Author's Note: Sorry if this seems a little slow. I know some people like to get to the action quickly but bare with me, this set up does all have a purpose I promise!
Part 2
Carl had always considered burlesque to be the gutter of the entertainment business. He'd once spent a long, hot summer working as a stage hand in one of the many such establishments that had appeared in New York over the last twenty years or so. It hadn't exactly been a career choice as such – if you overlooked the fact that he was doing it to earn money so he could go to college – but looking back, it had definitely given him a strong idea of what he didn't want to do. Whilst at the time all he could think was that being around women who weren't wearing very much and getting paid for the privilege was a pretty good start in life, he could now appreciate just how empty it all was. There was no art in the burlesque, no attempt to bring wonder and new experiences to the world. It was cheap titillation, designed to appeal to the letch in every guy, with no sense of the magical or the extraordinary only the coarse and desperate. In the burlesque there was only money and Carl had quickly learned that that wasn't enough.
Unfortunately it was a necessity though, one which even he couldn't escape from. Radio advertising afforded him the kind of anonymity he needed right now in the wake of what had happened, and it did pay the bills even if it was as empty as the burlesque had been to him. There was no room for freedom of expression here, no way to develop or try something new. It was 'record what was written with second rate actors and move on to the next one as quickly as possible'. Sometimes Carl wondered why he hadn't chucked himself in the lake yet.
Maybe it was because deep down, even after all that happened, he wasn't a quitter. He was down, yes, but he wasn't out. Never out until he gave up. And he couldn't do that. He owed it to Herb and Mike to keep going.
He shivered involuntarily, beckoning over the barman of the rather run down establishment he found himself in, pointing to his glass as a sign to refill it. The barman frowned at him, asking the question; haven't you had enough? Carl half snarled, banging the glass forcibly on to the bar in protest and the barman shrugged and poured away. It was no skin off his nose if a washed up film director drunk himself into an early grave.
The irony wasn't lost on Carl that at a time when pretty much the only industry that was flourishing was the movie business, he was out on his ear. People needed the kind of escapism that the movies provided right now, they clamored for the adventure and romance and the idea that there could be a happily ever after. It gave a chance for an increasingly depression-weary nation to live in a better world, if only for the duration of a movie. And Carl should be out there, giving the people what they wanted, what they needed. Instead he was sitting in a bar, drinking the cheapest whiskey known to man and trying to forget that he was recording a soap powder commercial in the morning.
He had no money, that was true, but that had never stopped him before. His main problem was that he was on his own, with no crew, cast or friends to help him make his idea a reality.
Sound was everything these days and soundmen were hot property. Carl had had one of the best in Mike, a man who shared his drive and vision, who was a perfectionist in his art and a genius in his own right. But he was gone now, the dull thud of the spear hitting his flesh, the splash of his body in the mud and his look of perplexed bewilderment all permanently etched in Carl's mind no matter how much he tried to scrub them away.
Herb had been an excellent cameraman, even though Carl had never given him the credit he deserved. He'd just gone about his job like a true professional, happy to let others take the glory, content just to do the thing he believed in. His screams as that thing dragged him away still woke Carl up at night.
A film was nothing without a good script of course, but the only writer Carl had any contact with was Jack and even then it was nothing to do with business. It couldn't be. Jack was busy; he had his play and he had Ann. Carl wasn't even sure why he'd written to him in the first place. Maybe it was just the need to tell someone what had happened. To show them that he was paying for everything that he'd caused. That he wasn't that bad a person after all.
Of course none of these problems would have been quite so bad had he had an assistant to help him solve them. The thought of Preston made him smile a little. When the guy had first come to work for him, all rich kid manners and good education, Carl had only given him a chance because he was desperate for an assistant and Preston would work for cheap. He kept going on about how he really wanted to work in the entertainment business and that he was willing to do anything, even though his parent's didn't approve of his career choice. And Carl had asked him to do a lot of things, some more illegal than others. But despite his protests, Preston hadn't once let him down. Never. He'd managed everything Carl had thrown at him, even when the director had been at his most difficult and rude. The kid had done good. And he'd certainly grown a pair. Carl smiled a little wider when he remembered how Preston had finally snapped, shouting that he had had enough and that he quit. In an odd way Carl was proud of him.
And so he drank again. Drank to friends who had moved on to better things and to ones who had given up everything for his vision only for it to amount to nothing. He drank to his life, acknowledging that he hated his own existence right now, but understanding that this was his punishment. He was pragmatic about that; he wasn't a good person, he was a selfish, arrogant, self absorbed jerk who shouldn't inflict himself on people who still had a chance.
