by Jane Galaxy
Playing an omniscient levitating space conqueror named Morganna on a seven-movie contract with Card One did seem like a logical progression on that theme.
Hart wasn’t much for public life, which meant she didn’t exist outside her roles—she didn’t goof around playing beer pong on late-night talk shows or show off her dancing and rapping skills in Hall H. Any social media associated with her were parody accounts. It had the effect of dampening media attention while simultaneously turning her into an interesting enigma when it came time for interviews or press rounds. Jax had never seen pictures of Joanna leaving her house or walking around New York to get coffee.
Which was why it was so strange that Vanessa had seven pictures of her sitting on a stoop outside a brownstone.
Jax had to press in with his abs for a moment at the rushing memory of Reyes wrapped slick around him, clenching fistfuls of his hair. She hadn’t given a fuck about anything, had never opened her eyes to look at him or check herself in the mirror on the wall.
He thought back to the photographs, just the photographs. Six shots of Joanna with her arms wrapped around her knees on the steps, looking off into space. The lifestyle and fashion magazines would see it as an opportunity to deconstruct her outfit, speculate on the designers, suggest similar pieces and makeup and hair options for budget-conscious readers. They’d create some narrative about her yoga-leisure aesthetic, how maybe this was finally a sign that she was ready to take her place among A-listers and start hooking up with a series of men who were all, for some reason, named Aidan.
The last shot had been a close-up of Joanna’s face. She looked pensive and unsettled. No one would buy it. Faces shot on the street were for promotion, not insight. It wasn’t the kind of expression that would set up a bidding war between the supermarket tabloids—nobody wanted introspection while standing in line to buy rotisserie chicken and frozen peas.
Joanna’s shoe scraped against the pavement, and he had to look up to make sure they were next to the right trailer.
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” said Jax. “For a while, anyway.”
“Jax! Joanna!”
Someone was rounding a corner and headed toward them through the asphalt lot.
“Jesus. Come on.” Jax tugged on Joanna’s elbow.
“Shouldn’t we—”
“Yeah, I can see where you might think that’s the right thing to do,” said Jax, yanking open the trailer door. “But trust me, this is an easier option.” He stepped back and turned to gesture Joanna inside, but she froze at the bottom of the stairs with her mouth open in shock.
There was the plush bench that was always directly across from the doorway, and there was a white sheepskin rug on top of that, and on top of that was the curve of Georgina Ashlar’s tanned naked ass cheeks. The woman in question raised herself up onto her elbows, and had the (hilarious, Jax thought) audacity to actually look angry.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Georgina cried.
“You dyed your hair,” said Jax, who couldn’t think of a better response. Emerald and lavender, he thought.
“Close the goddamn door!”
“Jax, maybe—”
“What are you doing here?” Jax could hear the anger in his voice more than he felt it. “I mean, why would you be here?”
“Maybe I should—okay,” said Joanna.
“CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR, JAX!” Georgina finally shrieked and sat up with the rug held to her chest.
“Georgina?”
Jax turned, scraping his shoes on the ground, to find Holland Matthews standing next to him with his head tilted to the side.
Holland looked at Jax, and Jax turned to look at Georgina, who was staring at both of them with an odd expression.
“Babe, this isn’t my trailer.”
“I’m—I’ll see you later, Jax,” he heard Joanna’s voice say.
“Georgina,” said Holland in a firmer voice, “This. Isn’t. My trailer.”
“I’m aware of that, Holland.” Georgina said this slowly and in a low voice. “Thank you for letting me know what is blindingly clear to all of us now.”
Holland jerked his chin in a sharp, curt gesture and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
“Okay, so does anyone want to explain this to me?” There was a long silence while he looked back and forth between them. “No one?”
“I think there was a problem with the call sheets this morning.” Jax could vaguely hear himself talking, like a video linkup that was glitching. What was he even doing? “I don’t think . . . I mean, it was a simple enough mistake.”
“He’s absolutely right, it’s a simple mistake, Holland.” Georgina seized on the cover too quickly, and Jax nearly rolled his eyes out of his head at the stupid obviousness.
Holland tilted his head again, unmistakably dropping any pretense at niceness or understanding, and Jax realized he’d never seen the guy actually angry before.
“So the call sheets got changed, and somehow that adds up to my girlfriend naked in your trailer.”
“Babe—”
“I guess I’m struggling with this, I’m just too dumb and am not getting something essential here, because,” he huffed a breath, “what it looks like is that neither of you thought I was supposed to be on set today, so you thought it would be a great idea to START SCREWING AROUND BEHIND MY BACK.”
Again, incriminating silence, and Holland made a noise that might have been a bitter laugh.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Ohhhh. I’m seeing it now. Okay.” He turned to his girlfriend. “Get dressed, Georgina.”
“Holland, if you’d just—”
He slammed the trailer door shut on her and turned to Jax.
“You are a fucking asshole, you know that?”
Jax put his hands up, palm out.
“Holland—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Jax shook his head helplessly.
“Bad childhood?”
“When my agent told me that Card One wanted me, I was excited. And then she told me you were signed, and I was thrilled to get to work with you.”
