Harder than Steel

by Jane Galaxy

  He liked her immensely.

  Not sexually—she was hot in a middle-aged-experienced-woman kind of way, always wearing leather jackets and knee-high boots. It worked for her. Cool mom or something. She had a teenage son who played soccer or lacrosse, and Adriana had to miss quite a few games, but she was on video call with the kid between rehearsals, yelling at him to do his homework and quit screwing around online, goddamnit.

  Jax was on the call sheet for a lot of film time but was warming to the idea of sticking around between his scenes—Adriana would be interesting to watch, and some of the costars might be fun, too. Sitting around the apartment was boring anyway. He hated not working on something.

  He texted Natalie to ask if he’d gotten any scripts lately.

  I gave you the marked-up one about Julius Caesar last week, was her reply. They wanted him for a cameo, which . . . boring. He waited to see if she had anything to add to that, but her message bubble went still.

  Whatcha up to he typed.

  Finishing your shopping. Natalie’s texts always included a period at the end. Jax made sure to never include punctuation, because he suspected it drove her nuts.

  He let loose a flurry of texts one right after another.

  Did you get condoms

  Be sure you get condoms

  Get all of them

  Natalie

  All of the shelf

  The condoms I mean

  Natalie’s message bubble showed a little pen scribbling away furiously for several minutes before she finally answered.

  If it’s on the list, it’s in the cart.

  Chuckling to himself, Jax slipped his phone into his pocket and turned to see if he had a chair.

  “Jax!”

  There was a talking dog in his way.

  “Hey, there he is,” Jax said as Holland went in for a bro-hug, complete with exactly four slaps on the back. Jax wondered if this was how he would die, in the arms of a dog-cobra mutant that smelled like a tumblr-approved boyfriend candle hug.

  “How great is it that we actually have a scene together this time?” Holland cried, pulling away and lifting his palms up, a huge blockbuster grin across his face. It occurred to Jax that Holland and Georgina went really well together; they had location-based names, and they never seemed to turn off. He imagined them exclaiming things in italics at each other constantly, loving and faving everything ever. The sandy blond was frozen in the same position and expression, and Jax realized he was actually waiting for an answer.

  “Awesome,” he offered, and Holland went into motion again, clapping a hand to Jax’s shoulder and steering him offstage.

  “I have to say, I’m really looking forward to us getting to work together, and really getting to know each other, you know?”

  There was another long pause.

  “Yeah! Yeah, same,” said Jax finally.

  “You’re not the same guy the tabloids paint you as, you know that?” Holland looked serious for a moment. “I can really tell, I think you’re being unfairly boxed into a role you never thought you’d play, and I don’t just mean movies. Do you ever feel that way?”

  Jax was taken genuinely aback for a moment and caught himself teetering between feeling exposed and oddly guilty. Holland didn’t seem like the introspective type, but maybe the relentless upbeat attitude allowed him insight into other people’s personalities that most in the industry weren’t willing to examine too carefully.

  “Well, I—”

  “Listen, let’s chat sometime, I think it would be great to spend time digging into what makes these characters tick. See you on the flip side!” Holland wandered off in the direction of some set electricians, immediately winning them over just by walking up. Georgina was standing by the chair with his name on it, and with a chill in his gut, Jax immediately went in search of craft services.

  “Why do you think they call it radicchio if the only thing it has in common with radishes is the color?” he asked the young woman minding the table.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied, and smiled, flattered by the warmth of his attention and famous face.

  “You look like an expert on food trends to me.” This set off a cascade of melodic laughter from her. She was a communications major, she said, and she had wanted to be a production assistant on a set somewhere, but working near the food was interesting, too. She was sweet and took to his mild flirting well—plus it was always nice to have a crafty on his side, someone who might remember that he hated chia seeds in a smoothie and who would have French toast waiting for him when he arrived on set.

  He worked hard, and Adriana was pleased, and it was a good day.

  Still, the strange feeling that had started when Holland Matthews had opened his mouth hadn’t fully gone away and popped back into his thoughts under a hail of flashbulbs when he pulled up in front of his apartment building later that night. Natalie very kindly hadn’t called with dire news of a tabloid exposé of him and Georgina, so he assumed that the Puerto Rican photographer, the paparazza with the tight body—Reyes, her name was Reyes— had actually appreciated having her life and bodily integrity preserved. She’d be back, though; anytime he was in New York, he saw her cute ass hovering above the back of a ten-speed, camera in one hand and dark freckles across her nose.

  It had always irritated him that she was there for so many of his fuck-ups. When he was back in LA, or out of the country, Jax could get away with shit. Like that . . . business with the Maserati. He frowned and pushed the thought away. But here in New York, Reyes was around every corner, catching him making weird faces, staring down the dresses of women who weren’t his date to the Met Ball. She was so consistent that he could always tell which photos were hers just from the way he was framed.

  The girl teased him, and they’d banter with each other, but the photographs always felt like she was commenting on him, more than paps usually did. The magazine writers added plenty of commentary to any other pap shots. Her pictures said something about him that others didn’t.

