A paper airplane contest started, using pages of discarded script, and that’s when AJ met up with us.
AJ Castillo was the third member of our law firm and worked as our investigator-paralegal. She had long dark hair, large dark eyes, and that sort of emo-goth edge she could still pull off at nineteen. Today, she wore black short shorts, with a white tank top and black suspenders.
“Hey.” She smirked and shook her head. “Is this what Dante’s hell is supposed to look like?”
“It’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” I muttered as I fanned out my t-shirt.
Next to us, the leading lady, a twenty-year old named Allison, sat on the table and ran lines with her co-star Ken. They were supposed to play an innocent couple who get caught up in the revolution against their will, and then he dies. So, they got to his death scene in their rehearsal, and he fell down on the floor and knocked over a couple of folding chairs in the process. Then she kneeled down with him and fake sobbed very loudly.
“Who are you playing?” Vicki asked AJ.
“Who knows,” she said with a shrug. “I’m doing costumes, I think. I don’t know why he wanted me here today.”
A quartet of men near us did voice warms up by singing scales, “La-la-la-la.”
I rolled my eyes. “Community theatre.”
“Ridiculous.” AJ shook her head in their direction and then turned to me. “I did high school theatre, too, you know.”
“Really?” I responded. “I didn’t know that about you.”
“I was always crew,” she said, “but the theatre teachers still talk about you.”
“Is that right?” I said with a smile.
“Yeah,” she said. “They were always telling us about this guy in the class of ‘09 who got into Julliard, and how it’s possible if you work hard, blah blah blah.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m glad I’m the inspiration for blah blah blah.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I remembered that the other day, and it just occurred to me that the guy was you.”
It was true. Once upon a time, in what seemed like five lifetimes ago, I’d been a theatre student at Sedona High School. I was pretty into it, did competitions, and won a lot of awards. At the insistence of my drama teachers, I applied and got accepted into Julliard--the Harvard of Sedona quirkiness.
I considered it, I really did. But, as much as I enjoyed acting, the artistic lifestyle never appealed to me. Maybe it had to do with growing up in a family where family functions included improv and five hour live renditions of All Along the Watchtower.
I could have gone that route, and I knew where it led. I guess I kind of felt like I’d already lived that life, watching my parents and their various compadres go through it. I wanted my own path. So, I disappointed them pretty bad by turning down Julliard and going to UCLA where I eventually became a lawyer.
Jerry re-entered the room and clapped his hands. “People, we’re going to wrap for today. Let’s reconvene for tomorrow.”
“Thank God,” I muttered to Vicki, and she nodded in agreement.
We gathered our things, and Jerry turned to AJ.
“You,” he pointed to her, “I’ve heard you read poetry at Voltaire’s Place.”
“Well,” AJ said, “I have done that a few times. But it’s something I--”
“You’ll do,” Jerry interrupted. “We need more writers. You up for scriptwriting?”
“Well, uh,” AJ stammered. “I’ve never done anything like--”
“Are you coming or not?” Jerry asked in impatience.
“I guess so.” She shrugged and followed Jerry into another room.
“That will be good for her,” I told Vicki as we joined the migration of people out of the room.
“I think she’s blocked on her blog,” Vicki said. “Maybe scriptwriting will unblock her.”
“I haven’t read her blog in a while,” I admitted.
“You’re so mean,” Vicki teased as she playfully slapped my shoulder. “She’s a good writer, you know.”
“She is,” I agreed with a nod. “She makes our firm sound so much more interesting than it is.”
AJ’s blog was a pivotal part of the story of our firm, and in some ways, the story of Vicki and me.
I met Vicki at work. I’d just made senior partner at a glitzy entertainment law firm in L.A. I was running as far away from Sedona as I could and the fast paced SoCal lifestyle was everything I was looking for. In expensive suits and flashy cars, I spent my days doing things like sorting out multi-million dollar squabbles that really amounted to, “he stole my song,” and “no, I had it first!”
Not bad for a day’s work, really, and then from time to time, I got invited to fancy A-list parties and could bullshit with the best of them. All in all, it was a good life.
But I always felt like there was something missing, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Enter Vicki. She was our firm’s paralegal, with aspirations toward becoming a lawyer, but she couldn’t pass the bar in California. So, we had the whole coded office banter thing going on, but we never took it further than that. That was until about eight months ago, when my sister Harmony back in Sedona was accused of murder.
My estranged family called me to come help out, so I flew back to Sedona. I spent weeks sorting through security footage and clues and dealing with her crappy public defender, and a town that had turned against my sister.
Everyone except local crime blogger AJ Castillo, who wrote an interesting post about the murder.
I recruited her help, but we still weren’t finding what we needed.
Then, when I thought I couldn’t take another minute of it all, fate handed me an interesting surprise. Vicki Park, of all people, showed up on my parents’ doorstep.
I was so
