Unsoul'd (22 page)

Her:
How's H'wood? I miss you!!! xoxo

Me:
I'm sorry 2 do this like this, but I need to see other people.

There were other messages from her, but I ignored them. I don't know why I did it then and there and in that fashion, but as soon as I sent that text, I realized that I'd been building up to this subconsciously for weeks, if not months. Manda had been my rebound. And it had gotten serious because
she
had gotten serious, but why did I have to live through her? If I'd been in love with her, would I have cheated with Gym Girl? Would I have eyed up Sherrie the whole tour?

I couldn't stay with someone just because
she
was happy. And I couldn't do it just because I was afraid of turning into my father. That last phone call with him had made me realize: I wasn't going to be him. I wasn't going to end up alone. I was a success. There would always been someone who wanted to be with me. Yeah, I'd sold my soul to guarantee it, but so what? It. Had. Worked.

That night, the devil appeared in my dream (I
think
it was in my dream), wearing a parka and snow boots. He said, "That was
cold
, bro. Even to me." But he smiled when he said it.

I just didn't care any more. There were bigger things, more important things going on. My world had changed, expanded, ballooned. Getting the movie made: That mattered. Figuring out this new universe of mine: That mattered. Finishing the book: That mattered enormously. That was the key to finally shaking off what I'd come to see as the shackles of Lacey Simonson. She'd propelled me to stardom, yeah, but I had saved her sanity, so we were more than even as far as I was concerned. There was only so much oxygen in the room, and every time someone spoke of
Flash/Back
, she inhaled a little more of it. Her name had become synonymous with that book in the public consciousness. Was I benefitting from it, regardless? Sure. But I didn't know who Lacey Simonson was when I conceived of the story and wrote it and fretted over copyedits and page proofs and published it to no acclaim and middling reviews. And it was time to decouple myself from her for good.

It was
my
book. And she had taken it. So now I needed a new book that could be mine. That was all that mattered. New book. New world. New life.

Old girlfriend?

No.

The next morning, I woke up early and returned to the keyboard. The devil brought me room service and lounged nearby, snacking on my wheat toast as I wrote and wrote and wrote.

Wherein I Go to a Hollywood Party

The party Malcolm had mentioned started at seven in some producer's mansion in the Hills. "This guy loves
Flash/Back
and he can't wait to show you off," Malcolm told me. I squirmed a bit, remembering Sam's similar "see the caged monkey!" routines, but this was Hollywood -- showing off the new toys was de rigueur.

Crystyl arranged for a car to pick me up and deposit me at a mansion in the Hills no earlier than half past eight. "If you get there on time, no one will respect you," she and Malcolm told me jointly.

I wrote up to the last minute. I had no idea what to wear to the party and realized I couldn't ask. Not now. For one thing, I would look like an idiot, waiting until so late to ask. For another, I wouldn't have time to shop anyway. I settled on jeans, scuffed sneakers, a jacket, and a button-down shirt open at the throat. It would have to do.

"Very sartorially authorial," the devil said, tipping his cap to me as I headed out the lobby door to my waiting car. He leered.

I ignored him and got into the car. The maps on my cellphone told me that the party was only fifteen miles away, but it took us almost two hours to get there. Fucking L.A.

Once there, I loitered outside for a moment, wishing that Malcolm or Crystyl or Sherrie or Sam were here to usher me, tell me who to see, who to talk to...

I wondered if I should have worn better shoes. I wondered if that slightly tender spot next to my nose was actually a massive zit waiting to break out. Had it done so in the car? I went to probe the area, then realized that would only make it worse.

Fuck it. I walked in.

And I soon came to realize that it wasn't just
a
Hollywood party. It was
my
Hollywood party.

Malcolm and Crystyl both were waiting inside, as though summoned by my arrival. They acted as though we hadn't seen each other in years, with hugs and manly claps on the back. Then they escorted me through the vestibule and into the party proper and began the introductions.

Everyone...

I mean
everyone
...

Everyone at the party was there to meet me. Producers, co-producers, executive producers and, of course, executive co-producers. (I had no idea what any of them did.) A phalanx of publicists and agents and managers and representatives and PR "gurus." A director, some assistant directors, a person referred to as "my muse" by the director. Del MacCarter ("I'm dying to dig into the book, brother.
Dying
.")

And, of course, her.

Kiki Newman.

The standard joke is that actors are all shorter in person. Kiki was not. She was tall for a woman and not afraid of it, wearing heels even though they made her loom over many of the men in attendance. Her face lit up when Malcolm told her who I was, and yes, I knew she was an actress and that it was most likely just feigned, but I couldn't help but to believe that her smile, the gleam in her eyes, that these things were real and true and meant solely for me.

Her hand, when I shook it, was cool, dry, and soft as a breast.

"Your book," she said in a lilting, relaxed tone, "is dead fucking brilliant."

I loved it when someone else broke the cursing barrier first. It gave me permission to be as potty-mouthed as I wanted.

"Thank you very fucking much," I said gravely.

She threw back her head and laughed. "You're very fucking welcome."

I decided that I liked the way she said "fucking."

"The sense of isolation in that book," she gushed. "And the incredible sense of yearning and denial... It's amazing. How on earth did you capture that?"

"Well, I hadn't gotten laid in a while," I said lightly. It was the truth, but I could make a joke of it.

"Yeah, that makes sense," she said, suddenly down. "I don't know how you could handle that. You poor guy. That's... How long was it?"

We'd gotten very serious very quickly. Could I really tell her about my Epic Everlasting (so it had felt) Dry Spell? It was Kiki Fucking Newman! I couldn't tell her about my (lack of) sex life!

And yet, I was powerless not to.

