Life in High Def

by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  Now she suddenly realized that she wanted Fergie to like her.

  “I told Drew what a great instructor you were,” said Reilly. She had already said that. She was gushing, a little intimidated from being around one of the people who had seemed so untouchable to her for so long. She wondered if it was a feeling her fans felt when they met her. It was a strange juxtaposition.

  Reilly saw Fergie glance at Drew, and she suspected that Fergie was weighing her response, probably because she didn’t know how much Drew knew about Reilly’s incarceration.

  “It’s okay. Drew and I are… close. We’ve talked a little about RR,” said Reilly, referring to Ral-Rutherford in the way of inmates and guards who have done time there.

  It seemed that Fergie was about to say something when Drew spoke.

  “Didn’t you tell me that you were in a hurry to get home, Ferg? We can catch up later.”

  “Yeah, I need to get on the road. I have a shift tonight,” said Fergie, nodding her head. “It was a great class, Drew, as always. Nice to see you again, Rans… Reilly.”

  Reilly noted the name correction and, in a way, it was a kind of closure, as if the short meeting had validated that Reilly was a real human again.

  “It was nice to see you, Fergie. I hope to see you around,” said Reilly stepping aside to let Fergie pass on her way to the door.

  Fergie smiled and waved as she shut the door behind her. The rest of the students were long gone.

  Reilly turned to Drew, who didn’t seem as tense as she had just moments before. She wanted to ask her about it, but wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Drew would probably tell her in her own time, but Reilly needed to feel connected to her again.

  “That was a surprise, huh?” said Reilly, testing the waters as she moved closer to Drew and put her arms around her waist.

  “Yes, it was,” said Drew with a small smile, putting her arms around Reilly’s shoulders and searching her eyes. “I suspected you two would run into each other before too long. Maybe I should have said something.”

  The stiffness was almost gone from Drew’s stance. So, Fergie was the cause of the renewed tension, and not the earlier conversation. Reilly could deal with that.

  “It was nice running into her. Weird, though.”

  “I can imagine. I didn’t…” began Drew, but she just shook her head and let the sentence hang. “Never mind.”

  Reilly was determined to assuage Drew’s agitation. She didn’t like the weirdness that had settled between them.

  “You didn’t what? Know if we knew each other?” asked Reilly, guessing at what Drew was about to say. She wanted Drew to know it was okay to talk about her past. And if Drew had a hard time with it, it would be good to get it out in the open sooner, rather than later. “How could you? But it’s okay to ask. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about it.”

  “Okay,” agreed Drew. Reilly thought that she still saw a question in her eyes. But she didn’t ask. So Reilly asked her own question.

  “Has she been attending your classes for long?”

  “Since the beginning, off and on. Her schedule makes it hard for her to attend regularly,” said Drew, and Reilly felt her loosen up. She almost seemed like the Drew that she was used to.

  “I’ll bet your classes are a little expensive on a prison guard’s salary.”

  “Guards working out in the desert make more than you’d think for the hassle of having to commute so far, but I also give her a discount. She’s been coming here since the beginning. You have to reward loyalty. And she sends referrals.”

  “Karma, huh?” Reilly gave Drew a light kiss. She hugged Drew tighter.

  “Yeah, karma,” agreed Drew, hugging Reilly back.

  “Will I get karma points for washing your back if we take a shower?” asked Reilly, wiggling against Drew and eliciting the smile she was after. She was desperate to feel their connection again.

  “Washing my back will definitely get you karma points,” said Drew, kissing Reilly, and the connection was there.

  “Can I trade my karma points for other stuff?” asked Reilly. She nuzzled a path down Drew’s neck, tasting salt, and then slid her hands into the back of Drew’s yoga pants to cup her ass.

  “What kind of other stuff?” asked Drew. She tilted her head back so Reilly had access to more of her neck.

  “I’ll show you in the shower,” said Reilly biting Drew’s neck, which produced a low moan from Drew.

  Heat rose in Reilly’s body when Drew went to lock the doors to the studio and she followed Drew into the back room.

  That’s Tonight?

  “ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE DREW to the thing tonight at the Marmont?” asked Cray, stopping in the studio parking lot near Reilly’s car. It was noon and they were already done for the day. The days of long shoots were over and they’d been called in for a few voice-overs.

  “The Marmont? That’s tonight? Oh, jeez. I forgot about that,” said Reilly, lifting her phone to check her calendar. “So the publicity junket begins.”

  Salsa Nights II was in post-production and, though it wouldn’t be released for at least six months, the studio had started to ramp up the schedule of publicity events. By the volume of them, Reilly suspected that the studio was making up for all the interviews and events she’d missed during the dark days after the accident. Reilly still wouldn’t do interviews, but she had at least two appearances per week scheduled over the next month, and it would just get busier the closer they got to the film’s release date. The press so far had been positive. The event at the Marmont wasn’t required, since it was just a private party for the stars and crew of the movie, but Reilly had privately committed to making as many appearances as possible for this movie since she had done so little for the previous one.

  “Drew has a yoga thing in Santa Barbara today. I’m not sure she’ll be back in time to go. But I’ll check,” said Reilly.

