The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 37

Michael Brad had a huge crackerbox in Bel-Air, because that was what he was told famous actors lived in. He'd been wrong, but like most things he was wrong about, he didn't care one way or the other. He just emptied the place of any potentially adult trappings and put in stand-up video games, dart boards, three huge televisions, and a pool table. All it was missing was a dark wood bar with bra.s.s beer taps.

"What are you wearing tomorrow?" Brad asked, lining up a combination shot that would tap the three and sink the nine if he were a better player.

"A tux."

"By who? I have an Armani jacket, but I'm wearing shorts." He shot and missed.

"I have one in my closet. I don't even know who." I chalked my stick.

"You could get a comp last minute."

"Nah. Hey, I saw that pic in Underground."

"Yeah." He leaned on his stick, cracking his gum.

"Laine took it." I leaned over the table, lining up the three for an easy sink into the side pocket.

"Yeah."

"How is she?"

"Fine."

I missed and scratched. "Fine?"

"Yeah. She's fine." He plucked the cue ball out of the rack. "She runs around at night taking pictures and caught us at Gra.s.sroots. She's got a nose for it, you know. Found Dave at Crawlers last night. He told me they hung out and got some cool s.h.i.+t. I'll tell her you asked about her."

"Alone? She runs around downtown alone?"

He lined up his shot. "Yep."

I didn't know what bothered me more: her toting ten thousand dollars' worth of equipment around downtown Los Angeles at night or the fact that Brad Sinclair had intimate knowledge of her life when I didn't. "I called her the other day," I said, trying to sound casual. "Did she change her number?"

"Dunno, never had it before. She's a hot s.h.i.+t photographer now. Maybe she's not taking calls from n.o.bodies." He sunk the four in a tame shot that was beneath him and did nothing to set up his next move. "What's the face?"

"A guy picked up."

"Look, dude," he said, dropping the five. "You tossed her."

"She tossed me."

"No..."

"Yes, Brad. I was there." I wanted to punch him, and I hadn't wanted to punch anyone in a long time.

Brad, for his part, looked unfl.u.s.tered, swaggering around the table looking for his shot. "Did you fight for her, bro? Or did you just let her walk out? You know, she says she's leaving to protect your precious career, and you just let her go? That what you did? 'Cos to me, that sounds like it's easier to let yourself think she did it when, in fact, you broke it off. You let it happen because you were scared of all the s.h.i.+t going down." He leaned over for his shot. "It's cool, man. People do s.h.i.+t like that all the time, but don't act like it was any different."

He knocked the six into the nine in a shot that looked like pure, stupid luck. The nine spun and barely made it into the corner pocket. Brad fist-pumped.

I had the sinking feeling that he was right.

I tried to shake it off, but I thought about it all the way home. Was he right? Had I let her do the dirty work I was too scared to do?

I couldn't sleep, replaying what my father had said in the hospital, and how I'd failed to live up to what he thought of me on every level. Then I looped the scene in my house over and over. How Laine had walked out and I'd allowed it. I told myself I'd fought for her, but I was a liar. I'd snapped under the weight of people's expectations.

I got up and sat on my patio. The view mocked me, reminding me that I was nothing, powerless, a speck in a monstrous city. I'd felt like that in plenty of cities across the Pacific, but it had been comforting. That night, the spiked lights of downtown jabbed me in the chest.

Maybe I needed to head down there. Maybe I needed to test out that sixth sense of hers. No one really knew I was back yet. I hadn't made a call. I was still just a guy in the city. That would last another day but no more. I got into my shoes with antic.i.p.ation and laced them up with hope.

Chapter 52.

Laine I own this city. I walk with its rhythms, run with its breath, speak its language. Los Angeles is my lover. It knows I'm a survivor. It knows what I've done and has found no reason to forgive me, because there has never been a sin. I am brave and strong. I have a good sense of humor. I am loyal and friendly. I have friends around every corner. Celebrities and homeless people, priests and con men. The Mexican dudes playing dice in the loading dock, the guys with the boom box outside the abandoned buildings. The businessmen and actors, the models and personal trainers. The hookers on Sunset know my name, and I know theirs. We all live here. This is our Los Angeles.

"I want two with extra..." I tilted my head and snapped my fingers. "Look, I don't speak Spanish. The cabbage with the carrots? It's like in vinegar or something?"

