by Maggie Marr
I got the message. I hoisted my duffel up over my shoulder, tilted my rolling bags, and turned toward the door. At least I had my Jeep. That rattletrap was the only thing between me and homeless. Plus I needed my car to keep looking for a job.
I couldn’t afford the parking rate at the motel and I’d already experienced the handiwork of the L.A. Parking Authority, so I parked three blocks north and three blocks west. I figured that was the safest place to leave my car. I’d needed a neighborhood that wasn’t too far and didn’t have meters. I’d had to hike a mile each way to find one.
I lumbered down Franklin Avenue. Shame settled in my gut. A deep, hollow feeling. I was a fool. Embarrassment over how stupid and naive I was heated my belly. I clenched my jaw and rolled my shoulders back. I held my head up and let my brown hair bounce around my back. None of the people driving by in their BMWs and Bentleys and Range Rovers had any idea I was stone-cold broke and homeless. Let them think that I was some posh young executive. My throat choked tight. I was such a fool. I’d thought my career was on the rise, but instead I had crashed and burned. I turned the corner and walked up Whitley. I stopped.
Where was my Jeep?
My heart thwapped hard against my ribs. My fingers tingled as panic crept up my spine. I walked to the end of the street and looked up at the green street sign. This was definitely Whitley. I walked up the street and back down the street, dragging everything I owned with me. Then up and down each street three streets each way. With every step, a bigger hole tore into my heart.
What an absolute idiot I was, stuck in Los Angeles, no money, no job, no place to stay and now—no Jeep. Darkness chased the sun. I dropped my duffel on the curb and sat next to the spot where my Jeep had been parked.
“What am I going to do?” I mumbled. Life wasn’t easy and life wasn’t fair, and I was a get-off-your-ass-and-make-something-happen kind of girl, but today… today I’d been handed a crystal vase full of shit. Shit that not even I could spin into roses.
My phone rang and I scavenged through my purse. I pulled it out and pressed it to my ear. Please God, let it be someone who has a job for me. I looked out at the street that didn’t contain my Jeep. Not that I could get to a job.
“Hello,” I said.
“Lane?”
The voice was familiar but at first I couldn’t place it.
“It’s Nancy.” She took a deep breath. “Nancy Tyson, from CTA.”
“Hi, Nancy!” I said a bit too enthusiastically and bounced to my feet. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” She hesitated and I heard papers shuffle. “So listen, Lane, there’s this job—”
“A job?” I interrupted, excited about the prospect of not being homeless and broke. “At CTA?”
“Not exactly.” I could hear the frown in Nancy’s voice. The hesitation and the pause. “But the pay is really great.”
Dillon
“Bro, you totally owe me. I so completely saved your ass.”
My little brother seemed to always think that I “owed” him for something, even though I’d been the one saving his ass since we were kids.
“My ass?” With my phone pressed to my ear, I jumped down the steps of my Star Wagon and walked toward my bike. I glanced to the far end of my trailer to where a black-haired actress I’d played a scene with earlier that day stood chatting up a grip. “Isn’t that backward, little brother? I’ve been saving your ass since I was nine and you were six. Ever since you let loose with the little fact that you preferred Barbie to GI Joe and accessories to ammunition.” I nodded my head toward the raven-haired beauty and smiled. She wasn’t as smokin’ hot as the girl in the Jeep from the day before, but she’d be okay for tonight.
“Whatevs,” my brother said with a tone that implied my saving him when we were kids was way past being owed back. “I heard that Worldwide is about to pull your offer for the Steve Legend film.”
My stomach clutched and panic hit me hard in the gut while I maintained my I-want-to-bang-you smile for the girl waving good-bye to the grip and hello to me. She sauntered toward me in her barely there shorts.
My career was just getting liftoff. If a director like Hunter Fabian and an actor like Steve Legend wanted me in their next movie and went out on a limb for me with the studio, I at least had to show enough respect to read the script.
