by Reiss, CD
Gene slapped Brad’s back and shook his hand. As they spoke, I brushed past them to the balcony. The music blasted from the courtyard, painting a thick coat of noise over conversations. The occasional shot of laughter drifted upward.
I should have left Michael Greydon alone. Shoulda just gone to the dance floor and given my booty a few good shakes and flirted with a boy or two before going home by myself, or waited in the Exploder for Tom to show up with his schlubby scowl. But I had a perverse compulsion to remind him of me. Maybe it was because he thought of me as a dirty pap, even when he’d seen me up close and without the rig. That bothered me.
“You really looked like you were hurt out there,” I said from a few feet behind him.
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Shuttergirl.”
I stepped forward, putting my hands on the railing. “Is that the only name you know me by?”
“It’s the name I can repeat in company.”
“I deserve that.” I’d come with my wine glass, but it was empty. A poor prop to hide behind and a loaded gun of bad judgment. I put it on the railing. “Here.” I handed him my phone. “There’s nothing on there. You can check yourself. I promised I wouldn’t take any pictures up here. I just came for a drink and to get my brother laid.”
He took the phone. “I see you got the drink. How’s it working out for your brother?”
“He’s behind me.”
Michael looked over my shoulder and leaned an inch closer. His neck was made of sinew and stubble, and he still smelled like the Christmas mornings I’d never had. “He’s face-locked with an Asian girl.”
I spun around. Tom was indeed attached at the mouth to Randee from Razzledazzle so tightly I could barely see his face. I fist-pumped.
Michael was looking at my glowing screen, bathed in its blue light, and he smiled at my fist-pump. “Mission accomplished?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I had a sister like you.” He smiled that million-dollar smile, the slight one with only a few teeth showing, and I noticed that spot in his short beard where hair didn’t grow. It was the size of a small pumpkin seed, and it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I didn’t melt. Not a bit. I never felt insecure or overwhelmed. I was the master of my realm. I owned the space around me, the city, the—
Jesus Christ. If he smiled like that again, I would have a coronary.
“I’ve had about twenty brothers and sisters. Tom is the only one who stuck,” I said.
“That’s a pretty crappy average.”
“You never met my foster sibs.”
Before he could say whatever he was about to say next, my phone lit up with a notification from YOU magazine. I knew it by the buzz. Probably a buy, and if I knew the notifications at all, they’d include the subject line of the email. The first words would be Michael’s or Britt’s name in all caps.
I put my hand over the phone. My fingertips touched his wrist, and his touched mine. I was tempted to keep them there. I guessed I did keep them there too long, because he looked into my face, and I realized how close he was. I curled my fingers over the phone. His fingers tightened around my wrist. Skin on skin, for the second time in so many years, sent the same electricity, the same current from my hand to the neglected space between my legs.
“Oh, right.” He waved his finger as if recalling the hours we’d spent telling each other everything. “I forgot. I mean, I didn’t forget. It’s been a long time.”
“Never mind, superstar. Sob stories are for losers.”
He smiled that way again but with a nod, as if he understood and agreed. Then he tilted his head a little.
“Sob stories are for losers,” he repeated pensively, looking at me more closely. “Been a long time,” he repeated. “But I remember the bleachers.”
I touched my nose with my forefinger. His smile was heartbreaking. I wanted to look away, because I was going to fall under the weight of his eyes, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t let him cloud my mind, or admit it when he did.
Our hands separated, but he kept the phone.
I was feeling cheeky. Maybe it was the wine. “Remember? Or never forgot?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Expectations. Did I just jog your memory, or have you recognized me the whole time? And you never said hello.” The phone stopped buzzing in his hand, and I relaxed. YOU magazine could wait.
“The opportunity never presented itself,” he said.
“Talking to me would hurt you. People wouldn’t approve. I know how that is. I forgive you.” I was flirting. What a silly fool. I turned away and looked down into the outdoor courtyard so I wouldn’t feel the disorientation of his gaze.
