Use Somebody

by Beck Anderson

  I have an impatient brain who would like me to feed it a beer, so I give the bell a nice, hearty ring.

  “Jeremy, for crying out loud. Give them a minute to come out front.”

  “Why? There’s a bell on the counter. Pretty sure that means it’s there to be rung.”

  We stand for another second. Andy shifts his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. He’s probably starting to feel like a sitting duck. Too long in a lobby, he’s bound to get spotted.

  “Hello, we need to check in!” I yell. Andy throws an elbow.

  There’s a loud crash from the back room. It sounds like a big piece of metal.

  “MOTHER of PEARL!” Someone didn’t expect that crash. Someone who is a girl.

  I smile and raise an eyebrow. Now, I’m interested.

  She comes in the room backward, ass first. She’s dragging two metal lids, and one of those buffet dishes that they always have at weddings.

  It’s a nice ass. In jeans, faded and without any of that sparkly crap on the pockets.

  She hasn’t turned around yet when she speaks. “You didn’t hear that, did you?”

  I speak up before Andy can. “Every word.”

  She drops the lids and the dishes. “Guess I’m fired.” She turns around.

  I get a good look at her for the first time. Petite. Nice rack, nice-shaped hips. Blonde hair, but she’s dyed the ends dark brown. She looks straight at me. Big hazel eyes.

  I smile, hold her gaze. “Hi. You got fired? For what?”

  “Scratch that. Can I help you gentlemen?” She licks her lips and pastes on a fake smile.

  I wait. Here’s the part where she goes all ape-shit over Andy, finally looks at him and loses it. Then I listen to nine years of her reminding him of all the movies he’s been in (What? He was in Redcoats Rising? Oh my guh!).

  “We need to check in.” I say it. Andy’s just standing there.

  “Okay. Sorry again.” She just looks at me. “Have I seen you somewhere?”

  I stand a little taller. “What?”

  She’s still looking right at me. “Have we met before?”

  This is new. She must’ve noticed Andy. “I don’t think so. I’d remember someone who used that curse.”

  She casts her eyes down on her mess and shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m way off my game. I sliced my hand open this afternoon, helping a guest.” She holds up her left hand, bandaged around the palm. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Or talking to you. But you do look familiar. Let me check you in. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “It’s no problem. You’re human. I’m Jeremy. Jeremy King. But the room’s under Tucker Caldwell, I think.”

  She digs through a box full of receipts with keys attached, finds what she’s looking for, and takes a huge breath. She plucks a key out and looks up at me. “Here we are. You’re in The Residence, just follow the lighted path at the east end of the lot. Your friends are here already. You’re all taken care of, Mr. King.” This must be what her hospitality is supposed to look like.

  “Got that game face back on. Good on ya’, way to rally.” I smile again.

  The phone in front of her rings, and she answers it.

  “Front desk.” Someone tells her something that makes her frown. “No chafing dishes? Fine. No, I can put them away. Fine.” She hangs up and turns her attention to me again, pasting the smile back on her face. “Sorry for the interruption. If you gentlemen need anything else, let me know.”

  I consider a line, but nothing really good comes to me. “Just hoping your night improves.”

  She crinkles her brow. “I guess. Have a good night. Thanks for being understanding.”

  She turns around and kicks the chafing dish, the lids, kicks them back into the back room. As soon as she’s out of sight, the curses erupt again. “SCUM-SUCKING WEINER DOGS! FOR THE LOVE OF READING RAINBOW AND ALL THAT IS HOLY!”

  I take the key and turn around to pick up my bag. “Well, that was interesting.”

  Andy looks stunned. “She never even made eye contact with me.”

  “Oh, poor neglected movie star boy. Not every girl with a nice ass is going to fawn all over you.”

  “Excuse me?” She’s back at the front desk. She heard that last thing. She looks like she might punch me with that bandaged hand.

  “We were just leaving. My apologies.” I turn tail and get out of the lobby as fast as I can.

  But, but, she never once freaked out over Andy Pettigrew. Maybe there’s hope for me after all. After she gets past the wanting to punch me part.

