The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 34

"So? I..." I stopped.

He wasn't worried about the public relations nightmare. He wasn't worried about what people thought of him or me or Bullets. He thought I liked teenagers, and he didn't want to work with a predator.

"f.u.c.k you, Steven." I threw the phone on the couch and turned around. Laine stood in the doorway, fully dressed and looking skittish and nervous. I was so annoyed with Steven and so worried about my father that I threw up my hands. "Don't even ask."

"Okay." She sounded small and anxious.

I just wanted everything and everyone to go away so I could throw something. "Steven quit right to my face, and I'd normally say, hey, brave move not having his agent call me. But his bravery doesn't make this less screwed up."

"It's because of me."

"No." I paused then told the truth. "Yes."

"I figured." She looked out the window, crossing her arms.

We'd been so close the night before, and that morning, with the taste of her still on my lips, she was a million miles away. She sat on the edge of the couch, looking into her lap. When I put my hands over hers, she didn't move them.

"I thought about this all night. After you fell asleep, I was up, thinking about what your mother said. And I slept a little and woke up thinking it would all be all right. Because I'm just... you. It's always been you. I look at the past nine years, and I don't think anything I've done that hasn't been because of you in one way or another. And it seemed that being with you was somehow... like it had a purpose. Like it was the end of a long journey. But I woke up uncomfortable and convincing myself it would all be all right. Your mother said you make everything an uphill battle, and I started thinking, 'Is that me? Am I his uphill battle?'"

"Come on, really?"

It was the wrong time to show impatience. It was the time to come together with her, but I was overwhelmed, hurt, and worried about my father.

"I think we had a good time, and now we have to move on." Her breath hitched, and her voice had an odd flatness to it, as if she'd opened a valve at the bottom of her throat and let the emotion drain out before speaking.

"What?" I sat up straight, feeling my nakedness for the first time. "Why?"

"Don't you see? I've been nothing but trouble to you. I walk into your life, and you get beat up and your movie is in trouble. People aren't talking about you and your work, they're talking about me and who I am. You break your contract, then you do something borderline illegal to help me, you get arrested, and your father winds up in the hospital. Nice, right? And this morning, Steven quits. Nice how I enrich your life. Nice how I add something instead of taking away."

"Hold it." I held up my hands. She was talking crazy. She just needed to hear sense. "You're looking at this all wrong. That's all external stuff. We can get through it."

"We couldn't have done anything better. We couldn't have worked harder to make it right, and we still f.u.c.ked it up," she said. "My best chance was with you, and if I ruin you in the process, then it's me. All I've ever wanted to be was no worse than anyone else, and it's uphill every day. I wasn't born to be normal any more than you were, but I can't drag you into my version of not normal."

"Laine, can you just stop and let me think for a minute?" I put my hands on the sides of her face so she had to look at me, because this was important. "How is it you can get shuttled through twelve homes as a child and cope with everything you've coped with and not deal with this nonsense?"

Did I sound angry? Maybe I was. Maybe I didn't want to deal with this right now. But I knew from the flatness of her expression that I wasn't giving her hope. I wasn't telling her anything she wanted to hear. I was talking into the mirror. I'd never felt this frustration mixed with despair before. She was gone to me, and I had no idea how to make it right. Was this feeling hopelessness? It was new and awful beyond measure.

"I'm so f.u.c.ked up," she said, emotion back in her voice. "I mean... so f.u.c.ked up. I shouldn't be with anyone. I should be alone and happy with my friends. I should play with their kids and be the aunt everyone loves. That's what I want. I don't want this. It's too complicated."

I should have answered her tears with kisses, should have held her or said something to cut off the next line, because before it, everything was salvageable.

"Do you love me?" she asked. "Can you honestly say you love me?"

I was too squeezed. Too many things were happening, and all of them closed and locked my heart.

"That's not a fair question," I answered. "It's only been a couple of weeks."

She nodded, her face a mask of stone and ice. She was gone, and I realized I should have said something else. But I couldn't take it back, even if I wanted too.

"So sensible," she said.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm sorry." She stood. "And thank you. Thank you for everything."

