“It means so many things, Clay.”
“I want to get out of here,” I say. “I want you to drop me off.”
Rip says, “It means she’ll never love you.” A pause. “It means that everything’s an illusion.” And then Rip touches my arm. “She’s setting you up, cabron.”
I offer the phone back to Rip.
“I told you already I don’t view you as a threat,” Rip says. “You can keep doing whatever you want with her. I don’t care because you’re not really in the way.” He considers something. “Not yet.”
Rip takes the phone from me and pockets it.
“But Julian … she likes him.” Rip pauses. “She’s just using you. Maybe that’s what gets you off. I don’t know. Will she get what she wants? Probably not. I don’t know. I don’t care. But Julian? For some reason that I can’t fathom she really likes him. All you’re doing is prolonging the situation. You’re keeping this in play and she’s following your lead because she thinks she’s going to be in your movie. And because of this it’s moving her closer to Julian.” He pauses again. “You don’t even realize how afraid you should be, do you?”
Before he drops me off Rip says, “Julian’s disappeared.” The limousine idles in the driveway of the Doheny Plaza. On the way down Beverly Glen and all across Sunset, Rip texted people back while “The Boys of Summer” kept repeating itself on the stereo. “He’s not at his place in Westwood. We don’t know where he is.”
“Maybe he went to find Amanda,” I say, staring out the tinted window at the empty valet stand.
“Shouldn’t that be Rain’s job?” Rip asks, unfazed. “Oh, I forgot. She has an audition this week, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” I say. “She does.”
“She doesn’t seem very worried about her roommate,” Rip says. “At least not as much as being in your little movie.”
“How worried should she be, Rip?” I ask. “Where’s Amanda?” And then I breathe in before asking, “Do you know?” I stop again. “I mean, you were with her, too. After Rain left you for Kelly? I guess that’s when it happened.”
“Women aren’t very bright,” Rip says. “Studies have been done.”
I can’t see his face. I can only hear his voice, which is, I realize, how I want it.
“What was that about?” I ask. “Revenge? You thought Rain would care that you were fucking her roommate?”
“He’s hiding,” Rip says, ignoring me.
“Jesus, why don’t you let it go?”
“He’s hiding.” Rip pauses. “I thought maybe you’d know where he is. I thought maybe you’d tell me.”
“I don’t give a shit where he is.”
“Why don’t you ask around and then get back to me?”
“Who do you think would know this?” I ask. “Why don’t you just talk to Rain?”
He sighs.
“Did you have him beaten up?” I ask. “Was that just a taste of what happens next if he doesn’t leave her?”
“You have no imagination,” Rip says. “You’re actually very by-the-numbers.”
Rip leans over and pushes a disc into the CD player. He sits back. Panting sounds, the wind and the sounds of sex, someone whispering as he has an orgasm, and then it’s my voice and I suddenly connect images to the sounds: the bedroom in 1508 in the building looming above us, the view from the balcony, the ghost of a dead boy wandering lost through the space. And then Rain’s voice joins mine over the speakers in the back of the limo.
“Turn it off,” I whisper. “Just turn it off.”
“There’s nothing of any use,” Rip says, leaning over, ejecting the disc. “That’s it.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Oh, the common questions you ask.”
“I’m not involved with any of this.”
“Who knows why people do the things they do?” Rip leans back against the seat, not listening to me. “I can’t explain Julian. I don’t know why he does the things he does.”
I reach for the door handle.
“You discover new things as you go along,” Rip says. “You discover things about yourself that you never thought were possible.”
I turn back to him. “Why don’t you just move on? Let him have her and just move on?”
“I can’t do that,” he says. “No. I just can’t do that.”
“Why can’t you do that?”
“Because he’s compromising the structure of things,” Rip says, enunciating each word. “And it’s affecting my life.”
I’m about to get out of the limousine.
“Don’t worry. I won’t come around anymore,” Rip says. “I’m through with you. It’ll play out like it’s supposed to play out.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I just wanted to warn you,” he says. “You’ve been officially implicated.”
“Don’t make contact with me ever—”
“I think you want him gone as much as I do,” Rip says before I slam the door shut.
Later that night I dream of the boy again—the worried smile, the eyes wet with tears, the pretty face that looks almost plastic, the photo of Blair and me from 1984 he clutches in one hand, the kitchen knife he’s holding in the other as he’s floating in the hallway outside the bedroom door, “China Girl” echoing throughout the condo—and then I can’t help myself: I rise up from the bed, and I open the door, and I move toward the boy, and when I hit him, the knife falls to the floor. And when I wake up the next morning there’s a bruise on my hand from when I hit the boy in my dream.