“So,” he said, “you became a photographer.”
“I became your worst nightmare.”
“You used to be my friend.”
“Things change.”
Like paper floating in a developing tray, he softened, rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb. I imagined them on my body, and I stiffened, because a shock of desire had shot through me. How could he do that to me? How could I allow it?
We paused on that. I had been his friend. Before he was anyone, he was still someone, parting the reeds wherever he walked in a school where I was no better than an outsider, fostered by a studio exec and his wife to save their dying marriage. I’d been unable to keep them together, unable to fit into their world of privilege. I was an outcast in new clothes and almost held back a year because of my scant education. My foster parents wouldn’t hear of it, so I was put in the class that fit my IQ, not my education, and I floundered. I was set up for failure, but I tried. Damn, I tried.
I’d needed quiet, so I went to the tennis court bleachers every day to study subjects I’d never been prepared for. I studied to the rhythmic thwock-pop thwock-pop of yellow balls as Michael Greydon, a senior to my sophomore, practiced that brutal serve over and over. Thwock-pop thwock-pop.
He’d thought I’d been there to watch him. I hadn’t been. Not initially.
“How’s your serve?” I asked, looking into the courtyard at NV, then back at him.
“Tore a ligament in college.” He bent his elbow in my direction. “Haven’t played a tournament since.”
“You called that playing? I called it watching you suffer through three hours of frustration every afternoon.” He laughed a good, hearty laugh, so I continued. “No, really. You, cursing heaven and earth. Loudly too. It seriously undercut my study time.”
“You distracted me.”
“You should have asked me to leave.” I shrugged coyly, because after a couple months, he’d shaved half an hour off his cursing and I’d shaved thirty minutes off my study time so we could sit together and talk.
“Did they adopt you?” he asked.
He must have known the answer. I was sure he’d worked with Orry Hatch or been to one of his parties.
“Nah. They didn’t want a kid, especially not a troublemaker like me. They wanted some fantasy family they were too busy to have. But stop”—I held up my hands—“we’re getting into loser territory. Sorry about what happened with that blond chick.” I waved as if I didn’t know exactly who I was talking about, but I remembered Lucy clearly. Once she saw Michael and me talking, she’d started leaving dollar-bill encrusted G-strings on my locker with a sign that said “Career Counseling at Polecat State.”
“She runs her own modeling agency now.” He shrugged. “The engagement was short, let’s just say.”
“You’re still friends though,” I said. “I see you around.”
That was silly, because he had a reputation of staying friends with everyone. From A-list talent to cocktail waitresses, no one had a bad thing to say about him, and he never spoke ill or well of the women he dated.
“Yeah. You know, I kind of feel like an asshole. I should have said hello when I recognized you the first time.”
I shrugged. I’d assumed I’d meant nothing to him. When I’d sold my first photo
graph of him, when my copyright line appeared next to the picture, I’d hoped he’d remember. The nineteen-year-old me had stayed up late, worrying and hoping at the same time, but over time, I stopped caring or worrying at all. If I meant nothing to him, I meant nothing.
I stopped thinking I was insignificant to him on the balcony of Club NV.
No. My throbbing, unattended sexual desire was making that up. He and I had nothing in common. Zero. So despite the liquidation of my spine, my buzzing, glowing phone reminded me of the worlds that separated us. I had never hated that chasm as much as I did that night. It yawned before me, no smaller for his physical proximity, and I wanted to leap over it so badly I tasted cinnamon in the back of my throat.
“How about a do-over?” I said.
“Of our meeting?”
“Pretend you haven’t seen me since that last time in the bleachers.”
“All right. You first.”
I looked over the balcony at the outside part of the club then back at him, with my finger pointing. “Hey, aren’t you… let me place you.” I tapped my chin. “You’re the guy from Breakfront with the serve. Michael?”
“Oh! Hey, you’re the girl in the bleachers. Gayle? Dolores?”
