He flashed a sly smile. “And she has hired Jim Flannigan.”
I lightly slapped his shoulder. “You already knew all this.”
“Brian, George, and I talked about it last week.”
Once we were out on the road, John seemed distracted and finally blurted, “Sam, has Paul paid you yet?”
Uh-oh. So Paul was the distraction. “No. I think he’s having financial problems.”
“That doesn’t give him an excuse not to pay you. You could sue him for breaching the terms of your contract with him.”
“I try to stay away from lawyers.”
“Look, I set George straight about Paul, that if they fire him, I’ll pay whatever is stipulated in his contract.”
“Don’t do this because of me, John. It would just piss him off and give him more reason to hate me.”
“It’s not just about you. We want the filming to go smoothly. Paul is toxic, and that energy can infect the entire process of making the movie. The bottom line is that we can fire him as producer if he keeps the money.”
I didn’t want to talk about Paul. I was burned out on the subject, fed up with it, done. I changed the topic by asking John about his son. His face lit up when he talked about Nick and his fiancée, and I just let the sound of his voice flow over me, through me, and found it enormously calming.
“How long will they be here?” I asked.
“Just until tomorrow.” He looked over at me again. “They really wanted to visit the set and watch some of the filming, but both of them have midterms. I told him that when we shoot in Brooklyn, he and Nina can visit the set all they want.”
“When do you think the Brooklyn shoot will happen?”
“My guess is June.”
“You mind if I ask you a personal question, John?”
“Ask away.”
“What did you do before you ended up in Hollywood? I mean, I know you sold real estate in Manhattan, but was that the main thing you were doing before?”
“A lot of things. But selling high-end real estate in Manhattan is how I made most of my money. After I advised Brian not to buy that penthouse in Manhattan, he told me to get out of the stock market before everything crashed. And I did.”
“Why’d you advise him not to buy?”
John looked amused. “You always ask so many questions, Ms. DeMarco. You are very inquisitive, my lady.”
“These days I am. But I don’t mean to be inquisitive.”
“Of course you do, Ms. DeMarco.” He smiled wide. “My advice was really a gut feeling. The asking price was ridiculously high; I knew Brian wanted to turn it around in a few years, and I just felt he would lose money. Turned out I was right. The people who finally bought the place paid the high price and then couldn’t sell it when the market took a dive, and it ended up in foreclosure. I came out to L.A. to see Brian, had some money to invest, and put it into one of his films.”
“That’s quite a journey.”
“It’s had its twists and turns, that’s for sure. You mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Ahh, your chance to be inquisitive, Mr. Steeling,” I laughed. “Ask away.”
“Your books, all the stuff you write about. Was it all true?”
“You already asked me that back when we met.”
“Yeah, I know.”
In the past when people have asked—like that Rick guy from People—it annoyed the shit out of me. Now that John had asked twice, I was thrilled. Go figure. “Yes. Next question.”
“How’d you survive that kind of childhood?”
“My grandmother, a lot of hope, and the belief that I could write my way out of Brooklyn.”
“Is Tony still doing time?”
“As far as I know. Or ever want to know.”
“And your husband actually ended up in a psychiatric ward?”
“Yes.”
“But he still had the smarts to make his insurance payments.”
“He loved his daughter. I think that was his motivation. Even after our marriage fell apart, I couldn’t leave him because of Isabella. I felt it would mess her up.”
“Because your own father abandoned the family.”
“Right. What about you? Are your parents still alive?”
“I never knew my birth parents. I was adopted when I was six months old. My adoptive parents have both passed on.”
“Were they good parents?”
“Nope.”
He said it with a hardness in his voice that suggested bitter memories, so I didn’t pursue it.
“What about your father?” John asked. “Has he ever contacted you?”
Interesting. My moment of truth. How much did I want to confide in this man? It was one thing to lie to Isabella to protect her. But if I lied to John, what would I be protecting? An image of myself ? My Hollywood image? What kind of bullshit was that?
I didn’t have an image. I was who I was because of what I had experienced, and Vito was a part of that experience. But suppose John told King and Prince the truth about my father, that he was alive, had harassed me twice, and that I’d had him arrested? Would they cancel the movie because of it? Of course not. But the real issue was whether or not I trusted John.
What’s it gonna be, bubelah?
“One night back in April, this haunted, scrawny man showed up at my front gate and announced that he was my father,” I said, and the rest of the horror story tumbled out.
John listened without interrupting. He didn’t even interrupt when the story about Vito melted into recent confrontations with Paul. By the time I’d finished talking, we were in the parking lot in front of La Playa, and John just sat there staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
“Look, I’m telling you this so you understand who I am. My history with relationships pretty much sucks, and a shrink would probably say it’s because Vito abandoned my mother and me. Maybe there’s some truth to that. But I’m working on overcoming it, and the steps I took in dealing with Vito have helped. With Paul . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know. That’s part of an inner pattern, too, I guess. I attract men who aren’t what they initially seem to be.”
