An Accidental Affair (31 page)

Bobby Holland said, “
Boy Meets Girl.
Has a director been attached?”

She ignored Bobby and looked at her assistant. “Tell my husband that I was just checking in and I’m stressed, but okay. I have my second wind. His name is James Thicke.”

“I know his name, Miss Baptiste. I’ve met him quite a few times. Nice guy.”

“I know you know. I was just saying that in case someone else had forgotten.”

Alice stood and walked by them all, the camera phone panning the impromptu party as she made her slow and easy exit, phone still on and recording until she stepped outside of the trailer into a section that looked like bungalows on wheels. She was good with the phone. Damn good. A reason we all had to beware. Still recording, she left that cocaine session, stepped into the light outside of Johnny’s trailer. She panted, frantic, speaking to herself in what sounded like Arabic. She didn’t stop talking to herself. Her breathing was harsh. She was excited and kept going. She hurried by actors waiting for makeup, by a crew complaining about being on the set this long, people bitching about the attitudes of stars, about Regina, about Johnny, about Alan Smithee, about the pimples on their lucky-to-be-working asses. She passed the other actors’ trailers, none as big as the one they had given Johnny Handsome and Regina Baptiste. Wardrobe trailers. Honey wagons. She walked a short distance, kept her phone up to her ear, like an actress waiting for a director to call cut, recording all she
passed, as if she’d give herself away if she put the phone down too fast. Then she jerked when she heard somebody shout.

“Steve Martin. Slow your fat ass down.”

“Shit. Bobby Holland is chasing me. I am so busted. Oh shit; oh shit.”

She lowered the phone and Bobby Holland’s expensive loafers came into frame.

He demanded, “Miss Baptiste said for me to tell you to give me her phone so I can get that asshole James Thicke’s phone number. Give me all of his phone numbers right now.”

“She didn’t tell me—”

“Give me the fucking phone, bitch.”

He took Regina’s phone from her. While Alice Ayres protested, he stole my numbers.

He said, “One word to her, one word, and I’ll make sure you never work in this city again.”

Then, with that clichéd threat, he dropped Regina’s phone to the pavement and walked away. With her phone, Alice extended her arm and recorded Bobby Holland storming away.

Alice Ayres looked into the phone, tears in her eyes, lips quivering, shaken.

Cursing in Arabic. Then the video recording on the phone abruptly went black.

Bobby Holland’s luxurious spread was still in the valley. The same home he had shared with Regina Baptiste. He leased at the end of a cul-de-sac, the street very quiet, at least three miles in from the closest freeway. The evil puppet master waited on me outside his three-thousand-square-foot home, curbside, with his hands behind his back and a Cuban cigar on the tip of his lips. I parked four houses down. Intentionally. When I looked back, there was no gray car. Bobby Holland extended his right hand and I did the same. We shook hands.

He said, “You’re in the wife’s car.”

I nodded.

He asked, “She knows that we’re meeting?”

“Only if you told her.”

He asked, “What’s in the man bag?”

I took the Tumi bag from my shoulder and allowed him to look inside.

He said, “It’s empty.”

I let his observations stand and offered no explanation. I carried it so whoever was following me in the gray car would think otherwise. At least I hoped that they would.

Bobby Holland was dressed like he’d just returned from an event. He had on jeans by Simon Spurr. He also wore a very nice watch, the Montblanc Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph Automatic, the version
that came in 18k red gold. On his feet were velvet slippers that looked like they were by Wellington Black and a Ralph Lauren wool turtleneck. Head to toe he was impressive, dressed in the casual attire of a formerly rich man who aspired to return to that status.

He tossed the last of his Cuban cigar and we headed toward his ranch-style home.

I glanced back again. The gray car was parking two houses beyond where I had parked. Bobby Holland looked back too. He saw the gray car. He didn’t question it.

