by Reiss, CD
“I like your accent,” he said. “New York?”
“Round it up to eighty.” I held out my hand. “The receipt’s on the kitchen counter.”
“And I’m supposed to believe she just called you?”
“I told you. Wrong number.”
“Louise can’t see shit. She uses speed dial.”
“You change your number recently?”
His mouth twisted, and he looked at me from shoes to hair. I wished I’d showered after the drive from Vegas. Zack never noticed when I was slobbing out, and for a moment I wanted that back.
“So, you’re saying she called my old digits?” he asked.
“Maybe.” I focused on that little pimple, but it was close to his eyes, which were a color no photo did justice.
“Prove it.”
“Are you asking for my number?”
“Give me a break.”
So snide. As if to say, “I only date models, and you’re no model.”
I put my hands on my hips. “It’s eighty bucks to find out.”
“Prove it first.”
He had me. I needed the money more than he needed to know. And all he’d have to do after I drove away empty-handed was look at Louise’s recents.
As I took my phone from my back pocket, his phone dinged with some kind of notification.
Any normal, courteous person would have finished our conversation and looked later, but Justin Beckett’s reputation as an asshole was obviously earned. He looked at it, swiped, curled his mouth in thought, and typed something in.
Then he waited for a response with me standing right there.
Some humiliations weren’t worth even seventy-five dollars, and this was one of them. I got back in my van and slapped the door closed. Justin didn’t even seem to notice when I started the engine and backed down the street.
“Wait!” He ran toward me, bare feet on the pavement, phone to his ear, baggy poly shorts flowing.
“What?” I asked when he got to my open window.
He held his hand out to me. “Give me your phone.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Give me your phone,” he demanded in the silence between rings. “Please.”
“Eighty dollars,” I said.
“You’re a raging bitch, but okay.” He took out his wallet and pinched out a hundred-dollar bill as the phone rang a second time. “This is for the flowers.” He missed my hand on purpose and dropped the cash in my lap. “And this,” he said, dropping another hundred, “for the ticket. Here.” He flicked a third at me. “Get Bluetooth speakers. Okay? Good. Now.” He put his palm up. “Give me your phone.”
Bought and paid for, I handed him the phone. He turned away to answer it so quickly he didn’t see me giving him the finger.
No good deed goes unpunished, and getting flowers for Ned the Bed was no exception. Had I known the favor was for Justin Beckett, I would have gotten lunch instead of a dozen red roses. But there I was after seven days driving cross-country, parked in a private driveway I was going to have to back out of, waiting for some jerk to return my phone.
I folded the hundred-dollar bills and put them in my pocket. This was a bad start, but it was my start. The new number was just a symbolic gesture. No more calls from the temp agency with grinding jobs at fashion houses that dried up as soon as they realized who I was. No more cold looks or turned backs waiting in line at 38th Street Diner. No more Zack asking what laundry setting to use before proclaiming his undying love.
Just me and a portfolio of sketches and swatches. Dreams in a folder. I’d even created a label. KAYLA MONTGOMERY in white block letters woven into gray tape. From this day forward, I was a fully formed fashion designer and would accept no less.
I was feeling pretty good about that when Justin made his way back to the van with his signature slouch and a far-off look that made him seem almost human.
Almost.
Only a man that gorgeous could style his hair like a tardy middle schooler, dress like a dirtbag, and inspire women to scream for him.
He came to my door and handed me the phone.
Was the pimple gone? I couldn’t find it.
“I need you to take messages,” he said. “I’ll call you to get them.”
“Are you kidding?”
“How much do you want?” He was looking past me to the back of the van, probably to determine how hard up I was.
“To be your phone servant?”
“What do you have back there?”
He was going to try and charm me by showing an interest in my situation, and I was in no mood to feel better about doing him any favors.
“My life.” I put the van in reverse. “It’s my first day in LA. Thanks for the welcome.”
“No, I mean that.” He reached in the window to point at the rolls of denim wrapped together in plastic.
“It’s four bolts of fabric. Step back before I take your arm off.”
“That’s nice selvedge.”
“Wrong. It’s fully saturated, red-cast, plant-based indigo from Japan. It’s not nice selvedge. It’s extraordinary selvedge.”
“Who you delivering to?”
“It’s mine.”
That was all the answer he was getting. The person who had given it to me hadn’t exactly owned it. I wasn’t telling him how I’d had an hour to get it out of the office, so I’d had to hire a guy to move it because Zack was playing softball at the Anchor Banking Memorial Day picnic. God forbid he miss that.
I was halfway down the drive when Justin appeared in my rearview. I braked hard to avoid swiping him.
“What?”
He took two quick but not-quite-urgent steps to my window.
“I need you to answer calls.”
“No.” I let my foot off the brake.
“You need a job, right?”
I stopped.
“What makes you think that?”
“You had time to get flowers. You just moved here. You’re begging for eighty bucks.”
The fact that he was right didn’t mitigate my anger, nor did his big icy eyes mitigate my humiliation.
“Bye.”
When I moved, he moved with me. I couldn’t go in reverse any faster without hitting something.
