by Julie Kenner
“I know it,” Blake said, not sure where this conversation was going, but suddenly more nervous about it than he used to be when his army colonel father would come home from a trip overseas and spend an hour grilling him on how well he’d taken care of his mother.
“She’s like a daughter to me, and I don’t want to see that spark in her fade. She’s been through hell twice already. Real hell, and then that crap you pulled on her.”
“With all due respect, she’s the one who broke up with me.” It was a ridiculous comeback and he knew it, but Tobias had got his defenses up.
“You want to know the truth? I don’t give a shit who dumped who. At the moment, all I care about is protecting this picture.”
“You won’t get any argument from me.”
“Good. Because I’ve been talking with the publicity folks over at the studio, and they want to turn this thing around.”
“This thing?”
Tobias shot him a sideways look. “Whatever you may have heard, all PR is not created equal. Your breakup’s going to affect our bottom line. Folks want to see a movie starring a couple in love. A movie starring a couple at each other’s throats? Not so much. Gossip may go up, but breakups don’t sell tickets. I’ve seen it happen to lesser couples than you two.”
“I’d love to help you out there, Toby, but let me state the obvious. We are broken up.”
“I never was good with the details, kid. I’m a big-picture man, myself. And the picture I see is filled with happiness and joy. You get what I’m talking about? I want every rag in this city talking about the chemistry between you two. How you made up, and now it’s hotter than ever. We need to do everything to make sure that you two are the golden couple.”
“And this all because of the box office? You’re just looking out for the bottom line? This isn’t about Devi at all?”
Tobias met and matched his gaze, but didn’t answer the question. He started to walk away, then turned back. “I’ll say this much. You do anything else to hurt her, and you’re going to answer to me. You understand?”
“I’d never do anything to hurt her.”
“Blake, you already have. What you need to do now is make it right.”
“I know.” The only problem was, he didn’t know how.
Chapter 8
“So you really mean it?” I ask for the eight-hundred-and seventy-five-millionth time. “I can handle it, right?” There’s a lot of things we could be talking about. At the moment, though, I’m focused on tomorrow’s scenes with Blake. Because after the way my heart skittered in my chest upon seeing him today, I’m more than a little nervous about working with the man.
Lindy signals for the check, but ignores me. I skim my fingers around the rim of my glass and try my best not to scream. The Beverly Wilshire is posh. Primal scream therapy really isn’t welcome here.
The bartender slides the check in front of us, and I make a grab for it. Lindy gets it first, but I manage to snag it between my thumb and forefinger. We’re locked in a desperate tug-of war to see who gets to fork over forty-two dollars.
“You’re ignoring my question,” I accuse.
“Um, yeah,” she says. “Duh.”
“Fine,” I say, letting go of the bill. “You pay.”
She snaps the paper toward her and pulls out her wallet, completely unperturbed. “I’ve already answered you. At least nine times at last count.”
“Do me a favor and answer me again. Just one more time,” I plead. “It’s the neurotic actress in me. I need constant reassurance.” I also need food, but I’m not going to touch the bowl of nuts sitting just six inches away from me. Too many calories. Too much salt. My trainer would have a fit.
What the hell. I snag a handful and pop them into my mouth before I can change my mind.
I close my eyes, reveling in my little corner of cashew heaven. When I open them, I see Lindy grinning at me. “Protein,” I say.
“Uh-huh.”
“Answer my question,” I demand, but she just smiles. I’m about to press the point when my cell phone rings. I snatch it up, check the caller ID, then ignore it.
“Who is it?”
“Larry,” I say, referring to my agent. “He’s calling about the North by Northwest thing. I just know it.”
“So just tell him you don’t want to do it.”
“I should,” I say. “But I’m still waffling.”
I’ve been offered the lead in a big-budget remake of that famous Hitchcock film. Apparently the producers think I’d be great in the Eva Marie Saint role. I think it’s a sin to mess with Hitch. I would have assumed that after the whole Gus Van Sant psychosis, everyone knew that.
At the same time, though, it is a big part. And Larry thinks that since my star is on the rise again with Givenchy, we need to jump on the role.
He’s probably right, but my head hasn’t managed to convince my heart. Which is why I now tuck my phone back into my purse, ignoring the chirp that signals that he’s now left a voice mail.
“So,” I say to Lindy. “Where were we?”
“Time to shop,” she says brightly, completely ignoring the fact that five seconds ago I was elbow deep in angst. Then she heads out of the bar and into the ornate lobby.
I sigh, then trot behind her, aiming needle-like glares at the back of her neck. I played a superhero two movies ago, and I had the power to force the truth out of my enemies with a single glance. That kind of power would come in real handy right about now.
The doorman holds the door open for us, and we step out into a balmy Los Angeles afternoon. The hotel opens onto Wilshire Boulevard, just steps from where that street intersects the fabulous Rodeo Drive.
I rummage in my purse for my sunglasses, then slip them on. Lindy does the same. We stand there for a moment. I don’t know about Lindy, but I’m taking stock. Because right in front of us is a shopper’s nirvana. “Shall we skip Via Rodeo?” I ask, referring to the ostentatious new walking street. Relatively new, anyway. And, in my opinion, tacky.
