Chapter 22
Laine
I didn’t hear from Tom. I slept like a dead thing and could have slept another ten hours. When the sun went down, I could have woken and gone out to the clubs to see who I could catch looking good doing something bad, but that didn’t happen.
Sometime in late morning, I was rudely awakened to my ceiling thumpity thumping techno music from the loft above. I wasn’t just annoyed, I was interrupted.
I gave it thirty minutes, pacing and showering to kill time until whoever was up there split. The space upstairs was unoccupied, so I hoped the cleaning crew was just in to prep it for showing. On the opposite side of my hope, I feared there was a new owner and he was an inconsiderate jerk.
I opened my door so I could stare up the stairwell, which could not have been a more ineffective way to deal with the problem. At my feet sat the LA Post Almanac section, without the rest of the paper. I picked it up. Of course the rooftop picture was on the corner of the front page, with Brenda Vinter’s byline.
When Celebrities and Paparazzi Share Space
Crap. I read the article, which tried to quickly disseminate whether or not paps and celebs were truly in bed together, how the media feeds on itself, and how the internet played a part in all of it. It said everything and nothing, failing to make its point because it sounded hurried and wanting for space. What they’d really wanted was to show the picture a day late rather than not at all.
But the nugget was in the last few paragraphs. I dialed Phoebe with shaking fingers, trying to shut out the blasting music.
“Did you see the thing in the LA Post?” I asked before she could say hello.
“Yeah.” She sounded contrite, and her glitter tossing for Michael was gone. “Just now. Where are you? A disco?”
“It says Michael and I were at Breakfront together.”
“Yep.”
“It says I was the foster child of Orry and Mildred Hatch,” I said.
“Yes, it does.”
Was that her lawyer voice? I hated her lawyer voice.
“That’s invasive. I am not a public figure. I’ve never hired an agent or publicist to get my name out there. That’s the prerequisite. Everyone knows it. That’s why I can do my job and they can’t touch me.”
“Did you talk to Michael’s publicist?” she asked.
“He called me. I just said… I don’t even remember.”
I can pay you.
“Did you know it was his publicist?”
“Yes.”
“Did the publicist know you knew?”
I know who you are.
“Yes… so?” I asked.
“Did you ask for his help in any way?”
“No, and I hate your lawyer voice.”
“Did he offer it?”
I don’t want to make any response at all.
I can help you with that as well.
“Shit,” I said.
“If the publicist is trustworthy, then you have a case against the Post, but if he told them he was working with you, you’re now a public figure.”
“That’s crap. I haven’t even met with him. I could sue him.”
“The toothpaste is out of the tube.”
“Michael Greydon is poison. If I ever forget that, remind me,” I shouted over the thumping beat vibrating through my house.
When a thop THUP thop accompanied the throbbing music, I lost my complete and utter shit.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Be good,” she said.
Maybe she wanted to say something more, but I hung up the phone and jammed it in my pocket. I slung my camera over my shoulder and stormed out the door without locking it. I stomped up the concrete-and-iron steps in my boots and pounded on the upstairs door with the side of my fist.
I was about to kick it when the door swung open. The music got louder, and my breath was stolen right out of me.
“Laine.” He smiled his million-dollar smile.
“Michael. What the hell are you doing?”
“I was trying to see if this was a good place to practice. You inspired me the other night.” He looked down the hall. “What are you doing here?”
I crossed my arms. “Save it for your audience.”
He stepped away from the doorway, and I noticed the racquet in his hand. “Come in then.” He looked at my body in a way that was discreet in its speed and warming in its intensity, as if he was trying not to but couldn’t help himself, so he decided to do it quick.
I stepped in, arms still twisted over my chest, and he closed the door. He crossed the room to the stereo and turned it off. Other than the musical equipment, the loft was empty but for a table, two chairs, and a gorgeous man I met in high school. His feet were bare, and his sweater was pure white. He might as well have been wearing lingerie with the way the sleeves held his biceps and his ass was cupped in the jeans.
“What do you think?” Michael asked, thwacking a ball against the back wall.
“This is stalking.”
“It’s stalking if you tell me to go away and I don’t.” He hit the ball again. He had such control. I would have broken a window already. “Are you telling me to go away?”
“You’re an entitled, spoiled brat. What are you doing here?”