“You do fashion. Stylist or what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Listen. Here’s the deal. You work on costume for this thing I’m on. Union gig. Come on as an apprentice. Outta my pocket.”
The gate must have been on a sensor, because it opened slowly behind me, and I had to stop to avoid crashing into it.
“Just . . .” He paused with his hands out, as if he wanted to hand me a bundle of explanations. The pimple was back, and redder than before. I hoped it found a mate and made pimple babies all over his face. “If that phone rings,” he said, “you come get me on set or take a message.”
The gate clattered when it was open all the way.
“Does anyone ever tell you no?”
His hypnotic smile chased away every thought in my head.
“Nah.”
Even his honesty was so charming I almost agreed to his offer.
Almost.
“Well,” I said and leaned over the doorframe to get a few inches closer to him, “I’m going to pop your cherry.”
Before I could gauge his reaction, I twisted around to see where I was going, which had the advantage of moving my attention away from his smile. Harder than it looked, but doable.
Once I cleared the gates, I popped the van into drive and looked forward. He was on the other side, standing in the center of the driveway with his fist to his ear, pinkie and thumb extended in the international sign for “I’ll call you.”
I gave him the international sign for “go fuck yourself” and drove back down the hill.
CHAPTER 2
KAYLA
It was a long way down Santa Monica Boulevard, and the maps app kept trying to put me on the freeway, which was south forever and not the way Talia told me to go.
&nb
sp; After seven days on the road, I was sick of highways anyway.
Once I was in the right neighborhood, I got something to eat at a fast-food chicken joint I’d seen twelve times on the way and went to the library.
A billboard with a pout-faced seventeen-year-old covering her bare chest with a handbag hovered over Santa Monica Boulevard. The designer was Josef Signorile, my last employer and a first-class scumbag. I sat with my back to the window to sketch from fashion magazines.
And of course there was a Justin Beckett spread in Italian Vogue.
When he looked out at me, he wasn’t really looking at me, and no one saw me bend over the page as if inspecting every inch of him. His skin was clear, of course, and his tattoos rippled and curved over the muscles of the arm he had slung over Thomasina Wente’s shoulders. They each had similar expressions of entitlement. Hers was shaded with vulnerability. His with disdain to any alpha who dared challenge him.
I was supposed to be looking at the clothes. Instead, I read the profile and tried to square it with the douchebag I’d just met.
FACTS:
Justin Beckett’s parents were currently sailing around the world on a boat he bought them.
When “My Heart’s Desire” went platinum, he bought his grandmother a house.
He’s totally ready to up his game and win an Oscar.
He had to actually (gasp) audition for the role of Darcy in the new Pride and Prejudice. When the director, Gloria Wu, didn’t ask for a callback, he begged.
“I, you know, I had to have Gene [Gene Testarossa, his agent at WDE] call her agent to make it happen. I really felt connected to this character. Everyone thinks he’s some kind of creep, but he’s not. He’s a good guy. I said, let me play him frustrated with that this time.”
“So, someone has told you no, you liar,” I mumbled.
I moved on to his lovers, which he wouldn’t discuss. Not that he needed to.
Though he won’t talk about his relationships, Beckett has been photographed with model Rachel Stoker and—quite recently—the Sunset Boys’ answer to Yoko Ono, Sienna Holden.
“When I’m in love, I’ll let you know,” he says. “I’ll shout it from the rooftops. For now, I’m just having fun.”
Beckett declined to discuss whether the affair with Heidi Collins, the wife of Sunset Boy Gordon Daws, was rooftop-worthy.
Climbing over women to crest the peak of Mount Adulthood. A real prince among men.
I was glad I’d refused his offer. I could make it a month on what I had in the bank. All I had to do was find a factory for the rolls of denim and I’d be halfway to my first small run.
Success or bust.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked it. Blocked number.
I’d bet my bolt it was Justin.
“Denied,” I said, hitting the red button.
It was almost six. I packed up and left just before the library closed.
At six fourteen, I parked in the alley behind the CineSquare Theater, where Talia waited next to her BMW.
“Boogersnot!” She enveloped me in a full-body embrace before I was fully out of the van.
“Hi,” I said into her shoulder. “It’s so good to see you. Traffic here’s no joke. And I got a ticket.” I let her go, and she stepped away to look at me.
“In trouble with the law already?” She brushed her razor-sharp bangs, as if they were anything besides pin straight.
“Talking on the phone.”
“Ouch.” Her fingers rubbed together in the international sign for big money. “Spendy.”
“Yeah. So.” I cleared my throat and swept my hand over the length of the van as if I were working a car show. “Ta-da! My life.”
Talia cupped her hands on the glass to cut the glare. “What do you have in here?”
“My stuff.”
“What’s the stuff in the plastic?”
“Four bolts of selvedge denim.”
“Why?”
“To make samples.”
“Okay.” She nodded, arms crossed. She was a lawyer. Sensible. Hard-nosed. She never understood the “creative thing” her little sister “insisted on.”
“I’m blocking the alley,” I said. “I don’t want another ticket today.”