“Nope.”
“Apple?”
“No! Let me give you a clue. Lover’s…” I spun my hand at the wrist.
“Laine! Nice to see you again.”
I held out my hand, and he put my phone in it but didn’t move away. We held hands, the vibrating, brightly lit device sandwiched between us. I felt as if the energy passing between us lit the phone up, and the connection of our eyes locked our fingers together.
Brad and Gene burst onto the balcony like cops at a drug lord’s.
“Britt’s at Sequoia Hospital,” Gene said, as if picking up a conversation that had never happened. “Broken clavicle.”
Michael held up his hands, letting go of the phone. “What?”
“She told you she was at Christian’s so you wouldn’t get upset,” Brad said, pointing. “This is you, Mike. She’s scared to disappoint you.”
Gene mumbled, “How you gonna shoot? How’s she gonna do the movie? What the hell, Mike?”
“Okay, you guys need to calm down,” Michael said.
“Calm down?” Brad shouted, ten percent more sober. “You can’t shoot without her. And your dad, what’s he going to do? What are you gonna do? This’ll hold up production. And your dad.”
Was he talking about the Bullets shoot? He must be. I suddenly felt as if I was eavesdropping, which didn’t bother me as much as the fact that I was right in front of them.
“Dad will be fine,” Michael growled.
My phone jangled and lit up. The number was my contact at Sequoia. It seemed as if a hundred things happened at once, all vying for everyone’s attention. Michael shot me a glance, but Brad continued, undistracted.
“That’s weeks. You don’t have wee—”
“Shut up!” Michael said.
“No!” Gene was a raging bull. “I told you Britt was a liability.”
Michael seemed to be coming apart at the seams, swallowing whatever was in his throat: pride, anger, a dose of frustration, possibly. Meanwhile, I was backing away, trying to get my phone to shut up.
“No pictures!” Michael shouted.
“I know!” I shouted back. I didn’t know how I’d become their focus, but I felt their attention physically, as if it ripped me open so they could look inside me. I was a well-lit billboard in a traffic jam, stuck under everyone’s eyes. I couldn’t stop feeling it as I tried to get the phone to stop jangling. I was shaking and pushing the wrong buttons.
Of course I had a QikPic app on my phone. Pictures on the fly were my job, after all. So while trying to get the call to go away, I pressed the home button. The phone thought I wanted it to calibrate the light and focus, so it did that in a split second. In the next split second, the flash went off, and the tiny digital excuse for a shutter opened.
The three angry men were bathed in light.
“Oops,” I said. Maybe I’d seemed coy. I was as embarrassed as hell.
“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” Michael said.
“It was an accident.”
“I’ll get a bouncer,” Gene said.
“Go to hell.” I was pissed off. Partly, I was angry at myself. I knew how the damn app worked, and I’d let myself get flustered because I was listening to an insider conversation while trying to tamp down a high school attraction while wrangling a stupid app that worked all too well.
What really piqued my rage was that Michael thought I’d taken that picture on purpose. Not that it mattered what he thought of me. Despite that moment of connection and silly encounters in high school that had never amounted to anything, he and I would be separated by velvet ropes and bodyguards in the morning.
“My word is good,” I said with my fists balled. He could look at me and see a dirty pap, but I couldn’t let him see a liar.
Los Angeles stopped with the next sound.
Clickclickclick. The sound of a shutter, like a hammer coming down repeatedly, froze me. I watched Michael’s face change from overwhelmed to angry, his mouth a tight hyphen, as he reached for me then past me.
Behind me, Tom grunted. His voice was a call from my childhood, and the rest went up in chaos. I backed up and fell ass over teakettle on Tom. Michael stood over me with my camera in his hand.
My camera.
“What the—” I didn’t get a chance to finish.
I scrambled to get off Tom, skirt hiked over my underpants, and watched Michael throw my camera over the balcony. When I righted myself, Michael was gone, and Tom kneeled behind me. Randee stood behind him with her lipstick smeared.
