by CD Reiss
“Wait, Tom.”
He didn’t look up from his screen. “What?”
“I’m in the picture.”
He hit Send. “You wanna sign a release?”
“Tom!”
“What?”
“You don’t talk to me? You don’t ask me? It’s my camera, my face—”
“Your back.”
“You are an asshole.”
I knew Randee was back there. Her presence loomed like a video camera in a bedroom.
“It was a shot,” Tom protested. “You told me—”
“Don’t—”
“Get the shot if the shot can be got. That’s what you’ve always said.” He tossed me the keys. “Drive.”
“I told Leo we didn’t have our rigs.”
“You lied,” he said.
“You lied. You ‘borrowed’ my rig, and you lied. That is not cool. He could get fired.”
I’d never spoken to Tom like that because I’d never had to. He was fragile and passive, which explained too much of his childhood.
He straightened up and got onto the freeway. I faced front and stewed. He knew I wouldn’t cut him off, not for this infraction at least, but I didn’t know what to do with this level of rage. One, because he was my brother, but two, because the picture was going to net him a bundle, and I wouldn’t stop him from making a bunch of money. I was trapped by my own loyalties. But I wanted to punch him in the face because I was who I was.
“So what?” Tom said. “I’ll make a nice take on this, and I can buy you a new camera and dinner.”
“I lost my appetite,” I said, pulling away from the curb. “I am so mad at you. Do not speak to me again.”
“Come on, Laine.” He flicked my knee. “Let’s meet Irv. You can get mad at him.”
The sad thing was, Irv, our mentor, had joints that ached late in the night. He was probably already awake and would be happy to meet us at three in the morning.
“Oh, Irv is going to eviscerate you good.”
From the back, Randee snickered. I turned around. She just sat straight.
“You all right back there?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” She smiled.
I did not trust that girl. I’d wanted to make things happen for Tom, and I had, but I determined that I’d never do that again. Nothing good could come from this.
We waited for his upload, and the calls started coming in. The heat on the picture and the story of the temper tantrum surrounding it was so hot, we had to pull over three times while Tom and Kill Photo negotiated the sale. Even though I wanted to strangle him, I made hand movements to communicate when he could ask for more money. If he was going to screw up, he should at least get paid for it.
It took us over an hour to even get to downtown, and by the time we hit club traffic on Olive Street, the picture was just about to go viral.
“Poor Michael,” I said.
“He broke your camera,” Randee said from the back.
I shrugged. “Still. It didn’t belong there.” I punched Tom in the arm for the tenth time. “You’re lucky about that nice payday.”
“Maybe the guy who threw it should replace it.”
“Don’t even…” I let myself drift off. Tom had to replace it, because there was no way Michael Greydon would lower himself to speak to me ever again, and that shouldn’t have bothered me. I didn’t need to talk to him to do my job. But he’d touched me, and I still felt the electricity of it. Jesus, I wanted him, and I hated myself for it.
Chapter 5
Michael
Kenneth Braque, LLP, was the biggest public relations firm in Los Angeles. He did politicians, doctors, lawyers, corporations, and industry types like myself.
His expansive lobby was quiet at that hour. The floor had been cleaned and buffed, the plants watered to a glisten, the glass and metal polished, and the sound system silenced. The night watchman looked up from his book. His face was blue from the bank of screens. I’d never seen him before, but then again, I’d never shown up at three in the morning.
“Sign in, please,” he said.
Gene snapped up the clipboard. “Did Ken Braque get here?”
“Yeah,” he said then pointed at me. “You’re the guy from Dead Lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I was in that.”
“Man, that was, like, the worst I’ve ever seen. When that building collapsed, I was like, man, you have got to be kidding.”
“Yeah, well…” I shrugged. “No one tries to make a bad movie.”
“You were good though, man. You were good.”
“Thank you.” I shook his hand and shot him a smile.
We got two steps away before I heard him say, “Hey! Can I get a picture?”
I never denied a fan a picture. Ever.
I stepped toward him, but Gene got between me and the guard. “Dude, no. Get behind your desk.”
The guard got behind his desk, and Gene and I got into the elevator.
“Think.” Gene poked his head so hard his stupid watch rattled. “That guy posts your picture to Facebook, and in fifteen minutes, everyone knows you were at your publicist’s in the middle of the night, an hour after you threw a tantrum at a pap.”
“Has anyone heard from Britt? Is she okay?” I wanted someone else to worry about. Worrying about myself wasn’t any fun.
“She’s fine. But your movie is screwed.”
I didn’t care about the movie, but my father did. I’d wanted to do it for him. I wanted to rescue him, but it was harder than it looked.
Gene put his hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to get you out of this, buddy.”
I had to swallow the words get your hand off me.
The elevator doors opened into a huge, empty lobby with an unmanned reception station. Ken’s offices had always impressed me. Tucked into the corner of a building made of glass, it made me feel as though we’d walked onto a precipice. No paper, pen, computer cord, book, or tchotchke was left unattended, undusted, or unorganized. It was always like that, even for surprise visits.