He caught the ball in his bare hand with the grace and accuracy of a gymnast. Or a dancer. Or someone hyper-aware of their body at all times. As if he was an actor who worked his ass off to understand his craft.
“I’m afraid to tell you,” he said, flicking his tongue over his teeth. His eyes were dirty thoughts, and his lips curved into a breach of etiquette.
“Let me see your hands.”
“What?”
He motioned for them, and I stuck them out. He dropped the ball and tucked his racquet under his arm before flipping my hands top-up.
“Before I tell you, I want to see if your nails are long enough to claw my eyes out.”
“I can do far worse than that if you don’t tell me.”
“You’re in the Post. And they know about where we met.”
“Your eyes are safe.” I squeezed his hands, and he held them. I didn’t know why I allowed it, except for the fact that they felt good. “I saw the paper this morning.”
“I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t me,” he said.
“It was your publicist. I should slap you for paying him to do it.”
“That’s not why I pay him. But I’m sorry it’s too late. Let me make it up to you.”
“I want nothing to do with you.” With my hands resting on his and the space between us shaped like a fault line, I couldn’t have spoken a fouler lie.
“I’ve made you lunch,” he said. “You don’t owe it to me to sit and eat it, but you should.”
“Always so respectful. Is this the same guy who smashed the trophy case at Breakfront?”
“His nice guy twin.”
“I’ll sit with you on one condition.” I let my hands slide away from his, and the loss was deeper than I expected. It might be the last time I had an excuse to touch him. “That night at NV?” He stiffened, but I wasn’t deterred. “You flipped out and smashed my camera, which was… not like you, I guess. Tell me what happened.”
A hundred magazines would pay for the story I’d just asked for, even without a picture. He’d never answer it. By the length of his pause and the coolness of his stare, I’d alienated him, and my disappointment was almost physical. Sure, I might avoid drinking the poison that was Michael Greydon, but I didn’t expect to feel as if I’d die of thirst.
“Do you like eggs?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Better sit down then. It’s all I know how to cook.”
Was he going to tell me? Would he make up something? He held the chair out for me and slid it in when I sat. To my right, the huge windows looked over the blue-grey fog of the city from six stories up. Everything was better higher.
“You think I should buy the place?” Michael said from the kitchen island, where he scraped a spatula over a frying pan.
“Are you trying to get me to move?”
His attention stayed glued to his pan. “Salt?” He held up the shaker.
He was messing with me. He knew I didn’t give a damn about whether or not he salted the eggs. I stood, clopped over to the island, and leaned back on it, next to him.
“Your dad didn’t want you to act,” I said. “I remember that. And your mom pushed you to do it. You didn’t know who to obey. Personally, I don’t know if I could reject your mother either.”
“Ah.” He shut off the stove. “Brooke Chambers’s biggest fan. I think I keep forgetting on purpose.” The eggs stood in a nicely gelled yellow pile.
“She seemed so perfect. Perfect actress. Perfect mother. What was she like? I’m sorry, I feel like a dork asking, but I can’t help it.”
“Same as anyone’s mother. Demanding, controlling, and occasionally smothering.” He handed me the plate. “But she took it on like she was conquering territory. I have to give her points for ambition.”
“Do I get toast?”
“Ah, crap.” He reached behind him for a loaf of bread, turned right then left, locating the toaster, which still had Styrofoam flakes on it from the packaging.
“Did your dad see that you were a natural?” I asked. “I mean, in high school, I couldn’t tell, but now, I’d like to see you do something you weren’t hyper aware about.”
He flipped up the loaf, letting it spin in the air, then caught it. “Maybe just bread?”
“That’s fine.”
“You don’t go anywhere without your instrument,” he said, laying the eggs and bread on the table. “Your camera. I mean, you brought it to yell at the guy upstairs?”
I swallowed. I’d had a reason or two to bring it, mostly “just in case” and the classic “you never know if…” but the real reason was simple. I didn’t feel right without it. “I see better through it.”
He pulled the chair out for me again. “I can’t leave my instrument home.” He smirked, making a blue joke about his instrument without saying a single dirty thing. He was pure sex with a side of fun. And he was warming up. Maybe I hadn’t pushed him away with my question. Maybe he’d sate this thirst. I swallowed hard, pushing down my throat the thought of him on top of me, eyes half closed and lost in pleasure. God, was I blushing?