Holland’s furniture was Spanish-style and elephant heavy. His living room had more celebrity photos than the walls at The Dresden. If you walked in and read the press that he had framed as well, you’d think that he was in the same category as DeMille, Stone, Lumet, Kubrick, Eastwood, Cameron, and Spielberg. There were
vestiges
of his native Norway, The Geirangerfjord, The Royal Guard in Oslo, Bryggen Wharf, Lillehammer, Vigeland Park, and the Holmenkollen ski jump, but they paled in comparison to his collection of celebrities at his side. It looked like he owned show business. I took in Hollywood and Norway as I followed. Beige carpet. Pure white walls, expensive paint, very European from what I could see. All the doors off the hallway were closed. There was no music on. No television. The house was quiet and held the sweet stench of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Outside of those aromas, the only thing that I could smell was the scent of chlorine coming from the pool in the back.

At the end of the hallway facing the pool and a well-landscaped area was his administrative center, a room that had at one time been a master bedroom. It had a wooden ceiling and a modern ceiling fan. There were a lot of things I pretended not to see, including the stack of yellow Post-its; Post-its took me back to being Varg Veum. This wasn’t his world. So I focused on the Golden Raspberry Award, a Razzie, the award for cinematic sins. It rested in front of his twenty-seven-inch
desktop, a Mac, and was positioned at the corner of his mahogany desk. Other awards were present too, some on his bookshelves and inside glass cases, but the Razzie was by itself. It belonged in the same category as The Golden Turkey and Stella Awards and Bad Sex in Film. I pointed at the Razzie, an award segregated from his other positive achievements, a bastard child at an orphanage waiting on an adoption that would never come.

Bobby Holland said, “Sandra Bullock has one. Halle Berry. Michael Bay. M. Night Shyamalan. Eddie Murphy. Many have accepted their shame. So I accepted mine as well.”

“I’ve never been nominated.”

“We all have bad periods.”

“Women have bad periods. You made bad films.”

Then I gave in and looked at the massive collection that would disturb me.

His office was filled with movie posters and covers from magazines, all the posters in expensive frames, all the magazines laminated.
Elle
.
Harper’s
Bazaar
.
Good
Housekeeping
.
Famous
.
Vogue
.
People.
Women’s
Fitness
.
Marie
Claire
.
Self
.
InStyle
.
Bis
.
Croissant
.
Filament
.
Hennes
.
Lucire
.
Shape
Magazine
.
VeckoRevyn
.
Bitch
.
Rolling Stone
.
Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Edition. The cover spoof by
Mad Magazine
. All were of Regina Baptiste. Between the movie posters and the laminated magazine covers, there had to be at least one hundred photos, one hundred different outfits, and one hundred versions of the same woman staring at me, enough to give me vertigo. Regina Baptiste in formal gowns, ripped jeans, a karategi, form-fitting workout gear, with her hair down, pulled back or done up like it was in the forties, in futuristic styles, on the beaches in Florida, in Paris, in Russia, in London. And in Norway. A stack of magazines was in the corner. All covers with Regina Baptiste. No matter which way a man turned in this room, Regina Baptiste smiled at him. This was an altar for religious worship. His private conventicle, a place to fantasize and masturbate.
There were only photos of Regina Baptiste. No one else existed in this room. He probably had a gallon of Vaseline and tissues inside of his desk drawer. His bedroom ceiling was probably wallpapered with the same images.

Witnessing my discomfort, Bobby Holland smiled, his eyes dark clouds turning gray.

He said, “Have a seat.”

There was a black conference chair facing his desk. I made myself uncomfortable on its hard black leather. Bobby Holland took the king’s chair behind his mahogany throne. There wasn’t a lot to be said, not at this stage in the game, so I cut to the chase.

Right away I said, “If you can’t have her, you’ll help destroy her.”

“I won’t destroy what I can profit from. Not at this point in my life.”

“You would exploit her like that? With something from years ago?”

“Regina Baptiste has become a religion.”

“And all religions are exploited.”

“Of course. Religion is about power and money. Which brings me to my agenda. I need financing. I need a big project. This is my moment to come back. That will take money.”

I took a breath. “How big of a loan are we talking about?”

“I’d never borrow from you.”

“I’m offering a low-interest rate this month. You’d get a free keychain too.”

“You’ll
give
it to me and you’ll do it with a smile.”

“Why would I do that, Holland?”

