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  Garrett pushed the balloons aside and looked out the window.

  “This is the address they gave you?”

  “Naw, I just brought you here for the hell of it. Of course this is the address.”

  Garrett swallowed. The building wasn’t just fancy, it was Fancy being blown by Lavish and coming all over the face of Wildly Excessive. And he ought to know—it was also home. How long had he been living in the same building as the head executive of OriCAL without knowing it? Did Marin know? Was she just that self-absorbed that she didn’t understand what a thing like this could mean to him?

  He climbed out of the Escalade and tried to pull the red and silver embarrassment after him, but the balloons resisted. They didn’t want to be delivered almost as much as he didn’t want to deliver them. How could he have possibly managed to convince himself this was a good idea?

  He finally got the balloons out. The Escalade drove off leaving him right back where his journey had begun, albeit now in the possession of a mass of red and silver helium filled chaos on a bundle of strings.

  “Mr. Lindsay, back so soon? And a bit overdressed for a children’s party if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Garrett did mind, but he knew enough not to piss off his own doorman so he grumbled a fake pleasantry as he passed.

  In the elevator (alone, thank goodness) he stared at the button for the penthouse suite. It wasn’t the first time he’d eyed it. It was a bigger button. A shinier button. A button that sat on the other side of the chrome number panel like it was too good to hobnob with the lesser buttons. He sometimes wondered what kind of douche inhabited the six thousand square foot home above his own (Marin’s own) condo. Six thousand square feet. Who needed six thousand square feet in San Francisco? It was The City That Never Came Over For Dinner. If you weren’t living with five other roommates it meant you had Serious Money (or somebody else’s Serious Money), and, if that were the case, you were never home anyway.

  Garrett sighed bitterly. The view of South Beach from the glass window in the shaft was dazzling. Turning away from it, he studied his reflection in the mirror-chrome walls of the elevator. He straightened his red satin cummerbund, displaced in the balloon fight, and took a deep breath. He needed his game face on. He imagined his confidence swelling like the helium of the itinerant balloons. If you will it, he thought, hearing his old acting coach’s adage in his head, it will be so.

  The elevator chimed. Its doors slid quietly open and he stepped out into a foyer. Four doors, one for each of the penthouses, greeted him. The one directly ahead was cracked open with a door stop.

  Footsteps approached from down the hall inside.

  VI: GRAND ENTRANCE

  A small woman with painted-on eyebrows appeared clutching a tablet. She spoke into the Bluetooth that was nestled inside the crescent of tiny silver hoops that ringed her ear. “Yes, he’s here. He is. Would I say that just to be a cunt? What? Oh, for fuck’s sake. No, they’re red. Dumb Shit,” she said, addressing Garrett. “Why are the balloons red?”

  He wondered if the woman took out the stick jammed up her butt each time she had to do her business. Or maybe she just threw everything back up and the hunger pains were what made her so bitchy.

  Stick-Up-Her-Butt stared at him through her Velma Dinkley glasses. “The balloons were supposed to be black and pink. You, low-rent Ryan Gosling, are you colorblind or just incompetent?”

  “I’m just incompetent,” snapped Garrett. “I only picked up the order, I didn’t call it in.”

  “Unbelievable.” Stick-Up-Her-Butt touched her ear. “Hold onto your hairy ball sack, I’m bringing him down.” She made an exasperated noise and then spun on the rubber sole of her black combat boot.

  Garrett moved to follow but stopped himself. He wasn’t some damn puppy dog to be led about on a leash, who needed permission to shit itself and fetch. He was a professional, auditioning for the president of OriCAL Entertainment. If he didn’t start acting like a leading man now, he never would. Like the song said, he would do this thing His Way. He gathered confidence about himself like a cloak. Planting his feet he began to sing.

  His baritone echoed down the marble hallway.

  “Not yet,” snapped Stick-Up-Her-Butt, scowling back over one padded shoulder. “Can’t you do anything right?”

  He faltered mid-note and his confidence melted.

