The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 23

"Beautiful because it's real. I know. I get it."

"I'm so happy, I can't... this is better than... G.o.d. 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 dest.i.tute, 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 st.i.tch 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 h.e.l.l with all of it.

But it was more than that.

Two more bodyguards waited past the gla.s.s 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.

"d.a.m.n 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, unenc.u.mbered, 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.

"G.o.d, I feel so c.r.a.ppy right now," I said.

"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 G.o.d, 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."

His eyes drifted down my body, as if imagining his acquaintance with those inches of skin, and I tingled. I wouldn't tell him anything about my past tonight. Not a word. I wanted a clean night. Just us.

There was a knock on the window soon after the car stopped.

"You ready?"

"We're going public, aren't we?"

"Right now." He took my hand.

I was shocked at how dry my palm was, and I knew it was because I was with him. He knocked on the window. Outside, everything was as I expected, as if set for a movie. Red carpet. Reporters. Fans holding little booklets and pens. The white facets of the Cinerama Dome were drowned in the lights.

"We're going in the front?" I asked. "No one goes in the front. What are we? Tourists?"

He kissed me through my smile. "We just run through this. It'll be fun. Just stay out of the camera's range."

The car door opened, and everything changed. I knew I'd never see my life, my job, or my city the same again.

Michael got out first and put his hand out to me. Behind him, the pathway to the ArcLight's courtyard was draped in red carpet and bordered by fans.

"Don't let go," I said before my feet hit the curb.

"Never."

The floods were blinding and too blue if you asked me, catching me in a tunnel of light that had voices at the end. Some had words, and some didn't. Some were simply long vowels. Some were his name. Some were spoken in a falsetto of excitement. They took my name and turned it onto a blade, opening me up.

A moment with Sunshine and Rover when I'd feel like this. On the beach. Late at night with all their friends in a drum circle. I jump in the middle and dance, and they clap in unison for me. All of them, eyes on me with approval.

"h.e.l.lo, my name is Deanna."

I only saw her in silhouette. She had a clipboard and sensible shoes.

"Mister Greydon, you have DMZ first, to the left."

"Thank you," he said, putting my hand around his forearm.

"Miss Cartwright," Deanna said, "you can get off camera if you want by taking a step to the right."

"Thank you," I said, grateful for the instructions on getting out of the way. Nothing would make me happier than moving out of DMZ's line of sight. I didn't want them taking my picture or anything else.

"Michael Greydon!" Rob Bearston shouted both at Michael and into his microphone.

And Mister Yi, checking the linking on a sideseam with a magnifying gla.s.s that strapped around his head. Nodding. A warm glow that was mine.

I panicked. Instinctively, I thought they were stealing my memories. I knew it wasn't true, but I tried to stop remembering, which made it worse.

"Rob, nice to see you."

I think Michael said that. I was watching the photographers. They weren't my people. They were hired guns from the studio's publicity department, and I was in the frame. I took half a step to the right, and Rob pushed me back as if he was saving me from falling past the velvet rope.

"Miss Cartwright, not real often we see you on this side of the rope."

I am ten. Tom sits on the couch with me, watching Nickelodeon. We talk in a secret language about how we'll sneak out of the house and run the streets because we can, and the bio sister watches us as if she knows.

"You mean never? Right, Rob?" I said.

"Are you going to continue to shoot celebrities?" He put the mic just below my chin. "We'd hate to lose you. Everyone at DMZ wants you to keep up the good work."

Jake grabs me when I get home from school, sticking his hand up my shirt and pinching my nipple as if he's trying to unscrew it. I am only fourteen, but I get him off me, and he looks at me as if he knows it aroused me.

"You do pay awfully well," I said, "but I'll charge more if you don't get that mic out of my face."

Rob smirked. Michael laughed and put his hand over mine. I bit my lip, wishing I'd been able to take that half step to the right.

"Any questions about the movie, Rob?" Michael asked. "Because she'll cut you. Cut you bad."

"Oh, over at DMZ, we know that already. Good luck, Mister Greydon." Rob winked into the camera. "Good luck."

He couldn't see me. He didn't know me. None of them knew me. I kept repeating that to myself. They only knew what I showed them, and I had to show them nothing. It was the only way I could breathe.

Deanna appeared as if summoned. "Petra French from the Entertainment Channel is just this way." She led us across the carpet.