Wild Licks (28 page)

My call was for three in the afternoon at a private address north of the city. I would have almost thought it was sketchy to be showing up at a residential house except for the production trailers in the circular driveway. The house had a modernist architectural look to it. I went up to the front door but a short woman with her dark straight hair cut in a pageboy waved to me from the nearest trailer.

“Gwen?” She was waving a tablet and she had a walkie-talkie on her hip.

“Sorry,” I said, hurrying up to her. “All I had was the address.”

“No worries. I'm Nancy Cho, the assistant director. Miles is still with the band at the soundstage, so we're a little behind schedule, but we can get you started with wardrobe and I'll fill you in while you're in the makeup chair, okay?”

“Sounds great!” And it did. Here I'd been bracing myself for Miles Redlace to start insulting me the minute I walked in, and he wasn't even here. There was this nice woman with an air of competence about her instead.

She introduced me to the wardrobe person and they discussed the scenes, deciding we should film some scenes with me in a bathrobe first. Not only that, but these would be scenes of me putting on makeup, so that meant the makeup artist would have to make me look like I wasn't wearing makeup.

While I was in the chair and the makeup person was layering up translucent powder on my face, Nancy told me more about the video. “So the concept is you're a trophy wife to an older, rich man, and this young rock star sweeps you off your feet and rescues you from a life without passion.”

“Okay.”

“So there will be some story scenes, intercut with some band performance footage and also some artistic lip synch shots where the singer is saying the words while trailing a knife up and down your back. Since the title of the song is ‘Razor Sharp.'”

“Do the young wife and the rock star run away at the end?”

“I'm not sure if there will be an actual shot of the escape or if it will merely be implied,” Nancy said. “Why?”

“The video is supposed to get people to like the band and the song, right? People might be kind of down on the idea that they're, you know, cheating. Committing adultery.”

“Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Here, have a look at the plot notes while I take this phone call.” She handed me her tablet and I read through the synopsis and scene-by-scene plan while the makeup artist worked on my eyebrows.

When Nancy came back, I handed her the tablet. “I'm sure it's going to be great, but it's so obvious a man wrote this.”

She chuckled. “Is it?”

“Maybe it's just that my sister is on this whole campaign about how media for women should actually be aimed at women, so we talk about this stuff all the freakin' time, but this video is really aimed at the guys in the audience, and I think most of the fans of The Rough are women who might be turned off by this whole thing.”

“You think? But it's a romance where she gets her happy ending; she runs off with the hot guy.”

“Yes, but really it's about the two men fighting and the woman is just the prize. And that's emphasized by the fact that the lip synch segments call for a naked woman's back and hips to be visible. It's like soft-core porno for guys.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose we could have the singer shirtless, too? For the sake of equality. If their other videos are any indication, Axel has no problem being nearly naked.”

Oh, right, of course it would be Axel playing the part of the young guy. I had somehow been picturing Mal. Of course I had. I wondered if Mal was even going to be present for this part of the filming.

“This isn't about you being unwilling to do those segments, is it?” Nancy asked tentatively. “I can assure you no actual nudity is required. But if it's really a problem we can get a body double.”

“No, no, not a problem. I'm just, you know, overthinking everything as usual.” What was I doing, criticizing the script? “I know I'm just the talent. I have a tendency to think out loud. The thing is, I know the band a little—you might already know that—and I think they might be uncomfortable portraying one of them as a cheater. I mean, I know they have a ‘bad boy' image and all, but this is a little beyond that.”

“No worries,” Nancy assured me with a smile. “I'll make sure their manager is good with this image-wise or we'll make some changes. Now let's get you into the master bedroom and film some B-roll of you putting your lipstick and jewelry on like you're getting ready to go out for a fancy evening.”

We spent the next hour with me primping in front of a mirror while they filmed extreme close-ups of my face, lips, lashes, ears, all while I was supposed to express depths of hidden sadness.

