Love & Ink

by JD Hawkins

  “If you think for one second there won’t be consequences for this—”

  “For what?” Ash asks.

  Candace seethes. “Oh, please! Let’s skip the ‘playing dumb’ part, shall we?”

  “I’m serious,” Ash says, with a look of sincere confusion that nobody could mistake for an act. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Candace thrusts her phone screen at Ash, but before Ash can even read it she pulls it back to read aloud herself.

  “Hollywood Night goes from reporting on sensational affairs to engaging in them, as details emerge of the married host, Carlos King, having a long-term affair with an executive producer on the show.”

  Ash’s jaw drops open, but Candace doesn’t take the hint, and snorts scornfully.

  “You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Candace says. “Do you know what you’ve just done?”

  “I swear to you, Candace. I didn’t say anything to the press.”

  I see Carlos rush past the door, scanning the office, then notice us all inside. He comes in and covers his mouth, realizing even further that the cat’s out of the bag.

  “Really?” Candace says, still spoiling for a fight. “You expect me to believe that? If it wasn’t you, who was it then? You’re retaliating because you got fired! And this is all lies. So if you think I’m not gonna have the company lawyers so far up your ass that you—”

  “Honestly, Candace,” Jenny interrupts, “it could have been anyone. It’s not like it was a secret. The whole office knows—anyone who’s had anything to do with the show must have known. It could be any one of the actors or celebrities who we’ve reported on in the past, who holds a grudge, maybe, or...”

  “Maybe it was your wife,” I say, looking at Carlos, but the guy’s too stunned to do more than stare at me with shock.

  There are a few moments of tension, focused on the space between Candace and Ash, as if waiting for one of them to break. It’s only when Sean comes in, shoving his phone in his pocket and looking about as authoritative as he ever could, that it breaks.

  “You’re all here?” he says, suddenly noticing the group that’s gathered in Ash’s old office. “I take it you all know, then?”

  “It’s on fucking TrendBlend,” Candace jeers. “Everybody knows.”

  “Well,” Sean continues, “I just got off the phone with the network. I’m afraid they want to let go of both of you.” He looks from Candace to Carlos. “Immediately. They want to release a statement within the next few hours, so. I’m really sorry, Candace. Carlos. It’s been a good run.”

  Sean offers his hand to Candace but she slaps it away petulantly.

  “You are all absolute amateurs,” she says, scanning all of us. “I should be glad I’m done here.”

  She spins on her heel and marches out of the office, shoving past Carlos, who still has a hand to his mouth. His typically-tanned face so pale now that he looks almost monochrome.

  He breathes deeply, casting desperate eyes over all of us, then reaches for his phone.

  “I need to call my agent,” he says, his voice quivering. “And my wife. Lord have mercy.” Already typing frantically on his phone as he rushes away.

  For a few moments we stand there in silence, nothing moving but our eyes as we look at each other for what’s coming next. It feels like the eye of the storm.

  “Ash,” Sean says, pulling her attention away from the open door. “I know this is rather sudden…but…well—”

  “You want me to stay?”

  Sean nods like a begging dog.

  “Very much so. If you’ll consider it, we can discuss a pay raise, giving you more control—”

  “What kind of control?” she says. “Will I only have control over certain segments, or the whole show? And what about the scripts? Hiring?”

  “Well,” Sean stammers, “with Candace gone, I’d like to promote you to EP, pass all her duties over to you. I spoke to the network already and they seemed open to you taking her position, so if you still want to shake things up a bit, now seems like the right time...”

  Ash glances at me once again, then back at Sean. She offers her hand.

  “Deal,” she says.

  Sean shakes it, but he doesn’t seem quite that relaxed yet.

  “I suppose it’s just you and me as producers now,” Sean says, sounding adrift.

  Ash smiles reassuringly. “It always was, in a sense.”

  Sean looks around the floor, wringing his hands a little.

