by Reiss, CD
A man stuck his head in. “Your family’s here.”
I didn’t waste a minute before walking out to the lobby. Tom was there, his monochrome face in a room that finally matched him. Irving had shown up like a beat-up knight on an old brokeback horse, so quickly that traffic must have parted before him. I didn’t know what family meant to me until they came when I needed them. I was so surprised and relieved to see them, I hugged them both so hard I thought I’d break them.
“He didn’t do anything,” I said after the first greeting. “He was trying to get them so we could burn them. And I keep telling them that, but they won’t let him go.”
“I shouldn’t have developed them,” Tom said.
“You saved my life. If you hadn’t put them under my nose, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“Yeah, well. I came to see you, but also…” He rolled his eyes, indicating the room at large. “Gotta tell them my side.”
“They wouldn’t put you away for it,” I said with an edge of desperation.
“I was a year younger than you, dorkhead.”
“Still are,” Irving said. “Go talk to the fuzz and get it over with.” He nudged Tom toward the sign-in desk then pulled me to a plastic chair.
“Can we not, I don’t know, talk about this?” I said.
“Sure.” He picked a magazine off the little linoleum table. “Personally, what you did when you were fifteen is your own business. Are they letting you go?”
“I guess I can go any time. I have to sign some stuff, but I want to wait for Michael.”
“You like him.”
I nodded. “If anyone else had gotten picked up for this, we’d laugh about it in a week, but him? This could hurt him, so I have to make sure we look like a united front. You know, so the public knows I’m not mad at him or anything.”
“Speaking of the public, they’re waiting outside. Your peers, I mean.” He licked his finger and flipped a page of celebrity news. “I’m going to ask the obvious. How do you like being on the other side of it?”
I looked over his shoulder at the magazine. Britt with a roller in her hair. Brad wearing white in winter. Fiona with ice cream on her shirt.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“I don’t think there’s a precedent for this, so do whatever you have to. Do whatever is right.”
We sat there another few minutes. Tom waved as they led him to a room to tell the story of his forgotten camera and an exposed roll of film. Irving didn’t ask about the pictures, and I tried not to think of them being distributed. I hoped that they hadn’t been. I didn’t know how I’d function if people knew.
Yet it seemed foolish to hide. If they were out, they were out. I wasn’t that girl anymore. She was scared and lonely, sensitive and breakable. I’d broken her and put her back together, myself.
Just me.
And Irv.
And Tom.
And Hollywood.
I wasn’t that girl anymore, but I loved her.
Why shouldn’t she have a voice in all this? Why should I leave it to Michael’s machine and the police? Hadn’t that girl been silenced long enough?
I took a deep breath and stood.
Irving looked up at me. “What’s on your mind?”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t want to be talked out of it. I knew what Irving would say. He’d say I didn’t know what I was doing. He’d say I was being impulsive and that I’d get in trouble. So I walked out the door without saying anything.
I was still in last night’s dress. The shawl had gotten lost somewhere. Michael’s house, or the police car, or any of the ten rooms I’d been shuffled between. Didn’t matter.
They saw me through the glass door, and twenty of them called my name, their faces obliterated behind flashes and cameras. There was a video camera among them—I could tell by the constant flare from the left. Fill lights on such a cloudy day would keep the pictures from being flat. Toby or Franco were behind the fill if I had my guess. I pushed the door open and stood on the precinct steps alone in my pink dress. I folded my hands in front of me and stared into the lights. Clickclickclick a tempo in unexpected rhythms, like fusion jazz.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, Miss Cartwright,” a few said in unison like a third-grade class.
I laughed, remembering that I liked my job and I liked those guys. I got them. I shielded my eyes from the lights. “Who’s got the vid rig?”
“Me,” a voice shouted.
I recognized the accent. “Franco! Hi! Renaldo? You there?”
“Right here!” came a voice in the front.
I saw his bald head shining and waved. “Take your strobe down. It’s not that cloudy.”
Laughter.
“Laine!” shouted a voice I recognized as Bart’s. “What’s happening with Michael? Did he buy kiddie porn?”
“Technically?”
“Come on!” Renaldo said, adjusting his dials. “What else is there?”
“He was protecting the person in the pictures, guys. You know him. You’ve worked with him. He’s not a pedophile.”
Another voice piped in before I even finished. Kyle? Lennart? “You the moral support?”
What was it about being in front of those cameras that made me feel peeled open? I couldn’t tell whether it was that I knew the men behind them or the universal desire to be seen and loved, but I wanted to answer what was asked so that it could be known finally. I felt the power to protect myself and him in just a few words. I could finish all of this nonsense.
“Yeah, Laine? Why are you here?”
“Because I’m the girl in the pictures.”
I didn’t have much else to offer. A bunch of explanations went through my head. In the split second where I decided to reveal more, I felt a hand on my arm. I looked over. A man in his fifties, in a suit, with a perfectly proportioned smile.
He turned to the cameras. “All right, guys. You got your pictures. You’ll know what you need to, when you need to.”
“Thanks, Ken!” Renaldo shouted as everyone put their rigs away.
