by Saba Kapur
“Milo called,” Jack said.
“What?” I looked at him sharply. “When?”
“Like a half hour ago?”
I widened my eyes in disbelief. “And you’re only telling me this now?”
“Sorry, but you were kind of busy, remember?”
A woman who had more Botox than actual skin on her face, sauntered past in her seven-inch heels, threw her hair over her shoulder and congratulated me on landing the role of Miss Golden Globe. I had absolutely no clue who she was and would probably never see her again, but I gave her my thoroughly rehearsed thank you and watched her walk toward the bar. The moment she was far enough away I snapped my attention back to Jack.
“Whatever!” I said impatiently. “Did he ask for me?”
“No, Gia. For the millionth time, no, he did not ask for you.”
I looked up at the ceiling and groaned, hoping my unhappiness was making its way across the chandeliers and up to the heavens above.
“Why hasn’t he called yet!” I wailed. “Why does he call you and not me? He doesn’t even like you!”
“Don’t hold back. No, really,” Jack said, completely deadpan.
“What? He doesn’t! That night was perfect Jack. It was literally the—”
“As lovely as all that sounds,” Jack said in a bored voice. “I can’t tell you why he hasn’t called. But I can tell you about the girl in Ao Jie Kai’s photos, if you want to stop whining and hear me out for a second.”
I reluctantly stopped pouting, did a quick check to make sure no one needed me for another photoshoot.
“Ugh, fine,” I groaned. “Tell me.”
“Her name is Claudia Finch,” Jack said, lowering his voice. “Twenty-two years old, two siblings, both younger. Studying journalism at UCLA. She works part-time at some place called the Coco Club. Have you heard of it?”
I nodded and said, “It’s a really fancy lounge. It’s super popular, and you can always see celebrities in there.”
“Have you ever been inside?”
“Nope. The girls and I tried once, but we couldn’t get in. You have to be twenty-one.”
Jack gave me a half smile and said, “Trust you to not be able to get in.”
I glared at him. “Shut up! We were like twelve, okay? There was no way they were letting us in either way.”
I was such a liar. It was actually a few years ago when I had first gotten my fake ID and had been too wimpy to use it. I backed out when we were literally at the door, and dragged the girls home right after.
“Anyway,” Jack continued. “I think we should go pay her a visit. Ask her some questions, do our undercover thing. She might be able to give us some information on Ao Jie Kai.”
“Wait,” I replied. “Isn’t that the police’s job?”
“Yeah, but since when have you ever backed out of an opportunity to sneak out of the house and cause trouble?”
I considered his point. “True,” I said, nodding. “But I’m surprised you’re actually going along with it this time with zero complaints.”
“The sooner we find answers, the sooner we can complete our deal, and I can go back to New York and you get your life back.”
I stared at him silently for a few seconds, hoping my surprise wasn’t showing on my face. He hadn’t said anything wrong; I mean, we did have a deal. But I was only just starting to get used to Jack, and dare I say it, I didn’t really hate it anymore. But obviously he still hated being around me, because the only thing on his mind was heading home.
“Right.” I forced myself to say with a smile. “Of course. Our deal.”
“The real issue,” Jack continued, evidently oblivious to how I was feeling, “Is getting out of the house without your dad noticing.”
I looked behind my shoulder and watched Dad shake hands with a man I didn’t recognize, and affectionately pat him on the shoulder. He seemed completely at ease at face value, but I knew he was bored out of his mind. Kenny, on the other hand, wasn’t as great at hiding his boredom. He was standing directly behind Dad, his head to the ceiling as if he was hoping God would descend from heaven and give him an escape route.
“We can’t go tomorrow night,” I told Jack, turning back to face him. “Dad’s at home, and with everything going on lately, he won’t believe any excuse I give him for us leaving.”
“What if we go during the day?”
“The Coco Club is a bar, Jack! It’s not even open before seven!”
“Okay,” Jack replied thoughtfully. “Well what about the night after?”
“Dad’s got some dinner with Tarantino’s people. They want him to play a gangster. Like a legit one, not a homie. He was complaining about it but I was like, that’s so cool! ‘cause he’d get to wear the old school hat and h—”
“Gia, focus!” Jack exclaimed with an impatient sigh.
“What?”
Jack rolled his eyes dramatically and said, “You said your dad has a dinner! Which means he’ll be out.”
It took a second for the scenario to register in my mind before I widened my eyes in realization. “Right!” I said. “Which means we can go to the Coco Club!”
“Exactly.”
“But what if she’s not even working that night?” I asked, biting my nail thoughtfully. “We’ll have to figure out when she’s working. Saturday is our only chance!”
Jack nodded and said, “We’ll work something out.”
“Gia! I need you for a moment!” I heard Carol call from across the room, with forced affection in her voice. I watched as she smiled brightly, waving her hand toward her, ushering me in her direction. Now she mouthed, dropping whatever fake charm she had displayed seconds before.
I forced a smile back and did an internal sigh. “Dragon lady beckons, so I have to go.”
“Leave Claudia to me,” Jack assured me. “I’ll figure out when she’s working.”
“How?”
“Just leave it to me!”
