Behind them the screech of tires sounded as a black Escalade raced toward the entrance to the rehab facility. The two paparazzi spun round and ran toward it. It was their lucky day.
She was fairly sure she caught a glimpse of the action star she was supposed to be watching for in the Escalade’s back seat, but couldn’t be certain. It was already too late to go check. The gates closed after it, and the Escalade disappeared behind the high walls.
3
Sofia had held her position for the rest of the day watching the cactus shadows creep along the parking lot until Aidan called to tell her that she could go home. She hadn’t mentioned the peeing incident. It was none of his damn business.
As Sofia made the turn from Big Rock Drive onto PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), her iPhone lit up with a call. The caller ID read ‘Aidan.’ He might have been the last person she wanted to speak to right now, but it could be work related, and she had already screwed up once today, got herself filmed, and maybe missed his big data point. She couldn’t afford to ignore him.
She tapped a button on the Tesla’s touch screen to answer. “What’s up?” she said, doing her best to sound upbeat.
“Not your pants?”
“Hilarious. I haven’t heard a joke that funny since at least, oohh, let me think, first grade.”
“That’s strange. I haven’t seen someone pee their pants since first grade,” said Aidan.
The woman driving in the next lane stared at her while they crawled north on PCH. Sofia grabbed a pair of over-sized sunglasses and put them on.
“So what did you want, Nighthawk?” she asked.
“You seen TMZ?” said Aidan.
TMZ was the go-to website for celebrity gossip. The initials stood for ‘Thirty Mile Zone,’ an obscure Hollywood insider term that referred to the thirty-mile zone around the Hollywood studios used by union film projects to determine per diem rates and driving distances for crew members. Basically, if a celebrity of any description did something noteworthy in the greater LA area or beyond, TMZ was usually the first to have the incriminating photographs or video footage.
It was no great surprise that TMZ would have been the first people to get ahold of the evidence of her peeing outside a rehab in Malibu. She’d known as soon as she saw the camera that she’d be making an unscheduled appearance all over social media and the Internet.
Sofia sighed. “No, and I don’t intend to go look.”
“You made a pretty big splash.” Aidan chuckled.
“Thanks for letting me know.” She reached over to kill the call.
“Hey, Sofia?”
“Yes?” Her finger hovered over the red end call icon.
“I know you’re probably a little peed off right now, but you have to be in the office at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow so no mooning around feeling sorry for yourself. And no staying up into the wee, small hours.”
She hit the end call button, cutting him off.
It was more than a little ironic that even though she had quit acting and the whole showbiz world that went with it in order to escape the limelight and do a real job, she was now going to be an object of public ridicule. On the plus side, at least her car didn’t stink of asparagus pee. She had that going for her.
The traffic inched forward. Up ahead the sign for Moonshadows restaurant beckoned. She often had dreams that bordered on the erotic about their spicy Hawaiian ahi tuna tartare. She thought about stopping, but right now, she wanted to go home. The woman in the next lane nudged her companion and nodded toward Sofia. Sofia ignored her, hoping she would go away.
Sofia looked across to see the woman in the next lane frantically waving for her to lower her window.
Ugh. Just because she’d been on TV, people could completely forget their manners. She was public property. And if she got on with trying to live her life and ignored them, she would be considered stuck-up or ungrateful. She had always, always been polite and respectful, going out of her way to answer every letter she could, and sign every autograph or pose for every photograph but all she wanted now was to be left alone. Which wasn’t going to happen.
With a sigh, Sofia lowered the Tesla’s window. The woman was grinning at her.
“Sorry,” the woman began, a verbal opener that clearly indicated to Sofia that she was from out of town. No one in LA would apologize for yelling at a stranger in traffic. “I just wanted to ask. It’s really you, isn’t it?”
For a fleeting moment she wondered if this was a deep, existential question such as ‘if you’re not really you, then who are you?’ Or, ‘if a person on PCH asks you if you’re really you, then are you really you?’ Or maybe ‘how do you know if you’re you?’