“Paul’s an asshole, Sam. Don’t blame yourself for what’s happened with him. When I came on board with this film and met him for the first time, I told Brian that he was the wrong producer for Brooklyn Story. But Brian feels a particular loyalty to Paul because he brought your novel and screenplay to Gallery. If Gallery does The Suite Life, which I think they will, it will be after I’m part owner. So you can be sure Paul won’t be producing it.” His hands dropped to his thighs. “And I think you handled Vito well. Has he been in contact since his arrest?”
“No. Hopefully, he went back to New York.”
“Hungry?”
“Starved.”
He leaned toward me then, touched the side of my face, and kissed me. “If I weren’t so damn hungry, I could sit here all night with you.”
As if in response, my stomach rumbled. We both laughed, got out of the car, and walked toward the restaurant, holding hands. A simple thing, but I liked it. His hand was warm and large, and made my hand feel like a small, sleepy creature nestled inside of it. For some strange reason I had a sense of peace and safeness with him. Again, that familiarity. It never left when I was around John.
• • •
La Playa looked like a large beach shack—just one wall where the S-shaped bar was, and everything else open to the elements. The last of the evening light spilled across the water and sand where a dozen tables were set up. Music played softly in the background, a catchy, Hispanic rhythm that made me want to tap my feet.
John gave his name to the hostess, said we were expecting two more people; she showed us to a table for four on the beach, beneath a pair of palms. A waiter came over immediately with
menus, a bucket of ice that held four chilled bottles of Metromint water, and a basket of warm rolls.
“This is gorgeous.” I slipped off my shoes, ran my toes through the warm sand.
“I bet you just slipped your shoes off.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Because I did, too. If you look around, you’ll see that nearly everyone does that out here. My theory? It’s the kid inside of us that just can’t resist doing it.”
“Before I left Brooklyn, I could count on one hand how many times I’d gone to the beach.”
“Brighton Beach, right?”
“You got it. And it sure as hell didn’t compare to this.”
“Not many beaches do.” He opened two bottles of water, filled our respective glasses.
Beneath the table, his toes brushed mine, then moved in a little closer, brushing them again, moving away, a little dance of toes that felt strangely and deliciously intimate. Now his toes were caressing the tops of my feet.
“Something seductive about sand, isn’t there?” he asked.
“Very.”
Our eyes held in that way they had the first day I’d seen him in that café. Then the moment was broken when a handsome young couple—Nick and Nina—strolled over to the table. Nick looked like a younger version of his father—longish hair, a neatly trimmed beard, the same intense eyes, but he stood about two inches taller. Nina was a slender five seven, with wavy blondish-brown hair and skin so olive toned it was like the color of a saddle. When she smiled, dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m such a fan,” she gushed as John introduced us. “Just loved your two books. So Brooklyn and Wall Street!”
“Thanks so much.”
They sat down, the waiter returned, and John ordered a bottle of Sassicaia. “It sounds like they’ve got a great cast for the movie,” Nick remarked. “Does it get any better than Sarandon, Batiste, and Conte? Wow.”
We traded set stories. Nick and Nina talked about a documentary they were working on, about being in film school, how they hoped to move to L.A. when they graduated. They were young people with big dreams, and their enthusiasm was infectious. I couldn’t wait to get back on set Monday morning.
The waiter returned with our wine and a plate of tapas, and John’s toes came looking for mine again, and inscribed a secret language on the top of my feet. It felt erotic—until either Nick’s toes or Nina’s brushed against ours. I quickly moved my feet back, closer to my chair.
It hadn’t taken John long to figure out how to play me. Even though my body craved his, I didn’t want to sleep with the man yet.
The tables around us were now filled, customers spilled out from the bar onto the sand, the bar was jammed with people, the music got louder. When John started to refill my glass of wine, I shook my head. I had spent way too many dinner parties with Alec during which four-hundred-dollar bottles of wine had been consumed like water. Been there, done that, no, thanks.
“Do you have any idea where the restroom is?” Nina asked.
“Nope. But let’s go find it.”
“Be right back, guys,” Nina said as we got up.
“Oops. My shoes.”
I slipped my sandals back on, grabbed my purse, and Nina and I made our way through the crowd in search of the restroom.
Maybe it was the two glasses of wine I’d had on an empty stomach, but the press of bodies, the music, the laughter, and chatter suddenly reminded me of a dinner Alec and I had had in the very early days of our relationship. We had eaten like gluttons and had drunk Tattinger champagne, plus several bottles of wine, and talked for hours. In the end, what difference had any of it made? In the end, I was just one of his many possessions. The only difference was that I was kept in a much grander and more expensive way.
Where did John fall in this picture? Was he going to turn out to be a power maniac with a raging appetite and fierce temper? It seemed unlikely right this second, but what the hell did I know? I’d made so many mistakes in the past that I felt I could no longer trust my own judgment about men.
Nina and I finally found the restroom, a door out back, behind the bar. As far as restrooms went, it was pretty cool—dolphins and palm trees painted on the concrete walls and some cool slogans. My favorite was the opposite of Murphy’s Law: If anything can go right, it will.
