Nathaniel said, “She was mixed up with a bad crowd. Something like that was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Nathaniel,” Randi said, “I saw the pictures. Something like that . . . It is never bound to happen.”
“Sorry.”
Blake said, “I’ll tell you who I feel sorry for.”
“Who, Blakey?” said Jason.
“Furlong.”
Simone stared at him. “Why?”
“With a track record like that,” he said, “he’ll never get laid again.”
Everyone at the table laughed, except for Simone and Randi and Ila, who seemed to have a limited knowledge of English to begin with. Julie was laughing just as much as anyone else. Her gaze was riveted on Chris Hart, and she laughed exactly as hard as he did, her laughter dying down at the same time, as if she were following his lead in some new, complicated dance.
“Speaking of Furlong,” Hart said, “he’s uh . . . here, you know.”
“No fucking way.” Jason peered around the room.
Hart smiled. “Not here,” he said. “The hotel. He checked in under the name Cole Whitney. Isn’t that nuts? Guy wants to lie low, he checks into the damn Beverlido—and he makes the reservation under his own manager’s name!”
Simone’s eyes went wide.
Nathaniel said, “If he wanted to lie low, he could have stayed in my pad.”
“C’mon, Nathaniel,” said Caputo, “there are limits to downsizing.”
“I introduced him to Destiny,” Randi said. “I introduced him to . . .” She took a breath. “I am never introducing Keith Furlong to anyone again. Ever.”
Nathaniel put a hand over hers—a surprisingly personal gesture, Simone thought, for a young man and his older, female boss. “It is not your fault,” he said softly.
Randi yanked her hand away.
“Let’s find out what room he’s in,” said Blake. “Send him up a girl. A brave one.”
Caputo said, “You are awful, dude.”
Simone stood up. “Excuse me for a minute. I think I left my cell phone in the bathroom.” To the left of the narrow hallway where the restrooms were located stood a set of double doors that led into the hotel lobby. Simone bypassed the restrooms and pushed through those doors, moving through the lobby as fast as she could. As she walked, she punched a number into her cell.
“Hi, hon.”
“Kathy,” said Simone, “I need your advice. Furlong is staying at the Beverlido under an assumed name. I know the name, but not what floor he’s on, and I don’t necessarily want to talk to him, but I want the scoop fast. . . .” The elevator doors opened, and Simone hurried in.
“Ninth floor,” said Kathy.
“How do you know?”
“That’s the VIP floor. You won’t be able to access it without a key. Just hit floor eight, take the stairs up. You dressed cute, honey?”
Simone had on a sundress, platform sandals. “Yes! I actually am!” She pushed the button for the eighth floor.
“Awesome. Walk down the hallway like you know where you’re going and find yourself a maid. Chat her up, give her money, whatever it takes. Make that your new mantra: Maids know all.”
“Thanks, Kathy,” she said. A family was getting on the elevator with her, the baby crying, the mother cooing, the father searching for the key as the sullen teenage son slid in and hit floor eleven.
“Good luck,” Kathy said. “But don’t forget about Chrylan, okay? That’s our paychecks.”
“Don’t worry, Kathy, I won’t.” Simone hung up.
The doors started to close, but then a hand jammed itself between them and a man got on, keying the slot for the ninth floor. The doors finally closed, and then the man turned around and gave Simone a stare that could freeze lava.
Simone gulped, visibly.
The man was Neil Walker.
NINETEEN
“Walker.”
He gave her a curt nod. “Gleason.”
“Neil, I—”
“Wait. Let me save you the breath.” He raised his voice an octave. “ ‘I’m sooo sorry. Nigel put me up to it. I’m small and clueless and cute, and my mean old boss forced me to screw you royally.’ ”
He narrowed his eyes at her as the sullen teenage boy watched, rapt. “Save it, sweetheart. Those are stale groceries. I’m not buyin’ ’em, I’m not baggin’ ’em.”
Simone looked at him. “You really think I’m cute?”
“Not funny. So not in the vicinity of funny that I am ending the conversation now.”
