The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 6

"I'll bring it to you."

"That works both ways. If I'm seen with you, it's bad. No one wants to tip a pap who's friends with A-listers. You can just call Merv's Photo and have them leave it for me."

That was the most obvious solution. His a.s.sistant or whomever would make a call, I'd walk into the photo store, see a hundred people I knew, pick up a camera, and get away clean. It was the best and only way to manage this, but I didn't want that. I wanted to suggest it, but at the thought of seeing him again, I felt heady and excited. I prayed just a little that there was a reason that wouldn't work.

"Is that how you think of me?" he said. "An A-lister?"

How I thought of him? I hadn't stopped thinking about him since we'd crossed paths. I thought about how he would taste, how he would sound low in his throat, how he'd touch me.

"I gotta make a living." I didn't think about my auto-answer until after I said it. Then I had to backpedal. "But it was nice to meet the guy with the bad serve again."

"I had a great serve. I just couldn't hit the inside corner."

"You should have listened to your coach," I whispered, snickering. G.o.d, what was happening to me? Was I giggling?

A busboy came out of the back of the restaurant with a bucket of onion leavings. His ap.r.o.n dripped with raw chicken gunk, and his gloves were caked with who-even-knew.

"How about this?" he said. "I have an event at the Breakfront School tomorrow night. They're great at locking the joint down. I'll get you in, and I can give it to you there."

"You'll get me in?" I said, a.s.suming he could hear my sarcasm.

"Why? Did you have an invitation?"

"Oh, screw you, superstar."

Of course I hadn't been invited. I'd been a student there for fifteen minutes and made nothing of myself that anyone thought was important. Even the people who bought my pictures did it in the shadows. No one invited me to a party unless there was a velvet rope for me to stand behind.

But Michael and his parents went every year. That had always been a temptation for me.

"Are your parents going this year?" I kicked myself before the last word was out of my mouth.

"Oh, I remember now...you have a Brooke thing."

He called his parents by their first names, of course. So Hollywood. It was almost charming on him.

"It's not a big deal. I'm sorry. Forget I asked."

"I was going to introduce you to her when we were in school, but you never let me."

Because I'd die, obviously. I wasn't a fan of anyone. I wasn't a follower of the stars unless following them could make me money. I didn't care one way or the other what happened to any of them. Except Brooke Chambers. I'd seen Michael's mother in Love in Between when I was eleven, and I'd never been the same. Her dewy goodness, generosity, and kindness broke my heart. I didn't want to be her. I wanted to be near her in a way I couldn't explain. I saw every movie she was in, and when I met Michael, I spent an hour explaining her virtues as an actress.

"Well, if your mother's not going," I said, "I'm not going."

"See you there, Shuttergirl."

I hung up without saying good-bye but smiling nonetheless.

Chapter 9.

Laine Every year I managed to avoid photographing the Breakfront Autumn Gala. The guys with the press cards stood in the front to shoot what they were told, and the paps stood in the back, getting the gritty s.h.i.t at night's end.

I didn't avoid conflict; I ran headlong into it. But Breakfront? Photographing the comers and goers was some aggravation I didn't need, because not everyone there would be a celebrity, and at my old school, that could be a problem. Actors tended to look at the camera as a partner, even when they weren't working. Non-celebs had a way of looking at the person holding the rig, not the lens, and if someone-say, model-turned-agency-head Lucy Betencourt-saw me in a crowd of paparazzi... well, I might as well be wearing a G-string with dollar bills taped to it.

"No," I said to my girlfriend Phoebe, who sat at my dining room table with a Starbucks and an open copy of YOU BRIDAL magazine. "I'm not going. I have a bad feeling."

"I can't believe you're going to miss the gala." She snapped the brakes off on her wheelchair and put the magazine on her lap before she rolled out. "Everyone goes."

Everyone. What a loaded word. Everyone to the exclusion of anyone. But Phoebe had spent her whole childhood in doctors' offices, flipping through celebrity magazines. Eventually she became an entertainment lawyer with plenty of access to the people in those magazines, yet she never lost her girlish fascination with them. I loved her.

"You should go and get my camera. That's the answer. You go."

