The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 17

At the light at Franklin and Beechwood, just before the psychological barrier of the Hollywood Hills, a horn honked.

"Look at me," he said.

I did. He looked over my shoulder and grinned, making a peace sign out the pa.s.senger side window. Through the other car's window, someone squealed.

I didn't blame them.

"You should get a driver," I said.

He leaned back in his seat. He was turned toward me, close enough for me to smell the cinnamon on him. "Driving my own car is an ent.i.tlement. Sorry. I'd rather deal with red lights."

He took off, twisting into the park and around the corner, checking his rearview mirror as we went into the deep recesses of the hills. The houses were set back behind foliage, big, well-kept, and selling in the multi-millions. There wasn't a sound up there but the rumble of the Aston's engine and the birds. I was sure he could have put the top down safely.

"I've been up here, you know," I said. "You hardly have to blindfold me."

"Really?"

"Yeah. If you make a right up here and go down a little ways, you'll catch the back entry to the Griffith Park Boys Camp."

"Uh-huh." He kept driving up Deronda, a little curve playing on his lips.

I started realizing that maybe I hadn't been that far up before, because there was nothing there. At the end of the road were two identical gates. One had signs all over it warning against hiking and threatening arrest. The other warned against trespa.s.sing.

Michael flipped his visor down and clicked a little beige box that looked like a garage door opener. The trespa.s.sing gate creaked open. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

"You win," I said. "I have never been past this gate."

"Don't feel too bad about it." He pulled past the gate onto a hidden street of mansions. "I had to do my share of begging to get access today."

The twists and turns of the road were etched into the shape of the mountain, making it impossible for me to keep track of what street we were on. Not that it mattered. I'd never get up there again. "Who the h.e.l.l even lives up here?"

He put his finger to his lips, taking my hand with his as if he was afraid to let it go, and whispered, "Shh. Lawyers."

I laughed.

The houses fell away, and we drove headlong into the nothing of nature with its fullness of sound. He put the top down, and I looked up, holding my tennis player's hand while watching the canopy of trees, a moving border on the clear blue sky. Still holding my hand, Michael punched the radio. I expected the same techno he'd played in the loft above mine, but something else came out.

"Sinatra!" I yelled over the music.

He sang "I've Got You Under My Skin" with the full force of his voice, and I joined in off key, more joyfully shouting than actually singing.

We made it to the end of the song, entertaining the bugs and squirrels all the way up. A radio tower appeared through the trees. I'd only ever seen that radio tower from the ground, and only then did I know where we were going.

"No way," I said, sitting up straight. "We're past the razor wire!"

A cl.u.s.ter of official-looking buildings appeared, and Michael turned down the radio. "We are."

"Do you know how many times my friends and I tried to get up here?"

"How many?"

"The fence is electrified. And there are cameras everywhere."

"And there's a good reason." He opened the door. "Because troublemakers like you would get yourselves killed." He got out without waiting for an answer, went around the front, and opened my door, holding out his hand.

I let him help me out, and he walked me to the ridge. Below us, from the back, was it. The Hollywood sign, standing like an oddly-shaped billboard in the side of the hill, the grid of steel supports holding up the backward letters.

"That thing? That's mine," I said.

"I went to grade school with a kid on Deronda. We came up here all the time. So you're wrong. It's mine."

"Dude, do not even." I took a step down the hill, and the sand and grit slipped from under my shoe.

Michael held me up then slid down a little in a controlled fashion. I took my cue from him and slid a little then steadied myself, gripping his biceps. I wanted to stay still for a moment, just to feel the hardness of his muscles, but he stepped and slid again. Leaning on each other, hands on arms and shoulders, weight on weight, stretching, catching, fighting gravity with only our bodies as a bulwark, we made it to the bottom of the sign.

I looked between the Y and W. "You can see everything."

"To the ocean."

"It's really smoggy."

"It's best the Monday of a holiday weekend." He nudged me, a glint in his eye. "Are you ready?"

"For what?"

He gripped a steel rail on the back of the first O in WOOD. "I could have brought you to any hill in Los Angeles for that stinking view." He put his foot on a rail and hoisted himself up.

"You're going to climb up it?"

"Coming?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l yes."

He got to the top first. He swung his legs over the side, straddling the letter. He guided me to the same position, steadying me until I was sitting securely enough to face the view. Then he swung his leg over and sat next to me.

"It's breezier than I thought it would be." I closed my eyes then opened them, trying to see that spread of the city for the first time. "Thank you. This was a nice surprise today."

