“Jesus!” Richard said, “The fucker won’t die.”
“Tell me about it!” Sis said.
Richard put all his weight into his arms. “Die you old fuck!”
There was a knock at the door. Sis and Richard fell silent.
Kyp made a blubbing noise in the Brie wheel.
“Yes?” Sis called toward the door.
It was Genevieve the PA. “Just wanted to give Mr. Valentine the 10 minute call.”
“Thanks, hon,” Sis called out cheerfully.
Finally all was silent. Kyp stopped struggling. Richard let go.
“Well, thank God. That’s-”
And with that Kyp Valentine popped up like a wild-eyed Dawn of the Dead version of himself and coughed out a chunk of Brie.
Richard threw his right arm around the old man’s neck, gripped his hand on the side of the Kyp’s head and twisted his neck once. Breaking it. Killing him instantly.
Kyp slumped to the floor,
Richard and Sis stood there in the silence, both breathing heavy from the effort.
Sis finally spoke.
“…You couldn’t have started with that?”
22
About an hour into the show, Devin felt Lori Plom’s hand on her leg. Casually. As if they always sat next to each other like this.
Devin looked over. “Can you get your hand off me?”
Lori lifted her hand off Devin. “Okay,” She smirked, raising an eyebrow. “La-“
“And so help me God, if you say ‘later,’ I’m going to get up and leave.”
Lori nodded. “Gotcha.”
Devin turned back to watch the show. Their seats were actually surprisingly good – about 15 rows back on the right side. Just past all the actually important people.
Ray Kitson was onstage sending to commercial. The screens at either the side of the stage filled with Award Show graphics and a moment later, because it was live, a paper towel commercial playing silently.
As the commercial started, the audience broke into a murmur of chitchat.
Devin could still feel Everett’s kiss; she absently touched her fingers to her lips, remembering. It made her heart ache. Don’t think about her. Just move on. She felt a lump in her throat and her chest tightened. Her resistance to crying was always way more painful than the actual crying. And this was no exception.
Devin felt something like horsehair brush her neck. She looked down to see Lori Plom’s head on her shoulder.
“Um… what are you doing?”
Lori looked at her all shiny eyed. “No?”
“Oh my God…” Devin sighed. She was starting to get aggravated. She flicked her shoulder up, flopping Lori’s head in the other direction.
Lori sat up, undeterred. “Look, after the show you wanna skip the Governor’s Ball and go grab some sushi?”
“No thanks.”
“Or go back to my place?”
Devin turned to Lori. She looked at her a beat.
“What exactly do you like about me?”
Lori opened her mouth to speak.
Devin interjected. “…Aside from how I look.”
Lori’s face went blank. Her mouth slowly closed.
“Come on,” Devin said, now turning her whole body in her seat towards Lori. “One quality. I like books. I like art. I walk dogs at the rescue near my house. One quality. What…what is it?”
“You’re - ”
“If you say hot I’m going to scream.”
Lori closed her mouth again.
“What else am I?”
Lori scrunched her face, concentrating, searching.
“Anything?” Devin said. “Name one actual thing you like about me.”
“Your-”
“ – Not my rack. Don’t you dare say my rack.”
Lori was starting to sweat. Rack was out. “…Eyes?”
“What about them?”
Lori looked like a deer in the headlights.
“Sparkly blue marbles?”
“For fuck’s sake, please tell me one thing you see in me past how I look.”
Lori looked at Devin. Searching.
“We both like Cheez Doodles?”
“No…We don’t.”
“You’re funny?”
“How am I funny?”
Lori looked like she was about to crack and spill state secrets.
“…You’re not?”
Devin shook her head. She turned her body away again. It’s not like she wanted things to work out with Lori Plom but she was not in the mood to be unseen. It made her crazy. Like the who she was inside didn’t matter. But it mattered to her. And it had once mattered to Everett. And she wanted it to matter to someone else again. Even this idiot. She just needed that right now.
23
Richard Blakely looked at his watch. 6:58 PM. He nodded to his second in command.
It was on.
Richard pushed the door open to the press room and walked confidently up to the little stage where the winners were interviewed. He held his hand up for quiet and began calling out instructions.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we need you out of the building. There’s been a bomb scare. Please exit through the doors behind you.”
And with that a bunch of frumpy journalists who donned ill fitting tuxes and too tight and badly designed gowns for the evening began to stream out of the room through the two exit doors at the back.
At the same time, 10 men with guns streamed out of the backstage area towards the theater. Three minutes and counting.
24
Devin checked her watch – just about 7 o’clock. She looked around the theater, bored out of her mind. She was about ready to leave but there was still lots of this show left to sit through.
Ray Kitson was standing onstage again. The show was back.
“Please not Everett,” Devin whispered.
At that moment Ray Kitson said the words, “And now, please welcome Everett Cale.”
Devin felt her chest ache suddenly. She was starting to feel light headed.
