Shuttergirl Read online

  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.

  Chapter 26

  Laine

  I knew Michael was taking me to a movie, and that meant jeans and nice shoes, a short leather jacket, and hair thrown up in a nest. Not a big deal. But a short phone conversation with Phoebe shook me from my fog of stupidity.

  “Big Girls premieres Tuesday,” she said. “It’s huge.”

  I sat on my balcony overlooking the newly gentrified street and threw back my head. I knew that. Nothing premiered in that town without my knowing, and somehow, I’d let that star-studded bit of Oscar bait drop from my radar.

  “He would have told me,” I said, bending at the waist until I was in crash position.

  “Unless he thought you already knew. I mean, with him starring in it and all.”

  “This is going to be very public, Phoebe.”

  “What are you wearing?” she asked.

  “They’ll all be there.”

  “Laine?”

  “This is it. It’s all over.”

  “Laine?”

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  “I have a few hours before I leave for Vegas. Meet me at Grandview.”

  When I saw Phoebe fingering a lacy thing in the dress department, I knew something was wrong. She was too sharp a woman, too crystal clear and energetic for that faraway dreamy look.

  “Phoebe?”

  “Would you show me this one?” The height of the rack prevented her from getting the dress off herself, and she’d probably shooed away three salesgirls already.

  I pulled the cream, floor-length lace dress off the rack, and she stared not at it but through it.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s nice.”

  “Not my style.”

  “I have to get a wedding dress,” she said.

  “You’re not getting off-the-rack at Grandview. Sorry.” I clicked the hanger back in place.

  “I have to get it made custom for, you know, the chair. God, I hate this. I’m going to hate every minute of it. I mean, I’d run away and get married if it weren’t for my family and the whole concept of running, which I never got a taste of.”

  Phoebe rarely got depressed. She didn’t spend a minute pitying herself. She’d put herself through law school and made a name as a tough negotiator and relationship-builder by using her girlishness not as a handicap but as a weapon. I admired her strength, and because of that, I respected her fragile places.

  I sat on a leather chair next to the rack. “Do you want to go get some coffee?”

  “No. I want to just do this. Flat out.” She said it as if what was coming was hard, as if it had been eating at her.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “You can’t be in the bridal party.”

  “Why not?” She’d picked me as the maid of honor because she didn’t have any sisters. We’d talked about dresses and responsibilities. I mean, maybe a demotion for whatever reason but to be cut out completely? “What did I do?”

  “Nothing. You’re my best friend. Ever since you tripped over me running after Rabine Johnansen. You know why? Because you laughed and helped me up. You’ve never t
reated me like a cripple, but you’ve never ignored it either. So this is the thing. I am a cripple. And I’m supposed to use different words, but this is the fact. And the happiest day of my life is in six months, and I’m going to be in this chair for it. I want… I want something else. I want it to be different.”

  I had the feeling from her run up that she wasn’t cutting me out of the bridal party as much as she was letting me into something else. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Wedding pictures are forever, and I don’t want them to be ugly. If it’s just the usual thing, me and Rob under a trellis, except I'm in a chair, I’m going to cry whenever I look at them. All I’ll have of this day for the rest of my life will be the pictures, and I don’t want them to look like an excuse, or half done, or fall short of the norm. Everything about it has to be different. Can you do that for me? Can you… I don’t want a photographer. Can you not be the photographer? Can you be the documenter? I’ll pay you anything.”

  “You want me to photograph your wedding?”

  “Yes.”

  What was I supposed to say? No, Phoebe, I think wedding photographers are failures. Or Sorry, that doesn’t fit in with my vision of myself?

  Besides the fact that would be rude and break her heart, besides the fact that our friendship might not recover from such a rejection, I had to be honest with myself.

  The idea was kind of exciting.

  “I need complete creative freedom,” I said. “You go all bossy lawyer on me, and I’m just going to drink and dance all night.”

  She slapped her hands over her mouth. “You’ll do it?” she said from behind her fingers.

  “I need full access to every step of this, so get Rob and your brothers on board. They can’t get on my case to make it boring and normal.”

  “Yes. Anything.”

  “I can’t guarantee you’ll look like a model.”

  “No, no, the point is that it’s real. And beautiful but—”

  “Beautiful because it’s real. I know. I get it.”

  “I’m so happy, I can’t… this is better than… god. You have a date with Michael Greydon! What am I doing?” She wheeled her chair back. “All the stars wear boring black. You need a color.”

  Chapter 27

  Laine

  I own Hollywood. I own the dark corners and littered curbs. The shattered bottles, the half-full fast food containers, the broken toilets and ripped mattresses at the curb for months, they’re as much a part of me as the spotlights crisscrossing the sky, the cobblestones of Rodeo, the Bentleys, and the private parties. Nothing shocks or scares me. I have never been star struck. Never at a loss for words. Never intimidated by the rich, the powerful, the glamorous any more than the destitute, the filthy, or the criminal.

  How can you fear what you own?

  How can you be intimidated by what’s inside yourself? By a city that nursed you to adulthood?

  How?

  Looking out the window, I watched a limo pull into a loading zone on the nose of four thirty. A driver got out and let Michael out of the back. Carlos met him at the car and walked him to the front door.

  I felt as if I were going to the prom. Not that I knew what that was like. I’d skipped that whole stage of life in favor of hanging out with drug-dealing dirtbags.