The elevator stopped on eight. “Your floor,” he said.
“Neil . . .”
“Your. Floor.”
Simone exhaled. Slowly, she got out of the elevator. But as soon as the doors closed, she raced to the end of the hall, opened the stairwell door, and rushed up the stairs. When she opened that door, Walker was standing in front of it, talking calmly into his cell phone. “Hello, security? I’d like to report an intruder on the VIP floor.”
“Oh, now come on.” She grabbed the cell away from him. It wasn’t turned on. “Hilarious,” she said.
“You know what’s really hilarious? I knew about Furlong checking in here this morning. Remember when I said I was going to call you? Well, I was, and I was going to tell you that. I figured you were calling to tell me about Chrylan going to Swifty’s because Swifty’s manager had already told me they made a reservation. She’s a good friend, the manager.” He gave her a pointed look. “Unlike some people.”
She leveled her eyes at him. “You’re pretty high and mighty for someone who masqueraded as a security guard and threw me off a—”
“I didn’t know you then,” he said. “I was probably better off.”
“Neil, please—”
“Anyway, I’d already booked this room when you called. I figured, hey. I could get the Furlong scoop, you could talk to Chrylan, we could meet up in my room, share leads, order up some champagne and omelets on the Interloper’s tab, watch a little HBO . . .”
Simone looked at him, feeling a little wistful. That sounds like fun.
He shook his head. “Too bad you missed your chance.”
“Wait, we can still . . .”
“Oh, no, we can’t. My maid.”
“What?” said Simone.
“My maid.”
At the end of the hall, a small elderly woman in a uniform was pushing a cart of towels. “She’s mine,” said Simone. “I speak Spanish!”
Walker took off after her, with Simone close behind him, shouting, “Señora! Espera un momento!”
As they got closer, Simone said, “Hola. Me llamo Simone. ”
The maid gave her a blank stare.
Simone said, “English?”
She shook her head.
Walker said, “Ola. Muito prazer em conhecer. O meu nome e Neil.”
The woman’s face lit up. “Ola!”
Walker glanced at Simone. “Portuguese,” he said, and proceeded to have an animated five-minute conversation with the woman, the only word of which she understood being Furlong’s alias, “Cole.”
The woman then left, shaking Walker’s hand and giving him a grandmotherly peck on the cheek.
Simone studied him with her hands on her hips.
“Interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“Furlong’s pregnant. He’s checking into the Desert Ranch spa under the name of—”
“All right, all right.”
Walker whispered, “He’s coming up behind you.”
Simone was about to tell him to cut it out, she got the point, when she felt it—that heavy hand on her shoulder. She turned around. Keith Furlong was standing so close to her she could see the tiny errant hairs sprouting between his plucked eyebrows. “What the fuck are you doing on my floor?”
Walker said, “I see you guys know each other.”
Furlong was wearing a gray wife-beater and huge black shorts, and he had an added greasiness, as if he hadn’t showered in a fe
w days. A smell clung to him, a mixture of gin, hair gel, and stale sweat. “I told you,” he said, “I’m watching. I’ve been watching you. Now I know.”
“What do you know, Keith?” she said.
His face went pink, then purple. She saw beads of sweat on his upper lip. He wasn’t wearing the contacts now, and his real eyes were a dull, wet brown. Hard to believe that for two years this man was known to all as the suave, successful live-in boyfriend of Suburban Indiscretions star Emerald Deegan. This is what it looks like under the mask.
“You wreck people’s lives,” he said. “You’re tabloid scum. You’re better off dead.”
Simone’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”
“I told you. I’m watching.” Furlong balled his hand into a fist and hurled it at the side of her face—but before he was able to make contact, Walker’s hand shot up, clamped around the wrist, and held it there.
Furlong grimaced.
“You want to fight somebody,” he said, “fight me.”
Walker let go of the wrist. Furlong came at him. Walker’s fist flew up, connected with his jaw. Furlong fell to the floor, then struggled to his feet, but Walker came at him again. And so he threw his hands up in a kind of truce. “I’ve got nothing against you, man,” Furlong said, rubbing his jaw.