I was led back into the building by Ken, who didn’t leave me much of a choice. It wasn’t until I was under the cold, hard fluorescents and Ken was in front of me that I lost the sense of control and ownership I’d clung to.
“What was that?” he asked.
Behind him, clusters of men and women in uniform passed by, making him seem as much a part of the system as the cops themselves.
“That was me. Why?”
“People like you keep people like me in a new Ferrari every year.”
I crossed my arms, suddenly cold. “What’s the problem?”
“Now that you told the world there are pornographic pictures of you? What could be the problem?”
“Michael got them.”
“They were digitized. That’s how they got onto your phone. No?”
They’d been crappy photos of photos, but yes. They’d been on my phone, which meant easily distributed. And found. I’d never trusted Jake, so it shouldn’t even be a question that he’d upload the pictures if he could turn a dime off them.
I felt small, weak, and unprotected. I closed my eyes as if no one could see me if I couldn’t see them.
“What should I do?” I whispered into the darkness.
“My job is to protect my client. But a bit of personal advice? If I were you, I’d go home and change out of last night’s dress. And don’t look at the internet.”
34
laine
Irving pulled up in front if my building.
“Think of it this way,” Tom said from the backseat, “everyone who gets the pictures was looking at an underage girl. They’re going to catch a lot of real sickos.”
I nodded and opened the door. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Thanks, guys. It meant a lot to me that you came.”
“We should come up,” Irving said.
“No, I just want to go to bed. Would you ca
ll me later?”
“Sure.” He hugged me from the driver’s side.
Tom got out to do the same. “Call. I mean it.” His hair flopped in the wind.
A shutter went off behind me. I cringed.
“Lonnie!” Tom yelled. “You asshole!”
He brandished his middle finger and charged the pap, our friend and colleague, and Lonnie backed up. But Johnny, Red, Allie, and others I couldn’t identify also scattered.
I went up the steps, Dave following on bent knees with a clickclickclick. I kept my head down and walked into my building. My head stayed down in the lobby, in the elevator, in the hall, and as I opened my door. I dropped my keys on the floor with a clatter. I locked the door behind me, stepped out of my shoes as I walked, peeled off my stockings across the room, and tried to unzip my dress but couldn’t without stopping. So I kept walking to my bed. I pulled back the covers.
I hadn’t hid under the covers in years. I hadn’t hidden behind or under anything since I’d left my final foster home to tool around with the motorcycle crew out of their little dump in Whittier. When Mister Yi, the dad with the sweater factory, hadn’t liked the way I linked a seam, I’d hidden. When the OCD mom in Studio City had yelled at me for leaving milk on the table or putting toilet paper in the toilet instead of the trash, I’d hidden. And in Westlake, where Tom and I were ignored, then moved, then moved again, I just hid when I had to and lashed out the rest of the time.
I’d stopped hiding so definitively at one point that I forgot I’d ever done it, until I thought about the pictures and people finding them and men looking at me like that. As I stood over my bed, ready to hide, I stopped myself. I wasn’t hiding.
As safe as I felt under the covers was as safe as I felt with Michael. He was my under the covers. He was my Los Angeles. Let them all look at me. He was mine.
35
michael
I walked out of the precinct with an unblemished record, thanks to my legal team and Laine explaining what had happened to the LAPD. I walked past the paparazzi as they shouted. I fingered the phone I hadn’t seen in hours.
“Hey, Michael! Have you seen Laine’s pictures?”
I froze. Ken yanked my arm, and my lawyer nudged me so subtly no one would have even noticed in the photos. A black car waited with an open door. Gali nodded at me when I got in.
“She’s about to be more famous than you,” Ken started before he’d even sat all the way. “They’re finding the pictures faster than we can send out DMCA notices.”
“How do they know it’s her?”
He poked at his phone then pocketed it again. “She told them.”
“No. No, she didn’t.” I was filling space. Obviously she had.
He took the phone from me. “It’s all over YouTube.”
He handed back my phone, with Laine on it under a white triangle. She stood against the backdrop of the concrete police station steps, her hands pressed together in front of her. I pressed the triangle.
—Hi, Miss Cartwright
She shields her eyes with her forearm.
She corrects their lighting.
Laughter.
—What’s happening with Michael? Did he buy kiddie porn?
—Technically?
She stalls, but it’s obvious she’s looking forward to telling them something. The cameras are eating her alive. She looks stunning, larger than life. Like a rare, escaped bird perched proudly over the city. Star quality. She had it.
—He was protecting the person in the pictures, guys. You know him. You’ve worked with him. He’s not a pedophile.
She loves her big reveal. It’s all over her face. She loves telling them I’m innocent. The camera sees all of it.
—You the moral support?
—Yeah, Laine? Why are you here?
—Because I’m the girl in the pictures.
And just like that, it ended on her complete lack of fear in the truth, and the triangle reappeared over her.
“She didn’t know they were out,” Ken said. “That Jake is a real piece of work. Stupid and smart at the same time. The prosecutor is making jail time his life’s mission.”
“How did you let that happen?”
