They're Watching (2010) (10 page)

I sat for a long time, the beat-up dashboard looking back at me. My eyes pulled again to the paper in the passenger seat with the address. I flipped it over so Punch's kid's crayon drawing was faceup. A big, sloppy sun, stick figures holding hands. A heartbreaking picture, primitive and wistful.

I put the car in park, climbed out. When I came in, Ariana was sitting where she always sat when I left, on the arm of the couch. She looked surprised.

I said, "I have spent six weeks trying to find any way not to be in love with you."

Her mouth came slightly ajar. She lifted a shaking hand, set her mug down on the coffee table. "Any luck?"

"None. I'm fucked."

We faced each other across the length of the room. I felt something budge in my chest, emotion shifting, the logjam starting to break up.

She swallowed hard, looked away. Her mouth was quivering like it wanted to smile and cry at the same time. "So where's that leave us?" she asked.

"Together."

She smiled, then her mouth bent down, and then she wiped her cheeks and looked away again. We nodded at each other, almost shyly, and I withdrew back through the door to the garage.

Chapter
15

I brought Julianne a Starbucks from across the street, which I held before me like a sacrificial offering as I entered the faculty lounge. She and Marcello sat facing each other, but at different tables to maintain the pretense that they were working.

She regarded me warily. "What do you want?"

"Cover my afternoon classes."

"I can't. I don't know how to write a screenplay."

"Right. You're the only person in Greater Los Angeles who actually knows she doesn't know how to write a screenplay. You're already overqualified."

"Why can't you teach?" Julianne said.

"I have to look into some things."

"You're gonna have to do better than that."

"I'm going to talk to Keith."

"Conner? At home? You have his address?" She clasped her hands with excitement, a girlish gesture that looked about as natural as a Band-Aid on Clint Eastwood.

"Not you, too," I said.

"He is sort of dishy," Marcello offered.

"Perfidy everywhere."

"Why don't you just go see him after work?" Julianne said.

"I have to get right home."

"Home?" she said. "Home? To your beautiful wife?"

"To my beautiful wife."

Marcello, in monotone: "Halle-fuckin'-lujah."

"That's all I get?"

"ON FEBRUARY"--Marcello checked his watch--"ELEVENTH, PATRICK DAVIS DISCOVERS THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY . . . IS THE ONE THAT TAKES YOU HOME."

"That's more like it." I waved the Starbucks cup in Julianne's direction, letting her attack-dog nose pick up the scent.

She eyed the cup. "Gingerbread latte?"

I said, "Peppermint"--she sagged a little with desire--"mocha." Her head drooped wantonly. I walked over and extended the cup. She took it.

I heard her slurping contentedly as I walked out. Classes were in session, the halls empty. My footsteps seemed unnaturally loud without bodies there to absorb the echoes. As I went by each classroom, the voice of the teacher inside rose and fell like the whine of a passing car. Despite the full classrooms all around, or perhaps because of them, the preposterously long hall felt desolate.

There was a clap like a gunshot, and I jumped, my files spilling all over the floor. Wheeling around in a panic, I saw that the noise had been nothing more than a kid dropping his binder, which had struck the tile flat on its side. I mock-grabbed my chest and said, too loudly, "You scared me."

I'd intended it lightly, but it had come out angry.

The student, crouched over his binder, glanced up lethargically. "Relax, dude."

His tone got under my skin. I said, "Hold on to your stuff better, dude."

Two girls paused in the intersecting hall, rubbernecking, then scurried away when I glanced at them. A few students had collected at the far end also, by the stairwell. I was breathing hard from the scare, still, and from my reaction now. I knew I was handling this poorly, but my blood was up and I couldn't find my composure.

The kid nodded at my spilled papers. "You, too"--he turned to walk away, coughing into a fist to mask his last word--"asshole."

"What the hell did you just say to me?" My words rang down the corridor.

A teacher I vaguely recognized stuck her head through the doorway of the nearest classroom. Lines of disapproval notched her forehead between her eyebrows. I stared her back into her classroom, and when I refocused, the offending student had vanished into the stairwell. The others milled and gestured.

Embarrassed, I gathered my papers swiftly and left.

Chapter
16

Vast iron gates greeted me a mere two steps from the curb. A ten-foot stone wall ran the length of the property line. The only point of access was a call box with a button, mounted on a pillar beside the gate.

Though it was three o'clock--and February--the cold had given way to a hot snap, the sun harsh off the concrete. I was supposed to be in class discussing dialogue, not chasing down movie-star litigants.

Before I could push the call button, a screech jerked me around--a door rolling back on a beat-up white van at the opposite curb. The clicking of a high-speed lens issued from the dark interior. I froze, nailed to the pavement. Leading with a giant camera, a man emerged and walked deliberately toward me, snapping pictures as he came. He wore a black zipped hoodie pulled up so the camera blocked out his face; there was just a lens protruding from the hood like a wolf snout. I could see the dark amoeba of my reflection in the curved glass. My thoughts revved as he neared, but I was caught off guard, my reaction lagging.

Just when I'd balled my hand into a fist, the giant zoom lens lowered to reveal a sallow face. "Oh," he said, disappointed. "You're not anybody."

He'd mistaken my immobilization for apathy. "How'd you know?"

"Because you don't give a shit if I take your picture."

I took in his scraggly appearance, the multipocketed khaki shorts weighed down with gear, and finally put it together. "National Enquirer?" I asked.

"Freelance. Paparazzi market's gotten tough. Have to sell where you can."

"Conner's a big catch now, is he?"

"His price has gone up. Hype over the upcoming movie, you know, and the paternity suit."

"I hadn't heard."

"Some club skank. She threw up on Nicky Hilton, made her stock rise."

