Chapter 6
Laine
Los Angeles had a reputation for being warm all the time and brutally hot sometimes, but the facts were more complex. In early November, the days hung around room temperature, but as soon as the sun set and the sky faded to the color of the cold, deep sea, a wall of still air proved that Los Angeles wasn’t a warm place. It was a cold place with a hot sun.
Tom called Irving as we drove east, shimmying left the whole way. We were night owls, hovering over the city, and as tired as I was, my schedule didn’t include going to sleep at three a.m. It was dinner time.
“He’ll meet us at Carnosa,” Tom said.
“Drop me at home.”
He was sullen. More monochrome than usual. If I kept on him, I would turn him off to making money. Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. He was terrible at it.
“I’ll get you a new camera,” he mumbled.
“That’s not the point.”
“But—”
“Forget it,” I said. “Just give me a minute to stop wanting to kill you.”
I had to figure out a way to stop being mad at Tom, because without him, I had friends and tips and working relationships but no family.
We’d almost stopped speaking completely once, when he was dating an actress whose name I’d forgotten. She was a waitress, to be honest, and always would be, but she took issue with him working with me. She didn’t like the stakeouts or the chases, and she railed on him about privacy every time I walked into the room. Tom had the roof over his head because of his celebrity shooting, and he was able to pay for dinner whenever they went out, but she didn’t like the way he made his money. He started to believe she was right.
When he was nearly broke and still refused to spend a few hours across the street from Ute Thurnam to put food on the table, I finally broke down and told him this girl (whose name still eluded me) was worried about the privacy of her dream celebrity self, who would dump him the minute she became worthy of a paparazzo, which she never would. She was one of the useless romantics who thought saying “I am successful! I AM an actress!” would make it happen. But it wouldn’t. Not without talent and not with her head in the clouds. Not unless she worked her ass off and beat the streets. She was a failure before she’d even started, a game player, a cockeyed dreamer, a waitress for life. She thought stuff just happened without working for it.
We hadn’t spoken for three weeks after that, which was exactly as long as his relationship continued. In that time, I felt broken, wavering between staunch refusal to move from my position and the quivering need to apologize. I hated myself for needing him. He was a pain in my ass, but he was my only family, and without him, I felt unsure of my place in the world.
In the end, he’d called and said I was right about everything. The Nameless Waitress was horrible and useless, a cheating, lying whore. I agreed of course, because she’d turned out to be as faithless as any dreamer, and I gave my sympathies while feeling warmth and relief. Everything was back to normal.
Irving met us at the Carnosa food truck, which was in its usual spot in a downtown parking lot. They’d set out a few chairs and tables, and Irving had already staked us out a corner. We gave Tom money, which he refused, and he and Randee went to order. Irving fished my laptop and my busted camera out of Tom’s bag.
At sixty years old, give or take, Irv looked about seventy. His right arm was skinny, permanently bent, and missing a pinkie finger. As a teen, he’d been in a car accident outside the Wiltern Theater, and that arm had never healed properly. Only the thoughtfulness of a photojournalist who had been shooting the band had helped his family find the driver who had hit him.
“Nice mess, this,” he grumbled when he found the picture of Michael on my laptop. “Probably the best picture your brother’s taken in his life.”
Irving had picked me out of a crowd of kids my last semester of Breakfront. As a storied portraitist, known for his work with celebrities and politicians, he was one of the school’s many featured teachers. When I’d disappeared for a week after Mister Hatch filed for divorce, Irving found me in a squalid home in Westlake, back with Tom as a matter of luck. He offered to mentor me, and I said Tom came with the package.
“I can’t believe I’m in it,” I said. “Now I have to either let it go without a problem, which makes me an accessory to him bringing a rig where he shouldn’t have, which destroys my reputation, or I tell everyone he stole my camera and destroy his. Either way, the focus is on me, which isn’t good for my prospects.”
“Maybe it’s time your brother started making his own way.”
“He’d starve.”
Irving laughed, showing his rough teeth. “Laine.” He always pronounced my name with the e at the end, and he was the only one I let get away with it. “I keep waiting for your wake-up call.”
“Well, this wasn’t it.”
“You could do some damage as a real journalist.”
“Is this why you got in the car at the crack of dawn? To give me a hard time for making a living?”
“I gotta tell you, sweetheart, I can’t let it go.” He rapped his lame knuckles on the wood table. “This is the exact right time for you to get out.”
Irv had been like a father to me when I needed guidance, and though he’d earned the right to say whatever he wanted to me, I wasn’t used to getting scolded. I was used to simply going where my gut instructed.
“You taught me this job,” I snapped. I was tired and trapped and still smarting from the remembrance of Michael. I felt worthless enough without Irv poking my raw places.
“I taught you how to take pictures. I didn’t pick you out of a few thousand so you could stand outside clubs in the middle of the night. You have a gift, and you’re throwing it away on trash. You were meant for better.”
“You’re full of it. You’ve encouraged me since I was fifteen. You mentored me to hustle Hollywood, and if hustling means something different to me than it means to you, that doesn’t change the facts.”
“You’re wasting your life. Think about it,” he said.
“‘Don’t think.’ Isn’t that what you said? ‘Shoot with your eye, not your brain?’”
“I was talking about the art, not the business.”
“It’s still good advice,” I said.
“Youth. Swear to God, it’s wasted on the young.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Irv. I’m not trying to throw your words back in your face.”
“But you are.” His eyes were sunken, and his skin was ashen.
I hadn’t thought about Irv getting old until that moment, but even his voice had aged. His transition from kooky middle-aged guy to concerned old man had happened while I wasn’t looking.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, tapping my phone, as if my attention on it would make a tip come through it. But there was no tip.
Tom was on his way back with a tray and a girl in sparkly shoes. She had her arm looped in his.
“God,” I said, “I hope she’s better than the last one.”
“You and me both.”