  “Well, I suppose there’s a lot to go through…but the most pressing thing is that we’ve just lost our headline segment for one of the best slots we’ve had in months.”

  “Can’t we still conduct the interview with Ray Bell?” Jenny asks.

  Sean shakes his head.

  “I doubt it. We only got him because he’s friends with Candace—and I would put money on her telling him to stay clear of us.”

  “So we’re screwed now?” Jenny says.

  “What about the stuff you’ve been filming?” I ask, turning toward Ash.

  She sighs heavily and says, “No. Nothing’s ready. I’m still waiting to hear back from the celebrities. Without them I don’t have anything good enough for the slot.”

  Another few seconds of silence pass, and then I say, “I can get you someone.”

  “You?” Sean says.

  “Uh-huh. You guys familiar with Eli Compton?”

  Jenny makes a sound like she just got punched in the gut.

  “Eli Compton? The Eli Compton? There are probably isolationist monks in Tibet who’ve heard of him.”

  I shrug. “Well anyway, I can probably get you an interview with him.”

  “No chance,” Jenny scoffs. “Eli Compton doesn’t talk to anyone.”

  “He talks to me,” I say. “He’s coming in for a tattoo tomorrow—private one, but I can get him to do it tonight, no problem.”

  “But,” Sean says, “how would you get him to actually talk to us? For an interview.”

  “Eli trusts me,” I assure him. “We go way back. I can get him to do an interview.”

  “Even if you could,” Sean says, “we’ve lost Carlos. And we don’t have a backup.”

  “Sure we do,” Ash says, turning toward her friend. “Jenny could do it.”

  Jenny straightens her back like she’s up against a wall.

  “Jenny?” Sean says, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Staff writer Jenny?”

  Ash grins. “Trust me on this, Sean. It’s my first decision as EP. You’re up for it, aren’t you?”

  Jenny gulps, and her chest visibly starts to rise and fall deeply.

  “Sure,” she says slowly. “Everything else is going crazy today, so why not?”

  “Ok.” Sean nods grimly. “Trial by fire, then. Let’s get you to hair and makeup.”

  Jenny lets out an excited little squeal and throws her arms around Ash before they both run out the door, leaving me to follow behind them with an amused smile on my face. Guess today’s gonna turn out alright after all.

  26

  Ash

  Teo makes the call and gets the ok from Eli for the interview. Even though I don’t really believe it, and fully expect Eli to back out or kick us out of the shop when he realizes what he’s actually agreed to, I start putting everything in place, directing the whole office and the production department to prepare.

  Teo loads the stuff from Ginger’s truck back into my office, and then starts taking down some of the equipment to bring to Mandala for the filming. Since Mandala isn’t big, I decide to take just a single light kit, a skeleton crew, and one trusty cameraman (Vince) with me (as well as Jenny, of course), and then settle in for a brief meeting with Jenny and the other writers in order to go over some of the stories buzzing around about Eli, and potential questions to throw at him.

  Time flies, and before I realize it the work day has gone by in a blur of fast meetings and logistical preparations. Even though the
tattoo is arranged for shortly before midnight, when Mandala is closed to the public and the last drifters will probably be gone, the decisive moment speeds toward us with a sense of forceful inevitability.

  At around ten in the evening, with Vince and Teo already waiting at Mandala, the crew setting up light, sound, and camera equipment, I finally head downstairs with Jenny to get in my car. As we sit at some lights, I watch her stare ahead with a dazed look on her face, arms folded, lip-biting and jogging her heels.

  “Don’t be nervous,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  Jenny looks at me like I surprised her and exhales loudly.

  “I feel like I’m tripping balls right now. This is a crazy way to start a new career.”

  “He’s just a guy, and this is just a conversation. And I can do amazing things in the edit bay, so don’t worry about screwing up. Just be your usual badass self, ok?”

  Jenny exhales heavily again.