But he didn't know the mousey looking guy who pulled up a stool next to him, standing out so starkly to the other customers here in both manner and appearance, and so allowed himself to accept the offer of a drink. Anyone who was drinking here had to be a hopeless loser like him anyway, and it was nice to have some company. They talked and drank until the sun came up and Carl had to go to work, all the time not really noticing that he was doing most of the talking, and that the guy did none of the drinking. Instead all he did was ask questions and wait patiently for answers from drunken, slurring lips.
It was only as he walked into the sobering affect of the chilly morning air that Carl began to wonder if he'd answered some questions that he really shouldn't have.
Ann smiled sweetly as the waitress stepped up to the table she had just taken in the diner, pen poised over her pad.
"What can I get you, hun?" she asked cheerfully.
"Sorry," Ann apologised, immediately taking a liking to the woman's warmth and motherly disposition, glad that sunny manners weren't totally lost in this city, "I'm just waiting for someone, could I order when he gets here?"
"Sure," she said with a reassuring smile, snapping the pad closed and moving back to the counter without a fuss.
Ann settled back in the worn but comfortable chair, checking her watch, reminding herself once again that she really should try to get the fraying strap fixed before she lost it completely. Jack was only a couple of minutes late, nothing to worry about. He probably got caught up in something at the theatre and was late leaving. He always seemed to be late these days and she put it down to the closeness of his opening night, even if that little paranoid voice inside her insisted upon giving other horrible reasons that she refused to listen to.
Stifling her third dry cough in less than a minute she sighed. Yep, she was definitely coming down with something, no denying it now. At her fourth cough the waitress suddenly reappeared and placed a glass of water in front of her.
"Sounds like you need it," she explained with a kind smile.
Ann smiled gratefully in return, taking a generous sip, basking in the momentary relief in her sore throat.
"Thanks," she said, and the other woman just nodded and walked away.
When she next checked her watch, Jack was ten minutes late and she was getting increasingly nervous about him. Maybe he'd just forgotten or something. He was a very busy man and he'd probably run into some kind of problem with the play that had taken his attention entirely. He hadn't intentionally stood her up.
The mere thought made her shiver.
"Can I sit down, Miss?"
For the smallest moment she was grateful to whoever had spoken for dragging her away from her thoughts. Then she looked up and realised that a man she didn't know was asking if he could sit opposite her, in Jack's seat, and she began to feel supremely uncomfortable.
He obviously caught something of her confusion.
"Please Miss Darrow," he continued, "I've come a long way to talk to you. I only want a minute of your time."
She instantly tensed. He wasn't exactly an imposing figure, quite the opposite in fact, but she had had several bad experiences with people who 'just wanted a minute of her time' over the past few months. She was in no hurry to repeat any of them.
"How do you know my name?" she asked quietly, defensive in the extreme.
"Please," he said again, not really answering her question, "There's no need to be alarmed. I just want to talk to you about the incident on Skull Island. About the creature."
That did it. In an instant Ann was on her feet, scraping the chair back so violently that a few people turned to see what the fuss was. She didn't care. She had gotten used to reporters popping up at all sorts of moments trying and get an interview out of her, but what with her constant refusals she'd honestly thought that they'd given up by now. This was the first guy in weeks to try it and she certainly wasn't in the mood to indulge him.
"I've told your kind a hundred times, okay? I have nothing to say," she stated firmly, going to walk past him and collect her coat. Jack may be here shortly, find that she apparently hadn't showed and get worried, but that was just tough. It was his stupid fault for being late in the first place. Right now all she needed was to get away.
The guy stepped in front of her, managing to make the gesture not look threatening at all. She supposed it was his small stature and rather mousy appearance that did it. He reminded her a little of Preston.
"Please, Miss Darrow," he soothed, "I assure you, I'm not from the press. I'm from the university. Washington State to be precise. I'm a zoologist. I'm part of the team who's been studying the remains."
That stopped her more quickly than any of his reassurances over who he was and what his intentions were could have done.
As she had gradually gotten over the shock of what had happened, she had begun to wonder what they had done with his body. It was hardly something you could dispose of easily. Despite keeping an eye on the papers, she had seen nothing mentioned and had assumed that they had just disposed of it somewhere. Hardly a fitting end for such a creature.
Although considering that in reality it seemed that he had become some kind of science project, she started to think that she actually preferred the former.
He took her sudden silence as interest and carried on.
"Obviously there's only so much we can get from flesh and bones though," he explained, "We want to know more about his behaviour and I heard that you were the woman to ask."
She was still eyeing him suspiciously.
"There's nothing to tell," she replied hollowly, "I don't know anything."
She went to leave but he nimbly stepped in front of her again, desperation on her face matching the look on his. But she couldn't go here. She didn't talk about it. Not to anyone. She'd gotten used to that.