Nina pointed it out and exclaimed, “That’s my motto!”
Most of the time, at least with men, my life had pretty much proven that Murphy’s Law was the norm—If anything can go wrong, it will. So I decided my new norm would be the first slogan, Nina’s motto. I repeated it to myself: If anything can go right, it will. I repeated it silently in my mind, like a prayer to the Blessed Mother, to Buddha, to Christ, to whoever was listening.
“Nina, do you think it really works like that? That your motto is how your life unfolds?”
We were standing at the sinks when I asked this, and her pretty brown eyes met mine in the mirror. “If it’s your deepest belief, then yes. If it’s just something you say because it sounds good, then no. A belief is something you feel. Here.” She brought her fist to her heart. What you say comes from here.” She touched her temple. “You see what I mean?”
“Not really,” I replied.
Nina turned to face me, her expression earnest, her model’s body taut with tension. She placed her hands on my shoulders. “Sam. We all carry emotional baggage. For some people, that baggage sculpts and defines their lives forever. But for other people, that baggage falls away when they realize that our point of power lies in the present. Now. It’s the only certainty. This instant. This breath.”
I just stood there, blown away by her words. I mean my faith was solid, without it I would not be where I am today, but she was half my age and so far beyond me in wisdom that I was speechless, which I rarely was. “That’s how you break past patterns?”
Her arms fell from my shoulders; she reached into her handbag and withdrew a brush. Then she turned to the mirror and drew the brush through her hair. “My uncle first raped me when I was twelve. It continued until I was fifteen. He was my dad’s brother, a real shit of a human being. Fortunately, my parents believed me, and my uncle is now doing twenty years in a Connecticut prison. But it took me a long time to turn my beliefs around.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Read, attended seminars, blogged, went to film school. Internally, I could feel things shifting. And then I met Nick and realized I’d had to go through everything I’d gone through so that I would be in the emotional and spiritual space where a relationship with someone like Nick would even be possible.”
“What do you think of his father?”
“Love him. He and Nick have a great relationship. Even when John did time, he and Nick . . .”
Blood pounded in my ears. I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Did time? John had done time? Shit, for what? I couldn’t ask for details because she would realize this was the first I’d heard of it. So I tried not to look surprised. I tried to act as if I already knew that he’d done time. I wished the pounding in my ears would stop.
John lied to me.
He’s like all the others.
Then we were moving out of the restroom, back into the crowd toward our table and dinner. But I had lost my appetite. I was instantly and totally sober. I just wanted to go home, back to my sanctuary, and curl up and sleep.
We navigated our way through the growing crowd of customers, and before we reached the beach, I spotted two men and a woman standing by our table, talking to John and Nick. My heart nearly stopped. Prince, Paul, and Jenean Conte.
As we approached the table, Paul glanced around and glared at me. I didn’t look away from him, didn’t cower, didn’t give any indication what I felt just then, which was unmitigated anger that he kept showing up wherever I was. “Hey, you all,” I said.
&n
bsp; Jenean and I hugged hello. I introduced her, Prince, and Paul to Nina. Nina didn’t know anything about my history with Paul and invited them to join us. This elicited a snarky smile from Paul, who was already looking around for some chairs to pull over.
“Thanks,” Jenean said. “But we can’t. We’re meeting Susan and Camilla to discuss some scenes in next week’s shooting. You’re going to be on set, aren’t you, Sam?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
A waiter came over and told Prince their table was ready. After a chorus of courtesies, Prince herded Paul and Jenean to their table, four removed from ours. Paul glanced back just once, his eyes shooting daggers at me.
Yeah, fuck you, too.
John stared after him, his mouth as flat as a dash, his expression as inscrutable as stone.
Our meals arrived, the dinner chatter went on, but I didn’t say much. My mind was stuck on the fact that John had done time and had never mentioned it. I wondered what he’d thought when I’d confessed I attracted men who weren’t what they initially seemed to be.
That would have been the moment when he could have said, Listen, Sam I want you to know that I did time. But he hadn’t.
Now and then, as I picked at my meal, barely tasting it, I felt Paul glancing our way and wondered if he realized just how close he was to unemployment. I decided right then and there to tell Brian King that I hadn’t been paid, that Paul had breached his contract. I suddenly didn’t give a shit if he was fired.
“Oh, my God,” Nina said. “There’s Susan Sarandon and Camilla Batiste. Sam, how weird is that? Sitting at that table are the women who’re playing Grandma Ruth, Joan, and Samantha Bonti. Your novel has leaped to life.”
I looked over at the table, and, yeah, it was unnerving. Sarandon saw me and waved, then Camilla turned around, and they got up and came over. Both women were recognizable, and even though celebrity sightings were fairly common in Malibu, they drew looks from other customers.
John introduced the women to Nick and Nina, who were obviously starstruck. Then Camilla said, “Sam, Susan and I have a question.”
“Several questions,” Sarandon said. “But you first, Camilla.”
Hello Hollywood Page 13
