Acting Out

by Tibby Armstrong

  Jeremy shrugged. “Besides this film, I’ve been cast as a grape in a local car commercial.”

  “A grape?” Kit breathed the question on a hooted laugh. “What’s a fucking grape doing selling cars?”

  “Beats me.”

  Ignoring Kit’s gales of laughter, Jeremy tucked into his lunch. A memory of the three-day shoot, him dressed in a spandex-and-foam costume, the production assistant helping him pee into a cup when his sweat dried the material to his skin and they couldn’t get it off, didn’t exactly give him a case of the har-dee-hars.

  “Oh, c’mon,” Kit said, wiping his eyes with his napkin. “You have to admit that’s pretty funny.”

  “All I’m saying is that I’m not famous, and there’s still not much chance I will be. You have top billing in this picture. Any awards it might—and I do mean might—garner are likely to go to you. Chances are I’ll just fade off into history as that guy you sucked face with to revive your star status.”

  Kit leaned across the table, took a bite of Jeremy’s steak fajita, and sat back. Chewing thoughtfully, he said around the food, “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  Hearing Kit confirm his more pessimistic, though realistic, visions made Jeremy flinch. In his heart of hearts, he’d held out fantasies of really getting somewhere in his career off this role. Taking a sip of his water, he looked over the rim and caught a glint in Kit’s eye.

  “You bastard,” Jeremy said. “You said that just to cut me off at the knees.”

  “Maybe.” Kit cocked his head to the side. “But you wanna be famous? You better start acting like you already are.”

  Intrigued, Jeremy leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “C’mon. Finish up. We’ll go outside, and you can get your first taste.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Following Kit outside, Jeremy stuck close. The paparazzi buzzed to life like a swarm of flies disturbed from a carcass and descended on them as they stepped onto the sidewalk. Like Switzerland, the pavement constituted neutral territory. Like Germany, the paparazzi did everything they could to exploit that legal safe haven.

  Sunglasses wrapping his face, Kit leaned casually against the fence and kicked back one foot as he lit a cigarette. Jeremy, feeling like an ass, dug his hands into his pockets and watched Kit.

  “So what’re you doing, Harris? Taking your costar on a date?”

  Instinctively, Jeremy stepped out of the frame of the pictures. Lighter fumbling from his hands, Kit leaned over to retrieve it. When he straightened, he shook his head and laughed. Bright. Clear. Unconcerned.

  “Digging for a story, Ken? You need to find a different angle.”

  He knew them by name?

  “Jeremy? Buddy?” Head cocked at a James Dean angle, Kit waved him over. “C’mere.”

  Jeremy stepped forward, and Kit grasped him around the shoulder in a See? Just two guys hanging out talking ’bout chicks and cars gesture.

  One hand in his pocket, Jeremy slung the other over Kit’s shoulder. The contact steadied him. Made him stand taller. Until, as the flashes popped in his face, he didn’t just hope to be famous. He was famous. Simultaneously, as if part of a symbiotic organism, he and Kit dropped their arms and leaned back against the fence. Crossing his arms over his chest, Jeremy took in the milling paparazzi and waited for the questions.

  “So how’s filming?”

  Taking a drag on his cigarette, Kit considered the lit end and slid a conspiratorial glance at Jeremy. More camera flashes. “We can’t talk about the film, guys. Sorry. Confidentiality agreement.”

  “Aw, come on, Kit. Tell us how you like working with Falkner? Is the script good? The food? Anything?”

  Quirking a smile, Kit shook his head. “Well, there’s not much wardrobe, so I get to sleep in late.”

  The photographers laughed, and the guy filming for a nightly gossip show looked like he’d just gotten an early Christmas bonus.

  “What about you? What’s your name?”

  “Jeremy Ash,” one of the better-informed journalists prompted.

  Hearing his own name on the lips of the paparazzi did strange, wonderful, and awful things to Jeremy’s stomach. In the end, he felt his lunch solidify and slide into his intestines, undigested. Thankfully, from years of watching his favorite actors, he knew exactly how to answer the first question.

  “Working with Kit is great. He’s a real professional.”

