by Lexi Whitlow
“It’s okay,” Gates says softly, his voice soothing. “It’s really okay.”
It takes an interminably long time for the sickness to pass away. When it finally fades, I drop back onto the floor, feeling the cool tile beneath me. I’m weak as a fish, breathless. Whatever Gates said in the kitchen, I know he must be second guessing himself now.
I am such a complete fuck-up.
Gates turns on the shower water, then hauls me to my feet and begins stripping my clothes off me. I feel so dreadful I don’t even try to do it myself. I want to just disappear.
Did he really ask me to marry him? Twice?
When the water is warm he puts me in the shower, sitting me down on the stone bench inside.
“I’ll get you some clean clothes,” he says. “Be back in a minute.” He kisses the top of my head, handing me a washcloth.
I scrub myself and wash my hair, while Gates cleans up the mess I made. He doesn’t bat an eyelash at cleaning up puke or holding my head while I’m sick. He doesn’t care that my father will fire him. He’s not afraid of anything. It’s like he knows—he just knows—that somehow, he’ll always manage to figure things out and come out on top. He’s not afraid to take risks. He’s not afraid…
Why am I so afraid?
What can my father really take from me? I can find a way to keep a roof over my head. I have friends. I have some skills. I’m a decent person. The only thing my father has is money. I can live without a charge card. I can drive a shitty old car if I have to.
But if I’m pregnant, I’m going to need a lot more than a shitty car and a job.
Health insurance, for starters, is important when you’re bringing a new life into the world.
Later, after Gates has put me to bed and he’s sitting quietly with me, watching a movie, I reach for the remote, putting the film on pause.
Gates turns to me, question in his eyes.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“You make it through filming wrap, and then we’ll come out. It’s only a few more weeks.”
Gates heaves in a lungful of air, crossing him arms over his chest. “I’ll do it,” he says. “But only because you want it. I don’t understand why you’re so afraid of him.”
“I need him,” I say. “In case I really am pregnant. Kids aren’t cheap.”
Gates looks at me like I’ve just stabbed him in his heart. He turns back to the television, lifting the remote, restarting the film.
“Okay,” he says, making his face solemn. “Whatever you want.”
Now I’ve done it. I’m such a fuck-up. Now I’ve pissed him off too.
Chapter 16
Gates
The sun comes in over the hills, tracing bits of pale pink light into the room. I come full awake and sit up. Winter is sleeping beside me, her eyelids dancing; she’s dreaming. She’s also smiling a little. She’s so beautiful, she takes my breath away. And she’s killing me too.
She doesn’t think I’ve got what it takes to be a father to our baby. She doesn’t think I can do what’s necessary to provide for a family. She believes she needs her father for that.
I’ll be damned if that sick, manipulative, hypocrite is going to have any part in raising a child of mine. I won’t have it.
I have some ideas about how to change Winter’s mind. Her father has ripped all her confidence from her, and now he’s setting her up to believe that he alone can provide her with the kind of challenging work she deserves. The whole Branson thing was just part of his game. He may not know for certain that she was the one in the photo with me, but he suspects it. He decided to get her out of town, get her away from me, and up the ante, all in one play, and it worked.
Two can play that game.
I know people. I know people beyond Addison’s reach.
When I first got to New York looking for modeling work, I ran into a guy named Richard Kern. He was the man in the underground scene. He shot album pix for Lou Reed and Patti Smith back in the 1970’s, bleeding edge art-porn in the 80’s, alt-rock bands and hip-hop acts in the 90’s. Today he does all manner of upstart fashion and music scene work. Like Addison, he likes to discover new talent and make it famous. Unlike Addison, he’s not a raging hypocrite.
I type out an email to him, attaching a few images from Winter’s SEAL and Force Recon calendar shoots. It’s one in the afternoon in New York, but he’s probably not out of bed yet. Richard’s days generally begin about four in the afternoon, and don’t even start winding down until the clubs close and the nighttime creatures flood out onto the sidewalks of Manhattan.
I’m surprised when, just an hour later, I get a response.
“Call me.” It says. That’s all.
Winter is still sleeping, so I go up to the roof patio to make the call. I don’t want to wake her, and I don’t want her to hear what I’m talking about.
“I heard you were in LA,” Richard says, his voice like gravel run through a garbage disposal. “You’re an ambitious soul, I’ll give you that. I heard you got cast in one of Bill Addison’s family films.”
He’s right on all accounts, but I really don’t want to discuss my career. I ask him if he can help her.
“She’s got a good eye,” Richard admits. “How is she with people?”
“Good enough,” I say. “She needs a break. The locals won’t touch her. I think her father interfered. I was hoping maybe you could send her some work. Just something to get her started up again.”