It was a lot easier to do than you'd think. Guess why.

I could not have told you what I ate in the time between returning to Los Angeles and the video shoot. I could make some guesses, but I could not have told you what it tasted like. It was like all my senses had shut down. Like without Gwen in my world, there was no reason to open my eyes, or to smell, taste, or touch. The condo seemed very empty. My life seemed very empty. I wasn't even feeling the pain of having lost her so much at that point as…dead. I'd gone from a vampire or werewolf who needs too much to a monster that didn't need anything at all, a zombie who didn't even hunger for brains.

In a way, perhaps this was what I was trying to achieve all along. I no longer hungered. I no longer felt the Need. Greed did not own me. I wondered if this was how people who sold all their possessions and became monks felt.

I wondered if I should quit the band. If I was really going to make a completely clean break with any kind of kink, it seemed it might be inevitable. I did not have the energy to contemplate it much, though. Right then, trying to think more than a day or two ahead was beyond me.

The first day of video shooting began as it often did, with the prettifying of our faces and hair—a necessary evil given the lights used for filming—and then us mock-playing through the song on a soundstage that had been made up with risers and lights and fog machines. Typical stuff. I had heard this director was supposed to be some kind of conceptual genius, but I lacked the will to question the motions we went through.

It meant hearing “Razor Sharp” a few hundred times that day, sometimes only a few lines over and over as they strove to get the shot they wanted, with Axel's hair flipping just so in the wind machine or my fingers sliding up the neck of the guitar.

 

My entire life has been a race
To not become the thing I hate

 

I wrote that. At the time I'd used the word
race
rather than
fight
because it sounded better with
hate
. But now, hearing it over and over, I couldn't help but think, had I paused to consider that in this race, if I slowed down, I might be caught by the shadow pursuing me? I'd been referring to the way my parents and their ilk had allowed greed to warp their values. All the times I'd told myself I did something for the sake of the band's success, had I merely been fooling myself into thinking I wasn't like my parents because being a successful rock musician wasn't something they would have supported? Yet success meant I'd created a large amount of wealth for the record company, and not an insignificant amount for myself and my bandmates.

Some of whom put the money to good use. Axel had bought a house for his mother, for example. We all gave to charity, me more than the others. Was that really enough to assuage my guilty worry that I was turning out exactly as I'd feared?

No,
I told myself,
that's the only good thing to come out of the Gwen situation. You are finally learning to resist and eliminate the Need. The Need is just another form of greed, inappropriately transferred from material possessions to possession of a woman's body.

These were the thoughts that occupied my mind while we filmed. So it was somewhat startling to see the script that Redlace handed around to us while we were in the shuttle bus taking us and the crew from the soundstage to the next location for filming.

Redlace was a tall man who looked to be in his mid-thirties but slightly balding. He ran a hand through his dark hair as he stood in the aisle of the shuttle bus to address us and only succeeded in making a tuft of it stick up oddly.

“As you'll see, I've taken the song and interpreted it as a plea for heart and passion to win out over material possession and appearances. Roderick Grisham will be playing the part of the rich husband and a young ingenue whom I think you are familiar with will be playing the part of the trophy wife—Gwen Hamilton.” He punctuated this announcement with a wink in my direction.

I blinked and shot a look at Christina, who was sitting next to the director at the front of the bus. She gave me an innocent look in return.

A truly innocent look. After all, Christina knew nothing of the Montreal meltdown between me and Gwen. So I couldn't really blame her. I'd been planning to simply tell her
no
the next time she tried to fix us up for publicity. It hadn't occurred to me there would be another opportunity to cross paths with Gwen in a professional realm.

Everyone was quiet for a while, reading the script. Axel was cast as the hero of the piece, meeting the heroine at a posh function in a Cinderella moment, her losing her shoe. Did Redlace really think invoking a clichéd old fairy tale was cutting edge? Besides, the overall message didn't seem all that radical to me. Old rich guy loses trophy wife to sexier, younger rich guy…? Not exactly a rousing moral.

