“There’s no one else you’re seeing, right?”
Rain stops talking, considers the vibe and asks, “Is that what this is about?”
“I mean, it’s just me right now, right?” I ask. “I mean, whatever it is we’re doing, you’re not hanging out with another guy, right?”
“What are you talking about?” she asks. “Crazy, what are you doing?”
“When’s the last time you had sex?”
“With you.” She sighs. “Here we go.” She sighs again. “What about you?”
“Do you care?”
“Look, I had a stressful week—”
“Stop it,” I say. “You got a tan.”
“Do you want to say something to me?” she asks.
I look around the room and she relents.
“I’m here with you now,” she says. “Stop being such a girl.”
I sigh and say nothing.
“What happened? Why are you so angry?” she asks after I order another drink. “I was only gone five days.”
“I’m not angry,” I say. “I just didn’t hear from you … ”
“Look.” She scrolls through the iPhone I bought her and shows me pictures of herself with an older woman, the Pacific in the background.
“Who took these pictures?” I automatically ask.
“A friend of mine,” she says. “A girlfriend,” she stresses.
“Why does that guy at the bar keep looking at you?”
Rain doesn’t even glance at the bar when she says, “I don’t know,” and then shows me more pictures of herself in San Diego with the older woman I don’t believe is her mother.
Heading up Doheny I’m looking through the windshield of the BMW and I notice the lights in the condo are on. Rain sits in the passenger seat, arms crossed, considering something.
“Did I leave the lights on?” I ask.
“No,” she says, distracted. “I don’t remember.”
I make a right on Elevado to see if the blue Jeep is there and I cruise by the spot where it’s usually parked and it isn’t there, and after circling the block a couple of times I pull into the driveway of the Doheny Plaza and the valet takes the car and then Rain and I go back to 1508 and she lets me go down on her and when I’m hard enough she sucks me off, and when I wake up the next morning, she’s gone.
Rain is the only topic discussed in Dr. Woolf’s office on Sawtelle and I had referred to her anonymously in the last session while she was in San Diego as “this girl” but now with the information I have about Julian I tell him everything: how I had met Rain Turner at a Christmas party, and I realize while I’m describing that moment to Dr. Woolf that I had drinks with Julian at the Beverly Hills Hotel almost immediately afterward, and how I ran into her again at the casting sessions and then at the lounge on La Cienega, and I detail the days we spent together that last week of December and how I began to think it was real, like what I had with Meghan Reynolds, and then found out from Blair that Rain is supposedly Julian’s girlfriend—at this point Dr. Woolf puts down his notepad and seems more patient with me than he probably is, and I’m trying to figure out the game plan and then realize Julian must have known that Rain and I had spent those days together but how was that possible? Finally, near the end of the session, Dr. Woolf says, “I would urge you not to see this girl anymore,” and then “I would urge you to cut off all contact.” After another long silence he asks, “Why are you crying?”
I’m not taking no for an answer,” Rip says lightly, in singsong, over the phone after telling me to meet him at the observatory at the top of Griffith Park even though I’m hungover enough to forget how to fill the BMW’s gas tank at the Mobil station on the corner of Holloway and La Cienega, and cutting across Fountain to avoid the traffic backed up on Sunset I call Rain three times, so distracted that she’s not picking up I almost make a right onto Orange Grove in case she’s there, but I can’t deal. In the mostly deserted parking lot in front of the observatory Rip is on his phone, leaning against a black limousine, the driver listening to an iPod, the Hollywood sign gleaming in the background behind them. Rip is dressed simply in jeans, a green T-shirt, sandals. “Let’s take a walk,” Rip says, and then we’re wandering across the lawn toward the dome of the planetarium, and on the West Terrace we’re so high above the city it’s soundless and the blinding sun reflected in the faraway Pacific makes it look as if the ocean’s on fire, and the empty sky is completely clear except for the haze hanging over downtown where a dirigible floats above the distant skyscrapers and if I hadn’t been so hungover the view would have been humbling.
“I like it up here,” Rip says. “It’s peaceful.”
“It’s a little out of the way.”
“Yeah, but there’s no one here,” he says. “It’s quiet up here. No one can follow you. We can talk without worrying about it.”
“Worrying about what?”
Rip considers this. “That our privacy might be compromised.” He pauses. “I’m like you: I don’t trust people.”
The sun is so bright it bleaches the terrace, and my skin begins to burn and the silence that drowns everything out makes even the most innocent figures in the distance seem filled with ominous intent as they roam slowly, cautiously, as if any natural movement would disrupt the stillness and we pass a Hispanic couple leaning against a ledge as we move across the Parapet Promenade and once we’re on the walkway and moving toward the East Terrace, Rip softly asks me, “Have you seen Julian lately?”
“No,” I say. “The last time I saw Julian was before Christmas.”
“Interesting,” Rip says, and then admits, “Well, I didn’t think you had.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Just wanted to know how you’d answer that question.”
“Rip—”
“There was a girl … ” He stops, considers. “There’s always a girl, isn’t there?”
