movie I had taken my nieces to see, Where the Wild Things Are. It took a minute for his name to come back to me. Mark Ruffalo!

Also in there were two people that didn’t look at all familiar and, when I asked Cassidy, she identified them as an Animal Behaviorist who had a new TV show and a singer trying to stage a comeback, but I had never heard of either.

I was the first guest so I didn’t get much of a chance to chat and was called out to the stage where the host, Jimmy Fallon, took a few minutes to walk through what was expected and crack a few jokes to relax me.

The interview went quickly, with no real surprises, and I even managed to crack a joke that went over well. I was scooted down the couch when Jeremy and Mark came out to discuss their new movie based on the old Avengers comic books. The shorts they showed looked pretty damn cool.

After a commercial break, I was cleared to leave the set since there was limited seating and the animal guy was coming out after the break.

When I got done getting cleaned up, a young guy who identified himself as a production assistant on the show rushed in, handed me a note and rushed right back out again.

The note was from Jeremy Renner saying that he and Ruffalo were going out for a steak and a beer and that I was welcome to come along.

Cassidy was thrilled with the offer, babbling about it giving me more presence and validating me with the Hollywood scene, while my security team were not quite as excited.

“David, these guys will have their own minders so we will probably be fine, but if something comes up, don’t fight us. Our priority is to get you out in one piece.”

I agreed to behave and Cassidy said she had things to do, that she would catch a cab to the hotel. She wanted to alert some contacts about the dinner. I just shrugged and waited with Drew and Charles for another half hour while the two actors finished their taping session.

“David! Glad you stuck around. I didn’t get a chance to introduce you to Mark earlier. Mark Ruffalo, David Weaver.”

“Mark, nice to meet you. I remembered you from that Maurice Sendak movie adaptation. I took my nieces to see it and we had fun.” I said, shaking his hand.

He looked surprised but smiled in return. “I didn’t think anyone remembered that. Everyone I meet these days wants to talk about the Hulk.” he rolled his eyes and laughed. “I’ll probably never get another serious role, but what the hell, right? It pays well.”

I introduced Charles and Drew, explaining that I had a bit of trouble recently and they were there keep me from getting into any more.

They didn’t seem at all phased by my protective detail and I saw why when they each picked up one of their own as we left. Jeremy gave me the name of the restaurant in case we got separated but said just to follow him and it should be fine.

The restaurant was called Keen’s Steakhouse and, evidently, most of the cast of the new movie were in town for various press events and getting together, along with friends, for dinner. The red carpet was rolled out and the paparazzi were swarming around the entrance. The car carrying Jeremy and Mark pulled up and the two got out to a barrage of flashes and shouted questions.

They paused and waved to the fans and the photographers, smiling and mugging. They waited until our car pulled up and, when I got out, they pulled me in with them and the volume of questioned seemed to double.

I was about blind from the flashes and was feeling a bit overwhelmed when someone screamed my name out, “David Weaver! Are you involved in the new Avengers movie? Why are you in New York?”

Jeremy and Mark laughed at my shocked expression and pushed me forward, raising their hands to get their attention. It got quiet, relatively anyway, and I cleared my throat. I reminded myself that this is what I signed up for and thought about what Cassidy would want me to say.

“I am here for a few interviews and I am hosting Saturday Night Live to announce my partnership with Starlight Productions. We are going to film my story.” I said, waving at the press and turning toward the restaurant.

Jeremy clapped me on the shoulder and Mark just nodded.

Dinner ended up being a lot of fun, and Robert Downey was every bit the cutup he tended to play on the big screen. Samuel L. Jackson was, despite the roles he played, a quiet, introspective man. It was mind blowing being surrounded by so much talent and being, for once, an almost forgotten add-on.

Towards the end of the evening, when the dishes had been cleared and the conversation had quieted, I found myself, quite unexpectedly, telling my story. I am not sure, exactly, what prompted it, but the audience was appreciative and they asked surprisingly cogent questions.

I told them everything. I told them about Nancy.

It was late when we finally left the restaurant, and the paparazzi were still out in force, but tonight had been a purging of sorts, and I walked the gauntlet with my head held high.

