The Devil’s Road event was being held at the Beverlido Hotel, a former eyesore on Sunset Boulevard that some supermodel’s architect husband had restored to all its 1950s Copacabana-ish glory. Kathy and Simone were getting ready in the women’s staff locker room. As Kathy helped her with her red bowtie, it hit Simone anew, the futility of it all. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering,” she said. “I’m out on Monday, anyway.”
“Don’t be that way,” Kathy said, which made Simone remember Dylan Leeds’s line from the radio ad, and at last she felt it wash over her—the relief of recognition.
“Julie Curtis,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking about Dylan Leeds—from the movie. She sounds exactly like this girl I went to high school with. . . .”
For one frozen moment, Simone was in eleventh grade again—sitting on the couch in Julie’s living room in Wappingers Falls, splitting a can of Budweiser they’d stolen from the fridge and watching Nirvana singing “Lithium” on MTV Unplugged. Simone could taste the beer, cold and bitter, could hear that strumming guitar and that pain-filled voice, and then she could see the tears running down Julie’s face . . . tears for Kurt Cobain. Ten years later, Simone felt the same strange emotion she’d experienced back then . . . that combination of awe and envy. Julie feels everything so strongly. She’s a little more alive than everybody else.
Amazing how memories worked—how something that happened so long ago could just flip back in front of you like a dog-eared page, as bright as ever. “I wonder what she’s doing,” said Simone.
“Voodoo, obviously,” Kathy said. “She gets paid to do love scenes with Chris Hart.”
“I wasn’t talking about Dylan Leeds. I meant Julie, from my high school.” Simone stepped back and smoothed her red butcher’s apron, dropping her microcassette recorder into one of the pockets. “You know, you’ve mentioned voodoo three times since I’ve known you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s rush week at my coven.”
Simone smiled.
At the end of the bank of lockers stood a full-length mirror. Simone and Kathy moved toward it and checked out their reflections. “You’ve really got a great look for this job,” said Kathy.
“Please.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Even the punk haircut works. It’s like, you don’t want to be sweet. But, try as you might, you just can’t help it. Know what I’m saying? ”
“Not really.”
Kathy patted her on the back. “Nigel can’t fire you. I won’t let him.”
Simone said, “You’re a really nice person, Kathy.”
“No way. I’m a huge bitch.”
As they started out the locker room door, Kathy said, “Oh, by the way, have you ever cater-waitered before?”
“No. Why?”
She grimaced. “Never mind. You’ll see.”
“For the fifth time, the vegetarian pot stickers go on the green trays and the shrimp pot stickers go on the pink ones,” said Erika James, the owner of Erika’s Edibles. Her face was inches away from Simone’s, like some kind of tiny drill sergeant with an unnatural food obsession. “Green! Vegetable! Pink! Shrimp! Is that too hard for your itty-bitty mind to grasp?”
Frustration was worming its way into Erika’s every feature. Beads of sweat dotted her hairline, and the tips of her glossy black pixie cut were starting to curl. Her skin was as pink as one of the shrimp trays.
Yes, Simone was a bad cater-waiter, but it wasn’t the fifth time she’d been told about the trays. It was the second; third, tops. Regardless, Erika was overreacting.
Technically speaking, she was working for Simone, not the other way around. A former acting school classmate of Kathy’s, the caterer had agreed to “hire” the two women for the night’s event, in exchange for three thousand in cash.
So she had no right to complain. Zero.
The other cater-waiters kept giving Simone pitying “I’m so glad I’m not you” looks, but they didn’t know the half of it. She had around ten dollars in her bank account on a good day, and now she was about to lose her second job in a month—probably the last journalism job she’d ever have—all because she’d crossed paths with Neil Walker, a world-class, picture-on-a-Wheaties-box-level liar. Before long she’d lose her lease, and her bank account would sink to negative numbers. And she would have to tell her family.
Some bribe-accepting bitch telling her where to put the shrimp? That was the least of Simone’s problems. . . .