  “I just can’t help thinking…this is such a scoop. There are, like, a thousand ways this could end in disaster. What if I ask something too personal and he walks out? Or I piss him off and he won’t let us air the interview? Or if I just can’t get anything interesting out of him?”

  “Just relax and start talking—you have time. The tattoo will take hours. Think of it like meeting someone new, someone interesting.”

  Jenny tries to smile, but it looks more like a puppy dog face, and I laugh.

  “You’ve got way too much confidence in someone who’s never done an interview before,” she says.

  “I’ve got a lot of confidence in you.”

  Eli Compton came from Australia in his twenties, and began his career in action movies. Tall, muscular, absurdly good looking, and with a powerful, gravelly voice that only emphasized his powerful stare. Typecast as the strong, silent type, his name became synonymous with brutal heroes bordering on the psychopathic. He looked and sounded tough enough for audiences to actually believe he could kick several asses without getting hit. You knew what you were getting with an Eli Compton movie. War films, ex-cops dragged back into the fray, astronauts who risked their own lives to save the crew, and TV interviews where he’d scowl and smirk at the interviewer like he knew something they didn’t.

  While his blockbuster action flicks were guaranteed hits, Eli began working with some more esoteric directors on the side. Quirkier, more subdued films in which he displayed a range of emotion that was almost an affront to the audiences who loved him as the emotionally-stunted ass kicker they secretly wished they could be. In response, he grew reclusive, started making films fewer and farther between, attaining cult status practically overnight and racking up critical acclaim and awards twice as fast.

  But despite being one of the biggest stars around, Eli rarely sits for interviews—even for promotional purposes. And when he does, they’re usually strict affairs. The only thing most people know about Eli is that despite his genius IQ and incredible talent, he has a temper, a short fuse, and is very low on patience. Stories abound of him walking off sets or disappearing midway through Hollywood meetings, or cursing at interviewers he deemed not up to scratch. So even though I’m encouraging Jenny as much as possible, I know her fears aren’t unfounded.

  As soon as we get to Mandala, we rush about in the cramped space to finalize the set-up. Vince and I go over camera angles while the crew finishes up the last touches on the sound and lighting. Meanwhile, Teo arranges his tattooing equipment and Jenny sits in a couch as a young hipster from the hair and make-up department puts a braid in her blue hair that reveals the line of studs running up the outline of her ear.

  When Eli arrives, it isn’t with the large entourage that we’re expecting, but alone. Casually, he steps inside the back room and greets Teo warmly.

  “Hey mate,” he says, with his Melbourne drawl, clasping hands and pulling him in for a hug. “Long time no see.”

  He’s bigger and more handsome than even the big screen makes him look, effusing a powerful charisma that makes the world around him seem like merely a stage.

  “You good?” Teo asks him.

  “Great,” Eli says, then turns his eyes from Teo across to the rest of us, the way I’ve seen him do to a thousand bad guys in films.

  “What the hell did I let you talk me into,” he mutters, shaking his head.

  Teo laughs, slaps Eli on the back, and gestures toward me. “This is Ash, who I’ve told you about. She’s the one running this whole thing.”

  “Hi, Eli,” I say, stepping forward decisively. “Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview.”

  The actor shakes my hand, silent for a second as he holds my gaze.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got no problem talking. There’s just usually nobody worth talking to. If Teo says you’re cool though, I trust him.” He scans the tattoo chair. “Anyway, doing it like this—kinda interesting. And who’s gonna be grilling me, did you say?”

  “Um. Me. I’m Jenny,” she says, blushing a little as she steps forward to shake his hand. “I’ll be doing the interview.”

  Once again Eli takes a second to look at her before speaking.

  “I like your hair,” he says, and they share a warm moment that I know everyone in the entire room can feel. It’s in that instant that I know this is going to be sensational.