  Well, well, well. Here he is, America. You sure you want to drink this in?

  Jax blinked and realized he was still standing in front of his apartment door, keys in hand.

  Maybe he was still in shock from having a steel girder come down next to him. That was a thing, wasn’t it? Delayed reaction of a few days? After that whole episode, he’d gone on to film an interview with Malcolm Clark where they played Quarters in front of a studio audience, and it had been effortless to charm the room. They had all wanted to love him; it was a foregone conclusion. Sometimes it was like he could do no wrong except when he tried to do something good, and then nothing went right. Trying tended to ruin things for him.

  Either that, or Reyes just saw him differently.

  Jax unlocked his front door and stood in the dimmed entryway. His apartment was never fully dark, not with lights from skyscrapers and billboards shining hot pink and electric purple through the loft-style windows. He was headed for the bar with the phrase liquor-sugar-water-bitter running through his mind and wondering if there were any slices of lime in the fridge, when he ran smack into something tall and metallic-sounding right where there should have been nothing.

  “FUCK,” said Jax, holding his nose. He stomped over to flick on the lights and spun back around.

  There was a store shelf fixture sitting in his living room neatly stacked with boxes of condoms. It still had the price labels beneath each brand.

  “You know what,” began Jax when Natalie picked up the phone.

  “No, I don’t know what,” she said placidly. She was getting really good at this game. He needed to see about paying her more.

  “How did you convince them to give you the whole thing?” Changing tactics was the only way he was going to get her goat.

  “You know I have your credit card, right?”

  “‘Nautilus-shaped for a spiral curve that stimulates you both’…” he read off one of the boxes.

  “Also, that I pay you
r credit card bill from your bank account?”

  “I seem to recall something along those lines.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you—” she said, and he could hear clanking in the background like she was cooking. He took a breath.

  “Hey, do you think I’m being unfairly boxed into a role I never thought I’d play?”

  There was a long pause, followed by the banging of a wooden spoon against a bowl, and a TV murmuring in the background. He was interrupting her actual life. There was some kind of line between being his assistant and having a life of her own, but he’d never thought about it before.

  “I recognize that being your assistant involves unorthodox tasks.” Natalie’s voice had changed into the patient timbre of someone who wanted to be forthright but was reluctant to be fired for something as uncouth as honesty. “Perhaps greater questions should be directed toward. . . .”

  “A neutral third party?”

  “A qualified therapist, or possibly a really emotionally intelligent Magic 8-Ball? With a ghost in it or something? Like, just a disinterested party.”

  “You’re not interested in me?” Jax made his voice as quiet and heartbroken as he could sound about this.

  “Disinterested means—”

  “I know, I know, some word or whatever.”

  Natalie growled a little hrrm in reply.

  “I definitely appreciate this bonding moment of sarcasm we’ve shared. Hey, Nat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I do appreciate that you went out of your way to be sarcastic about this.” He shook the box of condoms still in his hand. “It really feels like we’re growing closer as a result of my sexual escapades.”

  “Check ‘em for expiration dates. Those shelves haven’t seen a dust rag since 1983.”

  She hung up. Good prank, good sarcasm levels, and now he felt more reassured than ever that there were limes in the fridge. Jax went over and started the G&T he’d been fantasizing about before when his phone rang again. He rolled his eyes and pressed the screen without looking at it.

  “Your concern for my health is admirable, but how do you know I’m not with someone already?”

  “Not your health I’m concerned about, Jax.”

  “Ah, my man Barry!” His agent was loud and impersonal, and had a difficult reputation among the studios, which came in handy. “News for me?”

  There was a moment where the phone fuzzed and Barry seemed to be giving a drink order to someone.

  “Yeah, news—I’m sorry to tell you, I was calling you earlier, the notes came back on that audition. You got passed over for the Charles Swann role in that Proust adaptation.” He pronounced it Prowst. “Jax, I gotta level with ya, these serious roles are going to British theater types—they’ve got that shit cornered. I mean, if you’re looking to move up, I’d start by locking down your tabloid exposure and doing a rebranding. But it’s gonna be a total rebranding, and that’s back to square zero. Charlotte’ll have to get you into some classes and smaller productions.” Barry’s voice didn’t sound enthusiastic about the idea of waiting for his next percentage fee.

  “Look, I know it’s called highbrow, but for someone like you, it’s a step down. If you’re really determined, call Charlotte in the morning and we’ll set up a lunch, get you into a . . . method class or something, make it less of a shock.”

  Or something. Jax ran his finger back and forth around the rim of the glass. Barry began yelling at someone on his end.

  “No, no hollandaise, for the love of CHRIST, is that even remotely vegan? No, I’m asking you, woman! Jax, you still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Look, being Dirk Masterson in real life is fantastic for you, literally, which makes it easy for people to want to watch you invent things and kick ass. It’s exceptional cross-promotion. Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire playboy, anyway?”

  Jax laughed.

  “Yeah, that’s the truth, isn’t it.”

