Chapter 1
Laine
My butt hurt. My feet were fine, even in heels, and my shoulder didn’t ache, even with the twenty-pound camera bag slung over it. But my ass, which leaned against a railing not meant for leaning, throbbed like a dance floor.
Tom, my foster brother, stood next to me, his camera hoisted like a javelin. He had a scraggly beard and a hipster’s idea of grooming. Even in broad daylight, he was so sallow, he looked like a black-and-white picture pasted into a Kodachrome world. At night, he was barely even visible.
“My phone’s buzzing,” he said.
“Mine too.”
Our phones always buzzed. It was the Muzak of our lives. I checked my screen.
—Britt’s at NV—
Too little. Too late. At one in the morning, we’d already been staking out the back of Club NV for three hours, waiting for Britt to walk out with Maryetta, her longtime lover. The back exit faced the parking lot and was manned by two huge Armenians in leather, standing behind a velvet rope. I was on a first-name basis with both of them.
I might know the city like the back of my hand, but I didn’t have a line on when some self-hating actress would get tired of a club and decide to go the hell home. So we waited in the weed-bitten corners of the alley, under the hard shadows of the street lamps. Anyone would think the alley was empty but for the two Armenians, but paps were hiding in the corners and behind the SUVs, wedged between buildings and cars. Two were on a garage roof three doors west. They’d rented it just to keep their lenses on Club NV.
Tom poked his phone. “Kill Photo.”
He still used an agent, and they sent him calls. I was past giving someone a chunk of my money for their connections. What had been great while I was with Kill was that the outlets looked at their pics first. When a mag got upward of forty thousand frames a day, you needed to be fast, and you needed to be verifiable. Kill’s photos were fast-queued. Head of the line. Seen first and paid on time.
But I got to the point where my frames got ahead of everyone else’s at Kill, and I didn’t need them anymore. I kept telling Tom to ditch them. I’d help him get fast-queued, but he was too timid to go out on his own.
“I told her we’re already staking it out on your hunch.” He scrolled down Kill’s text. “Britt. London. Michael. Blah blah.”
In an unreciprocated intimacy, everyone in Hollywood called anyone who was someone by their first name. Michael was a name I loved hearing, partly because his pictures netted me a nice take, and partly…mostly, because he was Michael Greydon. There had been times, maybe three or four in the past years, that I imagined he saw me past the lens.
“Is Michael snorting anything?” I asked. “Because America’s Boyfriend cutting lines would be a million-dollar shot.”
I was being snarky, but the fact was, I didn’t want to hurt him. He was perfect, from the breathtaking smile that implied sex but never stated it, to the sharp green eyes that didn’t look at but through, from the way he moved as if carried on his own jet stream, to the body that made me shudder. I wanted him to stay exactly as he was. Stunning. Captivating. Catching the world, and me in the tractor beam of his personality. Bringing him down with a photograph would have been criminal.
The valet pulled a Ferrari up to the velvet rope. Paparazzi crawled out of the dark corners, their cameras up like shields. Only the VIP room could call ahead to the valet. Like clockwork, the back door slapped open, and Britt Ravenor, with her pixie cut and big hoop earrings, stumbled out of the club. The valet held the driver’s door open for her. Michael Greydon—with his walnut hair and wicked smile, lithe body and immeasurable talent—came out behind her. Every time I saw him in person, he blew me back, and I had to pause before putting the camera in front of my face. I heard the cadence of his voice in my head, the way his mouth moved, the way his face lit up when he smiled. And his hands… God. A tingle went up my back, and I put the camera in front of my face to stop it. I had work to do.
Lots of stars had entourages, but Michael Greydon didn’t. His isolation made him less accessible because he wasn’t surrounded by people I could connect myself to. Charming and only slightly aloof, he was so adept at managing his career and public image that everyone assumed he’d gotten more than talent and looks from his movie-star parents, Gareth Greydon and Brooke Chambers.
I didn’t assume. I’d known him in high school, and he’d been as gorgeous as he’d been a workaholic. I imagined he was much the same as an adult.
The valet handed Britt her keys. She swiped for them and missed but got them on the second try.
Britt had been a victim of the beauty pageant circuit, the daughter of an ambitious single mother who’d pushed the girl until the family broke. Britt broke slowly, over the course of a decade, from drinking too much and driving while doing it. It was the mother who was wrapped up in a straightjacket at Westonwood. I sympathized with Britt, understood her life, but that didn’t stop me from making money off it.
Flashes went wild as Britt got into the car. Not mine. I held my shutter back. That wasn’t money. Not yet.
Britt was halfway in the Ferrari when Michael went for her keys with a quick, decisive move that came from years on varsity tennis. Britt giggled and bent over, hiding them. He pushed her out of the way, trying to get behind the wheel instead. She wrestled him aside, and he put his arms around her, tickling her to get her away. It was delightful and charming, and it would make fantastic copy.
That was my picture. I got my manual focus going, because they were moving, and no auto-focus lens could think faster than I could.
Click. Money. Click. Money.