Cassidy was waiting at the hotel, almost manic when I came in, jumping into my arms and giving me a surprisingly friendly kiss.

“The studio is over the moon! You pulled a fucking coup tonight, David, a fucking masterpiece of publicity. You co-opted the cast of hottest movie of the year and put Starlight Productions in the minds of millions with a ten second, fucking impromptu interview! The studio head told me personally that the money they paid you has already been worth every penny.” she said, laughing and dancing.

I had to laugh; this was a side of her I had never imagined.

Saturday Night Live was a bit of a let-down. It went just fine and I officially announced the new movie, I even played a part in two skits, but I had grown up with a different cast and I just felt ... wrong somehow. I don’t mean to belittle the current cast members, they were all very talented and funny, but it was like finally getting that toy you wanted for Christmas when you were three, but getting it at twenty-three.

Monday morning it was back to the office and Abby had news on the Real Estate front. She let me know that she had sent me a list of addresses that superficially fit the profile I had set, and that she had forwarded the same list to Security Inc.

I took a few minutes to scan the email and check out the pictures and two of them stood out to me, but I wasn’t going to spend time worrying about it until the security guys had a chance to look them over.

There were no interviews this week, so I spent all of my time with the writers. We had come up with a beginning and we had the now, but miles to go to actually connect those two points. The ending was still up in the air, but we hadn’t decided which way to go.

The opening scene of the movie would actually be a composite of various viewpoints as the special effects people recreated the bomb explosion and the building collapse.

It would start with a fly through several of the floors, including the trading floor that had been on the thirtieth floor. There were enough photographs and video of that floor to recreate the area. The fly through would enter an elevator shaft and exit in the basement, swooping over and around the machinery spaces and end centered on explosives chained on a column and the digital clock counting down.

Then would become a rewind and we would see day become night. The light would cycle through three day and nights until it slowed again, showing three men actually attaching the explosives. It would continue to reverse in about ten times regular speed and you would see the men backtrack to their contact who supplied the explosives.

Another scene change would bring the viewer to my apartment with a close-up on the alarm clock changing to six and the alarm going off. The camera would pan out, pausing for a second on the photo I used to have of Nancy on the bedside table, then out again to show my character slapping the alarm and sitting up.

It would cut to me tying my tie, then sipping coffee from a travel mug as I left for work. Cut to a split screen as Nancy called me, confirming her visit to my work and then segueing into talk about our upcoming marriage.

It would progress normally, though through vignettes, until I had to go downstairs to meet her, and would be in regular speed as I walked into the lobby. The camera would show me being excited and checking my watch several times, watching people come and go through the big doors.

Then it would center on Nancy as she entered and the world would slow, cutting the movement speed to a fraction of reality. The scene would cut from my smiling face to hers and show her raising her hand to wave as the explosives go off.

The part I agonized over was what really happened, and if we should show what I remembered, or simply cut to collapse of the building and the cloud of debris and smoke that obscured my vision.

In the long run, and after a long, painful discussion with Nancy’s parents, we decided that we needed to show it all. They knew how she died, but they wanted to see it, wanted to see what I saw of her last seconds.

The special effects people in Los Angeles assured us that they could do the scene justice and the camera would even catch that fraction of a second when she realized that it was over.

There would be a collage of shots showing the portions of the building collapsing, the deaths and the destruction. It would show the smoke and debris cloud and even the destruction of surrounding structures.

The next part of the movie would be vignettes showing the shocked reactions of passers-by, and spend time with each of my circle of friends and family. Each of their vignettes would include a flashback of their connection to me, of important memories they held about our time together.

For Christine it would be the day she moved into the neighborhood and we met, and several scenes of us growing up together and even dancing at the Junior prom.

For Lucy and Selene, it would show how we met in college and how close we became.

Sophia, of course, would start with our childhood, the funerals of Mom and Dad, the news of Andy and the birth of the twins.

The movie would move to my little corner of hell, my hole in the ground. We had held a few discussions about how best to show this. We could go with diffuse lighting to make it dark and moody, or we could go with night vision to show me reacting to the absolute darkness. In the end, we decided on the latter, counting on the actor’s reactions to sell the terror I had felt down there.

