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    Present Perfect
    Present Perfect
    Present Perfect
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    Present Perfect

    By Peter Alexander

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Steve Harrah is an active man. A schoolteacher in his twenties. Marries a scintillating and mercurial Japanese beauty who divorced a rich and dangerous banker. Becomes a film editor in his thirties. Engages in a flirtatious relationship with his stepdaughter. Moves from Massachusetts to the Arizona desert when Kiko dies in an auto accident. His younger daughter joins him, while Yvonne, the stepdaughter, disappears from his life for 20 years. Fights off gangbangers at Santa Monica Pier. As the editor suddenly finds himself at age 66, he begins getting tantalizing visits from his deceased wife and questions about the life he's led.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKennebec River Publishing
    Release dateMay 24, 2018
    ISBN9781386140887
    Present Perfect
    Author

    Peter Alexander

    Peter Alexander, an American living in Thailand, is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and publisher. He formed his entertainment production companies, Kennebec Entertainment and Kennebec Publishing in 1999. Earlier, he was owner, manager and creative director of a leading Bangkok advertising agency, Redford International associated with Saatchi & Saatchi in London. A graduate of Boston University, he began his career as a sports writer for The Worcester Telegram in Worcester, Mass. He was also a sports stringer for The New York Times. He later worked for the Fairfax Sun Echo in Fairfax, Virginia. He next wrote and directed the documentary film The Animal are Crying, which won first prizes at The San Francisco Film Festival as well as at festivals in Columbus, Ohio and New York. The film was shown on the Phil Donohue television show and was picked up by Columbia Pictures for distribution. During his career in advertising, he wrote and directed more than thirty television commercials, one of which won the Silver Medal (2nd place) among all Saatchi & Saatchi agencies throughout the world at a time when the London agency was ranked either first or second in the world. During the past eleven years, Mr. Alexander has written seven children’s books, four for another publisher, and his three famous “Mubu” books published by Kennebec Publishing. They are Mubu and Mu-Mu, the Little Animal Doctor, Mubu and the Ghosts and the Tiger, and Mubu and Hoot the owl. The latter is being reserved to become retailed as an ebook. Besides Ruthless, which is being prepared to be an ebook, he has written two suspense novels, Beneath and The Girl Who Threw Stars. The latter has been retailed online throughout the world and received numerous five star reviews. Thus far, Beneath, self published, has been sold at book events. It is planned to sell it in the future as an ebook. Mr. Alexander is completing two new novels, Present Perfect and Burning Memory, which are currently being edited. He has one motion picture – a feature – presently undergoing development. It is entitled Finding Ruby.

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      Book preview

      Present Perfect - Peter Alexander

      1.

      The Princess Pirate broke her ankle. She slipped and fell off a rock during a sword fight. The shoot was over for a while. Ellie would be out of action for a couple months. Bergstrom wanted to consider finding a replacement and reshoot all of Ellie’s scenes. He’s an idiot. He ordered me to calculate all the scenes that would have to be reshot. The film was about 80 percent finished, so the idea was senseless. I was the head editor of the flick, already in my fifth month on the job.

      Randy White, Bergstrom’s partner, and I dissuaded him from that moronic recourse. It’ll take two months just to find the right girl to replace Ellie, we told him. By that time Ellie’ll probably be back.

      Meanwhile, I need a break, I interposed. Freshen up the creative juices.

      He gave me a look, but instructed his assistant to check the schedules of all the other players, which consisted mainly of eleven-year-old girls. None of the parents wanted to pass up their kids’ salaries, so everybody was still in except for a few evil adult pirates and good guy sailors on one of the boats we had shot back in California. They could be easily replaced, and the new talent could be made up to look like those who deserted the project.

      I was out of there the next day. Got Marjorie from next door to promise to feed Casper, my cat, while I sacked out on the beach in Santa Monica.

      I NEVER KNEW WHEN SHE would show up. There was no such thing as time. I never understood the concept intellectually, but it did seem to happen that way.

      It is always the same time everywhere, Kiko said. She had been my wife. Up until the car accident. I’m not dead, she told me, when I saw her the first time in the timeless realm. "Do I look dead?" she asked with that tantalizing smile.

      Of course not, dear sweet. Never, I answered with my own wily grin.

      I FOUND MYSELF ON A flat, dry, empty desert, standing at the edge of a

      long, straight road. A car, a 50’s Chrysler had appeared, pulled up, and out she stepped. Nachiko Yamamura, petite, attractive, stern-faced as usual, a Japanese woman wearing a light white dress, filmy, that seemed to catch an invisible breeze. She carried a small suitcase. The car drove off. The dust on the windshield hid whoever drove her here.

      I was sixty-six years old now. She was forever forty, her age when the car accident had occurred. I looked at her uncertainly. She was still very attractive, but the remoteness of her expression was somewhat unsettling.