I kept them in frame, head to toe. The money was in what they were wearing, from shoes to hair bobs. Even when Britt held her arm out and Michael reached for it, I moved with them, keeping all appendages in the frame.
I realized, even through the lens, that Britt was drunk and Michael was trying to keep her from driving. They were working together for a big Oscar-season thing, a remake of the 1970s classic Bullets Over Sunset. Big feels. Big tears. Big money. Michael’s father had played the green gangster then, and now he was to play the role of the old mob don his son had to kill. It was marketable to a fault, especially since Gareth hadn’t made a movie in a decade.
Through the frame, where everything was clear, there was a touch of desperation on Michael’s face, even when it looked as though he had his co-star under control. Unfortunately for him, she’d shot all of Zombie Apocalypse drunk, so when she twisted away from him, she was skilled at it.
I pushed against Roger, the pap next to me, to keep them in the frame, digging my heel into his foot.
Michael went for the keys again, smile gleaming as if he was simply doing a sight gag, and Britt twisted, dropping her hands. Michael caught the keys, but Britt put her knee between his legs. Her aim was perfect, and Michael took two steps back, letting go of the keys.
Even the dog pack of paps went ooohh. I got a couple of shots then put my camera down.
Michael Greydon, an A-lister’s A-lister, was crouched over in pain while everyone else shot Britt. I should have been shooting. It was money, and I only had four pictures. Yet I’d stopped because he was looking at me through the lens. Not just looking but appreciating. I felt a warm tingle over my skin, as if hands had gone up my shirt. He saw me.
I’d shot him a hundred times over the past years, yet I had always been convinced he didn’t know I was there. Did he recognize me? Shit. I’d considered the possibility every time we were on the same block, but it had never seemed so likely.
The glance must have been the length of a shutter snapping, because by the time I got the camera down, his attention had shifted back to Britt. She slipped into her Ferrari, and he held the door open, saying something I couldn’t quite decipher. It sounded like don’t do this. The engine revved to life, and the tires peeled against the cracked pavement, sending scree flying. I got caught in the rain of rocks and moved just before she skidded off with the door still open.
She came to the T at the end of the alley and cut the right too close, and the centripetal force shut the door as it scraped the corner of the building. The Ferrari missed a parked Civic, blew by two girls in sparkly outfits, and took off. Britt was gone.
“That’s gonna be the end of her,” Tom said.
“Shame,” I said. “She had talent. Did someone call the cops?”
“Raoul has a contact. They’ll pick her up before she gets to Venice.” He turned, and his eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”
I craned my neck toward the entrance but only saw the sparkly-shoe girls hustling away from the dented driver’s side door. They went around the corner to the front of the building.
“What?” Was he talking about Michael looking at me? I still felt undressed from it.
“Nothing,” Tom said.
The rest of the paps were taking pictures of the Ferrari’s rear lights getting smaller in the distance, but I had my camera back on Michael Greydon. He laughed with one of the bouncers and hobbled inside. The big Armenian had his phone to his ear. I hoped he was calling the cops about the drunk in the Ferrari.
I jabbed Tom’s calf with my stiletto. “Talk to me.”
“Randee. That’s her. She just walked in.”
“With the sparkly heels?”
He nodded as if the rest of his body was paralyzed. Tom had spoken about Randee from the band Razzledazzle. He had a huge crush on her but had been unable to cross the photographer-artist barrier.
Any time he wasn’t making money with me, he was shooting hip stylings in Silver Lake or rock bands playing in parking lots. He had a knack for catching a musician’s passion and a deft hand at retouching. He should have been doing clubs and performers full time, but there was no money in that. The money was in one-in-the-morning stakeouts and chasing celebrity drunks. I’d stopped promising him he’d get a big break doing a candid celeb shot. I’d stopped trying to convince him it was photojournalism. I just called it money, and he heard that.
“Come on.” I pulled his sleeve. “Let’s upload from the Exploder while these douchebags chase a dead story.”
We trotted over to Cordova Court, where he’d parked. We cut through a residential driveway I’d discovered when I was eleven, through a little-used gate, over a chain-link fence, and through a narrow space between buildings, cutting seven minutes out of our walk time.
Tom’s Explorer smelled like camera grease, fast food, and armpit. I’d driven it before, and it shimmied to the left so badly, I’d barely been able to make right turns. Since then, I called it the Exploder. We got in and, as if we were EMTs on a scene, immediately unpacked and laid out our equipment: wifi routers, laptops, cables, cameras, and cell phones.
“I don’t have my USB cable, damn,” Tom mumbled.
He was a chronic forgetter of parts and pieces. I carried extra around just for him. I reached into my bag for the extra USB cable he needed every couple weeks.
“Thanks, Laine.” He plugged in. “You’re all right for a girl.”
“You’d starve without me.”
He shrugged as if he knew it was true.
I brought up my shots, did a quick edit on the best ones, and got them up on my server. Then I emailed my contact list the link and told them I was selling the four pictures on the server: one of Michael trying to get the keys away from Britt, one of Michael getting kneed in the groin, one of Britt hitting the side of a building, and one of Michael Greydon looking through the lens at me. I took a second with that one. He couldn’t have been more inaccessible, yet the photo was so intimate, as if his eyes felt places only hands could reach. But that was what he did, wasn’t it? That was his talent, to expand the space of the frame until you thought he was looking at you, touching the places that needed healing, when in fact, he was only looking at himself.
