Lead Me Back

by Reiss, CD

  “I can’t anymore,” she said. “I have things coming up.”

  “Things?”

  She didn’t elaborate. Talia was an entertainment lawyer, and her girlfriend, Soledad, was a public defender. I thought that made them half-rich.

  “The repairs too.” She pointed to the ceiling, where a brown stain grew around a crack in the plaster.

  “I should have taken that job,” I grumbled, still glad I hadn’t.

  “What job?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  My phone rang.

  “I’ll tell it if you give me some of the schnapps in the cabinet.”

  Sliding my phone from my pocket, I checked the screen, expecting a blocked number.

  It wasn’t blocked. Wasn’t Louise. Wasn’t Talia, because she was right in front of me, sniffing the schnapps to see if it had gone bad.

  I picked it up, ready to tell someone they’d dialed the wrong number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” a woman said. “Is this Kayla Whitevan?”

  Kayla Whitevan?

  “No, I—” White van? “My first name is Kayla. Who’s this?”

  Talia gave me a quizzical look as she spiked my tea. I shrugged.

  “Ah, my name is Francine Glick. I’m doing costume for a historical film in production now with Overland Studios. I got your number from Justin Beckett’s agent. Gene Testarossa.”

  Wow. That guy really wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Motherfu—” I stopped myself. “Montgomery. My last name’s Montgomery.”

  “You’re a costume designer looking for work?”

  I looked up at the stain in the ceiling. It was June. When did it rain in Los Angeles? Would we have to patch the entire roof? How much money could I count on Talia for when I was living in the apartment?

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I could use another truck girl. It’s not that complicated a job.”

  Maybe not for her. I was the one who had to be Justin Beckett’s secretary. That was complicated, but needed too much explanation.

  “I’m a designer. I can make clothes, but I’ve never made a costume.”

  “Make clothes?” she asked, as if I’d surprised her. “You can do alterations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quickly?”

  The more I agreed the deeper I got, and I didn’t even know if I wanted this.

  “I’m pretty fast if I don’t have to finish every seam.”

  “This will save me so much time. Where have you worked before? Can you send a résumé?”

  Could I . . . ? No, actually. I couldn’t send a résumé. That was the point.

  Hang up.

  Hang up.

  I can thank her and hang up.

  Talia checked her phone. The glass was cracked. I knew she didn’t have a ton of money, and here I was, showing up for the free rent and the fresh start.

  “Excuse me?” Francine asked. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “You don’t need a résumé,” I said. “Let me come in and show you.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said with finality. “You come on set and show me.”

  CHAPTER 3

  KAYLA

  “She’s here two hours, and she meets Justin Beckett,” my father said after Talia and I told him the story over dinner. In his fifties, he was tanned and buff, handsome as a model with more sway than I remembered as a child.

  “And got her a job,” Talia said, cradling her latte. “To keep her close.”

  “Must be love.” He waggled eyebrows that had been meticulously lightened to match his full head of blond hair. “Is he as hot in the real as he is in GQ?”

  “I never felt so used in my life,” I snarled.

  “It’s Hollywood.” He waved his hand. “We’re all valued for our usefulness. If you wanted a costuming job, I could have helped you.”

  He’d been in the finance department at Overland Studios for ten years, so maybe he wasn’t overstating or showing off, but I didn’t want to ask him for anything. Not yet.

  “She would have had to call you,” my sister grumbled.

  “I don’t want a costuming job. It’s just what happened. And even if I get it, which I might not . . . it’s only for a few weeks.”

  “After that, then. You call me.”

  “Dad. I don’t like being used. I’m not going to turn around and use you.”

  “It’s not using if we have a relationship. Which is all I ever wanted.”

  I stared at the sludge at the bottom of my cup.

  “I know you’re mad,” he said. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “For you. You didn’t see Mom cry all the time.”

  “Because she took you guys and left. What was I supposed to do? Chase a woman who couldn’t stand the sight of me?”

