Chapter 25
Laine
I had a rock in my shoe.
It had lodged between the soft flesh of the outside of my right foot and the leather of my brown stiletto as I ran down Wilshire Boulevard.
Still, I ran like a purse snatcher. Like the old days, when I didn’t really know what was at the end of the run, when tips weren’t guarantees and the phone never rang.
My bag cut across my right breast and banged against my lower back. I held a spanking-new four-pound camera aloft in my right hand, and my hair clips were doing nothing to hold my hair anymore but were bouncing against my scalp, hanging on for dear life.
I cut a corner into an alley. Voices around some corner, indistinguishable over the sound of my panting. Flashing lights that could have been my body giving out or cameras. A few days off, and I was lazy and out of shape.
The back of Kate Martello’s was around the next corner. There wasn’t a movie star on the planet who used the front entrance of anything and not a paparazzo worth his salt who couldn’t find a back door. I slid on a pile of scree to get around the next corner, avoiding a twisted ankle by some miracle of grace and luck, and slammed full body into a shouting dog pack of photographers.
Wall-to-wall sweat, canvas jackets, lumpy bags, unshaven faces, car breath, and testosterone. My feet were on fire, and that rock in my shoe was getting shoved up someone’s ass if I didn’t get a shot I could sell. I squirmed to the front, giving as many elbows as I got. I knew those guys, and they’d step on me if I didn’t step on them first.
The situation behind Kate Martello’s was particularly bad. It was in the old part of Beverly Hills. The alley was narrow, and the only space in the front of the ropes for the paparazzi was a wedge between two black SUVs. It was a tight fit, but I was skinny. I elbowed my way forward.
“Is that the lens you’re using?” Tom asked, not even looking at me as I crouched and stepped in front of him. He was taller and had no problem putting his camera above me.
“It’s the one I got.”
The lens that Michael had replaced was long, and I’d been in such a hurry to get out of that apartment I hadn’t doubled down with something wider. I’d just grabbed a flash to fight the night and run.
“Fuck,” I grumbled. “I need a wide angle.” I twisted my body and reached into Tom’s bag.
“Yeah, you do,” he said, his eyes on the restaurant. He shifted so I could rummage around his bag. Flash. Battery pack. Long lens. Pepper spray.
“Don’t you have an eight?” I asked.
“It’s on my camera. My five six is in the car.” He glanced at me. “Sorry.”
“Who’s in there?” I rooted around his bag. He wouldn’t lie to me, but he could be mistaken, or maybe a jury-rig would come to me if I touched enough equipment.
“Brad. Jayce. Some girl. How the hell have you been?”
How was I supposed to answer that? How had I been?
Happy. That was how I’d been, but I’d die before saying that out loud.
“Fine,” I said. “What about you?”
“Great. I want to show you the stuff I’ve been getting.”
I let the flap of his bag drop. “Sure, I’d love to see it.”
He beamed then snapped back to business. I guessed that was what he thought I wanted. “Can you see inside with that thing?”
Two paps whose names I knew I knew but couldn’t recall pushed into me. Life sucked in the dog pack, but damn, it was never boring.
I put the camera to my face and looked through the diners for Brad and his crowd. It’d be nice to know whether they were paying the check or still working on salad, but it was hard to see past the darkness, and my thick lens didn’t help. There was a huge TV in there, and all I had to do was find it on the lens, to orient myself, and…
I was hit right in the frame with Michael in crystal clear HD, smile as bright as the strip on a Saturday night and eye as black as the sky behind it.
What’s the use of being with a paparazza if you can’t get a black eye for her?
The closed captioning, streaking black bands with white type across the top of the screen, went only seconds behind the movement of his lips.
So, this is very interesting, tell me, is she standing outside the rear entrance? because we might want to stay away from her.
Oh, you will, Jack. Because I have one other eye, and she’s mine, you understand?
I do, I do! I guess the other guy looks pretty beat up then?
He does. And let me know if you find him. About six three. Two-twenty. His knuckles are in pretty bad shape.
(laughter)
Okay, let’s talk about Bullets Over Sunset. You’re on hiatus because—
I put the camera down.
What the hell was that? Was he talking about me without talking about me? None of the paps seemed moved one way or the other, but they knew about the other night on the rooftop. I imagined they could smell the cinnamon of his skin on me, then I became convinced it was the truth.
