The Bright Spot Read online

“Hello?” I said cautiously. I hadn’t received a phone call since I’d been here.

  “Nicholas Bainbridge? Is it actually you?” Female. Fortyish, near breathless with excitement and emotion. She was almost certainly trembling. I suspected a practical joke, but nobody liked me that much.

  “Yes. This is Nicholas Bainbridge. How may I help you?”

  “Oh my God! It’s actually you! You haven’t exactly been easy to find. There were times ... Oh God, I’m so sorry.” She snuffled noisily, blew her nose. “You’ll have to give me a minute.”

  She was actually crying. Hell, I was crying too, and I didn’t have any idea what the hell was going on. It was certainly intense.

  “You must think I’m crazy. My name is Cassie Rockworth and we met years and years ago. I was just a little girl. You probably don’t remember me. We were riding on a bus, and I was very rude, and you gave me your card....” She got choked up again. No, couldn’t be, I’m thinking.... “I became a terrific fan of BG after that. And then all your work, and that started a lifelong interest in the dramatic arts and your work in particular. I did my dissertation on your work and have published about it extensively. I’ve tried to track you down many times before, but always failed, but with the festival coming up and everything, well, I bribed someone I met who works for the government, and he gave me this phone number. You are Nicholas Bainbridge the actor, aren’t you?” You’ve never heard so much hope packed into one plaintive little voice in your life.

  I’m your man, little lady. You just dry the tears from your eyes. I still have skills in spite of my advancing years, so I offered my credentials in the form of a long and bloodcurdling maniacal laugh that stunned the limited-assistance porch into silence and thrilled Cassie no end. “Oh my God! It’s you! It’s really you! This is the happiest day of my life!”

  I didn’t know how I felt about her going quite that far, but I appreciated the sentiment. “Festival?” I got around to inquiring when she’d calmed down a bit.

  “Yes,” she said excitedly, “a celebration of and symposium on your work. We’re calling it the Bright Spot!”

  A cold wind blew through my heart, and I almost dropped the phone. “The ... the what?”

  “The Bright Spot. It was my idea. You know, from the mid-career nickname. It’s the pivotal chapter in my dissertation on the connection between your early work, and your later work as Nicholas Bainbridge. It was quite a breakthrough when I demonstrated you were the same person. It sort of put us both on the map. I’m at the University of Arizona now, and we were hoping we could fly you out for the festival, and ... and maybe you could say a few words?”

  Can I say a few words? I can say plenty, actually. I’ll try not to embarrass you. “Certainly. I can do that. I’d be delighted. The Bright Spot. You came up with that? I ... I like that. That’s ... me.”

  Tucson’s pretty. I brought Spot along in his habitat and turned him loose in what they call an arroyo around here. I figured he’d like it out west with all this sun, all these different golds and oranges to be.

  The festival concluded last night. It was quite a week. The highlight was a series of virtuals in which my old performances were mounted in new settings with doctored scripts and volunteer actors and crew, all dedicated, it seemed, to making me look good. It was really quite embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as Cassie telling me I’d changed her life on the Llewellyn Connector over thirty years ago, or telling the packed auditorium of scholars I was “immortal.”

  A coalition of scholars—that’s what they call themselves, a coalition—are furiously pulling strings to have my copyright-infringing masterpiece restored and distributed in time for next year’s festival. They hope I will attend. At least they hope that for now. They may feel differently after what I’m about to do.

  Cassie’s supposed to pick me up to take me to the airport, but there won’t be any planes flying today, and she’ll find me gone. I’ve left her a note thanking her for everything and explaining something has come up and I’ll make my own way home.

  I found a pancake house just down from where I’ve been staying. I’ve finished my short stack, and I’ve just been sitting here, watching the sky slowly brighten behind the lights of a road crew working, dancing in the dawn. There’s about a dozen of them.

  The booklet Lu got with her drugs was called Happily Ever After: The Art of Facing Death. “Everyone dies,” it begins. Fair enough, if everyone gets the chance to live first, if there’s at least one open window, one shaft of light on the tile, one bright spot in the sun. Otherwise, it’s all a lie, isn’t it?

  I pay my check, step out into the cool morning air, and head toward the lights and the workers, hoping to have a word with them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Sydney is the author of several critically acclaimed works of fiction under another name. He lives, under another name, in Richmond, Virginia.

  THE BRIGHT SPOT

  A Bantam Spectra Book / July 2005

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2005 by Dennis Danvers

  Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.bantamdell.com

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-41839-5

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