  “No.” I pushed my cup away.

  “Is that what you wanted? Me to chase you?”

  I crossed my arms.

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “You’re in trouble now,” Talia said.

  “Until I was a teenager . . . I wished you’d stayed married and just pretended you were straight. Then I met gay people and realized you’d be miserable. But I just wanted you to be as miserable as Mom was, because why should you be the happy one?”

  “I wasn’t happy.”

  “Well, that sucks for everyone.”

  “I was glad she took you away, to be honest. Your grandfather disowned me, and I was afraid he’d do the same to you guys. This way, he’d help your mother financially as long as I had no contact with you.”

  “What?”

  “You look shocked.” He swirled his coffee around his cup. “It’s cute.”

  “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “Part of the deal. But, ding-dong, the homophobe is dead.” He downed the last of his drink and clicked the cup into the saucer. “Meanwhile, I’m still here, and so are you.”

  The waiter brought the check. Dad snapped it away before Talia could get her fingers on it.

  “So,” he said as he got his card out. “We friends or are you going to drag around a set of Louis Vuitton luggage with my name on it the rest of your life?”

  My anger at him was baggage at that point. I didn’t need it. Mom had died six years ago. Grandpa was dead. Dad had done his best. But, for reasons I couldn’t explain, I was attached to it.

  “I’ll drop the day bag.”

  “Good!” He handed the check to the waiter. “Unless you’re partying with Justin’s entourage next weekend, you come to my place.”

  Grandpa had no friends to want any of his stuff, and we were his only family. So his clothes were in the drawers and closets, and his sheets were on the bed. I changed them, but moving more to make room felt morbid. I left my clothes in the containers I’d brought from New York and kept my toiletries in the second bathroom, where his aftershave and soap didn’t take up space.

  Even with the bed facing the back alley, I’d underestimated how loud traffic could be. Fast cars whooshed by, or rumbled at the light, and the constant hum of the freeway kept me up.

  Dad and Talia had told me I was supposed to call it the 405. And I was supposed to hop on it and complain about traffic with a sense of resignation. I had to listen to people when they gave me directions somewhere even though we all used an app.

  She said I wasn’t supposed to take public transit. “No one” took the bus. But we could barely budge the bolts of denim from the back of the van and onto the loading dock. They were thirty-two inches long, wrapped together in plastic, and heavier than they looked. In the dead of night, four guys had carried them across 39th Street to load into my newly purchased van. I hadn’t asked myself how I was getting them out.

  Talia and I were never going to be able to move it, and I wasn’t risking someone stealing it. I planned my bus route without telling her.

  Eventually, I fell asleep and woke in the
morning during a dream where I opened my van to find Justin Beckett fondling my selvedge.

  Even half-awake, I had to laugh.

  The interior sets for Gloria Wu’s Pride and Prejudice were in an Elysian Heights Victorian. By the time I arrived at seven a.m., the street had already been blocked off and was lined with trailers. People with headsets and clipboards ran back and forth, putting out fires I couldn’t see.

  I approached a long table with coffee and bagels, where a bearded white guy dressed neatly in a polo shirt and jeans was sniffing the contents of a carton of milk. He wasn’t tall or short, dark or light, and had a pleasant, but ordinary, face.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey.” He took his nose out of the spout. “Coffee’s hot. Get it while it’s fresh.”

  “Okay. Sure.” I slipped a paper cup off the tower. “I’m looking for Francine Glick?”

  “Costume lady?” He put his cup under the urn and poured.

  “Yeah. It’s my first day, so . . .”

  “Welcome!” He snapped the lever up to cut off the flow. “I’m Eddie.”

  “I’m Kayla.”

  He handed me the coffee and took my empty cup.

  “I left you some room for cream. Happy to fill it if you like.”

  “It’s fine.” I dressed my coffee. “So, where do you work? On set, I mean.”