I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Anyway, there was a girl I met about four or five months ago, and this girl worked for a very exclusive, superdiscreet … service.” Rip pauses as two teenage boys speaking French pass by, and then looks around to see if anyone else is near us before he continues. “You can’t find it on the Net, it’s just word-of-mouth referrals so there’s no, um, viral trail. Everything was handled among people who knew each other so it was all fairly contained.”
“What … was the service?” I ask.
Rip shrugs. “Just really beautiful girls, really beautiful boys, kids who came out here to make it and needed cash and wanted to make sure that if they ever became Brad Pitt there’s no hard evidence that they were involved in anything like this.” Rip sighs, looks at the city and then back at me. “Comparatively expensive, but you’re paying for the low-key and the no records and how totally anonymous it is.”
“How did you find out about it?” I don’t want to know the answer but the silence, amplified, ramped up, makes me ask just to say something.
“Well, that’s one of the interesting parts of this story,” Rip says. “The guy who started the service is someone we know. I guess you could say he’s the one who hooked me up with the girl.”
“Who are we talking about?” I ask, even though something tells me that I already know.
“Julian,” Rip says, confirming it. “Julian ran it.” Rip pauses. “I’m surprised you didn’t know this already.”
“Julian ran what, exactly?” I manage to ask.
“The service,” Rip says. “He actually started it. All by himself. He’s personable in that way. He knows a lot of kids. He brought them in.” Rip thinks about it. “It’s something he knows how to do.” Another pause. “Julian’s good at it.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “I’m not interested in using an escort service to hook up and I’m definitely not interested in anything that has to do with Julian.”
“Oh, that’s a lie,” Rip says. “That’s a big lie.”
“Why is that a lie?”
??
?Because Julian is how I met a girl named Rain Turner.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
Rip parodies a brief scowl and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Oh, dude, you handled that so awkwardly.” He sighs, impatient. “That girl you’ve been hanging with? The so-called actress you promised to give a part to in your little movie? Does this ring a bell? Please, don’t be an idiot with me.”
I can’t say anything. I’m suddenly gripping the iron railing. The information is an excuse not to look at him anymore. The fear, the big black stain of it, is rushing forward and it’s in the heat and the vast expanse of empty terrace and everywhere else.
“You’re shaking there, bro,” Rip says. “Maybe you want to sit down?”
On the East Terrace I’m finally numb enough to listen as Rip starts speaking again, after he takes a brief call confirming lunch and texts someone else back and we’re sitting on a bench in direct sunlight and I feel my skin blistering and I can’t move and up close Rip’s face is androgynous and his eyelashes are tinted.
“Anyway, so I meet her and I like her and I think we hit it off and then I’m not paying for it anymore and I’m actually thinking about divorcing my wife, which shows you how committed I am to this girl.” Rip keeps gesturing with his hands. “I tell Rain to quit the gig and she does. I take care of everything—pay the rent for her and the bitch roommate in that dump on Orange Grove, clothes, fucking hair, the Beamer, personal trainer, tanning salon, whatever she wants. I even got her a gig at that place on La Cienega, Reveal, all these things that Julian can’t afford to do—and guess what she still really wants?”
Rip waits. I’m processing everything. And then it hits me and I say in a low voice, “She still wants to be an actress.”
“Well, she wants to be famous,” Rip says. “But at least you’re paying attention,” he says. “That’s basically the correct answer.”
I can’t unclench my fists and Rip gets up and starts pacing in front of me.
“I think you know by now it’s never going to happen for her, but anyway Julian’s been bragging about what a great friend Clay is and that he’ll be sure to hook her up with you and this movie that I guess you have some hand in casting. Whatever. I mean, it sounded like bullshit to me but you’ve gotta have hope, right?” Rip suddenly stops and checks his phone, then puts it back in his pocket. “But when you first got into town Julian kind of riled you up about something and I guess you guys didn’t exactly hit it off that night so he didn’t ask you to help out.” Rip sighs, as if tired of it all, yet continues. “Somehow she manages to get an audition—something I admittedly don’t really care about or have the juice to do and anyway I think it’s a waste of time because she has no talent—and so she comes in and reads for you guys and I’m guessing she’s just fuck-awful but she has her charms and the rest is … well, why don’t you tell me what the rest is, Clay?”
I’m just sitting silently on the stone bench.
“I take it you’ve been banging her for a couple of weeks now?”
I don’t say anything.
Rip sighs. “That’s an answer in a way.”
“Rip, please—”
“And then she splits for San Diego,” Rip says. “Right?”
“She went to see her family.”
“Family?” Rip scowls. “Did you know that Julian was in San Diego with her?”
“Why would I know that?” I say.
“Oh, come on, Clay—”
“Rip, please, what do you want?”
He considers this. “I want her.” And then he considers something else. “I mean, I know, I know, she’s just a dumb cunt actress, right?”
I’m nodding and Rip registers the nods and cocks his head, curious.
