Lead Me Back

by Reiss, CD

  He also had my old phone, which was signed into all my accounts.

  Ken didn’t want to meet in a restaurant, because he didn’t want to be seen. Hungry as a dog, I sat in his conference room, picking at the fruit tray while he sat across from me scrolling through my messages as if I was paying him to keep track of me. Which I was.

  Every room in Ken’s agency looked the same. Shiny wood. Chrome. Black office chairs. Windows from all the way here to all the way there. Not exactly cool or sharp, but expensive looking. Just like the man himself, who was some age between forty and fifty-nine, a height between five ten and six one, with a head of hair that wasn’t graying but wasn’t youthful.

  “Chad messaged you on Instagram,” he said, holding my phone so I could see what I knew was there.

  “So?”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean how? The paper airplane in the corner.”

  “Your messages are locked to the public.”

  “I forgot to unapprove him.” I snapped the phone away and navigated to settings, where I had a list of the very few accounts allowed to send me a message. Would have been hard to miss Chad, considering I’d cut off everyone else, but maybe it was a little bit on purpose. Chad was the only one of us who’d disappeared after that night, and the one who’d never contact me unless it was life or death.

  “Did he call?” Ken asked.

  “How should I know?” I put the phone down and picked a piece of toothpick-speared pineapple off the tray. “He doesn’t have my new number.”

  I popped the fruit in my mouth and flicked the toothpick on a napkin, trying to look casual. I half reclined in the chair with my ankle over the opposite knee.

  “Your limitations are for your benefit,” Ken said.

  “Are we doing the thing where you lecture me?”

  “We’re doing the thing you retained me for.”

  “Keeping me clean.” My foot rocked at the speed of my annoyance.

  “Keeping you from falling into the abyss of irrelevance. If you were a different kind of musician or you had a different look.” He flicked his hand toward me, up and down to indicate the look he was talking about. “If you’d started your career after adolescence, we could sell you as the dangerous kind and lead into a redemption narrative in your fifties. You don’t have that luxury. No one has ever successfully rebranded out of childhood stardom. Sorry, kid.”

  “Cool. I’m out.” I uncrossed my legs, but Ken didn’t move.

  “You start shooting again tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has Gene gotten you anything else?”

  “He wants the edit to go out first.”

  “Good. Let’s review.”

  I pushed into the back of the chair and turned it so he was to my side. Even then, seeing him in my peripheral vision was like a buzz saw an inch from my balls. I pressed my fingertips against one temple to block him.

  “No contact with anyone involved in the incident. This includes, but is not limited to . . . Gordon Daws. Heidi Collins-Daws. Chad Westwick. Shane Huang.”

  That list of names hurt every time.

  “I know.”

  “When you’re out, you will either drink zero alcohol or use a driver. Zero drugs, period. Carter Kincaid will be your bodyguard. He reports to me. Keep your middle finger in your pocket and pretend you like everyone you speak to. And we need to add a rule about women.”

  “I haven’t gotten laid in months.”

  “In Cork? Red hair?”

  “They’re all redheads.”

  “This one cost you a few grand in shut-the-fuck-up money. She had video of you in a pub getting handsy with two of her friends.”

  “That was one night in like . . . May.” It was the only night I let loose in Ireland, paying to keep the bar open. And yeah, there were three girls, and we all had a good time. “Did she say it wasn’t consensual? Because it was.”

  “No one’s saying that, but if the video had gone viral before we got to it, we’d be putting out a fire. This is the point, Justin. Never forget this is about directing people’s attention away from your conduct and toward your work.”

  “Dude, this is too far. I can’t date?”

  “I never said that.”

  “You said there had to be a rule about women.”

  “I did. Here’s the rule. If you like someone, they come through me.”

  “Nah.” I spun my body and the chair in his direction and leaned across the table. “That’s a full nope.”

  “You’re vulnerable, and you’re not in a position to trust your own judgment. The studio has stuck with you on this film, but all it’s going to take is one unscrupulous woman with a Twitter account and a lawyer and like this . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Your brand is shot, and Slashdot Records cuts your marketing budget. You make music no one hears about. Justin Beckett becomes someone people google when they’re wondering if any of the Sunset Boys made another album. DMZ will make money talking about every stupid thing you do for the rest of your life, but as an artist, you’re finished.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “It’ll cost you your career to find out.”

  I stood up and held my hand out like I wanted to shake on it.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Ken took my hand, smiling because he knew I didn’t have a choice.

  I figured Kayla, Hot Girl With Selvedge, would fold as soon as I had Francine Glick call. No one resisted Francine. She did the heavy lifting of making me feel like a man while wearing froufrou shit all over. She told me the more powerful the dude, the finer the lace. She was so convincing about the badassery of grosgrain ribbon that I had it put on my hoodies. If she could convince me of that, getting a jobless, broke-ass designer on set would be a piece of cake.

  And I was right.

  Monday. I was walking onto the location with Bern (my manager), Victor (my PA), Carter (my bodyguard), and Humby (my stylist) when I saw her talking to Eddie Ainsley by craft services.