The lady in the hairnet leaned out of the food truck, three feet above me. She was bathed in floodlights inside the truck, and the rest of the street was washed in the black of a streetlamp-free night. "Curtido?"

"That! I like it." My back pocket buzzed with a text.

-Gusta, gusta!- The text was from Maryetta.

-Where are you?- I looked for a street sign and couldn't find one. Just fifteen or more people at hastily placed card tables with white plastic backyard chairs.

-East Hollywood. Food truck in a parking lot off the 101- -We're near 18th and Alameda at a thing. Paul Messina is here. He wants to meet you like now- Paul Messina, the fas.h.i.+on magnate. A photographer did not turn down a meeting with him, no matter who they thought they were.

-I can be Downtown in ten- The reply came as I was leaning over the hood of my car, shoving pupusas in my face. It was an address I knew well, the Messina Inc. global compound. I got in my little Audi and headed back Downtown.

Chapter 53.

Michael I felt as if I'd never seen downtown Los Angeles before. I'd run through it the way I'd run through everything-head down, noticing things in snippets. I saw it for the first time that night. I drove into the deepest part of the city and parked by the Whole Foods. I wasn't lying to myself about what I was doing. I was testing myself and her, practicality against hope, just throwing the dice and hoping for sevens.

I walked the streets. No one followed. No one chased. I didn't see a camera anywhere. The night embraced me, and when I saw a crowd, they were heading into a club hidden behind matte black paint. It was about ten p.m., and the city was alive.

I'd walked a dozen foreign cities in much the same way, hands in pockets, living in the dark places, the hidden byways and underpa.s.ses. But I'd never done it at home.

My pocket dinged with a message from Brad.

-Hey, dude. Big thing at the Messina compound- I didn't want to go. I just wanted to stand on street corners and listen, but the compound was a block away. Maybe if I went, that was listening too.

-Yeah. I'm in- -I'll get you on the list- "Get me on the list?" I said to the phone, even though Brad couldn't hear me. "Give me a break." I put the phone away. I'd been gone too long if I needed to get on a list to go somewhere. Or maybe I'd been gone just long enough.

The Messina compound was four warehouses in a row behind twenty-foot razor-wire-topped fences. It was ugly as sin most of the time, but that night, the acres-wide parking lot had been turned into an outdoor club where people danced on the parking lines. Dozens of nine-foot-high tube lights that changed colors encircled the dance floor, and tables of food ringed the lot. The bare walls of the buildings on either side had light shows, and the offices inside were spotless and brightly lit.

Everyone knew Paul Messina could throw a party, and he never disappointed. Needless to say, the lot was packed with people.

One chain-link gate was open, and a velvet rope sat in front, a burgundy smile between two chrome poles.

"Can I help you?" asked a woman with a clipboard. She wore tight bellbottoms and a midriff s.h.i.+rt that tied under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, doubtless the next season's offering from Messina Couture.

"I, uh... I'm on the list." There was no way Brad could have been there already, but I'd been alone for months. I could go to a party by myself.

She c.o.c.ked her head and looked me up and down. "Name, please?"

"Greydon."

She froze. I was outed.

I put my finger to my lips. "Shh."

She let me in.

Paul threw parties for his employees and shareholders, so everyone knew everyone, except the loner with the beard. I was sure they were too jaded to say anything about me though, and I was sure Midriff Girl had told someone. I didn't know if I'd been recognized, but I was unmolested as I went to the bar. I got ready to text Brad my location when I saw Britt at a table with Paul, then I saw her.

Her.

With that hair and a way of sitting in tension, as if she wanted to curl her limbs around solid surfaces. In the flas.h.i.+ng pink and yellow lights, with the music so loud I couldn't hear myself think, she was divine. My tongue tensed against the roof of my mouth.

I wanted to taste her. I wanted to be that chair she wrapped herself around. As I stepped closer, I wanted more. I wanted to talk to her, to hear her life from her lips, her laugh. After another step, I wanted her eyes on mine. I wanted her to recognize me. To know me. I wanted her to be mine again. In my body, I felt her. My skin went sensitive and electric.

She was talking to Paul. Her hands were animated as she drew her fingers across her picture in Underground, explaining something. He nodded and asked a question, and her knees contracted, coiling her legs tighter around the legs of the chair, as if she couldn't wait to answer. She was working, and there I was, wanting to bury my face in her neck. I had no way to approach without s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with her.

No. I'd done enough damage.

Chapter 54.