      Where do they find those cars?

      What cars? she answered.

      The one that brought you,

      I don’t see a car, she said, turning her head to look behind her.

      I guess they have a junkyard in the Great Beyond, I observed. I’ve always been a bit of a wiseass, even in the timeless realm. She smiled. I was rewarded.

      I reached for her valise. Can I carry that?

      She proffered the bag. I felt a slight tremor when my eyes fell on that slim, pale arm and slender fingers.

      You asked me to come, she said, looking around at the hot, harsh landscape. Where are we staying?

      I saw only a desert. I’ll have to find some place, Kiko.

      She gazed at something in the distance behind me. I turned and saw an old, gray, weather-beaten house fade into view. She could do this, and my eyes had to acclimate.

      I like that, Kiko murmured, as if to herself or someone unseen.

      Everything looked wind-swept and abandoned, with almost all the paint peeled off the wood frame of the two-story dwelling. I just stared at the house and the torn screen door that led inside. Something unfathomable felt familiar.

      I’m not staying long, she told me

      Nevertheless, thanks for coming.

      You won’t come to us. You choose to stay here, she said, looking at the ground as her feet lightly touched the desert.

      I’m not finished here.

      She laughed, a lilting laugh that somehow, being a movie guy, reminded me the good fairy in The Wizard of Oz, Making your silly movie about little girls who are pirates.

      So you even watch that?

      She just tilted her head and looked at me with a slight impudent smile.

      "The movie’s not important, Kiko. The girls are. Our girls."

      She gathered her dress and sat on the dry scraggy gray steps that led up to the porch, looking up at me.

      Yes, I can imagine different outcomes if you don’t finish, she said thoughtfully. Her eyes seemed to see through me and far beyond.

      I wanted to know if you might agree.

      That doesn’t matter, Steven. It’s in your hands and theirs. I can only watch.

      But you know everything now, Kiko.

      I do not. I do not know your Fate. I can only observe, she said, staring off again.

      I started up the creaking steps. Kiko followed, untouched by the wind that had begun to sweep across the desert. I opened the screen door, which made a high-pitched groan. Inside, the interior reminded me of a chiaroscuro painting. A dark hallway, desert sunlight blazing through a living room window, dust mots floating in the ethers of the house. I had edited many shots like that, usually creating a foreboding mood.

      We were about to enter the kitchen, when Kiko noticed a piece of bright green material sitting on a hallway bench. She picked it up in her thumb and forefinger.

      What’s this? I turned and stared at it. Underwear or a bikini bottom?

      It was a flimsy, tiny garment, which she held high, evidence she wanted nearer to me than to herself, something I could hardly ignore.

      I don’t know. Sometimes people stay with me.

      "Of course. Why would it be down here? Kiko often had some reason to interrogate me on these visits. I was wary. Is she a child who just

      drops her clothes wherever she happens to take them off?"

      I took the garment out of her hand. Again, there was a very vague familiarity about this article of clothing. Nothing recent, however, but something that caused me a lick of concern.

      There’s cool water in the kitchen, Kiko informed me. There was, of course, and I needed it. She brushed the dust off the kitchen counter and leaned against it as she watched me drink.

      ‘I think you’re lonely, Steven, she told me. Deeply lonely. And Yvonne is on your mind more than ever."

      Why shouldn’t it? I haven’t seen her in—

      Nearly twenty years.

      It’s ridiculous, Kiko. I love her. She has her forty-fifth birthday— And then I felt tears starting to suddenly fill my eyes. I saw Kiko’s face soften ever so slightly.

      Yvonne is reasonably content, Steven. Most of the time.

      Why won’t you tell me, Kiko? Where-?

      She shook her head faintly. You know. I’ve told you before. Everything in its time.

      Time again.

      2.

      Before I left for Santa Monica, I had a little talk with Casper. My cat of nine years, my friend, white with light gray lines on his head next to his ears, which resembled eyebrows. They gave him an air of quizzicality. I had cut pictures all over the globe since I moved to Mesa back fifteen years ago, sometimes away from home a couple of months. Casper always stayed with Marjorie when I was gone. She was a single woman who lived in a little bungalow a quarter mile away from me, where she made Indian jewelry. It was debatable, who Casper liked best, because even when I was home, some nights he spent with Marjorie. I guess he figured out who was loneliest.

      I’m only gonna be gone about a week this time , I told him. Don’t go wandering around. The coyotes are out there. They’ll be waiting for you.

      He just stared up into my eyes and blinked.

      As soon as I got to Los Angeles, found Louise’s apartment in Santa Monica, dumped my stuff, I headed for the beach. It was winter. I didn’t care. So what? It’s L.A. It couldn’t

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