“Hunter was pissed!” my little brother continued. “I got to listen to the call in Webber’s office.”
The actress I wanted for tonight now stood before me. Her eyes were dark brown and her skin was this luscious mocha shade. “You listened to the call?” “Webber does that sometimes. How else am I going to learn to be an agent? Assistants listen to every call.”
“Right, but that’s Webber’s assistant,” I said. I reached out and let my finger run over the actress’s arm. What was her name? Lilah? Lola? Lisa? I couldn’t remember and it didn’t really matter. “You push the mail cart, remember?”
“Not much longer, bro. I’m getting my first assistant desk soon. And I believe it will belong to Webber.”
“That’s a good thing,” My eyes roamed up over her high heels and killer legs to her tiny shorts that barely covered her ass. Her shirt played peekaboo with her belly button. I got to her tits and then up to her face. She cocked an eyebrow and I wiggled mine to let her know I liked what I saw. My brother continued to yammer in my ear.
She reached out her hand and I wrapped my arm around her. Without a word, I settled her onto the back of my bike. “You’ll get the inside scoop too and be able to read the scripts I don’t want to read,” I said to my brother as I smiled at the girl.
“Hell no!” he said. “You’re not Webber’s only client—you’re not even his biggest. You need a reader. And that is how I have just saved your ass—I found you one.”
“Is she ugly?” I asked. I mouthed, “What’s your name?” to the hot sweet thing I would soon hammer.
“Lola,” she mouthed back. I nodded and handed her a helmet. I climbed onto the back of my bike. “Or does she have a penis?”
Lola tilted her head at that question. A smile broke across her face.
“That is weird, even coming from you,” my brother said. “but neither. She's untouchable.”
“Untouchable?” I turned the key to the bike. I leaned back and relaxed into Lola. She had some seriously nice tits, which now pressed into my back. “She must be some shit-faced type of ugly,” I said.
“Nope. Not it.”
“Is she a dyke?”
“Hey!” He yelled into the phone, “No derogatory gay comments. You’ve got family.”
“Look, I know you’re gay. It doesn’t bother me,” I said and smiled. I loved my brother. I loved busting his chops. I mean, he was gay, but he was still a guy. I glanced over my shoulder at Lola. While my brother loved guys, I loved having sex with women.
“Asshole,” he said, but I could hear the smile on the other side of the phone.
“Okay.” I laughed. “But what is it? What’s wrong with this girl?”
“You’ll see once you get here.”
Lane
The Escalade swept up the street and pulled to a stop in front of me, my duffel bag, and my two suitcases. How pathetic did I look wearing a rumpled sixty-dollar suit and sitting on a curb in Los Angeles? The driver jumped from the front of the car and swung around the back to where I now stood. He was older with dark hair and deep-set eyes. He was thick and broad and looked like he could lift a monster truck with his bare hands.
“Lane Channing?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I’m Bob,” he said. He grabbed my bags like he was lifting an empty paper plate and tucked them into the back of the Escalade. I wasn’t sure what I’d signed up for, but I knew the only choice I had was sleeping on a curb in Hollywood or getting into the car.
Bob opened the back door. “Miss Channing,” he said and tilted his body forward as though he was helping the Queen of England and not an-almost-homeless-girl from Kansas.
“Thank
you,” I said. I scooted into the back of the car.
Bob fired up the engine and ripped down the road. I watched through the window as houses of the rich and famous flew by. The road curved and winded, then the car slowed and Bob turned left.
Nancy had been right, based on the neighborhood alone, this gig would be like no job I’d ever had.
“Your employer is an important client of the agency,” she’d said into the phone. Her voice had nearly trembled when she said it. “A very important client. I wouldn’t even be offering you this job if your name hadn’t been brought to me by someone very close to this client. Someone…” She paused and chose her words carefully. “A person the client listens to and respects.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” I asked. She hadn’t really told me my job duties or what this important client of the agency wanted from me. “Scrub toilets? Clean floors? What the heck does this bigwig muckety-muck want me to do for my pay?”
