Usuality Read online

  USUALITY

  by THOMAS MUELLER

  from and inspired by THE PICK-UP

  by SUSAN A. KNOX

  An OriCAL BOOK

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, places, incidents, brands, businesses, organizations, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent from the author or authors.

  USUALITY

  Copyright © 2015 by THOMAS MUELLER

  & SUSAN A. KNOX

  Cover photograph © 2016 by Shutterbit Photography

  OriCAL® is a registered trademark of OriCAL Associates

  For Dana & HP

  I: SHAMEJOB

  Garrett Lindsay always knew the day he fell in love would be the worst day of his life.

  Arriving home on the night before the worst day of his life, he wasn’t thinking about love, or about fate, or about anything having very much to do with the future at all. He was thinking about the light switch. Having the lights on gave his return legitimacy, and, right then, legitimacy was what he craved. Never mind that the glow from the streets below illuminated the room enough to see by. He didn’t enjoy feeling like he was sneaking into his own home. Garrett Lindsay was all about driving the train.

  Although technically it was Marin’s divorce settlement that paid for the place. None of it was his. He only lived there.

  He dumped the mail onto the black granite counter and sorted through the bills he couldn’t pay, the child support he couldn’t pay, the threatening letters from Brittany’s lawyer about the child support he couldn’t pay. He needed an audition. He needed a lucky break. His short-lived stint as Dr. Rex Harper on Day by Day was looking more and more like the pinnacle of his career, and the residuals barely paid for his daily coffee habit.

  The thought of coffee reminded him of that afternoon. He winced. People were talking about him, but they were saying all the wrong things.

  “Where were you?”

  The door to the bedroom had opened without him noticing.

  “I had a meeting,” he lied. “I thought I told you.”

  “Whatever. Stefan and Greg are taking me to that new club on Trent that used to be a button factory. Come along if you want.”

  Marin’s indifference was relentless. She never went so far as to make him feel like she needed him around, but there was no telling who she might go home with if he wasn’t there to make sure she went home with him.

  He felt hands pulling at the hem of his shirt, tugging it free from his pants. Marin unbuckled his jeans. Garrett tried to turn away. His head wasn’t right for sex. But, as usual, his desire betrayed him.

  Marin knelt before him. Somehow, when he stood over her, she still managed to make him feel like he was the one on his knees. He was a kept man and didn’t even have to play house for it. Marin had a cook, a maid, a driver, an ever-increasing circle of friends. She kept him around rent-free for one thing and one thing only. There was a word for that...

  ...But then her mouth was fastening itself onto him and the word didn’t matter. He gave himself over to the pleasure. He bit down on the knuckle of his own thumb and pulled at his teeth like a stud horse fighting the bit. Her nails dug into his waist.

  A minute later he came in her mouth. He stood for a long time, naked and spent, catching his breath, before opening his eyes. He was alone. Marin was already back in the bedroom getting dressed for her evening.

  It had surprised him, the first time she’d swallowed. She’d done it casually, like the idea other women might have a hang-up over it had never occurred to her. It had impressed him, even though he wasn’t sure quite why.

  Now, tonight, it was merely a relief. Her running to a sink would have made everything far too real. He preferred not having to think about what had just happened, not having to think at all if he could help it. He pulled his pants back on and checked his phone, hoping for word from his agent.

  II: ANYTHING BUT USUAL

  That afternoon at the coffee shop had gone like this:

  “It’s Jerry, right? Having your usual?”

  The girl’s voice was melodious and far too cheerful. It was the way she talked, at work or otherwise. She was a genuinely nice person, and there was no greater curse in retail.

  Garrett studied the pastries behind the glass. Careless body language could betray weakness, indecision, even the dingy patina of has-been. He wanted to be noticed, not truly to be seen.

  Being up at the counter made Garrett nervous. Each time he reached the front of the line it felt like the cameras were rolling. The pressure was on. It was a mini performance, he was the star, and nothing could go wrong. All eyes were on him.

  Endless self-promotion and rejection clung tightly to his jeans, tighter even than the faded denim clung to the carefully sculpted roundness of his ass. He worked hard for that ass every day, doing lunges in line at the supermarket and squats on the hour, regardless of where he happened to be. A good ass was everything. Women liked a good ass and so did movie producers. Leading men with sex appeal sold movie tickets, and leading men who sold movie tickets had great asses.

  Ordering coffee was stressful, but he couldn’t live without it, and now this cheerful girl with her cheerful smile had inadvertently said exactly the wrong thing. Garrett, his name was Garrett, but her blunder wasn’t the issue. Leading men were supposed to be mysterious. Everybody instinctively loved them on sight, but never, ever should anyone presume to think they had a usual. Some degree of aloofness, some je ne sais quoi was paramount. Never mind the fact that everybody in Hollywood actually had a usual that underpaid assistants were constantly sent to fetch. That was different. It was Their Drink and God help the newbie who got it wrong, but it wasn’t their usual. Usuality was an affliction. It was something out-of-work actors developed. Garrett was a Working Actor, he just happened not to be working at the moment.

