GobSmacked82

As you wish, Achrisl! I just finished this one this evening, after toying around with it for a few days. It actually started as a lead in to another fic I was writing, but developed into a piece that can stand on its own. Enjoy. It is a continuation of 'Screentest,' and will have a Part 2, at least.


January 1, 1991
Los Angeles -- Kevin pours coffee into a tall mug, walks into his office, and shuts the door behind him. Ever since Whitney aced the screen test for the film, and signed her contract, they had talked regularly on the phone, up to several times a week. Up until she started planning for and rehearsing her tour, the calls had become less frequent, but they decided to carve out time for a talk today, New Year’s Day. Everyone in the house, including his own family and those visiting from out of town, was still asleep after he and his wife had hosted a big New Year’s Eve party.

He settles into an armchair, dials Whitney’s number from his dedicated line and it connects after two rings.

“Hello?” she answers quietly, almost at a whisper.

“Morning Whitney ...”

“Kevin! Happyyy New Yeaaarrr!” she says in the loudest whisper she can manage. Then they both laugh quietly.

“Happy New Year, Whitney,” he said, sipping his coffee. “How were the festivities last night?”

“They were … something else,” Whitney says. She explains that she and B----- had gone to a masquerade ball at a producer’s house, that there were close to 200 guests, fireworks, which will probably get someone into trouble, and they stayed overnight. She left out the part where B----- had become so drunk and belligerent, and grabbed her arm so roughly that their host had put them in separate bedrooms.

“And now I’m planning and rehearsing for my next big gig,” she says. She pulls a throw off the bed and walks to a chair by the window, curling up and spreading it around herself. “I’m singing the national anthem during the opening ceremony at the Super Bowl in a few weeks.”

“Way to go, champ!” he says. “How do you feel about singing it in the thick of a controversial war?”

"I dunno," she sighs. He can almost hear her shrugging. "I think it's important to trust the leaders to do the right things, and support the troops while they serve. They don't get to choose their boss, like you and me."

"Spoken like a true diplomat," Kevin laughs. "Or a Miss America contestant on the question round."

"Or both!" Whitney chastises him playfully. "Women can do it all, or haven't you heard? And at least my team made the playoffs."

They laugh and talk for an hour. It would have gone on longer, had B----- not woken up and come looking for Whitney. He knocks and scratchs softly at her door, calling tentatively to see if that was her room. Then he jiggles the knob.

“I know that’s you in there, Nippy,” B----- says, his voice muffled quietly. “It’s locked. You do the same thing at home. Come on, baby, I just want to talk.” The knob turns again.

Whitney snaps to her feet, nervous about someone else in the house overhearing her fiancé carelessly let loose with details about their domestic life.

“Hold on, Kevin,” Whitney tiptoes quickly to the door, unlocks and opens it. B----- is rubbing his eyes, looking repentant and hung over.

“I have to go, Ma. B----- is here,” Whitney says into the phone. Reflexively, she adds, “I love you. I’ll call you later.”

Whitney quickly hangs up, leaving Kevin dangling in the air for a good minute. The sound of ‘I love you,’ from her lips to his ears, even as a ruse to quell her fiancé’s suspicions, almost stops his heart. He was sure his body temperature spiked at least five degrees, and his hand holding the phone plopped onto the armrest. They were friends, just friends, he tells himself as he put the phone back into the base. He had no intention of being anything else to her, even though they had such an easy connection. Their phone calls turned more into long visits, as they like do things like drink coffee, sip wine and listen to jazz, and watch old movies. Well, Whitney had a tendency to chatter through the movies, so it was more like the movies watch them. Once, he inadvertently interrupted her while she was reading her Bible, and she ended up lecturing him about his lapsed church attendance. “And I’m Baptist, too,” Whitney had said. “So I know how you were raised!”

As charming, sweet and mischievous Whitney is, for all her attractions, he tells himself, he has a family of his own. She is engaged to someone else. He decides to reduce the phone calls and find ways to steer the conversations toward work. And when they met for pre-production after her tour, he tells himself, he’ll treat her like any other co-star or protégé.

Jan. 27-28, 1991

His plan works while Whitney was busy rehearsing for both her tour and her appearance at the Super Bowl. He managed to find ways to talk about filmmaking and little else. And they spoke only once a week.

But after Whitney steps onto the podium in front of the band, looking pretty and down-to-earth in her track suit, and then waves to the crowd, his resolve crumbles. The minutes pass quickly, and after she sings the last line, scrunching her nose and hitting her high note, Kevin shakes his head in disbelief. During the game, which he decided to record, he gets several phone calls from Mick Jackson, Jim Wilson and David Foster. They’re all astounded, like he is. Normally, Whitney makes singing look like it’s nothing for her. But in that instance she clearly put effort into her rendition, and she delivered something that probably no other, they all agree, will even approach for a very long time.