"Me?" She pointed at herself then opened her magazine again. "What's the point of that? Why are you pushing this off? Why can't you just go have fun?"

I paced the concrete, the sound of my boots echoing against the high ceilings. "I love that you think everything's about fun. I really do. But I have a bad feeling."

Phoebe snapped the bridal magazine pages with intent. "You always have bad feelings when things might change."

"I like the way things are."

"Mm-hm. What are you wearing?"

I sighed. "Help me pick, would you?"

She rolled toward the bedroom as if she was in a race. "I thought you'd never ask."

We went through my clothes and shoes and chose a simple thing from the back of my closet. I ignored the gut instinct that something was going to go wrong.

Usually, I listened to my gut. Until the night at Club NV, it had been a rule. If I had a feeling something would go wrong, I just stopped doing whatever it was, and the feeling went away. So all I had to do to be safe was not go. I blamed Phoebe for my willingness. She had everything I lacked-a good family and a fiance who loved her-and I had legs and an invitation to a hot Hollywood party.

"You need to shut your phone," Phoebe said, choosing just the right bracelet and slipping it on my wrist. "It's nothing but temptation to split."

As if on cue, my phone lit up. It was my contact at Sequoia.

I answered. "Yeah?"

"Britt Ravenor's being released in an hour."

"Thanks," I said, but she'd already hung up.

I'd get a nice take for that shot. I could make it to Sequoia in forty minutes, more than enough time to find out which exit they were using, and get very, very close. I could dig up my spare rig, go get the shot in my good clothes, and go to Breakfront late. Maybe then the bad feeling would pa.s.s. Or more likely, night would come, and my phone would rattle, and I'd use money as a reason to avoid the gala.

I was all right with that. I didn't need to go to a fancy party. Though it had been a pricey camera, I could still get Tom to dig deep into his pockets and replace it.

I talked myself out of going to the party as I helped Phoebe into her car, then I went back upstairs to my huge, empty loft. All I had to do was text Michael my apologies.

-Hey, sorry I can't make it. We can either forget the camera or do the Merv's thing- The bad feeling went away as soon as I hit send. Even as I yanked off the dress, I found myself hoping that he'd text back that he wanted to see me anyway. I didn't have a chance to question my girlish desire, because three seconds after I hit send, the text was bounced.

Of course. He was a superstar. He couldn't get incoming calls from numbers outside his little G.o.dd.a.m.n list. I wanted to throw the phone out the window.

Not counting the bedroom, which was separated by a wall of shelves, my loft was a huge open s.p.a.ce with fifteen-foot ceilings, a few exposed brick walls, and one huge wall that was smooth and plastered. On it, I'd put a custom mural of a map of Los Angeles. Even though the street names were so small I had to get nose-close to see them, the map took up the entire wall. It stretched from the Pacific to the easternmost points of the San Gabriel Valley, from Flintridge, which was only visible with a ladder, to San Pedro, touching the floor.

I cursed it, claiming ownership of every street, and stopped on the west side, just south of Brentwood. In a tiny green patch behind a hedge was a school for the specialest snowflakes money could raise.

The tennis courts were the size of memory chips and just as green.

Why was I so enraged? Why did that make me wrestle myself back into the fancy black dress with the lace trim? Why did I poke the dangling silver earrings into my ears as if I was stabbing myself, and why did the feeling that something was going to go wrong just get stronger and stronger when I jammed my feet into red-soled pumps?

Because I didn't want to go to a stupid party. I wanted to see the guy with the serve again, and there was a pretty good chance that if I didn't go tonight, I'd never see Michael again without a lens between us.

To h.e.l.l with it.

Let it all go wrong.

Chapter 10.

Laine I had a black Audi that I kept spotless. If I wanted to park outside fancy clubs and restaurants, if I wanted to stop in some of the best neighborhoods in the city to shoot out the window, my car needed to fit in to the point of invisibility. A Mercedes would have been even more inconspicuous, but sometimes a girl has to make a concession to her own taste.

I pulled up to the Breakfront guard and told him my name. He looked on his little clipboard. He was a nice-looking kid with light brown hair finger-spiked at the top, which had been the style two years before. Clean-shaven with a sweet mouth and a rock-hard body under his generic blue shirt, he smiled at me with caps, and I knew he was an actor biding his time. I smiled back.