"With all due respect, Miss Darrow, you're lying," he said with a knowing look, "I've heard the stories, I've read the papers."
Ann looked away, not wanting to know what lies he had read. They'd printed some terrible things about Kong. Some utterly disgusting. At times she had wanted to correct them, to put them straight, but Jack had talked her out of it. If she talked, they would never leave her alone. They would make her life hell. And so she'd let them print the lies, just to protect herself.
"Look at it this way," the man continued, half pleading, trying everything to persuade her, "We're not interested in sensationalising this. We're scientists. We just want to find out the truth about this amazing animal. Don't you want that too? Don't you want people to stop seeing him as a monster?"
She looked up, holding his gaze, wide eyed and shocked. It was like he had read her perfectly.
"Your testimony can help us do that," he gently promised, obviously sensing that he had her hooked with that.
Slowly she sat down, still warily keeping an eye on him, not quite ready to trust, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Okay," she agreed, "Ask me. But I don't answer anything I don't want to."
"Agreed," he said with a pleased nod and a smile, sitting down opposite her, "And thanks. You have no idea how much this means to me."
He spent the next ten minutes grilling her, trying to make his enquiries as accurate and thorough as possible without sounding as if he was forcing the information from her. He wrote down everything she said in a well used note book, punctuating her explanations and answers with responses such as 'fascinating', 'brilliant' and 'really?' He was particularly interested in how protective the animal had become of her, explaining that he likely saw her as part of his family group as she had engaged with him in a manner he found pleasing and so protecting her had then become part of his job. Gorillas are highly social animals, he had gone on to say, and it wasn't surprising that a solitary specimen such as he had been had grown to accept her so quickly.
Despite her initial reservations, Ann found the conversation quite cathartic. It felt good to talk about it, after keeping it to herself for so long. It felt even better to talk to someone who understood and could offer her an explanation of what had happened.
"So, from what I can gather you were under the impression that he was the last of his kind?" the man asked, flicking back through his notes, not bothering to look up at her as he spoke.
She shrugged, "Well, I didn't see any live ones. Just some bones."
He frowned slightly, "Pity."
He spent another moment consulting his notebook, flicking rapidly through the pages before pausing taping it with his pencil, noting that he had forgotten something important.
"Ah yes," he remembered, "Several reports, including your own, stated that there were other creatures on the island. Giant lizards, so they said."
She nodded.
"Tell me," he said, reaching down into the briefcase he had placed on the floor and pulling out a larger journal, "The creatures you said the gorilla protected you from, did they look something like this?"
He opened the notebook, practically shoving it in her face and Ann jumped a little, her breath catching as she instantly saw something that she wished to forget, all in beautiful rendered in horribly accurate artwork.
"Er…Yes. Yes, I think that's it," she mumbled, trying to regain her composure. He didn't seem to notice her discomfort though, simply pulling the book away and scribbling once more in his notebook, clear enough this time for Ann to read.
'Genus Tyrannosauridae positively identified…'
"And what about the people living on the island?" he asked, barreling on, his enthusiasm making him oblivious to how hard this was getting for her, "What were the natives like?
Ann couldn't even form words to describe it. The terror that suddenly gripped her at the mention of them made her clasp her hands so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She didn't know why it should be, but they scared her more than the animals that lived there ever could. There was something simply wrong about them, something disturbing that seem to gnaw parts of her soul out whenever she thought about them. They were the stuff of her deepest, darkest nightmares and she had no wish to divulge those thoughts to a man of science who would have no appreciation of them.
"Sorry," he said kindly, clearly having finally seen her discomfort but having the good manners to not mention it directly, "I've just had you talking and talking here, haven't I? There's only so much probing you can take, huh? Why don't I buy you a coffee?"
She nodded numbly in acceptance.
Minutes later she finally felt normal again, coffee cup warming her fingers, the chill in her blood gone, silence reigning between her and her unexpected companion. Jack was still no where to be seen, now a good half hour late. He wasn't coming. She should leave.
"I can't thank you enough," the man said, hurriedly gulping at his own coffee as he made his last few notes, apparently having finally run out of questions, "Really Miss Darrow, this will help our research no end."
He smiled a little.
"And me, if I'm honest. We're a bit short on funding right now. This is just the kind of thing we need to convince people that we're still worth investing in. And that I'm still worth employing."
She could understand that kind of desperation for work, willing to do almost anything if it kept you doing the thing you loved, and forgave his previously pushy manner a little.
