by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was rude and unbecoming.”
I was going to deny it, but I was struck by a distraction that cut me to the core. I smelled pine trees, deep in the forest, damp in the morning after a night of campfires and singing. The burning char and dew mingled in the song-like trails of cigarette smoke, rising and disappearing. And then it was gone.
“My brother’s an asshole, so I don’t blame you.” I regretted that almost immediately. I didn’t talk like that, especially not about family. I took her hand and squeezed it. “We both loved your voice.”
“Thank you. I have to go. I’ll try to see you on the way out.” She slipped her hand away and walked toward the dressing room.
I caught the scent again and looked in her direction, as if I could see the smell’s source. It could have come from anyone. It could have been the gorgeous black lady with the sweet smile. It could have been the plate of saucy meat that crossed my path. Could have been the waft of parking lot that came through the door before it snapped closed.
But it wasn’t.
I knew it like I knew tax code; it was him. The man in the dark suit and thin pink tie, the full lips and two-day beard. His eyes were black as a felony, and they stayed on me as his body swung into the booth.
The smell had come from him, not the other man getting into the booth. It was in his gaze, which was locked on me, disarming me. He was beautiful to me. Not my type, not at all. But the slight cleft in his chin, the powerful jaw, the swoop of dark hair falling over his forehead seemed right. Just right. I swallowed. My mouth had started watering, and my throat had gotten dry. I got a flash of him above me, with that swoop of hair rocking, as he fucked me so hard the sheets ripped.
He turned to say something to the hostess, and I took a gulp of air. I’d forgotten to breathe. I put my hands to my shirt buttons to make sure they were fastened, because I felt as if he’d undressed me.
I had two ways to return to Jonathan: behind the piano, which was the crowded, shorter way, or in front, which was less populated but longer.
I walked in front of the piano. The less crowded way. The longer way. The way that took me right past the man in the pink tie.
I wanted him to look at me, and he spent the entire length of our proximity talking earnestly to the baby-faced, bow-lipped man next to him. I caught the burned, dewy pine scent that made no sense and kept walking.
I felt a tug on my wrist, a warm sensation that tingled. His hand was on me, gentle but resolved. I stopped, looking at him as his hand brought me to his face. He drew me down until he was whisper close. A sudden rush of potential went from the back of my neck to the space between my legs, waking me where I thought I’d died.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t speak.
If he kissed me, I would have opened my mouth for him. That, I knew for sure.
“Your shoe,” he said with an accent I couldn’t place.
“What?” I couldn’t stop looking at his eyes: brown, wide, with longer eyelashes than should be legal, hooded under arched brows proportioned for expression.
Was I wearing shoes? Was I standing? Did I need to take in air? Eat? Or could I just live off the energy between us?
He pointed at my heel. “You brought yourself a souvenir from the ladies’ room.”
He was beautiful, even as he smirked with those full lips. Did I have to turn away to see what he was talking about? It was that or put my tongue down his throat. I looked down.
I had a trail of toilet paper on my stiletto.
“Thank you,” I said.
“My pleasure.” He let go of my hand.
The space where he’d touched felt like a missed opportunity, and I went to the bathroom to return my souvenir.
Chapter Two
After I’d kicked Daniel out of my loft, Katrina moved in. Living alone had thrust me hip deep into depression, and her things around the house changed my feeling of complete emptiness into a feeling that something was right even when everything was wrong.
For her part, she was dealing with a career that had crashed and burned when she filed a lawsuit against the studio that had funded her Oscar-nominated movie. She said there were profits she was entitled to share; they insisted the production operated at a loss. Fancy, indefensible, and legal accounting proved them right, leaving her bank account empty and her career in tatters.
She and I were cars passing on opposite sides of the freeway. As a nearly-but-not-quite-famous director, she was on set at odd hours, and when she wasn’t, she was trying to hold her production together with spit and chewing gum. She couldn’t pay much, so her crew left for scale-paying gigs and had to be replaced, or they dropped out of a day’s shooting with grave apologies but no replacement. Set designers, assistant camera people, gaffers did it for love and opportunity. Production assistants, also called PAs, were the unskilled and barely paid necessities on set, and most likely to drop out.
Her script supervisor, the person responsible for the continuity of the shots, couldn’t work nights or weekends. After Katrina fired her line producer, who was in charge of keeping ducks in rows, she discovered he hadn’t hired a second script supervisor. She shrugged it off as the risk one takes in “the business,” then segued into a long pitch about my attention to detail, my love of consistency and order, and my eagle eye for continuity. She’d asked—no, begged—me to step in for evenings and weekends.
I met her on set under a viaduct downtown at six a.m. The food truck was set up, and the gaffers and grips were just arriving.
“Let’s face it, Tee Dray,” she said, pointing the straw of her Big Gulp at me, “it’s not like they gave me enough money to pay union for weekend calls.” She wore a baseball cap over a tight black pixie cut that only she could pull off. A Vietnamese Mexican with an athletic build, she carried herself as if she owned the joint. Every joint. When we were at Carlton Prep together, she was a bossy outcast and the most interesting person at school.
“You’re paying me on the back end,” I said.
