Whack. Corey thumps his mallet into the wall again. So the trip to the Florida Keys has been put on the backburner indefinitely. His relationship with Lola is hitting its stride so there is no way he’s going to leave LA. They have a great time together and he’s as happy as he’s ever been. He’s even talked to her about his mother, which has been a difficult but positive experience. His only concern is what he’s going to do with himself after this reno is done. Should he start a chopper-for-hire business? Apart from the fact there are already a bazillion guys in LA doing just that, he’s been flying his whole life. He’d like to try something different for a while. He just doesn’t know what it is.
On the plus side, Spike likes Lola and Lola likes Spike. She doesn’t seem to give two hoots that he talks to his dog. He tries to keep it to a minimum around her mates and work colleagues, but no one appears to give a stuff. That’s one of the great things he’s found about the entertainment business in Los Angeles. Eccentricity, and by eccentricity he means outright craziness, is not shunned here, but celebrated — especially if you’re successful and making people money.
Rhonda scoops up a load of rubble and drops it into the bin. The landing, though not a success in the ‘did you save the aircraft?’ department, was a big success in the ‘did everyone live?’ department. There were a few minor injuries — some cuts and bruises, and one guy broke a finger — but that was it. Not only did it burnish her already impressive reputation, but it snapped her out of her Orion simulator funk. She has yet to perfect it, but the experience of flying and landing the 737 had changed her thinking enough so that she now felt comfortable improvising when things went south.
She has Severson to thank for that. As usual, he came out of the whole thing smelling like roses. His impromptu post-crash speech was filmed by one of the grateful passengers on a mobile phone, uploaded to YouTube and has been now been viewed over fifty-seven million times. With his increased profile, he has been tapped to lead the Mars mission’s crew selection committee. Having been happy to say previously that a decision was ‘above his pay scale’ so he could shirk responsibility, Severson now finds himself at that higher pay scale — with the extraordinary responsibility of deciding who will be the first human being to set foot on the red planet.
Since 7/27, she’s been going the lovey-dovey with Judd often and unprompted. She now understood the simplest thing, which her father never did: tell the people you love how you feel, every day, because you never know when the cabin will suffer an explosive decompression.
Whack. Judd swings his mallet again and dislodges another chunk of the wall. Once he’d passed the counteragent to the federal authorities they’d synthesised and distributed it. The petroleum companies began adding it to their supplies five weeks after 7/27, though it was another month before people felt completely comfortable about driving or flying again, particularly in Southern California, where winds and weather had spread the virus widely. With its fifteen-year half-life, the counteragent would be in use for the foreseeable future.
If anyone stopped to ruminate on the planet’s reliance on fossil fuels, it certainly wasn’t obvious to Judd. People were just happy to get back to business as usual. So Zac Bunsen had caused a great deal of heartache and almost destroyed the city, but had failed to change much of anything.
If Judd and Corey had been famous previously, they were bona fide superstars now. Even before the Atlantis 4 movie started shooting, Twentieth Century Fox signed them for a sequel based on their adventures on 7/2.7. There’s no title yet but Judd is leaning towards Ignition, the studio likes 7/27 and Corey thinks Combustion could be a goer.
Principal photography on the Atlantis 4 movie is slated to begin next week. The announcement, which brought them to LA in the first place, was rescheduled for next Monday. That’s why Judd and Rhonda are in town — and how Corey lassoed them into helping with the reno.
Ding dong. The doorbell rings.
Lola pulls the dust mask down around her neck. ‘I’ll get it.’ She moves through the house and opens the front door.
On the stoop stands Scott Ford, movie star, the Blue Cyclone, looking sheepish. Lola regards him blankly. ‘What?’
‘I just — I came to apologise. Your assistant told me where you were.’
‘Well, I will kick his arse for that. I’m taking the week. No work.’
‘This isn’t about work. This is — I’ve been trying to contact you for three months. You didn’t return my calls or texts or anything.’
She stares at him. ‘Gee, I wonder why.’
‘Look, I was hoping we could have lunch and talk about it —’
‘You went sailing while I was trapped under a beam in a building. There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘I’m sure we could find something, sweetness.’ He leans in, lightly touches her forearm, smiles his four-billion-dollar smile.
Her tone remains even. ‘Get your goddamn hand off me.’
He removes it. ‘There must be some way I can walk this back?’
‘There really isn’t. But there is a way you can stop me telling the world what happened.’
Scott’s smile vanishes. Instantly. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Really?’
He studies her, realises she would. ‘What do you want?’
‘Three times in the near future I will call on you with various projects from my clients. They’ll be quality projects and you will say yes to starring in each one of them. You will make each movie for fifty per cent of your current quote because you “love it so much” — and you will do it with a smile.’
He looks at her, clearly chilled and excited in equal measure. ‘You are the devil.’
‘If that means I own your arse, then yes, yes, I am.’
‘Lola, is there a vacuum cleaner somewhere? There’s so much bloody dust. .’ Corey rounds the corner, his dust mask around his neck too.
Scott sees him and gets very excited. ‘Oh, man. Corey Purchase! I just finished your LA Times profile. What you did on 7/27 was amazing. You saved the city — the world, really.’
‘Oh, no.’ Corey waves it off. ‘You’d have done the same thing, mate.’
Lola looks at Scott, her expression inscrutable. ‘Yeah, you would have, wouldn’t you? If you hadn’t gone sailing?’
He ignores her. ‘So, how do you guys know each other?’
‘Corey’s my boyfriend.’
Suddenly Scott’s very uncomfortable. ‘Oh. Right.’
Lola isn’t. ‘Actually, Corey has an excellent movie concept he’s working on at the moment. A zombie-vampire mashup.’ She grins at Scott. ‘We should set up a meeting.’
Scott forces a grin right back. ‘Sounds great.’
‘I’m sure it will be.’
Scott jabs a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I should get…’
Lola nods. ‘Yeah, you should.’
Scott holds out a hand to Corey. ‘Really great to meet you.’
Corey shakes it. ‘Pleasure’s all mine, mate. What was your name again?’
Scott keeps shaking, crestfallen. ‘Scott. Scott Ford.’
‘Oh! Sorry. Didn’t recognise you without your tights.’
Scott pivots and leaves. Lola closes the door behind him. ‘Ba-bye.’
Corey watches him go. ‘Well, he seems pleasant enough.’