He slid half the eggs onto my plate, his face turned toward me. I wanted to put my flushed skin under a bag. I felt naked, as if he could see my dirty thoughts.
“I have to say,” I said to fill the space, “I get it. I get you. But I want to say…” I stopped myself. I’d said that twice, which meant I was hedging. “About that night. On the roof.”
He folded his hands in front of him, elbows on each side of his plate, while I pushed my eggs around.
“The instrument thing. I know how it goes. I’ve known so many actors. And I just…”
“Say it. Whatever it is.” My God. How did he make it seem so reasonable and safe to just speak my mind?
“I don’t trust you,” I blurted. “The other night I kissed you, and it was the kiss of my life, don’t get me wrong. Your instrument works fine. And I wake up to my whole history in the damn newspaper. I didn’t sign on for that, no matter what Ken Braque says. And I’m not saying this means anything, what’s happening here with the eggs and squatting in the penthouse, because you probably just want to seduce me for lack of anything better to do. And okay, I think that’s all right, but I’m going to be as honest as I can be. I liked you in high school. I was probably as in love with a person as I could be without having it returned. And I know you had Lucy and everything, but here it is, on the line. I don’t want you to hurt me. Because you’ll walk away and be fine, and I’ll lose everything.” I pushed my plate away then leaned against the side of the table and slid out my chair.
Lightning fast, he reached across the table and grabbed my wrists. I took a breath involuntarily and held it without thinking. His hands were on mine again, holding me there, but that wasn’t why I was still. His eyes, those clear jade fires, held me in their connection to mine.
“That was brave,” he said. “And foolish. And real.”
“That’s me. Okay?”
“In a nutshell. Yes, that is you.”
I didn’t want him to let me go, but he looked at me so intently, I needed to leave. I pulled away, and he resisted.
“My father played every movie tough guy like he meant it,” Michael said. “He believes that’s who he is. That’s why he won’t get help for the drinking. Because he’s too tough. He missed days and flew into drunken rages on set. His career went into the toilet because he was too big a risk to hire. Bullets Over Sunset is getting made because it’s his last chance and because I could make it happen for him. But he has to stop drinking to do it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t say that while he lives.”
“I mean I’m sorry you have to go through this.” I whispered.
He lightened his grip with a smile. “When we were on that balcony together, and I’d just heard Britt was going to delay shooting, I knew he wouldn’t make it through. I just… I was on the edge, and I didn’t know what to do. That camera, seeing how confused I was, and you, Laine. You. There were reasons I didn’t say hello before. I cared about you, and I didn’t know what to say to you. When I saw it all fall apart with Britt, I just went over the edge. I apologize for freaking out.”
“I get it,” I said, even though I didn’t get it completely. I only saw his pain, even if I couldn’t wrap my head about the motivation.
He let go and leaned back in his chair. “I’m kind of sorry I told you. You’re not trained to manage the media. You could be a leak in a watertight drum. But I agreed so you’d stay. It was the deal. And you haven’t even eaten your eggs.”
I sat back down. I didn’t know how to feel. I’d never had a parent I cared about. Irving would be the closest thing, but not a single adult in my life had consistently taken responsibility for raising me into a woman. How could I empathize with the need to save that person?
“And yeah,” he said, popping a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, “I’m trying to seduce you.”
“You’ve gotten really lazy then. You should have catered. I mean, no juice even?”
“I can make a joke about my ability to serve after my injury.” He pointed at an elbow as if he did it every time he used the word injury.
“You wouldn’t dare make a pun.”
He smiled that half smile, and the light hit him just right, with a burned yellow tint and a soft halo.
I picked up my camera. “If I ask to take your picture before I do it, am I still a sleazy pap?”
“Are you asking?”
“The light’s really good. I won’t sell them.”
He leaned over and looked at my old rig. The light through the windows was textbook, soft on his cheeks and highlighting the ends of his hair.
“I have your new camera in the car,” he said.
“I want to see how this old horse works.”
“Is there actual film in there?”
“Yes. It’s a terrible pap camera, but for a perfect guy sitting still in perfect light, it’s perfect.”
“By all means then.”
