Cut to the Chase (20 page)

But the magnitude of it all paled when she compared it to the fact that she’d lost Paige. She wanted the lunch to be over. She had to set things right.

Billy scratched at the floral tablecloth as if he were trying to pick a bouquet of flowers. Maybe that’s what she should do. She would send flowers to Paige. No. She would take flowers over.

“I’d like you to read with a few actors,” Garrett said.

Billy began to protest but Avalon interrupted. “I’d be happy to.”

But not as happy as I could be,
she thought morosely. When would lunch be
over
?

*

“The stage is a magical place.” Dee Jae sat in a circle of four others on her small stage in the theater.

Paige adjusted her butt on the metal folding chair, and the wooden slatted floor, aged and worn from decades of thespian traffic, creaked miserably. The place smelled of musty curtains and the slight but dank aroma of cigarettes that had probably been smoked years before, leaving their remnants permanently saturated in the fabric and theater seats. The crisp green scent of newly cut wood was also present, probably emanating from the set walls that lay against the brick wall in back, awaiting a coat of paint. She surveyed the participants, all women, of various ages and body types. All were listening intently and taking notes.

“There’s an immediacy with a live audience that film cannot duplicate,” Dee Jae said. “So, we’re here to create that immediacy and intimacy.”

Intimacy
was not a word Paige needed to hear right then. Her desire to be as far away from it had propelled her to attend Dee Jae’s workshop. She needed to lose herself in something other than Avalon.

Avalon’s messages and texts, though, kept hovering around her brain like meddlesome bees insistent on finding sustenance.

Paige, please listen to me. I’m so sorry about what happened.

We need to talk. Please?

Don’t give up on us, Paige. I want to work this out.

Paige wasn’t sure how to work it all out. Maybe she was being too sensitive about things. People did make mistakes. But she would never act as aggressively and disrespectfully as Avalon had. And the act of aggression concerned her.

Still, it was virtually impossible to erase the feelings for Avalon that had swelled tremendously in her heart.

“…types of plays out there,” Dee Jae was saying. “There are ten-minute plays, one-acts, full-length, and musicals. We’ll focus on one-act plays. The goal in this workshop will be to write a fifteen- to twenty-minute piece. The plots shouldn’t be too complicated. We will have one shared set that you will all be incorporating into your play. I’ll determine the set. The goal at the end of this workshop will be to cast and rehearse your play, and then we’ll have a showcase. You can invite your friends and family, and we’ll advertise. Last year we had a packed house!”

The participants looked at each other with the same nervous but excited expressions. Paige wished she could feel more like them, but the only thing in her gut was a spreading puddle of foul, viscous despondency. For them, this was their chance to break out in Hollywood. For her, this was a necessary distraction.

*

Parking on the street was more difficult to find than usual, and Paige finally squeezed into a spot over a block away from her apartment.

Since leaving the workshop, she’d been running play ideas through her head. The setting Dee Jae had told them their plays would be constructed around would be a section of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Lots of possibilities ran amok in her head. Homeless people, police officers, and starlet-wannabes could all provide great fodder for her play. They had five weeks to write their work and then cast and rehearse before the showcase. The timing was working out well. She’d be too busy with her screenplay to chew herself up with worry about the book tour, as it was starting right after the showcase.

The gate to her courtyard clanged shut and she walked toward the fountain by her front door. She stiffened when she noticed the silhouette of a darkened figure standing by the door. She stopped. She’d heard too many stories of murders, rapes, and all the big-bad-city crime that could happen on any street no matter how nice or neighborhood-watched.

“Who the fuck are you?” She wanted the upper hand first. If it was someone up to no good, they might think twice about hassling her.

“It’s me, Paige.” Avalon stepped into the beam of her porch light, holding a magnificent bouquet of flowers.

“Avalon,” she said in relief. She looked so good, and a ripple of desire quickly spread through her. Her heart ached as desperately as a castaway glimpsing an approaching ship. She stepped closer.

