Hollywood Hit

by Maggie Marr

  Nikki shook her head but returned Liam’s smile. They’d met socially at Industry functions three or four times. They were on speaking terms, but still, she’d been surprised when he’d forwarded Jeb’s script to her with a note explaining that Jeb was looking for cast and a producer for the project. “I’ll take a water.” Nikki said.

  “Be right back,” Liam said. He slipped through a door within the office suite.

  Once the door closed behind Liam, Lydia turned to Nikki. “Don’t be intimidated by Bikram. He needs us more than we need him.”

  Nikki’s brow furrowed, turning her face into a question mark.

  “You own the script. You are a producer on the film. It’s your aunt who wants to star in the film—”

  “But—”

  Lydia held up her hand. “Stop. Listen to the facts. Worldwide will make this film with or without Bikram Shasta as the producer. While he has an option on the script, he hasn’t purchased it. He can’t, because he’d have to purchase it from you. Besides, Cici won’t make the film without you and Worldwide.”

  “My aunt is starring in my film,” Nikki whispered. This was a complete shift for Nikki. A shift from what she thought she wanted. Hadn't she been convinced that she'd get Boundless Bound made without her Aunt's help?

  “Bikram knows he can be kicked off the film. Which means he'll try to be an even bigger bully than he normally is.” Lydia scrolled down her phone, then glanced back at Nikki. “Don’t let him bully you. He thinks JP Anderson wants him on the film as producer, but JP doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Bikram. JP will do this film with me as a producer, or you, or any other hired gun that Worldwide wants to put on the project as long as Cici is involved. Bikram needs this film.” Lydia glanced around the paltry tiny office that was off Pico and in a medical building. “He needs this to get out of hell.”

  Nikki shifted in her chair. She twisted the opal ring on her right hand. Everything had changed in her world in less than twelve hours. She had a green-lit film with a world-class star and an amazing director and distribution.

  A sharp anxiousness, like a ball of pins, spun out in her chest and shortened her breath. Yes, she’d found the film and developed the screenplay, but it was Aunt Cici who gave the project lift. Nikki nibbled her bottom lip and glanced at Lydia. “I’m not sure I want to get Boundless Bound made this way—”

  “Don’t be a fool.” Lydia cut Nikki off. Her voice was harsher and her tone not nearly as light. Her dark eyes latched onto Nikki and the sparkle cut hard; her eyes glittered as though they could cut stone. “You found something good in Boundless Bound and turned it into something amazing. Do you know how long and how hard a producer looks to find a script like this?” Lydia’s cheeks sharpened and her lips formed a tight pert pucker. She leaned toward Nikki. “Look, I get it.” Lydia lowered her voice to an intimate tone. “I was born into this business, my dad ran a studio. I didn’t want to get handed everything either—I found my first script by myself too, but nobody gets here alone. It isn’t cheating, it’s using your talents and your connections. I had help, everyone does. Get over it. Get Boundless Bound made and move on.”

  “Ladies.” Liam stood in the open doorway. “Bikram is ready for you.” Liam handed Nikki her bottle of water and gave her a smile that seemed to say good luck.

  *

  Bikram Shasta was a big, foul-looking man. Pasty face. Doughy lips. Little hair. His eyes were sharp, beady brown stones set into this face.

  “Lydia!” Bikram said and lumbered from behind his messy desk. “It’s been years.” He grasped both her hands and kissed each of her cheeks. “What—when was the last time I saw you?”

  Lydia cocked her head, trying to pull up a memory, “Maybe the premiere of Seven Minutes Past Midnight?”

  “Yes!” Bikram pointed a finger at her. “And then you went off to run a studio.” Bikram settled his undefined mass into a chair next to a couch in his office. “How’d you like that job?” Bikram asked with a coy smile—a smile that seemed to say running a studio could be the worst job in the world.

  “Running a studio wasn’t for me,” Lydia said with a shake of her head. “I’m thankful to Ted I got to do it, but I much prefer producing than pushing papers.”

  “Ah,” Bikram said. “I agree.” He locked his gaze onto Nikki and his eyes roamed over her body.