And that was that. The fact that I'd never experienced that before notwithstanding, when a woman said it was done, it was done. As if I could hear a gate clang closed, my defenses fell into place.

"That's fine," I said, as shut down as I'd ever been.

"Can we still be friends?" she asked.

"Sure. I should go. Let me put you in a cab."

She put her shoulders back and held her head high. "I can get myself a cab, thank you."

"I can get Gali here in three minutes."

I took her arm to stop her and she jerked it away, then held her hands up as if stopping an oncoming train. I felt ashamed to have touched her. Even after all the intimacy of the night before, I'd somehow physically overstepped.

"You're a good man, Michael. You'll see it's the best thing."

She didn't wait for an answer. She just turned on her high-tops and walked for the door without looking back, head down as if she were looking for dropped change. I didn't sense that anything had shifted until she fussed with the doork.n.o.b, and when I jumped to help her, she put her hand up to keep me away.

"I got it. Just open the gate for me."

She walked out and closed the door. She trudged to the front, and just before she got to the gate, she put her chin up, her shoulders back, and walked as though she meant it. I pushed the b.u.t.ton and opened the gate so she didn't have to break her stride, and that too was a mistake.

I was supposed to shut it off like a faucet, as if I'd been acting the whole time.

I hadn't been. I'd meant everything I ever said to her, and I didn't know how to un-mean it. But maybe she was right. Maybe I should admire her strength to do what had to be done. I didn't know how to have a relationship any more than she did. I'd never learned how to work for it. I'd left my name to do the heavy lifting.

My life was my life. It wasn't changing. Whatever my ability to expose myself while exposing none of myself was, it was something I'd been born into. I couldn't change it any more than I could make myself shorter. She saw that. She was wise beyond her years and strong beyond her stature.

She was right. It hurt, but she was beautiful, and she was right.

Chapter 44.

Laine Nothing was right. Nothing was exactly wrong, but nothing was right. I had things to figure out, and I didn't even know what they were. I should have been out getting work, but I wanted to go to bed. Not to lie under the covers but to sleep. Forever.

I'd done the right and honorable thing. I knew immediately why so few people bothered with it, why so many just went where their heart pulled them. Because doing what made sense hurt. I had a physical pain in my chest. Doing the right thing wasn't supposed to feel like that. It was supposed to be uplifting. But the loss of him... well, the only word I had was pain.

I pulled an ice-crusted container of French vanilla out of the freezer. Maybe I'd just freeze out the sad. I opened the drawer for a spoon, and I stared back at me in black and white.

Jake had already copped a plea for two years behind bars, and still, the problem of that old me was nestled with the spoons.

I took the picture of sixteen-year-old me out of the drawer, ice cream forgotten. Look at that kid. She was tough. She did what she had to. She'd been given nothing and turned it into something.

I didn't flinch from the photo. That girl had screwed up any chance I'd had at happiness, but she had given me that chance in the first place. I didn't hide the picture or try to not think about it. She was mine. She was a part of me.

"I forgive you," I said, then I started crying.

I think I cried for two days. Two and a half. Normally I viewed every tear shed as a sign of weakness, as a lack of ownership and control. But I gave up on that in the first ten minutes. I'd been through a lot. I earned my tears. This snot-shooting, breath-catching blubber was mine, and I deserved it.

Irv called, and I texted back that I was busy. Tom emailed me an invitation to a Razzledazzle show, and I texted back that I couldn't make it. No one called to tell me who was eating at what restaurant without their underpants.

Sometimes I called up memories of Sunshine and Rover, with their brightly colored everything. I knew they loved me. I had been with them for two years, and I had to be ripped away from them. I remembered the funky smell of the van, sweat and love and something else.

I'd always thought they'd abandoned me, but maybe it was more complex than that. Maybe I shouldn't have grown up in a van. Maybe they thought I could do better than them. At six and a half, I had no idea what it meant to leave behind someone you loved.

It sucked.

Michael was the only person who could soothe me, the only one who could make my crying stop, but I'd abandoned him. I had no right to call him to comfort me.

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 gla.s.s of c.r.a.ppy 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 f.u.c.k?" 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 a.s.s 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."