“Let me ask you something,” said Erika. “Do you have to work hard to be so stupid, or does it just come naturally?”
But it didn’t make things any easier. Without a word, Simone placed the three errant pot stickers onto a pink tray and moved out of the kitchen. “Where do you think you’re going?” Erika said.
“Bathroom,” Simone said between her teeth. “Be right back.”
Simone swung open the kitchen door and walked into the ballroom, with its pale pink walls, mammoth chandeliers, and black-and-white-tiled dance floor, sleek and gleaming. To walk through this room was to walk into a time capsule—she half expected Ricky Ricardo to hop up on the bandstand and sing “Babaloo”—and Simone would have been impressed, had she not just let go of the last, frayed thread at the end of her rope.
Her footsteps bounced off the hard tiles—click, click, click—as she made her way to the far end of the room, where Kathy was setting up one of the open bars.
“I have to leave,” Simone said.
“Erika’s being mean, huh?”
“That’s the understatement of the century. It’s like a scene from Mommie Dearest in there.”
Kathy removed the last bottle of Swedish vodka from a crate and placed it on the black bar. “It’s not you,” she said. “I know Erika, and she’s just . . . she’s a guilty john.”
Simone looked at her. “A what?”
“You know. The guy who hires the prostitute, fucks her up, down, and sideways, and then slaps her around and calls her a filthy whore.”
“Oh.”
“Erika’s betraying her clients and she feels guilty as hell. So what does she do? She takes it out on you. She blames the poor hooker.”
“Okay, I get it. Wait . . . hooker?”
“But let me tell you something, sister. You’re not going anywhere. You’re gonna do our pimp proud today. You’re gonna unclamp those knees of yours and start screwing like a champ. And guess what? He’s gonna stop beating the crap out of you. He’s gonna tell you he loves you and buy you some nice bling.”
Simone had to smile a little. “You really know how to work a metaphor, Kathy.”
She pulled a piece of paper out of her red butcher’s apron and unfolded it. “I got the guest list,” she said. “Let’s go over it, see what kind of leads we can look for. Whatever news we pick up, you get all the credit.”
“Oh, Kathy. You are so ni—”
“Yeah, yeah. You told me.”
The Devil’s Road party was being hosted by Chris Hart and his wife, Lara Chandler—or as the media referred to them, Clara. They were major A-list talent, but Z-level tabloid fodder. Married for eight years, they were considered Hollywood’s happiest couple. “Believe me,” Kathy said. “I once spent two weeks in my car, staking out Clara’s house with binoculars from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every day. Nigel wanted one fight. One lousy little spat, and I couldn’t even get that.”
She moved a manicured finger down the printed list. “Let’s see,” she said. “Looks like there’s a bunch of humanitarian types here. Clara’s way into the Big Picture these days. You saw them both on Nightline, right?”
Simone nodded.
“Nelson Mandela. Boring. Coupla senators . . . Schwarzenegger . . . Meryl Streep . . . Come on, where are the stars?”
“No reality show people?”
She shook her head. “I hate this class-act bullshit. Wait . . . Jason Caputo!”
“The director?”
“Oh, right. For a s
econd I thought he was that new guy on One Tree Hill. . . .” Her eyes scanned the page.
“I wish Blake Moss was coming,” Simone said.
“I hear he’s having a party tonight,” said Kathy. “Now that I would like to infiltrate. Get this. Blake’s fuck palace used to belong to Mary Pickford! There’s something almost . . . blasphemous about that, don’t you think?”
Holly’s voice popped into Simone’s head. And she needs a pedicure appointment for this party tomorrow night, and . . . “Emerald Deegan was supposed to go to a party tonight,” she said. “I wonder if it’s the same one.”
“Let’s not talk about Emerald,” said Kathy, “or any members of her family.”
“Agreed.” Still, Simone couldn’t help but think about Emerald’s deepest, darkest secret. If she had betrayed Holly, if she’d written up a story about Emerald cutting herself, about the knife collection, the scars . . . the Asteroid would have had a real exclusive. It would have blown Walker’s “Hoarding Disorder” story out of the water.