“Look, I know this doesn’t change anything, but. . . .” Jax sighed. “None of this was supposed to happen. It was an accident. She came onto me.”
“I still have to work with you after this. I have to put up with you for at least five more movies.” Matthews looked like he was actually grappling with this disgusting idea.
“Holland, I’m sorry.”
The trailer door swung open, and Georgina, in a thigh-length orange silk kimono, came down the steps. She opened her mouth.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Holland didn’t look at Georgina. “I don’t have any idea how to deal with this.”
“Fine, we can talk about it later.”
“You need to leave.”
Georgina motioned like she was thinking of crossing her arms over her chest, but seemed to realize it would just expose more skin, and thought better of it.
“I’m not leaving.”
“You need to leave, or I’m calling security.”
She sputtered and gestured at them.
“What are you gonna—”
“GO, GEORGINA!” Holland finally exploded.
“Okay,” she whispered. Jax felt her brush past him and could hear a truck backing up somewhere on the other side of the lot. God, he was tired.
“You are supposed to be the vet around here,” Holland said in a low voice. “Everyone looks up to you, everyone—not just the kids who get their parents to buy them movie tickets and tie-in toys. Everyone. But you’re just a fucking kid, out to get his dick wet.”
Jax stood perfectly still, and Holland went on.
“When are you going to grow up? I mean, is this all you want from life? You have no ambitions apart from fucking every actress who falls across your path.”
“Okay, you’ve made your point.”
“It’s like you don’t want to be taken seriously, like y
ou just want to pretend you’re Dirk Masterson, and that’s good enough. Do just enough, and then go back to being whatever the hell is left over.”
“Better than having no clue what’s going on right under my nose, I guess.” He didn’t mean that, he could feel his face growing hot and red with the untruth of it.
Jax watched Holland disappear down the row of outbuildings and thought that he’d never actually given a shit about what the guy thought, but there was something in it, like everything he’d never suspected about himself had been obvious to Holland Matthews all along. It was weird to think of himself inside-out—weirder than just organs and muscles, but walking around with the inner invisible things obvious and unprotected.
He turned; there was no one else around the back lot that he could see. The rows of trailers and lighting rigs stopped where a small hill with some trees began.
Jax wondered if any hidden paps had caught the moment.
Dirk Masterson leaned over and fought against the dry heaves making his stomach pop and jump. They passed, for a moment, and he started digging through a desk drawer to find an orange prescription bottle, clutching at it with shaking, fumbling hands and desperately willing it to open before swallowing the pills dry and wincing.
He really needed something to calm him down.
The video on his computer had ended at the moment that young Mark Fossa’s head had finally stopped rolling around on the floor and his polo-clad body had slumped forward. The bone blades on the modular robotic machine that Mark had designed to optimize surgical amputation procedures in war zones hadn’t stopped spinning, still captured in a blur on the last frame.
It had been a long fucking week.
He could bother to trace back the source of the video, see who had created and installed the ransomware on his machine to force him to watch it, all the way back to its source somewhere in Russia, likely.
Kanevsky. Or one of his colleagues. Hackers, or hired thugs. Government operatives.
Maybe it was possible to connect that information to Senator Gleason’s untimely death in a jetliner that had disappeared over waters near Madagascar, two hundred miles off course.
And maybe—just maybe—he’d get all that done before Dirk had to go back into interviews and answer questions from the FBI over how his company’s building had mysteriously exploded just ten minutes after he’d left to pick up his own dry cleaning, having told his admin assistant that he wanted to stretch his legs and get some sunshine.
A billionaire, picking up his own laundry. What a time to randomly decide to do his own chores.
Someone was getting closer to killing him, or at least making sure Dirk Masterson’s name and money would be wiped off the planet, disappeared and forgotten inside a maximum-security prison.
He stared at the last image of Mark Fossa.
No one knew where the kid had gone off to—he hadn’t been heard from for over a month since he’d taken vacation time to head to Budapest and “clear his head from the whirlwind of entrepreneurial success,” he’d said. Now he was . . . somewhere. In pieces. His parents could never find out any of this. No one could find out any of this.
He closed the lid to the laptop and glanced at his watch. The bank was open late tonight, and it would add to the list of the FBI agents’ questions, but they’d just have to spend the rest of their careers wondering. He needed to drain the accounts and leave tonight.
Leave now, and never come back.
Chapter Six
“MMKAY, YOU OWE Zaida a hundred for getting you in front of that bistro before anybody else knew Patrice Delmar would be there, and”—Claudia reached forward to flick her fingers along the laptop track pad—“Ricky, for the text about Adriana Peace being in the dairy section at Whole Foods.”
Vanessa held her sister’s arm still and readied the hypodermic needle between her fingertips.
“Breathe out. Which one is he again?”
“Handlebar mustache, white boy trying to prove something?”
The plunger on the hypo went down.
“You can just say grocery clerk, you know.”
“Yeah, you know about fifteen of those.”
“How much do I owe him?”
