Chapter 12 – Joyce Nielsen Summers and the man who knew

Joyce Nielsen Summers was morally and materially at a loose end. It was Sunday, and she did not feel like staying at home. Ordinarily she was a house-proud woman who always managed to find the time to clean and dust, but at this point she hated the very sight of her house – part of the marriage whose last ruins had just vanished. On top of that her daughter had been virtually kidnapped, under pretence of having suffered some kind of mental breakdown which made her a danger to herself and others.

Joyce was both furious and desperate. Every step of the procedure had been fraudulent. Neither she nor any member of her family – not her soon-to-be-ex, not Buffy's physical father General Carter, not her sister Samantha, not even her ex' current woman Rosario – had heard anything from her since she had been seen riding her father's motorbike through heavy traffic; yet the records showed that she had made the phone call that evening, and that she had rung her home. Joyce even asked half a dozen of Buffy's school friends if they had got a call from her, just in case. The report on her breakdown read to her like it had been made up from stock phrases, and did not even sound like her girl. There was even a sickening allusion to her ongoing divorce, speaking not only of Buffy's emotional turmoil – which Joyce could have accepted, even though both she and Hank had worked hard to protect Buffy from the worst impact – but also saying that it was a serious threat to her Buffy's living standards and hence endangering "her prized status among her fellow students", which was a downright and insulting lie. She was perfectly able to provide for Buffy, and, if anything, she was inclined to spoil her. Her own antiques business was going so well that she had clients all over the western states. She knew that divorce was a disastrous financial blow to many women, but, luckily, she was not in that group; indeed, at the first meeting, she had been on the verge of telling Hank's lawyer to stuff their alimony, until Hank himself pleaded with her that the money was intended for Buffy. What threat to whose living standards?

That, as much as anything else, told her that her daughter was the object of a conspiracy. She had been sceptical when Hank had immediately concluded that this was the vengeance of and Talbot Entertainment, but now she could not doubt it. She had still not been able to see her daughter, and had only been notified of the extension of the original three-day hold to fourteen days by a snail-mail letter that had arrived, coincidentally, on Saturday morning. Her lawyer and her husband's lawyer were in the unusual position of working together, in Buffy's interests, even as they worked against each other in the divorce; but she could not complain about their willingness. They agreed that this detention stank.

But it was Sunday, and she could do nothing. Though nominally Lutheran, she did not even know where her local church was, and at any rate it would not occur to her to attend a service. Stay in the house? Never. She just went out aimlessly, and after a while she stopped at a little cafe. She hardly knew where she was, but she could see the HOLLYWOOD sign from her table. She looked at it, and thought, and sighed.

"Miss? I hate to barge in, but are you in distress?"

The voice was that of a pleasant-looking man in his forties or early fifties, with close-cropped, curling reddish hair, a light brown suit and no tie. He looked like a small businessman of some sort, but, with no tie on his shirt neck and no bag by his side, he looked like he had been taking the day off.

"Uh... Thanks for your concern, but I'm just feeling a bit out of sorts."

"Well, isn't that a pity? A beautiful woman on a beautiful sunny day in this beautiful city, and she should feel out of sorts? Something's wrong with the world, I say."

To her surprise, Joyce giggled. "And I say that someone is trying to flirt."

"Well, of course. There would even be more wrong with the world, if a single gentleman saw a beautiful woman and did not tell her she's beautiful." After a second: "Or want to do something to help if he thinks she's down."

iWhat the Hell/i, thought Joyce. "So what is that on your finger?"

"Widower, ma''am. It's been long enough that it doesn't hurt any more, but I don't want to forget her either."

"That's... sweet. Sad, but sweet too."

"It's how I feel. Even though, now I'm at the stage where I notice beautiful women again."

"So I see. So I'm beautiful?"

"Ma'am, if they don't tell you that three times a day, you must be surrounded by blind people. Natural blonde, tall, fine figure, in excellent shape, and what works the most – beautiful eyes."

