Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (9 page)

“All right,” I tell him, “no worries.”

He walks off, and I’m actually grateful I
put my foot down about having separate rooms.

The Damian Jones I knew from the glossy
papers and TV gossip shows is one of those guys who’s always playing the field,
rumored to have had dozens if not hundreds of sexual partners, though nobody
seems to have any definite numbers. As much as Damian’s tried to dissuade me,
though, I like him.

It’s because I like him that I insisted on
the separate rooms. It’s because I like him that I insisted we not kiss until
we’re on screen. I’m not a prude, I just don’t want to be another snapshot in
the cavalcade of Damian’s skanks.

I get back to my room and the next hour
passes grudgingly.

Ben got his first check. Despite assurances
that I would never have to talk to him again, he still sent me a text to let me
know when the check cleared.

What an asshole.

I’m so pissed off at everything right now.
Every time an opportunity comes up, I end up having to pay for it ten times over.
Nothing is ever fucking easy and I’m sick of it.

Five thousand dollars a month for the next
seventeen years: I did the math. That comes out to $1,020,000. I guess he just
figured making it an even seventeen years was easier than making it an even million
dollars.

I hope the money brings him nothing but
fucking misery.

Misery’s a hell of a thing, though. While Ben
certainly deserves as much of it as he can get, he’s probably never going to
feel the bite of it. Meanwhile, Damian’s down in his room wallowing in misery
and he’s done nothing wrong.

I think it’s time to go nuclear.

*
                   
*
                   
*

It took a little time and a little
planning, but after putting my mind to it, I’ve come up with the perfect plan.

Step one: Get Damian out of his room.

This part is easy enough.

I find a bellhop who’s not standing
particularly close to any of his coworkers and tell him, “I’ll give you two
hundred bucks, one hundred now, one hundred afterward, if you’ll go to this
room,” I hand the young man a sticky note with Damian’s room number written on
it, “and tell the man inside he’ll have to vacate the room for a couple of
hours. Say that you found spiders in the adjoining room—I remember reading an
interview where he said that he hates spiders—”

“Ma’am,” the bellhop says, “I appreciate
the offer, but I should probably remind you the kind of clientele that comes
through here. Two hundred bucks may be a lot to someone working a franchise in
Who Gives a Shit, South Dakota, but I’m not risking my job for a shitty payday
like that.”

Okay, so two hundred isn’t going to do it,
but judging by the mouth on this little bastard, I’d say there’s some wiggle
room.

“What would it take?” I ask.

“You’re Emma Roxy, right?” he asks.

Oh, this isn’t going to be good.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“I’ll do it for free,” he says.

I did not expect that.

“Why?” I ask.

I could swear there’s something about a
gift horse and looking it in its mouth that could be useful here, but for the
life of me, I can’t remember the saying.

“I saw you in
Drathmore
: Vengeance from Space
a while back,” he says. “Just answer one
question for me and I’ll go tell your dude whatever you want me to tell him.”

“It’s always nice to meet a fan,” I tell
him. “What’s your question?”

“When you were playing Mistress Death
Head, were you using some kind of tape or was it one of those push up bras or
what was going on there?” he asks. “I’d seen you in something else, but I could
swear your jugs were like double the size.”

“Don’t they usually give bellhop jobs to
well-spoken, well-mannered individuals?” I ask.

“Lady, when you walked over here and tried
to bribe me, I earned the privilege to pull my tongue out of your ass,” he
says. “So come on, I’ve got money riding on this.”

“You bet on the method of breast presentation
in some low-budget, sci-fi flick?” I ask.

“Funny you’re looking down your nose at
it,” he says. “I guess now that you’re hot shit, you’re going to dismiss those
earlier movies as just paying your dues or whatever.”

“I don’t think I’m hot shit,” I tell him.
“What did you bet it was?”

“I said they did the whole thing CGI,” he
says. “There are a few shots there where your
titties
react to one motion or another in a way that I think violate the laws of
physics.”

I chuckle a little.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong,
you’re attractive and all, but I just don’t see those things being real.”

