The Emmett Stonewall problem just got worse and worse. He grew bolder as the show’s ratings improved and his star ascended. He’d lean in close between takes when nobody else could hear him and he’d whisper, in graphic detail, what he’d like to do to her sexually, how he was thinking about Dee when he was having sex with some girl he’d picked up at Teddy’s, that sort of thing.
His hands tended to wander when they were close together as well. Once they were being filmed on a stakeout and they were in a small gully in a wooded area. During the scene, you could only see their heads and tops of their shoulders above the ridgeline as they passed a set of binoculars back and forth.
Emmett took advantage of the fact that nobody could see that they were practically on top of each other and invisible from the neck down to grope Dee throughout shooting. And he clearly kept messing up on purpose to keep them in position longer, dropping the binoculars, stepping on her lines, coughing, anything he could do to extend the molestation of his coworker.
She thought about telling Josh, or complaining to the producer, but those seemed like dead ends when Emmett Stonewall was involved.
Instead, she cried the entire drive home and resolved to tell Rooster, no matter if he tried to shift blame to her or make excuses for the male lead of the show.
Rooster came home late to find Dee sniffling on the couch.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her. She was, at least for now, getting kind, compassionate Rooster.
Unfortunately, that Rooster didn’t come around often anymore.
“It’s Emmett,” Dee confessed. “He’s a pig. I hate him.”
“Do you want a drink?” he asked. “I’m having a drink.”
He got up and strode across the living room to the bar, where he poured himself a Jack and Coke. He poured Dee a glass of wine.
“What’s going on with Emmett?”
Dee gave him a sanitized version of catcalls and a stray hand coming to rest on the small of her back and staying there, gradually sliding down to her ass. She was afraid if she told him everything, Rooster might kill Emmett or her, or both of them. He’d somehow twist it around and say she had been leading Emmett on or provoking him somehow.
Rooster listened intently, then responded with a question.
“And what do you think should be done about all this?”
“I don’t know, but if something doesn’t change, I can’t work with him anymore,” Dee replied.
Rooster laughed and walked over to his laptop. After a few keystrokes, he brought it to Dee to show her the charts on the screen.
“The Good Cop has won its time slot for five consecutive weeks. It’s been in the overall top ten for the past three weeks, It’s the highest rated new show on television, by a wide margin,” he explained. “Therefore, yeah, you’ll work with him for the foreseeable future. Besides that, you have a contract.”
This wasn’t the support Dee was looking for.
“Besides,” he continued, “Can you blame the guy for getting turned on by you? You’re gorgeous.”
Dee had personally watched Rooster beat up three different men he thought were admiring her a little too hard. One was a valet guy at their favorite sushi place, after Rooster said he didn’t like the way the guy was looking at Dee’s legs.
But now he was okay with Emmett Stonewall feeling Dee up and telling her all the places on her body he wanted to put his tongue?
“But, Rooster,” Dee pleaded. “At any place I’ve ever worked this kind of thing would be considered a major HR violation. Textbook sexual harassment. Can you at least talk to him?”
“This is Hollywood, Beckett,” he countered. “Different rules here. Yeah, I could probably talk to him. Put some fear into him. But where would that get us? The last thing I need is a disgruntled leading man.”
“I’m very disgruntled,” Dee muttered, almost under her breath. “And I thought I was the leading lady.”
“Yeah, you are. But there’s an important distinction you’re missing. There’s only one Emmett Stonewall. For all his faults, and he has plenty, he has a look and a style and everything else that has appeal across genders, and ages and for lots of people, if he’s in something, they watch. Period.
“You, on the other hand? There are potential Delilah Goodacres lined up from here to Barstow, with more getting off of Greyhound busses downtown every day of the year.
“In this town, everywhere you look you see hot girls. Now sure, many of them are the product of rhinoplasty and fillers and Botox and boob jobs and butt lifts and every other surgical procedure under the sun, but ultimately all that matters is how they look on camera.
“Nobody wants a pretty girl’s opinion. They want her to look sexy. We’ve had to replace problematic women before. The yachts are filled with them. They act all indignant when somebody on set pats them on the ass, then they climb on a yacht wearing a thong and put it in everybody’s face.
“Do you get where I’m coming from?”
Yeah, Dee got it.
Men are talent, women are meat. That was the message, loud and clear.
“I… I guess so,” she replied meekly.
“See? That’s why you aren’t going to wind up on a yacht, Beckett. Too smart. And so sexy.”
He moved in to kiss her, in a way that said he wanted much more than a kiss. She was disgusted.
But she kissed him back anyway.
Thirty-Eight
Dee had never been so excited to see her sister in her entire life.
Rooster had told her to send a car for Meg, but Dee wouldn’t have dared. Meg had never been to Los Angeles before. She didn’t want Meg to see some random driver when she got off her long cross-country flight.
She wanted her to see her sister.
Dee was filled with nervous energy as she waited for Meg in baggage claim. She couldn’t stop bouncing on the balls of her feet as she searched the faces of the arrivals coming down the escalators.
