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  But what I could do was look at him. I thought it would hurt to pull up the pictures I’d taken of him, from the loft upstairs to the first pap shot I’d gotten by the valet of the WDE Agency. I’d filed them by how handsome he looked, how happy, how engaged he was with the camera. I had one where he was scratching his head and looking pensive, and I stared at it at three in the morning, trying to understand him. I couldn’t. It was just a picture.

  In the evening of the third day, I realized I’d stopped crying. I felt clean. I felt powerful again, and though I hadn’t slept, I was wide awake.

  So I went to see Razzledazzle at the Thelonius Room. It was so dark I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. Even the foot-high candles didn’t cut through the murk.

  “Where have you been?” Tom yelled over the music of the opening band, Spoken Not Stirred.

  “Home crying.”

  He looked away from his camera. “You?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem?”

  “You should have called me.”

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry. You like doing this. I shouldn’t have distracted you with being a pap.”

  He nudged me with his shoulder. We had more to talk about, but Razzledazzle came on. He disengaged to do his job.

  I knew enough people around the room to hold conversations, but by the third song, I was alone at the bar, trying to get away from the noise. I ordered a glass of crappy wine from a skinny girl in black jeans. She’d done her hair in a fancy twist, but after hours of work, she looked worn out.

  Though I felt strong, I knew it was a moment of weakness when I called Michael.

  The call bounced. I was off his list.

  Sure, being cut off hurt, but the worst part was knowing I’d upset him enough to get pulled. I hadn’t expected hurting someone to feel like this. I thought leaving someone behind would be okay, not a big deal, because I’d be the one in charge. But it wasn’t like that at all. I felt sorry. I’d done the right thing, but it came with a flavor of regret I hadn’t tasted before.

  I left and stalked the streets of downtown, taking pictures of… I didn’t even know what. Corners. Garbage. A broken water main. Doorways. A club let out, and I took pictures of the drunks. I did it the next night, and the night after. I didn’t know what I was doing but avoiding my own sadness, but I was doing something.

  Chapter 45

  Michael

  Gareth, who had wanted to do Bullets more than he wanted to breathe, took Steven leaving pretty well. He called it deathbed perspective and did a few talk shows explaining himself. The studio found a new director who was half as good and twice as fast, and we were back on track, more or less, after another week and a half of shooting with Britt keeping her arms down.

  The furor over Laine died down. I didn’t call her. After a few days, I took her off the accept list, but whenever I saw a pack of paparazzi, I looked for her. I thought about what I’d do if I saw her. Give her that perfect shot or give her the finger, I didn’t know. I alternated between being grateful for what she did and resenting it.

  I pulled onto my street after one of the last days of shooting on Bullets. One, two, three, five paparazzi at the entrance to my driveway. No, six. Six paparazzi on the street, cameras up. Clickclickclick. None were Laine. It was as if she’d disappeared. I couldn’t even find a candid of anyone, anywhere, in any magazine with her byline.

  I ignored the paparazzi. I didn’t even wave as I pulled in and closed the gate. Call time on Bullets was after sunset, and I needed a shower and a nap, in that order, but Brad’s car was in the drive.

  He stood in the doorway of the guest house in his underwear and a tuxedo shirt. I forgot when I’d given him the keys, but he was a welcome sight, even half dressed.

  “The fuck?” he said. “Seen the time?”

  “It’s eight in the morning. You should be sleeping. At home. In your own house.” I went up the walk and onto the steps of the small house. I was fully surrounded by hedges and walls, but I wanted to get inside and out of sight.

  “Dude, these two girls I was with? Started fighting right there. Like, skin under fingernails. I had to go.”

  “You could have put pants on.”

  “I was going house, to car, to house,” he said. “I drank the beer in the fridge, by the way.”

  I waved him off and went inside. Brad slid his nearly bare ass onto a barstool. I dropped my bag onto the counter.

