She started to type: “Are you going to go back to Kentucky and” …
But then she deleted it. The thought of him driving to her hometown to try to find a little league ball cap made her a bit sick to her stomach. Instead, she typed: “And make it a pink hat.”
Jack responded: “A pink BLUE Bells cap? Do they even make those?!”
Gia typed: “If you really cared, you’d find a way.”
She looked up and saw the boxy, silver Prius she was waiting for from Uber. Gia opened the door and stepped out trying to not catch her dress in the door.
Gia looked down and realized she still had messages up to Jack the Liker’s private message thread. He had not responded again. Gia typed, “JK HAHA”, before she shut off the phone and returned it to her clutch.
***
She climbed into the passenger’s seat fighting her dress in with her before getting the door closed. The driver was an incredibly skinny girl with auburn hair tied up in a pony tail. She had horn rim glasses. She looked so comfortable in athletic shorts and a tee shirt. Gia was jealous.
The girl said, “The parking lot by the Stinson Bodega, right?”
Gia had to think. “Um, yes, that’s it. Thank you.”
As she girl drove, she said, “I like your dress. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Gia expected the girl to ask where she was going dressed up so oddly. As they made the first turn, Gia guessed that the Stinson Bodega parking lot was all the explanation that was needed; like she might be shopping in her Friday Night Bodega Corset or something. It was tough to stand out as weird in Los Angeles.
Gia was kind of sad to think the girl didn’t recognize her.
Gia shifted in her seat and tried to smooth her dress down again. She was having trouble breathing the way her stomach was bent in the seat against her ribs. This was not a dress and corset combination that was designed for hopping into an Uber.
They pulled into the parking lot that was adjacent to the bodega, but not really for it. The lot was empty with several tufts of grass breaking through the pavement around clusters of sand. The outline of the foundation for whatever building had once used the lot could still be seen. There was no other evidence the place had ever existed. Gia was only twenty-five, but she began to think of the vanished building as a symbol for what her career would be one day.
Gia climbed out being careful to keep her skirts down on her legs to hide any view of what was and wasn’t underneath. Her severe heels stabbed into the sand that coated the lot.
“Is this the right place?” the girl asked through the open door.
Gia leaned in. “Yes, they’ll be here soon or someone will murder me while I wait. How much do I owe you?”
The girl smiled. “You’ve already paid. It already hit my PayPal. We’re square.”
Gia nodded and closed the car door. As the hybrid backed out of the lot almost silently, Gia said, “Uber pays better than being the star of a movie these days.
As she stood in the middle of the vacant lot, she went to pull her phone out of her clutch. She wasn’t sure if she was going to call Don or check for a follow-up message from Jack. Before she found out, the limo pulled up to the curb at the edge of the lot and stopped. They didn’t even pull into the lot to let her in. She waited for a window to roll down and for Don to give her a cheesy line, but he didn’t give her that much.
Gia walked forward with as much grace as her heels and the sand would allow her. The driver stepped out and opened the door for her. As she crawled inside head first, she considered letting her dress ride up to give the driver a special tip and preview of the movie. The door closed behind her before she could follow through.
She sat down on the bench seat next to Don who had his phone up to his ear. His dark hair was slicked back and his deep, bronze tan was real from the beaches up the coast where he lived, but still managed to look fake on him.
He smiled and his blue eyes sparkled at her. She smiled back. He held up a finger to her and his eyes lost focus seeming to stare a thousand miles through the side of the limo which began to roll. He growled with the smile still pulled over his lips and bleached white teeth. “No. No. No! That is not what I said, so that is not what I want.”
His smile of happiness and his look of anger were almost identical. The focus of the eyes were the only difference she could see in either look.
Gia watched out her tinted window as he continued negotiating the set of a new picture – one she was not cast in. She did not expect to be the girlfriend cast in all his movies. She didn’t even really want to be that. Not being read for the part at all bothered her. If he had asked, she would have said yes. She always said yes. She couldn’t bring herself to turn down any role. Maybe it was good that Don didn’t ask then. It still bothered her though. He needed to pay her for the last gig before he got wrapped up in another one.
He brought the phone away from his face. As he started searching for another number, she asked, “Hey, should we talk about tonight?”
“I have one more call to make before we get there,” he said.
“Are we still announcing it?”
“Sure. Just let me do the talking. I’ve got this, baby.”
“We should talk about how it will all work at the other appearances,” she said putting her hand on his wrist to stop him scrolling through numbers.
He looked up, smiled, leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and shook her hand off his to go back to scrolling. “We will. Tonight’s a big night personally and professionally for both of us. I have to make this call while I’m hot and on people’s minds tonight. You and I can talk any time.”
