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  “Watching” might not be the exact right word. I analyzed them. Primarily, I analyzed the acting, the way the story was revealed in postures, glances, and small movements. I could watch a great movie a hundred times and every time peel off layers of the actors’ preparation.

  If I’d told Laine what I did when I got home from kissing her, I’d be embarrassed. I captured the feeling in my heart and mind and ran home without thinking of much outside it, and I put on Casablanca.

  There was a single kiss, told in flashback. Humphrey Bogart kisses Ingrid Bergman in Paris, and that powerful alpha male we met in the beginning of the movie, who was leathered with experience and fermented in whiskey, closes his eyes and surrenders completely. He seems to be in such rapture that he loses track of the kiss, and his mouth slides off Bergman’s for a second then returns.

  I thought, as I kissed Laine, that that feeling was what Bogart was channeling when he shot the scene. Complete surrender to the moment, to another person, to a kiss.

  When I got home, I didn’t go into the main house. I went right to the guest house. I didn’t even close the door or take off my jacket. I cued up the projector. Casablanca came on seconds later. I knew where that kiss was in the chapters, because I’d spent hours trying to peel it apart, wondering how I could catch that feeling and put it on the screen.

  I didn’t sit on the leather couch but stood in front of the projected image, watching for that moment. That feeling I held… I let it go. I let myself feel that heat of excitement, that twitch of need. It was on the screen. Even with his eyes closed, Bogart had it. People lived and died for it. Gave up everything to feel it.

  I plopped on the couch and let it run without sound, because the words were just distractions. I saw how his hand moved on her for the first time, and I understood the possessiveness in every twitch of his fingers. The love scenes in Bullets were coming after Britt’s break. I was going to nail them.

  I sat on the couch, leaning back in the cushions, and let the movie run. The whole thing became clear to me. It wasn’t even acting. Bogart was living that character. I wished I could go back and reshoot every love scene I’d ever done. They’d been all affect and indicating. What a waste.

  I fell asleep and woke when the couch cushions tilted and I went off balance. I opened my eyes, still foggy.

  “If people only knew,” Ken said, “Michael Greydon doesn’t sleep on a feather bed with a leggy blonde but craps out in front of old movies in his dress pants. Are you still wearing your shoes? Jesus, kid.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “You use my old cleaning lady, and I greased her wheels. Answer the door next time.” He slapped a manila envelope and a stack of pictures on my lap. “I’ve been up all night.”

  I didn’t want to open the envelope, but I couldn’t avoid the pictures. She was stunning. That hair was going to make me crazy. I wanted to twist it into shapes all over her body.

  “I assume that’s the last of her,” he said. “But it’s still got to be managed.”

  “No.” I tossed the stack in Ken’s lap and got up to stretch my legs. These days off were going to kill me. I couldn’t make it a habit to sleep past seven. “That’s not the last of her unless she turns me down. Which she won’t.”

  “How am I supposed to spin this?” Ken asked.

  “It’s not my job to make your job easy.”

  Casablanca had been on a loop, and Bogart was on my wall, saying something clever and manly at the bar. On his face, with the sound down, I could see every second of heartbreak.

  “I don’t mind difficult,” Ken said. “I mind impossible.”

  I scooped up the remote and shut off the player. “The public doesn’t care what she does for a living. They’ll think it’s cute.”

  “The public? The public has to know who you are, or you don’t have a career. It’s the industry you have to worry about. Do not underestimate their influence.” He counted off his fingers. “The press, who hate paps even when they pay them. The agents, who have clients who can’t get work because of what these assholes get on camera. Publicists, yes, that’s me—”

  “Whose job is to spin it. Spin it, Ken. Get off my back.”

  “You don’t go to bed with paparazzi. That’s nuts. No one even talks about that. You don’t let the wolves into the hen house.”

  “This is my personal life. You’re as bad as they are.”

  I felt encased in clay, trapped by Ken’s intentions against my own. I walked out into the yard, squinting against the winter sun.

  My house sat on a hill. The yard was small considering what I paid for the place, but the scope of the back view could wipe out a man’s personality for seconds at a time. That was why I’d bought it. It didn’t make me feel grandiose. It made me feel small and essential at the same time.

  “This is not about where you’re putting your personal dick, Greydon,” Ken said from behind me. “This is about three generations of men in this business. It’s about the fact that you don’t know how to do anything else. You want to end up like Gareth? You want to spend ten years drinking because no one wants to hire a moody, temperamental ass who loses bond? And what could he do besides say tough guy lines? Nothing. He was trained to do nothing else. Like you. Outside the business, you have nothing. No skills. No assets. No training.”

  “And my father managed to keep me in private school and a big house.”

  “That’s how you judge his success? Let me ask you, how would you handle not working then leaning on your son to get a movie made so you can have your great comeback?”

  I looked back at him. He had his hands in his pockets as if he was staying humble and non-confrontational.

  “Lay off my father. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I think I growled low, the words gurgling from my gut.

  Ken put his hands up as if showing me he was unarmed. I knew better.

  “You’re right. It’s not about your father. What does she mean to you? You’ve seen her twice since you were kids. What could she mean to you?”

