Chapter 6: Viral

NEXT MORNING ABI walked into the studios with a huge smile on her face. She was looking forward to popping in to see Walker, for a half-hour chat about their date tonight, before reporting to make-up. She had her words committed to memory ready for the two scenes she had scheduled for today. According to the script, her character, Heather, had come home a few days earlier after being away at college for several months. She had to film a short scene with her mother in her screen parents’ garden, followed by a longer scene with friends of her own age in the High Street pub, The Bear’s beer garden. The weather was bright and warm, so they shouldn’t take long to shoot, she imagined. She was hoping to spend some time between those scenes with Walker.

She found half a dozen of the TV production crew playing something on the high quality editing computer. They were crowded around watching with interest.

“Hi fellas,” she called out cheerily, “are you looking at yesterday’s rushes?”

“No,” One of them looked up at her and waved her over. “We’re watching YouTube, Abi, you must see this. You know the new TechAd guy who joined us last week, the Yank chap Walker Pickering, don’t you?”

“Yes, vaguely, I met him here yesterday while I was nosing around seeing what had changed in my absence.” She hoped that she had kept her voice perfectly neutral. No need to mention that she had met Walker twice before and was due out on a date with him tonight.

“Oh boy! You’ve got to watch this!” the film guy turned to the editor at the controls, “play it again from the beginning, Harry, we all want to see this again.”

She rolled her eyes, expecting this to be a quick clip of slapstick or a ridiculously embarrassing outtake. She had known most of these men and boys for seven or eight years. They were good lads but they tended to act like big kids some ... no ... most of the time. She walked over to join them in viewing the screen.

The video showed a scene being shot on a television studio set, rather like the High Street show the present viewers were used to working on. There was no sound, so it clearly wasn’t an integrated or scheduled shot. It must have been a stand alone camera without a microphone. Abi recognised the only actor standing in the centre of the shot. It looked like he had just finished a scene and was signing with his hands, checking if that last scene was a wrap.

“That’s Bull Donald,” Abi observed quietly.

The guys all looked at one another and grinned.

“Yeah, we know,” one of them laughed, the others joined in the chuckles.

Abi thought this had all the makings of an outtake, and assumed the crew wanted to show her recent co-star in an embarrassing situation. She rolled her eyes. It was common knowledge among the crew, knowing what Abi had been doing on her six-month sabbatical from the show, spending part of the time filming a Hollywood blockbuster romantic comedy in a California studio and on location on a ranch in Montana with the mega film star Bull Donald.

The camera panned and moved forward to follow the actor Bull Donald as he stepped off the studio set. The camera was either set on rails or was a Steadicam, as it smoothly panned to follow Bull just off and behind the studio set, which was clear by the timber framework keeping the set steady. It was also darker there, but the automatic exposure setting on the camera kicked in to suddenly lighten and improve the image. A woman stood there waiting for him.

“That’s Bull’s wife, Crystal Mackintosh. Oh, she’s so beautiful and also really sweet, you know? I met her last week,” Abi said conversationally. The guys all nodded with grins on their faces.

On the screen, Bull greeted Crystal with a passionate embrace, their lips joined together in passion, as if they’d been parted for too long. The kiss was one that went on longer than would be appropriate for a film scene; this looked like it was a natural kiss between two long-time lovers, a husband and wife hungry for each other after being parted for a time, and not some rehearsal by a couple of actors.

Abi felt uncomfortable watching what was becoming a long and extremely passionate kiss between a passionate man and his loving wife, their hands moving from the original desperate clinch to begin to stroke more exogenous areas.

“Hey guys, don’t you think this is a bit pers—?” Abi started.

“Shh!” Harry hissed, “This will get a whole lot more interesting in just a minute.”

Then, almost as soon as he said it, a man could be seen bursting onto the scene while Bull is kissing Crystal so passionately. Animatedly, he confronts the couple, who quickly break apart. It was Walker! Even seen from behind, Abi was certain that the newcomer was Walker. Soundlessly, obviously heated words were exchanged between the two men, with Crystal in the background holding both her hands up to her mouth, her eyes wide open in shock and anguish. Then, with one short, sharp jab with his fist, Walker punches Bull’s lights out and stomps off, with Crystal chasing him trying to catch a hold of his arm, instead of seeing to her fallen husband. The scene comes to an end with the camera following Walker and Crystal until they are out of sight, stage left, before the camera pans back to show Bull lying prone on the ground. Harry seems to have recorded the scene on a loop, as it went back to the beginning, to play over again.

Abi stood there open-mouthed, hardly comprehending what was going on. Walker knows Bull and Crystal? Why did Walker use so much venom in punching Bull, and why does Crystal chase Walker instead of checking out if her husband was OK? Did Walker and Crystal have a love affair and Crystal decide to stay with her husband? Were they still in love? When did all this happen?

“Bull has a reputation for fu— er, making out with all his leading ladies, Abi. He’s notorious for it, rumour has it that he has to have the biggest white dick in the business,” Harry the editor explained, “and our new man Walker caught the pair of them in the act. I mean, how unlucky for the guy was that?”

“Caught in the act?” Abi asked in a daze.

“Yeah,” Harry laughed, “this guy Walker was married to Crystal Macintosh at the time! Can you believe that, the actress and the extra? And they had been together like forever, they were a living fairy tale in the industry.”

All the others nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, even then she was a looker,” another added, “now she is the fabulous star actress earning tens of millions per picture while her ex- is the part-time walk-on, walk-off, film extra working here for pennies.”

“They were a legend like beauty and the beast at the time,” said one more production guy, “like they were happily married for over ten years. It was an unlikely marriage that everyone said at the start couldn’t possibly last long after the honeymoon, you know, the poor husband will divorce her for half the money, or she’d get bored with him course he’s a one trick pony in bed, yet for all those years it was one of the most enduring relationships in Hollywood.”

