Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  The girl removed her shades. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  Politely, Kristin said, ‘I’ve heard great things about True Match. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Turquoise remembered shooting on location at the Paradise Palms—Kristin had been there, too, though they hadn’t spoken. She recalled Kristin’s connection to Ava, through Lovestruck, and decided to tread carefully.

  ‘It’s good to get away for a night,’ she admitted. ‘It’s manic.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  There was no one else around so Turquoise didn’t need to speak loudly to be heard. ‘I’m sorry about your sister.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t have a sister but I always wished I did…It was obvious how close you two were and how much she loved you. I’m truly sorry. I wanted you to know that.’

  She wondered if she had overstepped the mark, because a long silence followed.

  Then Kristin spoke. ‘D’you know what? You’re the first person who’s said that to me.’ She closed the book.

  ‘Condolences?’ Turquoise’s brow lifted. ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  ‘Anyone can give condolences, it’s when they’re from the heart that they help. It’s not that people haven’t said the right things, they have, but they can’t understand. If they did, they wouldn’t be so concerned with getting photographed at a fourteen-year-old’s memorial—’ she chewed her lip ‘—because that’s the kind of attitude that makes horrible stuff like what happened to Bunny happen in the first place. Vanity, selfishness, ego—it’s everywhere. So it’s nice to have someone say something and actually mean it. You know?’

  ‘Sure.’ Turquoise sat down. ‘I know. What are you reading?’

  Kristin held it up. It was a romance, the cover soft-focus and windswept as two lovers embraced on a shore. ‘Trash,’ she admitted.

  Turquoise had to admit the trash looked to be working wonders. She thought how healthy Kristin appeared in spite of everything, flushed and rosy-cheeked. Hadn’t she just broken up with Jax Jackson? Not that that piece of news had come as a surprise: Jax was a rat.

  ‘Fictional heroes sure beat the ones in real life,’ Turquoise commented.

  Kristin put her shades back on. ‘Maybe.’

  An attendant wandered out and offered them refreshments. ‘Make mine alcoholic,’ decided Kristin, and Turquoise thought, what the hell, if you couldn’t beat them.

  Over the course of the afternoon the women became slowly drunk on salty lemony margaritas, happy to be in each other’s company and to have stumbled across an unlikely kindred spirit. As the sun lowered in the sky Turquoise felt young and free and far away, reassured that in this world it was still possible to find someone with whom you connected. For today, she and Kristin weren’t stars, they were just friends having a drink and talking the light out of the day. Kristin opened up about her sister, the struggles she had faced with her overbearing mom and how she had been affected by the Scotty Valentine scandal. Privately Turquoise had always thought Scotty might have been gay, but then she’d had experience enough of men who swung all ways imaginable, and in any case believed that when it came to it, most guys, given the right situation, had leanings.

  ‘You figure Jax spilled to the press?’ she probed.

  ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else. He’s a moron. If he’d kept it shut maybe Bunny would still be alive.’

  ‘Agree with you on the moron front.’

  ‘D’you know Jax?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re not in touch any more.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s an asshole, though, make no mistake.’

  ‘So I’ve learned.’

  Kristin didn’t press Turquoise further, instead resuming a flustered monologue about the lover in town who was responsible for her newfound glow, and how since meeting him she was eating enough ice cream to sink a ship.

  ‘So what’s your story?’ she asked after an impressive soliloquy. ‘Here I am going on about myself and you’ve barely said a word. Am I boring you yet?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Turquoise laughed.

  ‘Go on, then, tell me about you.’ Kristin drew on the straw, vacuuming up the fruity sour dregs, and settled yet another empty glass on the patio. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’

  ‘Nah, too busy.’

  ‘Never too busy for sex,’ Kristin challenged, a naughty glint in her eye. ‘Though working with Cosmo would probably put me off, too.’

  Turquoise’s brow shot up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s creepy. Don’t you think? No one else says so, and yeah, yeah, I know how everyone worships the ground he walks on, but to me he’s like a pervy letch.’