  “Not the point.”

  “What is the point?” Ken could have gotten tight or irritated, but he didn’t. He was the picture of reason.

  “I like her. That’s the point.”

  “You can like a lot of girls.”

  “I like her. Period. I don’t have to explain myself.”

  He looked out over my view, squinting at the horizon. He put his sunglasses on. “You’re right.”

  “I’m right?”

  “You know what? This spins like a top.” He swept his hand over the landscape. “Michael Greydon. Hollywood’s new rule-breaker. Perfect. No one tells you what to do. You’ll date the foster kid with no family. The commoner. We don’t play her as the Hollywood underbelly. We play her as the sexy underdog. You’ll be America’s Boyfriend times a hundred.”

  “I don’t think she’s open to being played.”

  He flicked his wrist. “Irrelevant.”

  “It’s totally relevant.”

  “In a couple of weeks, you’re going back to shooting. Steven’s going to double down on the calendar, and you’re going to have zero access to anyone off set for a month.” He stepped down the flagstone path, and we walked to the front, where he’d parked his Mercedes. “You might want to check out that envelope I left on your couch.”

  I put him in his car and watched him pull past my tarp-covered front hedges and out the gate.

  I texted Laine.

  —I still have your camera—

  Chapter 17

  Laine

  A tip hadn’t come through in hours. Nothing. Nada. That hadn’t happened in years. I’d have liked to think my phone was broken or that I had no signal, but when I’d refused the seventh call from unknown extensions of known celeb mags—meaning, the lifestyle reporters were calling me, not the editorial acquisitions department—I knew my phone had a virus. The name of the virus was Greydon.

  I didn’t have much of a life outside w
ork, which I’d never thought about because I was too busy working. It didn’t take long for me to get antsy.

  “Hey, Phoebs, what are you doing?”

  “Setting up for my niece’s baptism. Oh my god, she’s so cute. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  The weight of silence nearly broke my phone.

  “You should come!” she said.

  “I—”

  “You can take pictures.”

  Baptism pictures. Weddings next. No doubt I’d soon be competing for jobs with Lorenzo Balsamo. I almost choked on my horror when my phone vibrated in my ear.

  Phoebe’s voice cut into my thoughts. “And Rob would love to see you.” Rob, her fiancé, was as happy and gregarious as she was.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  The text sat on my home screen after I cut the call.

  —I still have your camera—

  I sighed.

  Could things get worse?

  Yes, indeed they could. This could all blow over, but it wouldn’t if I continued to see him. I shouldn’t have answered the text, but figuring it might bounce back anyway, I did.

  —Keep it—

  It didn’t bounce. I paced. Looked at my map.

  Still it didn’t bounce.

  Okay, fine. He’d put me on his short list, and as much as that gave me a flutter of excitement, it ate at me. I had to get out of the loft. I had to find some action. I would die if I didn’t move.

  The last decent tip I’d gotten was at Sequoia. It was deader than dead. Britt had left the hospital with one arm in a sling and the other over Maryetta, smiling and waving to the cameras.

  Back in the day, when I was still too young to drink or even vote, my phone didn’t do a damn thing but sit in my pocket. I still hustled. I still got out the door and made it rain. So though the car was nicer and the parking lot I kept it in was more expensive—I was still the same girl with the same fire under her ass.

  I approached my car with my phone plastered to my ear.

  “Tom?” I said, jangling my keys.

  “Hello, Mrs. Greydon.”

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Staring at my phone, that’s where. Has all of Hollywood gone and died?”

  “Shoulda kept your lips to yourself, big sister.”

  I stopped in the stairwell, my hands gripping the steel handrail. “It’s not that. It’s just slow today.” I knew that wasn’t true before I was done saying it. Gossip was never slow. “Please, it’s not like I can go out until the camera’s fixed anyway.”

  He could have turned into a real dick. He could have tormented me. With the right jab, I’d have been reduced to a puddle of powerless rage.

  Instead, he asked, “Fiona’s at her trainer’s. Should be out in a couple of hours. Maybe more, depending. Think you’ll have it fixed by then?”

  I could have chased anyone, shown my face and my continued viability. I could beat the street same as always as if nothing had happened. That was the smart thing to do. Be seen with a camera, doing what I did.

  “Can you pass me her twenty?” I asked. “When you know it, I mean.”

  I’d never asked Tom for a damned thing. I’d never had to. I should have been happy about the flip, about the chance for him to lead the waltz, and in a very distant, big-picture kind of way, I was. But he was my closest friend, and we had a relationship that I understood. I felt it changing. It wasn’t that I needed to be his boss or in some sort of superior position, but a thread of uselessness ran through me, as if my identity showed a crack. If I wasn’t helpful to him, what was I?

  There was a moment of silence on his end then the strum of a guitar and the murmur of female voices.

  “I’m working,” he said.

  “I can hear that, Razzledazzle Boy.”

  He laughed softly. “I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “Thanks, Tom.”

  “Don’t thank me until I come through. And, Laine?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t sweat this. It’s temporary. They forget.”

  Sure. They’d forget. But would I?