She sniffed and looked away. “Why couldn’t you come all the way to me to pick me up?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be like that. You’ll be the star when we get out. The limo would have bottomed out and got stuck, if we pulled all the way up in there. It’s a rental.”
“No, I mean, why couldn’t you come by my place to pick me up.”
He shrugged. “Your neighborhood smells funny. I don’t want to make a loop and make us late either. Big night. If you moved in to my place, this would all be easier.”
She looked back toward him. “Do you mean that?”
“Sure. Whatever you want. I have to make this call though.”
He brought the phone back to his ear and he was back to telling what he didn’t mean and what he didn’t want to the person on the other end. When they pulled up to the theater, he found the time to end the call and they stepped out together.
***
Flashes did their job and strobed over the red carpet. Gia did her job and gave her practiced answers to questions where they fit. She made them sound more convincing than her Splatter Love dialogue ever did. She still blamed the editing for ruining her performance, but she did not bring that up in any of her answers. They asked about Gia and Don’s relationship and they gave their practiced coy looks to each other and their non-answer answer.
As they turned to go inside, she scanned the stands across the street which were full. Gia stared for a couple beats wondering if Don had paid to have people to fill out the crowd to make it look full. If he had money for that, then he needed to pay her.
She saw the pink hat in the crowd and she smiled. What if that really was Jack the Liker showing up with one moment to prepare after their conversation? She started to focus on the person wearing it just out of curiosity, but then locked her attention on the outline of blue bells stitched on the pink front. They were overlapped and turned at canted angles as if they were ringing just like on her little league uniform. That hat couldn’t exist. The outlines were like the foundation of the building from the parking lot where she waited for the limousine – it was the after image of a life that no longer existed. That hat couldn’t really exist.
She froze and tried to focus on the face, but the flashes from cameras kept washing the color out of the world. Don held her arm at the elbow and said, “W
e need to go in. Come on.”
She looked toward Don and back into the crowd in the stands across the street. The hat was lost like magic and she started to wonder if she had seen it at all. Gia turned and they swept inside.
They circled the room making nice with invited guests with money to invest and Don moved to the center with Gia as they waited for everyone to gather and the catering staff to pass out the flutes of Champaign.
Gia whispered, “Will I take your name?”
“Whatever you want,” he whispered back as he took two glasses from the tray and handed Gia one. “You might want to keep Gia Sorah at this point now that you are getting real attention and notice.”
She smiled. “Sure, as a screen name, but legally, I mean.”
“You want to be Gia Blackheart?” He smiled and looked away. “That’s not a bad screen name either. We could be a Hollywood, Horrorwood, power couple, huh?”
“Would I not be Gina Blanchard in real life though? Like on a marriage license?”
Don frowned. “You can be whoever you want, but I’m not using that name anywhere.”
Her real name, her Kentucky name as Don Blackheart aka Donald Blanchard called it, was Gina Sullivan. Sometimes she looked at her Hollywood name on posters, on boxes, or online and wondered if her real name wasn’t the better name in many different ways. She thought about outlines of buildings and bells.
Don rang one of his skull rings against his glass and everyone drifted to silence.
Ding Dong, the career is dead, she thought.
He looked good in his grey tuxedo with tails. He was smiling in a way that could have been happiness or anger, but since he was a center of attention, she assumed he was happy.
He gave his speech about the movie and then announced that he and Gia were engaged. The crowd made the noise of surprise and clapped. The flash from cameras increased exponentially and they kissed on cue just like he had directed.
She graciously took everyone’s congratulations on the way into the screening. Gia fought the temptation to ask each of them if they had been paid yet. The movie got laughs and gasps at all the right places. Gia cringed at her own dialogue. She was going to get blasted by critics. She could feel it. Love Splatter would have been a better title, she thought again.
They took more questions and congrats afterward and returned to the limo. A few of the dates of the important men were stumbling on their heels with the drunk walk of baby giraffes. Don gave them dirty looks as photographers took their pictures like he was surprised they were acting like that.
The couple gave one more wave and smile before disappearing inside the limo.
“You want to go back to my place?” he asked.
He was already scrolling for another number.
“I’ll need to go back to my apartment to pick up some things.”
He shook his head. “Just order what you need after we get back.”
She frowned. “What happened to whatever I wanted?”
She expected him to relent, but he said, “Just do what I said. I need to return these calls.”
She pulled his phone hand down away from his ear. “I’m not sitting around your place in this uncomfortable dress all night while you talk on the phone.”
He shook her hand off and said, “Stop it. This is important.”