  “You want coffee?” I asked. “I have instant.”

  “Sure.” He turned the sound up on the little TV. “They’re talking Oscar for you on Cinema City.”

  “The nominations aren’t for two months.”

  “The posters went up all over the city. You haven’t noticed your face looking down at you?”

  All over Los Angeles, before a turkey graced a Thanksgiving table, billboards went up with “For Your Consideration” across the top and a list under it. It was the studios’ way of reminding the industry of the year’s great films and performances while their Oscar ballots were in front of them.

  “I don’t even see my face anymore.”

  “See it, dude. Overland put, like, seven million into an ad campaign for Big Girls. And they can’t even stand Andrea.”

  “It was a miracle they even released it.”

  “The miracle was you, asshole. You were a fucking powerhouse in that thing.” He poured water into a cup while he spoke, thinking about not burning himself, the trajectory of the water, putting in enough but not too much.

  “Remember in school,” I said, “pouring the tea?”

  He laughed. “Oh, man, I felt so bad for you. You couldn’t pour water and talk at the same time.” He put the pot down.

  I was amazed by how our minds multitasked only when we didn’t think about it. Like a switch flipping on, Laine popped into my mind again. Whenever I thought of experiencing life firsthand, I thought of her. One day it would stop. One day.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, shutting off the TV.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t want to be considered. I don’t want an award. I’m done. I need a break. A something.”

  “Dude.”

  “Dude, nothing. I’m burned out. I don’t know what to do with myself, but I have so much to do I can’t even think.”

  “You know what we used to do at home when shit got bad? Like when there was too much?” Brad asked.

  “Tip cows?”

  “Fuck you, that’s the Midwest, asshole. We went on a road trip. Drove up the mountain to look out over shit.”

  I whispered, “Road trip.”

  It was a ridiculous idea. Absurd. I was booked for the next eighteen months. I had one week in August with no work, and the slightest hiccup would fill those days. I couldn’t possibly travel. People counted on me. My new agent would scream. My dad would call me irresponsible. Ken would have to spin it. The press would assume I was on drugs, and the Hollywood machine as a whole would hate me for making them scramble.

  Yet it was the most appealing idea I’d ever heard. An hour after I’d considered the idea that I couldn’t pour water without overthinking it, I was making calls to get out of town. I didn’t know where I was going, except away.

  I wanted to go to places where my face was just another face, to do things I’d never done. I’d learned to mountain climb for a movie, but I’d never done it. Not for real. Not on an actual mountain. I’d only acted like a mountain climber and a ski instructor and a race car driver. Acting was done.

  On set that night, Gareth said, “You go after you fulfill your commitments.” He looked at me through the mirror as we both got our makeup done. It was our last day of shooting, and my obligation to my father would be done.

  “You’re lucky I’m finishing this movie,” I said. “I should leave tomorrow.”

  “They’d never forgive you.”

  “Fuck them.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re bailing on Harvey Worth?” Ken asked on the phone as I c
rossed my property.

  I’d avoided making any industry calls until I’d told Gareth I was leaving. Ken was the last of them. I had a ton of stuff to do and no time to do it in, and for once, that felt exciting. “Yeah.”

  “He makes a movie once every ten years.”

  “My agent mentioned that to me repeatedly,” I said, coming to a garage only my staff had seen the inside of. I jerked the door open.

  “You’re going to get killed, kid.”

  “Fans don’t care.”

  “Fans? You need to make a movie to have fans. I told you, even you need to get hired. Even you need to keep your reputation.”

  I was surprised at how dusty the garage was, considering how spotless the staff kept the big house. I found my mountain climbing stuff with a broadsword and shield. I’d learned how to use a nunchaku for a part. I found a box of spray paint. When I was nineteen, I’d played a New York graffiti artist and learned to handle a can of paint.

  “My virtuous reputation will remain intact.”