"Ah. Got herself a media profile."

"They're paying twenty grand for a clear shot of Conner doing something embarrassing. Nothing like a sleaze-success cocktail to stoke a bidding war."

"Cocktails that stoke. I could use one."

He looked at me conspiratorially. "You a friend a' his?"

"Can't stand him, actually."

"Yeah, he's a dickhead. Kneed me in the nuts outside Dan Tana's. Lawsuit pending."

"Good luck with that."

"Gotta get them to hit you, not the other way around." He eyed me knowingly. "He'll settle."

I hit the button. Asian chimes. The crackle of static told me the line had gone live, though no one said anything. I leaned toward the speaker. "It's Patrick Davis. Please tell Keith I need to talk to him."

The guy said, "That's your game plan for getting inside?"

The gates buzzed. I slipped through. He tried to follow, but I stood in the gap. "Sorry. You need your own game plan."

He shrugged. Then he flicked an ivory card from his wallet: Joe Vente. Below, a phone number. That was it.

I tilted it back at him. "Spartan."

"Call me if you want to sell out Conner sometime."

"Will do." I pulled the gate shut, making sure the lock clicked.

The Spanish Colonial Revival was spread out with no regard for the price of L.A. real estate. To my left, the row of garage doors was raised, presumably to vent the heat. Revealed inside were two electric coupes, plugged in, three hybrids, and various makes of alternative-fuel cars. A private fleet for conservation; the more you spend, the more you save. The front door, sized for a T-Rex, wobbled open. A waif, made waifier by the giant doorway, waited for me, holding a clipboard. She had impossibly pale skin, a neck that looked like she'd stretched with tribal rings, and a model's expression of perennial boredom.

"Mr. Conner is out back. Follow me, please."

She led me across a house-size foyer and through a sitting room and a set of double doors open to the expansive backyard. Stopping at the threshold, she waved me on. Maybe she'd ignite in direct sunlight.

Keith bobbed on a yellow inner tube in the middle of the pool, a black-bottomed monstrosity interrupted by a confusion of waterfalls, fountains, and palm trees sprouting from island planters. He said, "Hi, asshat," and started paddling in. Then he shouted past me, "Bree, the pool bar's out of flaxseed chips. Think you can get them restocked?"

The waif jotted a note on her clipboard and disappeared.

Two rottweilers frolicked on the far lawn, all fangs and cords of saliva. Knotted ropes--of course--abounded. To my right, a woman reclined on a teak deck chair, filling out a yellow one-piece and reading a magazine. Her blond hair, turned almost white by the sun, tumbled down around her face in a Veronica Lake peekaboo. She looked far too refined for the company, and too old--she was at least thirty.

Keith collapsed onto the chair next to her and lit up, of all things, a clove cigarette. I hadn't seen one since Kajagoogoo clogged the airwaves.

"Meet Trista Koan, my lifestyle coach." Keith set a hand on her smooth thigh.

She unceremoniously removed it. "I know. The name's a laffer. My parents were hippies and shouldn't be held accountable."

"What's a lifestyle coach do, exactly?" I asked.

"We're working on reducing Keith's carbon footprint."

"I'm gonna save the whales, dawg," Keith said. His teeth appeared seamless; the sun off them was squint-inducing.

My expression made clear I was missing the connection.

"L.A. is all about environmentalism, right?" he said on the inhale.

"And hair restoration."

"So we gotta get people thinking that way everywhere." Inspired, he swept his arm to indicate, presumably, the world beyond the park-size backyard. The grand gesture was undercut by the jet trail of clove smoke left behind. "It's about constant awareness. I was all into the electric-car thing first, right? Even ordered a Tesla Roadster. Clooney ordered one, too. They inscribe your name on the sill--"

"But the problem is . . ." Trista said, keeping him on track.

"The problem is, electric cars still plug in to the grid and suck energy. So then I bought some hybrids. But they still use gas. So I switched to"--a glance to Trista--"what're they called?"

"Flex-fuel vehicles."

"Why not take a bus?" I thought it was pretty funny, but neither he nor Trista laughed. I said, "Whales, Keith. This started with whales."

"Right. They're using this high-intensity sonar, it's like three hundred decibels--"

"Two thirty-five," Trista corrected.

"You know how many times louder that is than the level that'll hurt humans? Ten."

"Four point three," Trista said, with faintly disguised irritation. I was beginning to understand her role better.

"That's as loud as a rocket blasting off"--he paused to look at Trista, but evidently he'd gotten this one right--"so it's no wonder whales are beaching themselves. Bleeding out their ears, around their brains. The sonar also gives them, like, air in their bloodstreams--"

"Emboli," I said, figuring Trista might need a break.

"--so imagine how much other sea life is killed we don't even know about." He was waiting for my reaction with an almost sweet eagerness.

"The mind boggles."

"Yeah, well," he said, as if that were something to say. "So I'm a dumb-ass actor. I'm twenty-six, and I make more money in a week than my dad made his whole miserable working life. It's a miracle, and I know I don't deserve it, because no one does. So what? I can still tune in, make a difference. And this movie's really important to me. A passion project." He looked to his life coach for approval, which Trista withheld.

He'd leapfrogged our animosities, momentarily, for a pitch and some pious confabulation. He was using me to work out his new material, the green-friendly repackaging of Keith Conner, which would give him the edge on the red carpet, where it really mattered. But now playacting was over and it was time to get down to business. Sensing this, Keith held out his arms. "So what the hell are you doing here, Davis? Aren't we suing each other?" He flashed his camera-ready smile. "How's that going, by the way?"

"I'm here to take possession of the house."

Trista didn't look up, but she touched a fist to her lips. Keith smirked and beckoned for me to talk.