  “Hey! I know!” Knowing the excited, smarmy tone in the reporter’s voice boded ill, Jeremy slid his eyes to Kit’s fame-weighted slouch. “You can’t talk about the film, but you guys can kiss. Give us a taste?”

  “Afraid you’ll have to pay your nine bucks just like everyone else, Mack.” Kit pushed from the fence and flicked his cigarette butt into the bushes. He turned to walk away and stopped to give the cameras his profile. “Tell you what? Print a nice picture of my pal Jeremy here, say some nice stuff about him? I’ll get all you guys a place in the gallery at the premiere.”

  The second they rounded the corner, Kit lost his swagger, swiped his sunglasses from his nose to his forehead, and jammed his hands in his pockets.

  Watching Kit play the part of Kit struck Jeremy as surreal. The Kit walking next to him had a resonant laugh deeper and more full-bodied than the blue-label whiskey he seemed so fond of, a toe-curling smile, and the ability to shatter Jeremy’s internal universe with one well-placed kiss. The Kit courting the paparazzi two blocks back existed only on twenty-second entertainment news clips and late-night talk shows. The carefully calculated bad-boy tarnish showed wear in all the right places and from a distance seemed intriguing. Up close, it lacked three dimensions, a heartbeat, and a soul.

  “How come you’re so different with them?”

  They’d stopped behind the restaurant in the shade of some palms and overgrown foliage. Kit sat on a cinder-block wall. Hands curling over the concrete, he seemed to consider the cracked pavement beneath his feet and kicked at a bit of tar, loosening it by degrees.

  “It’s my job.”

  Jeremy flopped down on the ground and leaned against the wall. Tilting his head back, he wished for sunglasses as he squinted up at Kit. “It’s not like you got paid.”

  “Sure, I did.”

  “You did?” He tried to remember someone slipping Kit a wad of cash, but there’d been no opportunity.

  “Sure.” The piece of asphalt came loose and skittered across the pavement. “I just sold several hundred movie tickets to No Apologies.”

  “All the world’s a stage,” Jeremy quoted, not knowing exactly how to feel about this strange new reality Kit introduced.

  “Exactly, only the part you’re playing is a version of yourself—your star persona.”

  The statement struck him as ridiculous, and Jeremy scoffed a laugh as one of the busboys exited the restaurant carrying a bulging black trash bag. He and Kit remained silent as the young man lifted the Dumpster lid, tossed in the trash, and let the top fall closed with a bang.

  When the screen door to the kitchen creaked shut, Jeremy asked, “What the fuck is a star persona?” though from watching Kit he had a pretty good idea.

  “It’s the person you want them to think you are.” Standing, Kit dusted off his hands and peered into the bushes.

  “You can’t just live someone you’re not twenty-four seven,” Jeremy observed.

  Auditioning and acting took enough time. Pretending to be someone else the rest of the time sounded like a recipe for multiple personality disorder and a hefty psychiatric fee. Besides, who would he be if not himself? Channeling James Dean or Marlon Brando would only earn him ridicule when he fell way short of the mark.

  Kit snagged his helmet, held out the protective gear, and then withdrew it again. “Never mind. They’re not going to think you’re a girl no matter what I put over your head.”

  “What the fuck would I want to look like a girl for?” Did Kit think his star persona wore a dress?

  “To get past the paparazzi.” Kit jam
med the helmet on his head and started the bike. “I’ll send a car back for you. They snap us, we might as well pose for the December issue of Hot Cocks.”

  Kit surged forward on the bike and jerked to a halt when Jeremy stepped in front of the thrumming Monster. Dropping the palms he’d instinctively held out to protect himself, Jeremy growled, “You are not fucking leaving me next to a Dumpster behind a Mexican restaurant.”

  “Dude—”

  “Don’t dude me, you closeted motherfucker.” Jeremy leaned over the handlebars, and Kit leaned back. “Shove forward and give me a ride, or the next time I touch your cock, it’ll be to make it into a bronzed statuette before I bestow you with the Best Asshole Award.”

  Kit eyed him with wary cynicism. “I’m not gay, so you can’t call me closeted.”

  Great. Just great. He threatened to rip the guy’s dick off, and Kit fixated on the part about his sexual orientation. “I have news for you, Kit. The way you enjoyed my tongue rimming your puckered pink hole last week makes you one of two things: bi or gay.”