When she reached her, Avalon said, “Can we talk?”

Two long weeks had passed since that day at the Chateau Marmont. Paige had left the refuge of her apartment a few times, but everywhere she went, magazine stands and radio news shows had announced Avalon’s latest goings-on. Even at home, channel surfing became treacherous work because of the coverage Avalon got. And though Paige tried to ignore the gossip, she was aware that Avalon had kept to herself. There were no rumblings of Jessica or any other woman on her arm.

But whatever microscopic amount of strength she’d gained from Avalon’s absence immediately melted away when she gazed at those light jade eyes.

She let Avalon into her apartment, though she was still upset and wasn’t sure if she could trust what she might say.

Avalon handed her the flowers and she took them with a weak thank you.

“I’m not sure whether you listened to my voice mail messages,” Avalon said, “but the summation of all of them is a big I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are, Avalon. I doubt you’d say that if you weren’t. But apologies don’t mean much if they keep following new stunts.” She paused. At this point, she supposed she had nothing to gain by speaking her mind, except maybe a hundred more nights of staring at her apartment walls…alone. “The second or third time you said ‘I’m sorry’ makes me believe that there’s a pattern, and I don’t like that.”

Avalon listened and paused as if truly absorbing Paige’s words. She nodded slowly, almost reverently. “I’d like us to try again.” She stepped closer and took Paige’s hand. “To play off the bullshit and focus on the real stuff.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m asking you to separate that gossip and paparazzi shit from us. You need to ignore anything that happens in public. It’s just BS to sell magazines.”

“That’s just it.” She let go of Avalon’s hand and stepped back. “It’s not BS. It involved me personally.”

“But that’s Hollywood. This is what happens here. You sign up for the rodeo and have to deal with the dust that comes with it.”

“Dust? You think it’s just dust?”

“It’s a necessary ingredient. The press creates a buzz, and the buzz creates more magazine sales and movie attendance, and that creates more work.”

“It’s what happens to cause the buzz. You get into nasty little predicaments and say extreme, embarrassing things. And that day at the pool, I…I didn’t know who the hell you were. It was like you turned into a grabby macho idiot.”

“And I’m apologizing for all of that, Paige. I don’t like it either, but my public life is not my own.”

“Don’t you see that the way you are in public is just a façade? And you play into that. The Hollywood that the average person thinks they understand is nothing more than a bunch of glossy magazine stories.”

“My life is not feed for a bunch of four-dollar rags. Hollywood is my life, Paige.”

Paige’s simmering frustration bubbled up and elevated the volume of her voice. “Hollywood is your
career
. You do a job, like everyone else. The crazy lifestyle that’s attached to it isn’t what you’re paid to do. It’s what you choose to do.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Maybe I don’t,” she said. “But you’re missing my point.”

Avalon stopped and took a deep breath. “Paige, your point is that you’re uncomfortable with my behavior when we’re in public.”

Paige nodded.

“So I’m asking that you give us another chance. Give me the opportunity to show you that we can be in public together without the craziness.”

“Aren’t you afraid you won’t sell magazines that way?” She regretted her question as soon as it left her mouth. Avalon’s face flashed to something, but the emotion disappeared so quickly, she couldn’t tell whether it was anger, or irritation, or something else.

Whatever it was, Avalon chose to ignore the question. “Can we try?”

A kernel of doubt hovered in her chest, thick with hesitation and worry. When she’d started seeing Avalon, the locomotive of the star’s life came barreling down the tracks at her. And now, having faith that the train would change course somehow seemed impractical, at the very least. But one thing that hadn’t changed course was the substantial weight of her feelings for Avalon. She’d fallen so hard. And even when she’d hit the proverbial pavement by the Chateau Marmont pool, the impact hadn’t jarred one iota of her attraction for Avalon.

“I just don’t think I could handle the paparazzi and publicity.”

“Let me manage it for us.”

“Why manage it at all?” She knew the statement was absurd, but she had come to loathe that aspect of Avalon’s life.