“Is that what this is really about?” I
ask. “Are you trying to get me to show you my breasts?”

“Well,” he says, “now that you mention it,
I don’t suppose I’d mind taking a look.”

“Yeah?” I giggle.

“Yeah,” he says. “So what’s up, are you
down or what?”

“Okay, first off, late nineties, junior
high, stoner kid,” I start, “people don’t talk like that anymore. Yeah, you might
get all of those phrases spread out over a few conversations, but never all
together like that. When you talk like that, it makes you sound like a moron.
Second off,” I continue, “why don’t I walk over to your manager and tell him
about the little proposition you just made me?” I ask. “I’m sure they’d frown
on the whole me trying to bribe you thing, but when you stack that up against
sexual harassment of a guest in the hotel, do you really think I’m going to be
the one to get the fucking whip?”

Grudgingly though it may be, I can now
start thinking about step two.

While the dipshit bellhop’s getting Damian
out of his room, I’ll be gathering the supplies I had room service bring up for
me. Step two is accomplished when I’ve successfully made my way into Damian’s
unoccupied room.

Step three comes after about fifteen
minutes of double-checking my various ingredients and matching them up with the
proper instructions.

I’m sitting on Damian’s bed with various
household items with which one can prank one’s friends.

I’ve got clear gelatin, plastic wrap,
clear fishing line, shaving cream, fourteen balloons of varying sizes, a pack
of bottle rockets thanks to my ability to hammer out something a little extra
in my settlement with the bellhop and a few other assorted items.

Step three is completed when I’ve managed
to set up at least five different pranks around Damian’s hotel room.

I’m going somewhere with this. Trust me.

Step four is cleaning everything up,
double-checking to make sure none of the pranks are too readily visible to
someone who doesn’t know they’re there and packing my leftover items back into
the plastic garbage sack I got from the bellhop. It’s what he was keeping the
bottle rockets in.

Step five is to dump everything back in my
room and head back downstairs where the bellhop should be waiting for my signal
to allow Damian back into his room.

Step six is the giving of the signal
itself and step seven is to head back to my room and wait for Damian to give me
a call.

From there, well, the rest is going to depend
on Damian.

I’m back in my room after a surprisingly
smooth run of things. Damian should already be back in his, and I can’t imagine
it’ll be much longer before my phone starts to—and there it goes.

“Hello,” I answer.

“You’re really going to have to do better
than that,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“I found your little pranks,” he says. “If
you’re going to try to come at me with that shit, you’re going to have to do a
much better job of covering your work. By the way, thanks for making me dig the
gelatin out of the toilet bowl. That never gets old.”

“How many did you find?” I ask.

“All of them,” he says.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Because you suck at hiding them,” he
says. “If someone figures it out beforehand, it’s not a very good prank. I hate
to be so critical, but as your mentor and spiritual guide, I feel it’s my duty
to…”

He must be doing better; he’s gotten back
to referring to himself as my mentor and spiritual guide and all sorts of other
positively irritating nonsense that tells me there’s still a chance he comes
through the rest of the day with a smile on his face.

“…last time I had someone mess with my
showerhead,” he says, “they used this clear gel stuff that slowly made every
drop of water on me harden into what looked like snot lines all over my body
and in my hair—
that
was a hell of a
prank. I didn’t see
that
one coming.”

“Whatever,” I tell him, “so how many have
you found?”

“Five,” he says.

Shit, he
is
good.

What he doesn’t know is that I had a
couple of extra minutes and so I managed to slip in a little something extra.

I’m just waiting to find out what step
eight is going to be.

“What made you do that?” he asks.

“I thought it might help pull you out of
your funk,” I tell him.

I’ve dealt with tragedy before, though
nothing quite as bleak as what Damian’s been through. What I’ve found is that
sometimes it can seem impossible to pull one’s self out of that thought spiral,
but snapping out of it can be as simple as having something introduced into the
equation that you weren’t expecting.

When I was a kid, my favorite grandmother
died. After my parents told me, they gave me space when I needed space and
comfort when I needed comfort. The problem was that as time went on, I wasn’t
letting myself work through it.