“Why not?” Richard says. “She can’t fuck-up when working with fuck-ups. I’ll give her a call. Should I mention you?”
“No!” I say with emphasis. “Absolutely not. Tell her you saw her stuff online or something. I sent you her web address in the email.”
“Okay. Stay tuned.”
We end the call. I sit still for a few minutes, watching the Saturday morning traffic come down Laurel Canyon drive, slipping into Hollywood for brunch and shopping. The more I think about what Winter’s father did to her career, the angrier I get. I can’t fathom why he’d do it. Moreover, I can’t fathom why she doesn’t tell him to go get fucked.
That’s easy. Because she’s convinced she can’t survive without him. It’s Stockholm Syndrome. It’s the worst mind-fuck in the world. And the only way to break it is get the victim as far away from their captor as possible, then start showing them who their captor really is.
I have one more phone call to make.
Drew Ransom picks up on the second ring.
“Brother, it’s been awhile. What’s up? You win an Oscar yet?”
I skip the foreplay and go straight for the grind. “I need to hire you to do some digging on someone for me.”
“Okay,” Drew says, his jovial tone changing to business mode.
“Bill Addison, movie producer. CEO, Addison Productions. Anything you can find. And especially anything related to the business—or whatever it is—at this phone number; 310-597-3781. It’s an escort service of some kind. I get the impression it caters to some real creeps, like Addison.”
“What am I looking for, Vaughn?”
“Anything I can nail his born-again Christian, Neo-Conservative ass to the wall with. Anything and everything.”
“I’ll see what turns up,” Ransom says. “Man, you sound stressed. Are you okay?”
I tell him everything that’s going on, right down to the pregnant, secret girlfriend.
“You have an interesting life,” he laughs. “When’s the wedding? I need to get my suit cleaned.”
“I’ll let you know,” I quip. “You probably won’t need a suit. If Addison has his way, we’ll both need body armor.”
“I’ll come prepared then,” Ransom says, his tone softening. When it does that, I know he’s taking me seriously. “Is this guy fucking with you bad?” he asks.
“Worse,” I say. “He’s fucked mightily with someone I care about more than anything in the world.”
“Well then,” R
ansom observes. “He’s on my radar. I’ll be in touch.”
Drew Ransom has all the covert-ops tools of the entire United States intelligence apparatus at his disposal. If there’s grime to be found, no matter how deep it’s buried, he’ll scrub it out, turn it over, and analyze it for all its impurities. Something tells that what’s getting ready to be uncovered is going to turn out to be particularly putrid.
When I come back downstairs, I hear Winter. She’s on the phone.
I join her in the bedroom and sit down on the bed. She talking to her friend Margot. She looks up at me with concern.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
She softens.
“Margot, Gates is back. I should go. Thanks for calling me. I’ll let you know.”
When she puts down the phone I take her hands in mine, lifting them, kissing her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I know I have a long way to go before you think I’m ready to be a good father, but I’m going to prove to you that together, we can do it.”
“I know you’ll make a good father,” Winter says. “I also know it takes money. A lot of it. More than one film. My dad can—and probably will—kill your career when he finds out. And you don’t have a lot of other options.”
“You’d be amazed how resourceful I am,” I say. “For a long time, this seemed like my only choice. But it isn’t. But I’m not going to tell you, I’m just going to show you.”
Winter smiles solemnly. She reaches forward, lifting her phone. “The trolls and haters are back at it again. This is why Margot called.”
I take the phone. There’s a bunch of images of me and Keira from the set, arm in arm, in a deep kiss, then laughing, embracing. The captions below the images are all variations on the same theme; ‘cheating bastard,’ Dylan deserves better,’ ‘man-ho.’
The original images are posted from just a couple different social media accounts, but they’ve been shared and passed around multiple times, and picked up by the tabloids.
“Where’d all that come from?” Winter asks.
“They’re stills pulled from the dailies,” I say. “That’s a scene I shot with Keira this week. Thursday, in fact.”
Why would someone inside the production crew do this?
Thinking back on it, Keira was behaving even more oddly than usual on Thursday and Friday. She was hanging all over me, getting close. If the camera was running, she was draped around my neck like a cheap fox stole.
She was playing for the camera in more ways than one.
“My father isn’t going to be happy, but at least he can’t say you’re responsible for it.” Winter says. “I’d lay ten to one, Keira’s behind it. She mastered social media a decade before it was invented. It’s the only reason she’s famous now.”
Winter may be right, and I plan to find out, but right now I have more pressing issues to address.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
Winter shrugs. “So far, so good. I haven’t puked yet.”