When she finally spotted Meg, she wiped tears of joy from both cheeks. Meg reached the bottom and ran to Dee and the Beckett girls embraced. They’d each missed the other, but they didn’t realize just how much until they were reunited.
Meg couldn’t get over how skinny Dee had become. She had always been thin, but this was a bit shocking. Since Dee seemed so happy, and was evidently so successful, however, Meg decided not to mention her concern.
All their exuberance vanished in the face of the oppressive L.A. traffic. They crawled along through what seemed to Meg like a maze of freeways as Dee pointed out different areas of town and various landmarks.
The Hollywood sign was a biggie; once Meg caught a glimpse of that, she was definitively in California.
Dee had booked Meg a room at the Four Seasons, and she had several days in town, but she was so excited to get to play tour guide for a change that she wanted to do everything at once.
They drove down Rodeo Drive, and Meg gawked at the six-figure sports cars even more than she did the endless collection of stores she couldn’t pronounce.
Hollywood Boulevard was next, and Dee got to feel like a real Los Angeleno when she corrected Meg with regards to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which her sister had referred to by its old name, Mann’s.
The parked and got out to check out the handprints in the concrete squares in front of the theater. Meg was most impressed to find Denzel Washington, Richard Gere, and Tom Hanks. Her head was spinning.
Time got away from them, and it was late by the time they finally got Meg checked in at the Four Seasons. The sisters ordered room service for dinner and the Beckett girls finally laughed themselves to sleep telling stories well past midnight.
When they got up the next day, the whirlwind tour of Los Angeles continued, as The Good Cop had halted production for a few days to allow Emmett Stonewall to film a few scenes for a movie.
The hiatus meant Dee had more free time to hang out with Meg, which was great, but Dee had badly wanted Meg to visit
the set and watch her show being filmed, despite how uncomfortable certain people had made her work routine.
She’d have to settle for Rooster taking them on a tour of the studio later that afternoon.
Dee showed Meg the places where she’d first lived and worked after arriving in California and then to visit Venice Beach. Meg preferred her beach back home, although there was no panhandle equivalent to the muscular meat heads throwing around huge piles of iron at Muscle Beach Gym’s outdoor weight room, and they were fun to watch.
Dee introduced Meg to the religious experience of her first trip to In-N-Out Burger, where Meg inhaled an order of animal-style fries and a cheeseburger. Dee drank a diet soda.
Between lunch and LA traffic they reached the studio over an hour past the time they were supposed to have met Rooster, who didn’t answer Dee’s calls.
Rooster was nowhere to be found when they arrived and calling and having him paged didn’t produce him. A security guard in his seventies named Leo whom Dee had felt safe befriending over her time with the network (even Rooster couldn’t be jealous of a guy like that, Dee hoped) let the sisters onto the set.
Meg was fascinated by everything and Dee tried to explain as much of the “magic of television” as she could.
They’d just about finished walking through sets when Dee heard Rooster’s angry voice approaching.
“No, it’s not okay, Larry,” Rooster snapped.
“It’s Leo, sir, and like I said, I’m sorry, but Miss Goodacre works on the show so I figured it would be okay to—”
Rooster and Leo rounded the corner and almost ran into Dee and Meg.
“Rooster!” Dee said excitedly. Despite all that had gone on, she was excited for Meg to meet him.
“Did he really let you two in here?” Rooster demanded of Dee, without any sort of preamble or greeting. He was pointing at Leo.
“What?” Dee replied. “Oh, yeah, yes, Leo let us in. We tried having you paged, but—”
“You’re fired,” Rooster snapped at the old man. “Rules are rules. Get your things and go. We’ll mail you your final check.”
“But sir, I—” Leo tried to protest.
“No! This is crazy. I asked him to, he was just being nice,” Dee added to the tumult.
When Leo hadn’t immediately vacated the area, Rooster got in his face. “Don’t make me call security to have you escorted out of here, grandpa. And it won’t be a rent-a-cop like you, either. You know who I mean…”
Leo looked to Dee for help, Dee looked to Rooster for compassion, and Meg was baffled by the entire exchange.
Finally, Leo slinked off back the way Rooster had come in.
“Was that a joke?” Meg asked.
“You think security is a joke?” Rooster demanded.
“No, I just mean the whole firing thing, was that for my benefit somehow?”
Rooster squinted at Meg and then turned to Dee. “Where were you last night?”
“I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer,” Dee explained. “Meg and I, by the way, this is Meg, Meg, this is Rooster. Anyway, we were out sightseeing and lost track of time. I was tired by the time we got to the Four Seasons, so I just crashed there. I swear I called you.”
She had.
Rooster disagreed.
“Did the two of you have some fun last night?” Rooster asked neither one in particular. “Because I never got a call, and my girlfriend stayed out all night. Never came home, never checked in. That sort of thing makes me suspicious.”
“There’s nothing to be suspicious about,” Meg countered. Dee tried to intervene by talking over Meg.
“Meg, it’s okay. Rooster, I’m sorry. I could have sworn I called you last night.”