Simone couldn’t believe she was thinking this way, even for a second. She could hear Deegan saying, Treat my little girl fair . . . and she wished she could slap herself. Then she wished she could slap the next awful thought out of her mind: Did you treat me fair, Wayne?
Maybe it was for the best that Simone was about to lose this job.
Kathy was reading the list. “Quincy Jones, Dylan whatsherface, couple of designers, Miranda Boothe. She always wears something trashic, but we need more than fashion police stuff. . . . Oooh. Dale Waters.”
“Who?”
“You know, the hottie from that boy band . . . um . . . crap. I can’t remember their name, but one of them is gay. They’re white. Kinda hip-hop, but very sweet and earnest? You know which band I’m talking about, right?”
“No.”
“Well, trust me, they’re way big. Let’s see . . . George Clooney.”
“Really?”
“Don’t hold your breath, he’s shooting right now. Brad Pitt—same.” Kathy folded up the list. “Let’s just hope Dale does something spicy. I’ll make his drinks extra strong.”
Simone said, “Kathy, this is hopeless.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I have this feeling like my head’s on a chopping block. The blade’s hanging over me, and no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to impress Nigel, it’s just a matter of time before it falls.”
She raised an eyebrow at her. “Now who’s working metaphors?”
Simone tried to smile, but she couldn’t. She heard the kitchen doors swing open, and Erika shrieking, “That is not the bathroom!” And she didn’t even bother turning around. She kept walking, straight and deliberate, out of the ballroom toward the hallway that housed the staff elevators.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?!” Erika called after her.
Simone didn’t reply. She just hit the elevator button and walked in, wondering if there was any point in ever coming back.
“Chris, Chris, Chris!”
“Lara!”
“Lara, over here, love!”
“You guys look great!”
“How does it feel to be Sexiest Man Alive?”
“Are you pregnant?”
Simone hustled past the crowd—paparazzi and newspaper stringers and eager young reporters from the glossy celebrity weeklies, pushing and shoving and flopping all over each other as they jockeyed for quotes, glances, anything at all out of Clara.
From where she was, she couldn’t see the superstar couple, just the backs of all the press people, which made the scene all the more desperate and bizarre: a feeding frenzy with no food.
Staring at the writhing bodies, she couldn’t help but wonder if one of them belonged to Neil Walker. But that wasn’t his style, was it? Why do real work when he could wait in the parking lot, jump one of the reporters, and swipe her tape recorder?
Simone shook her head, walked past the red carpet toward the parking lot. You win, Walker. Hope you’re happy. Times like this, Simone wished she smoked. It would have given her something to do, something else to think about as she stood away from the sparkling gowns and popping cameras and those inane, shouted questions, at the entrance to the dank, hot alleyway behind the hotel. It would have given her something to focus on besides her thoughts.
Like a slap, she felt it again . . . that chill sensation at the base of her neck, that feeling of being watched. But before, it had been Walker, and now . . . What would Walker be doing back here? She turned, searched the alleyway, then listened. . . . There was no sound, save a faint rustling in one of the rusted Dumpsters lined up against the windowless brick. Rats? Clearly, this was the Beverlido’s bad side.
She turned back around again, gazed down the block at the parking lot . . .
“Simone.”
It came from directly behind her, a hissing whisper in the alleyway. But when she spun around and looked, no one was there.
“Simone!” The whisper was more insistent now, like a ghost shouting her name.
“Over here.” It was coming from the Dumpsters. She moved into the alleyway, and when she got to the middle bin, she saw the lid was cracked open, saw those malamute eyes peering out of the dark space. “Elliot?!”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nigel,” he said. “He heard some heroin rumor about that boy band kid, Dale Waters? This alleyway is where everybody likes to shoot up, so . . .”
“So he’s making you stake it out . . . from there?”