  “Jesus, what’s next? You gonna cut a raucous fart, maybe whip out your tiny little umbrella stick and do a dance, make even more of a fool out of yourself? Are you done? Just follow me and wait for my cue, got it? Is that too much to ask?”

  She led him through a living area that looked like a Scandinavian Designs showroom. It was impressive, thought Garrett, but he couldn’t imagine it being comfortable enough to actually live in.

  They headed down a hallway that was walled floor to ceiling with windows. Curved glass arched overhead. Below were his feet were flagstones. Where the rest of the penthouse had been temperate, here it was freezing.

  Stick-Up-Her-Butt stopped in front of a set of striking French doors.

  “We’re going outside?”

  “Showtime,” she smirked. “I’m getting a sandwich, you want anything?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Stick-Up-Her-Butt gave him a disappointed look. She mouthed “not you” and tapped her earpiece. As she sauntered off, Garrett felt his face redden. She didn’t even ask if he wanted a bottled water. This was ridiculous. How the hell did they expect his baritone to compete with the winds rolling in from the Bay? They were making a mockery out of his art and out of him.

  If you will it, it will be so. Leading men didn’t take no for an answer. In business, or in love, or in anything else. They adapted.

  Garrett almost reached for his tuning fork before remembering that he hadn’t carried it since his college quartet days. Old habits died hard. Even then he hadn’t needed it, not really. He could find a song’s starting note in his sleep, drunk and with one ear tied behind his back. He’d never cared much about music, but it was handy to have something that came naturally. Acting was different. It took discipline, perseverance. It was his passion, but he lost his edge more easily and more often than he found it. He hoped to God he had it now.

  He began to sing, waited for the high note in the first refrain and then threw open the glass doors and paraded around the corner, desperately fighting the wind for control of the balloons.

  People were gathered in an outside living area, seated on gaudy orange throw pillows in trendy loungers. A gas heater doubled as a coffee table in the center.

  He recognized Michelle Lyon from the photo he’d googled. She was talking to a woman who looked like a long lost Kardashian sister, with inflated lips and an obnoxious Valley Girl accent he didn’t have to hear to know was there (like, literally). The woman’s blouse was cut low and she was leaning sideways in her chair in such a way that Garrett could swear he saw the areola of one nipple peeking out at him. Try as he might, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Like everything here in the penthouse it was forbidden fruit casually displayed, but to Garrett it was still the stuff that (wet) dreams were made of.

  Staring, his feet moving as if they belonged to somebody else, Garrett tripped. He stumbled before regaining his balance. His voice cracked and it so surprised him that his singing ground to a halt. He raised one hand self-consciously to his throat. The wrong hand. Faces, noticing the commotion, turned just in time to see him lose his grip on the balloons. They sailed away in a flurry.

  For a moment he stood awkwardly, not quite knowing what to do. Then he remembered the actual telegram. The balloons were only half the shtick. He walked up to the woman he had identified as Michelle Lyon and thrust the sealed envelope toward her with a flourish.

  The Kardashian lookalike with the ugly lips intercepted it. The look on her face challenged him to do something about it if he dared.

  Everyone was staring up at him, some with expectant amusement, some aghast, and it was
then that he noticed the woman sitting off to the far side of Michelle Lyon.

  It was Jade. Jade, from his terrible date at Jazz Hands by way of their chance meeting at the Local Bean. His heart, in the process of crashing from the adrenaline high of his botched performance, sped back up again like a startled teenager caught jacking off to a Playboy he’d found in the neighbor’s trash bin.

  That cock-stabbing little shit Mild Beard was with her. Mild Beard, aka William, aka Bill. Bill Silverman, realized Garrett with a start. How could he have been so oblivious? He cursed himself up and down, all the while trying to keep a smile glued to his face. He had unknowingly walked into the very meeting Jade had mentioned the night before.

  Jade was staring at him in disbelief. Garrett raised his hand to greet her and she blanched.

  Ugly Lips held the intercepted envelope between her thumb and forefinger like it might contain anthrax, or a snake, or possibly both.