I didn’t have another second to feel shame about Michael and his busted eye. Brad Sinclair and his crew exited the back of the restaurant, and the pack broke. They didn’t hustle or rush. Brad put his arm around a pretty blonde’s shoulders and turned to Jayce with a comment that made his friend laugh.
I did what I was supposed to do.
I bolted ahead of everyone and leapt over the hood of a car to get in front of them. Clickclickclick.
Head to toe. Heels to hairpins. I had it. If I could separate Brad and Jayce into two separate frames, I could sell it twice.
“Hey,” Brad called. “Shuttergirl!” He pointed at his eye. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
I put down the camera. “Give me something to shoot, and I’ll tell you.”
He held out both middle fingers, smiling and looking over those stupid sunglasses. Everyone else had him from the side, but he posed for me. I shot it. You bet I did. Boots to bonnet.
“Well?” he said as his car pulled up.
I lowered the camera. “I’m left-handed. I woulda busted the other eye.”
He pointed at me with a fake gun shot. I laughed. I forgot to be jaded and knowing. I forgot how it would look for me to have a friendly relationship with Brad Sinclair. I just felt unburdened and available for a stupid joke from someone I’d casually labeled a douchebag.
When Brad and his friends got into his car, I felt the car door slamming as if it were the closing off a portal to another world. I was in an alley with my peers in their smelly T-shirts and matte black cameras. I had always been an outsider, being a woman, but after being friendly with Brad Sinclair, I was worse than an outsider. I was a pariah. I saw it in their looks and their turned backs.
The shots I’d gotten of Brad should have gotten me high fives. Instead, I looked as if I had a leg up, and nobody liked that. Especially not the ragtag team of starkillers I hung out with.
“Laine!” Tom came jogging up behind me, having missed everything. “What did you get?”
“Good stuff.”
I felt dead inside. I got no joy from it. Not from the accolades I’d get for doing my job, nor from the money or heated negotiation. I walked out of the alley, and Tom followed.
“Hey,” I said, slipping out my phone, “can I see what you’ve been shooting?”
“Yeah.”
I texted Michael.
—I’m worth getting a black eye for?—
“You seem surprised,” I said to Tom.
—Definitely. I’d give my other eye in your defense—
“You never want to see what I’m doing outside the celebrity shit,” Tom said.
“I don’t know. You seem excited about it.”
“I’m doing retouching I’ve never done before. I can’t wait for you to see it.” He practically skipped out to the street.
“Let me upload these, and we can go to Pasadena.”
My phone rang. It was Michael.
“Hey, I—”
He cut me off. “I just got a call from Brad.”
I heard people around him talking in serious voices, and through that, he was pissed. “Okay?”
“I asked you not to leave the house,” he said.
“I’m sorry? Are you serious?”
“This guy knows where you live and how to get to you. Do you want me to take a picture of my fucking face so you believe it?”
“Your face? Your precious face?” I wanted to list for him what of mine Foo and Jake had bruised, but that would make him crazy.
“Laine, it’s night, it’s dark—”
“Tom is here. He’ll protect me. He knows them.”
“Put him on the phone.” He was demanding and borderline discourteous. Who was he? This wasn’t the funny, sweet guy I’d kissed hours ago. “Laine…”
“What is with you?”
“May I please speak with your brother?”
I handed Tom the phone with a sour face and got into my car, cursing.
“Yeah, I know him,” Tom said from outside.
I plugged in my wifi and fired up the laptop, seething from the inside out.
“I know, I know, dude, I know…” Tom said as I ground my teeth.
I pulled up the pictures of Brad, half tilted, middle fingers up, and a big smile under his sunglasses. Not a pap shot. Not a bowed head or sense of discomfort that even the best of them got. No, he was a guy in his own element, and behind him was Renaldo with a sour puss, cradling his camera in his forearm.
“Believe me—” Tom said before I snapped the phone from him.
“You told Brad,” I said.
“About what? You? Of course I told him, he’s my friend.”
“Now he knows me.” I flipped through the pictures. It was amazing how they didn’t work without the touch of shame and vulnerability. Even though Brad’s comfort and smile were genuine, the pictures looked staged and phony. “How am I supposed to do my job if this is common knowledge?”
Tom got in and shut the passenger side door.
“You can’t do your job and be with me. That’s common sense.”
