Chapter Seventeen
The Beverly Center was a mall, not an office building, and it seemed highly unlikely he’d find Sparky here. Nine stories of poured concrete slathered in dark gray paint, monstrous and looming, taking up an enormous chunk of prime real estate on the easternmost edge of Beverly Hills. A smattering of restaurants on the ground floor, then six levels of parking crowned by three floors of upscale retail establishments. Vish took the escalators to the seventh floor, then stood and stared at the shop displays of luxury goods, uncertain.
Did Lon know what he was talking about? Vish hadn’t been here in months, but it looked much the same as his last visit. Shops. No offices.
At the customer service desk, a woman was deep in conversation with the uniformed young man behind the counter. She wore a black suit with an impeccably tailored jacket and high black boots with narrow spike heels. She was tall and Asian, with bobbed hair that gleamed copper in the light, and she looked very familiar.
Of course. Sparky’s glamorous friend Poppy, who’d picked him up after the party in the hills, who’d signaled to Vish not to accept Sparky’s offer of a ride. The young clerk slid a plastic mail bin overflowing with large padded envelopes across the counter to her. Screenplays, maybe, or manuscripts.
Poppy hoisted the bin. She balanced it on one hip, then headed toward the escalators leading up to the highest levels. A small avalanche of padded envelopes shifted and spilled to the marble floor. She paused, teetering in her boots. Her mouth twitched in irritation.
Vish hurried forward and gathered up the fallen envelopes. The addressee was Poppy Kang, not Sparky, but he was in the right place. He gestured toward the bin. “Do you want me to carry that?” he asked.
She looked at him and smiled. No trace of recognition on her lovely face, not that she’d remember their one fleeting prior encounter. “Thanks. That’s very cool of you,” she said. She passed the overflowing bin to him. “I’m on the top floor.”
He followed her up two flights of escalators. The interior of the Beverly Center was nicer than the exterior, all glass walls and glossy marble floors, open space and skylights. Poppy strode ahead of him, her boots clicking smartly.
Top level. Mostly just the food court, plus a few orphaned shops. There’d once been a movie theater here, Vish had heard, a multiplex, but it’d gone out of business years ago. The entrance had been plastered over to match the seamless white wall on either side, and now there was no sign the theater had ever existed.
Poppy headed toward that white wall. Vish trailed her as she walked straight up to a door he could hardly see, just an outline against all the white. No doorknob. She inserted a key into a white-painted lock and pushed it open.
“This is me,” she said. She held the door and gestured for him to enter. “Care to come in, Vish?”
Vish’s mouth didn’t drop open, but it was close.
“You recognized me,” he said at last.
“Sure.” Poppy had dimples, like Troy. She groped around the wall just inside the door and flicked on the overhead lights. “I was expecting you. If not today, then sometime soon.”
Vish found himself in an unfinished space. No dividing walls, a ceiling lined with exposed pipes and dangling electrical wires, bare floorboards. A desk sat near the door, covered with stacks of screenplays and messy piles of paperwork. Poppy nodded toward the desk. “Just put the mail down there.”
Vish shifted aside a tower of scripts to make room for the bin. “Lon Hartford said I might be able to find Sparky here.”
“That was optimistic of Lon.” Poppy grinned. “Sparky almost never comes to the office these days. You’ll have to make do with me. Grab a chair from over there and have a seat.” She sat down behind her desk.
Vish saw a stack of collapsed folding chairs resting against the wall. He arranged one in front of the desk and sat.
“I’d offer you something to drink, but the amenities are limited,” Poppy said. “There’s a Starbucks in the food court if you need anything.”
Vish glanced at the bare walls, the lack of furnishings. “Did you just move in?” he asked.
“We’ve been here three months. This is as settled as we’re going to get. Sparky likes to switch offices a lot, so it’s never worthwhile to invest too much effort in appearances, especially since he’s barely ever here.”
She pawed through the stacks of papers on her desk. “You’re here somewhere. I was just looking at it last week. Give me a second.” She picked something up. “Aha.”
She held up an unbound sheaf. It looked about manuscript-length. Vish glanced at the title page.
“That’s my book,” he said. His voice sounded muffled and strange in the cavernous room, or maybe something had gone wrong with his hearing. The blood rushed in his ears, and he felt kind of dizzy, because Poppy had his book, which he’d never sent to Sparky.
“Sure. You wanted Sparky to read it, right?”
“Yes, I did. But… I didn’t send it to him,” he said.
Poppy shrugged. “You sent it to someone. Sparky asked me to track it down, I sent out feelers, and some agent or publisher or whoever passed it along to me. No real mystery to it.”
“Why didn’t you ask me for a copy?” Vish asked.