  “I’m an actor.” He smirked. “I’m playing George Wickham.”

  “Ah.” He did look familiar. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s the curse and blessing of being a character actor. I’m the face you’ve seen a million times but can’t place.” He held his hand out. “Edward Ainsley.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I shook his hand, then turned my finger in a spiral to mirror what my mind did as it hunted through memory files. “Uh, you were the guy with the cane in—”

  “Dr. Jones.”

  “Right! And the cop in that movie? With the lighter fluid.”

  “You’re two for two.”

  He didn’t seem insulted or annoyed, so I decided not to feel bad.

  “Wickham’s a good part for a man of my limited talents,” he said after a sip of coffee, and my face must have shown my surprise, because he laughed. “Don’t look like that. I work a lot. A lot. That’s more than most actors can say. So. I’ve never seen you. How long have you been in costume?”

  “Sorry?” a woman in her twenties said from behind me. She wore a T-shirt dress under a beige cardigan, white sneakers, and pom-pom-heeled socks. When we turned to her, she looked as if she wanted to crawl under the table. “Hi. I, uh . . . I work in costume, and we’re expecting someone new today so . . . you’re maybe the new alterations person?”

  “Kayla.” I held my hand out.

  “Evelyn.” She shook. “I’m the truck girl.”

  “Um . . .”

  “She racks and tags,” Eddie said. “Can I pour you a cup, truck girl?”

  “Sure,” she replied with a nervous titter before turning back to me. “What have you worked on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Of course that was impossible, so I backpedaled.

  “No movies.”

  “TV?” Eddie said, handing Evelyn a paper cup.

  “Thanks.” Her eyelids fluttered behind her glasses.

  “No TV. I’m just a fashion person and a decent tailor.”

  “Just a decent tailor,” Eddie said. “Like being a decent engineer.”

  “Hardly.”

  “I bet you’re great,” Evelyn said. “Francine’s super picky.”

  I cleared my throat and sipped my coffee. I needed to change the subject before they found out I didn’t get the job through normal channels, whatever those were.

  “Quite an accent you have,” Eddie said before I could come up with a segue to anything else. “New York?”

  “Yeah.”

  I had to think of something to ask before they asked why I came to LA, but luckily Evelyn got distracted by something behind me. I could feel the change in energy, as if the entire street were being pulled in one direction.

  “Gang’s all here,” Eddie said. I followed his gaze to about half a dozen young men striding down the street like a pack of alpha wolves, and at the center was Justin Beckett. Same gold chain, with a new black tank top and knit pants baggy at the hips and tight at the ankles.

  He scanned the street as if looking for something, and when he found me, he stopped.

  Shit. Was he going to come toward me? I didn’t want to start this job as an attention magnet.

  He raised his fist to his face in the “call me” sign and I went completely rigid. I didn’t want him to do that. No one would understand it, and things would get very weird, very quickly.

  But when his hand got to his face, he spread his fingers and ran them through his hair, turning to shake hands with someone. Then, without another glance in my direction, he disappeared into a trailer.

  I exhaled.

  “Come on,” Evelyn said, snapping me back to reality. “I’ll show you over to costume.”

  There were two costume trailers. The one Evelyn took me to was air-conditioned, with a kitchenette, a space with a sewing machine, rolling racks, a desk, and a fitting room in the back. The other was apparently storage.

  Evelyn picked up a clipboard and checked the costumes on the day’s rack with a squeak-click-squeak-click, showing me how things were arranged and tagged as if I’d been hired already. Francine showed up a few minutes later and dropped her white floral Tory Burch bag on the desk.

  “Francine,” Evelyn said. “This is Kayla, the alterations person.”

  Evelyn continued checking with a squeak-click-squeak-click.

  Francine held out a hand with rings on four fingers. I was immediately convinced she’d sprung from her mother’s womb a fully formed professional with a profound vision. She had straight blonde hair to her waist that she kept sliding away from her shoulder with one finger and wore a leather blazer and bell-bottomed jeans that were totally out of style but worked on her so well I wanted to run out and buy a pair.