“Wellll…,” Nancy said and stopped speaking. “Well, Lane, I think that those questions are the questions that your employer will be best able to answer.”
“And who is this guy?” I asked. I plucked grass from the ground and let it drop through my fingers.
“Again, Lane, I can’t disclose much. I can say that, well, CTA and specifically this client’s agent would consider it a favor if you could keep the job for the entire summer.”
“What does that mean?” I stopped dumping grass onto the ground.
Nancy cleared her throat. “What it could mean is that you would have a guaranteed paid spot at the agency as an agent-trainee when you graduate next spring.”
My fingertips tingled and my heart beat faster in my chest. A guaranteed job, in L.A., at the biggest agency in Los Angeles, really in the world. My ticket into entertainment? This was exactly why I’d wanted the internship this summer so that I could meet some people, make some connections, impress someone enough to offer me a full-time job once I graduated.
“You’d put that in writing?” I asked. She had given away my summer internship, what’s to say she wouldn’t give away my job?
She paused. “Yes,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “By that very question I know you will be an asset to the agency.”
I smiled too. This was good news. Then I squinted… “But I have to survive whoever this client is and do whatever it is he needs me to do for the entire summer to get the offer? Right?”
“Right,” Nancy said.
“Nothing illegal? I won’t go to jail?”
“I think not,” Nancy said. “Although there could be some other challenges with this client.”
Challenges? I could take challenges. I liked challenges, especially when those challenges ended with a guaranteed job.
“If you’re interested, he’d like to meet you tonight. Where can I send the car?”
Bob pressed the accelerator and we started to climb. We passed a dozen houses, all big and beautiful but set way back from the street with a cozy type of vibe. The fading light hit the wall of a house tucked into the Hollywood Hills.
“What the hell?” I said and pressed my face to the glass. Whoever the muckety-muck was, he sure had a great house.
Chapter 4
Lane
Bob stopped in the circular driveway. He opened the back door and I slid from the Escalade. A wave of exhaustion swept through me. I kept getting pummeled with emotional ups and downs today. The front of the house was deceptively cozy because when I entered through the front door, the foyer was huge. Twin staircases wound their way upward from the foyer to the second floor. I took a deep breath, letting the air settle my nerves and hopefully whisk away my exhaustion. I certainly wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
The tippity-tap of claws on hardwood scrambled across the floor. I turned. Four dogs scampered toward me. Three giants, one that was nearly bigger than me, and a tiny, itty-bitty mutt of a dog scrambled over and bumped into my legs.
“Hey there.” I bent forward and gave the mass of wagging tails and slobbery mugs pats and scratches. “Who are you guys?” The brown-and-white giant licked up my cheek. He looked like a St. Bernard. “Aren’t you a good boy,” I said. I grabbed the side of his face with both hands. Whoever owned this house couldn’t be all bad with pups like these.
“Lane Channing, you are the best-looking female I’ve seen today.”
I turned toward the vaguely familiar voice and the dogs pranced in delight. This time I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping open.
“Choo?” I’d met this guy today in the HR department of CTA for all of three minutes, and now he was luxuriating in a big house in the Hollywood Hills. He leaned against a doorframe on the far side of the foyer, his arms folded across his chest.
“As you live and breathe.” He pulled his shoulder from the wall and walked toward me. “They like you.” A smile carved into his face. “You said you needed a job.” He reached for my purse, which in my stunned state, I’d dropped to the floor.
“But…” I didn’t understand. I was so confused. I’d been walloped all day. I’d actually been feeling again, I wasn’t numbed out, but I wasn’t sure that numb wasn’t better for the type of day I’d experienced. “Do you work here?” I asked.