“Same result either way. My method worked, and I didn’t have to bother you. From what I hear, you’ve been tied up lately with other matters.” She placed the manuscript on her desk and flipped through the first few pages. “Sparky hasn’t read it yet. He’s been meaning to, he keeps saying, but between you and me, he probably never will.”
“He didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic when I described it to him.”
Poppy rolled her eyes skyward. “That’s Sparky. If you’d managed to work in a cyborg ninja or a nitrogen tank explosion or something, he would’ve perked right up. I read it, though,” she said. She tapped a finger on the title page. Her nails were long and covered with glossy beige polish. “I liked it. It reads very well. Maybe a little soft for the current market, but there’s probably a place for it.”
“Thank you,” Vish said.
“I’ve suggested some changes throughout. You want to make them, we’ll see if we can get this sucker in the hands of the right publisher.”
She passed him the manuscript. Vish flipped through it. It was a mess of red pen marks, no page left untouched. Jotted notes in the margins, crossed-out lines, entire paragraphs covered in scribbles.
Vish picked a page at random and reviewed her changes. She knew what she was doing. His sentences were tightened, his prose was punched up, until it read in a swifter, cleaner, easier rhythm. Just at a glance, it was clear she’d made it better.
Some of her changes, though… Vish looked up at her. “You changed character names?”
“Not all of them.”
“Katherine to Kathleen? What difference could that make?”
“On the surface? Not a thing. But on the level I’m working at, it could mean the difference between being published and not being published.”
Vish stared, not sure how to express his thoughts without giving offense. She smiled at him.
“If it helps, think of your manuscript as a blueprint, the foundation for something that has yet to be built. What I’ve done is take the next step toward building it.”
“But… it’s so arbitrary,” Vish said. “Changing one name to another… you can’t possibly know this will help my book get published.”
“Nothing’s certain, of course. Do I know what will increase the chances of selling it, though? Absolutely.” She shrugged. “If you work with me and Sparky, we can get you published and make you very, very happy. That’s a promise. But I understand you might be reluctant to believe I know what I’m talking about. It’s a leap of faith.”
“I’m sure you’re very good at this, but I don’t even know who you are,” Vish said. “I don’t even know who Sparky is.”
Poppy examined him. Her expression seemed fond yet remote, like he was someone’s ki
d brother she’d been tasked with entertaining. “Want to grab a drink with me?”
“I… suppose,” Vish said.
“Excellent.” Poppy flashed her dimples again. She stood and led the way out of the theater, locking the door behind them.
They took the elevator to the first floor, which put them right in the middle of the parking structure. Vish expected Poppy to head for the sidewalk, maybe to one the restaurants lining La Cienega, but instead she strode toward the back of the parking structure, in the opposite direction of the exit.
She pushed open an unmarked door and led Vish to an enclosed outside courtyard. Gravel covered the ground. A black acrylic bar ran the length of an ugly concrete wall, with a smattering of iron bistro tables shaded with patio umbrellas arranged in front of it.
Two exquisite young men with dark suits and expensive haircuts sat on tall stools at the bar, sipping Scotch and conversing. They glanced back at Poppy and Vish and fell silent for a moment, then resumed their dialogue in hushed tones, their heads close together.
The patio tables were all unoccupied. Poppy sat down at one and gestured for Vish to take the seat across from her. “This okay?” she asked.
“Sure.” Vish sat and looked around. “I had no idea this place was here.”
“Most people don’t,” she said. “Nobody goes here who doesn’t belong.”
“What’s that noise?” he asked. It was an electronic hum, omnipresent, not loud but impossible to ignore.
“It’s the oil well,” Poppy said. At Vish’s confused expression, she explained. “The mall is built around an oil well. They put up a barrier to hide it from the street, but it’s active.”
Vish glanced at the wall. “Is it safe to have a bar here?” he asked. “Wouldn’t there be all kinds of chemicals in the area?”
“Sure.” Poppy gestured with her chin at a multi-colored chemical hazard placard mounted on the bar. “It’s not like they don’t warn people. It’s probably fine, as long as you don’t lick the ground or anything.”
A waiter came over, lithe and beautiful in a black collarless shirt, his dark hair swept off his face in a ponytail. “Your usual, Ms. Kang?”
“Please. Thanks, Alec.” She turned to Vish. “What will you have?”
“Ah… The house red?”
The beautiful waiter smiled and nodded, as though he wholeheartedly approved of Vish’s choice, then withdrew. As soon as they were alone, Vish cleared his throat. “I actually didn’t come here to talk to Sparky about my book.”
“Figured as much. What’s on your mind?”