“Uh,” said Sofia, “that kind of depends on who you think I am.”
The woman glanced back to her passenger. Sofia assumed it was her husband or boyfriend. He leaned over the woman. “I knew it was you. I said to Michelle here, ‘It’s definitely her.’”
Sofia smiled and nodded. “Right.”
She was happy they were happy. At least someone was happy today. All she wanted to do was get home, feed Fred, take a long soak in the tub, have a glass of wine, make dinner, go to bed, and try to forget that today ever happened. At least back home at the Cove, she’d be left alone. If she could ever get there.
Michelle shot her male companion an irritated look. “I knew it was her. You didn’t need to tell me anything, Brian.”
Based on that tone, Michelle and Brian were clearly either married, or at least in a long-term relationship. Sofia smiled. “Well, you were right.”
Michelle turned back to Brian and with more than a hint of triumphalism said, “See!”
Both the cars in front of them inched forward. Sofia was wondering about the etiquette if her lane started moving faster. Did she scoot forward, thus terminating the conversation? Or did she let the gap open? In the land of the car gun it was probably better to be mildly rude to some out-of-towners than to mildly inconvenience and thereby enrage some hardened road warrior trying to get home to the valley after a day slogging their guts out on the Westside.
Michelle leaned farther out of her car. “I hope you don’t think I’m rude, but I am so relieved you’re not seeing that Bieber boy anymore.”
Sofia tried to remember if she’d ever met Justin Bieber, never mind dated him. Maybe, if the supermarket tabloids were to be believed, the experience was so horrendous that she had completely suppressed it to save herself from further psychological torment.
“Me, too,” said Sofia.
It was Brian’s turn to lean in. “That kid is heading for a hard landing. Little punk.”
Michelle shoved Brian back into his seat. “Don’t call him that. Selena here might still have feelings for him.”
“Selena?” Sofia said.
“You’re Selena Gomez, right?”
4
Sofia’s home, Nirvana Cove in northern Malibu, was arguably the world’s most up-market trailer park. Sofia pulled her Tesla into the main resident’s parking lot. Apart from golf buggies and service vehicles, cars were prohibited from using the narrow access roads in the Cove. Anyone with a car had to leave it in the lot and either walk or take a golf buggy to their trailer. It was one of the quirks of living there that Sofia enjoyed most. She usually walked. It gave her time to decompress from whatever she’d been doing that day. Today she had a lot to decompress from. She could probably walk to San Francisco, and it wouldn’t be far enough.
Stretched out below her was Nirvana Cove Beach. Beyond the beach, the Pacific Ocean danced and shone in the sun. On a clear day like today, she saw all the way across to Catalina Island. It was a view that she never tired of, and she spent a second staring at it.
An older lady in running gear scooted up. “Beautiful evening.”
“Evening, Tex!”
Tex, one of Sofia’s near neighbors, flew past in a blur of neon pink Lycra. One of the features of the Cove was that most of the older residents had more get-up-and-go tha
n pretty much anyone. They were a force to be reckoned with if things didn’t happen as they wanted.
If she was even vaguely aware of Sofia’s new notoriety as the phantom urinator of Big Rock, Tex never let on. Not that anyone living in the Cove would. It was a pretty tight-knit community of a lot of people who had worked or still did work in the entertainment industry. More than a few A-list movie stars had homes there. They bought a place at the Cove because it was one of the few places in the greater Los Angeles area where they knew they would be left alone.
Sofia had bought her double-wide, two-bedroom home a little under four years ago, a few days after her eighteenth birthday, when she was finally allowed access to the earnings from her acting career. The price tag had been just north of half a million dollars. For that she got an eggshell-blue trailer with a living room cum kitchen/dinette, two bedrooms, a master bathroom with a shower over tub, and a front porch. She had stayed living with her mom and stepfather for the first few months while she remodeled it. She’d had the outside repainted, put in a new kitchen range, and had a tiny claw foot bathtub installed.