  “You’re not getting it,” he said. “No one cares if you sleep around. It’s your professional reputation, your ability to deliver that matters. It’s the industry you have to appease.”

  “I have a message for the industry.” I hung up.

  I left the equipment. I wanted to be unencumbered.

  Chapter 46

  Laine

  I watched one YouTube video over and over. Michael Greydon, America’s Boyfriend, pulls his Alpha Romeo out of his driveway and gets out. Seven paps jump on him. He doesn’t smile. He lets the gate close. He swaggers a little. Sunglasses. Leather jacket. Jeans. He has a spray can in his hand, and he steps up to his gate. He assesses the size of it. The paps ask him what he’s doing while they shoot him. They ask where his driver is. He doesn’t answer. He raises his arm and, with turquoise spray paint, puts a long vertical line on the leftmost side of the gate. Then a shorter horizontal one. He doesn’t stop, and the paps get silent as he paints his gate with two words.

  FUCK YOU

  I was proud of him. I watched that video a million times. I didn’t know who he was flipping off, and I didn’t care. The paparazzi, his staff, Brad, Britt, his father, his mother, me. I had no idea, but I was pleased for him. He’d cancelled two films and split.

  He was traveling as if he was the happiest, most grateful little bird ever, jaunting off to faraway places and filming everything. From the sky over Tunis, the waters of the Nile, and the sheer cliffs of Tibet, he posted it all on the internet. Everyone followed him and his journeys as an anonymous traveler. Especially me. I’d gone from his secret crush, to his nightmare, to his lover, to his problem. In the end, I’d wound up a fan, not of his acting or his stardom but of the man he was. If he never made another movie, I would have still admired him.

  “You keep saying you don’t care about him, but if you ask me, the lady doth protest too much,” Phoebe said, staring at my computer. We’d taken some test shots for the wedding, and she was noodling through the unedited batch.

  “I don’t even know what that means.” I wiped the inside of a pot.

  “I’m being bitchy. I’m sorry. Nevermind. It’s just that I’m sitting here looking at your computer,” Phoebe continued, “and you have, like, ten files with his name on them and his YouTube tabs open.”

  I slammed the pot down. “So?”

  “Can you call him?”

  I put the pot away. “No.” I walked around the desk and discovered Phoebe wasn’t looking at the folder with her wedding test shots.

  “I clicked by accident,” she said.

  She looked meek, but I knew her too well. Behind her was a YouTube box with the sky flying across it. The shooter was behind a little camera mounted on his shoulder, invisible to the viewer.

  Snap.

  Some crowded city with stands right up to the street and sounds I couldn’t even decipher.

  Snap.

  Back to the parachute jump. The ground getting bigger. Michael’s voice, turned low, laughing in excitement and terror.

  Snap.

  A shot of unidentifiable street food.

  Snap.

  The skydive. The parachute opened with a whoosh, and his velocity to the ground was cut to a drift.

  “It’s fine,” I said, pausing the video. “I shouldn’t keep that stuff on my desktop when Miss Sneaky Boots is around.”

  When the video window disappeared, the pictures from the loft upstairs, when Michael had made me eggs, came up. He came through the frame, same as always, with a half smile so intense it burned through the lens.

  “These are really nice. You should sell them,” she said.

  “I can’t. It would be weird.”

  “Is this why you haven’t been doing what you used to? The paparazzi thing? Because of him?”

  “No,” I said in a way that was too definite for what I felt. “It’s just… it just lost its allure, I guess. The excitement is gone, and I have this yucky feeling.”

  “From taking pictures?”