“I saw Sparky at Kelsey Kirkpatrick’s birthday party. He said he’d gotten me into trouble, and he was sorry about it.” Vish closed his eyes and tried to remember the exact words. “He said, ‘She’ll kill you if she can.’ I just want to know what he meant by that.”
“Huh.” Poppy raised her eyebrows until they disappeared under her heavy sheaf of bangs. She rested her elbow on the table and braced her chin in her hand. “That’s enigmatic.”
“That’s what I thought,” Vish said.
“Do you have any idea who ‘she’ is?”
Vish shook his head. “I thought he might be talking about my girlfriend, maybe. She dumped me immediately after the party, and I don’t know why.”
“Any reason she’d want to kill you?” Poppy asked.
“Not at all. Not even remotely.” Vish exhaled. “It’s all very confusing.”
The waiter brought their drinks. A Manhattan for Poppy, four cherries. They drank in silence.
“This is Sparky’s business, and I don’t know how much I should tell you,” Poppy said. She shrugged. “For that matter, I don’t know the whole story. I imagine he’ll find you at some point and explain things.”
“Do you know if I’m in any danger?” Vish asked.
She smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and something about the way she said it, both kind and dismissive at once, made Vish feel better about the whole situation.
“Can you tell me anything about Sparky? Anything at all? What does he do? Why do people get so… weird about him?” Vish asked. “Lon Hartford said he runs things. What does he run?”
“It doesn’t matter who he is,” Poppy said. “If you need to know about him, he’ll make sure you figure it out.”
“You want to help me publish my book, and yet you won’t tell me anything about who you—you and Sparky—really are?” Vish asked. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”
“Of course not. Fair doesn’t factor into this.” Another flash of dimples. “As I said earlier, it’s a leap of faith. And it’s entirely your decision. We’d be happy to work with you, but it’s not going to crush us if you turn us down.”
He could say yes. He could agree to work closely with Poppy, he could make the changes she’d suggested to his book, and maybe he’d find out more about Sparky in the process...
He shook his head. “Thank you for the offer, but no.”
“Suit yourself.” Poppy winked at him. She didn’t seem upset by his decision, and Vish’s chest relaxed. He hated confrontations, hated disappointing people, and somehow it seemed like a good idea not to annoy Poppy. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Why didn’t you want to give me a ride?” Vish asked.
The smile faded. Poppy’s brows drew together. “Sorry?”
“At the party in the hills, when you picked Sparky up after his car got wrecked. You shook your head at me when he offered me a ride.”
“I did?” Poppy looked confused.
“You did. It seemed….” Vish thought a minute. “It seemed like it meant something.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” The smile returned, lighting up her beautiful face. “Sparky’s odd. You’ve probably figured that out. I mean, I’m not going to say anything against him, because he’s my boss and he’s also a friend, sort of, but…” She shrugged. “Being around him tends to make life more complicated. I’m not saying I was trying to warn you, but things might’ve been simpler for you if you hadn’t called Sparky.”
“I met my girlfriend the day after that party,” Vish said. “And she broke up with me right after I saw Sparky again.”
“I know. You already mentioned that,” Poppy said. “You’re not very good at coming to the point, are you? You keep dancing around the subject, hoping I’ll give you a different answer the next time you bring it up, but not wanting to ask any uncomfortable questions outright. I like you, Vish, but having a conversation with you is exhausting.”
He wanted to explain that she had misread him, that he didn’t know what uncomfortable questions to ask—something along the lines of “Did Troy only date me because of Sparky?” was close, but not quite right—but it didn’t seem likely to help his case. “Did he ever find out who destroyed his car?”
“Of course he did,” Poppy said. “Someone lost a role in a film and thought it was Sparky’s fault. Which it may or may not have been—probably was, in fact—but you have to admit, that was a dumb way to deal with rejection.”
“Did Sparky do anything about it?” Vish asked.
Poppy raised an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”
“He didn’t… hurt whoever it was, did he?”
Poppy laughed. It seemed genuine, and Vish felt a rush of relief. “Sparky doesn’t hurt people. I mean, the responsible party is probably never going to eat lunch in this town again, to invoke an old chestnut, but nobody got hurt, Vish. Not in any way that matters.”
They finished their drinks. The waiter hovered nearby, but Poppy shook her head before he could ask if they wanted another. When the waiter brought the tab, Poppy laid a hand on Vish’s wrist before he could pick it up.
“I’ll put it on my expense report. We’ll bill it to Sparky,” she said.
“Thank you,” Vish said.
“Anytime.”
Vish hesitated. “Will you tell Sparky I want to speak with him?”
Poppy l
ooked at him, her expression filled with a strange mixture of sympathy and amusement. “I’m pretty sure he already knows.”
Wrong City Page 17