  It was quiet for a Wednesday afternoon. The bag lady in the corner who smelled like old piss, a regular, was surfing the web on a laptop that looked like it had been rescued from a curbside e-waste pickup. At another table, a hipster with gauged ears slid his paper cup back and forth between his hands, loathe to drink from it. That would be too conforming.

  Garrett heard laughter. It teased along his shoulders like falling blossoms. A beautiful laugh, he knew, often belonged to a beautiful woman. Dreary, plain women never laughed like that.

  He forced himself to be cool. An audition for a part on screen or a part in bed, it was all the same. Up here away from the action, girls were granola: wholesome and filling but never leading anywhere. Sex in L.A. was a gateway. Everything could lead to anything, a one night stand, a torrid love affair, even that questionable blowjob an otherwise straight-as-uncooked-spaghetti producer might accept behind his desk, that you both knew wasn’t gay, not when you only did it for the part and he only asked for it to see how far you were willing to go. Up here physical love was the end unto itself, but that didn’t mean you could afford to play it anything but cool.

  Garrett looked casually around. He saw the woman who had laughed but let his glance slip past. She was sitting by the corner window, her back to him, the soft outline of high cheekbones visible through her raven hair.

  He drummed the counter until his drink was poured, capped, and handed over. Making his way to the small cart that held the cream and napkins, he glanced
sideways as he passed her. She was sitting with a man, maybe her agent or a producer, maybe just some blowhard hoping to get blown, hard. The man was obviously tall, but it was all leg. He had no torso to speak of. His beard was trimmed short like the slick, virile Eighties sitcom dads who Garrett had always thought were probably porn stars on the side.

  A mild, ineffectual man, with a mild, ineffectual beard, who was out of his league.

  Mild Beard not only looked the part of a sitcom dad, he talked like one, too. He was waving his hands like a fairy godmother who’d had too much of her own magic powder, touching the woman’s hand for emphasis. It was disgusting. Garrett dismissed the man as a threat almost immediately.

  Then Garrett’s eyes widened. What appeared to be an honest-to-God movie script was sitting between Mild Beard and The Woman.

  Now he had to talk to her. In L.A., everybody and their plastic surgeon had a script they were working on. The market was so saturated it was utterly meaningless to see one anywhere. But up here, so far from the pulse, it could mean something more, potentially a great deal more.

  If it didn’t, he’d only end up fucking this woman and that was fine, too. The wedding ring on her finger didn’t mean a thing. Women who wore wedding rings were just that much more in need of a good lay. It was probably just there for Mild Beard’s benefit, anyway.

  Garrett decided to abandon his sideways play and go for the direct approach. He sauntered up to their table, intruding on what he was laughingly certain Mild Beard considered an intimate setting. He reached out and brushed his fingers over the papers that the woman was holding, being sure to accidently let their hands touch with an electric caress. She raised her gaze. Deep brown eyes connected with his like keys turning in locks. He imagined her kneeling before him and the vision was so powerful that he had the sudden absurd notion that she couldn’t help seeing it, too. He began to salivate at their inevitable lovemaking later that night.

  Grinning, he pretended to look bashful, as if he’d been so caught up with his interest in the script that he’d been unaware of his actions.

  “I’m from L.A.” He gave The Woman a moment to be properly impressed. “I’m an actor.” He nodded toward the script. “In my experience, women tend to write some of the most killer treatments.”

  He’d long ago learned it was best to sprinkle some truth into his come-ons whenever possible. Women liked to think they were being told the Whole Truth, but they often preferred a lie as long as it was what they imagined the Whole Truth would be in a perfect world. The trick, he knew, was never to fall into the trap of respecting them so much that you ruined your chance to rock their world. It was for their own good after all. To deprive them of The Garrett Lindsay Big Experience was a sin far greater than lying.

  The Woman put a protective hand over the papers on the table but said nothing.

  Garrett continued, “I’ve read enough scripts and known enough women to tell when I meet a special one.”

  He watched Mild Beard shift uncomfortably in his seat. It told him that he had the upper hand, so he moved in for the kill.

  “I know I’m being direct, but this is such a welcome reminder of life in L.A. that I...would you like to have dinner with me tonight? I might even be willing to read your rough draft. With the proper motivation.”

  The Woman frowned. Good, he thought, it meant he’d successfully bypassed the Friend Zone. Services came with a price. It was best she knew up front that this wasn’t going to be a pity fuck. He expected her to be worth it. Expectations were everything. Now that she was duly impressed with who he was and where he was from, with the fact that he wasn’t scared of her fake ring or her fake companion, she was ready for the night ahead.

  “Leguizman’s at Eight?”

  He eyeballed the woman’s partner, letting his pupils dilate as if to say: This is how you take care of business.

  Mild Beard looked like he was going to be mildly ill.