  “No, from stealing. As if they were never mine to sell in the first place. But these?” I pointed at the ones of Michael that Phoebe had pulled up. “These feel good. Bad, because it’s him, but good, because they’re mine. And I can’t sell them, because talk about yucky.” I waved it away. I didn’t want to talk about Michael anymore. “The whole thing. Just because someone wants to buy something doesn’t mean I need to degrade myself to produce it. I mean, yes, there will always be paps, and there will always be celebrities, and in a way, they do ask for it because they’re smart people, and they know what’s involved with success. And the magazines ask for it because millions of people ask for it. And the money goes around and around. It’s a snake eating its tail then complaining it’s choking.” I paced away from the computer and fussed in the kitchen. “Everyone’s degraded because we’re treating people like objects, like marks. The stars. The magazines. The readers. And me. I was degraded. Just because I did it to myself doesn’t make it less degrading.”

  “What does that mean for you exactly?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Chapter 47

  Michael

  I got profoundly lonely and profoundly bored, but those weren’t the times I thought of Laine the most. I thought of her when I shot awake as the Imams chanted a prayer over a loudspeaker in the middle of the night. I thought of her when I saw a sunrise worth photographing. I thought of her when I walked a crowded street and no one noticed me as anything but a white American. When I wanted to share a moment, I wanted her there, so I photographed those moments and filmed them. It was a shallow cure for a pervasive disease. Loneliness. It was at once empowering and debilitating.

  But I thought she might see them, and I felt less alone. That connection created with a shared photograph—was that what she had been doing with her work? Creating connections between people? From my perch at the top of the media food chain, I couldn’t see it. Maybe my face created a connection between people, gave them something in common. Maybe she hadn’t been a parasite but a facilitator.

  I wanted to talk to her about all of it, to get her take on those connections, but I was far away, and she’d left me. So I went about my days doing things I’d had to think about. Speaking with my hands. Getting a roof over my head. Surviving. I didn’t need approval to do any of that, so despite being alone, I felt like a free man.

  I hadn’t thought about certain things in what seemed like forever. How to be in a public space. How much eye contact to make. Calling ahead so all the right people and none of the wrong people would know where I was.

  I felt as if I’d gotten normality down to a science. A few weeks past Christmas, I sat in a shop, drinking mint tea and reading a little Kurt Vonnegut book I’d found outside a hostel. The main character had decided he was the only real person in the world, and everyone else was placed there by God to see how he reacted. When someone was out of his sight, they ceased to exist.

  The guy was crazy of course, b
ut his perspective wasn’t totally foreign to me. I smiled as I read, because I was so grateful to be in that little tea shop with a moment to read a crazy book I’d found in a cardboard box.

  Chapter 48

  Laine

  I went out that night, same as always, stalking the streets in my sneakers. I took hundreds of frames of I-didn’t-even-know-what, waiting for something good and worthy to appear. Sometimes I climbed a fence because I was curious or got on an empty eighteen-wheeler docked at a warehouse to get to the roof just to see what was there. The corners of downtown embraced me, but they revealed nothing. Not yet. But if they showed me anything at all, I’d be there to see it. That was the important thing. Showing up.

  I found an alley I hadn’t seen since I was ten. It was the little strip behind Mister Yi’s sweater factory. I remembered the patterns in the bricks and the slope of the cobblestones into the iron drain. The paint on the exit sign was worn out and lit by a new, up-to-code exit sign. I took a picture of them together, the old and the new, because I could, but I knew it wasn’t special.

  A grey metal door slapped open, and the sound of thumping techno poured out. Two, three, five people burst out, laughing and screaming. I gasped in surprise.

  “Shit!” a girl in a boob-exposing top said.

  “What?” a guy in sunglasses shouted.

  Brad Sinclair laughed. “Aw, man! You are so damn good.”

  “No fucking paparazzi!” Sunglasses Guy said.

  Two girls stepped back and hovered over a flame and something small between them.

  “I’m not—”

  “Get over here!” Brad said and enfolded me in a hug.

  Britt and Maryetta bounced out too, giggling. Britt froze when she saw me.

  I held up my hands. “I’m not—”

  “Laine! How did you find this place?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t looking. I—”

  More hugs. Who were these people? They were always nice, but this? It was almost as if they were real and a little high but normal for people their age.