“Because you love her. Like a fool you love her. You love her like a fool.”

“I could walk away.”

“You won’t.”

“You’re right. I won’t. And I won’t walk away from Regina.”

“But one day you might go away to write a screenplay and come
back and she’s in somebody else’s bed. She’s done that once. Maybe more than once. She left that model she was dating and came to me. That tells you who she is, Thicke. She is loyal only to herself.”

“Anything is possible.”

“Or she could go away to work six weeks on a film and never come back to you.”

“Like I said, anything is possible.”

“You’re in too deep, Thicke. She has you. Like she had me.”

“Sounds like she still has you. From your redundant office décor, looks that way too.”

“And that’s the only thing that we have in common, Thicke.”

“Yeah. The only thing.”

“Actually, may I ask for permission to withdraw my last statement?”

“Permission granted.”

“She doesn’t have me, Thicke. No, this time I have her.”

“Seems that way.”

He smiled. “I hate you, Thicke.”

“Never been too fond of you either, Holland.”

“Her publicist liked you better than me.”

“Well, all of your headlines began to be about a child support battle. Women hate men in child support battles. Women hate women who support men in child support battles.”

“Women take what is none of their business and pretend as if it’s happening to them.”

“That’s why Rom-Coms sell so many tickets.”

“But in my case, women do project and protest trivial things too much.”

I said, “I won’t call it trivial, but I won’t argue with you on that one.”

“We’re almost friends now.”

“We’re as close to being friends as the sun is to Uranus.”

“Uranus.”

“Funny word.”

“So funny that I forgot to laugh.”

I said, “No way we can kiss and make up?”

“We crossed the Rubicon a long, long time ago, Thicke.”

“When was that? When did this war between you and me begin?”

“The morning the paparazzi took her photo leaving your home.”

“I thought that our Rubicon was long before that.”

“It was.”

I said, “You should’ve sent me a memo.”

“I tried. You sued me, then never returned my calls.”

“I guess I hurt your feelings. I’ll send flowers and a photo of my wife on your birthday.”

“Most, if not all of this could have been avoided.”

“What’s the bill?”

“I should’ve drowned her in my pool. I should’ve left her coked up and let her drown.”

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“The things I let her to do me. She loved to tickle my prostate and suck me dry. Has she ever done that for you, James? That hurts.”

“Bet it does.”

“No, I mean the way women take all of your secrets and sashay away smiling, take all of their tricks to other men and pretend those tricks are their own invention.”

“What’s the bill?”

“When I met her, she was beautiful, but she was a lousy Montanan fuck.”

“What’s the bill, Holland?”

“From what I saw on the video, she has definitely improved.”

“Where are you going with this, Holland?”

“I’m trying to befriend you.”

I said, “Enemies closer.”

“Enemies closer, bill higher, if you prefer.”

“I’d never ask an enemy for a favor. And you’d have to get a promotion to become an enemy. So when you bill me, bill me with that in mind. I’m not here to beg or ask for favors.”

He said, “I’m showing you that you’re not special. You’re just the fool who is next.”

“The bill is what’s next.”

He smiled. “The bill should be enough to make you feel like a fool.”

I nodded. “Depends on what you’re selling.”

He turned his Mac desktop until the screen faced me. It was already set up. He tapped
ENTER
and QuickTime played. Twenty-seven-inch screen. Video camera set up in a bedroom. My wife. Younger. Cocaine on the table. Laughing. Naked. Talking about the industry. About the people in the industry. Evil things about Hazel Tamana Bijou. About gays. About the Jews who ran the business. The stuff that all of the two-faced people in the business said behind closed doors or when they were in a place where they didn’t have to be politically correct. The things no one wanted to hear or see in print. All Regina. Before the level of fame and success that she had now. A frustrated Regina, angry at a bitch named Hollywood. Holland was there. Invisible. All directors were invisible. Never seen. Always there. Lots of cuts. Cuts that made it sound as if Regina was answering questions. Interviewer unseen. Whatever Bobby Holland had said had been bowdlerized. But the world wouldn’t care, not even if she had been reading from a script. I pushed the screen away from me, gently, until it face Holland.