I turned on him. “What the hell, Tom!”
“That was a money shot!”
“I promised we weren’t carrying!”
Below us, in the courtyard, my camera was smashed all over the stones.
As my foster brother went to retrieve the rig, I watched Michael get pulled across the courtyard by his agent. In seeing him through a lens for so many years, I’d forgotten him. Maybe it was circumstance, or maybe it was self-preservation, but I didn’t think remembering would do me a bit of good.
3
MICHAEL
My name is Michael Greydon. Try not to hold that against me.
I’ve never wrecked a car, never knocked a girl up and paid her off, never screamed at my driver, never never never.
I think I became a series of nevers, and those nevers made me more valuable to the people who hired me. So I kept it up, and there I was, not wondering why I might grab a camera and throw it off a balcony, but what kind of person did that. I was a paper cutout of a man, blank and ready for anyone else to draw on.
When I first got into the business officially, at eighteen, I was told repeatedly that I didn’t need to like my agent. I was told that, as a matter of fact, liking my agent would not only make the task of firing him more difficult but necessary. Agents weren’t meant to be sincere, ethical, or good company. Agents were meant to tear out their grandmother’s throat and eat her esophagus for a deal.
I was sure Gene Testarossa had used his grandmother’s hide for the seats in his Mercedes. At Club NV, I wasn’t uncomfortable with the centripetal force on my douchebag agent’s moral center. By the time he pulled me away from the scene in the Emerald Room and out to the parking lot, I started to question everything I had been taught.
“Get off me,” I said, yanking my arm away.
“What were you doing with her?”
“Talking.”
“This is going to cost you more than a camera.”
This was a mess. Between Britt breaking a bone and my temper tantrum, we were internet fodder for the rest of the week.
Gene got me into his Mercedes SUV, whipped a U-turn out of the alley, and peeled east as if his ass were on fire, and in a way, it was. His eyes were bugging out, and his finger jabbed at me, clicking
the pink gold of his watch.
“Were you doing blow tonight?” he asked in a completely businesslike manner, as if the culmination of his job was in that question.
“What?”
“Were. You. Doing. Blow?” He peeled onto the 10 freeway toward downtown.
“No.” I didn’t know what he was getting at. I didn’t do drugs, and he knew it.
“Then what’s with the behavior?”
I leaned back in the seat. I didn’t feel right. I felt down, as if the adrenaline spike had drained me of energy. I stepped outside myself and watched the emotional toll of my physical distress. I could use it some time to inform a scene, or a word, or a glance.
I’d been photographed constantly since I was a baby. I had plenty of privilege, but that came with plenty of responsibility. I couldn’t show what I was feeling, ever. I had to be nice to everyone all the time, and I couldn’t be sick, not really. If I was shooting, my sick day cost everyone millions. If I didn’t work every single day I was contracted to, people could lose their jobs. That’s what my father had taught me. He said if I insisted on selling my life, if I insisted on getting into the business, then I was accepting responsibilities that weren’t to be taken lightly. Everything I did, right or wrong, was seen under a looking glass, disseminated, analyzed by the public, then ignored. And all I ever wanted to be was right.
“You are so lucky I caught you,” Gene said. “You looked like you were going to punch someone.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Act like a goddamn grown-up.”
“I cannot believe who this is coming from.”
“I’m going to be frank.” He changed lanes on the 10, zipping east in a blaze of headlights.
“Good. Be Frank. Because Gene’s a dick.”
“Tonight, everyone’s going to be looking at you. After Britt’s fucking meltdown, they’re going to wait for Bullets to sink. Is that what you want? I mean, no one cares what DMZ says, but once Variety starts in, then you lose the confidence of the studio. Then you know what happens? Money gets pulled. Notes called in. The schedule is screwed, and the bond goes up. Then you have a reputation. You end up not working.”