Deleted Scene #7 (& final) -- Drew's 2nd Dream
WARNING: Please do not read these scenes if you've not yet read my novel DREAM WAR. Out of context, these scenes will likely either mean nothing to you, or worse, they'll confuse you.
We have reached the end of my Deleted Scenes. My hope is that someone someday will read and at least somewhat enjoy these. I'm glad they didn't make it into my final novel. And yet I love these children as much as those in the book.
This is a scene (cut from Chapter 35) I really liked when I wrote it. I liked the way it played off Drew's first dream in Italy. I liked how it showed him as human and helping of others in need, but reading it with fresh eyes before the novel went live, I knew it had to go. The pace at this point in the book is becoming Mr. Hyde--this scene is Norman Rockwell. But enjoy it here.
Drew was still twenty yards away from the volcanic boulders, when he heard the voice behind him.
“I told you I want that fucking key back!”
He stopped running. This had happened before. This had already happened.
But when?
He looked down at the medallion that rested against his chest. He turned around. The cop’s gun pointed at him but Drew didn’t care.
“You’re a joke,” he said to the cop. “You are nothing but a joke!”
The policeman stammered like a stage actor denied the script. Drew cocked his arm back over his shoulder trusting a spear would materialize before he threw it. It appeared but the cop had already vanished.
“Kat, is that you?” His voice echoed over and over again in repeated staccato until he could only hear ringing.
Drew sat up in bed. The sound came from his cell phone, an annoying old-fashioned telephone ring that Nadia had downloaded. He’d probably never change it.
“Hello?”
“Drew?” He didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Tommy.” The voice, timid and uncertain, seemed almost to be asking.
Drew said nothing.
“Tommy. I met you at a meeting last Saturday night? You gave me your number and said to call if— if I needed to talk?”
It came back to him. Not just who the guy was. The whole chaotic week flashed by as his head cleared of the cop from his nightmare. Tommy was a guy who had seemed totally lost at his first AA meeting. He seemed like the kind of person who wasn’t given the chance to slowly develop the realization that he was an alcoholic, but had instead been drenched by the ice water of awareness all at once.
“Oh, yeah, Tommy, how ya doin’?”
“I’m okay.” Then he stopped. “Nah, that’s bullshit, man. I lost it last night.”
Drew got out of bed and groped the nightstand for his watch. It appeared to be twilight, but he hadn’t a clue what time it was. Hell, with all that had happened, he couldn’t even remember what day it was.
“What do you mean by ‘lost it,’ man?”
Tommy’s long silence suggested a temptation to lie, or at least minimize the truth. Drew understood that leading the man to just one moment of honesty might mean changing his life for the positive.
“Tommy?”
“Like the ‘get drunk, tell the girlfriend she’s a fuckin’ bitch, go out, and come home with your second D.U.I.-lost it.’”
While relaying a story to Tommy about his early days struggling with sobriety, Drew found his watch on the far dresser. It was almost six. He cracked the door allowing a sliver of bright light into the room. The sounds of Kat and Alexis banging around the kitchen, and aromas of Mexican food drifted into the bedroom. For a second, he felt at ease.
The bad man is coming tonight; the angel told me.
“Hey, Tommy, I’m not going to lie and tell you now that you’re in AA, everything is going to be easy. It’s not. There are days that just plain suck.”
Drew could swear the cell phone emitted a silent transmission of tension being cut.
“But even when I take times like this week,” Drew continued, “where everyone seems hell-bent on destroying my plan for happiness, and compare it to numbing out, drinking to oblivion, and running away from it all, I’ll take days like today.”
From the other room, Alexis let loose a playful howl. Her footfalls mingled with Kat’s, and Drew couldn’t tell who was chasing whom, or what kind of game they were playing. Tommy’s contribution to the conversation was more silence.
“Even my worst days have purpose, and good eventually manages to outweigh the bad. Stick with it, man.”
There was still nothing but quiet from the other end for several seconds. Drew would never know but he suspected the other man was crying.
“Will I see you at the Saturday night meeting?” Tommy asked.
Drew looked out the window at the vacant expanse of land between the house and the tree line. While the darkening gray sky camouflaged the falling snowflakes, they appeared at eye-level against the backdrop of the forest, swirling down until they collided with the frozen earth.
“I hope so, buddy,” he said. Drew opened wide the door to the hallway, letting the warm light flood his bedroom. “God, willing, I’ll be there.”