One of them added, “And that was the end of that particular marriage. In fact for many fans of that soap it was the end of a fairy tale and even the soap went into a sharp decline after Crystal left the show and it was dropped like a stone from a load of networks.”

Another piped up, “I think Crystal and Walker had actually been married for 15 years and had been a recognisable and inseparable courting couple for maybe a couple of years before that. It was rumoured that Walker held off committing to the marriage until they had lived together for a while and he was the one who insisted on a no fault prenup that only protected what each partner brought into the marriage. Crystal Mac had even became a mega star by the time this happened, and they reckon that the bad publicity from this video cost her an Oscar that year for ‘When Sunset Falls’. Now yon Bull Donald is married to Crystal, but looking at how she chased after her then husband out the door, I bet she’d take Walker back without batting an eyelid.”

“Hey, Abi,” another onlooker asked, “wasn’t Bull Donald your co-star in your Hollywood film?”

But Abi was already flying out of the room, a hand over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks and the sounds of her sobbing echoing off the corridor walls.

The men in the editing room exchanged knowing glances.

One said, “Damn! That Bull’s a bloody dirty dog! An’ I thought butter wouldn’t melt in Abi’s mouth.”

The editor Harry scoffed, “Nah. She’s definitely a genuine sweetheart as well as being one tough cookie. She’s fended off a number of known dodgy charmers just at this studio alone, without succumbing to their charms and without offending anyone. I’d put my shirt on Abi being able to resist that freak tosser. She’s probably just a bit upset at how close she might have come to getting caught up in Bull Donald’s web.”

Most of the group agreed with him.

One added, “That Bull maybe a right swine, but you gotta admit our Abi’s a rare pearl.”

Meanwhile, Abi rushed down to Walker with tears in her eyes, knowing what he suffered at the hands of Bull Donald.

“It was over five years ago now,” Walker said, laying full length on Abi’s living room sofa, with Abi languidly stretched out on top of him, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder. They were both naked and still gleaming with a sheen of sweat on their recently sated bodies. Abi stroked and gently blew on the fine mixture of dark and grey hairs on his chest.

“They’d been havin’ this on-off affair mostly based on flirting and touching for years and finally becoming fully sexual for a few months,” he continued, “Christina admitted as much while she was trying to own up and be honest, to do anything she could to try save our marriage. But you can’t ever get over nothing like that. Maybe those actors that seem to live their whole lives in a fantasy world could, but I certainly couldn’t. Love that’s let down so badly like that don’t die immediately, but it definitely freezes the development of any relationship before all the trust and commitment necessary evaporated as if it had never existed, then goes downhill, leavin’ you with a pain that’s similar to, or maybe even worse than bereavement, because you know that the body walkin’ around is just a ghost of the person you put on a pedestal to be.”

Abi gave an involuntary shiver.

“You cold, sweetheart?” Walker asked, rubbing her back.

“Only my back is,” she smiled, lifting her head and looking into Walker’s eyes, “Can we carry on this conversation in the bedroom, under the covers?”

“Do you really want me to be with you?”

“I really wouldn’t have suggested we continue this otherwise, honey,” she smiled, pulling her legs up and swinging them round, ready to stand up, then brighter said, “Why, Walker, are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to stay the rest of the night with li’l ol’ me, now that we’ve broken the ice an’ll, so to speak?”

“I think we’ve shattered the blessed polar ice cap, Baby Doll! Yeah, believe me, I would love to stay the rest of the night with you, Abi.”

“And what about the rest of your life, my love?”

“Why, Abi? Do you think you’ve only half killed me so far already, and you’re plannin’ on finishing me off later tonight?” he laughed.

“Well, honey,” she leaned down and kissed him quickly but softly on the lips, “it’s the very least favour I could return, as you finished me off quite nicely just a few minutes ago, and I’m sure that with some encouragement you’ve got another one or two left in you for me tonight.”

She stood up and held her hand out for Walker to hold. He leapt up and put one arm around her shoulders and one at the back of her legs and lifted her tiny form, laughing.

“Looks like you do have enough energy!”

She put her arms around his neck before she locked her lips on his.

“Which way?” he gasped when they broke off the kiss.

“That-away,” she pointed towards the bedroom with a giggle.

A long while later, under the covers, Abi cuddled up to his firm, warm body and sighed. The bedroom lights were still on but dimmed down as low as they would go without being off.

“Abi, it’ll probably take me a while to recover again before...” Walker was worried about how much this young woman was expecting of his old bones.

“Walker, hon, you are not in a lovemaking contest. You are my boyfriend. I want you to relax with me and enjoy this wonderful warm feeling of love as much as I am.” She looked into each of his eyes in turn. “We’ll make love again, but when we’re both good and ready. Right now I am also tired, in fact I’m shattered physically. But on the other hand I’m not sleepy yet, too emotional in my head to sleep right now. Do you want to continue telling me about Crystal and Bull, if it’s not too painful?”

He nodded. ‘Mmm, “boyfriend” sounded nice the way she said it,’ he thought. She made it sound natural, without shame or criticism, just nice. She had comfortably relaxed her head onto his shoulder again. Another gesture which he thought was not just nice, but just the right action at just the right moment.

“Christina Mackenzie, that’s her real name, not Crystal Mackintosh. I met Chris on the set of ‘Never Say Never’, oh it must be more than twenty odd years ago, yes, it was over twenty-two years. She played the daughter of one of the main stars in the soap, that I occasionally appeared in the background of, and she was about 20 and beginning to increase her profile in the show. Chris was becoming very popular with the younger audience, that the producers were trying to attract, while I was just a walk-on extra.”