  “That’d feel good if anyone did it,” Kit said. “Just because we’re…doing this research thing doesn’t mean I’m gay. It doesn’t count.”

  “Research?” Fisting his hands in his own hair, Jeremy stomped away, groaned his frustration to the ever-blue sky, and stormed back. He jabbed a finger in Kit’s chest. “I don’t care if you wear white to your coming-out party and pretend to be a virgin, but you’re gay, Kit. G-A-Y. Gay! So gay, fairies everywhere will weep that your machismo avoided their gaydar for so long.”

  The busboy stuck his head out the screen door and gaped.

  “Get on the fucking bike.” Kit ground the words to powder between his teeth. “And shut up.”

  NOT GAY. NOT gay. Not gay.

  Accelerating so they became nothing more than a Doppler whine to any lingering paparazzi, Kit felt Jeremy clutch him hard. The second time they’d ridden together, the duffel rested between them. Now, without the separation, Jeremy’s thighs seemed to squeeze him. Steel arms banded around his middle, a wall of sculpted chest muscle pressing close, Kit barely noticed the oncoming tow truck in time to swerve. For some reason, the near miss only pissed him off more, and he increased his speed in the heavily trafficked area until Jeremy shouted, “Slow the fuck down!”

  Red lights and sirens screamed out from a side street as they neared the lot.

  Fuck.

  He sped up, hoping to make it through the gate and onto private property before the cop caught up. When another cruiser barrel-assed from the other direction and screeched to a halt, cutting off the road and the studio gates, Kit knew they’d nailed him.

  He slowed, jammed the bike to a halt, and lifted his helmet. Right now, his face constituted his best weapon. Half the city owed his father a favor, or would want to, and chances were these guys were no different.

  One cop remained in his vehicle while the other—the one who’d originally tagged him going a seventy in a forty-five—stepped out of his car but left the lights flashing. Jeremy sat very still on the back of the bike. So still Kit wondered if he even breathed, but he didn’t have time to care as the glossy-booted officer stepped up to them and stared through his mirrored sunglasses.

  “The Terminator lot is over at Universal,” Kit said, and Jeremy finally sucked in a breath.

  “Okay, wiseass, off the donor cycle. Hands on the hood of the car and spread your legs.”

  Feeling exposed, angry, and more than a little out of control, Kit complied, but his mouth kept right on running as he pressed his palms on the warm hood.

  “Sorry, Officer. I mistook you for a real actor. How’s the cop-on-cop action going on lot three?”

  “Jesus, Kit. Shut the fuck up, will you?” Jeremy squeaked out the directive, apparently finding his voice.

  As if hovering above the scene, Kit watched as the cop grabbed his wrists, twisted them behind his back, and slammed the side of his face to the hood.

  “Do you know who I am?” Kit pulled the indignant-star card and wondered why he didn’t feel scared. Just full of self-affirming testosterone.

  “Officer?” Greg’s voice sounded from the sidewalk before his polished black loafers came into view. “If I may?”

  Kit felt the cop’s hold lessen slightly. With more than one A-lister on the scene, it behooved him to be careful, and they all knew it. While a police cam rolled in the car, Kit knew it only picked up the officer slamming him face-first into the hood but not his saucy comments. It’d take very little star power to make this look like police brutality.

  “Harris working for you today, Mr. Falkner?”

  The cop tipped his hand, showing he knew who he talked to and who he held by the scruff of the neck. Kit recognized the signs of a deal being offered, however subtly.

  “He is.” The quiet rumble of Greg’s voice reminded Kit of the far-off drone of thunder. “And I’d like to offer my apologies for his inconveniencing you today.”

  The officer let go, stepped back, and Kit straightened. His glance met Greg’s, then skittered away when he caught the barely veiled wrath pulsing along the corded tendons in the screenwriter’s neck.

  “We’ve been filming a difficult scene—very emotional—and I’m afraid it has a few of the actors out of sorts.”

  Kit snorted.

  Out of sorts? Who said that shit?