That is where we were stalled at the moment. We need to really sell that part. We needed to get the audience involved in my prison, to show what happens to the human mind when in complete darkness, reliving the horrendous death of a loved one; being pinned and unable to move, without even the choice of ending things.

It had to stretch for seven long days with no food or water, with the actor descending into hallucinations and even to the edge of madness.

During that time, we would be showing first responders, panicked families, the first bodies pulled from the wreckage. FBI and FEMA setting up camps and we would bring in Angela and her fellow officers. That segment would center around her, around her three days of hell.

The part where I am discovered and pulled from the wreckage wrote itself. We had a lot of news coverage and even video of the event, and we had the medical records, so that was no problem.

Angela becoming my love interest was a given and the scene at the pool was included as it happened, the team sure that it would be perfect on film.

For the ending, I wanted to close the movie on a scene of me signing the movie deal with Starlight, but the studio execs hadn’t signed off on that yet. Evidently there was some kickback about shoehorning in a happy ending, but I thought my idea was better and was holding out.

The next month flew by before I knew it and I was scheduled to fly out to Los Angeles to make an appearance on Good Day LA and Entertainment Tonight. We would combine that trip with a couple of meetings with the studio heads and the big money backers. It would be more of a press the flesh tour than anything else, but Cassidy assured me that it was how the game was played. I would be in LA for a week at least, the trip ending with my guest shot on Big Bang Theory, so maybe ten days max.

Cassidy was going with me, of course, but only to the two official press events. They she would hand me off to the studio and take a vacation until we went back to Chicago. Her time with me was almost up, according to her contract, but she would be spending a week every month with me, holding my hand for appearances, and the rest of her time back in California.

I spent a couple of nights a week with Lucy and Christine at her apartment and we had spent two weekends together as well. The times we spent just being together, talking and loving and relaxing were beyond wonderful. We talked about the project, of course, but most of our talk was about what would happen with the movie was over, when it had been released. I had a plan, but I hadn’t told them yet, wanting to make sure it was do-able first.

I was splitting the rest of my between Angela and Sophia’s apartment, making sure to spend time with the twins as well. I spent a whole weekend with Angela, and we flew to Miami on the Friday red-eye, coming back in time for her Monday shift that started at noon.

Another weekend was spent with Sophia and the girls but we stayed in, spending the entire weekend running around the apartment in our night clothes, boxers for me and t-shirts with no panties for them, and turned the weekend into a movie fest. We piled up pillows and blankets and slept together in the living room. I made love to Sophia with an audience of two and spent a little special time with the twins while their mother gave them tips and used me as a teaching aid.

None of the ladies could take the time off to come with me to LA, so it was Cassidy, me and my security team. We were taking six with us, and the Studio was sending their plane for us, which made the trip a whole hell of a lot better than the last one!

One last minute addition to the trip was Abby. I had spent quite a lot of time, during working hours, with Abby over the last month and she had proved to be smart, resourceful and willing to do just about anything needed to make our lives easier.

She had even been screening applicants for my Personal Assistant position, finally approaching Cassidy to throw her own hat in the ring. Cassidy, deciding that Abby deserved the chance if she wanted it and that finding an office manager slash receptionist would be easier than finding another Abby, had asked me to give her a shot.

Cassidy and I had sat down with her and explained what the job entailed, and that it would mean she would be with me twelve to sixteen hours a day during the week, and probably twenty-four hours a day when travelling. She said she had no reservations about the job at all, and would even take that extra room at the apartment if it turned out to make my life easier ... so, I invited her along as a trial period.

The most exciting part of this trip for me was a surprise for the studio. I was bringing the completed script with me! We had completed the write up and now we would turn it over for them to go through. The director and the technical guys, the continuity and research folks, the legal teams ... they all had to sign off and all of them would probably want changes.

There would be revision after revision and the whole team knew that, but we had pulled it off and the first draft was done earlier than expected. The entire writing team was taking two weeks of much needed vacation before returning to see how the studio had butchered their baby.