The lights were out, except for the absolute necessities, and the space was dead. Ken stood at the reception desk, wearing plaid pajama pants and slippers, a laptop illuminating his face. His hoodie said Harvard University across the front in grey felt.
“Greydon,” he said without further greeting, “were you on coke?”
“Come on, man.”
He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. “Drinking?”
“Hey, Ken.” Gene held out his hand. “I was there, and—”
“Not that much,” I cut Gene off when Ken ignored his hand.
“Then what the hell were you thinking?” Ken asked.
“That I needed to give you something to do. You know, earn your retainer.”
He slid off his glasses. “Save the smart mouth routine for the ladies.” He turned the laptop toward me.
He was on DMZ, looking at a picture of me in all my rage, my fist pushed forward. I looked vicious and brutal. A director couldn’t have constructed a better shot to make me look as if I was on the edge of sanity. The violence of the moment was stark. My jaw clenched. My fist tight. The color drained from the scene by the low light. I had been grabbing a camera, not hitting anyone, but that didn’t matter. The picture didn’t show my thoughts, as few as they were.
“I suggest you don’t read the comments,” Ken said. “They had no business up there.” Gene pointed at the screen.
“Apparently they did,” I grumbled.
“And nobody gives a shit.” Ken snapped the laptop shut.
“These paps are out of control,” Gene said. “They worked like a team. She softened him up, and he took the picture.”
“This is Tom Schmidt and Laine Cartwright. They don’t have to work that hard.”
“She was flashing her tits and he was taking the picture,” Gene protested.
“The one he threw?” Ken replied dryly.
“I’ll replace the camera,” I s
aid.
“They better not try to sue him.” Gene held up his hand, showing off his ten-pound pink gold watch.
“You stink at this, Testarossa,” Ken grumbled.
“You know what, Gene?” I said. “Thanks for the lift. You should go.” He looked about to say something, but I cut him off. “I’ll call you when we’re done.”
He glanced at Ken, who said, “I’m sure you have other clients. We’ve got this, bud. Go take care of Britt.”
“Yeah,” Gene said. “Cool, cool.” He shook my hand then Ken’s at the door.
After Ken was gone, my public relations guy didn’t waste a second before getting down to business. We hadn’t even left the empty reception area.
“Tom Schmidt is easy. We’ll work something out with his agent. Laine Cartwright’s dicier. If she so much as skinned her knee, you’re in for it. She’s super tough. Twenty-five. Been at this since she was seventeen. She gets the dirty laundry big money pics: Tawny, London, Lindsay, you. She’s extremely aggressive, the pap other paps follow. Got a way of landing in shit. Stop me when I’m telling you things you already know.”
“I know her name, what she does, and you should know… about the laundry…” I paused, and he raised an eyebrow. “She and I were at Breakfront together.”
“Oh, God. No.”
“Oh, God. Yes.”
“You were intimate with her.”
“No. I mean, yes, but…” I rubbed my eyes. I’d been tired before I left the club. This was more exhausting than anything I’d ever done.
“Get to the point,” Ken said. “I have Britt’s lawyer flying into LAX in two hours.”
“It was nothing.” Saying that felt deeply wrong, as if I was telling a whopper of a lie. “It was nothing actionable.”
“Was there penetration? Just tell me so I can earn my retainer. Are you her baby daddy?”
I laughed. “No.”
“You swear?”
I made the Boy Scout sign. “On my Eagle Scout pin. It was worthy of the Hallmark channel.”
“Why didn’t you finish the job?”
“She was fifteen, and I had a girlfriend.”
His eyes flickered, and I knew he was doing a quick subtraction problem. “Statutory.”
“Jesus, Ken, I held her hand.”
“Spare me the boring details,” Ken said, “Did you tell her anything she doesn’t need to know? Does she have anything to hold over you?”
“No.”
“And the guy she was with? You know him? He got anything?”
“No. I never met him before.”
“All right.” He zipped up his hoodie like a punctuation. He lived for this. “Let me see what I can dig up.”
“You going to tell everyone who she’s sleeping with?” I joked.
“If it’ll help us.” He was serious.
I felt as if I’d forgotten who I was talking to. I’d hired my public relations person using the same metrics I’d used to hire my agent.
“I want to replace the camera and be done with it,” I said. “Right now, I’m more worried about Britt holding up production.”
“You and me both.”
“I want to wake up Steven and get some rewrites. Put her character in a chair—”
“Done already. I have a call in to Gareth as well.” He turned back to his laptop. “Go get some sleep.”
“Ken,” I said, and he turned from his computer to look at me over his glasses. “Do I have to worry about this?”
He sighed as if I were asking a question so stupid, a four-year-old would have dismissed it. “You’re a nice Midwestern boy who was born in the wrong city. That’s what they love about you. You’re a born-and-raised Hollywood actor with Midwestern morals and Midwestern manners. Go home, and go to bed. Rest like your life depended on it. And don’t look at the internet.”