  The whole thing was far too easy. Garrett let the evening play out in his head. Leguizman’s was a family restaurant, but Garrett knew this fact and counted on it. The smattering of elderly clientele, the screaming kids and apologetically smiling parents, all of it was deliberately calculated to force the women he brought there to throw their expectations out the window. The atmosphere, so far removed from the sexually-charged nightclub scene, put them off balance. Garrett didn’t use the surroundings to hide his intentions but instead broadcast them loud and clear, letting the juxtaposition confuse his prey. Beginning the night in such a wholesome place forced his dates to get their feet wet without realizing it, laying a groundwork of guilt he would capitalize on as soon as they moved to more private surroundings.

  Garrett despised Italian food, it was full of carbs and garlic, but he didn’t go there to eat the breadsticks. All he cared about was dessert.

  He was gripping the smooth edge of the table tightly, so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard the woman’s reply. Asian chicks weren’t usually his cup of (green) tea, but there was something special about this one.

  He cleared his throat. “So, yes?”

  The woman raised one thin eyebrow. “You haven’t even asked my name.”

  Garrett leered. “I know everything I need to know about you.”

  The woman shrugged. “What the hell,” she said. “Sure. But not at, where did you say? Leguizman’s? Not there. I have another place in mind.” She took out a card from her wallet, turned it over, and wrote an address on the back.

  III: JAZZ HANDS

  Garrett glanced at the crystal face of his Omega, but the act didn’t cause his date to magically appear. She was late, and it vexed him that he actually cared. In his mind, he imagined her bursting through the glass doors, the skirt of her dress chasing behind her. She would breathlessly apologize, explain how she had been stuck in traffic and pull herself up onto the barstool next to him. She would order a cosmo or some other chick drink, squeeze his thigh, smile at him provocatively. He would use her contrition to his advantage, that was only fair for making him wait.

  He took out his phone and scrolled through his feed. As luck would have it, the woman had countered his suggestion of Italian food with Jazz Hands, a little bar downtown where Garrett happened to know the maître d’. He may have had to abandon his plan for Leguizman’s, but he would still be able to impress her in the more traditionally vapid dating arena. It would be slower going and the payoff might not be as uninhibited as he had originally hoped for, but it was still workable. If she’d ever show up.

  He adjusted his Thomas Pink button down. All his collars had metal stays, and he ironed and starched the cuffs until they protruded like axe blades from each wrist. His hair was styled as it always was, blow-dried and lightly gelled to perfection. He was a leading man through and through. Only occasionally did he wonder if leading men were supposed to feel hollow coming home at two in the morning, staring up into the stars overhead after having unadorned sex on the carpet beside the bed of a woman they would carefully avoid ever going out with again. He suspected that Leading Men simply perfected the art of feeling nothing at all, and so he strived to do likewise whenever possible.

  He was still gazing at the screen of his phone when he heard The Woman order a dirty martini a few seats over. He kicked himself. She’d caught him looking bored, a rookie mistake.

  Her hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She wore a loose flowing teal tunic over tight black jeans. It was the kind of blouse that slipped off the shoulder and teased at what might lie in store if he played his cards right. She gave him something that wasn’t quite a smile. He picked up his vodka soda. Sauntering over, he climbed onto the stool next to her and tried to recover his edge.

  “You look absolutely stunning.”

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  Her voice caressed him like a silk scarf but he was too pissed off to enjoy it. Seduction required focus and emotional distance. He took a deep breath and smoothed a grin back onto his features.

&nbs
p; “Let’s get a table.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Already?”

  It took all he had not to let his mouth hang open in disbelief. Showing up late to her own date and then accusing him of being in a rush. What the hell? Leading Men didn’t wait around, they kept others waiting.

  The Woman shrugged and slipped from the barstool. Furious, Garrett motioned to the maître d’, perhaps the most un-Oscar-like man named Oscar that he had ever met, to tell him they were ready.

  On her feet, he realized for the first time how tall his date was. At least her black stilettos gave her ass a flattering lift as he followed behind her. She was all leg, but in a good way, unlike her partner from the coffee shop.

  They were led to a cozy table with seating for two and a spectacular view of the bay. There was just the right ambiance. The sun having set added to the sexual tension of the evening.

  “So—”

  “Jade,” she supplied, not looking up from her menu.

  “What?”

  “My name is Jade.”

  “Ah. Yes, Jade. I’m—”

  “Garrett,” she interrupted. “I know.”

  She knew his name. He felt a sudden unease. This wasn’t the way these things were supposed to go. He was supposed to have the advantage. The hunter needed to always be one step ahead of the prey. Not only had she kept him waiting, but she already knew his name. God only knew what else she might know about him, what else she might be waiting to spring at the worst possible moment.

  It was high time for him to take back the momentum.

  “So,” he said, sending his gaze smoldering across the table, “Jade.”

  “Garrett,” she replied. She set the menu down and he took the opportunity to grasp one of her hands in both of his. She didn’t pull away. He felt his rhythm returning. “What have I seen you in lately? Commercials? Sitcoms?”