The day after the game, Kevin replays Whitney’s performance at least five times. A couple of times he closes his eyes and tries to imagine her mezzo-soprano singing “What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted,” the signature song for the movie. He smiles to himself, thinking that she is really the perfect choice to play Rachel Marron.

Later that day, Kevin calls Whitney primarily to congratulate her on the performance.

“Hi my little nightingale,” Kevin says when the line picks up.

“Did you see it?” Whitney talks excitedly.

“Did I? I have it on tape,” Kevin says. “I’m pretty sure I’ll wear it out before Memorial Day, thanks to you. Whitney, I’ve never heard anything like that. You really are the world’s greatest singer. You can breathe beauty into any written word.”

Whitney demurs, but he keeps after her. Then Whitney changes the subject.

“You’ll never guess what my father did. He embarrassed the daylights out of me!” she says.

“What happened?”

Whitney tells Kevin that she went back to the skybox seats with a few of her celebrity friends, including MC Hammer, the owners of the Giants and her father.

“And he pulled MC Hammer aside and tried to get him to propose to me, Kevin!” Whitney giggles. “If I didn’t love my Dad so much, I would have gotten back him big time!”

“Well, what did MC Hammer say?” Kevin says, masking a twinge that he can’t quite explain.

“He said, ‘Mr. Houston, I’m flattered really. But I’m a married man!” Then Whitney and Kevin laugh heartily for a good five minutes before Whitney composes herself.

"That was smooth," Kevin says. "Nothing like what I said at all when your Dad asked me to sweep you off your feet. I was so stunned, I couldn't speak for a whole minute, I'm sure."

"He did what?!"

Kevin has Whitney going for a few minutes, until he lets her off the hook, calling her an easy mark. They end up talking for two hours about everything from Sports to the lack of fine dining in Tampa. Finally, a sharp rap on his office door calls him away.

“Hold on, Whit,” Kevin says. He goes to the door and finds his wife. She’s telling him that his assistant called the house line, because he can’t get through in the office.

“OK,” Kevin says. “Sorry about that, Baby. Just tell him I’ll be done here in about 1o minutes, and he can call after that. Thanks.”

Kevin kisses his wife quickly, then resumes the call with Whitney. After they wrap up the call, Whitney sits quietly on the couch, with her feet nestled under the warmth of the cushions. Misteblu, her angora cat, slinks along the floor near the couch and as Whitney beckons, it springs into her lap. Whitney strokes the cat’s grey fur slowly, thinking about what she heard right before Kevin said goodbye. He called his wife ‘baby,’ and of course he would. She had seen replays of the Golden Globe and Oscar award ceremonies, and she was absolutely beautiful. Worthy of the big screen herself. And then hearing him kiss her, even if it was just a quick peck and softly calling her 'baby,' was humbling. In case their love of music, sports and everything else they had in common had made her too comfortable with him, those 30 seconds reminded her exactly of where she stood and who he really belonged to.

Whitney holds her cat up, resting her on her knees and looking into her face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Whitney says, scratching behind the cat’s ears to her delight. “I know he’s taken. All the good ones are.”

Then B----- noisily enters the house, slamming the door to the front entry hall and bellowing her nickname. He had been behaving a lot better lately, like the fun-loving guy she first fell for. He flops on the couch next to her and grabs the cat, setting her on the floor and shooing her away. Then he leans over and takes Whitney’s hand, rubbing it carefully. He starts talking about dinner reservations he’s made for the two of them at a trendy hotel in New York.

“Tonight, really, B-----?” Whitney says. “It’s cold out, and I wanted to just maybe curl up by the fire with a simple meal or something.”

“We can do that tomorrow, Baby,” he says, explaining that he wants to invite a producer and his girlfriend along to talk about a potential project. The way he says ‘baby,’ and roughly pinches her butt before he walks off, telling her to start getting ready, somehow leaves Whitney as frigid as the late January weather in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood.

Kevin even says simple things in a much gentler, warmer and superior way to this guy now rummaging through the kitchen for "some m-ther f----g grub!" Even the way B----- rubs her hand lacks Kevin's natural kindness, warmth and patience. For some odd reason, though, she can’t seem to find the strength to break up with B----, even though her father was beginning to press her on the issue relentlessly. Even though she was comparing her fiance increasingly, and unfavorably, to her new friend with every passing day.