“That’s not going to work,” I whispered, because the implications were painful.
Tom leaned over to look at my pictures then scrolled through, brow knotted.
“It is going to work, and you’re going to stay by Tom until I can get Carlos there to watch you.”
I wanted to tell him I had a camera full of head-to-toes of Brad Sinclair and I couldn’t sell one of them, thank you very much. But why would he care? He’d made his position clear.
“Can you not tell anyone else right now? Can you not make implications on talk shows? Can you respect my privacy? And do not even start to pick that apart because you will be as sorry as I am right now.”
“Are you apologizing for being a pap?”
“No!” I said. “Not really.” I took a deep breath. “Maybe.”
“If you stay at Tom’s place until Carlos meets you, I will be as silent as the grave.”
My first reaction was to thank him, but I bit it back.
“We have a date,” he said before I could think of something to say. “I’ll see you then.”
He hung up. I stuck the phone between my leg and the seat.
“These suck,” Tom said.
“They’re worthless.” I snapped the laptop shut and started the car. “Am I driving you to your car, or did my nurse mother demand you be in arm’s reach?”
“I am to be physically present at all times. Can you tell me what happened? Because I didn’t think you saw those guys anymore.”
I pulled out. “I didn’t see them. They saw me in the LA Post. Who even knew they could read.”
“Ah, and what did he want?”
“Money. What else?”
“I don’t—”
“Do you remember the pictures? Those fucking pictures?” I slammed the heel of my hand on the steering wheel. He reddened, and I turned onto the 110. “Well, they have them.”
“I’m sorry.”
I put up my hand. “No! Don’t even. Those pictures saved my life.” I counted events on my fingers. “You leaving your camera at my house, Jake and them taking pictures of what was happening, you developing them and shoving them in my face… that… Saved. My. Life. But me leaving them there when I split? That was stupid. Damn stupid.” I banged my hand on the wheel again.
I pulled off in Pasadena. Tom lived in a nondescript apartment building off Lake, and I knew the way by heart.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I’d spent little time asking myself that because I already knew the answer. “Pay them.”
“You? You never give in to shit like this. You don’t care what anyone thinks, and you don’t get bullied. What happened to you?”
I guessed there was a reason I kept Tom around. He didn’t let me get away with anything, and he didn’t soft-pedal it. I’d done plenty wrong in my life, and though I rarely wanted to hear about it when I did it, Tom let me know every time.
This time, however, I didn’t want to defend myself.
“Leave me alone.” I pulled up in front of his building.
“No, I’m not going to leave you—”
I slammed the car into park. “Leave. Me. Alone.”
“Do you even know how much they want?”
“I don’t care.” I gathered my things. Laptop. Camera. Bag.
“But you’re just going to pay it?”
“Yes.” I got out of the car and thumped the door closed. I walked up to the curb and toward the front doors of his building as if I wanted to be there. As if I was storming the gate to a golden city when in fact I was just changing the subject with my feet.
“Laine, come on, man.” He jangled his keys. “What is this?”
“Would you want those pictures out? Two guys on me in crystal-clear black and white? Mascara all over my face. Socks on. Naked bodies everywhere. Do you remember them?”
“I’m not going to forget them,” he said softly. “I don’t want people looking at you, but I can’t believe you’re just caving because you’re afraid of what Michael Greydon will think of you. I mean, that’s the reason, isn’t it?”
“I’m ashamed of everything about this. But he doubled down today. On television. What am I supposed to do? Let the world know he’s with a whore?”
“You’re not—”
“What’s it matter what you think of me? If everyone thinks I’m a biker’s fuckdoll, I am. And his career depends on what people think of him.”
He jangled his keys and found the one he needed. He wanted to say something, I could see it, but he was holding back.
“It’s not like it’s serious,” I said. “I mean, we’re doomed from the start. But for as long as it lasts, it’s mine. And I don’t want Jake the Pillow Snake killing it. Let it die of natural causes.”
“Are you going to see him?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going with you.”
I glared at him. He’d been pushed around constantly by Jake and his buddies, but Tom was brave, the poor sad sack. Brave and stupid.
“Miss Cartwright?” A six-foot-four solid wall of man in a navy suit approached from a black Chevy SUV that was as big as a bus.
“You must be Carlos,” I said, glad to be rescued from telling Tom he couldn’t go with me.