At that moment, as Everett walked out from stage left, Lori Plom picked the wrong time to go for a hand on the knee move. Devin felt the beefy paw land on her thigh and something in her had had enough – in a single move she grabbed Lori’s wrist with her left hand, twisting it quickly to a very painful angle and lifting the thumb into an impossible position. One extra move on Devin’s part and it would be in a cast for 6 weeks.
She heard a quiet “Yiee…”
“Lori…” Devin said measuredly, “So help me God. If you put your hand on my leg one more time, I’m going to break it.”
Devin heard a strained and whispered, “Fair enough…” Come out of Lori. She released the woman’s wrist.
The orchestra started and the two large screens at the sides of the stage were suddenly filled with mile high Everetts as she strode confidently onto the stage, Devin couldn’t look at her – not at the screens, not ahead to the stage, she looked away She was starting to feel unwell. Not sure if she was going to pass out or be sick, but she just knew she couldn’t do this.
She stood up.
“Where are you going?” Lori whispered, rubbing her own wrist with her beefy hand.
“The bathroom.”
“You can’t during the-”
Devin grabbed her evening bag and glared at Lori, who upon seeing the look, did an about-face.
“Hurry back,” she smiled weakly.
As Devin made her way along their row towards the exit, she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. This would be a really embarrassing place to pass out. She edged along the row, stepping over evening bags and programs, offering ‘sorry’s’ and ‘scuse me’s as she made her way to the nearby exit door on the right hand side of the theater.
As she finally exited the row a thrilled looking bald guy seat filler sidled on through to take her place like they were at some weird relay race.
Devin pushed open the heavy ornate door into the lobby.
It felt better being in the vast, empty lobby. There was space. Not a soul in sight. And even more importantly, there was no Everett. She could breathe a little easier. She headed to the ladies room across the way.
Inside the ladies powder room, Devin looked at herself in the mirror. For a moment she wished she could see anything in herself that was not pained or painful or broken.
She had a flash of Caitlin. She wasn’t even sure why, but it lightened her heart. She just knew she liked the way that girl looked at her. But Caitlin was probably straight and if she wasn’t she was probably with someone. Those thoughts weren’t helping anything right now.
Devin took her cell phone out of her purse and dialed Brad.
He answered after three rings. As soon as he picked up she heard a din of noise in the background – laughter and loud talking.
“Hey…”
“Hey!” he said. “How are you calling me? The show’s on.”
Devin could hardly hear him. “What’re you doing?”
“We’re having a Hollywood Screen Awards party. And I’m loaded. We had a drink every time someone mentioned ‘This community.’”
Devin felt the tears coming. “I just wanted to call you because-”
Brad yelled over her. “I can’t hear you! What’d you say?”
Devin realized it was futile. She sighed. “Nevermind. I’ll call you later. Enjoy your party.”
“Okay, call me later.”
She hung up and stood there in the silence a moment.
“Devin, get it together,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and let it out. Time for a distraction.
She pressed another call button on her phone. After a few rings a voice picked up.
“Hello?”
“Um, Nadia, it’a good to know your taste in women is even worse than mine…You said she was cute. Define cute.”
25
Sally Bixby heard a commotion in the backstage hallway outside the Entertainment PM lounge, really just a tiny cramped box like set they’d spent $250,000 to be able to build with some swagged curtains, and two overstuffed chairs. She lifted herself off the overstuffed chair she was sitting on and had a look in the hallway. A bunch of people were rushing in one direction. Weird, but whatever.
Sally sat back down, checked her notes for her next interview and looked at her phone. Not that she expected her husband to text her, but it would be nice if he did. She knew about his mistress. And was pretty sure he knew she knew. That at least should merit a “how’s it going” text, if not some hastily tippy tapped perfunctory expression of love. Where was the overdoing it? Where was the covering up? Cheating on her was bad enough but the lack of overcompensating? Not okay. Suddenly she felt ashamed. She knew she had a problem loving people and being vulnerable and all that crap. But she tried. Sally felt her stomach growl and plump hot tears spring to her eyes. She took a deep breath, imagined her stomach happily filled with cotton balls and sighed a stress releasing sigh. She reached her arms up into a nice yogic stretch and leaned back. She closed her eyes and repeated her mantra -
“I am happy and peaceful and calm…I am happy and peaceful and - ”
Suddenly she felt a cold hard metal circle pressed into her temple.
She turned her head and saw the gun.
The man spoke quietly and calmly. “Sally Bixby, come with me.”
26
Lori Plom was starting to get crabby. Her wrist hurt and her sexy date was still in the bathroom, leaving her sitting there next to some bald guy in a tux who smelled like sweat and Altoids. This was starting to suck.
At that moment, she looked up to the stage and saw a security guard walking across the stage with his gun to the head of entertainment reporter Sally Bixby.
“What the fuck…?”