“Will you be okay if I leave you alone for a few minutes?” I ask her.
She nods. “Where are you going?”
“Drug store,” I say. “To get a pregnancy test and some pre-natal vitamins, and then to the grocery store to get some things for lunch and dinner this week. I want you to stay here. You’re scared of your father, and I understand that. I want you to stay anyway. I’m going to take care of you, and feed you good stuff. You can tell your father whatever you want about why you’re not coming home, but I want you to stay here with me.”
“Gates, I can’t—”
“You can,” I insist. “And you will.”
I kiss her. “I’ll be back in an hour, I say. “There’s ginger tea in a pot on the counter I made for you, and some saltines with butter. Get something on your stomach if you can.”
I head out to the market, keeping an eye open for paparazzi and the errant stalker. Seeing no one who looks suspicious or appears to be following, I let my guard down. At the drug store I don the de rigeuer dark glasses and baseball hat, heading in to make my purchases. Heading out the same door I walked in, I’m confronted by a trio of paparazzi, cameras popping, asking me why I’m there.
I roll the bag in my hand over twice, concealing its contents as I brush past. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out they’re probably going to drop a twenty on the clerk inside the store to find out what I bought. I can already see tomorrow’s headlines, “Who’s the Baby-Mamma?”
Fame sucks on so many levels, I can barely keep up with it.
The paps stalk me around the grocery store too. Luckily my purchases there aren’t as damning. By the time I head out to the parking lot, my audience has grown to include some fans—of Dylan’s. They hiss insults at me.
“She’s too good for you!” one girl spits.
“You’re a fucking cheating bastard!” another screams.
The paparazzi eat it up, recording the whole thing for TMZ’s cable show and online audience, numbering in the many millions.
As I’m pulling out, another group of women trail me, shouting, “We love you Gates! Please come back!”
A few seconds later a cat-fight erupts in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s; a hair-pulling, tooth and nails brawl between my fans, who are grossly outnumbered, and the militantly nasty fans of Dylan Denali.
Good lord this shit is bizarre.
Back at my condo, I find Winter in the bathroom on the floor, pale and clammy from another round of morning sickness.
The pregnancy test is just a formality; I know she’s pregnant. I can feel it in me. Since she came to me yesterday, every nerve in my body has come to attention. My brain is firing with determination to protect her. I know it’s chemical; natures response to pheromones, but it’s no less real.
I’m determined to take care of this beautiful, precious woman—and our baby—at all costs.
* * *
An hour later, Winter is napping in my bed, curled up on top of the covers. She’s lovely, and peaceful, and pretty as a picture.
It occurs to me, I need a photograph of her. I don’t have any.
My phone isn’t exactly professional quality, but it’ll do. I compose a shot, then another. A few minutes later I have a whole gallery full of images of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.
Winter wakes up while I’m taking her photograph, but I don’t stop. Before I’m done. We’re both laughing as I play the bossy photographer, posing her this way and that, telling her how beautiful and sexy she is.
“Shut up!” she howls, laughing, throwing a pillow at me.
I lower the camera and climb onto the bed. “You are beautiful,” I say. “And smart. And talented beyond reason. And that’s why I love you. Because I never met anyone else like you.”
I kiss her, tasting her, pulling her scent into me.
Just then her phone rings.
Shit.
Winter lifts it, her brow furrowing. “It’s a New York number,” she says. “I don’t know it.”
“Well, answer it,” I say. “They already interrupted us.”
She answers, and I see her expression change from question to confusion, then to unreserved excitement.
“Yeah!” she says. “That would be great. Sure…”
It’s Richard Kern.
The call lasts longer than I expect it to, but I assume that’s a good thing. When it finally ends, Winter looks up at me with wide eyes, a beaming grin coloring her face, her cheeks pink with glee.
“I got a job!” she exclaims. “A photoshoot here in town! This guy in New York just called me. He saw my stuff online!”
“That’s awesome,” I say. “What is it? When is it?”
“Wednesday. It’s a band. Some punk band that just signed a record deal. He got the job, but he doesn’t want to fly out for a bunch of unknowns. He’s farming it out—to me!”
Perfect.
In a moment, morning sickness and fear of her dad are forgotten. She dances a
round the condo, bouncing on her toes, laughing with excitement and radiant energy.
That’s my girl.
* * *
After dinner, while I’m sipping Tennessee whiskey and memorizing lines for next week’s scenes, and Winter is researching everything she can find about this band she’s scheduled to shoot on Wednesday, my phone rings.
It’s Sam. I pick up quickly because I’m not expecting a call from her. She never calls on the weekends.
