Chapter 18
Michael
“Were you drinking?” my father asked, popping a yellow ball with his racquet so it would bounce up into his hand. His question seemed almost self-directed. He wasn’t drinking, and it was making him tense.
“I don’t need a drink to kiss a woman.”
“You’re going to botch this.” He thwacked a ball to me. I caught it and put it in my pocket. “Your friend Britt already delayed production long enough to screw everything. Steven says we almost lost bond.”
He thwacked me another, and I almost missed it. My father was a belligerent prick when cornered, and with everything about Bullets over Sunset being held together by PR departments and sneaky scheduling, he was a thrashing mess. I’d stopped listening to his negativity and growling aggression a long time ago and learned to see the man under it.
“Lucky genius frontloaded the schedule,” he said. “You know why? Britt. He knew something would happen with Britt. So, smart guy, but not so smart. Because now you’re becoming a risk.”
“Since when will kissing stop production?” I said. “You’re talking crazy. The studio buys a bond note to insure a film against catastrophe. An actor dying, or falling off schedule too far¸ not the lead kissing a paparazzi.”
“Public relations.” He poked the racquet at me. He’d had the only red clay court in Los Angeles installed right in his backyard. It was the most difficult surface in the world to play on, and he liked it that way. “You date a paparazzi, you look bad, and the movie looks bad. The studio can call in the bond guys. You do not want that, and I can’t afford it. This is my comeback.”
Gareth had played cowboys, soldiers, and cops his entire career. Those personas became steeped in alcohol, fermenting until they became the embodiment of who he was. Playing the staid don of Bullets Over Sunset was a stretch, but he was doing it. He would get his Oscar, and he knew it.
“What was this with you breaking a display case window?” he asked.
“I paid for it.”
“You’ve never paid for anything. And here’s what I’m saying—don’t start paying when you’re on my movie.” He got on his side of the net. “I’m tired of saying it over and over—you don’t get free time. You don’t get discretion. You need to wake up, kid.” He held up a finger like a weapon.
I might have grown up a golden boy, but when he held up his finger like that, I was seven again.
“I never wanted this for you, but since you chose it, you live it,” he said. “You do not show them you can’t handle a role, or they’ll make sure you’re right. Trust me on that.”
“You need to step behind the line.” I tossed up the ball.
“No, I don’t,” he said as I served.
Of course he didn’t have to get behind the line. I faulted the center line.
“You’ve never faced consequences,” he shouted as I set up my second serve. “Well, keep it up, mister, and you will.”
The second serve was supposed to be a gentle way to put the ball in play. It should be your one hundred percent, no-doubt, do-over, least-risky shot, because you didn’t get a third chance. But I didn’t feel like using my second serve. I felt like a wound coil. I pulled my arm back, and just as I released the tension, I realized he was baiting me so I’d screw up. I served hard to the outside, right where my father was standing.
“Hey!” Gareth shouted when the ball brushed the line and headed for his gut. He got the racquet in front of him just in time to avoid bending over in pain.
I felt a crippling shaft of pain from my elbow to my wrist, and I dropped my racquet. I wasn’t supposed to hit so hard, and I hadn’t since college. I tried not to scream, and I tried not to even flinch, because that was a sign of not just weakness but incompetence.
“Michael, honey?” My mother’s voice came from behind the fence, miles away, across the pool and patio, the rose garden and the barbecue pit.
As if she could sense my pain from the changed vibrations in the air, she traversed the patio in her sensible suit and pearls, just back from a lunch or shopping. As she shaded her face from the sun, the bulge of her lips and the shine of her skin became more apparent. Her eyes perked at the corners, and the skin of her chin was taut around the bone.
“Get your heels off the clay!” Gareth shouted.
“Oh, take it easy, Gareth.” She put her hand on my back.
I straightened. “I’m okay.” The pain throbbed, but it would go away. I was done with tennis for the day though.
“He’s fine,” Gareth said.
She rolled her eyes and turned back to me. “I saw those pictures, darling. She’s very pretty.” She smiled, raising a brow as much as the collagen would allow. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
“They have one,” Gareth cut in, popping the last ball into the tube. “It’s you. You’re their hobby.”
I stood up. “I know. And you told me so. I’m wrong, careless, and impulsive. Right?”
He patted my back. “But you have a good heart and a mean forehand. Now, is there any lunch? I’m starving.”
“Callie put out sandwiches.”
“I need a special soda,” he said, using his code word for gin and Perrier.
“Gareth,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “No.”
“I need a drink.” He cut the air horizontally with his hand, meaning discussion over. “This delay’s eating me alive. And I’m getting a transplant anyway.”
“No, Gareth,” Brooke said.
“I don’t need this liver anymore.”
“You’re joking to piss Brooke off,” I said. “But you’re going to piss me off. A lot.”
“I’m not joking.”
“You take one drink, and you’re on your own. Do you hear me?”
“Don’t you dare, young man—”
“On your own, Gareth,” I said. “Everything I’m doing for you stops. Everything. You can rot. Actually, have a goddamn drink. I’ll be glad to get rid of you.”
I turned my back on him. I got in the car a few minutes later and sat in the driveway, staring out the window. I hadn’t eaten lunch with them. I couldn’t watch him drink again. Without a movie to hold over his head, I was powerless.
How fast can I drive an Aston Martin? Should I get a faster one? My skin itched and tingled. I wanted to get out of my body and not just feel a thrill but be it. To exist only as a levitating mass of risk and unsurety.
The blue bag from Merv’s photo that my assistant had brought me was still on the passenger seat floor.
I couldn’t risk my body. I had to keep that together, but everything else was fair game. Something, anything. A change. A shift toward meaning. I wanted to touch something with the blood of life coursing through it.
I was going to chase Laine.