“Best view in town,” he said. “Plus, while I’m at it, I can look for needles.”
“God, you’re a . . . good sport,” she said. Even from outside the bin, the fumes were getting to her. And the longer she stood in front of it, the worse they got—the rotting corpses of uneaten meals. “How can you stand this?”
He held up a gloved hand, the tin of rose salve clasped between his thumb and forefinger. “Man’s best friend,” he said. “What are you doing outside the hotel?”
“Getting a little fresh air,” said Simone, which under the circumstances was pretty ironic.
“Well, I’m glad I caught you. Listen,” he said. “I feel really bad about what happened to you with the Deegan story.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“I wish I could help you get on Nigel’s good side. But I don’t think he has a good side.”
Simone smiled. “That’s okay.”
“So . . . anyway . . .” Elliot cleared his throat. “I, uh, I got you a little something. To cheer you up.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“Hold out your hand.”
He slid the other arm through the narrow space and dropped something into Simone’s waiting palm, something light and cool and surprisingly delicate.
It was a silver bracelet, dotted with six large square-cut rubies.
Simone gasped. “Elliot . . . I can’t—”
“Sure you can,” he said.
“But this must have cost—”
“Didn’t cost a dime.”
“What do you mean?”
“Found it in Destiny’s trash.”
Simone cringed.
“I sterilized it,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“I don’t know, Elliot,” she said. “It’s beautiful and all, but . . . wearing jewelry out of someone else’s garbage . . .”
“Don’t knock it,” he said. “One time, I was going through Madonna’s cans. Found a Cartier watch. Sold it on eBay for ten thousand bucks.”
Simone held the bracelet up to the light. “They’re real rubies, huh?”
“Yep.”
She remembered her phone conversation with her mother. I can afford my own plane ticket. Even though she could afford nothing; even though she was about to lose her new job before it even began. She fastened the bracelet on her wrist. It was beautiful. Probably the nicest thing she’d ever owned. And whether or not it came out of a stripper’s g
arbage, it might just pay her rent for a few more months. “Thank you, Elliot.”
“Nothing dead in her cans, by the way. In case you were wonder—”
But he stopped when he heard approaching footsteps, a man’s voice saying the word “alley.”
“Shit. Someone’s coming,” said Elliot. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get in!” Without another word he was opening the Dumpster lid, and Simone was pulling herself up and in, holding her breath all the while.
ELEVEN
Too bad she couldn’t hold her breath forever. Simone had never sat in on an autopsy, but to her way of thinking, there was no way it could smell worse than the inside of this Dumpster. Plus, it was hot in here—a good twenty degrees hotter than the ninety-degree day progressing outside, which baked the stink, making it even more unbearable. Like Elliot, she was standing up, overstuffed garbage bags huddled around her feet. She hoped none of them were leaking; she did not want a souvenir.
Elliot handed Simone the rose salve, and she rubbed a glob of it under her nose. They both stood there, quiet, Simone trying not to audibly gag as the footsteps neared, and the man’s resonant voice said, “What is going on with you, babe?”
“Nothing,” a woman’s voice replied. “I just . . .”
Carefully, Simone and Elliot cracked the Dumpster lid.
“You just what?”
“I’m tired of sneaking around.”
In perfect sync, Elliot and Simone pressed their bodies against the metal, peered through the crack.
The woman said, “I feel dirty, Chris,” and Simone registered what she was looking at: Chris Hart gazing intently into the eyes of someone who was not Lara Chandler . . . not even close. The woman’s hair was light blond, the virtual negative of Lara’s famed raven tresses. She wore a strapless gold lamé dress, revealing a tattoo on her left shoulder blade. And that voice, that accent . . . Simone reached into her apron pocket, plucked out her microcassette recorder, and turned it on.
Hart said, “You don’t look dirty to me, Dylan.”
Dylan Leeds.
“You know what I mean.”
With his free hand, Elliot slipped a camera phone out of the pocket of his cargo vest and took three pictures, Click, click click.
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