Claudia leaned toward the laptop again before Vanessa could pull out the needle. Vanessa sighed and gestured to the rest of the empty apartment in exasperation—her sister could be so oblivious sometimes, it was stupid. There’d be a worse bruise than usual, and Claudia would bitch about it, but there was no point going on about it now.
“I mean, it was a pretty standard setup, and I think you just got Adriana as she was checking out. How’d it sell?”
Vanessa finally extracted the needle and put it into the Sharps box, then leaned forward and squinted at the spreadsheet in front of them. The description line had acronyms and abbreviations to jumpstart her memory. Claudia was always more interested in people’s names and stories, talking about them like she knew them personally; for Vanessa it was all about the where and when.
“Movies Now was interested, but I think they’re sitting on it. Star Snoop picked it up—the net was $1,000.” She frowned. That was a bit high for a snapshot of an untested director running errands; maybe the editors were betting on something bad happening and holding it in reserve.
“A monkey!” Claudia said this in a weird accent, and Vanessa turned to give her a look. “I saw that the other day somewhere; British soldiers started calling £500 monkeys after they came home from India, where the 500 rupee bill had a monkey on it.”
“Five hundred pound sterling isn’t worth $1,000.”
“Yeah, which they would have been prepared for if their country didn’t have such a shitty tradition of racist imperialism.”
“I’m sure Great Britain rests easy knowing that you have a strong opinion about their decisions.”
“Hey, they know what they did.”
“This is why I wish you’d spend less time on Tumblr,” Vanessa said.
“So you’ll make what, $450 off that?”
“Less after taxes—”
“—your boss being the ur example of mediocre white middle-aged man—“
“So, standard cut, it’d be about $40 for Ricky.”
“Unless Star Snoop knows something you don’t, and some future issue sells out.”
“Ricky doesn’t get to ask me for more money if the tip turns out to be hot later, just like I don’t get to ask for more money if a tabloid sells better than expected,” Vanessa said, and stood to go find something to eat. “You want something before you have to go?”
Her sister waved a hand and turned her wheelchair back to the screen. “That medicine’s been making me nauseous.”
Vanessa took out the last bit of plastic-wrapped cheese. “More than usual?” Claudia had opened several tabs of gossip sites, though, and didn’t answer.
They’d always lived on the second floor of this building, which was lucky, in her opinion. When Claudia had a doctor’s appointment or was going to her support group, like today, Vanessa could carry her wheelchair, then her, down the stairs easily enough. Maybe she would have gotten used to more flights over the years if she’d had to.
You could get used to a lot of things when you had to. It was kind of like how treading water wasn’t really swimming, but it wasn’t yet drowning, either. You were exerting energy and waiting for something to happen, for someone or something to come rescue you. And in the meantime, you were just doing the best you could to rescue yourself.
Claudia’s health was hard to gauge from day to day. Lupus wasn’t fatal, but the degree of severity was in a constant state of flux. One day she’d be fine; the next she could barely function. There was always a kind of paranoia, like she hadn’t made the most of good days. More than once, Vanessa had been forced to stop her sister from pushing herself too hard on those better days so the fallout wouldn’t be even more debilitating.
With the rounds of daily shots and weekly visits at the hospital, her sister’s skin
was always recovering from injections, and sometimes the medications bubbled up underneath the skin, swelling and leaving her welted for weeks at a time.
And the butterfly-shaped rash across her cheeks and nose kept her indoors more often than not.
Still, she never complained, and preferred being busy, she said. Or distracted.
Four years ago, when Vanessa had come home after talking to Sam for the first time in front of the restaurant where Gabriella Zahn had posed, she hadn’t told Claudia that she was going to start working as a pap. What had seemed dynamic and useful out on the streets of Manhattan felt frivolous and shameful in their little apartment with Vanessa’s prints tacked up on the walls, the only decent furniture to sit on in the living room an old couch Papa had reupholstered as a wedding gift to Mama.
She’d kept it a secret, paying the bills when Claudia was asleep and relishing the feeling of getting to write checks from the bank knowing that she was doing the absolute best thing possible. Not just surviving, but thriving—or nearly. Not sinking as fast as before, anyway.
Everything eventually came out, though, when on a good day, Claudia had been helpful, opened all the mail, and seen the checking account deposits along with a letter from Queens CUNY confirming Vanessa’s deferment to another semester.
“What you don’t understand is how hard it is to be in charge of all this,” Vanessa had almost shouted, flapping her hands around at their dingy little apartment..
“What I don’t understand is why you’re out there doing God-knows-what just to make some money!”
“Isn’t that what everyone does?”
“Sure, if you want to be some mindless, soulless drone that only exists to get cash in exchange for years of your life. Vanessa, you can’t just leave college!”
“You aren’t listening to me! You haven’t even let me tell you where the money’s coming from!”
When she’d said it out loud, Claudia’s expression had made Vanessa’s anxiety and shame palpable, real and existing out in the world, instead of masked as energy and excitement inside the artificial bubble among the men at the press agency. Entertainment had that funny attachment to it. Get just close enough and it becomes the arches holding up the world; step away and realize it’s all fake and flimsy.