Chapter 9: Crystal

CRYSTAL HAD BEEN frantic trying to find Sierra, as the infuriating girl would not pick up or switch on her cell. It was clear from what clothes she’d packed, and the way she left the drawers and wardrobes open and hangers scattered on the floor of her bedroom, that she was gone and not just overnight. Ordinarily, a mother would assume she was staying with friends, but knowing how Sierra reacted yesterday to her Mom’s confession about the lies she told about her father that, wherever Walker was living nowadays, was where she would have gone. Crystal had to admit, the way her second marriage was panning out, she’d go back to steady, reliable and loving Walker in an instant, if only he didn’t hate her so much.

Walker’s mother was also refusing to pass on Walker’s mobile number or his current address, but she did reassure Crystal that Sierra was fine, she’d spoken by cell phone to her earlier in the day and Sierra had told her nothing about leaving home.

So where was Walker? When he first split from her he was staying in various hotels and motels, quite seedy ones, eventually, once his assets had been frozen and the cheap lawyer he used initially wasn’t smart enough to get the court to release sufficient means to live on.

She herself had been in shock from the outset, and she allowed the Studio to dictate the way forward to her. She had been left with little choice, because Walker refused to listen to her. She thought that if she could only bring him to his knees, she could get an hour with him to explain to him that he was the only man who she loved and she could assure him that she could change. She had indeed changed, although it did her no good.

Walker was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The sex with the rest of them was just part of the role she played, and had played since she was 18, to get men to do what she wanted, to get the parts she needed, to keep actors asking for her to appear with them because she was a starlet that put out. It was all a game. These guys meant absolutely nothing to her, and therefore they took nothing of her away from her husband.

When she was with Walker, she knew she was home and safe with no need to act a role because he was her world. Their marriage was the real thing, the rest of it was all make believe. She had even been so careful and discrete before, so she had avoided building any outside reputation; it was Bull Donald who was desperate for her and was the one who kept pushing the boundaries. Perhaps it was because it was just after her 39th birthday, and was dreading being 40, that he finally wore her down and she let him have a taste. He wasn’t even all that good, nowhere near as satisfying a lover as Walker, because sex to Bull was all about Bull getting off.

She thought back to when she first met Walker, when he was about 27 and she was 20. She had been in this soap opera since she was 12 and Walker had only been doing walk-on parts in the show for a couple of months. He was tall, handsome, and lean-muscled like a swimmer. He always had a smile on his face, always delighted to be on the set and he seemed to know everybody, and the crew and actors all knew and liked him. He was a complete nobody, and revelled in being such; he had no ambition to be an actor, or anything other than a walk-on extra. He didn’t come on to any of the female players or production staff. He didn’t seem to have any other agenda other than enjoying whatever he did.

Crystal found out that his full-time job was working nights for the local power company, to provide his core income for rent and to live on. Only later did she find out that all the money he earned from working as an extra went into a separate account, from which he bought wood to make amazing, beautiful furniture of his own design. She didn’t find that out until a long while into their courtship. He was quiet and never boastful, but always happy to converse and entertain on a wide range of topics.

Crystal knew she was gorgeous and could have anyone and anything she wanted. Everyone had told her that since puberty, when she had first set her sights on a performing career. So, when she targeted Walker as a lover, she expected him to fold with very little resistance. But he proved to be a hard nut to crack.

For a start, she gravitated to him at every break for lunch. At first he sat with the other acting extras or junior members of the technical crew, so she had to make an effort to cut him out of the herd, by getting him to walk around the Studio plot, or using excuses like “tell me about the real London we never get to see”, or “help me through my lines on this tricky scene, woncha?” Pretty soon he was conditioned to expect to see her every lunchtime and the other crew took note and tended to drift away. She made sure Walker was called to the Studio as an extra every day that she was scheduled to be there, although pretty soon, even the chief producer said he was good enough to be useful to have around throughout the week anyway.

But still Walker wouldn’t ask Crystal out on a date, despite her constant attention, so she asked him if he had a girlfriend.

“No,” he said, “not since my wife divorced me in England.”

That he had been married before was news to her, but at least it meant he probably wasn’t gay.

So, she asked if he could accompany her as an escort to a couple of formal functions, because she didn’t currently have a boyfriend to do that, “No strings attached, Walker, but I know you and trust you...”