"I used to come up here all the time after I did Fractured. Some days, I felt like I was becoming that guy in the magazines. So big. Bigger than I could make sense of. And flatter too. It's hard to explain. But up here... how many people are looking up here right now? None of them can see me. I feel real and unimportant at the same time. I wanted you to see the unimportant me."

"I remember unimportant Michael from high school."

"He couldn't take his eyes off you." His hair flicked in the wind, and the gold of the sunset burnished his skin. "You were a serve-killer."

"I'm sorry I was a distraction." I wasn't sorry. Not a lick. All I wanted at that moment was to be a distraction all over again, even though I knew I'd change my mind in the morning.

"It was worth it. You were worth it. Every minute. Meeting you, it changed me, and I didn't even realize it at the time. The first time I saw you behind a camera, I didn't acknowledge you because I knew I couldn't walk away again. I wasn't ready to face what everyone would say."

He put his hand over mine, and we sat in silence. After a years-long minute, he slipped his arm around my shoulders and put his face in my hair. I felt him breathing against me.

"It must be hard to keep your head on straight," I said.

"It's not a big deal." He waved it away.

"I don't know what to do," I said. "This is complicated."

"Not up here. Up here, it's very simple."

I wanted to tell him how I felt about him in the simplest language. I wanted to use words like warm and safe and joy, words like admire and appreciate, words that a six-year-old could use. I wanted to use words without guile or hidden meanings, without the weight of everything that could, and would, come between us. But he kissed my mouth, stealing the words and turning them into actions that were complex, layered in desire, and breathing with possibilities a six-year-old couldn't imagine or understand.

Like heat.

And l.u.s.t.

And the feel of a man's body through his shirt.

And the way the whole of your consciousness can be focused on the way his thumb cruises the ridge of your breast and every thought in your head comes out your mouth in a groan.

That blast of a bullhorn woke me from the dream sleep of the kiss.

"Mister Greydon."

Michael seemed unperturbed. He turned and looked behind us, where a park ranger stood with a red bullhorn. Michael waved.

The ranger put the horn to his face again. "I didn't say you could climb the letters."

"I'm in trouble," he said, but he was smiling. "Come on, let's go back to reality."

He got me down from my pedestal against gravity and let the park ranger give him a hard time. It was obvious he'd been there before and that he'd never brought a guest.

It wasn't until we were headed back down Deronda, and Michael had put the top back up, that I kicked the bag with the replacement rig and realized I'd left my camera at the loft.

Chapter 23.

Laine We went back down the mountain, the pressure of the city growing heavier as we descended. I got caught up on the lives of my old tormentors at Breakfront, his first few movies, and his tennis injury. I hoped I caught it all, but it was hard when he touched me and my skin became a net of electrical currents.

"Where did you land after Breakfront?" he asked.

"Oh, see that church over there?" I said. "It used to be a Ralph's."

"No."

"Yes, look, it's got an oval sign, and there are pictures of vegetables pressed into the concrete."

"Holy c.r.a.p, you're right. I've pa.s.sed that a hundred times," he said.

"And that over there? That little strip mall? That building used to be a fire house. You can see the holes where LAFD used to be nailed in."

"Are you avoiding the question? About what you did after I left?"

"You never told me what happened with Lucy," I said. "I really thought you were going to marry her."

"So did I."

"What happened?"

"You didn't read it in the papers?" He glanced at me sidelong while changing lanes.

"I didn't want the CliffsNotes version."

"We were a perfect match," he said then paused. "Her parents loved my parents and vice versa."

"Did I tell you I'm a huge fan of your mother's?"

"You mentioned that."

"She's amazing. She's a G.o.ddess. Okay, go ahead. Lucy."

"We looked good in pictures together," he said. "I mean, I know that sounds ridiculously shallow, but half the people rooting for us only knew us from pictures, and at that age, there's no such thing as perspective. So, I mean, we were from the same universe. We had everything in common. We made sense. But I went to college on the east coast, and things got different."

I craned my neck around. "Different?"

"I met people. I expanded, I guess, and it just died."

"No CliffsNotes." I was, of course, guilty of much worse, but I justified it by saying that no one would continue to want me if they knew the full version of my past. I was scared as h.e.l.l to lose those borrowed moments with Michael.

"Lucy was like a stepsister. I liked talking to her, and we had a lot in common. I thought that was all we needed, but it wasn't that thing. You know? That thing?"

"I've heard of it."

"What's that mean?" he asked.

"It means nothing. So you stayed friends?"

He stopped at a red light and turned toward me. "Tell me about the first boy you ever loved."

I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. Was this more embarra.s.sing than anything I'd done with Jake and his friends? Maybe. Maybe I'd die of shame.

"Besides you?"

"Someone who didn't ditch you before you kissed him," he said.