“Enough!” I flailed until he let me go and stepped a safe distance away from both the people who adored me so much I was having trouble breathing. “Ellen, I’m sorry, I didn’t know he had his car here. I need to speak with my beloved boyfriend in private—maybe I ought to go with him.”
My grinning beloved boyfriend took a step forward, but I stopped him with a death glare and a finger point.
Ellen seemed to brighten because I was directing nasty scowls to Sam. “It’s not a wasted trip. I brought you lip gloss and a compact. There are eight million cameras in the parking lot.”
I examined my outfit. The jeans and baggy, belted sweater would have to do. My bestie, however, had dressed to impress. A tight red cardigan emphasised her pushed-up assets above—a black pencil skirt, her ass below. As if on cue…
Sexy cop swung by our group. Apparently, she was capable of not looking as if she was examining a pile of rotting garbage, for she positively glowed at Ellen. Guess it was just me who inspired the three-day-old-fish face.
“Hi, Nicolette,” Ellen purred. I hadn’t seen my BFF this fired up since she’d dragged me to an Adele concert.
“Officer Fitzgerald,” corrected the same in an equally melty voice. She took an evasive glance around and continued, businesslike, “Your friend is free to go.” ‘Friend’ was said the way I’d say ‘salad’.
“Great. Thanks for your time.” Sam almost yanked my arm from the socket in his joy at leaving Policeville. Only the prospect of sex had hitherto given him such zip.
I jerked him to a halt. “Stop! I need to fix my face.”
Nicolette muttered, “Oh, hell,” and sauntered away. Ellen shot me a totally unfair dirty look.
My complexion as easy, breezy and innocent as possible, I composed myself and grabbed Ellen’s and Sam’s hands in my own.
“Nope.” My dearest friend in the world snatched her hand back. “I’m gonna try to take Nicolette out to lunch. This shit show is all you, babe.”
“Judas,” I hissed.
“Yup. Call me later. Good luck! Don’t say anything stupid.”
Valid advice. I pulled Sam to the side of the room and whispered, “What do I say that’s not stupid? What did you tell them in there?”
“Let’s not have this conversation here. Just tell the reporters ‘no comment’, and try to look sweet and retiring. Can you do that?”
“Blow me,” I replied.
He laughed, some of the tension melting off his shoulders. “Good luck, actress. I’ll meet you by the car.” He headed off in a different direction.
“Wait! Are you abandoning me, too?”
He backed away. “I’m terribly camera shy,” he lilted. A common side effect of being a criminal. Or a vampire. In this day and age, it would be so much easier bringing a vampire to Thanksgiving dinner than a thief. On the other hand, if I did that, Suzie would begin criticising the nutritional value of my blood, and warn me that sexy vampires didn’t like to drink whatever is in Pizza Rolls.
I wondered how he’d got into the precinct to begin with. Probably by seducing a stupid secretary. Poop on him and poop on Ellen. At least I had lip gloss, the stalwart friend that also moisturised.
I couldn’t help but wonder if these news people had nothing better to cover. It was the day after Christmas, though—arguably a slow news day.
Twenty cameras jockeyed for position, each accompanied by a reporter in a jaunty, Christmas-coloured suit and bulletproof hair. Because this was Los Angeles, a surprising amount of cleavage had come out to play. They were the most malicious-looking bunch of elves I’d ever seen. And the bustiest.
“No comment,” I squeaked as strangers suggested in turn that I was a mistress, whore, gold-digger, criminal or some highly original combination of these. I lifted my chin and repeated my mantra. “No comment.”
Once through the front doors of the precinct, they stalked me all the way to Sam’s car, the Austin Healey idling in the corner of the parking lot. Thank goodness they’d repaired the bullet holes, which would have looked suspicious at best. At least I’d shun the cameras’ harsh spotlight in style.