While the little blue trailer took a big bite out of her savings, she figured that as long as she could make the service fees, she would always have a roof over her head. If things got rough, she could always sell it. And, it sure as hell beat paying rent. At least those were reasons she had given her mom, sister, manager, and accountant. The truth was that she had been visiting a friend at the Cove, seen the little blue trailer for sale, and fallen hopelessly, madly in love with it. It was home, and she didn’t want to live anywhere else.
As she walked farther down the path, she took off her shoes and socks. She took a left into her lane and walked barefoot along the path to her little blue trailer. A loud cawing sounded from overhead, and a seagull swooped by. She scoped out the black ring around his left leg as he hopped from the path up onto her front porch railing. The seagull was a regular visitor. Her niece and nephew had named him Fred Segal, after the upmarket clothing store and the name had stuck.
“Heya, Fred!” she called.
She didn’t have the free time she needed to have a regular pet, so Fred had become her surrogate pet. He showed up every morning to be fed and was there as soon as she came home in the evening. As pets went, Fred the seagull was pretty low maintenance. His only character flaw was that he was overly possessive. Not only would he chase away any other seagull interlopers, but he also targeted dogs, cats, and even other humans. Anyone who came too close was subjected to repeated dive bombing until they got the message that this was really Fred’s place. Sofia suspected that if she stopped feeding him, she’d be added to Fred’s hit list.
“Just a second,” she told him.
Walking past Fred, she took out her key, unlocked the front door, put down her shoes and socks and purse, and walked into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, took out a half full bottle of wine, poured herself a glass, pulled a slice of bologna out of the fridge and walked back out to the porch. She took a sip of wine and laid out the lunchmeat on the railing for Fred to peck at. He squawked something she chose to interpret as ‘thank you.’ She closed her eyes and let the crisp white wine settle on her tongue. She was finally home safe.
Bliss.
“Three words. Celebrity Second Chances!” said a voice far too close to her ear.
Her eyes popped open. A deeply tanned man in his early fifties wearing nothing but a pair of red board shorts and a dazzlingly white grin stood on the path directly in front of her porch.
“Before you say anything, I already spoke to Steve Kazalian at Fox, and he is totally prepared to put serious money down to get you on board with this.”
Sofia closed her eyes. Maybe if she kept them closed long enough, when she opened them again, her former agent would have disappeared. She started to count down slowly from one thousand. She had reached seven hundred and eighty-nine when she heard:
“High six-figure fee for one week’s filming. Maybe even seven if I push him hard enough, and you’re prepared to do Dr. Phil.”
She opened her eyes. “One week’s filming? Rehab is twenty-eight days long.”
“Yeah, but this is TV. Shooting for seven days is a lot cheaper than twenty-eight. I mean, duh! Plus the story beats for that show are all there already.” Her former agent narrowed his eyes. “You don’t actually really need to go to rehab, do you?”
She stared at him, not prepared to dignify that question with an answer.
“Please tell me you don’t,” he said. “Because if you do, that puts the completion bond insurance sky high, and your fee will have to take a hit.”
“No, Jeffrey, I don’t need to go to rehab. I was on a stakeout, and I needed to pee really bad, and I couldn’t find a bathroom, so…”
Jeffrey Weiner looked skyward. From his position on the railing, Fred was eyeing her ex-agent suspiciously. He was lucky the gull was busy eating.
“No one needs to know that. Plus, I’ll be honest here. I could really use the ten percent. I mean this job you have,” he said, air-quoting the word job. “It’s like Joaquin Phoenix wanting to become a rapper, or Rick Moranis wanting to spend more time with his family, right?”
Fred must have sensed her rising temper because he stopped pecking at his food and cocked his head. “Rick Moranis’s wife died, and he wanted to take care of his grieving kids! That’s real, and it’s more important than acting. Your kind of attitude is exactly why I quit the business.”