“Okay, fine!” I said. “Will you tell me if Milo calls?”
“Probably not, no.”
“Jack!”
“I’m kidding! Jesus!”
I frowned at him. “If they bring the food out, save me some. Especially if they bring out those little patty things because, those are incredible! Like wow.”
“GIA!” Carol practically barked, and I jumped a little in my Manolos.
“Duty calls,” I said, stepping toward my impending doom.
Carol seriously needed to relax, or go on a date or something, because she was uptight to a whole new level. I had enough to worry about without her always breathing down my neck, like gee, my stalker. Or the fact that Milo still hadn’t called me and it had almost been a week.
If Dr. D didn’t end up killing me, waiting for Milo to fall in love with me definitely would.
Chapter Sixteen
Thanks to Jack and his master planning, our latest secret mission fell exactly on the night of Dad’s dinner. After calling up the Coco Club and pretending he was a stranger who found Claudia’s wallet and was looking to return it to her, we were able to confirm that Claudia was indeed working on Saturday night. I spent the whole of Friday distracted at school, feeding my friends a lame excuse about why I couldn’t sneak out the house and hit up Château Marmont with them that night. Needless to say, they were growing more impatient with my shifty behavior every day, especially when I didn’t completely destroy Meghan for starting a rumor that my absences were a result of a Lindsay Lohan-style rehab debacle. Of course I had confronted her about it, asking her what the hell her problem was. She had simply replied by looking down at my Marc Jacobs wedges with a frown and saying, “Those shoes, actually. It’s not 2008 anymore, Gia.”
Yeah, she was a psycho bitch, but I didn’t bother pursuing the matter. I was far too busy scheming with Jack about how we wer
e going to get the information we needed. Truthfully, we could have just waited until the police did their own questioning, or even just asked Claudia out-right. But things were getting a bit boring in Hollywood, if that’s even possible, so why not shake it up a bit?
We never did get around to telling Dad about Ao Jie Kai’s phone, seeing as it would have raised a lot of questions that I didn’t have well-thought-out answers to. If I did mention that I lied about where I was and who I was with, and that we had never actually managed to track down Ao Jie Kai, he would have just yelled about how I had completely wasted my time and put myself in danger for no reason. Plus he might have fired Jack for covering for me, which would have been super inconvenient. Telling him I managed to swipe AJ’s phone, which could potentially help solve the mystery, would just give Dad the opportunity to yell at me some more about how he didn’t raise a thief. In fact, if I had told him I had saved a one-legged cat from a burning house, he’d have told me I was breaking and entering and was therefore a criminal. There was no winning with that man.
So of course, I was more than eager for him to get out of the house and out of my hair. It had been all of three seconds after Dad and Kenny left for dinner before Jack and I were in full frontal mission impossible mode. At least Dad had managed to rope Al into going to the dinner too, mumbling something about a PR opportunity through his annoyance as he put his suit on. I had done my best to not make it too obvious that I was trying to keep him out of the house; smiling encouragingly and helping him find a tie that wouldn’t make him look like a clown.
With all the housekeepers gone for the day or kept busy, Jack and I snapped into action the moment we heard the car pull out of the driveway. Mike wasn’t a problem; he was too busy getting high in his room and kept yelling about how he was “getting those Benjamins, cuz.” I considered giving him a lecture, but then decided against it. It wasn’t exactly like I was the model daughter. Every chance I got I was sneaking out of the house; so really I was in no position to talk about appropriate behavior. At least this way Mike wouldn’t rat me out to Dad. Plus, it wasn’t like Chris was going to say anything. He just sat there looking extremely uncomfortable, eyes glued to the television. Someday that boy was going to have a meltdown and yell for fifteen hours straight and then we’d all miss his silence.
With expert speed and timing, Jack and I threw on our disguises and drove to the Coco Club, which thankfully wasn’t too far away. It had barely been an hour since Dad left, and I knew those dinners always lasted late into the evening, which gave us ample time to investigate and get home before he arrived back. Jack and I parked across the street from the Coco Club, hid behind his car, and peered over at the bar suspiciously.
“Two bouncers,” Jack said quietly, and I nodded.
“Yep.”
We watched silently as two tall, scary looking bouncers checked the IDs of a group of girls. They looked more like professional wrestlers than bouncers, which made sense considering how fancy the place was.
“Go for the one on the left,” Jack told me. “He looks less scary, which means you’ll be able to lie better.”
I raised an eyebrow, watching the bouncer that Jack had indicated. “He looks like Kenny.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So how is that less scary?”
Jack smiled a little and said, “Kenny’s a big teddy bear, come on!”
This time I raised both eyebrows. “I don’t know what freaky ass teddy bears you grew up with, but that’s not exactly how I picture him.”
“Anyway,” Jack said, standing upright. We had been bending down a little so we were completely hidden behind the car. “Let’s go over the plan once more.”
I turned to face him, giving him a determined nod. “I go in first,” I began, recalling what we had discussed earlier. “Locate Claudia and then give you a signal. Then you come in and I begin questioning.”
“Right,” Jack continued. “And remember, no probing her too much otherwise she’ll catch on. I’ll be right there as back up, just in case.”