“I have to. It’s how I keep visible. Fans make or break me.”

“What about your work? Isn’t that what you’re judged on?” She knew her words were biting.

“It’s about an image. You should know. You write about Hollywood. And why do you do that?” Avalon’s voice escalated. “Because people want to know about it. They expect glamorous, exciting stories. You’re a hypocrite because you peddle the same shit that you’re complaining about.”

“I tell the stories of the movies themselves.”

“And the lives of the actors who play in them. It’s a whole package.”

“Well, I don’t know if I want the whole package.”

Before she could add that there were parts of the package she very much wanted, Avalon turned and walked away. This very gesture from Avalon, her showing up so humble and willing to try, was one of the parts of her she very much wanted.

Paige lifted the flowers that had been in her hand and rotated the beautiful bouquet. Jewels of deep-blue velvet poppies, orange freesias, yellow trumpets, and red fire lilies nestled together like a treasure of precious gemstones and made her miserable beyond belief.

Why is it so hard to take her back when all I want is that very same thing?
She was making the slice of Avalon’s life that was undesirable the biggest factor in her decision.
And how big is that slice, really?

Obviously, she thought in an attempt to defend herself, it was big enough to cause hurt and confusion. Her protection radar had blipped bright warnings more than once. She was crazy about Avalon, but she would inevitably get hurt.

This is for your own good
, she thought, and hated her own rational tone as much as if it came from a patronizing preacher.

It was fight-or-flight time, and both choices were shitty. If she stayed and fought, she could get the crap beaten out of her emotions. She might as well tie herself to the back of a train and let it drag her down a hundred miles of track. If she ran, she’d regret killing the chance that whatever was between them might work. And if Avalon moved on and eventually forgot about her, she might as well get in front of that same damn train and just lay herself down.

Yes, no. Stay, go. It was all so fucked up.

Cut to the Chase
was coming together better than Paige had imagined it would. She’d locked herself in her apartment for the better part of the last three weeks, fingers ablaze, as she cranked out 20,000 words of text, most of it needing trivial editing.

She finalized the images of Bubba and Ricky within the first three days. The contrast between two such different men, in both personality and stature, illustrated the ends of the macho spectrum, proving that Hollywood could make the clumsy appear elegant and the spineless seem brave. While she had a modicum of success in remaining fairly detached while writing about Avalon, editing and cropping the photographs was an entirely different beast. The work slowed to a painful crawl when she finally got to Avalon’s photos.

She had to admit they were all spectacular, but each memory-filled image slammed against her with the force of a wrecking ball against a brick building.

When she reached the image she’d taken of Avalon taking a swing at her costar, she was extremely satisfied with the composition. Avalon’s body arced like she was throwing a discus, and the energy of that curve carried through to the backward bend of Brent Hastings’s body as he reacted to the theatrical blow. It was like a painting that expressed the tremendous forcefulness in one perfect brushstroke. And Avalon’s face completed the compelling photograph. A declaration of absolute commitment screamed from her eyes and mouth. Her expression was that of a gambler who goes all in at the high-stakes table, no matter what the outcome.

She’d stared at that picture for hours, it seemed, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t the exact same look Avalon had when they’d made love. But it was. Paige had seen that all-inclusive devotion more than once. Her heart ached constantly. She toyed with her cell phone countless times, wanting so desperately to call her, but what would she say?

Avalon’s life moved like a rocket, and Paige simply wasn’t cut out for that type of trajectory. If they could only run away somewhere where there was no paparazzi, no movies, no fans…but that was tantamount to killing Avalon’s livelihood. Paige would never let anyone do that to her photography career.

It just wasn’t meant to be
, she told herself with each pass of her Photoshop tools as she cleaned up a background blob on Avalon’s clothes or softened a shadow across her face.

Finally, however, she was almost ready to submit the pages to Carmen. She’d written the acknowledgments, and the only thing left was the dedication.