"Glad I could help," she said courteously before quickly moving to a point that she realised she had entirely neglected until now, "I'm sorry but I didn't catch your name…"
"Jeez, Ann, I'm so sorry, there was this problem with the second act and I-"
Jack's hurried apology, given as he stepped up to the table, slightly out of breath and clearly flustered, was abruptly halted when he spotted the guy sitting opposite her. In his seat.
"Who's this guy?" he asked, none too politely, his manner icy in the extreme.
Ann was wondering how bad it would sound if she admitted she'd been having coffee with a guy whose name she didn't even know, when the man in question saved her the embarrassment.
He stood, picking up Jack's unwilling hand and shaking it with vigor, "Hi, I'm Benjamin Gallenstein, Washington State University. Miss Darrow here was just helping me with some enquiries about the giant beringei graueri specimen she encountered."
Jack looked blank.
"The big gorilla," Gallenstein clarified.
Jack nodded, but ignored all that he said, only apparently caring about one thing.
"You're in my seat," he stated icily.
Ann cringed at such an unnecessary display of ownership over her, but Gallenstein seemed to be unaffected.
"Right," he said cheerfully, "Of course. Sorry about that. I was just on my way actually." He hurriedly picked up his things, carefully stowing his notebook away in the briefcase. "Thanks again, Miss Darrow. If you like I can send you any reports I make for your approval."
She nodded, "That would be good. Thank you."
He tipped his hat politely at her, nodding a farewell at Jack which the other man ignored, and left.
Jack slid into the seat opposite her, looking grumpy and put out.
"Have a nice chat?" he asked.
Jack was incapable of dropping into the full depths of sarcasm. In fact he had much the same calm, measured tone for nearly all his words and observations. But even he couldn't hide the underlying hints of jealousy in his question. Ann would've thought it sweet had it not been so damn annoying.
"Like he said, he was from the university," she answered firmly, clear she would take no nonsense from him, "They've got Kong's body. They've been studying him and they want to know more."
"Yeah?" he replied, still in a huff although apparently unable to be truly angry in the face of reason, "Well they should leave you out of it."
"I can decide that for myself," she stated, making it clear that it was her decision to make, "And besides, where else will they get their information from? The papers? At least he's interested in the truth. You read what they wrote Jack, those disgusting lies I-"
She stopped sharply, sickened by the reminder.
Jack, all the tense suspicion and jealousy gone, laid his hand gently across hers.
"It's okay," he soothed, giving her hand a squeeze, "And you're right. Better talk to a guy like him than anyone else, huh?" He shook his head, running his free hand back through his hair, "Jeez, I'm sorry Ann. It's just been one hell of a morning."
She smiled gently, brushing her fingers across his cheek affectionately, shaking her head, all forgiven.
"You work too hard," she scolded lightly.
He sighed, "I just want this to be perfect, you know?"
"It will be," she said with a genuine smile, "It's one of your plays."
He smiled in return, lifting up her hand to his lips and kissing the back of it softly.
"Oh so you're the guy who left this one of her own," the waitress said with a jolly grin, stepping up to the table once more, giving Ann a friendly wink, "If I was you son, I wouldn't leave one like this unattended. Pretty girl like this won't stay lonely for long, someone'll try steal her for sure."
Jack smiled more broadly, not taking his eyes off of Ann.
"Yeah, I know that."
Her insides soared and a sudden warmth springing up despite the chill in the air and the lack of decent heating. It was like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders, like some of her guilt had been stripped away. For the first time in a long while, Ann felt truly free.
"Oh, he's got nothing to worry about," she replied, eyes only for the man sitting opposite her, "I don't plan on being stolen by anyone."
Outside, Benjamin Gallenstein waited nervously on the street corner, tapping his feet, clutching at the briefcase as though his very life depended on it. He didn't like to think that it probably did.
The car finally stopped in front of him and he got in, handing over the briefcase to the man occupying the other back seat, somewhat relieved to be rid of it. It wasn't his responsibility now.
"Well?" the other man asked, flicking through the notebook without taking much in, "Did she tell you?"
"I didn't ask."
"Excuse me?"
Ben sighed, "She's hardly going to know is she. I thought it was more important to get some information from her without scaring her off. Besides, Driscoll showed up. I didn't want to cause a scene."
The other man shook his head, not really listening to his excuses, "I wonder about you sometimes, Ben, I really do. What exactly do I pay you for?"
"You don't," Ben pointed out, "Not for the last three months at least."
"That isn't my fault," the other man stated firmly, "I'm not the one controlling our funding."
"I know," Ben said with a frustrated sigh, "It's just…We're so close, damn it. We need this or it's all over. What are we going to do now?"
The other man did something Ben rarely saw him do. He smiled.
"Mr Young is working on it."
Ben shivered. He remembered Mr Young and he didn't like the way he worked.