"Eight months, two weeks, and one day," I told her.

"Oh. My. God. How did you survive?"

"It wasn't easy," I said with a tone of manful self-abnegation.
 

"I think I would lose my mind," said Kiki Newman, "just absolutely lose my mind, if I didn't get laid a couple of times a week."

Wherein I... Oh, Hell -- Take a Wild Guess

For reasons I didn't understand then and still don't understand now, I laughed -- a pure, almost innocent, almost childlike laugh -- as I ejaculated inside Kiki Newman for the first time.

We had spent most of the party together and alone. Not huddled in a corner for privacy or off in an unused room somewhere. No, we were alone together in the middle of it all, right in the thick of it. People milled about us, occasionally bumped into one of us, but no one spoke to us. No one even looked at us. We were invisibly visible, present while absent. Out of synch enough with the universe that we had the party to ourselves, snagging the occasional wine or beer or canapé from a passing server for sustenance.

I wish I could say that at some point during the night she became "Just Kiki," that at some point I became unaware of her superstar status. That her smile became just another smile, her laugh just another laugh. But that would be a lie. I was keenly aware of the essence of her, of her fame, of the sheer
size
of her the entire time we talked. What did happen, however, was this: I became attuned to it. Accustomed to it. The initial nervousness, the sense of "Who the hell am I to be talking to her?" was buffeted into tatters by the wind of her personality, the shreds then blown away entirely. I relaxed into her, came to terms with her fame almost unconsciously.

It was my party, she'd reminded me, so when the time was right, we left, climbing into her limo together. I wondered -- briefly -- what would happen to the car that had brought me, but decided I didn't really care.

I leaned forward to talk to the driver. "My hotel is--"

"Irrelevant." Kiki pulled me back by the arm and pressed a button, raising a divider between us and the driver.

I'd seen
this
movie before.

"I know what you're thinking," Kiki said, sitting back. She was gorgeous in the dim light of the limo.

She was gorgeous in the bright light of the party.

She was gorgeous.

This could not be happening to me.

"You're not getting lucky in this limo," she said, confirming my suspicions. "I don't do that. I'm not some fucking desperate little starlet who needs to blow you in a limo to feel validated, do you understand?"

Of course I understood. Until recently, most of my life was lusting after women I couldn't have. Gym Girl was the glorious exception to the depressing rule. Why had I ever even entertained the notion of Kiki and--

"But once we get back to my place, Randall, I plan to make you see the gods." She grinned salaciously and I felt myself harden nearly instantly. "If you're amenable, that is."

"Uh, I am."

She shifted herself closer to me and leaned in, holding my eyes with her own. Hypnotic.

"Kiss me right now."

I did. She tasted of peppermint and wine. She put her hand in my lap. I gasped. I reached for her.

"No," she said, and nibbled my earlobe. "You can't touch me. Not yet. I like to be in control. Until I'm not. OK?"

Being raped by Kiki Newman was possibly the greatest experience of my life.

Hours later, I rolled off of her, still laughing like a child at Seaworld, like a child seeing Bugs Bunny for the first time, like a child, period.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh."

"Why not?" She turned towards me. "Sex is supposed to be fun."

We lay sloppily against each other for an indeterminate time. Some schoolboy deep inside me wanted to call Tayvon.
Dude, you would not
believe
what I just did!
I tamped it down.

"Something to drink?" she asked. "I have a really nice zin in the fridge. Or a beer?"

I was still slightly buzzed from the party, and the idea of enhancing the buzz was appealing. "I'll take a beer."

She padded naked to the door and vanished into the cavernous depths of her mansion. I'd caught glimpses of it as we wrestled each other from the front door to the bedroom earlier, shedding clothes as we went. Her wealth was a foregone conclusion -- she was Kiki Fucking Newman -- but her good taste was not. What I'd seen of the house impressed me.

I capitalized on her absence to check my phone. I couldn't remember my schedule for tomorrow and a part of me was suddenly terrified that I would miss something important, that Sherrie had been trying to get ahold of me for hours while I romped in Kiki's house and in Kiki.

My schedule for the next day showed "Production Co. mtg." at noon. Then a flight to Chicago, the next stop on Randall Banner's victory tour. A text waited for me on the homescreen as well. Not from Manda.

From Gym Girl.

My nipples miss you.

That was...unexpected. Forbidden fruit? Wanting what she couldn't have? Second thoughts about staying with James? I didn't know.

Was it time to break up with her, too? Then again, we weren't technically "together," so how could I break up with her? I decided not to respond and had just replaced my phone when Kiki emerged from the darkness beyond the bedroom, bearing a beer and a wineglass.

"Room service," she said.

"I like this hotel." I eyed her with deliberate lechery and took my beer.

She crawled into bed with me and we clinked glass to glass.

"To
Flash/Back
," she said. "The book
and
the movie."

Something huge and dark and impenetrable floated between us in that moment and I had to acknowledge it before I became lost in it on my way to Kiki. I didn't want to wander in the fog, not when she waited on the other side.

"I understand you took a big paycut to be in this movie," I said, aware that this could be dangerous territory, but not really caring. I had known Kiki forever, after all. Forever or a few hours. They were the same in Kiki's atmosphere.

She arched an eyebrow and smirked at me. "Is that what you understand? At the end of the day, I'll be out two million up-front plus points plus a continuity bonus."

"That's a lot." Pang of guilt. Ridiculous. It was
her
decision to scrap the MGM contract.

"You're smiling. Does my losing all that money make you happy?"

Truthfully, I was thinking of the commission Fi would lose and all the extra work she would have to do in pursuit of losing it. "No. Not at all. I feel bad about it, in a way."