  She was as hot as I remembered. Curly black hair. Brown eyes. Full lips that had a little hole in the center when they were closed. I gave her the “call me” sign, then flipped it into a head scratch when her eyes went wide with “don’t do that.”

  I could take a hint.

  “You have a fitting for scene 21 at nine thirty.” Victor sat on the bench across the table, tapping the eraser side of his pencil against his clipboard and puckering his lips, meaning he was deep in thought.

  “Noted,” Humby said in a thick British accent as he stood in the corner, flipping through a magazine.

  “Meet with Gloria at eleven thirty on set to prep for scene 19, which is shooting at eleven forty-five. When are you supposed to eat lunch?”

  Leaning to look out the tinted window, I saw Kayla walk away from Eddie and into the costume trailer with the truck girl. I checked my watch. My fitting wasn’t for another hour.

  “Not acceptable,” Bern said as he leaned into the fridge. “She knows better than to call Justin’s scenes between twelve and one.”

  “You had the schedule last night,” Victor bit back. “This should be fixed already.”

  Bern came out with his breakfast Tab and popped the cap. “I was busy.”

  “So was I,” Victor said. “Doing my job.”

  “Your job’s ordering lunch.”

  “Nobu,” I said more than asked, trying not to look like I was staring at the costume trailer.

  “Of course,” Victor said. “Your grandmother called. She said she was surprised. Thought you fired me and hired a girl with curly hair?”

  “Oh snap,” Bern said.

  “No.” I waved it away. “She’s got a bunch of numbers for me on speed dial. It’s a long story that ends with oncoming dementia. Whatever she wants, just say yes.”

  “She wanted to thank me for the roses.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘What roses?’ and she said, ‘The ones that got me la
id.’”

  Bern laughed while I watched the costume trailer for a girl who wasn’t coming out for a while.

  “I have a fitting.”

  “Right.” Humby snapped the magazine closed. “Early bird and all that.”

  “I’m good,” I said to him. “Hang here.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just a button,” I lied. “Go check on the shirts with the lace, would you? I want one for the thing on Saturday.”

  I left before he could ask what thing. Carter fell in behind me without a word.

  Just about the only time I could walk around on the street was when it was closed off for a video and now a movie shoot. Even then, it wasn’t like I was just walking along the street. People had questions, script revisions, and gossip. It was like trying to get across the quad in high school after our first album went platinum. It took forever to go a hundred feet, but I acted rushed and eventually got up to the costume door.

  Kayla was on a ladder, holding a Victorian undergarment that looked like a bedsheet. The phone made a rectangle bump in her pocket, and I had to admit she was even cuter when she wasn’t growling at me.

  The truck girl stood beside the ladder, checking her clipboard.

  “Not my size,” I said, sitting in Francine’s chair, eye level with Kayla’s cowboy boots.

  “Not everything’s about you,” she replied, flipping the tag on the hanger.

  “Justin,” the truck girl said with a glance at her watch. “You’re early.”

  “Came to see how Kayla was doing. So. How you doing?”

  Kayla got down from the ladder carefully. Making me wait. Still cute, but still growling in a way.

  I put my feet on the desk, because I was feeling chill, even if she wasn’t.

  “I’m fine.” She kicked the steamer on with the toe of her boot.

  “Truck girl,” I said to the chick with the clipboard. “Can you grab me a doughnut or something?”

  “Her name’s Evelyn.” Kayla hung the garment on a hook above the steamer.

  “It’s fine,” Evelyn said, pushing her black glasses up her nose. “Doughnuts from the cast table?”

  “Yeah.”

  She left. It was just me and Hot Phone Girl.

  “No ‘thank you’ for getting you a job?” I said. “Cool. Cool. You do you.”

  “I will.”

  “Any calls?”

  “No.” The steamer gurgled as she ran it under the skirt.

  “You sure?”

  She put her phone on the desk. “There. Code’s 2019.”

  I took the phone and opened it. Scrolled through the messages and notifications. Nothing. I flipped it back onto the desk blotter.

  “It’s absolutely amazing to me that you just felt entitled to go through my phone like that.”

  “You gave me the code.”

  “So?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”

  Not answering, she ran the steamer handle under the garment with an intensity that had nothing to do with me. I was sitting right there, but I wasn’t even in the room as far as she was concerned. Or so I thought.

  “What are you looking at?” she said.

  “Why are you so pissed off at me?”

  “For one? You manipulated the situation to get me here, and you won’t tell me why.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because you just scrolled through what could have been really personal stuff.”

  All I’d seen were a few yeses and thanks and a yellow emoji.

  “There was nothing.”

  “That’s not the point.” The water in the steamer was doing its thing. Steaming. And so was she. I’d just tried to reassure her it was cool, and she was mad. What did she want out of me, already?

  “What’s the point then?”

  “The first point is, don’t look in my stuff. The second is . . . What if I pick up and I don’t know what to say? And am I supposed to just wait until you ask me who called? I mean, what is this? You’re controlling a piece of my life, and for all I know you’re using this number to sell drugs or . . . I don’t know. Fuck your best friend’s wife.”

