by Tatum West
He reaches up, pulling a small white card from an elastic band around the sun visor. He hands the card to me.
“My firm specializes in assisting celebrities in resolving complicated personal, legal, and financial problems,” he says. “You should call your parents to discuss the audit and the reasons for it. Call me if you want to discuss things further. I can – at the very least – help you secure a better qualified security detail.”
He’s so businesslike; so professional. And he’s kind. He may be the first genuine gentleman I’ve met in this town.
“Would you like to come in? For a coffee, I mean?” I ask, feeling a vague recollection of nervousness come over me. It’s not a sensation I’m accustomed to. I’m a star. I can bring a thousand beautiful men here, and they’d be begging me to take them to bed.
Fox is different. I can’t entirely explain how.
Fox’s regards me carefully, seemingly considering my offer. He smiles awkwardly.
“How old are you?” he asks.
Not a question that’s ever come up before. He’s older than me, but so what?
“Old enough,” I reply, pulling my scarf over my shoulders and suddenly feeling just a bit smaller than I did ten minutes ago.
He smiles again, shaking his head.
“It’s tempting,” he says. “But not today.”
“It’s not like that—”
“I know,” he says, smiling. “Call me if you need help with your business,” he says, reaching past me and opening my door. “You seem like a talented young man. Don’t let yourself get taken advantage of.”
I step out of Fox’s car, feeling the bracing cool morning air on my skin. I just got sent off with a mild scolding and a pat on my head, I think, amused. He idles in the driveway until I see myself safely inside. He only pulls away when I wave him off from the side window.
Fox Lee… He wants me to call my parents. Who says that? My parents have no clue about my weird life here in LA. They have no clue what it is to be me.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe they should know. Maybe it would do me good – a world of good – if they knew a whole lot more about what I’m going through.
CHAPTER THREE
FOX
The morning sun seems menacingly bright, beaming into my office from over the Hollywood hills. I didn’t have a drop to drink last night, but I still feel hungover—likely because I didn’t make it to the gym. Nikki Rippon totally fucked over my morning routine. I even had to get coffee from the Au Bon Pain on the corner.
Pop stars. They’re all the same.
Except Nikki’s not the same, not at all. I smile as I think of him describing his little cottage in the hills—he said it was Art Deco. The scrollwork above his door frame suggests that it is indeed restored Art Deco. There’s even a bit of stained glass work in the upper windows, and the dark, rich wood suggests a bygone era. His personal style doesn’t quite suggest the desire for a place like that—a quiet retreat, homey and hidden.
I open my laptop to do a little preliminary research when my door swings wide open and a very short, very angry man barges into my view.
“Stephan, you’re back. I would have thought you’d go home to shower, but it seems you didn’t.” I give him a smile. I know he’s going to be unhappy with my somewhat unorthodox plan for Natalie Bethesda.
“What the hell were you thinking? Our firm needs a client like Natalie. She’s up and coming. She’s new and hot—and young. I don’t know if you were aware, Fox, but we’re slowly being ousted by the other firms in town. We haven’t landed a client under thirty in six months.”
“I’m well aware, Stephan. Maybe if you had been here to deal with your nightmare of a client—”
“Nightmare? She played Anne of Green Gables when she was sixteen. She’s in her prime years of talent. She has a stellar reputation and—”
“Let me explain something to you,” I say to Stephan. “Natalie Bethesda was blown out of her mind on coke and locked in a men’s toilet with bodyguards from somebody else’s detail. A few hours earlier, she was showing me her tits by the poolside and talking about how her stylist was conspiring against her. She’s a mental and physical wreck, and she’s currently incapable of making a rational decision.”
Stephan deflates, dropping into a chair on my credenza, arms crossed over his chest. “She’s what? She’s on coke?”
“Happens fast when they get the first big contract. With most of them anyway.” I glance back at my laptop to see Nikki Rippon’s charming face and his list of upcoming tour dates. If only Stephan would leave me to do my job, we might have a much more dynamic client in our future.
“Speaking of Natalie’s contract, she’s getting paid two million dollars for this upcoming picture, plus a percentage of box,” he protests. “You couldn’t have handled her with a little more consideration?”
I glare at Stephan. “If she doesn’t get clean, she won’t make the first day of the shoot. Get her in rehab. She might salvage her reputation and her career. And we might be able to help her. You know, like humans do for other humans. Or have you turned into a Hollywood cyborg in the past week you’ve been gone?”
“You’re getting corny in your old age, Fox.”
I shrug. “True enough. But that doesn’t change the question—what are we planning to do for this young starlet? She may have plenty of talent, but I’m not willing to sign her if she’s a liability to the firm.”
Stephan sighs. “I’m picking her parents up at the airport at noon,” he says. “They don’t believe any of this. They think we’re making it up, trying to steal from her.”
I lean back in my Herman Miller chair. “You leave them alone with her for twenty-four hours,” I say. “Alone with her dealer and his pharmacopeia, and they’ll beg you to intervene.”
“I hope you’re right,” Stephan says. “She’s a golden opportunity that you just pissed off.”