  Squeak-click-squeak-click.

  “Kayla Montgomery,” she said with a hint of an accent I couldn’t place. “I am Francine Glick. Nice to meet you.”

  “Hi.” We shook. She was strong. “Thank you for trying me out.”

  “We don’t say no to Justin Beckett.”

  The squeaking and clicking stopped. If I were prone to blushing I would have been deep crimson.

  “So,” I said. “I guess I have a fitting? Soon?”

  Evelyn’s hanger shuffle resumed.

  “Yes,” Francine answered, digging around her bag and coming up with a box of mints. “One for you?”

  “Thanks.” I hated mints, but on the off chance she was dropping me a hint, I took one. She offered Evelyn one.

  “Nine thirty.” She snapped the tin closed. “You’ll show me how you fit on Justin.”

  Of course it had to be him.

  CHAPTER 4

  JUSTIN

  The first time I auditioned for Darcy, I hadn’t read the book, and I had zero intention of doing so. I was pissed about having to audition in the first place. My name should have generated an offer. I wasn’t going to take three hours to read something written when guys wore ribbons and bows.

  Then I didn’t get the part, and as annoying as that was, it was fine. Gene had sent me out for Darcy as a warm-up before putting me in for what I really wanted—the Bruckheimer thing, Speed Junkie.

  Meanwhile, Brad Sinclair’s agent was getting him my part on Speed Junkie, and in four hours DMZ was throwing him a parade, and I was getting dragged all over the internet for losing a job in a period piece I didn’t want. This was before the Roosevelt Hotel Incident even happened, which we are not talking about right now because it’s irrelevant. The reason I didn’t get Darcy the first time was because I phoned in the audition. Period.

  So I read Pride and Prejudice. It wasn’t bad. More g
irl-style than I like. But Darcy was my man. I felt him hard. My second audition was so on point they coulda just handed me my Oscar right there.

  Sure. Sinclair got Speed Junkie, but I’d snapped victory from the jaws of defeat.

  The champagne was barely flat before reality hit.

  My old-timey British accent sucked. I had to get a voice coach. Gloria Wu was a drill sergeant with the rehearsals. Then the Roosevelt Hotel happened, and she loaded the contract with clauses that could get me fired. No drinking. No smoking. No bad press. Like I didn’t quit Boy Scouts in third grade.

  Gene said I had to take it, or I was going to have to forget movies altogether.

  Some days, I wished I’d just taken him up on forgetting acting. They shot the outdoor scenes in Ireland, which was buggy as a jungle, and you couldn’t get bottle service in the clubs. The costumes squeezed my balls, and girls had a weird-ass sense of humor that made me wonder if I was the butt of a joke or just dumb. The accent started creeping into my regular speech, so when I got home, I sounded like a tool. Louise liked it. Louise liked everything.

  But I just kept doing my best. I was so good the entire shoot I thought I shoulda stayed in Boy Scouts. Everyone was high-fiving me as if I’d walked through a fire that had cooked off my bad reputation. I wrote a song about it, and another. Once I was done with this shoot, I was going to record a solo album that was going to do fine, and no one would come at me about the Roosevelt Hotel ever again.

  The last two weeks were in a local location in Elysian Heights. Then Chad messaged on Insta . . . just “I’m going to call you. Pick up.”

  It was possible he didn’t know I was on contract-clause probation. Also possible he didn’t know he was the villain in my story.

  That was what Gloria Wu said about Darcy. He was just living. He didn’t know everyone thought he was some kind of rogue asshole. He also didn’t have a team of people whose paycheck depended on what people thought.

  I did.

  Ken Braque wasn’t only my public relations guy . . . he was everyone’s PR guy, and he had the chateau in the south of France and the Bentley in his Malibu garage to prove it.