  “I’ll be at Irv’s fixing my rig if you need me.”

  We hung up. By the time I got to the car, a text had come in. Had Tom gotten Britt’s twenty so fast?

  —Is this a special actor-chasing camera?—

  I smiled and leaned against my car.

  —It takes fine pictures of flowers and shit—

  —Teach me how to use it—

  —There’s a manual in the box—

  —It doesn’t kiss like you do—

  I’d typed a few replies—some sweet, some snarky, none truly honest enough to send—when another came.

  —I want to see you again—

  I felt as though my insides were transported to the sky while my eyes stayed on Earth and stared at those letters. But as much as I smiled remembering our kiss, a part of me stayed firmly planted on the ground. He made me feel nice, he truly did, but with every word he used to rope my heart, my brain screamed foul.

  —I can’t. It’s career suicide—

  The pause was longer than they’d been before. Had he given up on me? On the one hand, if it was that easy, he wasn’t worth it. On the other, if I meant what I said and said what I meant, and if he respected me enough to hear that, I should be relieved. I should be able to move on, repair whatever damage had been done, and remember him well.

  I got in the car confused. When I started it, I got another text.

  —I’m not going away so easy this time—

  I didn’t want to be relieved. I wanted to be annoyed. I wanted to text him back and threaten to call the cops, but I couldn’t be that dishonest with myself. I didn’t want him to go away any more than I wanted to forget him.

  The phone rang while I was on Temple.

  “Hello, Miss Cartwright?” said a woman’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  “I have Kenneth Braque on the line.”

  I knew who Kenneth Braque was. Everyone knew. As much as I wanted to believe he was calling to represent me, I knew he represented Michael. I stiffened at a click from the other side. I was totally unprepared for this conversation, but that was how I’d rolled my whole life.

  “This is Ken Braque, Laine. How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “I own the public relations firm of—”

  “I know who you are,” I said.

  “I represent Michael Greydon.”

  What was this? Did Michael know about Ken calling me? Did he arrange it? I shouldn’t have picked up. I was driving, for Chrissakes.

  “I’m aware. And I saw the pictures.”

  “Good. I think I can help you,” he said. “I wanted to discuss how you intend to speak to the press about last night.”

  “However I want.” I felt bitchy and tight. Though I knew he could do more for me if I played ball, all I could imagine was him talking to Michael about how I needed to be managed. Was this a baby-sitting call to see if I was going to cause trouble? “I’m a big girl.”

  “Of course,” he said, as if he’d never, ever try to tell me what to say despite the fact that spin control was his job. “And I’d never expect you to tell anything but the truth. But in representing my client, I do have to help the people he’s involved with and try to get a line on how they’re going to talk about him. It’s my job.”

  “So you can craft a response.”

  “You can put it that way.”

  I wasn’t taking him seriously, and I should have. But I was annoyed. I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt or what that kiss had meant to me. I didn’t want anyone between Michael and me, even though a world existed between us already. I was weak, thoughtless, and the fact that Ken had talked straight rather than blown smoke up my ass put me off guard.

  “Did Michael tell you to call me?” I asked.

  “No, he did not. But nonethe
less, I think I can help you. You’ve been getting calls from reporters, I assume?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can help you with a response,” he said.

  “I don’t want my response crafted. I don’t want to make any response at all.” I felt as if I was making decisions without thinking things through. I pulled over, parking in the red.

  “I can help you with that as well,” he said. “Look, I know this can be overwhelming, especially for someone with one foot in the business and one foot out. I’m not trying to sell you anything—”

  “I can pay you,” I said. I didn’t want to hire him necessarily. I didn’t want to not hire him either. I just didn’t want him to think I couldn’t pay him if I wanted to.

  “Why don’t you come around, and we can discuss it?”

  “Fine.”

  “Until then, if anyone asks, I’ll say you’re not responding,” he said.

  “All right.”

  He transferred me to his assistant, and I made arrangements with her for two afternoons hence, which seemed late to me. The whole thing could blow over or explode in that time.

  I was suddenly terrified. This was bigger than I was, and I wasn’t thinking. Everything I said would be put through the amplifier of the media. I didn’t know what I’d say next, and that was a problem. I needed to step back and think, for once, before I shot my mouth off.

  I got three more calls from unknown numbers in the next three minutes. As unused as I was to taking any kind of levelheaded action, I did the only sensible thing. I didn’t answer any.

  Chapter 18

  Michael

  “Were you drinking?” my father asked, popping a yellow ball with his racquet so it would bounce up into his hand. His question seemed almost self-directed. He wasn’t drinking, and it was making him tense.

  “I don’t need a drink to kiss a woman.”

  “You’re going to botch this.” He thwacked a ball to me. I caught it and put it in my pocket. “Your friend Britt already delayed production long enough to screw everything. Steven says we almost lost bond.”

  He thwacked me another, and I almost missed it. My father was a belligerent prick when cornered, and with everything about Bullets over Sunset being held together by PR departments and sneaky scheduling, he was a thrashing mess. I’d stopped listening to his negativity and growling aggression a long time ago and learned to see the man under it.