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  TED STAUNTON

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  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHER

  Copyright © 2012 Ted Staunton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Staunton, Ted, 1956-

  Jump cut [electronic resource]/Ted Stuanton

  Seven (the series)

  Electonic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-948-3(pdf). --ISBN 978-1-55469-949-0 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Seven the series (Online)

  PS8587.T334J86 2012 jc813’.54 C2012-902622-0

  First published in the United States, 2012

  Library of Congress Control Number: 20129838225

  Summary: Spencer, an aspiring filmmaker, takes a trip to Buffalo to get a kiss from an aging movie star.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  In loving memory of my father,

  Frederick William Staunton, and my grandfather,

  William James Stewart; and for my son, Will Staunton.

  Contents

  REEL ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  REEL TWO

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  REEL THREE

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY- EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  REEL FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  REEL ONE

  “TWO SHOT”

  BY SPENCER O’TOOLE

  FADE IN:

  EXT.—A COUNTRY ROAD—LONG SHOT, FROM ABOVE—DAY

  A red Miata, top down, zooms along.

  CLOSE-UP—SPENCER

  SPENCER (Colin Farrell?) is behind the wheel. His hair blows in the wind. He’s all in black with cool black shades. His chiseled face has a three-day beard.

  EXT.—GATES OF HUGE MANSION—LONG SHOT, FROM ABOVE—DAY

  Miata turns in at gates of a huge mansion.

  EXT.—STEPS OF MANSION—TRACKING SHOT FOLLOWS FROM BEHIND SPENCER—DAY

  SPENCER strides up steps to mansion. Door opens. BUTLER nods.

  INT.—MANSION HALLWAY—DAY

  SPENCER walks down elegant hallway to giant doors.

  He opens them.

  INT.—MANSION LIBRARY—WIDE SHOT (SPENCER’S POINT OF VIEW)—DAY

  Two of Spencer’s cousins, COUSIN DJ and COUSIN STEVE, are arm wrestling while playing chess. COUSIN ADAM flicks knives into a target across the room. COUSIN WEBB hangs upside down, texting. Spencer’s brother BUNNY is on the couch, playing with a tiger. BUNNY looks at SPENCER and nods. The LAWYER sits at a big desk.

  MEDIUM SHOT—LAWYER AT DESK

  LAWYER

  Spencer. Good, we can get started. Gentlemen…

  WIDE SHOT—GROUP AROUND DESK

  All sit around desk in leather chairs.

  SPENCER

  Sorry I’m late.

  COUSIN DJ

  (buttoning sleeve)

  CIA again?

  SPENCER

  MI6.

  COUSIN ADAM

  (putting knives in pockets)

  They always call me when I’m making dinner.

  BUNNY

  (stroking tiger)

  It’s nice to be wanted.

  LAWYER

  Ahem. Now then. Gentlemen, your grandfather’s will is a curious affair. But then, he was a curious man.

  All look up at painting of Grandpa in a massive, ornate gold frame.

  PAN TO:

  CLOSE-UP—PAINTING OF GRANDPA

  GRANDPA is wearing a cool leather flying jacket and a black beret. He’s holding a Colt .45 and a compass.

  LAWYER (OFF SCREEN)

  Perhaps I should let him explain…

  SPECIAL EFFECTS:

  Picture turns misty and swirls into a hologram. Pixels resolve into a 3-D GRANDPA. He’s dressed all in black and now he’s got a glass of whiskey and a cigar.

  GRANDPA

  Boys—sorry, men. I have a final mission for each of you.

  ONE

  Just kidding. I wish though. Really, we take the 501 Queen streetcar to the lawyer’s office: Deb, Jerry, Bunny and me. Deb and Jer are my mom and dad. B-Man Bunny is my baby brother. His real name is Bernard. He’s twice as thick as me and maybe forty-three times stronger. Bunster is your go-to guy for jars that need opening or cars that need to be lifted with one finger.

  The lawyer’s office is downtown. Don’t ask me where; all the way there I was streaming Kill Bill on my cell phone. I’ve seen it fourteen times, but I like it. And I’m starting film studies in the fall at Humber College, so it’s important that I study the fine points—like Kiddo.

  Also, it’s better than listening to Deb and Jer. Deb is still uptight because Grandpa D was her dad and now he’s dead. That’s why we’re going to see the lawyer. Deb insisted we dress up. Naturally that got Jer uptight too. Jer gets cranky when he has to take the bandanna off his head. Even Bunny knows that. Who knows why? It’s not as if he doesn’t have any hair. It’s just that the front is creeping back toward his ponytail, which is something he really should lose, if you ask me. He hasn’t asked.

  Anyway, as we ride up in the elevator, Deb says to Jer, “You know how I feel about cowboy boots,” and Bun tugs at his collar and says, “This scratches,” and Jer hums “Ripple.” I keep my earbuds in and turn up the volume.

  All my cousins and aunts and one uncle are in the office. We find seats and the lawyer comes in and starts talking. I’m not paying much attention because Kiddo is really swinging her swords now. Next thing I know, everyone starts jabbering and the lawyer is yelling “Just stop!” or something, and a minute later all the parents get up and leave the room.