"Hang on for a second, ma'am."

I tapped the wheel, looking inside the grounds. I'd always gone in through the student entrance, and this entrance, for parents and benefactors, was older, more elaborate, and verdant within an inch of its life. It had been designed to provide a feeling of peace and safety. During my first visit through this entrance, during the interview with my new, and quite temporary, parents, I'd felt safe, as if I was returning home.

I didn't have the same feeling as the blond guard tapped my name and creds into the computer, but I remembered it. I remembered how real it felt and how fake it had been.

"Miss Cartwright?" he said, leaning down.

"Am I not on the guest list?" I flicked my eyes at the clock. Could I still make it to Sequoia?

"You are, but I hate to say this-maybe I should get a supervisor?"

"Just tell me."

"Well, you're on the guest list, but our system pulled you up on the 'no entry' list. It's kind of like a 'no fly' list that the TSA keeps but-"

"Did it say why? Did I commit an armed robbery?"

"It just says you're a photographer-slash-journalist. This list carries over year after year, so maybe someone with the same name had a problem with a benefactor or board member years ago?"

I didn't say anything. I was too stunned.

"I'm happy to get you a supervisor. I'm sure it's a mistake, but he has to sign off on it."

"It's fine." I rolled up my window.

He raised the gate behind me, and I backed out. I felt nothing, not even disappointment. No, I didn't care at all. I was going to get my head-to-toe of Britt getting out of the hospital and-d.a.m.nit, if I cried, I would totally mess up my mascara, and that was not cool. This was not cool.

I'd gone to the Breakfront School, same as anyone. Michael was on the board at twenty-eight, as was Lucy Betencourt. But me? I'd gone there, and it was mine, board or no. As much as Los Angeles. As much as Balonna Creek or the Arroyos. Mine, mine, mine. I would not ask permission to be a citizen of my own d.a.m.n city.

I turned off San Vicente and parked on a side street, trying to breathe normally without gulping for air. The tennis courts were across the street, behind fences and hedges, like the camera I didn't care about, and Michael, who strangely, I did care about. I wanted to show him what kind of woman I'd become, what kind of woman he'd left behind. I wanted to show him my heels and my long legs and everything he'd missed. I wanted to see him up close again, to dissect how he'd changed, how his soft skin had become rougher, his jaw more defined, his jade eyes more mature with concerns and thoughtfulness. His hair had gotten darker and a little wavier, and I wanted to inspect it for change, to ask what had happened in the years past. And now, poof. Never.

A text came in.

-Fiona Drazen's at Tinkerbell's with a new guy- Nothing in my life had changed. I just had to continue as always. I couldn't make it to Tinkerbell's, not with my spare rig across town, but it was Thursday night. My phone would light up like a Christmas tree in an hour.

I checked my pa.s.senger-side mirror so I could pull out. I could see down the block and across San Vicente. The green-tarped gates of the tennis courts were centered in the oval of the mirror, objects closer than they appeared.

I'd studied in the tennis bleachers partly because they were relatively quiet and unpopulated in winter, but also because I could exit the school from there without being seen by anyone who would hand me a professionally printed Future Prost.i.tutes of America application. I could slip out unseen and unscathed through a patch of trees and a little-known gate meant for emergency crews. It set off an alarm for half a second until the gate shut behind me. From there, I just cut across the golf course and onto San Vicente.

I still felt the gnaw of something going wrong. With it, excitement flowed through my veins like a drug.

I shut the car and got out. Breakfront was mine.

Chapter 11.

Michael "Here's what I want," I told Steven in my most modulated tone. "I want you to play with that schedule so we're shooting for the next three weeks. This delay cannot happen."

We stood in the foyer outside the ballroom, our anti-social postures a temporary bulwark against intrusion. I'd tried to get an appointment with the director of Bullets, but the fallout from Britt's accident had kept him busier than me.

"We frontloaded the schedule. We can afford it and still make release," he rea.s.sured me.

"I don't care about the release."

"You should. It's your Oscar."