  A slimy feeling traced along her skin as if Bikram’s eyes left a trail. Nikki ground her back teeth together with the feeling of this man’s gaze upon her. She kept her smile plastered to her face and reached out her hand to greet him. She’d been eye-fucked by Bikram. She would definitely need a shower.

  “You look exactly like your aunt,” Bikram said and clasped her hand in both of his. A cool chill raced down Nikki’s spine. She didn’t like this man—not at all. “Minus the red hair, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Nikki said and sat on the couch beside Lydia.

  “And it would seem that you, too, have the Solange gene for picking good material,” Bikram said. “How long did you and Jeb work on the script?”

  Nikki cleared her throat. “About three months.”

  “Three months. That’s impressive. I found it about a month ago. A remarkable piece of material. I’ve read some of Jeb’s other work—your notes must have been excellent because Boundless Bound is by far the best thing he had.”

  With the mention of Jeb, red flashed in front of Nikki’s eyes and she fought the vision of him facedown in his pool.

  “Such a tragedy,” Bikram said. He shook his head and his lips turned down. “And how it happened. I hear you found him.”

  Nikki looked into Bikram’s eyes. “Yes,” she said. Had he asked that question to throw her off, because the memories now swirled in her head?

  “This entire production will have to be dedicated to him—his memory. But we must soldier on.” Bikram reached his hand toward an empty bowl. The bottom glittered with salt and broken nut shells.

  “Liam,” Bikram shouted. “More nuts!” Bikram picked up the bowl and ran his fingers along the inside until the tips were glazed with the glittery dust. He inserted his fingers one by one into his meaty mouth and sucked. Bikram's tongue danced around his digits and looked like a calf on its mother’s teat.

  “Lydia, tell me why you’re here?”

  “As a mentor,” Lydia said. Her voice was solid as though she dared Bikram to ask any other questions.

  Liam swept into the room and placed a bowl filled with pistachios on the end table. Bikram handed Liam the empty without any acknowledgement. His still-saliva-slicked, stuffed-sausage fingers grasped a handful of the pistachios from the bowl. He opened his maw and tossed them into his mouth. Bikram didn’t bother closing his mouth as chewed.

  “You couldn’t ask for a better mentor,” Bikram said. Chunks of chewed nuts decorated his teeth.

  “And a producer.”

  Bikram stopped mid-chew. A cold smile emerged over his nut-covered teeth. “Of course. Mike Fox wants you to babysit the film and me.” Bikram turned his hard gaze from Lydia and directed it toward Nikki. “What do you think your role ought to be on this production?”

  Nikki’s heart slammed in her chest. She was pinned beneath the predatory stare of this bulbous man. Bikram’s look, Bikram’s question, they were a test. She would either step up and be the producer she wanted to be or she’d be treated like the tagalong kid on the production of Boundless Bound—her opinions worth nothing, an unheard voice in the wind.

  Nikki locked her eyes onto Bikram. She didn’t smile. She didn’t hedge her tone. She didn’t ask him to buy what she was selling—which deep inside she didn’t yet believe—instead, she told him in this moment how it was going to be. “I’m the producer,” Nikki said. “I own the script. My aunt will star and my uncle’s studio will finance.”

  The smile on Bikram’s face shifted. A hard gleam lit his eyes. He wasn’t happy with her words, but alongside his irritation something else built, maybe a disgruntled respect. Bikram shifted his
gaze to Lydia. “Smart like her aunt too.”

  He raked his eyes over Nikki, as if looking for a vulnerability of which he might take advantage. He perused her for some weakness, some lack of self-confidence, some flaw. Nikki held steady under Bikram’s gaze. Finally his eyes released her. For now.

  “Well then,” Bikram said and dusted the glittery speckles from his hands. “I guess the only thing left to discuss is when do we start?”

  Chapter 20

  The Tattler Tells Tales

  AKA

  You Can’t Hide Your Past in Hollywood

  While Deadline Hollywood was where everyone in entertainment went for Industry news, The Tattler was where everyone picked through trash. Time spent dumpster diving for celebrity mishaps and sordid details that were often swept under the rug.