  My reputation preceded me. Denying everything wasn’t even on the table, but letting her think the worst wasn’t either.

  “Hold up.” I took my feet off the desk. “I am not that guy.”

  “Sure you’re not.”

  I’d walked through fire, and all she could see was the stupid headlines about the Roosevelt Hotel. What happened to the benefit of the doubt?

  “A’ight,” I said. “Here’s the deal. You get a call from Vegas, don’t answer it. Just come get me. Anywhere on set. You find me.” I plucked a pen from a mug full of them and wrote my number on a sticky note. “If we’re not on set, you call this.” I stuck the note on her phone and slid it toward her. “Guard that with your life.”

  She looked down at it. Then at me, as if she knew what my personal number was worth.

  “Take my phone,” she said, turning back to the steamer. “I’ll use my old one and get another number.”

  Did that work?

  No, that wasn’t gonna work. Ken could find out I had two phones. I needed a buffer.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Money?”

  “Not from you.”

  “I can tag you on my Insta.”

  She scoffed. “Why?”

  “Maybe you got a SoundCloud or something. I tag you, you get followers.”

  “No thanks.”

  “What, then? What’s a guy gotta do?”

  She hung up the steamer rod and leaned over the desk as if she were the boss and I was in some kind of trouble. Which was a no. She wasn’t the boss of me. I leaned back and put my feet up. She could sniff my soles or back the fuck up.

  But no. She looked me right in the eye.

  “I have a pretty good ear for bullshit,” she said. “But I don’t need it for this. You want me to pick up calls to your old number, and I want to know why.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I tell you and you’ll just do it?”

  “You’ll owe me, but I’ll do it.”

  “What’ll I owe you?”

  “To be determined.”

  I shrugged. I could live with a TBD. Wasn’t much she could ask for that I couldn’t deliver. And if it was a bad ask, I could just say no.

  But blowing my wad wasn’t going to work either.

  “I stuck my foot in it. Got put on blast. You read about it. The Roosevelt Hotel. My band broke up. The record company threw a hissy fit and invoked this thing in my contract. I had to cut myself off from certain people and get counseling.”

  “That was in your contract?” Her expression settled somewhere between a sneer and genuine curiosity. “Who you can be friends with?”

  Anyone who couldn’t be accused of “exerting negative influence,” but I was in no mood to define Chad by the accusations against him.

  “Yeah. You handing out free legal advice?”

  “No.” She took her knuckles off the desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “And these people? The ones you cut off? They have your old number?”

  “Yeah.”

  God, the way she looked down at me as if she was trying to see inside my head. She was so damn hot. Not my type. Too tough. But more of a challenge than any millionaire model on my old (or new) phone’s contact list.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s an old friend. It’s not my dealer or anything like that. And . . . you know I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. But I’m not the guy who just cuts people off. Doesn’t feel right.”

  “You’re asking me to help you breach your contract.”

  Roadblock. I wasn’t asking for a service, I was asking her to stick her neck out. But being right didn’t make her right. What was going to happen to her if she was found out? What did she have to lose? She wasn’t going to get sued. I mean, mostly maybe. And it wasn’t like she needed a working relati
onship with my record company.

  I was about to point this out when the door at the end of the trailer opened and Francine came in with a coffee cup.

  “Hey, Frannie,” I said.

  “Get your feet off my desk, Justin.”

  I got up and gave her a hug.

  “You’re early for your fitting,” she said, getting into her chair.

  “Yeah, I was bored.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.” She turned to Kayla, whose arms had dropped to her sides. “You can go now? Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t recut,” she said to Kayla. “We work with what we have, and we’re not fancy about it.”

  “No problem.”

  “Good. Get JB21. Mr. Darcy’s lost a little weight since we made the trousers.” With a flick of her wrist, she ended the questioning.

  Kayla nodded and casually picked up her phone, shooting me a glance before she put it in her back pocket.

  CHAPTER 5

  KAYLA

  I was a sucker for people who love their friends. I didn’t make friends easily, and I lost them like earring pairs. Carelessly, while I wasn’t looking. I guess that was one of the reasons it was so easy to leave New York.

  Brenda was the only one I really cared about. We’d met at Parsons School of Design, and eighteen months after graduation we were working at Josef Signorile together.

  I hadn’t seen her in a long time, but I’d never forget her. In first-year draping class, she’d brought her own dress form. We all had to work on size-eight forms, but she wasn’t having it. She’d hauled in her own size fourteen and dared the instructor to tell her otherwise . . . which he did. He brought it right to the dean and she fought tooth and nail to work on large sizes, which didn’t make her any fans in the class.

  They didn’t want to think about big women. Wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. I’ll admit to being uncomfortable with anyone doing their own thing while the rest of us followed the rules and were all graded on the same size model. But she grew on me. She was tough. She knew what she wanted to get out of that class, and by hook or by crook, she was getting it.

  I started to admire her, and by the end of the semester, she’d sold me on the million ways large-size people were erased, and that draping class was number one. She deserved a better grade, because she could do magic with a square of muslin and the right size form.