Funny You Should Ask(73)

“Any Jews in Cooper?” I ask.

“I think you’re the only one at the moment,” Gabe says.

All the lights I see are red and green, poinsettia garlands and mistletoe hanging in windows. Lots of baby Jesuses in their mangers.

“Hmm,” I say.

“There’s a synagogue in Myrna,” Gabe says. “About thirty minutes from here.”

“Hmm,” I say.

“I love this town.”

He says it like it’s the start of something more, so I turn toward him.

“I love this town,” he says again. “But I bought the house in L.A. because I don’t want to live here all the time. Especially when the smallness of the place is too much, in too many ways.”

He’s telling me something without actually saying it.

I’m not in any rush.

There’s an enormous Christmas tree at the end of the block, where the road is closed off to cars and the pavement turns to cobblestones. It’s very beautiful. We stand in front of it for a while. Teddy sniffs the branches that extend outward.

“Does she live here all the time?” I ask, thinking of how his Laurel Canyon house didn’t have any dog supplies.

“Naw,” Gabe says.

He’s kneeling and scratching her impressive neck ruff.

“I usually drive to L.A. or vice versa,” he says. “Load her in the car and we just cruise down the Fifteen. She likes to stick her head out of the window. Even in the winter.”

Teddy sits on my foot.

“I divide my time pretty evenly between here and L.A.,” Gabe says. “I do miss seasons.”

“It does seem like Montana delivers on that end.”

“It does. Makes up for other things.” He gestures. “A lack of synagogues and the like.”

“I’m sure your family is happy to have you around,” I say.

“Yeah,” Gabe says. “Especially after the accident.”

I turn to him. “I’m sorry about your brother-in-law.”

Gabe is looking at the tree. “Yeah,” he says. “That was a bad year.”

I reach out and take his hand. When he links his fingers with mine, I realize that we’ve never really held hands before. Not like this.

It’s surprisingly intimate, his palm pressed against mine, the calluses of his fingers, the warmth of his skin.

“It’s not a perfect place,” Gabe says. “Cooper.”

I stare up at the tree.

“Neither is L.A.,” I say.

I think about how it felt when I came back from New York. How I expected L.A. to feel like home again, but it didn’t. How a part of me has been chasing that feeling without really knowing what I’m looking for.

“Believe it or not,” Gabe says. “The tree isn’t the thing I wanted you to see.”

He gives me a tug and I realize we’re still holding hands. That brief shock of intimacy smoothed out into something comfortable. Something familiar.

We go around the massive tree trunk, and I can smell the pine.

The town is decorated in nostalgia.

Gabe stops us in front of the one building that isn’t lit up with Christmas lights and holly. It’s dark, with boarded-up windows and a cracked marquee. If this was a Hollywood film, it would serve as a metaphor for the tortured hero’s tortured past.

Standing back a little, I see that it’s an old theatre.

“Ta-da!” Gabe says.

There’s a FOR SALE sign on the window of the ticket booth, and a SOLD sticker tacked over it.

“Mazel tov,” I tell Gabe.

“Do you want to go inside?” he asks.

“Is it haunted?”

He grins. “Only one way to find out,” he says.

Inside, the air is filled with cobwebs and dust. It’s not a movie theater, like I expected, but a theatre-theatre. There’s a stage and a small pit for a small orchestra. There are at least three hundred seats and even two modestly sized but grandly built balconies on either side of the stage.

“I hope you didn’t pay a lot for it,” I say.

Gabe tsks and Teddy sneezes.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he says. “Use your imagination.”

“I’m imagining a lot of mice and rats using this space to stage their own rodent-positive version of The Nutcracker,” I say.

Even as I do, I’m looking past the layer of grime on every surface. Past the moth-eaten curtains and the well-worn carpet. Past the cracked and crumbling molding on the walls.

I can see intricately carved seats. I can see a beautifully built stage. And when Teddy lets out a short, happy bark, I can hear the incredible acoustics.

It’s a perfect little theatre for a little town. With Gabe’s name behind it, it could bring attention and people to Cooper. He could have as much—or as little—control over the productions as he’d like.

It could be a brand-new classic.

“What do you think?” Gabe asks.

“I think it’s perfect,” I say.





VANITY FAIR


POUR OUT THAT MARTINI: Gabe Parker Talks Sobriety

[excerpt]


By Beth Hussey


We sit down at the restaurant and Gabe Parker orders a big, tall glass of water. It’s his first interview since the former Bond star left the franchise in a spectacular fashion and entered rehab. Twice. And now he’s ready to talk.