Spin (Songs of Corruption #1)(4)

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I will cut you.” She didn’t mean it, of course. Even coming from the wrong side of Pico Boulevard, her threats were all affect.

“Brown eyes. Black hair.”

“You must be off blonds since Dickerino Boy.”

“Six feet. Built. My god, his hands. They weren’t narrow or soft. They were wide, and... I’m not making any sense. But when he looked at me, my skin went hot. All I could think about was… you know.”

“You got a number?”

“Not even a name.”

Her phone dinged, and three people approached at once. Her day had begun. She turned away from me but flipped her head back. “You just got woken up.”

three.

en years ago, I couldn’t have gotten a donut three blocks away from my loft without getting jacked. In Los Angeles at the turn of the second millennium, the wealthy moved from the city’s perimeter back to the center. And if anyone was “the wealthy,” it was me.

We lived in an old corset and girdle factory. It had been abandoned in the sixties, used as a warehouse by a stonecutter and cabinet maker, then expanded and converted into lofts just before the Great Recession. The units had gone at fire sale prices. I could afford whatever I needed, but Daniel had insisted on paying half, and the recession hit him hard. So a short sale downtown loft at a million and change it was.

And I was stuck with it. He moved to Mar Vista after I kicked him out, and I commuted across town to Beverly Hills to run client accounting at WDE.

Studios did not cut checks to talent; they cut checks to their agents. The agents deducted their ten percent fee and sent the client the rest. Thus, Hollywood agencies were the beating heart of the industry, the nexus through which all money circulated.

And most of them were still cutting paper checks.

I’d been hired to move the company from paper to wire transfer, and I’d done it. I’d convinced old guard agents, grizzled actors, below the line talent, banks, and business managers to get into the twenty-first century. Many of our clients still insisted on bike-messengered and armored-trucked paper checks, but they were more and more the minority. New clients weren’t given a paper option.

I was still necessary to manage the rest of the paper trail, chase studios for payment, and run the department, but I felt my job was done. The only thing worse than the idea of living with my job was the idea of living without it, of drifting into a life without purpose. My sister Fiona had made an art form of it in her youth, and I’d watched her slip into debauchery. I’d do anything to not be her.

But there I was, closing my eyes and seeing those hated checks. I heard the tones of my follow-up call to the messenger service, the tip tap as Pam logged them in one by one, and I thought, I want to burn it all and then slip into oblivion. I never did. I dreamed about it sometimes while I spaced off looking at the numbers or listening to one of the agents throw his anxiety on the table when a client’s check was a day late.

I thought about law school then dismissed the idea. If I became a lawyer as well as an accountant, I’d be so valuable I’d be miserable.

“Hey, Fly Girl.” Gene stood over my desk. “Rolf Wente’s business manager needs you to follow up with Warner’s.”

I tapped my phone log. “We have calls out to them.”

“You look tired. How was the weekend? Do the whole party thing?”

If I didn’t answer, and if I wasn’t specific, he’d spend fifteen minutes telling me about his party habits. “Went to dinner the other night. We saw this lounge act. The singer was terrific. Faulkner. Something Faulkner. Like the writer.”

“Never heard of her,” he said.

“Nice voice. Original.”

“Whyncha send me the deets? Maybe we’ll get out there on the WDE dime. Bring the assistants. Make them feel loved.”

“Okay.” I turned back to my work, hoping he’d leave.

“And get on Warner’s, okay? We lose old Rolf, and we’re up the ass on the dry highway. Let me know about the singer by the end of day.”

I didn’t realize that by suggesting a musician, I was obligated to ride the company dime to yet another show at Frontage. I was exhausted even thinking about it, until I remembered the man with the pink tie. I grabbed my phone and went outside.

I walked by Barney’s. It was bridal month, apparently. High end designers had their white gowns in the window. Jeremy St. James had a jewel-encrusted corset over a skirt no more modest than a strip of gauze. Barry Tilden layered dove white feathers on skirt worthy of Scarlet O’Hara, topping it all with a bodice made purely of silver zippers.

“Deirdre?” I said when I heard her pick up. “You there?”

“What time is it?”

“Ten. What are you doing next Thursday night?”

Sheets rustled. “I have to be at the shelter late.”

“Wanna go out?”

“I can’t do anything fancy, Tee. It makes me sick.” My sister Deirdre despised the consumptions of the rich. She lived in a studio the size of a postage stamp and put every penny of her trust fund interest toward feeding the hungry. It was noble to the point of self-destruction.

“It’s not fancy. Kind of dumpy. I don’t want to go with just work people. They all look at me like they’re sorry for me about Daniel. I hate it.”