One day, though, after school I came home
to find the house deserted, though I could hear a lot of strange noises coming
from the backyard.

When I got out there, my parents had set
up a miniature carnival in the backyard complete with games, prizes, my parents
dressed up as clowns, and all my friends sitting around a big table.

What I came to realize as I grew up was
that what my parents did hadn’t worked because having fun and a bit of a
distraction made me forget my grandma or miss her any less. It simply gave my
mind permission to switch into a different gear.

I still had a lot of rough days and nights
for a while, but after that carnival in the backyard, things started turning a
corner.

Again, though, Damian’s tragedy is a bit
of a different situation and I don’t have any illusions that I’ve cured him of
his grief. At best, I’m just hoping that I can get him through the weekend
without having him retreat back into his room for the rest of our stay.

We’ve got shit to do.

The rest of the weekend is pretty quiet,
though it’s filled with plenty of conversation. The best part comes at around
four o’clock Sunday morning when I get a call from Damian telling me that he
found my last trap the hard way.

I’m just surprised it took him that long
to go for the Icy Hot-filled lotion bottle in his bathroom. One thing you can
set your watch by is a man’s need to relieve backed up pressure and, in lieu of
a sexual partner, you’ll find that particular kind of relief generally comes in
a fairly predictable way.

Did we accomplish everything we set out to
accomplish after Dutch told us both to get away and practice our ability to be
attractive together? Probably not.

What we did accomplish, though, was to
start building the foundation of an actual intimacy, one that isn’t just going
to go away when the cameras stop rolling.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

I’m just happy enough to say that this is
the weekend that Damian and I have become friends.

Chapter Eight

Reshuffling

Damian

“You’re not going to believe this,” Danna
says when I come through the door.

Before I have a chance to ask her what
she’s talking about or ask her if she would kindly shut up for a while until
I’ve had some time to decompress from the mini-vacation, I see what she
rightfully thinks I won’t believe.

“Where did all this come from?” I ask.

“Guess who,” she says.

“Ah, Rita,” I laugh, “my own personal
deranged fan.”

“Do you actually know what you’re looking
at?” Danna asks. “It’s really pretty impressive when you read the note and
figure out what all of this is.”

She bends down and picks up a folded piece
of paper from the corner of my coffee table and hands it over to me.

The note reads:

“
Dami
,

How quick we are to forget one another.
From the moment we’re born, we start to die. Every day, we’re a little bit
closer to reaching that final end, and I don’t know how many more of those days
I can wait to be at your side.

I know that sometimes people don’t
understand me, but I think you would. I think you already do. Sweet
Dami
, I want to show you the ways I’ve grown and died every
day since I’ve known you.—known you.—known you. I want to show you the ways
I’ve grown and died every day since I first saw you, so I’ve decided to share a
piece of me that you started planting that very first moment my eyes caught
yours. I’d never seen someone with such kind, caring eyes and such incredible
mental agility that you had when you saved the world as Burke Howard, and in
that moment, I knew that every part of me that falls away should be yours to do
with as you please.

Yours forever and ever and ever and ever,

Rita”

“Burke Howard,” Danna says, “that was
Casting Shadows
, wasn’t it?”

“
Immediate
Dream
,” I correct her. “
Casting Shadows
was the down-and-out pitcher who’d gotten in trouble with the league one too
many times, only to turn everything around in just under ninety minutes and get
everyone to love him again.”

“Right,” Danna says. “You know, you’ve
been making some pretty shitty movies recently.”

“I took a break,” I tell her.

“Yeah, but
Flashing Lights
isn’t going to be the artistic comeback that would
justify taking so many crap roles,” she says.

“You said there was something impressive
about the letter,” I redirect. “What was it?”

“It’s not just the letter,” she says,
“check the dates on these.”

In the front room of my house and
extending into the living room are dozens and dozens of pots, some with live
flowers, some with dead flowers and some with only soil.

I bend down and look where Danna’s
pointing.

“June fifth, 2013,” I say aloud.

“Now the next one,” she says.