We shook hands.
“I’m here to watch you,” he said, “not to get in your way. If you tell me where you are at all times, I won’t have to.”
He said it so cleanly and professionally, it didn’t ruffle any of my feathers. That was a talent.
“You coming in?” Tom asked, opening the door.
Carlos held open the door. “That’s what I was hired to do.” He smiled, big and wide. He could have been an actor himself. Of course, Hollywood couldn’t tolerate even the slightly unattractive.
I realized I would have a hard time taking care of my business with Jake whether Tom interfered or not.
Deep breath. I could figure it out. I had to.
I didn’t know when I became so dedicated to making Michael and me happen, or at least, not sabotaging the thing entirely. Probably when he fell asleep on me and the world outside stopped mattering. Or when he took me to his secret place. Or maybe when he tried so hard to protect me that I felt the need to step in and protect him.
Carlos was a pretty unobtrusive shadow, sitting outside Tom’s apartment as I inspected every picture of Randee and her band. We broke down his retouch technique to the last pixel. Only when the woman herself showed up did I leave, and in the darkness, with the bus of a car behind me, I wondered what I was doing with my night, and I missed him.
I should have been out chasing something, someone, making myself available for an opportunity to make money. I didn’t want to cross him or his friends again, and the phone wasn’t ringing no matter how hard I stared at it. I could call Kill Photo, but why take two steps back if I didn’t have to?
Could I continue to work with Michael, for however long it lasted? And if I wasn’t a paparazza, what was I? Who was I?
I opened the silverware drawer, and I stared at me in poorly fixed black and white, scratching for a cigarette, pain everywhere down below. How hard had it been for Tom to develop this carefully enough to do an exposure test? And the rest of the pictures, where that shirt was pulled up and the sheet wasn’t covering what was between my spread legs, how hard had those been to work on? How hard would they be for Michael to see? Would he ever look at me again?
I knew Jake’s number. I just had to call him and ask him how much for the pictures. It didn’t have to be more than that.
I sat on the edge of my bed and dialed four digits before another call came in. It was Michael.
“Hi,” I said, relieved to put off Jake for the moment.
“Hey, I hear Carlos got there?”
“Am I supposed to feed him or something?” I lay back on the bed, suddenly relaxed, as if I had permission to not worry about anything.
“His partner will come relieve him. You’re not supposed to even know he’s there.”
“Okay.”
“About before?”
“You being a jerk?” I creased the sheets in my fingers, making a sharp edge of the fold. I caressed it against my knuckles
“That.”
“You get a do-over.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
I could almost feel his breath on my ear.
“You’re not working?” he asked.
“No, you?”
“I’m at a thing. A boring thing.”
“It’s quiet,” I said.
“That’s how boring it is.”
“You should come here.”
“Ah, Laine, what I’d do…”
“What would you do?” It must have been the touch of the sheets and the dim light that made me ask. Or maybe it was the silence on his end.
“Kiss you, of course. But everywhere. Every inch of skin. I want to taste it.”
“Oh.” I had nothing more articulate. He’d never said anything like that to me, and the pleasant shock went right between my legs. “Michael…”
“Laine, the next time I see you… I’m taking you. I mean it. And then that’s it. You’re mine. I’m not kidding.”
Voices came through the phone. Background noise, as if they’d entered the room.
“Tell me you heard me,” he said.
“I heard you.”
“What did I say?”
“You want me.”
“What else?”
“God, I’m so turned on I can barely think.”
“Good. I have to go. Let Carlos stay close. See you tomorrow night.”
The line went dead, but I felt like an electrified fence. I was supposed to call Jake. Wasn’t that what I had been doing? But I couldn’t. Not while I could feel my underpants rubbing against me. The last person I should talk to in that state was Jake.
I stuck my hand in my panties. I was soaked from only a few words. Everything was wrong. Everything stood between Michael and me, but my body wanted an uninterrupted night with him. More than wanted it. My reaction was a response to need.
I closed my eyes and imagined him above me, groaning my name, unaware of anything around him but my body. I imagined him breathing in harsh gasps as he came, and my fingers moved enough for me to come with him, even though he wasn’t there.
My hand cupped my ache as it built again. I wasn’t making another call, and I wasn’t accepting one. I fell asleep basking in the warm promise of him.