  We get out the doors and carry our bags down the path the girl mentioned.

  I’m still thinking about her. “I didn’t see if she had a name tag. Did you see a name tag?”

  Andy looks at his phone. “What?”

  “The girl at the front desk. Did you see if she was wearing a name tag?”

  He shakes his head. “I was too busy watching the two of you.”

  “What do you mean?” I feel something clench deep in my gut. I ignore it.

  “The two of you, staring at each other. Batting eyelashes at each other, you smiling your pearly, toothy, sharky smile.”

  I wave a hand. “Whatever. What I noticed is her ample ass.”

  Andy smiles. “And she noticed, no, actually, heard you talking about it. Well done, my friend.”

  We are at the end of the pathway, and a large log lodge rises above us.

  “No worries. I’ll charm her. Plus, it was a compliment. I’d say a woman should be glad to know if a guy admires what she looks like.”

  Andy leads us up the stairs to the front door. “Jeremy King and charm are not two words that come up together very often.”

  The front door is open, and Todd is in the doorway. “Snake charming and Jeremy King, yes. Charming and Jeremy, no.”

  Todd. Fuck him. I’ve never liked him, and he always acts like because he was Andy’s friend first, he’s Andy’s best friend. Bullshit, I say. And the poser rocker thing? It’s old. He needs to own up to the fact that he and his smug face and self-referential band name (Oxford Comma? Yeah, you’re hilarious) are a flash in the pan that flashed two years ago.

  But my biggest complaint about Todd Ford, alleged best friend and supposed musician? When Andy was struggling with alcohol, Todd was clueless. He took Andy out to clubs, encouraged the drinking. Total dumb ass. Andy says that it was his own decision to go out with Todd back then, but let me tell you, I’m not a pro at letting things go. Having a long memory has served me well in my business. History in Hollywood can sink a movie deal in a heartbeat, so I make sure I know the history.

  I acknowledge him. “Todd.”

  He does the same. “Jeremy.”

  “Hey, brother.” Andy smiles wide as he comes up the stairs to the door.

  Todd gives Andy a “bro-hug”—you know, the handshake with one hand and the hug with the other. They part, and Todd takes Andy’s suitcase. Suck-up.

  I sigh and go inside to find my bedroom.

  “That was quite a sigh.” Tucker, Andy’s bodyguard, sits on the couch in the living room. There’s a huge fireplace, and river rock surrounds it and climbs to the vaulted ceiling. Tucker takes up the whole couch. He fits right in to the oversize décor. He’s a beast.

  “Could be a long week. Just sayin’.” I think back to the front desk and wonder if I’d get slapped if I went back over to talk to her.

  “A long week of choice fishing.” Andy drops his backpack by the stairs. “Tuck! Come here, you.”

  Tucker springs from the couch in a way that scares me—he’s too fast for a guy that big. I’ve seen him lay a guy out who came at Andy from the crowd at Cannes once. Don’t try that. Trust me.

  Now, though, he just hugs Andy. He claps him on the back, and I can hear it from over by the couch.

  I get down to the details. “Did you guys pick rooms?”

  Todd opens the fridge and plucks a beer out, cracks it. “Saved the one with the hot tub on the deck for Andy.”

/>   I swallow. “And I get?”

  Andy points at me. “Don’t start. There’s not a bad room in this place. You get the one next to mine.”

  I grab my bags and take them upstairs. He’s right. I swing my bedroom door wide and walk into a large room with a king-sized bed and wide windows facing the river. The river’s almost purple under the moonlight.

  I’m not outdoorsy. I live in LA. If I was the type to pine for the pines, I’d have shriveled up and died a long time ago, choked out by the smog.

  What do I love about LA? I love Indian food on Mondays, Thai Tuesdays, the Lakers and concerts at the Staples Center and driving my Tesla down the PCH. I like buying bespoke and eating at SoHo House.

  LA and I just fit. I wasn’t born there, but I should’ve been. I don’t even mind the traffic. It’s just an excuse to hang out in my car longer.