  She concealed her alarm. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘When I did Lovestruck with Ava,’ Kristin hiccupped, ‘Cosmo was always making these really…suggestive remarks—really suggestive. Usually Scotty was there so he reined it in, but I always got this sense that if I were by myself he wouldn’t know when to stop.’

  Turquoise said nothing.

  ‘Maybe I’m paranoid,’ Kristin finished quickly.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘You know how some people give you this uneasy feeling? I’ve always felt like that about him. Bunny used to call it “the shivers”. When someone makes you anxious but you can’t say why, you just know you don’t want to be next to them.’

  Turquoise nodded. ‘I get that,’ she said. The margaritas were making things foggy, but even so a niggling idea was playing at the back of her mind, like a knot loosening or a key slipping into a lock. A path through the chaos—if she was brave enough to follow.

  Bringing Cosmo Angel down was only half the battle.

  If Turquoise wanted to be free, truly free, there was only one course of action.

  She interrupted Kristin. ‘Are you still in touch with Jax?’

  Kristin was surprised. ‘No,’ she retorted. ‘I never want to see him again.’

  A beat. ‘Would you see him one last time?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For me.’

  Kristin’s blue eyes narrowed. In them was compassion and concern and in that instant Turquoise knew unambiguously that this was right.

  She had dirt on Jax—the night of Olympic-baton-fuelled passion he would sooner die than reveal—and yet she had never used it. Perhaps she had been on the receiving end of blackmail too many times to ever consider it a tool at her disposal. Now, it was.

  Turquoise had been played her whole life and it was high time she became the player.

  ‘I can’t tell you what this is about,’ she said, ‘but I need you to trust me. Can you?’

  Kristin nodded.

  ‘I want you to take me to him. It’s time he and I had a little conversation.’

  53

  Jax’s hired sports car swung into the parking lot of the Celestial Space Centre in Colorado, half an hour late. He and Leon were fronting the newest venture by entrepreneur Reuben van der Meyde, promising to bring space to the masses through galactic tourism.

  We’ve conquered this world, ran the tagline. Bring on the next.

  ‘We’re on,’ grovelled Jax’s sycophantic manager. ‘The big guy’s here.’

  Leon had arrived on point and was already in costume, resentful of Jax because the suit he’d been given was seriously damn hot. Relieved, he was escorted to the studio.

  ‘Please accept my apologies, Mr Sway,’ a nervous assistant was saying. She was new on the job. ‘We didn’t realise you’d be waiting, I know you must be a very busy man.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ Leon answered, wiping his brow with the back of his elbow.

  Minutes later Jax was being steered into the shot, donning a spacesuit of his own. Each was padded and white, proper Moon Landings stuff, with a clear orb of a helmet. Behind them a space capsule yawned open, its interior pearly-white, otherworldly, spooky, an alien pod that according to van der Me
yde would be hurtling through the cosmos come 2020.

  ‘You guys look great,’ called van der Meyde. He was a ruthless South African. Paunchy, with a fuzz of unkempt hair, he was unremarkable to look at but utterly fearsome when it came to business. And it always came to business—what worth doing didn’t?

  ‘I want that one,’ Jax announced within seconds, pointing at Leon’s chest. The men’s suits were identical save for a gold crest on Leon’s left pectoral. Leon hadn’t even noticed when he’d put it on. ‘Step out of it, Sway.’

  ‘It’s too late to trade,’ coaxed Jax’s manager, already having had a bitch of a morning making excuses for his client. ‘Let’s just get the job done, shall we?’

  ‘Bullshit,’ argued Jax. ‘Get me into that suit or else get me one the same.’

  Leon’s suit had been an ordeal to get into—no one onset was prepared to remove it.

  ‘Be reasonable, man,’ Leon said. ‘These people have been waiting on your ass long enough.’