  “You take care, and hey—good luck with Joanna, huh? That’ll be a box office panty-dropper!” And then Jax’s phone screen flashed on as the line went dead.

  He finished mixing the G&T, set it on a coffee table, and slumped back on the couch, all the brightness from Natalie’s call gone.

  Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire playboy? Who wouldn’t want to chase models around and fuck a costar’s girlfriend and make amazing and impossible pieces of technology? Who else could bankroll a team of superheroes and give his credit card to his assistant? Who didn’t want the motherly approval of a director he barely knew and was being hunted by Russian oligarchs and—

  God, it was exhausting trying to pick apart the pieces of his life. He’d even started responding when people addressed him as Dirk—first the production crew, now fans on the street asking for selfies. They’d introduced him as Dirk Masterson at Comic-Con, and he hadn’t even noticed until he was bored one night and rewatched the footage online. They’d never called him Jax Butler, not even once.

  There was no difference, anymore. For all intents and purposes, he was a billionaire playboy inventor wearing a mech skeleton and punching people into the moon. At least it was more interesting that way, even if it wasn’t that fun when it was just him, sitting in his apartment.

  Sometimes, in the past, Jax had tried to boil down the theme of his entire existence. He’d experimented with blaming it all on a missing mother and a father who’d alternatively ignored and beat the shit out of him, but it never felt real when he thought about it that way, like a line in a biography. It wasn’t interesting or outrageous, it was just . . . sad. Ordinary.

  Escape the ordinary. That had been on an LA billboard advertising a cruise ship line when he’d first come to town. He’d always had big plans to be more, something larger, something interesting to talk about at parties. Back when he was Henry, he’d had a role in a teen sex comedy series. He’d taken the job at the time because it was funny to think of it as his break. Each successive part had been a little broader, his credit a little bigger, until he was getting the “with Jax Butler as” next to his character’s name. It had been so easy, falling upward without any work. He was probably supposed to feel guilty about that.

  But so many people had been impressed with exactly what he’d done. He was a hero to frat boys, quoted by millions, even appearing on SNL as Prendergrast, the high school kid who could throw a killer party on a Tuesday night and get every girl in class to not only show up, but take her panties off.

  No one seemed to think that he needed to eventually be more. He’d reached the point, and that was enough. His first agent had been surprised when Jax wanted to audition for Steel Knight.

  Why did so many people want to tell him not to try any harder than he had? Were they afraid he’d truly fail if he made some bumbling attempt at being serious, cast them all down, ruin his entire team’s careers?

  His glass of gin and tonic clinked as the ice started melting, and Jax gave up on the idea of reaching forward to drink it before it was too diluted. And then felt shitty for giving up on something as simple as that and sat up.

  A vague shadow behind him flicked suddenly, and he had the impulse to run for the light switch panel across the room, like that would help. He stood and squinted out onto the fire escape.

  “Oh, for shit’s sake,” he said, then took a sip of the cocktail and watched while Reyes tried to unscramble her legs from underneath her.

  “With PitPatChat…”

  “With Sharespace…”

  “We’re going to change the world—”

  “Change the world—”

  “Change the world—”

  “With BearBait, we’re going to change the world, one team at a time. Thank you.”

  Dirk Masterson needed a drink. Every single kid at this conference was giving a talk about how their up-and-coming technology was going to change the world, and he only hoped it meant he could finally wake up with liquor already inside him. None of them managed to finish their
pitch without that line, like they were writing their college application letter again and were no more creative than the opening phrase “Ever since I could remember.”

  Some of them were worthwhile, and some could be groomed into a better social presentation, but ultimately, his motivation was only ever about the technology’s viability.

  Sure, it was a dick move, and yes, it had gotten him onto a gotcha-journalism-style show with a reporter ambushing him at one of these events.

  “Buy the company, fire the brain behind it—how do you sleep, Dirk Masterson?”

  He’d bought the company the journalist had worked for and fired the asshole.

  It wasn’t illegal in business practice, hell, it was barely even a dick move. Things like this happened in a fast-moving tech sector.

  Kids like these came and went and bounced back with an almost alarming frequency. They were young, they could get up, dust themselves off, and invent some new damn way for people in an office to chat. They always got over the methods he used to make money, and they would keep getting over it as long as he paid people off to avoid court. And then they’d go on to screw over somebody else, and the cycle would continue.

  At least they were learning it from him, and not somebody truly awful.

  He was headed to the private VC lounge for something less depressing than cold chicken sandwiches and potato chips when a man with a Caesar cut, stubble, and $40,000 shoes appeared at his side.

  “Not surprised to see you here,” the man said. Dirk was, however, surprised to see him.

  “Viktor, I didn’t know you graced these small-time conferences. Shouldn’t you be in a McMansionski in Sochi?” Viktor Kanevsky flashed his teeth, several of which were gold. It wasn’t a pleasant expression. “Let’s get you a drink.”

  The Russian stopped Dirk with a hand on his arm.

  “Maybe it’s not so good to freely associate with a middle-man when I don’t need one now.”

  “What do you mean?” Dirk murmured, keeping his expression nonchalant.