I was reluctant to crouch in front of him and put the camera in front of my face, but once I did, he went into actor mode. I’d never seen someone come through the lens like that. Some people had that thing, that aura, that frame-crowding presence, but until I got him in a shot he wanted to be in, instead of running away, I hadn’t understood it.
“You always take so few?” he asked, fingers in his hair, head tilted like a sexy movie star god.
“I take fewer than most. Turn a little toward the window.”
“Are you wondering how I found you?” he asked between shots.
“I figure you’re rich, so you have rich person superpowers.” I meant it. The wealthy could always just get things done in a way the rest of us couldn’t. It was an assumption, and a foolish one. It gave him abilities he couldn’t possibly have. It set him up to fail me.
“Your name is on your mortgage, and your mortgage is a matter of public record.”
I didn’t lower the camera, but I stopped taking pictures. Michael leaned down toward me, filling the frame.
“Everything Ken found out is on the public record, and he knew stuff the Post didn’t publish. Stuff he held back.”
I clicked the shutter because my hand got so tight. But the camera? That stayed in front of my face. I couldn’t look at him. I felt too vulnerable for that.
“I came here to seduce you with breakfast and to apologize for my publicist and also to tell you that you need to protect yourself.”
I remembered the two paps who had followed me downtown. I hadn’t even wondered how they’d found me. I assumed it was a tip or something, but what if they’d followed me from my front door?
The frame got dark as he put his hand over the lens and pulled the camera away.
“There’s information out there, and it’s not a big deal for most people,” he said. “But you’re out there now. Until they forget and move on to the next thing.”
“I don’t want to be famous.”
“I understand.”
“I just take pictures.”
“I know.” He put the camera on the table.
“And I kissed you. That was—”
He put his finger on my lips. “I’m going to protect you. I’m going to teach you how to do this.”
I stood. “No. I don’t need to be protected. Who’s coming after me? A bunch of smelly paparazzi? Sitting out front in their shitty SUVs waiting for life to come into frame? No. Screw them.”
“What about your family? They say screw you too?”
I stiffened. I didn’t talk about that to anyone, but I’d told him so much in the bleachers. I’d told him I’d worked in Mister Yi’s sweater factory because my hands were small enough for the machines and that he sent me away when the order was done. I’d told him about Sunshine and Rover, who I’d loved and who loved me. I’d told him about the perfectly put-together mom I’d called June Snowcone, her super particular OCD, and how I’d never done anything right for her. I told him about the mom and dad who’d ignored Tom and me, the nights and days we’d spent wandering the city instead of going home. I never expected him to remember it all.
“I told you all about my family.”
“Your mother is dead. She died in prison when you were eleven.”
“Do you remember that? Or is it from Ken?” I asked.
“Both.”
I bit my lower lip, and he reached down to free it from my top teeth. I sat down, toying with my camera on the table.
“This is awkward,” I said. “I want to get mad about my privacy, but being who I am and what I do for a living… I can’t really, can I?”
“You can if you want. It’s just not a good use of your energy.”
“I wasn’t prepared for this.”
“We’ll figure it out. Is there anyone else you need to warn? What about your father?”
“You don’t remember?” I spun the camera on the table. “He left my mother when she was pregnant. I’ve never met him. She never told me who he was, not even when she went to jail and I went into the system. He doesn’t even know I exist. Why are you even talking about this shit? No one’s family is safer than mine.”
His elbows rested on his knees, and he looked up at me with big green eyes. “I thought you knew.”
Between my intellectual disorientation (What? Who?) and my emotional confusion (Why?) I froze in place. If I’d ever thought of my father as a real person, which I realized had never occurred, I might have been angry at him. But how could I be angry at a man who had never existed? Dead, alive, gone, here, none of it mattered.
Was Michael trying to resurrect the dead? Was he making a man out of a pile of dust or the extra bone of a rib cage?
And his silence. The way he closed his mouth and didn’t let his eyes waver from mine. I felt observed, peeled open, and examined in a way that would have been uncomfortable if it hadn’t been him. I couldn’t explain to myself why it was all right coming from him, why his silent, deadly scrutiny didn’t feel invasive but welcome.
“I’ve seen my birth certificate,” I said. “Brian Nordine is nobody. I looked for him. He’s gone like the freaking wind. And the wind can have him,” I said. “I don’t give a shit.”
“Really?”