Jeffrey cocked his head, mirroring Fred’s head tilt. Both of them doing it was making Sofia dizzy.
“How was I to know you were serious? I mean, you’re an actress.” He stopped, obviously sensing that she really was angry. “A fantastic actress. One of the finest of your generation. I’m just trying to look out for you here.”
“The finest of my generation, huh?” said Sofia. “I was in a show called Half Pint Detective, and then I did a couple of movies.”
Jeffrey raised himself up on his tiptoes to his full five feet four inches. “Do not run yourself down. I will not stand for it. You were all set to be the next J-Law, if you hadn’t got this crazy notion into your head about getting a real job, encouraged no doubt by that crazy ex-cop.”
Sofia could feel her eyebrows threatening to leave her head. “Jeffrey, why don’t you go for a swim? Find some sharks to play with.”
He gave her his best agent’s smile. “Sharks wouldn’t go near me. Professional courtesy.”
She stared at him and didn’t speak. Fred had finished his food. He flapped his wings and squawked menacingly in Jeffrey’s direction.
“Good bird,” she said.
“Think about it, okay? A million bucks for seven days work plus press. Is this the greatest country in the world, or what?” said Jeffrey before turning around and disappearing into the twilight toward his home on the upper bluff.
Sofia looked at Fred. “Go poop on his head, and I’ll double your rations.”
While she made herself dinner, Sofia couldn’t help but think about Jeffrey’s offer. Not that she would ever do that particular show, but maybe she was fooling herself with this real job thing. Her career had been in a good place when she’d quit. Most young actresses would have killed to have had her career trajectory. The three movies she’d done, one for a studio and two small indie films, had gathered great reviews. She had been touted as the actress most likely to become the next Jennifer Lawrence. The problem was that she didn’t want to be the next Jennifer Lawrence. She was fairly sure that there were days when Jennifer Lawrence didn’t want to be Jennifer Lawrence. Sofia didn’t blame her.
The difficulty was that because so many people wanted to be famous, they regarded anyone who gave up fame as suspect. Or ungrateful. To be given something so many people wanted and then to turn your back on it seemed like a betrayal.
But Sofia had never wanted fame. She hadn’t even wanted to be an actress. That had been her sister’s dream. But fate had conspired to give the big break to her r
ather than Emily.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed her acting career. It had meant she didn’t have to go to school and instead worked with a series of increasingly mellow tutors. She had made money for herself and her family, money her mother had really needed at the beginning. And being on a long-running TV show was like having a huge extended family. Until she had gotten into her teens, the media had pretty much left her alone. It wasn’t so bad.
Eventually though, things had changed. Or, more accurately, she had changed. Jeffrey might have sneered at people who did real jobs, but Sofia didn’t think like that. It had always mystified her that people like police officers and plumbers and nurses and engineers, people who actually made a real difference to the world, were somehow deemed inferior to people who pranced around a stage or appeared on some dumb TV show. It was like the world was stuck on opposite day.
As she drizzled Ranch dressing over her salad and checked on the chicken breast in the oven, her cell rang. It was her mom. No doubt she’d got news of today’s events. Sofia let it go to voicemail. She should call her back after dinner.
She took another sip of wine and a bite of salad. Her cell rang. This time it was her sister’s number. Sofia grabbed her phone and wrote a text. “I’m fine. Will call you tomorrow. Love you. S x.”
She switched her cell off. She’d had enough drama for one day.
5
Sofia pushed open the office door and headed straight for her desk. In the corner, Aidan was already at his desk, staring at not one, not two, but three huge computer screens. A flat screen TV mounted on the far wall ran shaky handheld footage of Sofia with her pants around her ankles. The footage ran for forty or so seconds then looped back to the beginning. At least it was from the front, and her bare butt wasn’t in the shot. Sofia walked over to small waiting area with its seats and coffee table, grabbed the remote, and switched off the TV screen.
A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1) Page 2