  Nikki’s heart hammered inside her chest and a slick, oily feeling filtered up from her belly and into her throat. She pressed Play and her eyes widened as she watched the video of Aunt Cici and Hannah Hendricks. Hannah wore her makeup and hair just short of Valley-stripper. She leaned forward and asked Nikki’s aunt about not only the death of Nikki’s mother and the death of Jeb Schmaltzer, but also the charges against Nikki when her mother’s pedophilic boyfriend had tried to not just undress Nikki with his eyes but also with his hands.

  The story beneath the video held too-accurate details of the events that had unfolded in a Tennessee trailer that horrible night. Details that were meant to be sealed to protect the then-minor Nikki Solange. Details that Nikki had shoved so far and so deep into her psyche that now upon the reopening and the reading, the edges of her brain began to crack.

  Her knees trembled. The tremor spread out through her body. Her hands shook. She couldn’t seem to grab the necessary air and her chest heaved up and down. Nikki gasped for oxygen. Her lips trembled as her eyes ate up the words on the screen. The words that everyone in Hollywood would digest. Words such as gun and rape and drunk and alcoholic and illegitimate and gunshot wound and neglect and abuse. Words Nikki had buried with the painful memories. Words that dropped deep within her and with their sharp spikes yanked from her inner core the memories of that night.

  They used a picture of Nikki from her freshman college ID, her hair cut in an unflattering chop for which she’d managed to pay only $22.95. That ID picture, no matter how unflattering, didn’t cause her heart to beat in an erratic fashion; it was the picture of the man, the arrest photo of Calvin Geckler, pasted beside Nikki’s image on the Internet page that caused deep swells of fear to rumble through her.

  Mean eyes stared out from the long, lean face. Black hard beads, empty soulless holes above his sharp nose and hard-angled jaw. Deep hollows beneath cheeks were witness to what had once been a good-looking man, but the worn-down dead look in Calvin’s eyes testified to the inequities of life, the scraping and clawing and nearly not getting by, as well as his alcohol and drug abuse.

  Nikki’s lips trembled. She’d not looked at that face since she’d watched two sheriffs lead Calvin in handcuffs from a Tennessee courtroom and toward a jail cell. A cell he’d inhabited for nearly eight years, thanks to his long list of prior incarcerations and the then attempt to rape Nikki while her mother lay passed out on Jägermeister and Vicodin at the other end of a twenty-year-old trailer.

  Eight years wasn’t long enough. Five thousand miles wasn’t far enough. The article laid out the release of Calvin into society and how “this reporter had tried numerous times to reach Mr. Geckler for comment.” But to no avail. Not even Calvin’s parole officer seemed to be aware of his whereabouts. A discrepancy that kicked the Tennessee justice system into overdrive, if the word “overdrive” could be attributed to anything in Tennessee. Due to his disappearance, once again Calvin Geckler was a wanted man. A man whose whereabouts were unknown. A man with a deep grudge and nothing to lose. A man who caused Nikki Solange to quake in her shoes. A man who had phoned on more than one occasion. A man whom Nikki Solange would do nearly anything to never have to see again.

  Chapter 21

  Shine Bright Like a Diamond

  If requested, any man would bring jewels to Celeste “Cici” Solange. Harry Winston himself would bring the baubles of bling anywhere in the world for Cici. She was married to one of the world’s wealthiest men and she was one of the world’s biggest stars. Bling was Cici’s business. Diamonds were a necessity for the continuous parade of red-carpet events which Cici and Ted were required to attend. While any purveyor of gems would come to Cici, today Cici had wanted to go to the HW. She wanted to escape the confines of her rarified air atop her Bel Air hill.

  Cici’s latest film, Concession to Her Delight, was scheduled to release next week, therefore the premiere was in three days. Two days after the premiere, Cici’s golden film—her Oscar film, Boundless Bound—went into prep. She’d waited the requisite time to allow the paps to move past Jeb’s demise, past the tale in The Tattler, past all the muck and on to something more sordid. In the past two days there’d been two divorce announcements, one rehab check-in, and a high-speed drunken car chase on PCH. The press had moved away from Fuckface’s death and the spilling of Nikki’s adolescent near-molestation.

  Cici’s driver pulled to a stop behind HW and she peered out the window. A few looky-loos and a paltry number of paps decorated the alley. She could definitely get into the boutique without too much of a fuss, but it was always getting out of the store that took some real finesse.