“Why not?” Walker said. “I’m tabloid scum, too.”
Furlong glared at Simone.
“What were you doing Tuesday night, Keith?” she said. “Why did Cole say you were at Bedrock?”
He lunged at her, but Walker took a step forward and Furlong slunk back. “I’m going.” He headed away from them, down the hall to his room.
Simone caught her breath, trying to get it out of her mind; the way he had looked at her. That hate. I am watching.
“You okay?” Walker said.
“I think so.”
“Good.” She sort of wished he would hug her, like he had after they’d seen Destiny’s body. But that was obviously too much to expect.
“Sandiford was right,” she said, just to keep him from walking away. “You weren’t lying about boxing.”
“I don’t always lie, Simone.” He took his wallet out of his pocket, removed Dylan Leeds’s business card, and gave it to her. “See? You don’t have to worry. Your cover is safe.”
“Neil. I’m sorry.” She looked at him. “No excuses. Just . . . just that, okay?”
“Better head back downstairs to Chrylan,” he said. He stared into her eyes for a few moments. And then, without saying good-bye, he walked down the hall to his room.
Simone was left remembering the look in his gas-flame eyes—the same look she’d noticed outside Holly’s house. It was so serious, this look, yet so oddly tender. Simone could feel it in her toes . . . but like before, it disappeared long before she could figure it out.
By the time Simone returned to the bar, Chris Hart had left, along with Randi and Maurice. Julie was deep in discussion with Caputo, Nathaniel, and Moss. Great, now my Chrylan story is gone, thought Simone, who couldn’t, as it turned out, hold on to anything tonight.
Ila had migrated across the room and was now sitting in the lap of one of the studio executives.
As she approached the table, Simone was about to ask what had happened to Chris, but the tension in the air made her stop before anyone noticed her. All the men were looking at Julie, whose expression seemed stolen off the face of a different, less fortunate woman.
“You’re not angry at me, are you, Jason?” Julie was asking.
“Why would I be angry?”
“I’m telling you, I’m just as upset about all this as he is. Neither one of us wanted it to come out now.”
“Dylan, it’s none of my damn business.”
“It’s nobody’s damn business,” said Nathaniel. “I mean, if you decided to talk to the tabs, then—”
Blake noticed Simone first. “Angel, what took you so long?”
“Turned out I left the phone in my car.”
Julie narrowed her eyes at Nathaniel, her speech fuzzy from champagne. “I didn’t leak the story,” she said. “And you know what? I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or . . .” She glanced toward the door, where Sheryl Crow and Jennifer Aniston were greeting a group of friends—a group that included Lara Chandler. “Oh, great,” Julie said.
Lara Chandler was wearing a clinging purple dress that played up her slim body and her shining black hair—her “hot and single look,” as they would no doubt refer to it in the Asteroid. She peered around the room, and once she caught sight of Julie, Chandler promptly excused herself from her girlfriends and made her way to their table.
To say all eyes in the place were on her would have been a major understatement.
Lara ignored all the men and stared Julie in the eye. But instead of averting her gaze, or mumbling an apology— which is what Simone probably would have done—Julie stood up, looked right back at her, the friend she had betrayed . . . and smiled.
“What do you want, Lara?”
When the actress spoke, her voice was surprisingly measured. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” she said. “I feel sorry for you.”
Julie’s smile dropped away.
Lara left the table and then the bar, taking her girlfriends with her. Julie watched her leave, pain settling into the corners of her mouth. “Whatever,” she whispered.
Simone realized: I have my story for the night. But there was no joy in the thought. None at all.
Once they were back in the limo, Julie popped open another bottle of Cris. Simone said, “You’re doing wonders for my liver, you know that?”
“Come on,” said Julie. “Help me celebrate.”
Simone took a sip to keep the bubbles from spilling over. “Celebrate what?”
“My first movie, you giant dork!” Julie put on that grin she often wore—plaster-bright, too perfect to be believed. Never in her wildest dreams had Simone thought she’d feel sorry for Julie Curtis, but right now, she did. Could Julie ever stop acting and tell the truth?