Rain arrives wearing sweats and no makeup and she’s trying to keep it together with the audition set for tomorrow and she didn’t want to come over but I told her I would cancel it if she didn’t and she’s been fasting so we don’t go out to dinner and when I first touch her she says let’s wait and then I make another threat and the panic is cooled only by breaking the seal off a bottle of Patrón and then I just keep fucking her on the floor in the office, in the bedroom, the lights burning brightly throughout the condo, the Fray blaring from the stereo, and even though I thought she was numb from the tequila she keeps crying and that makes me harder. “You feel this?” I’m asking her. “You feel this inside you?” I keep asking, the fear vibrating all around her, and it’s freezing in 1508 and when I ask her if she’s cold she says it doesn’t matter. And tonight, for maybe the first time, I’m smiling at the black Mercedes that keeps cruising along Elevado, every now and then slowing down so that whoever is behind the tinted windows can look up through the palm trees to the apartment on the fifteenth floor. “I’m just helping you,” I tell her soothingly, trying to calm her down, and then she’s slurring her words. “Can’t you think of anyone but yourself?” she asks. “Why can’t you just be chill about this?” she asks when I start touching her again, murmuring how much I love it like this. “Why can’t you accept this for what it is?” she asks. She pulls a towel over her body that I just as quickly pull off.
“What is it?” I whisper. I feed her another shot of tequila.
“It’s just a movie that you’re writing.” She’s crying openly now as she says this.
“But we’re both writing this movie together, baby.”
“No we’re not,” she cries, her face an anguished mask.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m only acting in it.”
And when I finally notice the red message light flashing on her cell phone on the nightstand I ask, one hand on her breast, the other one lightly gripping her throat, “Where is he?”
Trent Burroughs calls me and tells me to meet him in Santa Monica after a lunch he’s having with a client at Michael’s. On the Santa Monica pier Trent’s wearing a suit and sitting on a bench at the entrance and when he sees me approaching he looks up from his phone and takes off his sunglasses and just stares at me warily. Trent mentions he finished lunch earlier than he’d planned with a skittish actor he manages, successfully persuading him to take a role in a movie for m
yriad reasons that would be beneficial to everybody.
“I’m actually surprised you came,” Trent says.
“Why couldn’t I meet you at the restaurant?” I ask.
“Because I don’t really want to be seen with you,” he says. “It would validate something that I wouldn’t want validated, I guess.”
I start walking with him along the boardwalk. He puts his sunglasses back on.
“I suppose I’m more sensitive about things than I thought,” he says.
“I got your client an audition today,” I say, in a good mood because of how Rain responded to me last night.
“Yeah,” Trent says. “You did.”
I pause. “Isn’t that what you wanted to see me about?”
Trent thinks about it before saying, “In a way.”
The empty Ferris wheel looms over us as we pass by barely visible in the haze, just a dim circle, and except for a few Mexican fishermen no one’s around. Holiday decorations are still up and a dead Christmas tree wrapped in a garland leans against the peeling wall of the arcade and the faint smell of churros floats toward us from a brightly colored cart and it’s hard to concentrate on Trent because the only sounds are the distant surf and the squalling of low-flying gulls, the psychic calling out to us, the calliope playing a Doors song.
“This isn’t about Blair?” I suddenly ask.
Trent looks over at me as if he’s shocked I would ask that. “No. Not at all. This has nothing to do with Blair.”
I keep moving with him down the boardwalk toward the end of the pier, waiting for him to say something.
“I want to make this quick,” Trent finally says, checking his watch. “I’ve got to be back in Beverly Hills by three.”
I shrug and put my hands in the pockets of the hoodie I’m wearing, one of them forming a fist around my phone.
“I guess you’re going to stop this with Rain Turner, right?” Trent asks. “I mean, the audition’s this afternoon, right? And then it’ll be over?”
“Stop … what, Trent?” I ask innocently.
“Whatever it is you do with these girls.” He quickly makes a face, then tries to relax. “This, I don’t know, this little game you play.”
“What are you talking about, Trent?” I ask, sounding as casual and amused as possible.
“Promise them things, sleep with them, buy them things and then you can only get them so far and when you can’t get them the things that you really promised … ” Trent stops walking and takes off his sunglasses and looks at me, mystified. “Do I really need to say this?”
“It’s just a very interesting theory.”
Trent stares at me before he continues walking, and then he stops again.
“It’s interesting that you—what? Abandon them? Try to screw things up for them once they figure it all out?”
Something in me snaps. “I think Meghan Reynolds is doing okay,” I say. “I think she benefited from using me.”
“You don’t really need to work, do you?” Trent asks. He sounds genuinely interested. “You’ve got family money, right?”
I don’t say anything.
“I mean, you can’t afford to live like you do just off screenwriting,” Trent says. “I mean, right?”
I shrug. “I do okay.” I shrug again.
“I know Rain Turner doesn’t have a shot at that role.” Trent keeps walking and then he puts his sunglasses back on as if it’s the only thing that will calm him down. “I talked to Mark. I talked to Jon. You can keep fucking with her as long as you want, I guess—”
“Trent, you know what? I just realized this is none of your business.”
“Well, it has, unfortunately, become my business.”
“Really?” I ask, trying to sound neutral. “How’s that?”
We’re both suddenly distracted by a drunken man in a bathing suit who’s gesturing at something invisible in the air at the end of the pier, sunburned, bearded. Trent takes off his sunglasses again and for some reason he doesn’t know where to look and he’s more agitated than he was before and the land has disappeared behind us and there’s no sound coming from the distant shore, which is now completely hidden by haze, and we’re out over the water now and two Asian girls pulling tufts of cotton candy off a stick are the only other people wandering by.