Meg didn’t recognize this sniveling version of her sister. The Dee she grew up with had a backbone and the confidence to stand up for herself.
Meg remembered Dee calling Rooster. She’d been standing right next to her. No question about it.
“How much of your lying do you think I’m gonna put up with?” Rooster asked Dee before he glared at Meg and then stormed away.
Dee gave chase, a frazzled Meg standing stationary, wondering what just happened.
Rooster and her sister were partially obscured by a pallet filled with plywood and a pyramid of paint cans, but Meg gasped at what she saw.
Dee reached Rooster and touched him on the shoulder. Rooster spun and grabbed Dee’s wrist, twisting it until she fell to the ground. From there, he screamed in her face that she was a liar and nothing but white trash through and through.
He then drew his hand back and smacked Dee across the face before continuing to walk away, disappearing around the corner.
Meg rushed to Dee’s side and found her sister fighting back tears.
“I’m okay,” Dee insisted. “I just slipped. Everything is okay.”
Meg was aghast. “You didn’t slip! He hit you! We should call the police!”
Dee wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. “No, I tripped over that can of pain right there,” Dee said. “Rooster didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What the hell…” Meg said. Dee sounded like a robot. “He’s a complete asshole, Dee. The way he talked to you, and firing that sweet old man? And he absolutely hit you. I watched it. Somebody has to hold him accountable!”
“We should go,” Dee said in a daze. “I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
They rode back in silence, but when they reached Meg’s room, the argument erupted again.
“Dee, what would Dad say? What will Dad say?”
Dee looked incredulous. “He’ll… say that I’m clumsy? I mean really, you’re going to tattle on me for falling over a can of paint? What are we, five years old?”
Meg was speechless.
“How long has he been hitting you?” she asked once she found her voice.
“He’s never hit me, Meg, I keep telling you that.”
“I can’t believe you’d defend an animal like that,” Meg muttered. “It’s so gross. You’re better than this, Dee. Come on.”
“This is California,” Dee reminded her sister. Things are… different here.”
“I can’t even look at you right now,” Meg said shaking her head. “Thanks for the room, it’s super nice. And you’ve been great showing me around. But I think maybe coming here was a mistake. I hope you’ll come visit us in Florida. Dad misses you.”
The hug goodbye was awkward, nothing like the hug hello the day before.
Thirty-Nine
Donovan Lockwood hated LA.
He’d grown up in Montana, among cowboys and ranchers. He missed the vastness of the land and the capability to be somewhere so remote that the closest human was miles and miles away on their own swath of heaven.
There was nothing that made Donovan feel like the world belonged only to him like standing in the middle of a valley, by a glittering lake, in the middle of the night in Montana. He’d never felt so small and so infinite all at the same time.
Los Angeles was the complete antithesis of that.
Donovan hadn’t lived in Montana since before he’d left for Navy boot camp twelve years ago. His mother still lived there, and he visited as much as he could, though his line of work made it difficult.
But here he was, in LA.
As much as he hated it, it’s where the work was. He’d finally gotten a huge break in his career. Donovan had just finished interviewing for a head security position for one of the most powerful families in not only Los Angeles, but also, the world.
And Donovan Lockwood knew a thing or two about the world. He’d seen almost all of it, and he was tired. If he was able to get this contract it meant he could stay in one place for a while. He’d never lived anywhere for longer than a few months since his SEAL days ended back in ’99.
He felt good about how the interview went and was pretty positive they’d offer him the position. He’d counter their first offer salary-wise, but in the end it would just be a perfo
rmance. He’d take it.
Sometimes a man just knows when he’s nailed something— and Donovan tended to be someone who accomplished anything he decided to.
Sadly though, he was celebrating alone that night at the Four Seasons. That was the biggest con to the life he’d chosen— it was an isolated one.
Maybe now that could change.
He’d gone down to the bar for a drink. He didn’t partake often— after all, he was a man who needed to be in control of his functions at all times. But what was the point of life if you couldn’t enjoy a simple vice every now and then? Besides, his soon-to-be new boss was paying for all of it.
“A rusty nail,” he requested as he sat down at the granite bar top. “With Macallan’s if you’ve got it.”
“Of course,” the bartender nodded. “It’s been a while since I’ve made one of those. Nice to make a man’s drink.”
Donovan chuckled. His father had always been a fan of any drink with Scottish whisky and had passed that love down to his only son. Donovan still remembered the old tale of their Scots ancestors stirring their drinks with rusty nails.
“Nothing like tetanus as a garnish!” his father would laugh.
As Donovan waited for his drink, he looked around the Four Seasons lounge. It was a slow night, he seemed to be the only one in the place save for a few couples scattered around the outlying tables. No one else sat at the bar other than him.
It was just as well. As much as he craved company at times, it was also nice not to have to wait for his drink.
“I’m guessing you serve a lot of appletinis,” Donovan joked with the bartender as he handed Donovan his glass.
“Yeah, a lot of those. And cosmos. Everyone wants those now because of Sex and the City,” the bartender replied, wiping down the bar top. “I’m looking forward to those going out of style.”
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