  But tonight, I decide to walk out into the great outdoors. I hope that some pissed-off grizzly bear isn’t looking for a snack.

  Most mornings we’re here I’ll have to drag Andy out for a run. He’s got a shoot coming—he’s going to have to fly straight to Toronto with me after our boys’ week. He needs to look lean and mean.

  In LA I lift three days and run two. Sometimes I hike in the hills on Sundays. Usually it’s when I’m wooing some actress. Especially if she likes dogs. Take her and her dogs on a hike early Sunday, buy her a coffee at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, get a treat for the dog, offer to make her breakfast at my house—have you ever hung out with a woman on a Sunday? It’s the non-date that gets you to scoring position faster than any come-on in a club will, I guarantee.

  Really, I doubt you’re a guy if you’re reading this, but if you are, sit at the feet of a master. I can tell you how to get a woman in bed. You tell me what she likes, I’ll tell you the way into her boudoir.

  Is she a Midwestern girl? I bet she loves football. Find out her favorite team, fly her to their stadium, invite her dad, get a meet and greet. Ka-ching. You will score.

  New Yorker? Carriage ride doesn’t cut it, my friend, and don’t try the cheap-ass last minute Broadway tickets thing unless you never want to get past a cozy hug. Do not pass go, do not collect her panties in the inside pocket of your suit jacket.

  No, you take her with you to ring the opening bell of Wall Street, and follow it with pancakes on the roof of a penthouse overlooking the Park, then let her sit in with you on a fitting session for New York Fashion Week. Make sure the designer fusses over her and signs a first-edition charmeuse scarf for her before you go.

  LA ladies love trips to surf school in Cabo for a quick weekend, sure to be followed by quickies on the corporate jet.

  I am good. Make an experience for the girl, make her feel special, make her feel like she’s the only one you’ve ever done something so thoughtful for, and you will have her where you want her. I like the little touch of cooking breakfast for her, preferably before I’ve had sex with her. Cooking after conquest is awkward.

  My favorite parting is to woo her, bed her in the afternoon, put her in a cab or on a plane when she’s got somewhere to go. Then I’m on set, busy-busy, off to a premiere on the other side of the world.

  They don’t usually feel abandoned or dumped. They usually feel like they’ve had this amazing experience. Kind of like a visit to Disneyland. You don’t live there. You just soak in the adventure and then jet back to your real life.

  That’s what the Jeremy King experience is like.

  Sure, I’ve done the long-term dating thing before. They tend to be either man-eating actresses or agent colleagues, and it doesn’t tend to go well. I do like the thrill of the chase with a tough case like that, but if we date for more than a few weeks, I get claustrophobic or she gets crazy. Either way it ends, and then she usually wants to bury me in the business world.

  There’s a half knock at my door, and Andy strolls in. “Well?”

  He wants my approval. One of the reasons I dig this guy. He still wants my approval, even though he could go get another agent and pay him handsomely to constantly voice approval for anything Andy might do.

  “First-rate, Andy. Still not sure how long I can take all the quiet and nature before I go stir-crazy.”

  He plops down on my bed, reclines. “There’s still TV, still us. Still poker games, where I intend to bankrupt you, by the way.”

  “Not a chance.” I unzip my suitcase and dig for the Cubans. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a beer and a cigar.”

  He’s about to answer when his phone buzzes, and he fishes it out of his pocket. “See you out on the porch for one of the cigars but not one of the beers, my ever-thoughtless friend.” He points to the phone. “I’ve got to take this—it’s Kelly.” He gets off the bed and takes three long strides out of my bedroom. “Hey, Kells. What’s up?”

  I find the cigars in my bag and stroll out on my deck to light up.

  I mentioned a drink again, in front of my friend the recovering alcoholic. I’m an ass.

  It probably would serve me right now to say that I don’t always intend to be an ass. Plenty of times I do, don’t get me wrong. Getting a rise out of someone, getting them off center, it’s a brilliant business tactic. God, get somebody steamed, and he shows you all of his cards. It really works. I can’t tell you how many deals I’ve completely scored extra packages or percentage points on the back end of the movie because I got someone so off-kilter he showed his hand.