Where did he get that confidence? That ability to say one word that would throw me off my axis and catch me at the same time?
“Really.” I grabbed my camera. “Thank you for the eggs. Your apology is accepted, and your warning… I get it. Thank you. I’ll keep my eyes out.”
Fifteen steps to the door. Why were those lofts so damn big? What was I thinking?
Five steps, and I heard a shuffle behind me, the scrape of a chair. I picked up the pace, and I knew he was behind me. By the time I got to the door, his chest was against my back and his hand was over the doorjamb.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“I’m going to get between you and this. I don’t like anyone knowing where you are. I don’t like you walking around at night unprotected. Especially because of me.”
I turned, putting my back to the door. “I haven’t seen you in ten years. Now this?”
“I should say it’s that I feel responsible for what’s happening. But you’re in this business as much as I am, so it’s not that. It’s you. I was up half the night thinking about you in those bleachers. The things you told me. The stuff I told you. How I felt. Back then, I was so confused, and I left you without a call or checking on you for reasons that…” He shook his head. “The reasons were pathetic. No one would have approved of you, and I lived on approval.”
He touched my hair, and those long strands became nerve endings for desire. The little hairless spot on his chin shifted, and I wanted to touch it so badly that I did so without thinking.
“Whatever it was I felt before, I’m not hiding from it this time. This time, I’m not going to worry what anyone else thinks,” he said.
“What if I’m worried?”
“I’ll make you not worried.”
His breath warmed my cheek, and I believed he could change things, even as I knew he couldn’t. He could only drag himself down. This could only go bad. But I turned my face until my lips touched his, and he stopped being a movie star. He was the boy in the bleachers, the one who worked too hard and cared too much, and I became the girl who could be anything she wanted, the one who was accepted and whose life was about to turn around.
But I’d wanted it then. I’d wanted his hand in mine to be the warning bell for change. In the penthouse loft, with his lips and tongue growing more urgent and his hands on the sides of my face, I didn’t want my life to change. I’d done everything I’d set out to do since he’d left, and there he was again, ready to destroy everything I’d built in exchange for a mouth that fit mine like a palm curled over a fist.
I turned to face the door, still trapped by his arms, and opened it a crack. He slapped it shut.
“If you’re not busy, I want to take you somewhere.”
“I’m always busy,” I said, leaning into him.
“Doing what?”
“Taking pictures of Hollywood royalty.”
“Bring your camera then.”
I held my finger up to him and said in pure mockery, “That kind of thing isn’t going to fly, superstar.”
He stepped back and took his jacket off the counter. “Today it is. Come on. It’s fun. You’ve never seen this part of the city before.”
“Ha! Fat chance of that.”
“You’ll only know if you come.”
The possibility of showing him a thing or two about the city he pretended to rule was too good to pass up. “You’re driving.”
He opened the door. We went out and strode to the stairs.
“Are we going to get mobbed? Because I’m not up for another LA Post story,” I said.
“We have ways around you guys when we need them. Today, I needed it.”
“What ways?”
He opened the door to the parking lot. “We’re not ready for that, Shuttergirl.”
I hadn’t expected him to tell me the strategies he used to avoid people like me. Or maybe I did. Maybe I’d forgotten who I was for a split second and became no more or less than a girl with a boy, because I was disappointed at the same time as I knew I had no right to be.
He approached a green two-seater Aston Martin and opened the passenger side door.
“This isn’t exactly inconspicuous,” I said as I buckled in, “but it’s super cute.”
“One tends to cancel out the other.” He leaned in, one forearm on the roof of the car and one on the open door. “You have the very same drawback.” He kissed me quickly and closed the door before I had a second to absorb the compliment.
I was smiling like a schoolgirl when he slid in next to me. God, would that be us? Would I do nothing but grin like an idiot around him? I shook it off. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t impressed so easily.
“If you’re taking the 101 anywhere north,” I said, “you should get on after the Cahuenga Pass. Time of day, and all.”
The engine rumbled to life, and he pulled out, looking bemused. “I should blindfold you, or you’re going to just boss me the entire way.”
“Good luck with that.”
He took my hand at the first red light, drawing his fingertips from my wrists to the webs of my fingers and bending them closed. After everything I’d done in my life with men, after what Jake and his friends had exposed me to—the humiliations, the distasteful acts, all the things I tried to not think about—I couldn’t believe that having my hand held could make me feel like four pounds of joy in a two-pound bag.