  What’s up? I don’t know. I shut down my phone. Bunny moves over and sits beside me. “We’re okay, right?” he says.

  “We’re cool, Bun. Whatever’s going on can’t be that big a deal. I mean, we’re not the grown-ups, right?” I tuck my phone in my pocket.

  It turns out there’s something to watch anyway. It also turns out t
hat I’m wrong about it not being a big deal. The lawyer messes with the remote for a flat-screen TV, and all of a sudden Grandpa D pops up on the screen, wearing his black beret.

  The lighting is too bright. The colors are wild. Grandpa looks a little orange, as if he has makeup on. That alone would be pretty crazy. Grandpa D was not exactly what you’d call a makeup kind of guy. Jer always said he chewed rivets from his airplanes for mineral supplements. On the TV, Grandpa starts blabbing away about loving us all. It’s kind of weird, seeing as how he’s dead.

  Bunny shakes my arm. “What’s going on?”

  “Ssh. We’ll find out.”

  “What’s Grandpa saying?”

  “He loves you.”

  “I know that,” Bunny says. “So?”

  “Ssh.”

  Actually, it’s a good question. No matter what Grandpa is saying in his video, I’m pretty sure he liked Bunny a lot more than he liked me. He’d start glowing anytime Bun wanted to wrestle or when he crushed a baseball out of the park. Comics and gaming? Nah, not so much. And Jer’s “Front Porch Farmer” column for the Parkdale Advertiser? I don’t think so.

  Grandpa D was always after me to do manly stuff, although once he gave me a list of old movies he thought I should watch. That was nice, even though I’m not much of a black-and-white guy. I decide to look up the list when I get home, maybe watch a couple as my tribute to Grandpa.

  Except now it sounds as if Grandpa has other plans for us. I listen more closely. Bunny is hissing at me again. “What’s happening?”

  “He wants us to do something.”

  “What?”

  “We have to wait and see, Bun.”

  I shoot a quick look at my cousins. Bunny is a loud whisperer. They’re cool with it though. They usually are. I don’t have a lot in common with these guys, but they’re good about Bun.

  Video Grandpa tells us he has a task for each of us and then the movie is over. The lawyer is handing out large sealed brown envelopes to all us cousins. Now Bunny isn’t the only one who’s confused. We’re all looking around, wondering, Whaaat? Do we open these now?

  In a movie, this is where you’d cut to black.

  TWO

  In real life, Deb makes us wait until we get home to open the envelopes.

  Dear Spence,

  Sorry I’m not there in person, but if you’re reading this, I’m airborne, as it were. Now Spence, I know there have been times when we couldn’t figure each other out. I like to do things. You like to watch things. That doesn’t mean we can’t meet in the middle. It’s a big place.

  The middle has your brother in it. Watch out for him always, Spence. Bernard thinks you’re the bee’s knees, as we used to say, and he needs a co-pilot. I know you won’t let him down.

  The middle also, believe it or not, has movies. I like movies too. My all-time favorite movie star was Gloria Lorraine. Ask your mom if my liking Gloria L wasn’t a family joke. Gloria Lorraine is older than me, Spence, but as I write this, she’s still alive and kicking. I want you to go and see her—I know you can find her with the Internet and all—and get her to give you a kiss on the cheek. Tell her it’s for me, a sentimental favor.

  Film that kiss for me, Spence. Someone’s got to make movies and this one only you can make. If Gloria Lorraine has passed or is incapacitated, look in the smaller envelope with this letter for your alternate movie mission.

  The lawyer will have money for you to buy a good video camera and for travel and any other expenses you might have.

  Make your first movie one that the family can watch and think of me.

  Do these things for me. Do them with me. I know you can. Remember that list of movies I made for you? I hope you watched Casablanca. Remember what Rick says to Louis at the end? “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  Sometimes I’m a little too late to the station, but really, it’s never too late.

  Love,

  Grandpa

  THREE

  Jer starts making pie dough while Bunny and I read our letters; he always bakes when he’s bugged. At first, all the talk is about Bunny’s task. Bun is supposed to get a tattoo of Grandpa’s old fighter squadron logo from World War II. Deb is not big on tattoos, even if they are of Grandpa’s squadron logo. “Oh please,” she sighs. “The Marauding Mosquitoes? Their insignia was a mosquito with a cigar and a machine gun.”

  Jer shrugs. He’s at the counter, rolling out pie crust. “Could be worse.”

  Deb shoots him a look.

  Bunny just says, “Cool.”

  When they get to me, I hand over the letter and the other little envelope that’s still sealed. Deb tears up a little when she reads the letter. I check my phone for texts. Then she laughs. “Gloria Lorraine. Oh, Lord.”

  “Gloria who?” says Bunny.

  “That name rings a bell,” Jer says. He’s a trivia guy. “On TV…”

  “Cosmo’s Castaways and Auntie Frank,” says Deb.

  “Good for you.” Jer’s impressed. “Before my time, really, but I remember after-school reruns; well, Castaways anyway.”

