Chapter 3
Michael
My name is Michael Greydon. Try not to hold that against me.
I’ve never wrecked a car, never knocked a girl up and paid her off, never screamed at my driver, never never never.
I think I became a series of nevers, and those nevers made me more valuable to the people who hired me. So I kept it up, and there I was, not wondering why I might grab a camera and throw it off a balcony, but what kind of person did that. I was a paper cutout of a man, blank and ready for anyone else to draw on.
When I first got into the business officially, at eighteen, I was told repeatedly that I didn’t need to like my agent. I was told that, as a matter of fact, liking my agent would not only make the task of firing him more difficult but necessary. Agents weren’t meant to be sincere, ethical, or good company. Agents were meant to tear out their grandmother’s throat and eat her esophagus for a deal.
I was sure Gene Testarossa had used his grandmother’s hide for the seats in his Mercedes. At Club NV, I wasn’t uncomfortable with the centripetal force on my douchebag agent’s moral center. By the time he pulled me away from the scene in the Emerald Room and out to the parking lot, I started to question everything I had been taught.
“Get off me,” I said, yanking my arm away.
“What were you doing with her?”
“Talking.”
“This is going to cost you more than a camera.”
This was a mess. Between Britt breaking a bone and my temper tantrum, we were internet fodder for the rest of the week.
Gene got me into his Mercedes SUV, whipped a U-turn out of the alley, and peeled east as if his ass were on fire, and in a way, it was. His eyes were bugging out, and his finger jabbed at me, clicking the pink gold of his watch.
“Were you doing blow tonight?” he asked in a completely businesslike manner, as if the culmination of his job was in that question.
“What?”
“Were. You. Doing. Blow?” He peeled onto the 10 freeway toward downtown.
“No.” I didn’t know what he was getting at. I didn’t do drugs, and he knew it.
“Then what’s with the behavior?”
I leaned back in the seat. I didn’t feel right. I felt down, as if the adrenaline spike had drained me of energy. I stepped outside myself and watched the emotional toll of my physical distress. I could use it some time to inform a scene, or a word, or a glance.
I’d been photographed constantly since I was a baby. I had plenty of privilege, but that came with plenty of responsibility. I couldn’t show what I was feeling, ever. I had to be nice to everyone all the time, and I couldn’t be sick, not really. If I was shooting, my sick day cost everyone millions. If I didn’t work every single day I was contracted to, people could lose their jobs. That’s what my father had taught me. He said if I insisted on selling my life, if I insisted on getting into the business, then I was accepting responsibilities that weren’t to be taken lightly. Everything I did, right or wrong, was seen under a looking glass, disseminated, analyzed by the public, then ignored. And all I ever wanted to be was right.
“You are so lucky I caught you,” Gene said. “You looked like you were going to punch someone.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Act like a goddamn grown-up.”
“I cannot believe who this is coming from.”
“I’m going to be frank.” He changed lanes on the 10, zipping east in a blaze of headlights.
“Good. Be Frank. Because Gene’s a dick.”
“Tonight, everyone’s going to be looking at you. After Britt’s fucking meltdown, they’re going to wait for Bullets to sink. Is that what you want? I mean, no one cares what DMZ says, but once Variety starts in, then you start losing the confidence of the studio. Then you know what happens? Money gets pulled. Notes called in. The schedule is screwed, and the bond goes up. Then you have a reputation. You end up not working.”
He was talking about my father, who hadn’t made a movie in ten years because no one would book a drunk. Gene wasn’t a subtle guy, but when it came to my dad, he knew to shut the hell up.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Ken.”
Ken was my PR guy, a powerhouse rotating in the same moral universe as my agent. But as little as I thought of him, he didn’t throw stuff when he got angry.
I stated the obvious. “It’s late.”
“You can tell him that when we get there.”
Downtown appeared over the horizon, a smattering of star-drowning lights. Glass-encrusted shafts hung together in a huddle, and we twisted right into the middle of them.
I knew what I looked like to the public. I looked as if I had all the freedom in the world, but as Gene handed the night valet his keys with an admonition to take it easy and not change the radio stations, I realized I hadn’t done a damn thing I wanted to do my whole life. I shut my eyes and tried not to curse repeatedly, drowning out my anger with thoughts of work. Football. Food. But the only thing that washed away the frustration was my curiosity over Shuttergirl.