You reach Via Rodeo by climbing a set of stairs that rise from Wilshire. Then the road curves around until it meets up with Rodeo Drive proper more or less at Dalton Way. It’s a nice piece of real estate—and home to some of the ritziest stores on the planet—but I happen to like what I call the “old” part of Rodeo Drive best. And the stores along Rodeo aren’t slouches by any means. Tiffany’s (technically on Rodeo and Via Rodeo), Harry Winston, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana. You get the picture. And, of course, there’s Prada. Which, to my way of thinking, is the ultimate Beverly Hills destination.
Since Lindy knows my personal agenda well, she doesn’t argue. We walk the fifty or so yards to the crosswalk, then wait for the light to change. (Always wait for the light in Los Angeles. We’re a car culture here. Pedestrians are only good for target practice.)
I’m itching to start shopping. Although my bank account runneth over, I rarely buy anything on these outings (well, except at Prada, but that’s because of my own personal weakness), but I’m a die-hard window shopper.
The light changes, and we cross with the rest of the throng, a combination of locals and tourists. A few do a double take when they see me, but most are oblivious. I look cute, but compared to most of the shoppers, I’m hardly dressed to the nines. And I scrubbed off my makeup before I left the set. Hard-core fans and paparazzi will know me on sight. Everyone else, though? To them, I’m just another face in the crowd.
I know it’s not cool to be in love with your town, but I really do love Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills most of all. I mean, there’s an island of tall trees right in the center of Wilshire. Clearly, this is a town concerned about aesthetics.
We reach the other side, and Lindy stops dead, making me (and a dozen or so shoppers) almost stumble over her. “What the—”
“Here,” she says, taking me by the arm. She turns us around so that we’re facing Wilshire again, right back the way we came.
“Hey! We haven’t even shopped yet.”
It’s a professional-looking sign, printed on thick metal and firmly attached with screws. In Beverly Hills, it seems, even the grafitti has style.
I’ll admit the thing amuses me, but I manage to keep a straight face. “And you’re showing me this because…?”
“You’re panicking,” she says, as tourists flow around us. “And you don’t need to be.” She turns around, takes my arm, and starts walking up Rodeo. For a moment, I walk beside her in confused silence. And then I realize: she’s talking about tomorrow’s scenes with Blake.
“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
“I’m a hard-nosed bitch lawyer,” she says with a perfect deadpan. “I don’t do touchy-feely.”
“Yeah,” I say, hiding a smile. “I noticed.”
The truth is, just by reassuring me, she is doing touchy-feely. She knows how weird I get about my acting. Couple that with my general neurosis about Blake, and I’m a walking time bomb.
She hooks her arm through mine and gives me a friendly squeeze. “Dev, sweetie, all you need to nail a scene is an actor to play against that you trust. You may not trust him in a relationship anymore, but I know you trust him professionally. Blake’s a good guy. He’s solid. And you two are going to sizzle on the screen.”
I want to press her for more, but I don’t. Because she’s right. I do trust Blake. Or at least, I did. Before Blake, I’d never truly had a real, serious relationship with a man. It was just too hard getting past all the celebrity stuff. I love my life—don’t get me wrong—but finding the time for a relationship was just as hard as finding a guy who wasn’t either jealous or awed by my money and fame. I’d been burned a couple of times early on, and by the time I hit twenty-two, I realized there just weren’t that many men out there that I could put my faith into.
After the attack, I didn’t even try to date. I was nervous and jittery around everyone, but men especially. Blake, though…Well, somehow he eased in through the cracks in my heart. Slowly at first, and then so much that I let down my defenses. He was there. It felt right. And I truly believed that I had finally found a man who truly loved me. A man who could soothe my fears and share my life. A man I could trust with my heart.
I was wrong, though, and that miscalculation was one of the reasons it hurt so bad when he betrayed me on television. But even now, I know that I can work with him. I might hate him, but I can definitely work with him.
“You’re right,” I say. “But I still feel…I don’t know. Antsy.”
She looks at me appraisingly. “Is it the scene? Coming home and finding a stranger in your apartment?”
“You sound like Mac,” I say. “She said pretty much the same thing earlier today.”
“Maybe we’re right.”
“Maybe…” I trail off with a shrug. “At any rate, whatever the reason, I am nervous about it. So I guess it’s good that Andy’s coming over tonight to rehearse.”
“To the house?” Her brows rise a bit with the question.
“Yes,” I say, feigning casualness. I know she’s not fooled, though. Lindy knows me better than anyone, so she knows just how few people I’ve opened myself to since the attack. I’ve had like zero new friends, so inviting Andy over is a big step.
Blake, actually, is the only new person in the last few years who has squeezed through my walls. And look how that turned out. I’d opened my heart to him—shared things I’d never shared with anyone else. I’d believed it was for real and for forever. And then he’d gone and twisted the knife.
