Broken Strings

Seven

Brock

Fame is a poison most would drink happily despite the warning of a slow and miserable death – Atticus

Des hired a private charter to carry Brock and Jay across state lines.  It took a little under three hours to fly from Los Angeles to a small municipal airport in a city that Brock had never heard of.  They called it Ardmore and supposedly it housed over twenty-four thousand people. 

            Brock didn't have the chance to see more than a handful of those people as he was ushered into a car that Des had arranged for him to rent while he was in Oklahoma. He and Jay had decided to go alone: no assistants or bodyguards. After all, neither of them thought that they were likely to get attacked by anything or anyone way out here, except perhaps by a cow or a horse.

The car Brock and Jay clambered into was tinted with black windows, making it impossible for passersby to see inside of the vehicle, but it didn't stop Brock from looking out as he and Jay pulled away from the airport and headed towards Tishomingo.  Brock didn't see much as they went – at least, not from the perspective of someone who'd lived in a major metropolitan area his entire life.

            Mostly, it was just a lot of rolling plains and farmland.  They passed through a few little towns but mostly Brock just followed the GPS instructions on his phone while Jay napped in the seat next to him. 

            They didn't go directly to Bailey's minuscule hometown.  Brock had looked for hotels there and though he didn't often pride himself on being a stuck-up egotistical celebrity, he found that he did have standards higher than what the small town offered.  The local bed and breakfasts and the sole motel weren't encouraging, so he'd booked two adjoining rooms under a fake name in nearby Madill, a municipality that offered a hotel with complimentary breakfast and more than one floor.

            It would be none of the five-star establishments that they were each used to staying in.  No valet parking or rooms that featured anything more than a bed, television, bureau, an uncomfortable chair, and an air conditioner that ticked incessantly. But it was a place that they were each fine staying for a few days until they could head back to L.A.

            Of the two of them, Jay was the more easily recognizable.  His was the face that was stamped on posters and movie trailers while Brock tended to fly further under the radar unless he had a tour approaching or his life was in shambles as it currently was.  Still, for the two of them to go relatively unnoticed, their best chance was for Brock to check them in and so that was what he did.  While Jay waited by the elevator with sunglasses on and his hood drawn up, Brock grabbed the room keys from a woman who looked old enough to be his grandmother at the front desk.

            By the time they collapsed in their rooms, Brock was exhausted.  He left the adjoining door open and could only see the edges of Jay's feet as the other man sprawled on the bed.  Brock was inclined to do the same – would have, actually had his stomach not grumbled louder than the sound of rolling thunder.

"I'm starving.  You want food?"

            Jay didn't even move.  "Sure."

            "Are you sticking to your movie-star diet?"

            "Not tonight."

            "Thank god."

            Because Brock wanted something greasy that would surely make him feel terrible later.  The thought didn't stop him from placing an order at some family-run burger joint down the block.  By the time their delivery driver arrived at the door, Brock and Jay had already tuned in to an L.A. Dodgers baseball game.  Brock lounged across the bed, Jay in an armchair with his feet propped up on the edge of the mattress.