“Sure. Well. At least you won’t have to pay rent for a while.” She kneeled to the bottom of a solid black gate and, with a yank, pulled it up with a loud rattling noise. Behind it was a loading dock with two dumpsters, collapsing cardboard boxes, a row of silver soda canisters, and a car with a canvas tarp over it.
There was just enough room for the van.
“Get your life in here, my little booger.”
The CineSquare Theater was wedged between a wig store and a café, limiting its size and, by extension, its scope. As movie theaters went, it had failed to evolve, just like the man who had owned it and lived in it until the end of his life. Our grandfather, who died and was buried before we even got a phone call from a lawyer.
The CineSquare was our inheritance. Not a cent of liquid cash had come our way when our last grandparent died, but my older sister and I were part owners of a movie theater that hadn’t done a lick of business in a decade. The land it was on was worth millions, but it was hard to sell it when Grandpa wouldn’t let it go unless the new owners signed off on keeping it a theater. No one would promise their future in service of another man’s past.
So Talia and I got it in the will but weren’t allowed to sell it. It was less an inheritance and more an encumbrance. But I could live in it, and that made it worthwhile.
“We’ll get your stuff once I give you the lay of the land,” Talia said as we walked past the empty concession stand. The carpet was decorated in blue and gold art deco loops.
“You thinking of reopening?” I asked.
“No parking,” Talia said. “Not for love or money. Who goes to the movies and doesn’t need to park the car?”
She backed into a red door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, revealing a short hall with a janitor’s bucket with a bone-dry mop inside it. At the other end was a long staircase.
“In New York you don’t need to park the car.”
“This ain’t New York, booger.” She looked back at me from above. “Drive or die. Grandpa had his apartment up top.”
We hit a landing with a door marked PROJECTION ROOM, passed a floor with double doors marked STORAGE, and came to the topmost floor. My new home for the time being. The space our grandfather had lived in until the day he died.
“This is great,” I said. “Like living in a Stephen King novel.”
“And free. Kind of.”
She opened the door before I could ask her what she meant.
“Wow,” was all I had to say, so I said it again. “Wow.”
Twenty-foot ceilings with huge skylights. Exposed brick walls. Open kitchen. Warehouse casement windows on both sides of the space. It was absolute heaven.
“Busted pipes,” Talia said, closing the door behind me. “Cracked walls. Clogged gutters. Broken skylights. The leaks in the roof are so unsurprising they’re almost a relief.” She picked up a moldy carton. “And more Grandpa stuff than I can fit in the dumpsters on any given week.” She dropped the box in front of me. It looked like a dozen other containers were piled up against the walls. “If he hadn’t been such an asshole, I’d lovingly go through every item.”
I opened the flaps. Dust and grit slid off the cardboard.
“Has Dad been up here?”
“He wants nothing to do with any of it.”
I took out an orange box with a white projector icon on the front.
“Reels?” I asked, opening the side. “When Harry Met Sally. Oh my Lord.”
“Dad wants to see you. Dinner tonight, if you’re free. And you are.”
I hadn’t seen my father in years. He and Mom broke up when I was four, and by “broke up” I mean Mom packed up one day and moved us out. She called him when she’d driven us far enough away that he couldn’t follow. For years, she didn’t
say his name, answer questions, or tell us why she’d split like that. She just cried all the time.
When I was old enough to be angry, she dropped little hints about his contribution to her brokenness. I held on to a toxic resentment I couldn’t shake. Talia called him after the accident, but I wasn’t having it. Talking to him on the phone made me angry for no real reason, so I ghosted him like a coward.
“Sure. I can put off . . . I don’t know . . . everything for half a day.”
“Good.” Talia went behind the kitchen bar and filled the teapot. “Do you think it’ll be a problem to find a job?”
“Don’t care. I’m not putting myself in that position. I’m going to look for a sample factory and start my own thing.” I opened drawers and cabinets, taking inventory of the Corelle cups and plates. “God. So vintage.”
“Do you need me to set you up as a corporation?”
“Good idea,” I said, holding open two cabinet doors so I could stare at a collection of water glasses. “I wish we’d known Grandpa died. I would have gone to the funeral.”
“He hated everything and everyone. He’s probably haunting this building just to stay mad.”
“I feel kind of bad, though. Living here without knowing him all that well.”
“Don’t.” She stuck her nose in an old box of tea bags. “Dad and I tried talking to him when he was alive, and he wanted nothing to do with us. Does tea go bad?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Besides,” she said, plucking out two. “He’s screwing us from the grave. We can’t sell this thing. You’re sure you have enough to live on without working?”
“Yeah. A month maybe.”
“And enough for utilities?”
“Yeah.”
“And property tax?”
“Uh—”
“I told you about the property tax.”
Had she?
She must have. She was thorough. Talia didn’t miss stuff like that.
“How much is it?” I asked.
“I’ve been shelling out two thousand a month.”
“Oh my God!” I’d lived in New York. I’d paid three grand a month for a loft bed over a doorway to my roommate’s bedroom. We’d had six inches of counter space and two electric burners. But this wasn’t Manhattan, and I wasn’t prepared to lose what added up to two weeks of freedom.