“You worry too much about short-term gains. We get Natalie clean, we support her through this, and we gain her loyalty. Don’t you think she deserves that? Don’t you think we do?”
“I suppose.” Stephan crosses his arms and tries to look stern, but he doesn’t quite pull it off.
“I’ve got some work to do if you’re done busting my balls over Miss Bethesda. Let me know how it turns out.”
Stephan stalks out of my office. A year from now, when Miss Bethesda is clean, sober, and commanding ten million dollars a picture, Stephan will thank me. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Before I was one third of Lee, Jackson and Bragg, I was a partner with Stewart, Bolivar, and Daniels. When I first joined them, I had Stephan’s job wrangling new clients. I’ve been here before. This isn’t my first rodeo. Miss Bethesda is the least of my concerns.
And Nikki Rippon is far more interesting a client than Natalie Bethesda could ever hope to be.
Google reveals a lot. For starters, Nikki runs his own website, interacting with fans and trolls alike. He engages dedicated, true believers and questionable characters with equal time, and he’s likely staying up all hours of the night maintaining his own page. This kid needs some guidance. He particularly needs some buffers on his interaction with the public.
A cursory investigation into his security detail reveals that four of the five of them have multiple assault charges. Two have known gang affiliations. One was charged with statutory rape. The charges were dismissed when the accuser failed to appear in court. The prosecutor claimed witness tampering. Nothing further came of it.
Are these the people Nikki wants to associate himself with? He doesn’t seem the type.
I have a look at Nikki’s personal life before becoming a star, and there’s very little on the record. He’s done a good job reinventing himself. I can’t find so much as a high school annual photograph. His IMDB bio says he’s from LA. His Wikipedia page claims he’s from Illinois. His own web page makes no mention of where he was born or where he grew up.
A quick call to my friend
Joe—a private investigator who works with our firm—reveals a little more. ‘Nikki Rippon’ is actually Leonardo Nicholas Rippon, twenty-six years old, originally of Abingdon, Virginia. He was prep school educated, a good student, and doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket on his record.
“How about a guy named Salvatore Domenico?” I ask Joe. “He’s Rippon’s manager. What’s his story?”
Joe pauses. “Now that’s a more interesting piece of the story. I’ll send you what I have on him.”
When I hang up the phone, I feel my heart beating a little faster. Nikki is one of those over-the-top stars who seems to the world like he’s indestructible, untouchable, removed from the drudgery of humanity. I’ve been in this business long enough to see something behind the glitz and glam—otherworldly exhaustion in his eyes, and a vulnerable, lost soul far beyond his years.
“Salvatore Domenico,” I say, clicking open the file as it appears in my inbox. “What have you got in store?”
There’s an old adage in the legal profession. It’s ‘never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.’ I suspected Domenico wasn’t as squeaky clean as his client, I just didn’t realize quite how dirty he was. I hope Nikki Rippon knows who he’s dealing with. Something tells me he has no idea and wouldn’t know what to do with the information if he found out.
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKKI
Y ou’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumble, opening the sliding glass door to the pool deck, stepping outside into the early morning sunrise.
Derek is sitting up straight on a deck chair with a semi-nude girl sitting on his lap and giggling. It’s pretty clear what they’ve been up to, and my deck chairs are expensive. I shudder to think what kind of stains might be left behind.
Two other nearly naked girls appear to be passed out, sleeping in lounge chairs by the poolside. Three guys—all from my security crew—are playing a drinking game with another scantily clad young woman at my patio table. Empty beer bottles sit on the concrete deck, waiting to be kicked over and turned into sharp shards of glass. There’s a whiskey bottle dropped in a planter by the door.
“This ain’t right!” I shout, causing the girl sitting on Derek’s lap to startle and nearly fall onto the patio. She’s topless, and avoids looking at me. “What the fuck are y’all thinking?”
Derek leaps to his feet, fumbling at the buckle of his pants as he stands. The guys at the table are still grunting and laughing, their eyes glazed and distant as they continue playing the repetitive drinking game. They barely give me a glance and continue to pour vodka into shot glasses with shaky hands.
“Yo! Boss!” Derek croons, leaving the startled girl straddling his pool chair. “What happened at the club? We looked all over for you. We called you. We finally came here looking for you. I let myself in and realized you were already home, tucked in asleep.”
“Why are you still here, then?” I ask, refusing to act as if this is all cool.
It’s so not cool.
“Aw man, the girls…” he hedges, grinning over his shoulder. “They’re fans. They wanted to meet you. We thought…”
“Go home, Derek. Go home and take everyone with you.”
My rage is manifest, but I don’t have the energy to give vent to it. I just want them gone. All of them.
“Hey, it’s all cool,” Derek says, putting his hand on my shoulder reassuringly. “We just thought…”
“I don’t care what you thought,” I interrupt, shrugging his hand away. “Go home. Now. Those pieces of shit you call a security team are drinking the vodka Bjork gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday, and they’ve probably jizzed all over the patio.”
Derek’s brow furrows. A spark of anger flares in his eyes.
“There’s no need to get your panties in a bunch,” he replies smugly. “What’s wrong? You on the rag or something?”