I move over and read the date off the next
flower pot, “June sixth, 2013.”

“Each one of these was planted every day,
one after the other for a year,” Danna says. “The newest one—it’s over there by
the door—is from three days ago.”

“Where was all of this?” I ask.

“On the sidewalk out front,” Danna
answers.

“I was going to ask why the security guys
didn’t do anything, but if she wasn’t on the property—”

“No, they would have seen her,” Danna
interrupts. “They should have seen her, anyway. It must have taken a long time
to set all of these pots out in chronological order by planting date, but
nobody saw anything, neighbors, no one.”

“What about the security tapes?” I ask.

“Doesn’t cover where she was outside the
fence,” Danna says. “I called the cops and they came by and everything, so it’s
all taken care of. I guess the only thing we’ve got to do now is hope they
catch her while we figure out what to do with all of these flowers.”

“You’d almost think something like this
would be good in a movie,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she scoffs. “You’d have the crew
cursing your name every time one of the plants dies out of order, though. How
was the weekend?”

“It was okay, I guess,” I tell her. “It
didn’t really go off the way it usually does.”

“No sex in the hot tub of the presidential
suite this time, huh?” she asks.

“Oh, that only happened the one time,” I
protest. “No, I don’t know, I’m starting to think that maybe she and I could
actually be friends. You know, she told me she got her first movie role after
winning a contest in the newspaper.”

“Really?” Danna asks without inflection.

“Yeah,” I tell her, undaunted by her
grumpiness, “the role was to be an extra in some low budget kid’s movie, but
the director liked her look and bumped her into a speaking role. That’s how she
got her start.”

“It’s nice to hear that not everyone goes
for the blood pacts and the soul-selling in order to get their foot in the door
like you did,” Danna says. “By the way, I’ve got a thing for the two of you
next week if you can. It’s a new show on primetime—”

“I don’t want to be doing so many
interviews and drop-ins while I’m working on a movie,” I remind Danna. “Seriously,
it divides my focus and I don’t have the time for it.”

“I can get you out of it,” Danna says,
“but I think they’re going to insist on your costar.”

“Why would they want her and not me?” I
ask.

“Hey, now you’re starting to sound like my
client again,” Danna says. “Oh, and Penelope called. She said that she’d love
to see you this weekend if you’ve got the time. If not, she says she
understands, but I kind of got the feeling something was going on there.”

“Any idea what kind of something?” I ask.

“She didn’t say,” Danna answers. “If you
ask me, it’s probably something to do with that asshole she’s married to.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Nice try,” Danna answers.

She hates the question. The few times I’ve
gotten her to answer it for me have been when I’ve slipped it haphazardly into
the middle of a conversation.

As you can see, though, it doesn’t always
work.

“You look good,” I tell her. “You’ve got
some color to your cheeks.”

“Will you stop?” she asks. “You know I
hate it when you do that.”

“What are little brothers for?” I ask.
“It’s our job to torment our older sisters.”

“Any chance there’s any leeway for the
fact that I’m less than five minutes older than you?” she asks.

“Not really,” I tell her. “Anything else
going on?”

“Yeah,” she says, “there’s been a woman
standing at the buzzer to the gate acting like she’s not sure whether or not
she should press the button.”

I flip around and look out the window.

I can’t tell too much about the woman as
I’m looking at her through a gate and from a distance, but Danna was right. I
was hoping it was just a jogger who needed a break to tie a shoe or something
like that, but the woman is definitely here for one of us, and Danna’s not the
breadwinner of this particular house.

“What should I do?” Danna asks.

“Just stay inside,” I tell her as I pull
the phone out of my pocket, “and if things start getting crazy, call the
police.”

I hand the phone to Danna and, although
she tries to stop me, I manage to work my way free of her grip, and I walk out
the front door.

There’s got to be something I can do to
increase visibility from the front door to the mailbox.

“Excuse me!” I call out to the person
staring at the buzzer.

I’m expecting the woman to run or go for
some kind of weapon, but she just turns and walks up to the fence.

“Damian, I’m sorry, I didn’t know where
else to go,” Penelope, Jamie’s mother, says.

