“I want to be there for you, but I can’t. I can try to stay out of trouble,” I said.
“I’m not worried about you getting into trouble. I’m worried about trouble coming to you. I’m worried about spreading myself too thin. I have enemies all around me. Every man wants his own thing, and not every man can have it.”
I felt a light vibration at his hip. He ignored it and pulled his lips along my cheek, then to my ear.
“A bunch of my crew broke off. Is that enough for you to know?” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s my fault, and it’s going to take time to make right. I’ll have someone on you.”
“Will you come see me?”
“If I can.”
His phone vibrated again. We kissed briefly before he dropped me, stepping back to button up his pants then his jacket. He checked me out and, finding me presentable, kissed my cheek and took my hand.
Back in the loft, in the middle of the crowd, he kissed my hand then stepped back. He bumped a girl in a tiny skirt then Michael. Michael held up his hands, and Antonio did the same before he spun on his heel and walked out, one hand on his phone.
Katrina crept up behind me. “Got a live wire on your hands, girl.”
Michael passed by, a pretty girl on his arm, and said, “No dancing,”
I slapped his arm, but he walked to the dance floor with his new girl as if that sort of thing happened all the time.
thirty-one.
Someone knocked at my door early the next morning. Katrina still wasn’t home. I’d left the party twenty minutes after Antonio.
Looking out the window, I saw a bald man in jeans and a long black jacket. He was smoking. Would answering the door be stupid? Would that be getting myself into trouble? I decided not to risk it and let the curtain close. I waited one minute, then two, then looked out. He was gone, and a little package had been left behind.
I opened the door and peeked at the package without picking it up.
Contessa
Same handwriting as the cards on Antonio’s flowers. I brought it inside and opened it. A phone dropped into my hand.
This device is secure. My number is on it. Please only use it for emergencies. And be very safe.
I checked and saw one number in the contacts with an area code in Nevada.
The front door opened, and I jumped. It was Katrina, and her lip was split.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He picked me up.” Her breath hitched in a loud sob. “I got in the car, I didn’t think anything of it. He said I lied about who I was. That I couldn’t pay him back because no one was going to buy my movie.”
“What did they do to you?” I said with an edge I didn’t recognize from my own throat.
“The lip. It’ll go away. I’ll just make my vig until I prove him wrong”
I did something I’d only done once before, on the side of the road with a Club in my hand.
I lost my temper.
“What do you mean make your vig? Do you live in one of your goddamn movies? Who the hell even knew that fucking existed anymore?” I paced.
Katrina cried. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never seen me like that. I didn’t even know who I was.
“I’m calling the cops!” My hand was shaking so hard, I couldn’t dial before Katrina snapped the phone away.
“Central?” She spat the name of the LAPD’s Downtown division like a curse. “Are you fucking with me? They’re a bunch of blabbermouths. The editor of the Calendar has every one of them on the take. If this gets out, I’m finished.”
“When what gets out? That he pulled you into a car and slapped you around? No. No. A thousand times no. I’ll call Antonio.”
“No! I don’t want to be rescued by your boyfriend. That’s weird. Forget it. Just forget it. I’ve handled douchebags like this before.”
“How much do you need?”
She leaned on the back of the couch and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “A thousand for last week and a thousand for next.”
“Interest compounded minutely if you don’t pay.” My arms were crossed. I was so mad, all my compassion had run away in fear.
“I can pay it all back when I get distribution. He just...” She drifted off, and tears welled again. “He didn’t know about the lawsuit I lost. He found out. I think it just... I don’t know.”
“For someone so smart,” I said, unable to stop myself, “you leave yourself open to the stupidest mistakes.”
I stormed into my bedroom. My closet held a few thousand in small bills for emergencies. I counted out three grand and stuffed it in an envelope. I called Antonio from my new phone then hung up. Was this an emergency? Did he just tell me to stay away from Mabat because he was being protective? I really didn’t want to bother him when he had so much going on. I’d apologize later for disobeying him if I had to.
I went downstairs. “Come on. I’m delivering it personally.”
Katrina drove. The place was in East Hollywood, a trashy nightclub as big as my childhood living room. Vtang. I had no idea what it meant, but it was in big, flat red letters on the front, bathing the people in line in blood.
The bouncer, his hairline a receding M, moved the rope before we’d even slowed down. He ushered us past the register for the cover and into a room so dim I wouldn’t have been able to tell the girls from boys if there had been no high hair involved.
I was still mad. I didn’t know how I’d held onto it that long, because anger wasn’t my forte. It was unattractive and uncontrollable. It pushed people away and for the most part, achieved nothing. This anger was mine, though, and it was a caged mink about to get skinned.
The bouncer nodded to the bartender and opened a door to the back room for us. We passed through then down steps, past a smaller door, into an underground office. I should have been scared, but I was too pissed off. Even when I saw four men lounging around the room, two playing backgammon, one on the phone, and one tending blood on his knuckles, I wasn’t afraid.
Before anyone had a chance to explain our presence or introduce us, I spoke. “Which one of you is Scott Mabat?”
One middle-aged dirty-blond man in a black leather jacket, bent over the backgammon board, raised his hand slightly, the pointer extended to say, one second.
“Scotty, come on,” the skinny guy across from him demanded. He pushed aside a tiny cup with a lemon peel in the saucer.
“Shut the fuck up, Vinny,” Scott said.
“This is a fast-paced game.”
Scott moved his piece. “Not when I play it.” He stood. “Kat, nice to see you so soon. Who’s the friend?”
“She’s—”
“I’m the money.” I wanted to throw the envelope down and storm out, but common sense cut through my anger. “I’m putting up her interest, and I’ll be paying off her loan next week.”
He stepped around the desk and slowly opened his top drawer. “Cash.”
“Cash.”
“I recognize your face.” He flipped through a folder. “You marrying the district attorney?”
“No. Let’s get this over with. I have last week, this week, and next week on me. I’ll get you the—”
“Whoa, whoa, lady. Don’t rush. Kat, did you explain that our terms changed?” He spoke to her as if she was a child.
I wanted to kill him slowly.
“No,” she said.
I’d never seen her so cowed. She was the fucking Directrix, for Chrissakes.
“This is the contract,” he said. “It’s easy as shit. A moron could understand it. The studios give you a ream they nail together. You go to the Giraldis, they don’t even write shit down. You’re lucky.” He flipped me two stapled pieces of paper. The contract was in bullet points and looked as if it had been the result of a hundred generations of photocopying.