The top was up, shielding Sam, scrunched in the driver’s seat doing his best Unabomber impression. I huddled beside him, taking care not to let my belly bulge too much, the cameras looming over us like evil shadows. My eyes prickled. I grabbed at Sam’s hand. He patted my knee and began to back out of the parking space, slowly, for we’d been surrounded.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, we turned onto the street. For a long time, we drove and drove—the damn vultures followed us for forty-five minutes until Sam lost the last of them. Afraid to talk, afraid to peek behind us, I kept my head in my hand and tried to calculate exactly how ruined my life was.
We didn’t want to lure anyone to Sam’s house, so we went to my apartment. The only thing keeping me from crying were the tacos we snagged en route. That man really did know how to calm me.
By this point, outrunning the three news persons who’d cleverly set up shop at my complex was easy-peasy. After tearing down the police tape across my front door—for real, police tape!—I slammed it in the face of one particularly aggressive lady from Channel Four. Eyewitness my wood veneer, bitch.
Sam put his finger to his lips and removed a little black box with an antenna from his bag. I laughed. “Are you checking for bugs?”
“Yes.”
Shit was getting real. “Where did you get that?”
He rolled his eyes. “The Internet.”
Of course. I bet the Internet made crime a lot easier. Maybe Sam could go straight by writing a how-to for the next generation of lying thieves. How to Not Steal Things, Wink Wink would be a runaway bestseller.
While he skulked about reading his tricorder, I took stock of my domicile and finished a taco. A hurricane had come through. But it had always looked that way. I heaved a sigh and breathed in the familiar scent of old lasagne. Don’t judge. So I wasn’t a fabulous housekeeper. My talents lay elsewhere—acting, attracting bad men and, um…puns?
Giant wooden planks covered my broken bedroom window. Tacked to the boards was an invoice from my landlady for the damage. A lot of red marker underlined various parts. Importantly.
The pile of shoes on the floor glittered with shards of glass. An unfortunate, excellent excuse to buy new shoes. With the money I didn’t have because my job was gone. I could cover the rent due in a few days and had a little put away in the bank, but not much. I’d been living in the now, even though the now had been Suck on a Stick. When your future looked like a dead end, you avoided examining it too hard.
Just as the black was closing in on my tired brain, Sam peeked his head in the door. “All clear.”
“That’s good.”
With an air of an anthropologist getting a rare glimpse of a bizarre, foreign civilisation, he made a quick circuit of my tiny bedroom. The Xanadu poster particularly drew his exasperated ire. “I do not get it,” he muttered.
“Xanadu offers excellent life training,” I said.
He plopped onto the bed, a smile forming as he bounced in appreciation. I had a fabulous mattress. He was the greatest thing to be on it since that day I’d got drunk and ordered in a burger and macaroni and cheese, then combined them. The Mac ‘n’ Please Burger had been a big hit with me. I even eyed the grease stain on my saffron and white flower bedspread with fondness.
“What life training?” He lay back and stretched out, his shirt creeping up over his belly.
I licked my lips, mesmerised by the strip of yummy skin. “Hair feathering, following your dreams…”
“Roller skating,” he added.
“Yes! I can roller skate like a demon.”
He turned on his side and flashed me a dimple. “I’ve never known a demon to roller skate.”
He should know.
Although it was fun to discuss the merits of Xanadu, I decided the conversation needed more me being on top of him. I crawled over his legs and straddled his hips. A devil smile played
across his mouth. He ran his hands from my waist to my thighs and said, “We should discuss the police station.”
“Will it sound better after an orgasm?”
He groaned and sat up to kiss me. I locked my legs around his middle and pulled at his soft, gorgeous hair. He tasted like joy, like a physical manifestation of comfort. Right or wrong, being wrapped in him made everything else go away.
Until my phone rang.
I pulled back and set my forehead on his shoulder.
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
I opened one eye and peeked at the yellow princess phone by my bed. The answer machine light blinked wildly. No more room at the inbox. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear those messages. Sam stirred underneath me in a most delightful manner, so I sucked at his bottom lip in appreciation.
The phone rang again. “Grrrrrrrr,” I grrrrrrr-ed.
“Ignore it,” huffed my paramour.
A light bulb lit up in my overworked brain. “It could be Scott.”
Sam’s face thundered his disapproval. As did my body, aching with unspent tawdriness. “Wouldn’t he call your cell?”
