Part 6 (2/2)
I'm leaning forward, clutching my sides. I glance at him before nodding.
”Yeah. I guess I am.”
We're walking across the gra.s.s toward the black limo and the driver waiting there and Rip glances at the Astronomers Monument as we pa.s.s 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 d.i.c.khead 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 s.e.x. I turn away and tell her I'm not going if we don't. She downs two shots of Patron in the kitchen and then strides into the bedroom and carefully takes off her dress and says, ”Just don't kiss me,” gesturing at her makeup and while I'm eating her out my fingers move to her a.s.s 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.lo 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sure 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 She knows and after I type in 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: 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 She knows that you know.
Heading back to the Doheny Plaza trying to keep steady on Sunset, I ask casually, ”Do you know a guy named Julian Wells?” After I ask this I'm able to loosen my grip on the steering wheel-the question is a release.
”Hey, yeah,” Rain says brightly, fooling with the stereo. ”Do you know Julian?”
”Yeah,” I say. ”We grew up together out here.”
”I didn't know that. Cool.” She tries to find a track on a CD Meghan Reynolds had burned for me last summer. ”He might have mentioned something about that.”
”How do you know him?” I ask.
”I did some work for him,” she says. ”A long time ago.”
”What kind of work?”
”Just like an a.s.sistant. Freelance,” she says. ”It was a long time ago.”
”I actually know that you know him,” I say.
”What's that supposed to mean?” she asks, concentrating on locating the song. ”You say that so weird.”
”Where is he right now?” I ask. ”I'm just wondering.”
”How would I know that?” she asks, pretending to be annoyed.
”Well, aren't you his girlfriend?”
Everything is suddenly in slow motion. It's as if suddenly she forgot her lines. Her only response is to laugh. ”You're crazy.”
”Let's call him up.”
”Okay. Sure. Whatever, Crazy.”
”You don't believe me, do you?” I say. ”You think this is a joke?”
”I think you're crazy,” she says. ”That's what I think this is.”
”I know about you and him, Rain.”
”And what do you think think you know?” Her voice remains playful. you know?” Her voice remains playful.
”I know you were in San Diego with Julian last week.”
”I was with my mother, Clay.”
”But you were also with Julian.” Saying this relaxes me. ”Didn't you think I was going to find out about this?”
At the light on Doheny she stares straight out the winds.h.i.+eld.
”Didn't you know I was going to find out that you're still f.u.c.king him?”
She suddenly cracks. She whirls toward me in the pa.s.senger seat. A series of questions pour out in a pleading rush. ”So what? What does it matter? What are you doing? What do you think this is about? Will you just leave it alone? What does it matter what I do when I'm not with you?”
”It matters,” I say. ”In this situation, for you to get what you want, it matters very much.”
”Why does it matter?” she shouts. ”You're crazy.”
I calmly make the left and start heading down Doheny.
”You couldn't even play this part for a f.u.c.king month?” I ask quietly. ”What, you needed his c.o.c.k so badly that you had to jeopardize everything for yourself? If being with me was so important to you, Rain, why did you f.u.c.k it up? You could've played me but-”
”I don't play play people, Clay.” people, Clay.”
”What about Rip Millar?”
”What about Rip Millar?” she says. ”Jesus, you need to get over yourself.”
The blurry headlights from oncoming cars cause me to pull the BMW to the side of the road across from the Doheny Plaza.
”Get out. Just get out of the f.u.c.king car.”
”Clay...” She reaches for me. ”Please, stop.”
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