“Do you want the top down?” he asked, squeezing my hand a little as he headed up Western Ave.
“Will people see you?”
“Yeah, but it’s fun. The top, I mean. Not getting seen.”
“Next time then.”
Damn. I’d said next time, which presumed that there would be a next time. After the LA Post story, which was undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg, the last thing we had were guarantees.
“Nighttime’s easier,” he said. “And anything one lane is good, so no one can get astride, and any cars going the other way can’t turn around because it’s too narrow. They’d have to pull a K on Sunset by Palisades, and the twisty part of Mulholland.”
“Are you telling me your secrets? Because I could be taking notes right now.”
“That won’t make the road any wider.”
“I could just wait until the sun goes down and stand at the side of Mulholland with a motorcycle. All I have to do is wait until I see a good-looking guy in a convertible, then he’s mine.”
He glanced at me sidelong. “Just call me next time. It’s safer.”
“But not half as much fun.”
Why was I digging this hole? Why was I making this an issue? I was the hunter, and he was the prey. I made money from his work whether he liked it or not, and that was what it was. Maybe I kept bringing it up because it was real. The nagging pragmatist in me wouldn’t let the fantasy of our connection exist undisturbed.
But there were our hands, clasped in a double fist, and the longing in my body surged again. I crossed my legs. I was wet. I knew it. Just from this nothing we were doing.
I wanted to say something. I was going to say something, but I couldn’t find a way to open a conversation without apologizing for how I made my money, and that was the most insincere thing I could do.
At the light at Franklin and Beechwood, just before the psychological barrier of the Hollywood Hills, a horn honked.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. He looked over my shoulder and grinned, making a peace sign out the passenger side window. Through the other car’s window, someone squealed.
I didn’t blame them.
“You should get a driver,” I said.
He leaned back in his seat. He was turned toward me, close enough for me to smell the cinnamon on him. “Driving my own car is an entitlement. Sorry. I’d rather deal with red lights.”
He took off, twisting into the park and around the corner, checking his rearview mirror as we went into the deep recesses of the hills. The houses were set back behind foliage, big, well-kept, and selling in the multi-millions. There wasn’t a sound up there but the rumble of the Aston’s engine and the birds. I was sure he could have put the top down safely.
“I’ve been up here, you know,” I said. “You hardly have to blindfold me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If you make a right up here and go down a little ways, you’ll catch the back entry to the Griffith Park Boys Camp.”
“Uh-huh.” He kept driving up Deronda, a little curve playing on his lips.
I started realizing that maybe I hadn’t been that far up before, because there was nothing there. At the end of the road were two identical gates. One had signs all over it warning against hiking and threatening arrest. The other warned against trespassing.
Michael flipped his visor down and clicked a little beige box that looked like a garage door opener. The trespassing gate creaked open. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
“You win,” I said. “I have never been past this gate.”
“Don’t feel too bad about it.” He pulled past the gate onto a hidden street of mansions. “I had to do my share of begging to get access today.”
The twists and turns of the road were etched into the shape of the mountain, making it impossible for me to keep track of what street we were on. Not that it mattered. I’d never get up there again. “Who the hell even lives up here?”
He put his finger to his lips, taking my hand with his as if he was afraid to let it go, and whispered, “Shh. Lawyers.”
I laughed.
The houses fell away, and we drove headlong into the nothing of nature with its fullness of sound. He put the top down, and I looked up, holding my tennis player’s hand while watching the canopy of trees, a moving border on the clear blue sky. Still holding my hand, Michael punched the radio. I expected the same techno he’d played in the loft above mine, but something else came out.
“Sinatra!” I yelled over the music.
He sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with the full force of his voice, and I joined in off key, more joyfully shouting than actually singing.
We made it to the end of the song, entertaining the bugs and squirrels all the way up. A radio tower appeared through the trees. I’d only ever seen that radio tower from the ground, and only then did I know where we were going.
“No way,” I said, sitting up straight. “We’re past the razor wire!”
A cluster of official-looking buildings appeared, and Michael turned down the radio. “We are.”
“Do you know how many times my friends and I tried to get up here?”
“How many?”
