Page 20 of Return to Whitmore
Charlotte wanted to curl up into a ball. Instead, she took a breath and, to the best of her ability, answered Kathy’s question. As she did, she stared straight ahead at the back wall, unable to make eye contact with anyone in the audience. She dared any of them to get up while she was talking and leave, adding insult to injury. When she finished, she shrugged and said, “Anyone else have a question?” She expected there to be another minute of silence before she’d free all of them.
But that was when a man stood and raised his hand. Although it was dark, Charlotte remembered him as the man who’d snuck in at the very last second. At six foot or so,he was broad-shouldered and formidable and nothing like the typical “film guys” Charlotte knew from film classes and other screenings.
“Why Bukowski?” he asked.
Charlotte felt a stab of recognition. That voice. It dropped her back into the ocean of her memories. It made her ache with the past.
“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte asked, her voice breathy.
“Why did you choose to fixate on Bukowski?” he asked, stepping forward so that his face glowed in the light that came from the bulbs up above.
Charlotte was stricken. He didn’t just sound like him—he looked like him, too.
He was just like Jack.
But it was impossible. Jack had died on the night of the fire. He’d died on July 4th, 1998—three and a half years ago, during a far different era. This fake Jack was nothing more than a coincidence, a “ghost” brought into Charlotte’s life to confuse and distract her.
Why, then, was he looking at her like that, as though he were playing a game with her they’d begun as children in the eighties? Charlotte’s mouth was as dry as sand.
“Bukowski?” Charlotte said into the microphone, her heart opening. “Well, he’s a complicated figure, isn’t he?”
“He sure is,” the man who looked and sounded like Jack said.
Charlotte had lost her will to sound intelligent in front of these people. Even Kathy looked at her, now, as though she was worried Charlotte was having a breakdown.
Charlotte shook her head and smiled at the man. “What is your name?” she asked, because she couldn’t resist.
“Is that important for your answer?” he asked, his eyes glinting.
“You look like someone,” Charlotte offered, her cheeks steaming.
“Do I look like Charles Bukowski?”
The few people remaining in the crowd chuckled.
“No. I mean.” Charlotte cleared her throat and willed herself to answer, telling him that she’d selected Charles Bukowski because her father, Benjamin Whitmore, had been a longtime fan of the poet. “My father died in a tragic fire when I was nineteen years old,” Charlotte said, continuing to fixate on not-Jack. “I suppose I’ve been trying to make sense of him, of who he was and what he loved, ever since. And when I started to read more of the poetry of Charles Bukowski, something clicked for me.”
“Can I ask what that was?” the man asked.
Charlotte wet her lips. She couldn’t help but feel as though she and this “stranger” were hiding in the White Oak Lodge horse stalls, listening as Francesca called them in for dinner and giggling because she would never find them. They wouldn’t let her.
“Charles Bukowski echoed a sorrow I never knew my father had,” Charlotte said finally, taking a small step toward not-Jack. “I was never allowed to know my father’s inner life, because I was maybe too young for him to show me.”
The man in the audience offered a sad smile and said, “I wish you had put more of that into the documentary. I would have loved to feel that.”
Charlotte was immediately rattled. More than that, she was struck with the realization that he was right. She should have made the documentary more personal, more about her singular connection with Charles Bukowski and with her father. Maybe the documentary rang hollow. Perhaps it felt blank.
Was she actually a crappy documentarian? Was she pursuing a field she should have stayed clear away from? Had her grandfather lied to her about her talent?
Or—was she simply unmoored after such a difficult few years?
After that, Charlotte didn’t have the strength to continue the question-and-answer session. She told the crowd that she had a migraine and thanked them for coming. As she turned to put the microphone on the table beside her, she realized that the man who looked like Jack was one of the first to dart out of the theater. Before she could stop herself, Charlotte raced after him, her thighs burning. Why was she chasing him? Did she want to ask him something more about her documentary, about what he’d wanted from it? Or was it something else she was after? When she reached the lobby, not-Jack was already at the glass door, speeding into the cloudy afternoon. Charlotte couldn’t let him go. But what do I want him to say?
When Charlotte bolted out onto the sidewalk, she heard a familiar and glorious sound: Jack’s laughter. The man who couldn’t possibly be Jack was howling with it, glancing back as Charlotte chased him down the road and around the corner. Charlotte laughed, too, feeling as though she were twelve years old, chasing her ten-year-old brother along the beach. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe none of this was real.
Finally, she spotted him as he slipped through a dark door and into a dive bar. Charlotte shot in after him, terrified of what she would find on the other side. Probably, she’d realize this man was crazy, that he’d lured her into a trap.
But there, standing at the bar, was a man who could only be Jack Whitmore. He grinned broadly at her, his eyes glinting with joy and mischief. Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. “It can’t be,” she whispered, shaking her head.