“Just take me back to my place. All the way back. Not to an abandoned parking lot for me to wait on a stranger.”
“Fine. Tell the driver. I need to take this call.”
“You still need to pay me for the movie,” she said.
He froze. “Wow. Is that what this is about?”
“It’s about giving me more than a brush off between phone calls, Donald Branchard.”
He grimaced as if she had blown the onion smell into his face. “I’ll take you home, we’ll talk tomorrow, and I’ll do a proper night out on the town to celebrate our engagement.”
She smiled, but looked away, so he would think she was still angry. He saw it though. He said, “That’s my Gia. Put on a nice dress and heels for tomorrow.”
She frowned and shook her head.
***
He was still on the phone as the driver let her out. The limo pulled away and she sighed in the dark outside her building. It really did stink. The actual smell of her surroundings as well as the whole situation she found herself in.
Gia turned and scrolled through her messages seeing lots of notes from acquaintances about the engagement, but nothing about the movie. There was nothing from back home either. She punched in the code from muscle memory and went inside.
No photographers had bothered to follow her home.
Upstairs in her apartment, the garbage onion smell was still there. She realized that she had left her bedroom window open and she groaned. As Gia walked through the dark, unlacing the corset behind her and taking her first deep breath of the night, she froze staring at the shape of a man’s head in the open window.
She wanted to scream, but her throat felt tight and she couldn’t find her air. She was a scream queen with no scream left.
Gia turned on the light and saw it was only a hat sitting on the sill. It was the pink hat with the outline of the blue bells on the front. It was the hat that couldn’t exist. She almost wished it had really been a person instead of this.
“Hello?” she called.
The apartment was tomb silent except for distance traffic noise drifting in the window on the cool night onion air. She finally made herself walk forward and picked up the hat. It felt new like it had just been made. She brought it to her face and smelled the inside for sweat. All she could smell was the onion odor that was everywhere now.
She closed the window and knew that if this was one of her movies, he would already be inside and waiting on her. She would need to check all the closets before she went to bed. Gia wasn’t sure what she would do once she found someone though.
Not someone, she thought, Jack the Liker and the magic hat maker.
She traced the blue bells with her finger. It was the foundation for a life that wasn’t there anymore – her Kentucky life. It would be the outline for her career soon.
Gia moved the hat farther away from her face even though she still held the thing. She whispered. “Not possible.”
She still held the hat by its brim as she pulled out her phone. As she did, she intended to call Don to come back and get her, but then she realized she would never get through his string of calls. He would assume she was calling to fight and not return her call until morning. She thought about calling the police like any sane woman would do, but then, she opened Jack’s message thread.
He had given one more response. It was longer than the screen would allow and she had to scroll as she read it: “I found the hat. I swear they had one on the wall in the store. After I bought it, I thought about how weird it would be if you actually saw me. I left early from the premier and drove by your place. You have location on for your Periscope videos. You might want to turn that off. I gave the hat a toss toward your window as a joke, but then it landed on the sill. I freaked out and almost looked for a ladder, but then thought I had already crossed all of the lines as it was. I swear I am not hiding in a closet, although I guess that is exactly what a dude that hides in closets would say. I swear I’m the harmless kind of creepy. I’ll go away and leave you alone both virtually and in the real world. Hope you enjoy the weird engagement gift and congratulations on the movie. I was going to pirate it, but I decided to preorder the Blue Ray, so you will get your cut like you deserve. Sorry I’m so weird. – Jack the Liker.”
She looked up and out across her bedroom. “Jack?”
Her voice echoed and rang off the metal in the apartment coming back to her empty.
“Like ringing bells,” she added and then shivered.
Jack the Stalker was the only one that congratulated her on the movie. He was also the only one that bought her a present tonight including her own director/fiancé. He might be the only one in
the world that gave a damn whether Gia got paid at all.
“The movie is already up for preorder?” Gia shook her head.
She tapped the message to give a reply. Her fingers hovered over the keypad on her screen as she considered the oddity of it all. She typed: “That’s okay. You don’t have to vanish. Cool gift. We all get creepy sometimes. Splatter Love, Gia.”
After she hit send, she still considered calling someone. Gia set her phone and clutch aside. She clawed her way out of her corset and pulled her dress over her head and cast it all onto the floor.
Gia lifted her breasts and let the tepid air of the apartment dry out the sweat. The skin around her stomach and sides was a map of red and purple creases leading to some magical, alien land. She was sure her back looked the same way. She needed someone to give her a rub down, but she was alone – she assumed.
Choosing Hearts - The Fighter's Passion (Gritty, Explicit Romance Novel) (A Lusty Stand Alone Story) Page 15