The Danish couple who were giving their acceptance speech for a short film no one saw and even more people didn’t give a shit about looked over startled.
The Security Guard walked over to the microphone. He spoke in an authoritative voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, here’s how it’s going to work. Everyone in the first two rows, don’t move. Everyone else exit the theater now.”
As if to illustrate his intent, there were now something like ten security guards roaming the aisles with automatic pistols trained on the audience.
“You’ve been given your instructions,” The man onstage said. “You have exactly one minute to get out. Anyone who is left after that time will be shot. No exceptions.”
With that, Lori Plom and everyone in her row stood up as one and bolted for the exits.
Backstage, Ray Kitson stood in the wings watching the show on a monitor. Next to him, the head writer Len Curtis, was reading some jokes to Ray on index cards.
Ray saw something weird on the monitor. “What the fuck?”
But the weirdness wasn’t just on the stage. Head writer Len Curtis turned around, saw a gun in his face, instinctively went to grab for it, and the scary looking guy with the buzz cut squeezed the trigger, shooting him between the eyes. The shot was deafening. Ray Kitson felt something warm splash against his face. He didn’t need a mirror to know it was blood.
He looked into the eyes of the scariest fucker he’d ever seen in his life. The guy spoke slowly and with an Eastern European accent. But all Ray saw was the barrel of the gun now trained on him.
“Mr. Kitson, come with me…”
Ray looked around for help. What the fuck was happening?
27
Meanwhile in the booth, Sis Warren was yelling into her headset.
“What the hell is going on?”
At that moment, the director’s booth door slammed open and three guys with guns ran in. One put his gun to Sis’s head.
He spoke calmly right in her ear. “Tell your crew, camera guys, sound guys everyone… to leave all the lines open. Leave all the cameras where they are. But get out. Now.”
Sis was shaking. She nodded ‘okay’ as she looked over at Marty. She pressed a button on the board. “Crew…all crew. Leave cameras on, sound on… exit the theater now.”
The guy looked at the others in the booth. “Everyone out. Now.”
They all stood up to leave, including Sis.
“Not you,” he said.
Sis looked at Marty desperately.
Marty’s lip was twitching in terror. “Sis I can’t leave you here.”
“Marty, go…”
He hesitated.
The tough guy cold cocked him with the butt of his pistol. “Get the fuck out.”
Marty, shaken and bleeding made his way to the door behind the others. He left.
The tough guy looked at Sis. “You. Come with me.”
Outside Bronco Bennett looked up at the theater from where he was standing at the edge of the red carpet. Suddenly the doors to the theater opened, all of them, all at once, and what seemed like thousands of people began pouring out.
Bronco picked up his radio. “Bennett to Milner.”
“Milner”
“Dan what the hell’s going on?”
“…I was hoping you might have a clue.”
28
Richard dialed the number he had programmed into his phone. He’d been looking forward to this part all day.
He heard the voice. “Bennett.”
“Lt. Bronco Bennett, this is Gunnar Leise. You’ll notice the people streaming out of the building… Please know we have twenty five hostages and if any of your men make a move to come in, we will kill them all. Do you understand?”
There was silence. A long silence. Probably five seconds. Finally a voice. “I understand.”
“And if this feed is taken off the air, we will kill them. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Now wait for further instructions.”
Bronco Bennett pressed the End Call button on his phone and looked up the red carpet at the 2000 or so people streaming out of the theater. For a moment - for the first time in his wh
ole life - he was scared shitless.
29
Caitlin O’Brien sat forward on her couch, staring at the television. Not quite able to believe what she was seeing. The stage was bare. The cameras were still on. And what she and the other billion people watching had just seen was even more shocking. A man with a gun holding that Entertainment reporter hostage. He told everyone to get out. He said they were taking hostages.
Caitlin’s head was spinning, her heart racing, her thoughts only went in one direction.
“Oh my God…Devin…”
30
Brad madly dialed Devin’s cell number. No answer.
“Come on… Pick up.”
He hung up and stared at the TV screen. Behind him in his house, suddenly the dozen or so yelling Hollywood Screen Award queens were silenced, all his friends sitting and staring at the television, wishing life could just be normal again.
His boyfriend Armand came into the room. “You get her yet?”
Brad shook his head. He swallowed hard. “Not yet.”
They exchanged a look. Brad picked up his phone again and pressed Devin’s number. It was all he could do.
31
Devin was laughing into her cell phone. She was now sitting on the long counter that was supposed to be used for makeup bags or purses while women freshened up in the long mirror that ran the length of the outer area of the powder room.
“And the ex was even worse, Nadia. I’m telling you they deserve each other.”
Her call waiting beeped. She looked at it.
“It’s just Brad, I’ll call him back. Where are you anyway?”
“I’m at the beach.”
“Reading palms?”
“Yeah, but it’s dead. I think everyone’s watching the game.”
This is Devin Jones Page 8