  Jax scowled. He was still seething about the push-up humiliation on Friday Later, exacerbated when days after the men had locked horns at the Championship trials and Leon had wound up in a photo finish so close to victory that it had taken a bunch of officials poring over the stills to call it. Gold had been Jax’s, it always was, but Leon had never engaged with the promise of triumph so acutely. Nought to full-throttle in less than a second, he had sprung from the blocks, every muscle working for that singular goal, his lungs aflame with burning lactic acid. He had felt the guys at his sides lose a pace, he’d been closing in, gaining on The Bullet, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough…

  Yet Leon had been at Jax’s shoulder; he was one step closer to claiming that ultimate podium. It was the quickest time he had ever run.

  Today was about Jax proving there was only one alpha dog on the scene.

  ‘I ain’t doin’ this shit,’ he informed his manager, tearing at the neck of his spacesuit and failing to get any manoeuvre. ‘Get me outta this thing now.’

  In the end the nervous assistant took a marker to Jax’s suit and painstakingly copied the gold crest. Leon watched from the sides as her fingers shook, but minutes later everyone agreed the replica was sufficient. Nothing could assuage Jax’s bad mood, however.

  ‘One of you gets in the pod,’ explained van der Meyde, ‘helmet on. The other outside, keep your helmet off. Let’s get it both ways, see which looks better.’

  Inside the capsule it was cool and echoey. Leon ran his fingers across a panel of controls, imagining the casing tearing through space in years to come and Earth’s lonely marble appearing in the window, a drop of blue in the black.

  ‘No way,’ declared Jax when the time came to swop. ‘I’m claustrophobic.’

  ‘I’d really like to see it,’ said the photographer. ‘It won’t take five.’

  ‘What part of No way don’t you understand, asshole?’

  Leon emerged from the pod, drawing his height up next to Jax’s, and everyone knew that to have Leon standing would be the better arrangement. The suit fitted like a dream.

  Eventually Jax agreed to climb in, deliberately failing to meet the photographer’s stipulations in the hope that the other set would get used, but in the event his lackadaisical posturing, the casual, almost bored attitude he adopted next to Leon’s Captain America vibe, crackled with a dynamic that all the creative directors in the world couldn’t have articulated.

  ‘I like it,’ van der Meyde approved. ‘I like it a lot.’

  Jax snapped the helmet off and gasped theatrically for air.

  ‘There—’ his manager grinned ‘—that wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘What the fuck ever.’

  ‘Great job, Jax,’ everyone fawned, intent on massaging his ego.

  ‘Many a legend has gone before you,’ contributed van der Meyde, who was expert in the art and correctly hazarded that this kind of comment would be right up Jax’s street. ‘Space has been the ultimate frontier for decades and for generations. That’s what you represent: fearlessness. It’s why I wanted you, Jax. You’re part of the universal family now.’

  Until his nervous assistant, trying to be helpful, added: ‘Just think of those poor monkeys they used to send up! Oh, they were so cute in their little space outfits…!’

  A grim silence descended.

  Jax’s face twisted. ‘You callin’ me a monkey? You gettin’ racist on my ass?’

  The colour drained from her cheeks. ‘God, no,’ the assistant stumbled, ‘no, of course not. What I meant was…I meant…’ She trailed off, horrified.

  ‘Give it a rest, Jax,’ put in Leon.

  Jax rounded like a bull about to charge. ‘Tell me what to do one more time, Sway,’ he threatened, ‘and you’re dead. Y’hear? Dead.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’ Leon turned to go but Jax pounced on him, totally unexpectedly, like a giant polar bear. The others rushed to intervene but not before Leon had been thrown into reverse, putting an arm out to break his fall and crashing into an expensive-looking nest of equipment. Jax rolled on top of him for several seconds, unable to bend his elbow efficiently enough in the suit to facilitate a swipe. Only when Leon pushed off from the ground did Jax resume motion, thrown unceremoniously backwards into the pod.

  ‘My God!’ quailed the manager. ‘Somebody do something!’

  Jax’s legs churned as he struggled to find the floor. The company scattered, afraid of getting caught in the conflict. Van der Meyde staggered forward, with just enough time to roar, ‘Jesus Christ, not the—!’ as Jax’s storming frame careered towards his rival and threw them both into a glass case containing a billion-dollar model of the entrepreneur’s Celestial Voyager. The men slammed in combat, spinning on their feet as Leon grabbed the neck of Jax’s suit and they crashed in a shower of glass to the ground.