“Got it.”
“You got your ID?”
I pulled out my fake ID from the small bag hanging from my shoulder and held it up to show Jack. “Here. But I don’t really understand why you changed it. What’s wrong with the one I had?”
“Clearly whoever sold it to you ripped you off,” Jack said, taking the ID card from me and inspecting it. “It sucked. So I found someone at school to help me fix it for you. Just added a different photo and changed the name. It was the best I could do with a day’s notice.”
“Who’d you find?”
Jack smiled. “I can’t reveal my sources.”
“Oh come on! It’s not a drug bust!”
“No, but I think he’s involved in that business too.”
“Fine!” I snapped, snatching the card back. “I’ll just take the stupid ID and pretend I’m Roxy Mulligan for a night. Which, by the way, is a terrible name.”
“What’s wrong with the name Roxy?” he replied.
“Hello—o?” I said, looking at him like he was nuts. “It’s such a stripper name! Might as well have called me Candy and sent me off to the nearest bachelor party.”
“Well, we can’t change it now, so quit complaining!”
“Whatever!” I sighed. “At least I get to wear a decent outfit.”
Thankfully Claudia worked at the Coco Club and not some dump where the homie costume or anything similar would fit in. I was wearing a black, Olcay Gulsen cross-back dress, which I had teamed with a blonde wig I had bought for Halloween last year so I could dress up as Barbie. The wig was high quality, so it didn’t look fake, but I couldn’t stop checking my reflection just to see how weird I looked as a blonde.
Jack, as usual, looked like perfection in a grey suit. He was wearing a crisp white shirt underneath and looked like an absolute sex god without even trying. It was downright unfair what Baby J was doing to me. He can’t possibly have given me Jack, hands-down the most attractive person I’d actually ever gotten to touch, and Milo, who was just about perfect in every way. That is if he ever decided to call me back, which he still hadn’t done. Almost seven freaking days! What, had he died or something? Because that was really the only legitimate excuse for kissing a girl like there was no tomorrow, and then refusing to even send her a hello.
At least I had Jack in a suit to fill the void, which was strong enough for my ovaries to pretty much self-combust. If Jack were a handbag, he’d be Dior. I was Walmart compared to that. Okay, that’s a stretch. More like a Fendi purse from 2002. Still worth a lot, but just not as in style.
“Okay, here’s your microphone,” Jack said, handing me a tiny black device with a clip behind it. “Don’t talk through it too much, or you’ll raise questions. Hide it somewhere it won’t be seen but the sound will still reach.”
I took the mic from him and inspected it. “Where do you expect that to be?”
Jack lowered his gaze to my chest and I whacked him as hard as I could on the arm. Of course he was deceivingly strong so he barely flinched.
“I’m not putting this on my bra!”
“It’s a convenient spot, Gia!”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll bet it is.”
“I’m serious!” Jack said, but he was smiling a little. “It’ll stay hidden and the sound will be clear.”
I did some frustrated sighing while I accepted that he had a point. I whirled around so I had my back to him and clipped the mic into place, right in the center of my bra.
“Okay, done,” I grumbled.
“You need me to check?”
“You want to die?”
Jack laughed and pointed at my ear. “You got your earpiece in?”
“Yep,” I nodded, making sure it was hidden behind the wig.
“That’s how you’ll be able to hear what I’m saying to you. Don’t talk into
your microphone too much, or else she’ll get suspicious. And don’t touch your earpiece too much; it’ll look weird.”
“Jeez, have you got enough rules? And how do you even have all this stuff anyway?”
“Gia, I’m a bodyguard,” he replied. “The microphones and earpieces come with the job.”
“And the suit?”
“Added bonus.”
That it definitely was. Jack wished me luck and I took a deep breath, clutching onto my new identity. I kept telling myself to become Roxy, but who was I kidding? I was just going to have to wing it. I took a long look at Jack’s encouraging smile before marching over to the bouncers with alarming determination. Given that it was a Saturday night, there were swarms of people trying to get into the bar. Generally, the bouncers could tell who could afford to be seen in a place like that, and who should just give up on trying. I was fairly certain I looked the part of a rich girl. I just wasn’t sure if I looked like a twenty-one-year-old rich girl.
I looked over my shoulder to check on Jack, but he was gone. I had no clue where he was, and I was scared to ask because Mr. I’ll Do the Talking had made it clear that he could yap into my ear the whole night and not the other way around. I gave up and walked inside, barely breathing from anxiety and excitement. It’s not like I’d never used my fake ID before. The stakes were just much higher than usual. A group of paparazzi were snapping shots of someone beside me, but I didn’t dare turn around and check who it was just in case someone pulled off my wig and revealed my true identity to the world. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would notice or care, but just in case the news got out, Dad would definitely care.
“Hi,” I said weakly, handing my ID to the apparently nicer looking bouncer when it was finally my turn. I practically beamed at him as he took it from me, expressionless.
“Smile less!” Jack’s voice came through the earpiece, and I immediately dropped my smile. “No not completely! Just a little.”
The smile immediately resurfaced as the bouncer glanced up at my face. “Roxy?”