The Comeback(37)

I push my silk eye mask up and hold the vibrating phone close to my face so that I can read it through the blur of another heavy night’s sleep. The eye mask has been doing its job too well recently, and I’m finding it nearly impossible to get out of bed before midday. When I do wake up, my brain feels furry and strange, as if I’m wading through a swimming pool of thick clay just to form a sentence.

I hold the phone up to my ear as the air-conditioning unit in the bedroom blasts warm, damp air over me.

“Grace, I messed up. Nathan and Kit have been harassing me for your address, and I gave them your cell number. Do you hate me?” Wren asks, sounding upset.

“No, it’s fine,” I say, stretching slightly and trying to keep the sleep out of my voice because it’s eleven thirty on a Monday . . . or maybe it’s Tuesday. “I needed to call them anyway so they stop ringing the house.”

“Are you going to start working again? Feminist space movie?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I’ll see what they think.”

“Who’s the one who talks really fast? Nathan? He sounds pretty pissed.”

“I can only imagine.”

I assure Wren one more time that I don’t hate her, and then I hang up and call my old agent Nathan.



* * *



? ? ?

Nathan and Kit were with me from that very first dinner at Nobu. Able brought them on to represent me when I moved over, and the two of them, plus Able and my publicist, Nan, became my team and, in effect, my new family.

Nathan, my agent, is the younger of the two, probably only just nearing forty now, and he hadn’t had much success when I signed with him. What he lacked in experience, however, he made up for in arrogance and delusion, two qualities admired above all else by men in this industry. Now he looks after some of the biggest names in the business and has an office with a view from Korea Town to Pacific Palisades to prove it.

Kit, my manager, likes to think of himself as a more cerebral man. It’s definitely an image he has cultivated, playing the role of a beleaguered Ivy League professor who has rather embarrassingly found himself embroiled in our indecent industry. As far as I’m aware, Kit grew up in San Diego and comes from NASCAR money.

We meet at Nathan’s office like we always used to. It’s been redone again, and everything in the room is now bright white, including Nathan’s jeans and his ratty Pomeranian, Dusty. It’s like stepping into a seventies insane asylum.

“The prodigal daughter returns.” Kit pulls me into a hug even though I’ve told him at least forty times over the years not to touch me. He gestures to the white leather sofa, and I’m stepping across the shaggy white rug when Nathan grabs my arm and shakes his head.

“Honey, no. This rug is worth more than your marriage. It’s not for walking on.”

“No problem.” I roll my eyes and climb over it dramatically. I’ve always been on my worst behavior with the two of them, and I naturally fall back into it. I met them when I was thirteen, and it was the only role I ever carved out for myself.

Kit sits in an ivory and chrome chair opposite me while Nathan paces the room in front of the window.

“Someone forgot their Ritalin today,” I say, and my first clue that this isn’t going to go how it used to is that neither of them laughs. Dusty curls up on the white rug below me, and I look at Nathan pointedly. He doesn’t say anything.

“First of all, welcome back to LA, Grace,” Kit says, steepling his hands like a Bond villain.

“How was Anaheim?” Nathan asks, saying it as if I’ve been in Fallujah and not a mere forty miles outside of Los Angeles.

“I should have told you where I was,” I say courteously.

“You also shouldn’t have left,” Nathan says.

“That’s debatable.”

“It’s not. Debatable,” Nathan says, and I think he’s gotten hair plugs since I left. Was everyone just waiting until I left the city to fulfill their cosmetic surgery goals? “You realize we’ve spent the best part of ten years working with you, right? We have built an entire network based on you being here, showing up and working. Your actions are no longer just your own at this point. You do understand that?”

“Nathan—” Kit interrupts, but Nathan holds up his hand. His lips are slick with spittle, and he wipes them with the back of his hand. When he puts his palm on the desk to steady himself, I can see the glob of saliva on his knuckles, and it makes me feel embarrassed for him. Nathan used to invite me over to his house in Brentwood and his entire family would treat me like I was Beyoncé, calling in the sushi chef from Katsuya and opening $800 bottles of wine that I inevitably ended up knocking over when I got too drunk.

“I just need to check that she understands that if this was any other business, we’d be able to sue the fuck out of her. Because it’s not like the CEO of a tech company going missing, or even the lead designer, it’s as if the fucking product itself disappears into thin air. Do you get it?”

“Like I said, I should have told you where I was.” I fold my arms across my chest and shift in my seat like a child in trouble.

“In all honesty, Grace, yes, you could have sent an email. We looked like retards,” Kit adds, and my surprise must show on my face because he shrugs and mouths what? at me after.