Chapter 11
Michael
“Here’s what I want,” I told Steven in my most modulated tone. “I want you to play with that schedule so we’re shooting for the next three weeks. This delay cannot happen.”
We stood in the foyer outside the ballroom, our anti-social postures a temporary bulwark against intrusion. I’d tried to get an appointment with the director of Bullets, but the fallout from Britt’s accident had kept him busier than me.
“We frontloaded the schedule. We can afford it and still make release,” he reassured me.
“I don’t care about the release.”
“You should. It’s your Oscar.”
“This delay cannot happen.” I was shouting down an alley. More than twenty-four hours had passed, and the delay was happening.
“What’s the problem, Mike?” Steven put out his arms, the ice clinking in his whiskey sour. “Gareth looks like shit on a cracker. He needs the time off if you ask me.”
I leaned a little closer, my eye contact transmitting seriousness and secrecy. “Look, have you talked to him?”
“Yes?”
“He’s holding himself together with spit and chewing gum.”
“He’s not on the bottle. I’d know,” Steven said.
He wasn’t. Not yet. But he had a failing liver and an addiction that would only be slowed by work.
“He’s not,” I said, “but I know the patterns. He needs this movie. He needs for it to happen, and he needs to get treatment or fall off the wagon. Soon.”
The director thought he was just dealing with a Britt nightmare. I’d promised him my father would stay sober for production. That was the deal.
I glanced over Steven’s shoulder to break eye contact. Through the layers of guests milling and mingling, I saw Laine, neck craned to catch my eye, carrying an aura all her own.
I hadn’t felt more than curiosity when we met all those years ago, and though the curiosity had a mile-wide sexual streak, I wasn’t ready for it. But this woman, right now? I was ready, and she looked delicious, soaked with the sweet, tart sticky juice of the forbidden. It must have been all over my face, because Steven looked around in the middle of a sentence.
“Do I know her?” he said.
“Do you?”
“I feel like I do, but I can’t place her.”
I hadn’t foreseen a problem when I put her on the guest list and paid for her ticket, but that had been stupid and naïve. The room between us was full of people she’d shot, whose images she’d sold for an amount commensurate with their invasiveness. There was too much room between us. I saw Theo muscle through the crowd toward her then Janice, who’d had a sex tape foible only weeks before.
“Steven,” I said, wanting to close the conversation before I got sucked into her sphere, “we talked about this. The cirrhosis will kill him.”
“Let me ask you something,” Steven said pointedly, even as I wanted to break away and head for Laine. “Let’s say Britt didn’t break something. What were you going to do after we were done shooting? He’s going to drink again.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I figured if I could show him thirty days wouldn’t kill him, he’d get treatment.”
Steven patted my shoulder as if comforting me and encouraging me at the same time. There was something slightly patronizing in it, but I didn’t care. Laine needed me.
I painted on a smile and walked to her. With her little clutch in front of her, chin up, she walked straight for the bar, where we triangulated and met.
“Glad you could make it,” I said, putting my hand on her arm to let everyone know she was with me and thus safe from harm.
“Just came for the camera.”
“You’re wearing a dress. You look stunning.”
“Some rigs are worth dressing up for. What’s your excuse?” She smiled, looking me up and down.
I touched my tie. Which one had I worn? I forgot. “Occupational hazard. I don’t get to dress down.”
“It’s working for you.”
“Can I get you something to drink?”
A glass of white wine appeared at her elbow.
“Thanks, Robert,” she said to the bartender.
I ordered something for myself while a waitress came around with a silver tray of stuffed endive leaves. Laine pressed her lips together in refusal, and the waitress left.
“Do you ever get this feeling,” she said, eyes darting around the room, “that people are looking at you?” She laughed almost immediately. “Never mind.”
She cleared her throat and picked up her head, straightening her shoulders as if she’d always told herself she’d act a certain way when she was in my shoes, and this was the way. In attempting to look comfortable, she looked incredibly uncomfortable.
My inner delight darkened when I saw two men in navy suits walk in and scan the guests. Oh, no. Laine was there because I wanted her there, and if they took her out, I didn’t know if I’d see her again. The compulsion to stand between them and fight to the death was physical, as if I’d be losing more than nice chatter at a party. I put my hand on her arm to keep her by me.