  Sometimes the deal goes down in flames because of me and my ass-ish behavior, but more often than not, the way I act is to my advantage.

  But there are times when I’m not deliberately a dick. I just don’t think. I forget to be considerate. Is that redundant—not considering to be considerate?

  One time in college, a girl broke up with me because she was a vegetarian and I ordered a pepperoni pizza. It wasn’t the ordering of it that completely drove her over the edge—it was the part where I asked why she couldn’t just pick the pepperonis off. This was inconsiderate, apparently.

  Or the assistant who quit because I asked her to pick up a mega-pack of toilet paper when she asked what she could do on the way out to a big after-party for a client’s movie premiere. It was in Malibu, and hey, she asked, and hey, the house we’d rented was brand-new and didn’t have toilet paper, and I was already there, and if she wanted to be helpful but only in ways that she didn’t consider “demeaning,” she should have been clear about that in the phone call.

  I take people literally a lot of the time, and the rest of the time I am too goddamned busy to worry if what I say to you is going to hurt your feelings or not, or if I’ve thought about all the ins and outs of asking a person to do something.

  Yes, I will ask my assistant to go to the animal shelter to look for a client’s lost cat. I will tell a stylist to stop dressing my client like a streetwalker; I don’t give a shit what her “artistic sensibility” is. If I think the dailies are coming back on a movie and my star looks like he’s underwater because the color wash is so blue, I will say something.

  And I forget that Andy doesn’t drink anymore.

  I used to say “so shoot me” in regards to my bad memory/basic lack of consideration. You know, “I forgot that you just broke up with your partner of ten years when I asked if you and he wanted to come out to the after party with me. So shoot me.” Then a director told me once he’d take me up on that offer (you know, to shoot me) after the film wrapped. I reflected and decided I shouldn’t push the power of suggestion.

  I turn over the latest in my long string of forgetful moments as I light up a cigar and survey the river in front of me.

  It’s quiet. The evening is warm and still, no breeze. There aren’t trees along the shore line. Just scrubby sage and bushes at the water’s edge.

  Across the river, I spot movement. A moose picks its way down to the water. He moves slowly, in no particular hurry, it seems. I’ve never seen a moose in real life.

  I think to take a picture and curse my luck—my
phone’s inside on the bed. I look left and right, but no one else is outside on the deck.

  Some moments are meant just for you and your mind: no sharing, no telling. I guess this is one of them.

  I breathe in deeply as the moose slips into the river, then swims across. He takes his time, head bobbing up and down in the current through the deepest part. Soon, though, he’s back in shallow waters. He walks to the water’s edge on our side, nibbles the leaves off a shrub for a moment, and then climbs out and lopes away, disappearing into a stand of pine trees to the right of the lodge.

  “Wow.” I whisper it to myself.

  “I know, right?”

  I jump straight up. Where did that come from? I look down off the porch. Just below me, on a path between the house and the river, the girl from the front desk stands looking up at me. She has a fishing rod in one hand and a pack of cigarillos in the other.

  “Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Please don’t curse in front of me,” she says. She cranes her neck to look up at me. Too bad she’s wearing a regular t-shirt—another shirt and I’d have a glorious view of her cleavage.

  I lean over the railing to get a better look at her. “What? I seem to recall you yelling some interesting things at the main lodge.”

  “Yeah, but not one of them was a bad word. I’m trying to quit.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be treating me with the guest courtesy I witnessed at the front desk? You seem awfully casual for one of the help.”

  She tosses her head. “When you commented on my butt you lost your guest standing. Now you’re just another jack”—she leaves off. “Crud. See? You almost made me cuss.”

  “You’re gonna be fun.” I can feel my interest in her rising, so to speak. “Come up and have a drink with me.”

  “You don’t even know my name. Besides, I’m headed down to fish.” She holds the rod up as proof.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Macy.”

  “Come up and have a drink with me, Macy.” She’s petite, but those luscious curves, they beg to be ridden. I could have some serious fun with this one.