“Shit, it’s you!” I exclaim. “Hold on a
second and I’ll let you in.”

I make my way to my side of the gate and
type in my code on the little keypad to open it.

The gate slowly grinds over the concrete
as it opens. I should really get that thing fixed: It’s missing a wheel.

“What brings you here today, Penelope?” I
ask. “I didn’t miss your call, did I?”

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to hit the
buzzer,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell you.”

“What’s going on?” I ask as she comes
through the gate and we embrace on the other side.

“It’s Ed,” she says. “He’s had another
heart attack and the doctors are starting to act like he might not be coming
back from the hospital this time.”

“That’s terrible,” I respond.

Ed.

Fucking Ed.

Ed is Jamie’s father and there wasn’t a
moment since I met the guy where he could find it in himself to tolerate my
existence.

When Jamie and I first started dating, Ed
would refer to me as “that guy you’re slumming it with,” despite the fact that
my family was just as well off as his. I think Ed was one of those fathers who would
rather his child had never left home.

“How are you holding up?” I ask.

“About as you’d expect,” she says.
“Damian, I’m devastated, but what makes me feel even worse is the knowledge
that you and he still have all these terrible feelings toward one another. I
was hesitating at the buzzer because I didn’t know if you would be ready to
hear what I have to ask you.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

In the distance I can hear sirens.

“Shit, Danna called the cops because we
thought you were…” Yeah, I’m not really in the mood to tell that particular
story right now. “We thought you were someone else,” I tell her. “Why don’t you
come in and we’ll get everything straightened out.”

Penelope follows me into the house and, as
soon as Danna sees her, she drops my cellphone and rushes over to give Penelope
a hug.

“Could you do a favor for me and tell the
police that we won’t be requiring their assistance?” I ask my sister as she
compresses Penelope’s internal organs.

“Right,” Danna says. “Sorry about that. We
thought you were someone else.”

“Yeah, Damian told me,” Penelope says,
looking somewhat disoriented.

“Ed’s in the hospital,” I tell Danna.

“Oh no!” Danna says. “What’s going on?”

After we convince the cops that nothing’s
actually wrong, Penelope fills Danna in with what she’s already told me.
 
“After his last bypass, the doctor told us
that Ed’s heart may not be strong enough to handle another attack, so they put
us on the organ donor list, but it was never an immediate thing until yesterday
when it happened,” Penelope says.

“This happened yesterday?” I ask as Danna
picks up the phone and explains the situation to the operator on the other end
of the line.

“Yeah,” Penelope says. “I would have
called or stopped by earlier, but I’ve been trying to stay real close with Ed
since his collapse.”

“No worries,” I tell her, “but do you
really think Ed is going to want to see me?”

“Of course,” Penelope says, “he’d
love
to see you, only…”

“Only he still blames me for Jamie?” I
ask.

“I’m sure that if you come by the
hospital, the two of you can work it out. Damian, I wouldn’t ask, but he has so
little time left, and I know he doesn’t want to see his life end with any
grudges still intact,” Penelope says.

“I get that,” I tell her, “and I think
you’re doing a wonderful thing. I just don’t know if he’s really ready to let
go of what he thinks happened.”

“Has he said anything about Damian?” Danna
asks.

Danna and Ed met on a few different
occasions, but never seemed to develop an opinion of each other until after
Jamie’s death. Once that happened, Ed blamed me, so he hated Danna. Danna is my
sister and a decent person, so she thought the way Ed was treating me was
unfair, so she started to hate him.

Around and around it goes.

“You know Ed,” Penelope says. “He’s never
going to admit that he’s made a mistake until there’s no other option but for
him to do it. Please,” she says, “he may only have a few days left if they
can’t find a new heart for him.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

Danna says, “I think the least you could
do would be to head over to that hospital and at least try to make amends.”

“That’s the problem,” I tell her. “He’s
going to want me to admit that it’s my fault she’s dead, and as far as I’m
concerned—sorry, Penelope—he can screw himself. I’m not going to have him drag
me through hell just so he can feel a little better about things.”