“How the hell should I know? He’s threatened to murder my entire family—he’s probably not worried about calling an inappropriate number at an undesirable hour.” I fell across the bed and grabbed the jangling receiver. “Hello?”
“Ms Lytton?”
“Erk…who’s asking?” Subtle and smooth, that’s me.
“This is Deborah Diaz, the attorney.” She said ‘the attorney’ as if she were the only one in the world. I admired that kind of impudence.
I replied, “This is Samantha Lytton, the actress.”
“Okay. We can go with ‘actress’.” Geesh. Everyone’s a fricking critic. “I’d like to meet with you about seeing you through this trying time with your reputation intact. Maybe even with it enhanced.”
She let that confident sentence dangle for a moment or two. I knew her name, of course. She’d handled all the most notorious starlet divorces, and kept deserving rich persons out of jail and into luxurious rehabs.
I disentangled my legs from Sam and rolled onto my back. “Hello, Ms Diaz. I’m a big fan. Thank you, but I’m pretty sure I can’t even afford this phone call with you, so I’ll have to say no—”
“You might be surprised. Just have coffee with me—no charge, of course. I’ll buy the latte. From what I can see, the police have nothing on you. You’re a young…ish, attractive actress with a promising career ahead of her, if we can play the publicity right. What do you say? At least hear me out.”
Sam had grabbed the living room cordless extension. He stood next to the bed and shook his head no, no, no.
“Yes,” I said. He rolled his eyes every which way, hung up and stomped into the kitchen. “How about tomorrow morning?” I suggested. By tomorrow morning, my misadventure with Scott would be over. “Let’s go somewhere out of the way. How about M Street Coffee in Sherman Oaks? Seven a.m., hopefully before the plastic hair brigade shows in full force?”
“Perfect!” Her laugh sounded like the tinkle of a thousand cash registers. “See you then.” She gave me her cell number and hung up.
That had either been a bad or a very bad decision. My gut liked it, though. My stomach unknotted in agreement. False sense of security or no, I needed to look out for myself and have an ally who wasn’t on Picasso’s side more than mine.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Sam grumbled from the doorway.
“I have to protect my own interests. This is my life, Sam. It’s in tatters. No amount of good kissing from you can fix it.”
“Samantha—”
I stood and faced him. “I’m going to meet her. The end.” His mouth opened and shut for a moment. His shoulders knotted upward, but he said nothing and studied the boarded-up window.
He grunted. “Officer Fitzgerald didn’t believe one word I said.”
“Me neither. What exact lie did you spin?”
He shuffled towards the bed and perched on the end farthest from me to recount his tall tale. It was the same as mine, more or less. We both sighed, relieved that we’d corroborated each other. I was now fibbing at a twelfth-grade level. “They asked me about our anonymous tip regarding Oliver.”
“Yeah. Nice to know they’re asking us about it, but not him.”
I sat beside him and laid my head tentatively on his shoulder. He put his arm around me. “Justice is equaller the more money you have,” he said.
Sam pulled me into his lap and set his chin on my hair. He rubbed my back, lulling me into a sleepy warmth. “The painting is in a hidden compartment in my car. We still have to return it to Scott tonight.”
“Don’t say that name while we’re cuddling.”
Almost five o’clock. The sun fell over the city. Not that I could see it through my busted-ass window.
Sam had decided that my front was possibly more exciting than my back when my cellphone rang. I said, “I’ll get it,” my voice quavering to an embarrassing degree. I reached for my purse. “Um, you’re gonna have to let go of those.” He let go.
I took deep breaths while I rummaged in my bag for the jangling cell. “Hello?”
“Do you have it?” Scumbag Scott!
My palms turned slick with sweat. I hit the speaker button so Sam could listen, too. “Yes.”
His smarmy breath blew all over the phone. Ickiness washed over me, and I shivered. “The Port of Long Beach, midnight. Take Navy Way until it dead-ends. You, your fucking boyfriend and no one else. Got it?”
Sam’s face flooded with alarm and he mouthed, “No, no, no!”