I reminded myself I didn't care.

They brought us to a multilevel house on a hill, white-stuccoed with flat roofs and huge plate-glass windows, making me wonder if Redlace was planning a stone-throwing scene as well. We were shepherded into a rec room down near the garage on the house's lowest level that had been converted into a temporary production office and staff lounge. An instantly recognizable man was sitting on a sectional sofa there, sipping a cup of tea.

“It's my pleasure to introduce you to Roderick Grisham,” the director said.

“We've met,” I said. “Mr. Grisham, nice to see you again. I was quite impressed by your turn in
Midnight
.
”

“Oh, I would have much rather played the monster, you know, but they want someone young and devastatingly good-looking for those roles these days and alas I'm no longer young,” he said wryly, making me chuckle. “Still, such an honor to work with Ariadne Wood. I was like a schoolboy on Christmas when they told us she was due to visit the set. She's quite reclusive, you know, so I'd never had the pleasure. Such a gracious woman, one of England's best. The only reason she hasn't received every literary accolade we offer is that so little value is placed on fantasy. Imagine that! We penalize writers for taking full use of their imagination. We want them to be imaginative, but only a small bit. The establishment is so terribly small-minded.”

A female voice from behind me added, “I would bet if she hadn't been a woman she might have had an easier time of it, too.”

“Oh, quite right, quite right, Gwen,” Grisham harrumphed, taking her hand and tucking it into his arm. “Kenneally, have you met this charming young lady yet? May I present Ms. Gwen Hamilton, who will be my costar on this production.”

The moment I had heard her voice, my heart had turned to a lump of stone. I could barely swallow, and I turned stiffly toward her.

Gwen offered me her hand as if she were a stranger, and I kissed it as if she were one, even though she said, “Yes. Mal and I know one another.”

“Ah, but of course!” Grisham said suddenly, tapping his forehead with his fingers. “You introduced me to her, didn't you, Kenneally? At the
Midnight
premiere. No wonder you two are giving me such sideways looks.”

Yes, yes, let him think that was what he was picking up on, not that I was paralyzed by her presence.
Gwen.

“Okay, folks, have a seat,” said an Asian woman who hurried into the room. “We'd like to get some of these exterior shots done before we lose the light.” As everyone seated themselves around the sectional sofa and on the armchairs by a nearby wall-mounted flatscreen, she gave way to Redlace himself.

“All right, you've all seen the script, but it's been brought to my attention that, ah, there are a couple of elements we might want to tweak to keep in line with band image. I may be a total diva about some things but honestly, people, Basic is paying me a fuckton of money to do this and I'm not exactly bucking for an Oscar with it. So let me hear you: Is the adultery theme going to alienate your fan base or the American public at large?”

“Adultery is not ‘on brand,'” Christina piped up.

“I didn't think you guys had to worry about looking squeaky clean, but yeah, I don't want you to just look like a bunch of worthless fuckboys either.” He gave a nod in Christina's direction and took a long swallow from the aluminum thermos he was carrying before he went on. “Frankly, I wrote this script while sitting on the crapper a couple of weeks ago and then I forgot about it. I'm, shall we say, not attached to anything in it. Our main constraint is we've only got two and a half more days of shooting on the schedule and we've already booked locations and wardrobe, obviously. So any changes we make can't be too radical. You get me?”

No one said anything for a few seconds, though a few people glanced at each other. Gwen raised her hand. “Mr. Redlace?”

“Oh my God, call me Miles or I'll have flashbacks to that time I was a substitute teacher and let me tell you it wasn't pretty.”

Gwen nodded and smiled. “Miles, okay.” She wasn't the slightest bit intimidated by him being a Hollywood big shot, and that was good. She was merely polite. “How about instead of being the trophy wife, she's the guy's daughter, and he's a widower who's overprotected her all her life?”