“If you’re agreeing with me, then why are you so beat up over her?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly. “I just am.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe this—your little freak-out—isn’t about her?” Rip says. “That maybe it’s about you?”
“No.” I swallow. “I haven’t.”
“Look, you’re not the threat,” Rip says. “She’s just using you. However … she really likes him.” Rip pauses. “Julian’s the problem.”
“The problem? What are you talking about? Why is he the problem?”
“Julian is the problem,” Rip says, “because Rain denied anything was going on with him until I found out about their little vacation in San Diego last week.”
“She told me she went to see her mother,” I say. “She showed me pictures of herself with her mother.”
Rip fake-smiles. “So, she has a mother now? In San Diego? Sweet.” But after he studies my reaction the smile fades.
“The first time I found out they were together I had gotten some information she couldn’t lie her way out of and I let it go because she promised me she wouldn’t go back to him or do anything with him but … this time … I just don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“This time … I don’t know if I’ll hurt him or not.” Rip says this so gently and with so little menace that it doesn’t sound like a threat and I start laughing.
“I’m serious,” Rip says. “This is not a joke, Clay.”
“I think that’s a little extreme.”
“That’s because you’re probably very sensitive.”
After a long pause, Rip says flatly, “I only want one thing. I want her back.”
“But obviously she wants someone else.”
Rip takes a moment to study me. “You’re a very bitter dude.”
I’m leaning forward, clutching my sides. I glance at him before nodding.
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
We’re walking across the grass toward the black limo and the driver waiting there and Rip glances at the Astronomers Monument as we pass it and I’m staring straight ahead, unable to focus on anything but the heat and the surreal blue sky and the hawks sailing over the soundless landscape, their shadows crossing the lawn, and I wonder if I’m going to be able to make it back to Doheny without getting into an accident and then Rip asks me something that should have been just a formality but because of our conversation now isn’t. “What are you doing the rest of the afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and then remember. “Are you going to Kelly’s memorial?”
“That’s today?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Rip says. “Didn’t really know him. We did some business, but that was a long time ago.” The driver opens the door. “I’ve got to deal with this dickhead about the club. You know, the usual.” He says this as if I should be hip enough to understand what exactly he means, and before getting into the limo Rip asks me, “When are you seeing her next?”
“I think maybe tonight.” Then I can’t help it and ask, “How do you feel about that?”
“Hey, I hope she gets the part. I’m rooting for her.” He pauses, and grins. “Aren’t you?”
I don’t say anything. I just barely shake my head.
“Yeah,” Rip says, convinced of something. “I thought so.” And then, as he slides into the back of the limo and before the driver shuts the door, Rip looks up at me and says, “You have a history of this, don’t you?”
I’m supposed to go to a Golden Globes party at the Sunset Tower tonight but Rain doesn’t want to even after I tell her that Mark and Jon are going to be there and that if she wants the part of Martina I should formally introduce her to them outside of Jason’s office in Culver City. “This isn’t the way to do it,” she mutters. “But it’s the way we’re going to do it,” I tell her. When she arrives at my place, newly bronzed, her hair blown out, she’s wearing a strapless dress, but I’m still in a robe, drinking vodka, stroking myself. She doesn’t want to have sex. I turn away and tell her I’m not going if we don’t. She downs two shots of Patrón in the kitchen and then strides into the bedroom and carefully takes off her dress and says, “Just don’t kiss me,” gestu
ring at her makeup and while I’m eating her out my fingers move to her ass and she brushes them away and says, “I don’t want to do it like that.” Later, as she’s putting the dress back on, I notice a bruise on the side of her torso that I hadn’t seen before. “Who did that to you?” I ask. She cranes her neck to look at the bruise. “Oh, that?” she says. “You did.”
Entering the party at the Sunset Tower we’re behind a famous actor and the cameras start flashing like a strobe and I pull Rain with me toward the bar and when I catch my reflection in a mirror my face is a skull, sunburned from the hour spent at the observatory, and on the terrace overlooking the pool, snaking through the hum of the crowd with Rain, I say hello to a few people I recognize while nodding to others I don’t but who seem to recognize me and I make small talk with various people about the Kelly Montrose memorial even though I wasn’t there and then I spot Trent and Blair and I move in another direction since I don’t want Blair to see me with Rain, and projected onto the walls are black-and-white photos of palm trees, stills of Palisades Park from the 1940s, girls who were cast in the new James Bond movie, and trays of doughnuts are being passed around and I’m chewing gum so I won’t smoke and then I spot Mark with his wife and I bring Rain over to where they’re standing and Mark frowns when he sees her, and then erases it with a smile before we fake-hug, his eyes never leaving Rain, his wife’s reaction a barely concealed hostility, and then I launch into an explanation as to why I haven’t been at the casting sessions and Mark says that I should come in tomorrow and I assure him I will and just as I’m about to make a pitch for Rain my phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out and there’s a text from a blocked number that says She knows and after I type in ? Mark and his wife drift off and Rain, seemingly uncaring that I didn’t pitch her to Mark, is behind me talking to another young actress and a new text arrives: She knows that you know.