  The interview goes like a dream, so good that I panic at several moments, making sure we’re getting it on tape, making sure the mics are picking it all up, convinced a last minute Hail Mary couldn’t actually be this good. Visually it’s amazing, Teo etching the eagle onto Eli’s chest while he tells the real story of why he walked off the set of his last blockbuster film and never looked back—something people have speculated about for years, but that he’s never come close to opening up about. The close, intimate surroundings of the shop making it feel almost cinematic, Eli displaying both vulnerability and strength, a complexity that most directors spend a lifetime failing to capture.

  It’s difficult to even remember Jenny being nervous now, as she talks with Eli confidently, so that the interview feels less like one, and more like being a fly on the wall at a late-night conversation between two old friends. She makes him laugh, asks questions that he has to think about, trades quips, and compels all kinds of emotions and stories out of him.

  We’re a million miles from the PR-prepped, pre-scripted interview-cum-advertisements of Hollywood Night, now. There’s something unique and magical in the air, and every single one of us can feel it, and just lets it happen. Almost everything Eli says feels like a secret—important and insightful.

  Even Teo gets in on the act, bringing the whole crew to hysterics as he tells Jenny the story of how he and Eli first met while skiing in Germany, both of them falling down almost an entire black diamond trail after Eli tried to pull off some insane stunt turn, all the while cursing the air blue at each other the whole way down. They ended up spending the rest of the afternoon drinking the pain of their bruises away in a beer hall and finding out they actually had a lot in common.

  Most of all, though, Eli opens up in a way that’s rare for any actor—least of all the most infamously guarded one.

  “Hollywood needs you to act off-screen just as much as on it… If you pretend to be someone long enough, you start to forget who you were in the first place…” This is gold.

  The interview only ends when Teo finishes the tattoo, and even then Jenny and Eli continue on for another quarter-hour after Jenny’s made her final remarks and the cameras have turned off.

  At around four in the morning, Eli leaves, embracing all of us warmly, and taking his time over goodbyes. In particular Jenny, whom he pulls aside to have a private word with before leaving, whispering something in her ear that has her blushing all over again. Vince rounds up the crew and they break everything down and then take the equipment back to the studio, and Teo cleans up at Mandala, leaving Jenny and me outside, breathing in the cool air and trying to regain some sense of reality, still coming down from the hig
h of what just happened.

  “God…”

  “I know…”

  I turn to her with a sly smile. “What did Eli say to you? When he was leaving?”

  “Oh, nothing…” she says casually. “He just invited me out for coffee.”

  “Seriously?!” I grab Jenny by the shoulders and we just laugh.

  “What was that, two hours?” she asks.

  “Nearly three.”

  “I don’t know how you’re going to edit that down to fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I’m gonna run it for the whole hour of the show.”

  “What?” Jenny says, dubiously. “They’ll never allow it.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? The show’s mine now.” I put my arm around her shoulder and pull her in for a buddy-hug. “Ours.”

  Three days after the interview airs, people are still talking about it. About Eli’s charisma, about where the hell Jenny came from, about how Hollywood Night is so much better than they’d previously thought. The Candace-Carlos story is old news now—but it couldn’t have come at a better time, the scandal bringing in even more new viewers for the show. The network decides to air the interview again at a primetime slot on the weekend, and numerous shows and blogs are now approaching Jenny herself for an interview. Teo half-jokingly complains about how many new people are now coming into his shop for tattoos, and I keep a running list of the dozen or so actors virtually begging me to be interviewed by Hollywood Night, hoping to emulate the organic, open charm that Eli gave off.

  Jenny even meets Eli for drinks a few times before he jets off to Europe to do an indie film with a hot new avant-garde director, and she tells me that Eli said as soon as the interview aired, he was offered more roles than he had even before he first broke out.

  Somehow I even find it in me to talk to Grace about what happened, about my father and Teo, about the past and all the things that still hurt to think about. We spend hours on the phone, Grace sympathizing, and struggling to believe it about our own father almost as much as I do. I tell her I’m done, that I don’t ever want to see him again, but Grace resolves to fix things, to talk to him, to bring our family back together again. Ever the diplomat.