“The fence is electrified. And there are cameras everywhere.”
“And there’s a good reason.” He opened the door. “Because troublemakers like you would get yourselves killed.” He got out without waiting for an answer, went around the front, and opened my door, holding out his hand.
I let him help me out, and he walked me to the ridge. Below us, from the back, was it. The Hollywood sign, standing like an oddly-shaped billboard in the side of the hill, the grid of steel supports holding up the backward letters.
“That thing? That’s mine,” I said.
“I went to grade school with a kid on Deronda. We came up here all the time. So you’re wrong. It’s mine.”
“Dude, do not even.” I took a step down the hill, and the sand and grit slipped from under my shoe.
Michael held me up then slid down a little in a controlled fashion. I took my cue from him and slid a little then steadied myself, gripping his biceps. I wanted to stay still for a moment, just to feel the hardness of his muscles, but he stepped and slid again. Leaning on each other, hands on arms and shoulders, weight on weight, stretching, catching, fighting gravity with only our bodies as a bulwark, we made it to the bottom of the sign.
I looked between the Y and W. “You can see everything.”
“To the ocean.”
“It’s really smoggy.”
“It’s best the Monday of a holiday weekend.” He nudged me, a glint in his eye. “Are you ready?”
“For what?”
He gripped a steel rail on the back of the first O in WOOD. “I could have brought you to any hill in Los Angeles for that stinking view.” He put his foot on a rail and hoisted himself up.
“You’re going to climb up it?”
“Coming?”
“Oh, hell yes.”
He got to the top first. He swung his legs over the side, straddling the letter. He guided me to the same position, steadying me until I was sitting securely enough to face the view. Then he swung his leg over and sat next to me.
“It’s breezier than I thought it would be.” I closed my eyes then opened them, trying to see that spread of the city for the first time. “Thank you. This was a nice surprise today.”
“I used to come up here all the time after I did Fractured. Some days, I felt like I was becoming that guy in the magazines. So big. Bigger than I could make sense of. And flatter too. It’s hard to explain. But up here… how many people are looking up here right now? None of them can see me. I feel real and unimportant at the same time. I wanted you to see the unimportant me.”
“I remember unimportant Michael from high school.”
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you.” His hair flicked in the wind, and the gold of the sunset burnished his skin. “You were a serve-killer.”
“I’m sorry I was a distraction.” I wasn’t sorry. Not a lick. All I wanted at that moment was to be a distraction all over again, even though I knew I’d change my mind in the morning.
“It was worth it. You were worth it. Every minute. Meeting you, it changed me, and I didn’t even realize it at the time. The first time I saw you behind a camera, I didn’t acknowledge you because I knew I couldn’t walk away again. I wasn’t ready to face what everyone would say.”
He put his hand over mine, and we sat in silence. After a years-long minute, he slipped his arm around my shoulders and put his face in my hair. I felt him breathing against me.
“It must be hard to keep your head on straight,” I said.
“It’s not a big deal.” He waved it away.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “This is complicated.”
“Not up here. Up here, it’s very simple.”
I wanted to tell him how I felt about him in the simplest language. I wanted to use words like warm and safe and joy, words like admire and appreciate, words that a six-year-old could use. I wanted to use words without guile or hidden meanings, without the weight of everything that could, and would, come between us. But he kissed my mouth, stealing the words and turning them into actions that were complex, layered in desire, and breathing with possibilities a six-year-old couldn’t imagine or understand.
Like heat.
And lust.
And the feel of a man’s body through his shirt.
And the way the whole of your consciousness can be focused on the way his thumb cruises the ridge of your breast and every thought in your head comes out your mouth in a groan.
That blast of a bullhorn woke me from the dream sleep of the kiss.
“Mister Greydon.”
Michael seemed unperturbed. He turned and looked behind us, where a park ranger stood with a red bullhorn. Michael waved.
The ranger put the horn to his face again. “I didn’t say you could climb the letters.”
“I’m in trouble,” he said, but he was smiling. “Come on, let’s go back to reality.”
He got me down from my pedestal against gravity and let the park ranger give him a hard time. It was obvious he’d been there before and that he’d never brought a guest.
It wasn’t until we were headed back down Deronda, and Michael had put the top back up, that I kicked the bag with the replacement rig and realized I’d left my camera at the loft.