  Her driver opened the door and Cici skirted her way past the two photogs who jutted their cameras in her face while yelling questions. Some were obscene, some were innocuous, most were downright rude. This was the trade-off she made to be a successful actress. Give up privacy for work. Freedom for fame. Anonymity for assholes.

  HW’s staff knew Cici would be visiting the store. They’d been prepped and in return they’d readied a private suite for Cici. She slipped down the side corridor to the back room in which the jewels and two behemoth security guards—each packing, she could see their bulges—plus Ted, waited for her arrival.

  Warmth coursed through Cici and her heart bounced about her chest. Ted. She loved Ted with his gray hair and sharp blue eyes. His lips perked up into a smile when Cici entered the room. She’d had lovers—athletes, film stars, musicians; she’d had another husband. She’d known the sexiest and the wealthiest men in the world and still this man who stood a bit stiff and appeared a bit stuffy in his handmade suit caused her heart to ka-thwap against her ribs. Ted comforted her. He made her feel secure. His love was a constant. Absent from his devotion were the dramatics that in the past Cici had made the mistake of thinking were love. He was stoic and at times closed off, maybe even a bit secretive, but there was an absolute trust that Cici maintained with Ted. Everything Ted did he did for her benefit and never to her detriment.

  Ted reached out his hand. Cici grasped his fingers and a jolt rumbled upward through her body. He pulled her forward and she molded herself to him. His gaze locked onto her before his lips found hers. The heat that seared through her was always the same—never ending, never finishing. Even after years as a couple, Ted’s touch sent a desperate and hot energy pulsing through her body.

  “You made me wait.” His voice was gruff against her ear.

  “Not too long,” Cici purred. His was a possessive and an all-encompassing love. A love into which Cici comfortably nestled.

  He turned his gaze from Cici and toward the long gilded table on which lay multitudes of navy velvet. On each swath of fabric lay a giant bauble.

  “I had them bring in some things I thought you might like.”

  Cici’s eyes widened at the sight of the jewels. She loved diamonds. No matter how many she owned, nor how many she borrowed, she loved the glitter of a magnificent stone.

  Hypnotized by the bright diamonds that surrounded her, Cici settled into the chair. Without a noise, one of the HW staff settled across from Cici, her job to help and answer questions and quite likely take an obscene amount of money from T
ed. Cici’s fingers clasped an emerald-decorated cuff. None of the pieces had prices. With Ted prices were irrelevant. Cici was meant to pick what she might wear to the premiere. HW would lend any jewel to her as she would only enhance the value of the piece with the multitude of photos that would be taken. But Ted—well Ted, as he so often did, would most likely purchase the pieces she chose to borrow. He’d also watch her and see what she liked, where her hand lingered, and then he’d have that little bauble of bling wrapped and sent to the house as a surprise. Ted stood behind her. The hot traces of his eyes marked her neck. Theirs was a constant connection that jumped and pulsed when they were near each other.

  Cici picked up a slim diamond-filled hoop and slipped it over her wrist. She held her hand and he examined the sparkles that decorated her arm.

  “How’d the meeting go with Nikki?” Ted asked.

  A smile curved over Cici’s mouth. Not only was Ted giving her jewelry, but he was giving her, with his studio’s financing of Boundless Bound, the opportunity to finally win her Oscar.

  “She seemed shocked, excited, and a bit relieved.”

  “Relieved?”

  “She thought I was expelling her from Los Angeles.”

  “Might not be the worst idea,” Ted said.

  Cici slipped the cuff from her wrist and turned to Ted. “Not an option,” Cici said.

  “I am aware,” Ted said.

  Cici’s love for Nikki was limitless. She was the only family that remained for Cici. Cici had done her sister and her niece few favors when Nikki was young. When Lacey Solange, Cici’s older sister, had died, the deluge of guilt had flattened Cici. Her heart ached for her motherless niece, a young woman whom, Cici had barely known.

  “Lydia is producing with her?”

  Cici nodded. “With that horrible Bikram Shasta.” A shudder shook Cici’s shoulders. The man was a beast—a horrible human, a cross between a garbage dump and Jabba the Hutt. “Thank goodness for Lydia. She’ll be able to contain Bikram. Plus Nikki will learn so much from her.”