“Sure,” she said with a strong smile. “Forty percent, but I keep the books.”
We hovered over the coffee and fruit. It was still dark, the ambient hiss of the freeway above as low as it would ever be.
“You know what to do?” she asked.
“I have the binder from last time. Track shots, cuts, who’s wearing what, where their hands are, off-book dialogue, et cetera.”
“I really appreciate this,” she said.
“You deserve a comeback. I’d finance the whole thing, you know.”
“Then I’d feel obligated to sleep with you.” She winked. A flirtatious bisexual, she’d offered herself to me more than once, joking, then not, then joking again.
“I think I’m getting to the point I’d take you up on it,” I joked back.
We’d lost touch during college then reconnected when she got representation at WDE, where I ran the client accounting department. She had directed an action movie with heart and suspense that filled theaters for months. It was in the lexicon of greats, nominated for awards, watched and rewatched years after release. When she’d lost her contract with Overland Studios because of her lawsuit, I knew all the intimate fiscal details because I worked for her agent. She could cry on my shoulder or vent her frustration without explaining the nuances of studio math, or as she called it, ass-rape on a ledger.
A studio like Overland loaned a production company money to make a film then billed themselves interest. The interest compounded for the months of production then into the years following release until a blockbuster like Katrina’s wound up with no profits. No amount of litigation could erase the foul and totally legal practice.
Her current self-made episodic piece, to be shot in diners and under viaducts, was financed through a tiny holding in Qatar. Written, directed, and produced by Katrina Ip, it could put her back on the map. I couldn’t have rooted harder for anyone’s success.
“You need a man,” she said. “A rebound coc
k to fuck the sad right out of you.”
“Nice way to talk.”
“The truth isn’t always nice. Let me set you up with my brother, and you can set me up with yours.”
“You don’t have a brother.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying. What about Michael?” She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head. The lead actor in the production had made it clear he was interested in me and a couple of other attractive women on set. He was a man whore, but a nice one.
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“I know, sweetheart. It’ll come back. Some time.”
I pressed my lips together, and though the sun was just peeking over the skyline, it was light enough for her to see the prickly heat brush my cheeks.
“Theresa,” she said, “call is in four minutes. I’m going to have no time to talk. So tell me now. And fast.”
It was a miracle we’d even had time to talk already. Directing a movie was like having a wedding every day for four months. You threw the party but couldn’t enjoy it.
“I went out with Jonathan last night, and there was a guy. A man. I had toilet paper on my shoe and—”
“You? Miss Perfect?”
“Yes. I was so embarrassed.” I dropped my voice to a near whisper when Edgar, her assistant director, approached with a clipboard and a problem. “He was breathtaking.”
She leaned on one hip. “Los Angeles is wall-to-wall breathtaking.”
“He was different. When he touched me—”
“He touched you?”
“Just my wrist. But it was like sex. I swear I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“You tell me this now?”
Edgar got within earshot, and I dropped my eyes. Even thinking about that man in range of a stranger made me feel shameful.
“Kat,” Edgar spoke fast, “honey, the LAPD—”
“Give them the forms,” she shot back.
“But they—”
“Can wait five minutes.” She pulled me behind a trailer. The hum of the generator almost drowned her out. “You cried on my lap for hours over Danny Dickhead. Now you have a hundred-twenty seconds to tell me about this new one.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“I will cut you.” She didn’t mean it, of course. Even coming from the wrong side of Pico Boulevard, her threats were all affect.
“Brown eyes. Black hair.”
“You must be off blonds since Dickerino Boy.”
“Six feet. Built. My god, his hands. They weren’t narrow or soft. They were wide, and… I’m not making any sense. But when he looked at me, my skin went hot. All I could think about was… you know.”
“You got a number?”
“Not even a name.”
Her phone dinged, and three people approached at once. Her day had begun. She turned away from me but flipped her head back. “You just got woken up.”
Chapter Three
Ten years ago, I couldn’t have gotten a donut three blocks away from my loft without getting jacked. In Los Angeles at the turn of the second millennium, the wealthy moved from the city’s perimeter back to the center. And if anyone was “the wealthy,” it was me.
We lived in an old corset and girdle factory. It had been abandoned in the sixties, used as a warehouse by a stonecutter and cabinet maker, then expanded and converted into lofts just before the Great Recession. The units had gone at fire sale prices. I could afford whatever I needed, but Daniel had insisted on paying half, and the recession hit him hard. So a short sale downtown loft at a million and change it was.
And I was stuck with it. He moved to Mar Vista after I kicked him out, and I commuted across town to Beverly Hills to run client accounting at WDE.
Studios did not cut checks to talent; they cut checks to their agents. The agents deducted their ten percent fee and sent the client the rest. Thus, Hollywood agencies were the beating heart of the industry, the nexus through which all money circulated.
And most of them were still cutting paper checks.
I’d been hired to move the company from paper to wire transfer, and I’d done it. I’d convinced old guard agents, grizzled actors, below the line talent, banks, and business managers to get into the twenty-first century. Many of our clients still insisted on bike-messengered and armored-trucked paper checks, but they were more and more the minority. New clients weren’t given a paper option.