Laine Paul Messina knew how to throw a party. I'd heard about them, but they were at odd times and never publicized. Celebs didn't usually show up in droves, and there was no parking on the block, so the events were too much trouble for paparazzi.

I'd stayed until three. Paul wouldn't let me leave, meaning he kept feeding me drinks and asking when I was shooting his fall line. I was too drunk to answer intelligently, and he seemed all right with that.

I woke up at noon the next day, my head under the covers with a brain that felt broken and a mouth that tasted like glue.

I took a Tylenol and drank a quart of water, then I loaded my shots from the night before while I drank my coffee. I'd got some slightly interesting stuff with Paul, but he was uncomfortable in front of the camera. The great thing about working with actors and celebrities was that, even if they protested, they loved the camera. It fed their inner child. Paul was a fas.h.i.+on designer. He didn't know what to do with his body.

I flipped to the news. More of the usual. I was thinking of going back to sleep until Phoebe's Oscar party when I saw him.

Michael, eating breakfast an hour before at Terra Cafe with Lucy. Clean-shaven and wearing something that fit so well, I could tell he'd lost weight. I froze. My nerves tingled. He was back. I couldn't read the copy fast enough. My eyes skimmed over everything, and I comprehended nothing. I took a deep breath and a sip of coffee. I tried again.

He'd been back days already.

I'd held onto the thin hope that when he got back from wherever in the world he was, he'd call me right away and say he wanted me. He'd say he was done running, done getting his head together, and just wanted to be with me.

Well. That was that, wasn't it? He was back, and our little one-sided love affair was over.

I threw myself back into my desk chair, found the blue folders with his name on them, and dragged them all into the trash.

I crawled into bed. I tried sleeping. Couldn't. I paced in bare feet and pajamas.

My map of Los Angeles towered above me. I touched Monterey Park and dragged my fingers to Rancho Palos Verdes. RPV. The concrete behind the map had a hairline crack, and the map had pulled and ripped there. I fingered it. I pulled. The green expanse and part of the bay came off like a piece of sunburned skin, leaving a curled sliver of map in my hand and a wound with upturned, grabbable edges. I took one of those and peeled. It came off in an arc. I let it fall. The next bit was still partly stuck. I worried it away and let San Pedro from Trinity fall to the floor.

I got all the water off, then Santa Monica and Topanga, until the entire west side was gone to Brentwood.

To h.e.l.l with it.

I got my stepstool and peeled off Holmby Hills, Bel-Air, and half the Valley into Studio City. West Hollywood all the way to Silver Lake, and down into Wils.h.i.+re Center. Done with it. Done. I peeled the entire map away, leaving Downtown for last, which I took off in a swath of sticky paper.

I stepped back and looked at what I'd spent hours doing. The wall had streaks of sticky stuff and a few shards of the city on it, but otherwise it was clean. The floor wasn't so lucky. It looked like a bed of white paper flowers in full bloom.

I didn't clean it. Not yet.

The only thing you had to bring to one of Phoebe's Oscar parties was a twenty for the jackpot. She supplied booze, food, pencils, ballots, and a year's worth of magazines to help you research your choices.

I'd only won once. Seven-hundred-sixty dollars. I'd guessed every winner except the sound editing category because I'd thought the movie was too loud. When I'd said that while hugging my fishbowl full of twenties, everyone in the room shouted until my ears hurt from the vibrations and my sides hurt from laughing.

Rob lived in a half-fixed, half-dead Victorian in Angelino Heights. He'd done the first floor in period-appropriate detail but modernized the layout with a big central room and ramps for his future wife. He intended to fix the house, remove the ramps, and sell it so they could buy a place that was more comfortable for her.

The landscaping was being redone. Everything was dirt. I went up the walk with a bottle of wine and a bag of chips. I always brought something so no one could accuse me of not being raised well, even though the accusation would have been true.

Roger opened the door. "Hey, Laine." He hugged me, and I went in.

I was late, so I walked into the middle of arguments over film scores and discussions about how much each studio had put into advertising. The people who worked for marketing departments at the studios were very popular at this point in the evening, because everyone knew the amount of money a studio spent on advertising to voters was a huge factor in whether or not a nominee won.

"They killed advertising for best actor when the pedo thing happened," a guy in a b.u.t.ton-down black s.h.i.+rt said. The front tail was tucked in to show off his belt buckle, and the rest hung out over his white jeans.