So he dressed up real nice for her in an acceptable tux and she had to admit he looked good in it, outstanding even. Walker turned out to be as near the perfect date as she could have wished for. He paid her lots of attention, yet stood back when she needed to be centre stage. He had tidy and relaxed table manners, able to converse with senators as well as shopkeepers, using that cool natural British accent, with a long list of stories and jokes, each tempered appropriately for his audience. And he was a hit with all the ladies, young and old, who hung on his every word. He was light on his feet and could dance well and was quite prepared to dance all night if she wanted him to dance every dance. Given enough notice he could switch his shifts at the power station, or persuade someone to work on a couple or three hours, and he would come in a few hours earlier at a later date to pay his workmates back.

And, it came as a complete surprise to Crystal, that he had been working for a couple of years at all the other studios in the area. A number of actors, actresses, producers and directors would come up to speak to him (him, not her!) and say how they missed him, asked him where did he go and then heard, of course, that he was now working almost exclusively on Crystal’s show.

The mystery man who appeared so regularly on Crystal’s arm was also big local news and Walker’s picture was often featured in the Hollywood gossip pages. Crystal’s girlfriends assumed he was some established British thespian, finally trying his luck in tinsel town, and they all wanted to know what films he was working on and could Crystal get them studio passes to witness him in action. At first, Crystal was reluctant to tell the truth, but then she found an inverted pride in telling everybody that Walker was no actor but an extra.

“He is so comfortable in his own skin that he doesn’t pretend to be who he is not.” Crystal declared. “Walker only plays himself, an honest, straightforward, dependable and handsome hunk, who is resourceful, brimful of charm, and respectful towards whoever he is with, yet determined to plot his own course through life, too happy being busy in the work he does to even consider being a loafer or a sponger off others. He is the genuine article, the real deal, ladies, and no free passes for any of you girls, this guy’s all mine.”

And that was when she realised that she was falling head over heels in love with Walker.

At one shindig, a famous director brought up the subject of some upholstered lounge furniture he had commissioned from Walker a year before and now wanted to add a sideboard. The back of an invitation card to the event became the medium for a detailed drawing of the sideboard with dimensions, tiny side drawings showing joints and details, all beautifully shaded in the mechanical pencil he had produced from a pocket.

Crystal marvelled at this man, a studio extra who had a crowd of onlookers enraptured while he designed this beautiful piece of contemporary furniture off the cuff, costed and scheduled it out over a six-week period to delivery and shook hands on the deal there and then, for a price that made even Crystal gasp.

“You should be doing this full-time,” she told him later as he showed her round his small workshop that he rented in a downtown commercial center of tiny lock-up units.

“It is a hobby now, Chris,” he had said to her, “if I did this all the time, I would soon get sick of it and it would become too much of a 9 to 5 job. I enjoy doing three jobs, I am in turn stimulated and relaxed by different tasks and I look forward to the next change of pace, rather then the same old relentless pressure to meet the next deadline.”

“So five weekends for that sideboard is not a pressure deadline?”

“I have the wood in already, I bought a container load of that seasoned light oak, shipped in from the Baltic, so I don’t have to wait to start it. I have already glued up more than enough boards to give me the width I want to make four or five sideboards. I will measure out and cut all the boards and the legs this weekend; cut and glue up the joints next weekend, as well as cut out the material for the drawers and maybe even turn the legs on the lathe; definitely turn the legs the third weekend using a lathe with dust extractor, drill the frame for the legs and glue them up for a final rub down of everything on the Saturday, cut the joints and rebate the drawers and glue up the three drawers; seal all insides and outsides of the wood on Sunday in prep for French Polish; apply up to seven coats between then and the fourth weekend so it is ready to deliver on the fifth weekend with a weekend spare. We have an old white box van that several of us share for deliveries, and there’s always a spare lad around to help load and unload for a few bucks.”

Crystal was already aware that Walker was someone special, but moving on from there was not easy. Walker simply didn’t get the concept of casual sex; to him making love was all about commitment of two people to be exclusive and loving, each had to be prepared to fill the other partner’s life completely, a partner had to be at one with him on this. It took her nine months of continual courting, with kissing, cuddles, evolving into more making out, to draw him into enough of a relationship to make love to her.

Abstaining from sex that long was the hardest thing she could do. She was tempted, oh, how she was tempted, but she had to admit that during the time they courted he had captured her heart and found she was able to resist all the rival come ons, well, after the first six weeks or so.

She finally accepted that she loved Walker enough to commit her future with him when, after constantly seeing him for about nine months, she had a ten-day shoot away on a supporting role in a movie and she really missed him terribly. Even phoning him every night wasn’t enough, she wanted to see him in the round, hold him, melt into his powerful arms and enjoy having her knees go weak with his wonderful kisses.

So, when they got back together, she attacked him, burying him in kisses on his handmade sofa, so well made that a herd of elephants could have orgied upon it with barely a creak of a dovetail joint.