“Let it happen? She’s a free agent, Mike. You knew this.”
I leaned back in the seat. “I’m starting to want to do things her way. I’m getting bogged down in the rules.”
“You’re already in breach of contract with Big Girls. A party’s not a party for you. It’s an obligation. And the big stuff? Conduct unbecoming. You’re turning into a liability on Bullets in the middle of a schedule killer.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re a public relations nightmare right now. That’s not what the studios bank on.”
I had no answer, because he was right. I was the good guy. I didn’t get taken in for buying kiddie porn, and I didn’t fail to do one interview, one junket stop, or one party. That was a big part of the reason I was paid so well and hired so easily. No one had to worry about me. No one had to spend money covering my tracks. No one had to spin my Saturday nights into Sunday’s public apology.
All of that was about to change.
Would I become like my father? A dead weight for a decade or more because I couldn’t find work? He had all the money he needed, but he wasn’t working, and I was about to have the same problem.
I dialed her number. I needed to hear her voice. I needed to tell her to wait for me, to not do anything or speak to anyone until I came to her. She didn’t answer the phone, and I found I was glad. I had to think, and I couldn’t. I hung up. I didn’t want to leave a message in front of Ken and my lawyer, who only pretended he wasn’t paying attention.
“I need her pictures to go away,” I told Ken.
“Keep associating with her, and they’ll keep looking for her pictures. They’ll never die.”
“You’re not getting it. That’s not an option. Joe.” I turned to my lawyer. “Can you represent her?”
“Conflict of interest.” He put down his phone and looked at me with a nod of understanding. “I know someone though.” He took out his wallet and sorted through a handful of business cards. “Tough as nails. Never loses and has zero patience for dirtbags.”
“Good.” I took the card. It was just a name and a number. As if saying more was unnecessary.
“Mike,” Ken interjected. “You keep me on retainer for a reason. This kind of thing? It’s chaos, and chaos happens to everyone at some point. I manage chaos. I calm it down, or I turn it to my client’s advantage. That’s my job. That’s why you need me. And believe me, I don’t need your money. Fire me the way you fired Gene, and as a businessman, I won’t care. I have plenty to do. But you’ve been with me since you were eighteen, and I care about what happens to you. The stakes are high now, and if you go off the deep end now, if you spiral into a pit, and I can’t stop you, I’ll feel…” He motioned with his hand, spinning it at the wrist.
“Guilty?” I offered.
“Close enough.”
“And in your professional opinion, I should no longer see Laine?”
“If you want to protect the both of you.”
“And if I continue to see her anyway?” I asked.
“There might be more chaos than I can manage and more than either of you can handle. That’s my professional opinion. You can have any girl you want. Just pick another one. A pretty one who won’t sabotage your career.”
I respected Ken. He knew his job, and he wasn’t the biggest jerk I’d met over the course of my career, but what he was suggesting simply wouldn’t work for me. I couldn’t imagine thanking Laine for a nice time and walking away. I couldn’t imagine never seeing her again, never being surprised by her, never witnessing her delight and her darkness, her impulsiveness and her cynical wisdom.
My phone buzzed. I was sick of it. I was about to shut it off, but it was my mother, who was probably worried sick that she’d raised a pedophile. “
Mom? Hey, I—”
“Gareth is at Sequoia Hospital. His liver. He didn’t even take a damned drink, but it’s failing.”
I forgot about everything but getting to the hospital on time.
36
laine
That blanket over me was cinnamon-scented and invisible. I padded around on bare feet, in my robe. I felt better, slightly untouchable, and inside a sphere of safety.
I’d gotten a text from Michael.
—Wait for me—
I could do that. As much as I wanted to run out and shoot frame on top of frame, that was the wrong thing to do. I needed to lie low for his sake and wait until it could be sorted out. I didn’t look at the internet. I exercised a level of self-control so rigid I pulled the cable out of the wall. If I saw myself on the feeds, I knew I would be paralyzed.
I felt good about that. Relaxed, even. I knew what to do.
I pulled up the photos I’d taken of him in the upstairs loft. He was so perfect on my screen in all his thirty-inch glory. I’d forgotten what he had been explaining at that moment, but he looked calm, yet on edge, as if anything could happen. I smiled, a warm feeling radiating from my chest to my fingers and toes. I edited the digitals on autopilot, wiping away imperfections with my stylus, little marks and flecks, the little chapped spot on his lower lip, gone gone gone.
Those lips, on my body, moving between my legs and on my mouth, the scent of my arousal on them. My bones liquefied as I thought about it, as if the scaffolding that held me up had gone viscous and warm. When he looked through the screen, I realized he wasn’t looking at the camera. He wasn’t looking at an audience. He wasn’t acting or faking. He was looking at me, and that elation in his eye was mine.
I undid all my changes and went back to the raw image. Those blemishes weren’t imperfections. They were perfection itself. They were part of my experience of him, which was three-dimensional, alive, dynamic, and flawed.
I layered the image on itself and blended it so the defects weren’t covered but more apparent. I touched up the image until I could practically smell him, and his skin was as textured as it seemed when his face was an inch from mine.