  Deb shoots him another look. “Required watching at our house, even though you never actually saw her on Auntie Frank. She was the voice of—”

  “The talking bulldozer,” Jer finishes for her.

  Bun looks mystified. It’s the right look.

  “Grandpa said she was a movie star,” I say.

  “She was in movies before she did TV,” Jer says.

  I go online with my phone and search for Gloria Lorraine as Bunny peers over my shoulder. There are a lot of hits. I start with Wikipedia. Up pops a black-and-white photo of a platinum blond.

  “She’s pretty,” Bunny says.

  He’s right; pretty, but not stellar. She looks smart though, smiling at the camera with one eyebrow raised a little, as if she’s about to say, I know things you wish you knew.

  “Whatcha got?” Jer asks. He’s sprinkling flour on the rolling pin.

  I read out:

  “Gloria Lorraine (born Gayle Leonard, September 16, 1922, in Topeka, Kansas) is an American film and television actress with some fifty-two screen credits, most dating from her heyday in the forties and fifties. She also had roles in two TV series in the 1960s. Her last movie appearance was in 1972’s grindhouse non-classic Drive-In Savages.

  “Lorraine was discovered in classic fashion in 1939, waiting tables in a luncheonette in Seattle, Washington, where her family had moved in 1928. ”

  “Well, that can’t be right,” Deb cuts in. “Grandpa was born in 1920 and his letter says she’s older than him.”

  I shrug and keep on reading.

  “First signed to Republic Pictures, she had small roles in westerns, including two with Roy Rogers before—”

  “My hero,” Jer cries. Is he kidding?

  Bunny asks it for me. “Who’s Roy Rogers?

  “A cowboy actor,” Jer says. “Guys my age thought he was cool.”

  I read on.

  “—before moving on to both Columbia and Warner Brothers studios. Typically she was cast as a younger sister or the heroine’s best friend in a string of largely forgettable wartime dramas and mysteries. She came into her own briefly in the late forties and early fifties in several minor classics of film noir, including Blond Trust, Shadow Street and Dead Letter Office, with costars Fred MacMurdo, Richard Wildmark and Ryan Robert…blah, blah, blah…”

  I skip a bunch of boring stuff. “Dropped by Warners in 1953, she worked frequently in live TV. In 1958 she appeared (regrettably) in Swamp Creatures from Zorgon, which has made several lists of all-time worst movies. In the early and mid sixties she played the wealthy widow on the NBC sitcom Cosmo’s Castaways (two seasons) and voiced the role of the talking truck on Auntie Frank (one season).”

  “Wrong,” says Jer. “It was a bulldozer.”

  Whatever. I finish up. “Apart from Savages, in which she parodied her role of the homicidal secretary in Dead Letter Office, she has been in retireme
nt since then. Married four times, she has two daughters. A complete list of her films is below. ”

  That’s it. I look up.

  “So that’s who she was—is,” Jer says, rolling away at his dough. “I always used to wonder why the credits for Auntie Frank called her ‘Miss Gloria Lorraine,’ as if she was a big deal we should all know about. But really she was a B-movie actress who never quite hit the big-time. How come your dad had a thing for her?”

  Deb shakes her head, then rests it on her hand. “Who knows?” she sniffles. She’s crying a little again when she says, “Maybe Spence will find out.”

  FOUR

  “Don’t you want to film this?” Jer asks.

  “Film what?” I say. It’s Friday, just a few days later. We’re driving through some ho-hum suburb in Buffalo, New York, on our way to the Erie Estates Retirement Lodge. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. I should be asleep. Instead, Jer is at the wheel of our rented car. I don’t know what kind it is, something boxy and boring, but it’s nicer than our beater minivan. Deb needed that to bring files home from work or something. “Grandpa said to film getting kissed on the cheek. That’s what I’ll do.”

  I look out the window. All the houses are way bigger than ours. We slept over in one of them, my cousin Adam’s place. He and my Aunt Vicky were there. Uncle John was away. He’s an airline pilot. Grandpa liked that.

  Adam gets to go to France with his parents to do something for Grandpa. Cousin DJ is going to freaking Africa, and Steve is off to Spain. How do they rate? I get to go to Buffalo to get kissed on the cheek by a ninety-year-old.

  That’s right, Buffalo. I’d figured that for an old movie star, I’d at least get to go to LA or someplace cool. Wrong-o. It hadn’t been tough finding out where Gloria Lorraine was. She was on Facebook, and when I’d messaged her, she’d said, Come on down to Buffalo. Oh, yippee. Watch me struggle to contain my excitement.

  Even Bunny gets to do something better than me. He’s getting his tattoo today. How cool is that? How easy is that? Grandpa found the tattoo place for him. He’ll probably be showing his tatt off by lunch. At least the whole stupid thing is only going to take a day.

  I flip my phone open to check for texts. I should send one to Bun, just to say hi. He likes that; I like doing it too. Besides, it’s better than thinking about a ninety-year-old’s smooch. As if he’s reading my mind, Jer says, “You don’t have to do this you know.”