Joyce's face grew sad. "Three times a day? My husband used to... a long time ago." And catching his look: "Divorced. Just about to be. The papers go through this coming week."

"I see. So that's why you're sitting here all alone looking at the hills?"

"Not just that. My daughter's in a hospital."

"Well, gosh! That sounds dreadful. I don't know that I can do anything to help... but maybe I can just listen? Sometimes it helps to unload yourself." And he sat down, not close to her so as to suggest intimacy, but on the other side of the table, looking at her.

"It's been going bad for a long time. I couldn't give my husband a child, you see, and it tore us both apart, and even when we adopted a beautiful little girl – my niece, actually – after her mother, my sister, died..."

"Whoa, whoa,.whoa. You lost your sister on top of everything else?"

"That was twelve years ago. Like you said, it doesn't hurt any more, but I will never forget her."

"Gosh! You've had it rough all right."

"It's just been a rotten week. Now I'm having trouble even seeing my daughter."

"That's dreadful. A mother should never be kept from her child."

"She's adopted. But I do love her as if she were mine. It's like I told you – what made the trouble with my ex is that we couldn't have children. He's had one with another woman now."

"Oh, gosh darn. Seems kinda hard to say something adequate. What kind of buttinsky I must have been, forcing myself on you and playing Lothario? I'm really sorry."

"Oh no – you've helped. Being flirted with, being told I'm beautiful – it felt nice."

"Well, you are. That's no blarney, that's just the truth."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure. Will you forgive a little curiosity?"

"What the Heck. You already know the worst." He didn't, but she was not going to tell him that Buffy was being held as a danger to herself and others.

"What are you going to do when you divorce? Who's keeping the house? Do you have a job?"

"I have a good job, that I love, at least. I'm an antiques dealer."

"Antiques dealer? Now I wonder...?" - and he took the card Joyce was handing him.

"The house is being sold. Neither of us want to stay in Los Angeles. He is going to Spain with his kid's mother, and I'll be looking for somewhere else to set up. Luckily most of my business is long-distance."

"You want to leave LA? I should imagine it would be a good place for business?"

"It's not a good place for my daughter. I want her to grow up somewhere away from Hollywood." He looked at her intensely. "Oddly enough, my ex agrees. Neither of us think this place is good for a young girl."

"Ohhhh..." said he in the tone of someone who is seeing clearly for the first time. "I think I see. Look, I don't want to know anything any more. I'll just say a few things, and if you think I'm on the wrong trail, just say that.

"I come from an old California family. My people came here before l848. We've seen this state be born and grow. I think I can say, too, that we've done a bit of the growing. With our hands.

"My grandparents saw Hollywood being born. I mean, literally, they were there when the first movie cameras started shooting. They watched it grow, and they did not like all they saw.

"The thing with Hollywood is that it was always a place where ambitious young people met. People uprooted from the four corners of the earth, beautiful young men and women by the thousand, all eager for a break, and all with an instinct to show themselves. To be an actor, you have to be a show-off.

"You bring thousands of people like that together, and a lot of money with it, and what do you get? You get a place where people just don't think of sex as normal people do. It's always on their mind. It's something they do when they want, and above all when it is useful to them. My grandparents did not like this attitude, and they passed their views on to us.

"And there's one thing that's even more important: Hollywood is permanent. You have generations of people not just coming here, but being born there – second, third, fourth generation. They not only get used to the way they do things here, they are born among them. They don't really understand that they are not like other people, and if they do, they treat other people as the weird ones. What they do is inormal/i to them, you get me?"

"All too well."

"Ah, so I'd guessed right... You sure as heck shouldn't bring up a girl in this place if you don't want to. So maybe I can help."

Her eyes focused in surprise. "Help? How?"

"My name – full name – is Richard Wilkins III, and I am mayor of Sunnydale. I always like to encourage people to move to my town, and I think you would be an asset to it. And as it happens, there is an antiques business there whose owner had been thinking of selling up and moving out."

…...