  For Phoebe, it had come down to pink or yellow, and I’d thrown my hands up and gone with a pink dress. If I was going to be pretty and feminine, I was going all the way. Tight skirt, with lace overlay, that fell just above the knee. Sleeveless bodice with a scooped neck that was still modest and a shawl in a slightly deeper shade. Then shoes, and new stockings, and a matching hairpin, all of which had almost landed Phoebe late for a meeting with the SVP of Overland Studio.

  “You look terrible,” I said when Michael reached my door, because he looked perfect in a dark suit and tie. His black eye was still uncovered by a stitch of makeup, as if he was as proud of the wound as he would have been if he’d won the fight.

  “Turn around,” he said, looking at my body as if I wore nothing but the shawl and a smile. “Let me see this rag you bought.”

  “I knew you hated pink.” I turned for him until I could only feel his eyes on me, rather than see them. “That’s why I got it.”

  He put his hand on my waist and his lips on the back of my neck. “I can’t even see the dress. Just the woman in it.”

  “Michael, I…” I drifted into a groan when he moved his hand from my waist to my breast, the edge of his thumb finding where I was most sensitive. I was about to tell him how long it had been since I’d been with a man and unzip exactly as much baggage as I needed to, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what I had been trying to say.

  “We have to go.” He stepped back, and I turned around.

  “I lied before.”

  “You thought I liked pink?”

  “I know you like pink,” I said. “But you don’t look terrible. You are obscenely handsome. It’s not fair to all the other men in the world.”

  He drew his finger across my collarbone. “Lock the door behind you.”

  I did. Carlos waited by the elevator and stood silently by us as we put our backs to the elevator car wall, holding hands. Michael drew his thumb along the side of my hand, and I shuddered. Even that simple touch was electric.

  “You were great on Jack Rambling’s show today,” I said.

  “How did I look?”

  “Like you were blasting a secret all over town without telling me first.”

  “It was a spur of the moment thing. I’m not usually impulsive. I had a simple joke set up, and then, I don’t know.”

  I turned to look at him. He watched me, and I knew he was being honest. I couldn’t be angry, even though I should have been about both Brad and the show.

  When the elevator doors opened, I realized why I couldn’t be angry.

  I thought I’d understood the significance of our night out until we stepped outside. I’d thought it was about us, about us being official on some level. About accepting that we would proceed, one and the other, to hell with all of it.

  But it was more than that.

  Two more bodyguards waited past the glass doors, and they had a big job in standing between us and a dog pack of paparazzi.

  I stopped. No, I didn’t stop. I froze, thinking about the head to toe, the heels to hairpins; my posture, my face, the shape of my persona against the perfection of Michael Greydon.

  “Hey,” he whispered, “I thought I’d have the car ride to prep you, but—”

  “Of course. Why would they bother with the opening? They’d have to fight the press there. Here, it’s all them. These will be all over the internet with edited copy before we even get to the theater.”

  “Will you be okay?”

  “Will you stay by me?”

  “Always,” he said softly, squeezing my hand.

  “Damn you, Greydon. My heart just expanded three sizes.”

  “Let’s have fun. Come on.” He pulled me to the door, smiling as if he were a two-year-old on the teacup ride, delighted, unencumbered, and fully in the moment.

  I tried to imitate his glee as we walked out, but I couldn’t. They called my name, because they knew it, and every click of a shutter was a point of attention away from him. He held my hand, and my hand felt safe. Then he stepped in front of me and looked back, locking me in frame. He put himself as the calm eye in the storm of my fear, which then disappeared like water on the sidewalk at noon.

  He pulled me to the limo. A man in a suit opened the door, and Michael let me in first. He got in across from me. The door closed, and everything disappeared.

  “How do you do that all the time?” I said.

  “It’s not that big a deal. Not when I expect it.”

  I leaned back. It was just us, and the car hadn’t moved yet. The paps were mostly gone. Having gotten their shot, they were either uploading, racing to our destination, or both.

  “God, I feel so crappy right now,” I sai
d.

  “Why?”

  “My job. I feel… guilty.”

  The car moved, and Renaldo popped his shutter a few times as if he could sell a picture of a limo.

  “I hate this, this regret. I thought the attention made you all feel good, but it doesn’t feel good on this side. It feels ugly.”

  “Between us,” he said, leaning forward, “I want to tell you something you should believe unconditionally.”

  I didn’t answer because his hands covered my knees. They put a slight pressure on the insides of my legs, as if he was about to open them.

  “Don’t even believe it,” he said. “Know it. You, personally, have never made me uncomfortable. You, personally, have never been anywhere I didn’t expect you. And I always thought you had a beautiful body behind that camera.”

  My legs wanted to open. The insides of my thighs felt alive with desire, as if they were lit with klieg lights, and when he ran his thumbs along the insides of my knees, the buzz increased.

  “I want you,” I said. “I don’t want to be unladylike in this dress, but I want you right now.”

  “I want every inch of you. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to tell Gali to spin around the block a few hundred times so I can be alone with you. But I’m not a boy. First, we’re going onto the carpet. Let me lead. Then the lobby, which is just a movie theater lobby but full of people in the business, and they’ll talk too long about nothing. I want you to trust me. All I’ll be thinking about is spreading your legs and tasting you.”

  “How am I going to get through this movie?”

  He laughed softly. “No one watches the movie. My God, I’ve seen it seven times already.”

  “Are you any good in it?”

  “According to who?”

  “You?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I think I overdid it in places and underdid it everywhere else. But everyone else is happy, so who am I to say? I just have to go into the theater with you and keep my hands off you for long enough to leave. Then it’s in my contract that I have to go to the after party. It’s three blocks away. We’ll drive so we don’t get mobbed. Then I’m taking you home, and I’m getting acquainted with every inch of you.”