I was still necessary to manage the rest of the paper trail, chase studios for payment, and run the department, but I felt my job was done. The only thing worse than the idea of living with my job was the idea of living without it, of drifting into a life without purpose. My sister Fiona had made an art form of it in her youth, and I’d watched her slip into debauchery. I’d do anything to not be her.
But there I was, closing my eyes and seeing those hated checks. I heard the tones of my follow-up call to the messenger service, the tip tap as Pam logged them in one by one, and I thought, I want to burn it all and then slip into oblivion. I never did. I dreamed about it sometimes while I spaced off looking at the numbers or listening to one of the agents throw his anxiety on the table when a client’s check was a day late.
I thought about law school then dismissed the idea. If I became a lawyer as well as an accountant, I’d be so valuable I’d be miserable.
“Hey, Fly Girl.” Gene stood over my desk. “Rolf Wente’s business manager needs you to follow up with Warner’s.”
I tapped my phone log. “We have calls out to them.”
“You look tired. How was the weekend? Do the whole party thing?”
If I didn’t answer, and if I wasn’t specific, he’d spend fifteen minutes telling me about his party habits. “Went to dinner the other night. We saw this lounge act. The singer was terrific. Faulkner. Something Faulkner. Like the writer.”
“Never heard of her,” he said.
“Nice voice. Original.”
“Whyncha send me the deets? Maybe we’ll get out there on the WDE dime. Bring the assistants. Make them feel loved.”
“Okay.” I turned back to my work, hoping he’d leave.
“And get on Warner’s, okay? We lose old Rolf, and we’re up the ass on the dry highway. Let me know about the singer by the end of day.”
I didn’t realize that by suggesting a musician, I was obligated to ride the company dime to yet another show at Frontage. I was exhausted even thinking about it, until I remembered the man with the pink tie. I grabbed my phone and went outside.
I walked by Barney’s. It was bridal month, apparently. High end designers had their white gowns in the window. Jeremy St. James had a jewel-encrusted corset over a skirt no more modest than a strip of gauze. Barry Tilden layered dove white feathers on skirt worthy of Scarlet O’Hara, topping it all with a bodice made purely of silver zippers.
“Deirdre?” I said when I heard her pick up. “You there?”
“What time is it?”
“Ten. What are you doing next Thursday night?”
Sheets rustled. “I have to be at the shelter late.”
“Wanna go out?”
“I can’t do anything fancy, Tee. It makes me sick.” My sister Deirdre despised the consumptions of the rich. She lived in a studio the size of a postage stamp and put every penny of her trust fund interest toward feeding the hungry. It was noble to the point of self-destruction.
“It’s not fancy. Kind of dumpy. I don’t want to go with just work people. They all look at me like they’re sorry for me about Daniel. I hate it.”
“I’m not a good buffer.”
“You’re perfect. You keep me on my toes.”
She sighed. “All right. You’re buying, though. I’m broke.”
“No problem.”
We hung up, and I fist-pumped the ivory Sartorial Sandwich in the last window. I needed Deirdre there to give me a reason to escape the WDE crowd, especially if the breathtaking man was there.
Chapter Four
“How many have you had?” I asked De
irdre.
“My second.” She took her hand off her mop of curly red hair to hold up two fingers. All eight of us shared the red hair, but only she had the curls. “Not that it matters.”
“It matters,” I said.
“No,” Deirdre said, putting down her glass. “It doesn’t. Do you know what matters?”
“Let me guess. The poor and hungry?”
Deirdre huffed. I’d caught her before she could make her speech. She hated that. “You’ve got more money than the Vatican. You’re cute as a button. Yet you think you have problems.”
“Looks and money aren’t the whole of a person.”
“Don’t pretend they don’t matter. They do. If you saw what I saw every day.”
My sister was sweet and compassionate, but she was a belligerent drunk. If I let her, she’d tell me my sadness came from material idolatry and that it was time for me to give all my money to charity and live in service to the poor. I’d often considered the possibility that she was right.
The musicians had come by and then disappeared again. The lights dimmed, and she appeared by the piano singing “Stormy Weather” as if she wanted to rip the clouds from the sky but couldn’t reach high enough. Monica Faulkner, a nobody singer in a town of somebodies, stood in front of the piano singing other people’s songs in a room built for other purposes. She moved from “Stormy Weather” to something more plaintive. My God, she was fully committed to every word, every note.
There was no halfway with that woman. I’d seen her sandwiched between my brother fingering her and fucking her, and I’d felt bad. But not today, she had control over me. She sang in the tempo of keys clacking and printers humming. There was an open place inside me, past where the professionalism cracked and the weariness fissured and the sadness throbbed. She caressed that place then jabbed it.
I missed Daniel. I missed the hardness of his body and the touch of his hands. I missed his laughter, and the way he cupped my breast in his sleep, and the weight of his arm on my shoulder, and the way he brushed his light brown hair off his face. I missed calling him to tell him where I was. I was an independent woman. I could function fine without him or anyone. But I missed him, and I missed being loved. Once he’d cheated on me, all my delight in his love drowned in bitterness. I was wistful for something dead.