  “If she can’t, let’s go together. Hank is at some sort of fashion week thing in New York.”

  “He’s busier than we are these days,” laughed Reilly, happy for her old friend. “And so much for his aversion to fame. He’s sucking it up like oxygen.”

  “He says it’s different being famous for what he makes rather than how he looks,” said Cray, with a shrug of his shoulders that said he didn’t understand but accepted it.

  “I get that,” said Reilly remembering some of the talks she and Hank had had when he had quit acting. Even back then, when they were still so young, he had been more mature than most of the other young actors she met and worked with. Although she respected his decision, she hadn’t really understood. He’d tried to explain to her how the industry valued the right look more than the person who wore it, how it had made him feel like he was disappearing in full sight of everyone. She’d seen the effect that it had on him, but it had taken her a few years to finally understand what he meant. And it had never really bothered her as much as it did him. It was only in the last few years, when she wasn’t so immersed in the whole Hollywood scene that she’d started to feel some of what he had described to her. Then she wondered if anyone really even knew her. Whether anyone really cared about Reilly the person, rather than Reilly the actress. She’d even questioned whether acting was what she should be doing. Was it enough to offer the world ninety minutes of cinematic escape for a small fortune? Should she be doing more? But who was she to think anything about a better purpose? She was the quintessential fuck-up. When she got to that point in her introspection, she always had to stop. She didn’t know what the next step was, didn’t have any answers. It was too hard to think beyond that.

  “Okay, so let me know,” said Cray, walking toward his red Porsche, reminding Reilly of where she was. “I can have my driver pick us both up.”

  Alison held her door open and snorted.

  “Or Alison can drive us,” said Reilly, swatting Alison’s shoulder as she turned toward the car. “I’ll call Drew and let you know.”

  At the Hotel Marmont


  “WHAT PART OF NO COMMENT do you not understand, mister?” asked Cray, stepping between Reilly and the heavyset man with the camera who had popped up out of nowhere as they exited the car at the Hotel Marmont. Drew’s Santa Barbara trip had her making it back to the city a little later and she had promised to meet Reilly after she showered and changed. Reilly had already called ahead and left her name at the door, and was currently glad that Drew didn’t have to deal with the invasive paparazzi that was now accosting her and Cray.

  “Is this the start of your new party phase, Reilly? Where have you been all of these months? What have you been doing since you got out?” asked the persistent man in the bad suit, even as Cray blocked his approach with his own body.

  “Dude, this is a private party. Now get out of our way or I’ll call the—” Cray’s eyes landed on a point over Reilly’s shoulder, and his words stopped behind a relieved smile. She turned to see a man approaching them wearing a suit jacket over a black tee shirt. She recognized him and his vast beard from her past visits to the hotel bar that was popular with celebrities.

  “Hey, Miss Reilly. Someone bothering you?”

  “Hey, Trent,” said Reilly, pulling Cray’s sleeve to lead him away. “That guy just needs to be taught some manners. Be nice though, okay?”

  “What’re you talking about? I’m always nice,” smiled the giant man as he moved past them.

  Reilly and Cray stepped around the reporter and walked toward the garage entrance of the Hotel Marmont. Alison had let them out in back instead of on the street to a avoid some of the paparazzi. It appeared that the plan had backfired.

  “Hey, jerkwad! Take a hike!” said the huge doorman stepping between them and the man, who was still snapping photos. “You really should wear the strap around your neck. Otherwise your camera might… Oops!”

  Reilly heard a scuffle behind her and the sound of something hard hit the cement, but she didn’t turn to see. She just held onto Cray’s arm and followed him up the steps and down the ornately tiled pathway that led to the hotel bar. She stopped for a moment to ask another door guard to get the pushy reporter’s address and what kind of camera he’d been using. There was a line of people waiting to go in when the private party wound down later in the evening, but the doorman nodded and ushered them in through the closed side door.

  “No problem, Miss Reilly. Nice to see you here again,” he said as he lifted the rope.

  “Thanks, Nick,” she said, surprised that she remembered his name.

  They headed toward the far side of the room where some of the other actors from Salsa Nights II: Dare to Dream were congregated.

  “Does that happen everywhere you go?” asked Cray, his mouth close to her ear, shouting to be heard over the loud music and the wall-to-wall people as they pushed past the bar.

  “Not since I first got home. But then again, I don’t go anywhere much—other than the studio and Drew’s place.”

  “You’ve got your priorities right, then. And you’re not missing much,” sighed Cray, sounding bored with the fame machine all of a sudden. It was a side of Cray that Reilly hadn’t seen before, and she was about to ask about it when a woman stopped them before they made it halfway across the floor.

  “Reilly! I haven’t seen you in forever!”

  Reilly struggled to place her. She snuck a furtive glance at Cray, who raised his eyebrows to tell her that he didn’t know who she was either.

  “You look fantastic! How are you?” asked the woman, flipping back her shoulder-length blond hair with two fingers and a raised chin.