“Midnight at the docks?” I countered with more confidence than I felt. “Are you kidding? Shall I bring my own pair of cement shoes, too? No way.” I took a deep breath to fortify myself. “I’ll meet you in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in an hour, no negotiation. If you don’t say yes, I’ll set fire to this damned painting, and then your boss can kill you, asshole.”
Silence. I held my breath. I had thrown that boss thing in at the end just to test the waters. Everyone was accountable to someone, right?
“I hate you,” he finally replied.
Yes! Samantha for the win.
“Fine.” He hung up.
I replaced the phone handset and whooshed the stale air from my lungs. Sam bounded across the bed and enclosed me in a bone-crushing hug. He kissed me on the top of the head. “Well done, baby. Everything’s going to be okay.” He made light and patted my bottom, but worried his lip with his teeth all the same.
That was when it hit me, finally. The obvious thing my brain had somehow overlooked, or I had wilfully ignored—that even when he got the painting back, Scott would never leave me alone. As they said in spy movies while dramatic music played, I knew too much.
Dun dun dun.
I searched Sam’s eyes—it was there, too.
As I made the decision, I knew it was the right one, though my heart ached already. “You can’t go with me,” I said. “It’s time for you to disappear, Sam.”
He looked away, into nothing. One big, fat tear rolled down his cheek and plopped onto the bedspread. “I’m so sorry. For everything,” he whispered. Tears shimmered in his lashes, framing those heartbreaking hazel eyes. The dimple trembled. “I never deserved you anyhow. You definitely didn’t deserve me. Do what you have to do—you should take care of yourself.” He ran his fingers down my cheek. “I guess this is my karmic punishment.”
“Wouldn’t the real punishment be putting up with me?”
He laughed. Another tear slipped down his cheek. I kissed it away and held him almost as tightly as he squeezed me.
My own eyes stayed surprisingly dry. His tears had cancelled mine out. He’d been both the best and worst thing ever to happen to me. Probably more worst, if I looked at it objectively, which of course I didn’t.
He smiled, the beauty of it almost like a punch in my gut. I cupped his face, and we kissed a kiss so soft an
d sweet, I hadn’t even known it was possible until a week ago. He finished with a lingering kiss on my forehead, then backed away. With a studied, businesslike demeanour, he said, “I’ll be right back.” He left the apartment.
The yawning hole in my chest threatened to flatten me, so I forced myself to move. I found sneakers that didn’t have glass in them. I found my car keys. I began to brush my hair, but I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without my Mount Vesuvius of feelings rumbling, ready to erupt, so I sat on the couch and twisted my hands.
Sam returned and handed me a huge backpack. I peeked inside the case within—there lay the stupid, horrid artwork that actual grown adult people were willing to murder over. It made me sick to my stomach. In another pocket of the bag—his gun. I nodded. I couldn’t face him.
He kissed me on the top of my head, whispered my name and walked out.
Chapter Nineteen
A Star Is Invented
Ext. An Airport—Van Nuys, Ca—Night
The fog mists the dinky airport in romantic shades of grey, almost like an old movie. Wait, this is a script—of a black and white movie. Well, it’s not so much a script or a movie as a delusion, but hey, just go with it.
A 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II Roadster pulls up beside an airstrip upon which a double-propellered plane waits. The Thief and The Heroine emerge from the vehicle.
Angle On: The Heroine, wearing a dashing hat, for that is what heroines do during heartbreaking scenes that will definitely earn them a Golden Globe nomination.
The Heroine: Thief, you’ve got to go. It’s no good for you here—no good, you hear?
Angle On: The Thief, his dimple deep in the shadowy light. He gazes at The Heroine, mesmerised by the single tear glittering in her starlit eyes.
The Thief: I said I would never leave you.
The Heroine: You didn’t say that.
The Thief: Didn’t I? Damn, it would have been romantic if I had.
The Heroine: Last night we said a great many things.
The Thief: Most of them sex puns.
The Heroine: Don’t make me cry, you sweet-talking bastard.
The Dimple of Doom (Samantha Lytton) Page 21