“I wish it was only work.” He waved his hand as though inhabiting the house and dealing with everyone else who inhabited the house contained the same annoyance as shooing mosquitoes. He walked between the twin towers of stairs and I followed, as did the four-pack of fur and paws. “Nothing that simple,” Choo said. He turned left into another giant room with wood paneling, deep chocolate-leather couches, a flat-screen TV, a pool table, arcade games, and a giant, ornately carved bar. The dogs hopped onto the couches and settled. “This”—he waved his arms at all that surrounded him—“is family.”
He dropped my purse on a barstool and stepped behind the bar. “What are you having?” he asked. His eyes roamed over my gaping face. “Something pretty strong from the way you look.”
I climbed onto a barstool. “This…” My eyes roamed around what was only one giant room in a large, beautiful house. “This is where you live?”
Choo nodded.
Either Choo or his parents were rich, but it still didn’t explain why I was here. My eyes wandered around the room. The whole room screamed “made for men.” My mama always said you could tell if a woman lived in a place because of three things: cleanliness, pictures of family, and flowers. This place was clean—spotless—but there were definitely no flowers and no photos.
“How about a Choo special,” he said and dropped some raspberries into a glass. He muddled the berries and pulled out the vodka. A few moments later, he pushed the drink my way. “That will make everything better.”
I took a long swallow of my drink. “That,” I said and smiled over the rim at Choo, “is fabulous.” The anxiousness careening through my belly smoothed with each sip.
“Everything I do is.” Choo smiled. With a drink in his hand, he led me through sliders into the backyard. All four dogs ambled behind us.
I stopped and stared. The house was fabulous, but this view, the view behind this house… “It’s… it’s amazing,” I breathed.
“It’s pretty killer,” Choo said. He settled onto a couch not far from the infinity pool, then leaned forward and lit two candles and with a remote made the fire in the fireplace spring to life.
I took another gulp of my drink, got a good look at the view, and sat down in the chair next to Choo. The lights in the pool, the candles, and the fire created a little circle of light. I could see Choo and the dogs, and if I looked to my right, I could see the glittering lights of L.A. Choo patted the black lab with one hand. The itty-bitty dog that was a cross between a Chihuahua and some sort of terrier hopped into his lap.
“This is Kong,” Choo said and ran his hand over the tiny pup in his lap.
I smiled. “As in—”
“King Kong.” Choo nodded and smiled. “He may be little, but he has a big person
ality. That’s Scorsese.” Choo patted the black lab now curled beside Choo on the outdoor couch. “And Spielberg.” He nodded toward what had to be a shepherd-collie mix. “And the one warming your feet.”
I glanced down at the giant brown, black, and white dog who tilted his head toward Choo and then looked at me.
“Yeah, you buddy,” Choo said. “That’s Bernie.”
“I like Bernie,” I said and rubbed his head. “He’s keeping my toes warm. What kind of dog is he? A St. Bernard?”
“Burmese mountain dog rescue.” Choo looked around at the pack. “They’re all rescues. It’s kind of our thing.”
Our?
I really needed to know what the our meant, and why I was here, and what I would be doing for work. If not for the Choo special being halfway finished, anxiety would again be pummeling my chest.
“I…” My eyes roamed over his face. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so confused.” I reached down to stroke Bernie’s head. I bit my lip and looked at Choo. “Why am I here?”
“Because we need you.” He waved his hand at the pack of four. “And from what I heard today, you need us.”
I definitely needed a job and a place to stay, but I still wasn’t sure what Choo was offering me. “You want me to take care of your dogs?” I asked. “For the summer?”
“I know.” Choo sighed. He puckered his lips together and settled his elbow onto the back of the couch and his head onto his hand. “Not a great title for a summer gig. We’ll have to come up with a better title than dog-walker,” he said. “What about you also read some scripts and we call you a development intern and the dog-walker can be on the side?”
“Development intern? But… wait.” I pressed my straw through the ice in my glass. My mind spun through the varying scenarios. “You push the mail cart at the biggest agency in town.” I looked up. His eyebrow quirked with interest. He wondered if I could figure out this puzzle. “Just like everyone else in this business when they start out? Right?”