  “What,” she said, “is this?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she tossed the telegram away unopened. The breeze caught it, swooping it up and over the railing. It plunged down into the city below. Garrett felt acrophobia thrill the hairs along the back of his neck and had the sudden absurd impulse to leap off after it.

  “Who is this guy? He’s like, literally wearing a tuxedo in broad daylight. Braxton!” Ugly Lips called to a man wearing a ridiculous pink cashmere sweater. “Do you know this guy?”

  Pink Sweater had a temerity that told Garrett he had to be a director. Propelling himself to his feet with languid, predatory grace, the director was the very picture of a jungle cat in his element, momentarily surprised but ever cunning. He made an everybody-stay-calm gesture with his hands.

  “Okay, so this just happened. Right. Full disclosure,” he flicked his eyes to the right, “they, the writers, thought it would be nice to show how well the climax in the script worked. The sheer monumental unexpectedity,” he said the word with a straight face, “of a singing telegram being the mechanism that allows—” he broke off, seeming to notice Garrett for the first time. “But that’s not important. This was a mistake. It works like tits in the script, don’t get me wrong.” He smiled widely. “No harm, no foul, am I right? Let’s just pretend this never happened.” He touched his own Bluetooth. “Char,” he muttered, “be a dear and come take out the trash.” Then he locked fingers around Garrett’s arm at the elbow, pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to Garrett. It was a crumpled twenty dollar bill.

  “Get lost. Call a cab and have them take you to the beach; you’re washed up. After I talk to your agency you’ll never deliver so much as a eulogy again.”

  Garrett heard footsteps. Stick-Up-Her-Butt appeared at his other side with a half-eaten sandwich in her hands. Even in the outside air he could smell the onions on her breath.

  “Wait.”

  It took Garrett a moment to realize who had spoken. Michelle Lyon was smaller than Garrett had initially thought, blinded as he had been by the enormity of her power and influence. She had blonde hair done up in a simple braid. She wasn’t wearing a business suit like she did for her press photos. She was, he realized, the only person there who was wearing jeans, along with some kind of cotton peasant top. She had eyes that made Garrett think that her soul had been shattered and then glued back together in such a way that all the pieces finally fit right and were the stronger for it.

  She was smiling. At him. Garrett had seen smiles like that before. They scared him. Smiles like that gave him the urge to settle down, to start wearing a mustache and a wedding ring and pressed khaki pants, and eat oatmeal in the car on the way to an unfulfilling, mindless job. Matrimonial Venus Fly Traps, that was what smiles like that were, and Garrett avoided their siren call like the plague.

  This time, however, he smiled back. It felt dangerous, thrilling, to walk the precipice of commitment with complete disregard. Knowing the consequences of the act made it almost perverse. He wondered how Michelle Lyon’s smile would look in bed, how she would behave when vulnerable and alone, absent her entourage and everybody else who hung onto her every word. Just as they were doing now.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “His name is Garrett,” put in Jade, before he could answer for himself. If she could have struck him dead with the loathing in her words, worms would have already been taking up winter residence in his corpse. She looked at Mild Beard and made a face as if to say that all men were assholes. Mild Beard nodded, dutifully betraying his sex.

  “You two know one another?”

  “What? No!” said Jade quickly.

  Michelle Lyon looked incredulous. Her director, Braxton, narrowed his eyes.

  “He’s nobody,” insisted Jade. “He came up to William and me in a coffee shop yesterday. He’s just some chauvinist loser who thinks he’s all that.”

  The woman with the ugly lips snorted.

  Michelle Lyon ignored everybody but Garrett. “You have a powerful voice,” she said.

  “About that cab?” insisted the director, digging his fingers in until they hurt Garrett’s arm.

  Garrett looked confused. “I don’t need a cab. I live below. Downstairs, I mean. On the floor below this one.”

  “What are you talking about?” The director was perplexed.

  Ugly Lips pouted. “Like, literally? You do not.”

  Stick-Up-Her-Butt tugged on Garrett’s other arm. “You’re embarrassing yourself, let’s go.”

  Michelle Lyon held up her hand. “I said to wait a minute.”