  ‘JESUS CHRIST!’ bellowed van der Meyde.

  Jax swung at him again, his fist impacting uselessly on the cushion of the suit. Leon threw his entire weight into Jax’s core, propelling him back, thwarted by a lighting stand until at last Jax was returned decisively to the pod. There was a brief scramble, a vision of Jax making for the hatch like some tentacled freak in an Alien movie, his face contorted, before Leon sealed the door. He turned and was confronted by a circle of bewilderment.

  ‘OK,’ he panted. ‘Are we done yet?’

  By the time he was out of the centre and clear of a rigorous debrief with his lawyer, it was getting dark. Leon arrived at the airport and called his girlfriend.

  ‘Are you home?’ he asked, looking forward to seeing her. He put a finger to his nose, which was still bleeding from the fight. His head throbbed but he’d insisted he didn’t need medical attention. What he needed was an easy night.

  There was a pause before Lisa said, ‘Leon, listen. The witness fell through.’

  It took a moment for his brain to slide into gear. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. The evidence didn’t clear.’

  So much for winding down—the last thing he wanted right now was a reminder of the excavation underway at his apartment. Lisa was fixated on it, poring over evidence and files and articles, any detail that she might have missed the first time, and while he supported the outcome it was as if their relationship was now becoming wholly defined by the tragedy.

  Was Lisa with him for him, or for his connection to the biggest case she might ever get to work on? His home was these days inundated with reminders of Marlon and the pain he had learned with superhuman discipline to accept, and even when away she rarely let up. At the weekend they had visited Lisa’s parents and she had barely stopped talking about it then, either. It was becoming an obsession. He didn’t know how much more he could handle. Meeting Lisa was meant to have been a fresh start.

  ‘Can we not talk about the witness?’ It came out sharper than he’d intended but perhaps that was no bad thing. ‘Look, I’ll call you when I land. We’re about to board.’

  ‘Sure, baby,’ she said quickly, sensing
his anger, ‘I’ll pick you up from the airport.’

  ‘I’m not sure I feel like coming back tonight.’

  There was a pause. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s just I feel like we’re so close, you know—’

  ‘Lisa, please…’ He handed his documents to a steward, who gestured that he’d need to turn his phone off.

  ‘Like there’s one tiny detail I’m missing and then it’s all gonna slot together—’

  ‘Just stop, OK? This is taking over our lives.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be?’ Lisa pushed. ‘Leon, this is your brother’s murder we’re talking about. Don’t you want to see his assassin get what they deserve?’

  ‘This might be a two-month project to you,’ he answered, ‘and maybe you can give up your life for that. But I’ve been surviving this for twelve years, and finally I’m starting to think about myself, what I want. How am I meant to move forward with this…anguish everywhere I turn? I need to be on it for the Championships—they’re important to me.’

  ‘Once the killer’s found we can all sleep easy.’

  ‘Can we? It won’t bring Marlon back. Nothing will.’

  ‘I know how difficult this has been for you…’

  ‘No, you don’t. You can’t. Difficult? It doesn’t come close. You’ll never understand what we’ve been through and what it’s taken for us to get past it, as a family, as a whole. This is a job to you, but to me it’s everything. It’s my life.’

  ‘I understand that…’

  ‘Then cool it.’ Silence. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Leon, wait—’

  But he’d already hung up.

  The sky was the colour of a bruised peach as the jet soared off the runway. Leon rested his head against the seat, staring out of the window and hoping not to get recognised.

  He considered calling Gordon when he arrived in LA, throwing his pre-comp regime out of the window and getting drunk…but he wasn’t in the mood for more drama. It was clear something wasn’t right with his friend. First there had been the anxious phone call asking to meet, and then the morning after Leon had returned from the coast Gordon had shown up at the apartment unannounced. His friend had been twitchy and riled, standing on the porch and shivering through his T-shirt. He’d refused Leon’s offer to come in.