“Go home,” I repeat, my heart starting to beat just a little faster. “Just go. I’ll call you when I need you. I need to chill out alone for a while.”
Derek calls a cab. From my balcony overlooking the pool, I watch his crew huddle on the pool deck, talking in low voices. They wake the sleeping girls, tossing discarded clothing at them, and tell them to get dressed. I watch them leave, all of them crowding into the hired car and driving away. I let out a long, deep breath, and I realize that my own hands are shaking. Derek’s reaction to my request was… disgusting. Disrespectful. Frightening. He’s supposed to intimidate stalkers and aggressive fans, not me.
Something’s gone completely sideways in my life, and I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know how to straighten things out. I don’t even know who’s working for who anymore. Some days, Sal and Derek treat me like I’m staff, just here to do their bidding.
That guy last night—Fox—he told me to call my parents.
I’m twenty-six years old. I should be able to do this on my own. I shouldn’t bother my mom and dad with this. I want them to be proud of me, not worried about me. No, I think, shaking my head, they’re always worried about me. Nothing I can do, and nothing I hide from them, is ever going to change that.
I find my phone and check the time. It’s early here, but mid-morning back home. I dial my father’s number, feeling an unwanted tremor in my hand, an unwelcome tightness in my throat.
When he answers, just the sound of his voice tears me apart, bringing tears to my eyes.
“Hey Nick,” he says, his deep voice as smooth as good Irish Whiskey. “We were just talking about you. It’s so good to hear from you.”
It’s been nearly a month since I called, I think, with a pang.
“Hey Dad,” I say, my voice low and the very tiniest bit nervous. “How are you and Mom?”
He pauses, letting the quiet between my question and his response lengthen. My anxiety deepens inside that pause.
“What’s wrong, Nikki?” he asks. “I can hear it in your voice. What’s going on?”
There’s no pretending with my parents. They know me too well.
“Dad, everything is so fucked up. I don’t even know where to start.”
Dad gets Mom on the line, and in just a few minutes I’ve told them everything I know, which is precious little, and everything I fear, which is a lot more. I tell them about the drugs and the girls I woke up to this morning, and the way Derek behaved when I told him to go. I tell them about Sal freezing me out of the bank accounts; telling me not to worry; telling me he’ll pay for everything I need. I tell them about the freaky people trolling me online, and the weird guy who’s always hanging out at the gate outside the recording studio. I tell them about what happened at the club last night; the paparazzi and the person who called me his ‘husband.’ I tell them about Fox rescuing me, bringing me home.
“Who is Fox?” my mother asks, her tone soured with concern. “Did you know him before this incident outside the club?”
“No,” I admit. “He just appeared out of nowhere. I think he might have punched someone, trying to get the paps off me. It was the strangest thing.”
It’s only then that I remember Fox’s card in the back pocket of my jeans.
“He said he was a lawyer,” I say. “He gave me his card. Hang on.”
I fish through the clothes from the previous night and still find the card tucked away.
“His name’s Fox Lee,” I tell my parents. “It looks like he’s with a firm called Lee, Jackson and Bragg on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Swanky address. He was driving a Tesla, so he must be somebody.”
My mom laughs. “If a car is the measure of a man, then I never would have married your father. He drove a Pinto—did I ever tell you—”
“Hush up, Molly,” my dad says, but he’s laughing too. “You loved that car.”
“Did not—it was such a piece of shit—”
I smile. I’ve only heard that story about five hundred times.
In the background, I hear fingers tapping on a keyboard.
“I’m Googling him,” my fathe
r says.
“Who?” my mom asks.
“Fox Lee,” my dad sighs.
“Okay y’all, I can use Google too. I did graduate from high school—”
My dad cuts me off. “His firm specializes in working with celebrities. Audits, security. They make deals, break deals, protect clients. Looks like they’ve got a good website, at least. And an impressive client list, but some of these guys they work with are my age.”
“Old,” my mom says.
I start laughing and almost can’t catch my breath. “Well, he told me to call y’all. He must like old people.”
“He did?” my mom asks. “He told you to call us?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I told him you were a CPA.”
“Smart guy,” my father says, reading aloud from another web page he’s pulled up. “Founding partner with Lee, Jackson & Bragg, formerly with Stewart, Bolivar, and Daniels, where he represented prominent business and entertainment industry clients. Lee has done corporate litigation for Twenty-first Century Fox, Warner Brothers, LucasFilms, Paramount, FX, and CNN. Mr. Lee successfully handled the defense of the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles against the United States Department of Immigration; Rupert Murdoch’s private company against National Public Radio; actor George Clooney against criminal assault charges; the estate of Paul Newman in a false-advertising suit against the Lorillard Tobacco Company; and LucasFilms in the corporate litigation of its book negotiations for the Discworld film franchise.” Dad says, adding, “It just goes on and on like that. If he’s actually real, this is pretty impressive. Are you sure this is the guy you met?”
“I think so,” I say. “Is there a picture of him?”
My father describes the man on the web page. Without including descriptive terms like “hotter than the bayou in mid-July,” or “smooth, delicious silver fox,” he does an adequate job of describing the man who saved me.