“It’s much more complicated than you know.” Trent says this in a strained voice as he keeps looking around, and I just want him to stop but I also don’t want him to look at me. “It’s just … bigger than you think. All you need to do is, is, is remove yourself,” he stammers before regaining his composure. “You don’t need to know anything else.”
“Remove myself from what, exactly?” I ask. “Remove myself from her?”
Trent pauses a moment, and then decides to tell me something. “Kelly Montrose was a close friend of mine.” He lets the statement hang there.
It hangs there long enough for me to ask, “What does Kelly have to do with why I’m here?”
“Rain was with him,” Trent says. “I mean, when he disappeared. They were together.”
“With him?”
“Well, he was paying for it, I guess … ”
“I thought she had stopped doing that,” I say. “I thought she met Rip and that she had stopped doing that.”
“She knows things,” Trent says. “And so does Julian.”
“What things?”
“About what happened to Kelly.”
I stare at Trent stone-faced but the fear begins swirling around us softly and it causes me to notice a young blond guy in cargo shorts and a windbreaker leaning against a railing on the pier, purposefully not looking at us, and I realize he could not be more obvious if he were holding a hundred balloons. Invisible gulls keep squalling in the hazy sky above him, and the blond guy suddenly seems familiar but I can’t place him.
“I’m not saying she’s innocent,” Trent’s saying. “She’s not. But she doesn’t need someone like you to make things worse for her.”
I turn back to Trent. “But Rip Millar is okay?”
For some reason this question forces Trent to shut up and figure out another tactic.
We start walking again. We pass a Mexican restaurant that overlooks the sea. We’re near the end of the pier.
“What did you get out of taking Rain on as a client?” I ask. “I’m curious. Why did you take on a girl you knew was never going to make it?”
Trent keeps matching my steps, and his expression momentarily relaxes. “Well, it made my wife happy to help Julian out before she realized … ” Trent pauses, thinks things through, and continues. “I mean, I knew about Julian. Blair and I didn’t talk about it but it wasn’t a secret between us.” Trent squints and then puts his sunglasses back on. “If I have any problems they’re not with Rain Turner. And they’re not with Blair.”
“But you have a problem with Julian?”
“Well, I knew that Blair had loaned him a lot of money—well, seventy grand, but for him that’s a lot of money.” Trent moves alongside me toward the end of the pier, seemingly unaware of the guy who’s following us and I keep looking back at. I notice he’s holding a camera. “And I knew she really liked him.” Trent pauses. “But I also knew that in the end nothing was going to happen with him.”
“And what about me?”
“See, there you go again, Clay,” Trent says. “It’s not about you.”
“Trent—”
“It comes down to this,” he continues, cutting me off. “Blair loaned Julian a large sum of money. Julian decided to go to Rip to borrow some cash to pay Blair back. Why? I don’t know.” Trent pauses. “And that’s how Rip met Miss Turner. And, um, the rest is, well, what it is.” He pauses again. “Do I need to say anything more? Do you get it?”
I look over at the blond guy again. He’s supposed to be in costume, he’s supposed to be camouflaged but he’s not: it’s almost as if he wants us to notice him. He keeps moving down the pier, twenty, maybe thirty yards behind us.
&n
bsp; “Rip told me he was going to divorce his wife,” I say. “What would they have done then? I mean, if Kelly hadn’t shown up? How much longer could they have played this game with Rip if he actually went through with the divorce?”
“No. It was safe,” Trent says dismissively. “The divorce would’ve been too expensive for Rip. They both knew that.”
“But then your friend Kelly got in the way,” I say.
“That might have been a problem,” Trent says, nodding his head.
“The problem being what?”
“Whatever happened between Rip Millar and Kelly Montrose … ” Trent stops, figuring out how to phrase it differently. “Kelly knew a lot of people. It’s not like Rip Millar was the only person who had issues with him.”
My iPhone starts vibrating in the pocket of the hoodie, its sound muffled.
“Actually”—Trent stares at me—“you and Rip have much more in common than you might think.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. “I didn’t have anything to do with Kelly’s death.”
“Clay—”
“And I don’t know how but I think Rip did.” I stop walking. “And you knew something at the Christmas party, didn’t you? You knew Rip had done something to Kelly. You knew Rain had left him for Kelly and you knew Rip liked her—”
Trent cuts me off. “Yeah? Well, I guess we all have our little theories.”
“Theory?” I ask. “It’s a theory that you knew he was probably dead that night?”
The haze obliterates everything: you can’t see the Pacific or the pier behind us, the Mexican restaurant is barely visible at the end of the pier and nothing else at all. The pier falls away into the sea and beyond that is just a sheet of haze blocking out the entire sky so there’s no horizon and Trent leans against the railing studying me, still intent on pitching the narrative he wants me to respond to, but I can barely pay attention.
“Why do you keep looking at that restaurant?” Trent suddenly asks. “You thirsty for a margarita or something?”
Trent doesn’t realize I’m not looking at the restaurant. The young blond guy in the windbreaker is somewhere around us but I can’t see him.