American Outlaw - Jesse James [109]
We went jogging the next morning, and I couldn’t help but agree that the winding roads really were kind of pretty.
“I never do this,” I admitted. “But I have to say, it feels pretty good.”
“Gets the blood going,” Sandy gasped. “In half an hour, we’ll be ready to collapse and face the day.”
My T-shirt was soaked, and I was feeling pretty disheveled by the time we’d made our turn and headed back to Sandy’s place.
“Oh, shoot,” she remarked. “Just keep on running, okay?”
“What’s up?”
“It’s nothing,” Sandy said. “Just some photographers. They’ve been lurking around for the whole week, but I’m afraid I’ve been such a boring subject, I don’t think I’ve given them anything good. Now that I’ve got a gentleman jogging partner, they’re sure to be interested . . .”
“Are we talking about paparazzi here?” I asked, mildly amused.
“Yes, indeed,” Sandy said apologetically. “It’ll be fine. They’re minor annoyances. Just jog on by.”
When we made the last leg of our journey into Sandy’s house, I saw the small clutch of paparazzi pull out their cameras to record our entrance enthusiastically.
“I feel like I’m at the Kentucky Derby.” I laughed, as we stumbled into the house. “Photo finish.”
“It’s so stupid, isn’t it?” Sandy said. She tossed me a towel. “I’m this normal person who does acting for a living, and for some reason, these guys can make thousands of dollars selling a picture of me, I don’t know, picking my nose or something.”
“Do you really pick your nose?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, hugging me. “Ooh. I’m so sweaty. We should shower.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We should.”
It was just the best time. New romance always feels good, but there was something so wholesome and so incredibly positive about Sandy. She didn’t waste much of her time complaining, and I noticed that she seemed averse to voicing criticism, unless it was really called for. And contrary to the typical actor stereotype, I didn’t find her self-centered in the slightest. Our conversations didn’t tend to be about her, or me; instead, they were about art and film and ideas she found engrossing. Gradually, I got the sense that I was hanging out with an evolved human being. Or, perhaps a little more simply put, a grown-up.
It was kind of a laugh, because it showed me in such vivid detail how much of my life I’d been lurking around in the shadows, waiting for someone to invite me into this kind of conversation. Maybe it sounds like a load of crap, but the truth is, from the start, being around Sandy made me want to be a better guy. Whereas with Janine I was always riding that wave of her attention, watching myself reflected in her eyes, with Sandy, I saw her watching the world, and wondering how she could contribute. The better I got to know her, the more I wanted to be by her side, doing the same thing.
“Daddy, you’re in the magazine!” Chandler said one evening as we wheeled through an Albertson’s supermarket in Long Beach. Happily, she held open a glossy gossip magazine. “See?”
Sure enough, there I was, jogging through Georgia, alongside none other than Ms. Sandra Bullock. I scanned the caption, my eyes falling on the words “heavily tattooed biker boy toy.”
“Awesome,” I mumbled.
“Should we buy it?” Chandler giggled. “Look, you’re sweaty.”
“Uh, nope, that’s okay, sweetie,” I sighed. “There’ll be more where that came from.”
Sandy and I continued to see each other when our busy schedules would allow for it. She worked very long hours, both as an actress and as a producer, and Monster Garage continued to keep me busy and sleep deprived. For years now, I had been shooting three weeks on, one week off. It was really starting to grind on me.
“This is just stupid,” I remarked, after six straight days of trying to convert an armored car into a festival dunk tank.
“Huh?” said one of the cameramen.
“It’s pointless,” I said, motioning to our almost-complete car. “I mean, it’s funny, it’s a challenge and all that . . . but would the world be a single