Chapter 6
Laine
Los Angeles had a reputation for being warm all the time and brutally hot sometimes, but the facts were more complex. In early November, the days hung around room temperature, but as soon as the sun set and the sky faded to the color of the cold, deep sea, a wall of still air proved that Los Angeles wasn’t a warm place. It was a cold place with a hot sun.
Tom called Irving as we drove east, shimmying left the whole way. We were night owls, hovering over the city, and as tired as I was, my schedule didn’t include going to sleep at three a.m. It was dinner time.
“He’ll meet us at Carnosa,” Tom said.
“Drop me at home.”
He was sullen. More monochrome than usual. If I kept on him, I would turn him off to making money. Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. He was terrible at it.
“I’ll get you a new camera,” he mumbled.
“That’s not the point.”
“But—”
“Forget it,” I said. “Just give me a minute to stop wanting to kill you.”
I had to figure out a way to stop being mad at Tom, because without him, I had friends and tips and working relationships but no family.
We’d almost stopped speaking completely once, when he was dating an actress whose name I’d forgotten. She was a waitress, to be honest, and always would be, but she took issue with him working with me. She didn’t like the stakeouts or the chases, and she railed on him about privacy every time I walked into the room. Tom had the roof over his head because of his celebrity shooting, and he was able to pay for dinner whenever they went out, but she didn’t like the way he made his money. He started to believe she was right.
When he was nearly broke and still refused to spend a few hours across the street from Ute Thurnam to put food on the table, I finally broke down and told him this girl (whose name still eluded me) was worried about the privacy of her dream celebrity self, who would dump him the minute she became worthy of a paparazzo, which she never would. She was one of the useless romantics who thought saying “I am successful! I AM an actress!” would make it happen. But it wouldn’t. Not without talent and not with her head in the clouds. Not unless she worked her ass off and beat the streets. She was a failure before she’d even started, a game player, a cockeyed dreamer, a waitress for life. She thought stuff just happened without working for it.
We hadn’t spoken for three weeks after that, which was exactly as long as his relationship continued. In that time, I felt broken, wavering between staunch refusal to move from my position and the quivering need to apologize. I hated myself for needing him. He was a pain in my ass, but he was my only family, and without him, I felt unsure of my place in the world.
In the end, he’d called and said I was right about everything. The Nameless Waitress was horrible and useless, a cheating, lying whore. I agreed of course, because she’d turned out to be as faithless as any dreamer, and I gave my sympathies while feeling warmth and relief. Everything was back to normal.
Irving met us at the Carnosa food truck, which was in its usual spot in a downtown parking lot. They’d set out a few chairs and tables, and Irving had already staked us out a corner. We gave Tom money, which he refused, and he and Randee went to order. Irving fished my laptop and my busted camera out of Tom’s bag.
At sixty years old, give or take, Irv looked about seventy. His right arm was skinny, permanently bent, and missing a pinkie finger. As a teen, he’d been in a car accident outside the Wiltern Theater, and that arm had never healed properly. Only the thoughtfulness of a photojournalist who had been shooting the band had helped his family find the driver who had hit him.
“Nice mess, this,” he grumbled when he found the picture of Michael on my laptop. “Probably the best picture your brother’s taken in his life.”
Irving had picked me out of a crowd of kids my last semester of Breakfront. As a storied portraitist, known for his work with celebrities and politicians, he was one of the school’s many featured teachers. When I’d disappeared for a week after Mister Hatch filed for divorce, Irving found me in a squalid home in Westlake, back with Tom as a matter of luck. He offe
red to mentor me, and I said Tom came with the package.
“I can’t believe I’m in it,” I said. “Now I have to either let it go without a problem, which makes me an accessory to him bringing a rig where he shouldn’t have, which destroys my reputation, or I tell everyone he stole my camera and destroy his. Either way, the focus is on me, which isn’t good for my prospects.”
“Maybe it’s time your brother started making his own way.”
“He’d starve.”
Irving laughed, showing his rough teeth. “Laine.” He always pronounced my name with the e at the end, and he was the only one I let get away with it. “I keep waiting for your wake-up call.”
“Well, this wasn’t it.”
“You could do some damage as a real journalist.”
“Is this why you got in the car at the crack of dawn? To give me a hard time for making a living?”
“I gotta tell you, sweetheart, I can’t let it go.” He rapped his lame knuckles on the wood table. “This is the exact right time for you to get out.”
Irv had been like a father to me when I needed guidance, and though he’d earned the right to say whatever he wanted to me, I wasn’t used to getting scolded. I was used to simply going where my gut instructed.
“You taught me this job,” I snapped. I was tired and trapped and still smarting from the remembrance of Michael. I felt worthless enough without Irv poking my raw places.
“I taught you how to take pictures. I didn’t pick you out of a few thousand so you could stand outside clubs in the middle of the night. You have a gift, and you’re throwing it away on trash. You were meant for better.”
“You’re full of it. You’ve encouraged me since I was fifteen. You mentored me to hustle Hollywood, and if hustling means something different to me than it means to you, that doesn’t change the facts.”
“You’re wasting your life. Think about it,” he said.
“‘Don’t think.’ Isn’t that what you said? ‘Shoot with your eye, not your brain?’”