Chapter 20
Michael
Brad was an introvert. You’d never guess it from his entourage or his public persona, but in the strictest sense of the word, he was as much an introvert as I was. When he was tired and overwhelmed and needed energy and strength, he retreated into his music, which he’d never share with anyone.
I respected that, and I understood it. Whenever we were seen together, the sober, straight-laced Michael Greydon and bad boy Brad Sinclair, people always noted how different we were. We were more the same than they could see.
Of course, when he felt good and there was fun to be had, he had fun. Tonight, it was a simple dinner and whatever else the night brought. He planned on being out all night without actually making plans.
Me, I was just hungry. I was going to eat and bail.
When I got out of the car, the valet took the keys, and I was subjected to the usual flashes and catcalls. This restaurant in particular was low-hanging fruit for the paps, and I wondered if Brad had chosen it as a joke.
I waved and smiled as usual, but I also did something unusual. I looked at the paps directly, frustrated by the fact that it was too dark, too backlit for me to catch the people behind the cameras. They were all men’s voices, but they always were. Laine was stealth silence in her heels.
The feet. I looked at their feet as I walked toward the back of the restaurant. All boots and run-down sneakers. No heels. How many years had she been in those packs and I’d never said a thing to her because it would be too awkward?
I faced them, and the flashes popped like a lightning storm.
“Mike! Mike!”
“You love us now!”
“Over here!”
“What happened with you and Laine?”
“Wanna kiss me?”
The voice on the last pap was deep baritone, and everyone laughed. I caught myself before I said, “Are you going to put out?” That would imply Laine had, and it wasn’t anyone’s business.
In that second of thought, the pack of them propositioned me.
“Kiss me!”
“Give me a squeeze right here!”
“I kiss better than him!”
“I just brushed my teeth!”
Squeaky kiss noises fell like rain, and I couldn’t turn away. I walked right into the pack with my arms out. I grabbed a short guy with a beard and planted one on his cheek. Another guy came at me with his arms out and kissed my cheek. Another just hugged me. We laughed, and the shutters went on and on. With every handshake and testament to my coolness, I looked for Laine, hoping she’d be at the back of the pack, but of course, there were a thousand little stakeouts in the city, and she’d be wise to avoid me.
But still, I looked for her. I didn’t know what I expected, but I knew what I wanted.
When the last willing pap had been smooched and the last picture taken, I waved and went into the restaurant. The speeding traffic along Sunset was replaced by music, the hum of conversation, and good acoustics.
Brad sat in the center of a long table in the back with his usual dirty dozen. Guys from his hometown and whatever girl they were with. His manager. A stylist. I knew their names, but they belonged to Brad. He saw me immediately, from half a room away, and waved.
“You!” he shouted. “I want to talk to you!”
After much reseating, shifting, arguing, and joking, I sat next to Brad. He kept one hand on the knee of a German ten-thousand-dollar-a-day runway model who was already half drunk. I said my hellos, using names when I remembered them, and ordered something to eat.
One guy, an obnoxious friend of Brad’s from his hometown, held up his phone. A picture of me kissing a bearded pap had already been tossed up. “Too far, Mikey baby. Too far.”
He looked like a Hollywood player, with his thick gold chain and carefully placed hair product, but his Arkie accent still hung around the corners of his vowels. Three of Brad’s entourage were from home, but this guy was the only ass. I’d forgotten his name, because I couldn’t stand him.
“Letting them think you’re their friend is too far.”
“He was cute,” I said. “Here, I’ll kiss this asshole too.”
I grabbed Brad’s head and kissed his cheek. Brad laughed and dunked his napkin in his water to wipe his face.
“Not cool,” said Arkie. “These people, they’re parasites. You talk to them, and they think they’re your friend. They think they have access.” He flopped the phone down, angry. “They’re animals, and they don’t have access to us, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “To who? Access to who?”
Groans went up, and heads shook. Everyone at the table could feel the tension. Brad’s model got up to go to the bathroom.
“Arnie, man,” Brad said, reminding me why I called the guy Arkie, “cool it.”
But Arnie-slash-Arkie was a sheet to the wind and belligerent even sober. “You cannot fuck paps, okay? That shit is scary. That bitch is scary.”
“You didn’t—”
“You got fooled by her tits or whatever. Maybe she sucked your dick like a pro, but she’s an animal just like the rest of them.”
“Shut up, Arnie,” Brad groaned.
I said nothing, because the half of my brain that wanted to kill him was arguing with the half that had been trained to be a civilized member of society.
“You can get a blow job anywhere, man,” Arnie said while I tried to keep my hands under the table. “Half the girls at this table would suck your dick. Why you gotta get head from a lowlife hooker pap is like—”
I grabbed his gold chain and twisted it so fast, he didn’t know what was happening. I tightened it and pulled him over the table. Plates crashed. Girls screamed. Food went flying as I pushed his head into someone’s dinner.
“You no-talent piece of shit,” I growled, watching his face get red. “You’ve done nothing your whole life. No one cares what you think.”
“Dude.” Brad’s voice. A hand on my arm.
I looked up to a huge restaurant packed with people standing, phones up. A dance of rectangles, some with flashes, captured me in the act of choking someone with a gold rope. I let the chain go. Arnie hacked, and Brad yanked me away.
I pulled him off me and got my finger in Arnie’s face. “Stay away from me.”
“With pleasure, motherfucker.”
His friends made a show of holding him back, but he wouldn’t come after me. He was a coward.
Brad pulled me, navigating the chairs and camera phones, into the kitchen. The adrenaline in my blood made me sensitive to the bright lights and the ambient noise, which was more of a crash bang than a loud hum.
“Dude?” Brad said. “What the fuck?”
I held up my hands. “I’m done with him.”
“Cool. Totally cool, but then what? He’s always trash talking. That’s what he does. Remember what he said about Harriet when you were with her? And you didn’t care, dude. You laughed.”
“The tone of this was a little different.” Was I defending myself? What a waste of time. Choking him with his gold chain was indefensible.
“Sure, sure, I get it,” Brad said. “But who cares what Arnie says?”
“I do, all right? I care.”
“Duh.”
I rubbed my eyes, coming off the adrenaline rush. My apology would have to be public, and the pictures would be discussed by over-coiffed entertainment jockeys in TV studios and insiders over lunch on Wilshire.
The kitchen had quieted, as if the staff had made room for us.
“I knew her in high school,” I said, backing into the refrigerator room door. “She scared the hell out of me then, and she scares me now.”
“Hey, I get why she scares you now. She’s pretty scary with that camera.”
“The camera? Fuck the camera. She’s got something explosive in her.”
“You’re the one with the explosive side.”
“It’s just…” My hands were in front of me, as if clutching something I couldn’t explain. Some desire to make things happen, to change, to break the status quo into a million pieces and live in the center of an unknowable, unplanned, unpredictable, boundary-free universe. “I can’t keep away, and I won’t. Maybe she’s going to screw me, but that’s my problem.”
Brad shoved me into the metal door in a gentle, brotherly way. “You know what? Go for her. ‘Cause you’re not the guy who gets his balls in a twist for any woman. You feel like this, whatever this is, and I’m cool with it. She seems all right from here. I’ll take care of Arnie. I got your back. Just hear this.” He held up his finger. “She starts some shit I don’t like, I’m gonna tell you. Don’t try to choke me across the dinner table. Got it?”
“I got it.”
We shook on it.