  Her director cowered at Michelle Lyon’s tone, but Stick-Up-Her-Butt only looked annoyed.

  “Downstairs?” said Michelle Lyon. “Really?”

  Garrett nodded, bracing himself for the worst.

  Michelle Lyon raised an eyebrow. “Do you sing in the shower?”

  VII: A CLOGGED SINK

  Reagan was going to kill him. Marin too. And there would never be a cold enough day in Hell that Jade would ever speak to him again.

  He groaned, sat up, and then groaned again. His head was pounding. He was on a sofa, or rather on what an interior designer with an unlimited budget might think a sofa ought to be in a world where people only ever sat in chairs. He might as well have passed out on an upholstered coffin. It would have been softer.

  He was in a room he didn’t recognize. However, given the expensive stylishness of the riveted, striped torture device he was sitting on, it was a safe bet he was still in Michelle Lyon’s penthouse. He thought back to the last thing he could remember. He recalled the pitch meeting coming to an abrupt halt, the head of OriCAL Entertainment smiling at him. Jade and Bill Silverman leaving stiff and distraught, hiding their anger about as well as a leopard hid its spots. This in spite of the fact that Michelle Lyon had assured them that their screenplay was bought and paid for based on her director Braxton’s enthusiasm for the project, and that their botched handling of the meeting had done nothing to change that.

  Braxton, there was something about the director, Braxton. Garrett tried to think back but it was around this time things had started to become hazy. Braxton had left, that was it. But his assistant with the painted eyebrows had stayed behind. Yes. Garrett remembered thinking it was odd she didn’t go with him. She had stayed behind and...that was it, had in fact brought him, Garrett, a drink. Finally. With a flash he recalled a sudden vivid image of the small woman handing him something amber on the rocks. He had been sitting on a bench beside the head of OriCAL Entertainment. While he chatted her up? Or she chatted him up? Or...but why did he seem to remember Assistant Stick-Up-Her-Butt sitting down to join them? Why did he remember that it was her and Michelle Lyon who were the ones chatting with one another while Garrett sat there drinking his...whatever it was. Sipping it, ignored, perplexed and fast becoming sleepy.

  Sleepy. Yes. Getting sleepy and falling. Falling forever until...fire? Fire! That was it.

  Garrett looked at his hands in a panic. They were unburned so he patted his face. The skin t
here was smooth and unblemished, just as he remembered it. So why was he thinking about fire? Fire with a clicking sound. An oven burner, maybe? No, that wasn’t it. A lighter!

  Garrett blinked. Michelle and the assistant, what had her name been? Char, Braxton had called her Char. Michelle and Char had been talking, unconcerned that Garrett was falling, while somebody clicked a lighter open and closed, open and closed. Or was that later? He couldn’t make sense of what had happened, or when, and now here he was after who-knew-how-many hours of being passed out on a couch.

  He got unsteadily to his feet. The sun had set and twilight was creeping up on the city outside the penthouse windows. He listened, doubting very much that he was alone, but he could hear nothing that told him otherwise.

  His mouth tasted foul. He looked around the room. Nothing registered but grayness. If they were going to abandon him, at least they could have left a light on. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket. As he did so, his ringtone began to play. It was Marin.

  “Hi.”

  “Where are you? You’re not in the apartment. I’m in the apartment, that’s how I know that you aren’t here. Are you out? Don’t say you’re not. Where are you?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hand to his temple, trying to think straight. “Of course I’m not out. I mean, I am. But I’m not. Look—” He stopped himself. Even in his current state he had enough wits about himself to know that telling Marin he’d just woken up in another woman’s penthouse was a bad idea. “I’ll be home in a little bit.”

  “You’ll be alone. I’m painting my nails, then I’m going out. Jerk off in the sink if you’re horny.”

  “That’s not why it’s clogged.”

  “That isn’t what Magdalena says.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. That isn’t why it’s clogged.”

  “Whatever. Don’t wait up.”

  “Marin? Hello?”

  After a moment of silence he looked at the screen. Smart phones didn’t even give you the dubious courtesy of a click when someone hung up on you.