  Then Reilly remembered. The woman had a distinctive diction that was almost a parody of a California Valley Girl, but it was that in combination with the almost obsessive hair flip that triggered her memory. The woman—her name started with a T or maybe an R—was a development executive at one of the studios that Reilly hadn’t yet worked for. She’d gone home with her and Sylvie one night after a benefit auction. Reilly had fallen asleep, fully clothed, on the couch in her room while Sylvie and the woman had fucked. Reilly cringed on the inside, while she continued to smile on the outside.

  “I’m fine, Tasha,” said Reilly, remembering her name and peering over Tasha’s shoulder, searching for people she knew. Anyone she wanted to see was still all the way across the bar.

  “What projects are you working on?” asked Tasha. She flipped her hair again.

  Before she could respond, someone touched Reilly’s shoulder from behind. She turned but didn’t recognize anyone. Suppressing irritation, she returned her attention back to Tasha, but a guy she didn’t know pushed in front of Tasha, even as Tasha tried to move him aside. Another man approached her from another direction and jostled for Reilly’s attention. Someone else picked at her arm.

  “Hey, Reilly!”

  “Looking good, girl! Come over here, let me buy you a drink!”

  “Wait! Reilly. I have a project you might—”

  Feeling claustrophobic, Reilly turned to Cray, who stepped in front of the small crowd that had suddenly appeared and put his arm around Reilly. He led her toward the back corner, away from the grasping hands.

  “Holy shit, girl. That was sudden and intense. I don’t know how you do it,” said Cray, as they entered a cordoned-off corner to join the people they knew from the movie. Reilly shook her head. The bar was small, and the space was still crowded, but she was relieved to be out of the throng.

  “Honestly, I don’t, either. Sylvie always played defense for me, I guess.”

  “Maybe it’s just worse than usual because you’ve been away so long,” suggested Cray.

  “Maybe. Or maybe I was just too high to care before,” said Reilly, wondering if that was more true than anything else.

  “Do you want a glass of wine? Or should I just get you a Diet Coke or soda water or something?”

  His attentiveness was sweet—and another aspect that she hadn’t seen often. She wondered if his relationship with Hank was settling him down.

  “Wine sounds good, but I think I’ll stick with water tonight. This isn’t going to be a late night for me.”

  Cray deposited Reilly with the people they knew from the movie and went to fetch their drinks.

  It was strange to be out and about after having been away from the scene for so long, especially at a place where she had partied so many times before. If any bar could be considered her bar, the Marmont was it. But the once exciting energy that had filled the room for her was no longer there. Part of it was the lack of chemical courage, but most of it was the feeling of separateness that Reilly felt. It seemed so contrived, all the cheerfulness and camaraderie, and she wondered if she would ever get comfortable with it again.

  The evening wasn’t a complete hassle, though. She enjoyed talking to the director’s assistant, Jackie, who had run lines and played rummy with Reilly during her breaks between shooting. And the director was a genuine, nice man, just as passionate about travelling as he was about his work. He had a million interesting stories to tell, and Reilly sat riveted, listening to every one. She was glad that the bar was packed. She took that as an excuse to stay where she was, to watch people from afar, and to enjoy the people she had come to meet.

  When Cray still hadn’t come back after more than what seemed to be an adequate amount of time to retrieve a couple of drinks, Reilly began to scan the room. She spied him near the bar holding her bottle of water in one hand and sipping a drink from the other. He was talking to a handsome man whom she remembered from the first movie she and Cray had done. She was pretty sure that the guy had been one of Cray’s many conquests. To her irritation, they seemed to be getting along really well. Almost too well. She loved Cray, but she was loyal to Hank.

  “What’s the matter, Rye?” asked Jackie, following Reilly’s gaze.

  “Oh, nothing. I’m thirsty. I’ll be right back,” she said and decided to brave the crowd to go see about Cray.

  Reilly had almost made it through the sea of people, ignoring those wh
o tried to stop her, when she saw the man Cray was talking to put his hand on the back of Cray’s neck and pull him in for a kiss. Reilly’s heart sank, and she was about to turn around and go back to the table when she saw Cray remove the man’s hand from his neck and take a step back. Reilly watched as Cray said a few words while shaking his head. When he headed back toward the table, Reilly started toward him. They met a few steps later.

  “Sorry that took so long, Rye,” said Cray, smiling at her in apology. He gave her the bottle of water and hooked a thumb toward the bar where he had been standing. The other guy was still there, frowning into his drink. “I ran into an ex—if that’s what you’d call a prolonged one night stand. He’s smashed. Poor guy just got dumped. He tried to hit on me.”

  “He was in the last movie, wasn’t he?” said Reilly, pretending that she had just seen the guy when Cray pointed him out.

  “Yeah. But he slept with the wrong person, or something, so the director blackballed him from this one.”

  “Well, like they say… it’s not what you know, but who you do, am I right?” asked a familiar voice from just behind Reilly.

  Cray frowned and his eyes flicked to someone behind her. Reilly turned to see the sandy-haired production assistant from a movie that she had starred in several years earlier. He was also the personal drug dealer for half of Hollywood’s film industry.