It Happened One Night...
“I don’t want this divorce, you see. I never wanted a divorce, because I do love Anne-Marie,” James tells Michael. “I just wanted her to know the truth. I knew that telling her wouldn’t be easy, no matter what happened, but I never thought she would react the way she did. I guess, I’d gone over it in my head so much, that I’d fooled myself into thinking that she already knew and was okay with it. You know, that we would still be friends after the dust settled, then everything would go back to normal.” James snorts, looking disgusted with himself, “Was I ever wrong! But still, I kept fooling myself—even after everything got so bad between us, I still held out hope that things would get better, that we could at least be civil to one another for Brendan’s sake. But it only got worse, when a couple of months ago, she finally figured out what I’d left unsaid...and we had the most terrible row.”
James looks utterly miserable, near the point of tears. Michael wants to hold him and he has a thousand questions, but doesn’t want James to stop talking, so he just listens.
Still sounding so very sad, James continues on, “She was just so hurt and bitter over everything—as far as she was concerned I had used and betrayed her all theses years. Not that I can really blame her for thinking that way. But during that last fight...she said some horrible things to me. She said that...”, here, James’s voice finally cracks, “...she said that once she tells the court about me, they’ll never let me see my son again. As it is, Anne’s not let me see him since I moved out. She said that I should be ashamed of myself and that I didn’t deserve to see him after what I’d done to our family. That when she tells the courts, when she tells everyone, about me, that my son will hate me.”
Michael can’t help himself, “Oh, James...”
“I miss him so much, both of them.” James finally looks at Michael and, his blue eyes determined even as they are shining with tears, says, “I can’t...I won’t let my son hate me, Michael. I knew, then and there, I had to do something to make this up to him, make him proud of me. I needed to be someone for him to look up to—a hero.”
“And Amore` was born?” Michael asks, softly. Good, Michael. Start with something simple. Save the hard questions for later.
James gives him a broken smile. “Yeah. You remember when we were doing all the press junkets for First Class, and we were always joking about becoming superheros? That’s where I got the inspiration for Amore`, but I swear it was the press that came up that stupid name!”
“What was your first act as a super-hero?” Michael asks, curious, but still trying to keep it simple.
James turns bright red. “Um, well...actually, it was kind of an accident,” he says, squirming a bit. “You remember the day it was so cold that we called off filming?” Michael nods and James continues, “I was having a horrible nicotine fit and was desperate for cigarettes, so I ran out to the store in spite of the cold. It was fucking freezing, so I had on one of those ski mask-looking things so that my face wouldn’t get frost-bitten or wind-burned.
"I couldn’t really see where I was going and I tripped over the curb and stumbled into a man running out of an alley. He fell, and I think hit his head on the dumpster or something and knocked himself out cold. I was panicking, thinking I’d killed the sorry bastard, when an old lady comes shuffling out of the alley, calling for help. Turns out the wee bastard had just stolen her purse.
“At first, she was frightened of me because I had that mask on---but I couldn’t take it off because I didn’t want her to see my face. I finally convinced her that I wasn’t going to hurt her, that I was only wearing the mask because it was just so cold.” Then he makes a sour look, “Though I probably shouldn’t have bothered. After all, this is America, so she probably wouldn’t have recognized me, regardless.
“Anyway...I made sure that she was okay, then I got her purse off the guy and I gave it back to her. I used her scarf to tie his hands and told her to call the police so they could arrest the man so that he couldn’t do that to anyone else. She was such a sweet old lady. Once she realized that I wasn’t going to kill her, she told me how grateful she was to have her purse back, because she had pictures of her grandchildren in her wallet and she hadn’t wanted to lose them. She didn’t care at all about the money, Michael, she just wanted the pictures. She just kept telling me how it was a miracle that I’d come along just in time to save her and how brave I was. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was all just dumb luck, that I hadn’t done anything but be my usual, clumsy self.
“I stayed with her as long as I could, until I could hear the police coming. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t stay. But as I was leaving, I guess my flair for the melodramatic got the better of me, and I kissed her hand.”
“The next day I saw the article in the paper about a woman being rescued by a masked man. I wouldn’t have known the story was about what had happened to me, if there hadn’t been a photo of the lady along with the article. Apparently, that sweet old lady had a flair for the dramatic, herself, because the story she told was that I had swooped in and bashed the robber myself, then gave him a stern talking-to, Dirty Harry-style. She called me a hero, Michael.” James looks up at him and smiles. “I knew then what I was meant to do. I mean, after all, if I can be a super-hero, getting my family back shouldn’t be so hard, right?”
Michael can’t stand it anymore. He’s got to ask. “James what did you do that was so bad? Did you cheat on Anne-Marie?”
“NO!!!” James shouts.
“Then what is it?!” The look on James’s face is one Michael can’t quite describe, sort of relief mingled with agony.
“I told her I thought I might be in love with you.”
Michael's glad he's already sitting down. Well, Michael, you did ask...