Lindy flashes me an understanding smile, then hooks her arm through mine and tugs me along. “Come on, my insecure friend. Let’s go spend money.”
Since that sounds like a truly fabulous idea, I walk with her in silence for a good ten seconds. But this whole invite-someone-over thing is now on my mind, and after a few moments I can’t take it any longer. I pause in front of Tiffany’s extravagant windows. “I didn’t screw up or anything by inviting him over, did I?”
She smacks me in the arm with her purse, and that shuts me up. “Oh, honey. He’s a working member of the team. That’s why you invited him over in the first place. He’s not Janus. You know that.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.”
“Besides, Andy probably understands what you’re going through better than anyone. I mean, wasn’t he stalked himself? Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Sort of,” I said. “He got sucked into the game as a protector.”
“Explain that to me again? I still don’t get this whole Play.Survive.Win thing.” Considering that she has an IQ high enough to be the gross national product of an emerging nation, I don’t believe her. But I do appreciate what she’s doing. So I humor her and give her the rundown of the game, explaining about the target, protector, and assassin roles.
“And that’s just the structure,” I continue. “It’s the actual scavenger-hunt part of the game that makes it really cool.”
“That’s right. I remember from the script you let me read. The target has to follow clues around the city.”
“Exactly,” I say. “But the really neat part is that each of the clues is based on a profile that the player fills out the first time they play the game. I think some early players lied—I mean, who doesn’t in cyberspace?—but later folks realized that the clues keyed off their interests.”
“So doctors would have medical lingo, and attorneys would have legal clues to follow?”
“Exactly,” I say. “And after people started putting down the truth, the game’s popularity grew even more. The guy who invented it became hugely rich. Scary rich.”
“What’s he doing now? Does he have any ideas about who started playing the game in the real world?”
“Nope,” I say. “He’s dead.” Archibald Grimaldi had started out a poor, abused kid who’d been failed by the system. He’d climbed out of the muck, though, and made a fortune at a very young age by inventing and marketing PSW. None of that money did him any good in the end, though. He disappeared one night, sucked into the sea. Finis. Game over. For Grimaldi, at least, but not for the millions of players around the globe who kept pumping energy into the PSW machine.
“How sad,” Lindy says when I tell her all that.
“I know. Very.”
“You played once, didn’t you?” she asks. “In real life, I mean?”
“Once,” I admit. “Lost right off the bat.”
“I can’t even win at Spider Solitaire. PSW sounds like it’s way out of my league.”
“Mine, too.”
“But back to Andy,” she says, twisting the conversation back to where we started.
“He was sucked in as a protector,” I say.
“But something happened,” she prompts. I can’t remember if I’ve told her the whole story or not, but she definitely knows where we’re heading.
“Andy took a bullet trying to save his target, but it didn’t matter. In the end the assassin killed the target, and Andy…” I trail off with a shrug. Because what can I say?
“Wow,” Lindy says.
“Exactly.”
“He must be a mess.”
“I think he’s dealt with it pretty well,” I say, feeling the need to stick up for him. “He was in an impossible situation, and he did his damnedest to keep the guy alive. And once it was over, he found Mel, and now they’re doing whatever they can to help other folks who get caught up in the game.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mel used the money she won by surviving the game to fund a kind of project. She and Stryker and
some other folks who survived now visit computer gaming conventions and post on bulletin boards and generally do all sorts of investigation to try to find other people who’ve played and lived to tell about it.”
I shudder a little. The whole thing just sounds too horrible. Getting caught up in some maniac’s version of a good time. I mean, how terrifying is that? (Actually, considering I’d gotten caught up in Janus’s version of a good time, I suppose I could answer that. And the answer is: way terrifying.)
“So, a lot of people must survive, right? You said she’s got other people helping her?”
I lift a shoulder. “I don’t think so. Last I heard there was just Andy and two others. Jennifer Crane and her fiancé, an FBI agent named Devlin Brady.”
“Jennifer,” Lindy says, her forehead scrunching up. “Why is that familiar?”
“Because you read the script,” I say. “She’s my roommate. Or Mel’s roommate.”
“Oh, right,” she says. “So is the movie all part of Mel’s grand plan? To get the word out, I mean?”
“Apparently,” I say. “Andy’s the one who’s actually been shepherding the film rights through, though. I guess he convinced Mel that getting her story out there and clueing the public in to what’s been going on would not only bring more players out of the woodwork, but also might put a stop to the whole thing.”
“Shine a bright light on the fungus and kill it,” Lindy says.
“That’s one way of putting it,” I say, as we start walking again.
“So do you feel better?” she asks after a moment.
I stop and squint, because I don’t know what we’re talking about. “About what?”
She just laughs. “You’re so predictable! Not five minutes ago, you were totally second-guessing yourself for inviting Andy over. You need to stop that. You do it all the time.”
“I do not,” I say, but that’s a big fat lie. I do. I always have, but it got worse after the attack. And doubly worse after the breakup.
“You told me yourself you did it today,” she argues. “Kicked Blake out of your trailer and then raced after him to do the interview yourself.”