Of course, Simone was acting right now, too, and she wasn’t even an actress. . . .
Maybe lying was part of the atmosphere here, in this city where everyone wanted to act or write or direct—to make up stories and play them out. Maybe fiction was in the air like smog, and there was no avoiding it.
Simone heard herself say, “What happened with Chris? Why did he walk out?”
“Nothing. He gets in moods sometimes.”
“Julie,” she said, “if you don’t mind my saying, why Chris? I mean, you could have anybody you want, and he’s . . . I’m sorry, but he doesn’t seem . . . he doesn’t seem like he’s in love with you.”
“I told you before,” she said, “it isn’t what you think.” She looked at Simone for a good long while. “Would you like to see my house?” she said. “It’s right around here.”
As tired as Simone was, Julie was hard to say no to. “Sure.”
“I lived in an apartment for ages, but last year, when I got the part in Devil’s Road, the first thing I did was I made the down payment on this place. I used to drive by it all the time and it was like . . . You know how it is, when you see a guy you really want, but you’re too shy to talk to him?”
Simone nodded.
“Like that.”
The car headed east on Wilshire until it hit La Cienega. Then it headed north for a few blocks, then east again, on a peaceful, modest residential street. A few more blocks, and the limo pulled into the driveway of a small, ’60s ranch house with a trimmed square lawn and a tidy garden. “This is it,” Julie said.
“Really?”
There was no gate, no security camera, no thick line of hedges even. Nothing to put any distance between the house and the street. It was late now, quiet. “But . . . aren’t you worried about security?” Simone said.
“I wasn’t,” Julie replied. “Until yesterday.”
Simone cringed.
“I don’t give a da
mn, though. Pretty soon, Lynzee de la Presa will do something crazy. The paparazzi will move on, and I’ll still have this fab house.” She looked at Simone. “No matter what happens with Chris, I’m keeping it.”
Simone said nothing, that sentence taking root in her mind. Since their first meeting at the Devil’s Road party, that was the closest Julie had come to admitting the affair. No matter what happens with Chris. She waited for Julie to say more, but all she added was, “You’ve got to see my plants. I have a green thumb. Who knew?”
Simone looked at the house. Beyond the lack of security, it was such an odd home for a celeb to fall in love with. It couldn’t have been more different from Blake Moss’s compound, or Emerald’s tower or any dead celebrity’s mansion Simone had seen on her Map of the Stars’ Homes. It was so . . . normal. There was something else about it too, something that set it apart from the other houses on the street.
As they got out of the limo, Simone noticed the four pink rosebushes that clung to the side of the white house. She breathed in their scent, then looked down at the brick walkway bordered by purple and white impatiens. Then she remembered. Julie’s mom’s garden. She studied the red door and matching shutters, the window box overflowing with multicolored pansies. “Julie,” she said, “this looks exactly like your old house in Wappingers Falls.”
Julie grinned. “I know! Isn’t it amazing?”
Once they were inside, Julie took Simone on a tour. Proudly, she showed her old friend the floral-print couch, the wicker furniture, the dozens and dozens of house-plants—“They give you so much, and all they ask for is water”—and the huge wooden J mounted on the wall, which Simone remembered from Julie’s room back in high school. She checked out the small kitchen with its ’60s-style electric range and potted herbs lined up on the tile counters. While Julie’s bedroom, too, was sweet and basic, it did house the only extravagant item in the entire space—a huge gilded antique mirror, shaped like a heart, that Julie had hung over the dresser. “Randi gave me that,” she said. “Not something I would have picked out myself, but . . .”
“I can see that,” said Simone. Slipped into the corner of the mirror was a snapshot: Julie and Todd on senior prom night, 1998. By then, Julie and Simone had drifted apart. They’d say hi to each other when they passed in the halls, sometimes study for tests together, but that was about it. Simone didn’t resent it. She had other friends, and besides, Julie was in love—real, knock-you-off-your-feet-and-take-everything-you-own love.
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