I changed my email before sending. I had three pictures. That last one made me tingle, even if I’d imagined it. That gaze was mine.
I snapped my laptop shut. “What now?”
“Kill servers are so slow.” He stared at the screen, tapping the edge of the machine as if Kill Photo’s servers would hurry up to a rhythm.
“Let’s go in,” I said. “We got the shots. Let’s chase your future girlfriend.”
“What? We can’t go in there.”
“We’ll go in the front. It’s different bouncers.”
“I can’t.”
“Does she even know you exist without a camera in front of your face?” I flung my laptop into the backseat. “Have you said one word to her as a man, not as a guy who takes pictures of musicians?”
“Irrelevant.”
“Answer me.”
“I’m not going in there.”
“You’ll never get that girl if you always have a camera between you,” I said, unzipping my thigh-high stiletto boots.
“Jesus, Laine, what are you doing?”
“Okay,” I said, yanking off my boots. “Number one, anyone who’ll give us a hard time is in the Emerald Room.” I unbuttoned my jeans. “Don’t look.”
He averted his eyes as I peeled off my pants.
I continued, “We’re just regular schlubs. We’re not Emerald Room material.” I yanked down my shirt. It was a black knit tunic that, when not bunched, could serve as a very short dress. “Number two, Britt’s probably failing a breathalyzer right now, and Michael just got kneed in the balls. They left. I’m sure Brad followed with whichever girl he was in the mood for. Dollars to donuts, there’s not an A-lister to be found in there.”
I convinced myself all that was true because the idea that I wanted to go into the club to see Michael was utterly ridiculous, not even worth considering, even if the thought of him putting his eyes on me made the skin between my thighs feel awake and alive.
My tank top straps tied over the shoulders. I pulled them under my arms and twisted the shirt around until it was a tube top with a bow in the front. “No one in there knows us or cares that we’ve been in the parking lot for three hours. Period.”
“What are you doing?” he asked when he turned around.
I rooted around in my bag. “Getting you into a club.” I found an old tube of lipstick and picked the dust and crumbs out of the crease between the bullet and the cap.
“What’s your angle?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I pressed my lips together to smooth the color.
“You always have an angle. I’ve never seen you do something just to do it.”
I wrestled my boots back on. What was my angle? Should I tell him that having Hollywood royalty like Michael Greydon look at me as if I was sexy and beautiful made me feel alive, excited? It was almost as good as chasing a mark down Rodeo or getting a tip and realizing I was only a block away from the action. I wanted to be in the center of something stimulating, and I wanted Tom to get the girl. I didn’t want to just collect bids for my pictures and go to bed. I wanted to make something happen.
“We’ll leave the rigs in the back. Just lock up.” I handed him my camera.
He held it for a second, feeling its heft. It cost twice as much as his, and he did appreciate beautiful things.
I opened the door and stepped out.
“Does everyone need to be your gynecologist?” he called.
“We’re not getting past the rope in what you’re wearing, and I’m not risking leaving my rig in this car just to get turned away at the door. Come on, Tom. For once, chase something.” I slammed the door before he could argue.
He was a good guy, Tom. He’d saved me from myself when I’d needed saving, and he was the family I’d never had. I’d never had a father, and my mother went to prison when I was five. Tom’s mother had had a boyfriend who was, let’s say, unabashedly stupid and cruel. We latched on to each other young and made life up as we went along. He was my rock, my world. Anything I did, I wanted him with me, because he was more of a brother to me than any shared set of parents could create.
He never approved of what I did, because that was the only thing he knew of family. He was especially hard on the few guys I’d dated. They weren’t safe or mature enough. I mean, if I wanted a guy who would take me to the farmer’s market, pick up some organic kale, and eat it lightly sautéed before making afternoon love in a squeaky little bed, then sure, he’d approve of that guy. But I wanted a man who’d climb fences with me. Trespass. Steal from the rich and give to the poor. I had a fantasy of a man who got arrested with me, pleaded innocent, and kissed me on the precinct steps when we made bail.
I was too much of a hustler for most men. I ran too fast, broke too many rules, and stayed on the right side of the law by too thin a margin. My ambition was scary, even to my friends, but I didn’t feel safe unless I had something to work for.
I walked up to the velvet rope, ignoring the line, putting my long boots in front of me as if they were the sum total of who I was. Tom schlubbed along beside me, handsome but morose, a study in monochrome, and looking away from me as if I embarrassed him. The bouncer didn’t break my stride or the rhythm of his conversation as he opened the rope and let us in at exactly the right moment. He didn’t clip it shut until Tom was past the rope with me. We were in.
Now we just had to find the girl with the sparkly shoes. Then I got the twisting feeling in my gut that things were going to change. I ignored the desire to run back to the car. I put my chin up, added swagger to my step, and decided I owned Club NV.