  Leaning sideways to speak in his ear, Greg let loose the barbed tines of a warning. “Simmer down, or I’m going to beat your ass like your daddy should have.”

  Swallowing at the threat and reddening at its implications, Kit backed up a step and let Greg clean up his mess.

  “Tell you what.” Greg faced the officer again and fished a white card from his wallet. “You write Harris here the ticket he deserves and impound his bike. I’ll give you my personal cell number, and we can talk about your concerns when everything cools down.”

  Kit closed his eyes. Twelve and grounded. That’s how he felt. Not that he’d ever been grounded. His parents probably knew better than to bother trying. Either that or they just couldn’t trouble themselves with more energy than it took to fork over the bail money when he got into trouble.

  “I guess we could do that.” The officer took the card between his fingers and slipped it into his back pocket. “But this other guy has a helmet violation too. It’s going to take a few minutes to get all the information.”

  Greg glanced to the lot, and Kit knew the cop had just told him that if the paparazzi caught them all out here, the deal was off. He’d have too much explaining to do to his superiors if this shit storm hit the six o’clock news.

  “Come on in while you do what you have to do.” Greg motioned the officer toward the gate, and then slung his arm around Kit’s neck and squeezed tight as they walked. All the while keeping up a companionable chatter Kit wouldn’t have known him capable of. “You look like you could stand to get out of the heat. Ever had the doughnuts at the canteen here? They’re excellent.”

  After they’d brought the vehicles past the gates, including Kit’s bike, Greg snagged day passes for the officers at the security booth. The cops would then be free to wander the sound stages and get inside access to people they normally only saw on the ass end of rehab before a trial date. All this meant Greg would be busy for a while…and miss out on chewing Kit’s ass until he could get into wardrobe and back on the set. By the time Kit saw him again, he’d have cooled down. He hoped.

  Having fronted more than half the budget for this film, Greg also worked as its executive producer. If he hadn’t known his job included doing favors for everyone from the boom operator, to get him not to complain about unauthorized union overtime, or the key grip, to get her not to tattle to the tabloids about walking in on an adulterous star, then he worked in the wrong business. By the time Kit reached wardrobe, he’d almost convinced himself he had nothing to feel sorry for. Until Jeremy stepped into his path to remind him.

  “It all feels like an act to you, doesn’t it?�
��

  A golf cart laden with cadet uniforms in dry-cleaning bags whirred past, and he had to step closer to Jeremy to get out of the way. Jeremy took a step back into an alcove, presumably to preserve his personal space.

  “What’s your deal?” Leaning a shoulder against the wall, Kit looked around casually to gauge the distance between them and a potential eavesdropper. “You liked the speed last time we rode.”

  “What’s my deal?” Eyes bulging, Jeremy jabbed a thumb into his own chest, then pointed a finger at Kit’s. “What’s your deal? This area’s much busier, and it’s not a straight shot. Do you have a death wish?”

  “Look,” Kit pushed a hand through his hair. “Falkner’s already gonna ream me. Can we save the parental crap till after I’m bleeding out my ass?”

  “I just hope I get to watch,” Jeremy muttered, stepping back a pace and folding his arms over his chest.

  “Watch what?” Greg’s voice rumbled in Kit’s ear, and he whipped around.

  Kit saw the stony expression on the man’s face, and his adrenal system issued the warning, run!

  “Gotta get to makeup,” he said, trying to step around the man. Over six feet of solid muscle shot out an arm, blocking both him and Jeremy into the alcove.

  Greg leaned in, and Kit backed up into Jeremy, who pushed him forward again.

  “Are we ever going to have this problem again?” Greg asked.

  “No.” Kit’s brain screamed at him to add the word sir for good measure, but he clamped his jaw shut on a strangled sound.

  Pushing away with the hand he’d braced against the wall, Greg nodded once and walked away.

  “Jesus,” Kit whispered, staring after the screenwriter’s broad back. “Do you suppose he lives on the beach to dispose of the bodies easier?”

  Greg pivoted on his heel and stalked back toward them. Every fiber. Vein. Muscle. Sinew. Every molecule of his being froze when Greg said, “I chose it for the riptides.”

  Puffing out his cheeks, Kit expelled a breath and muttered, “Sorry.”