Hidden Bodies (29 page)

“Was Jake Gyllenhaal really interested?” I ask, because it feels like this is an honest zone, a sacred space, the opposite of a set where the movie is God.

“Fuck, no!” he says. “That’s just Milo stroking his dick and calling it a hand job. Jake isn’t into that kind of shit. I don’t even think he read
it.”

“Wow,” I say. “Does Love know?”

Forty shakes his head. “It’s a boatload of hell, getting a movie made, especially one like
B and P.
You gotta believe your own bullshit, ya know? It’s like when you go
to Promises and it’s the last day and you’ve been there for three weeks and they’re like ‘Do you feel ready to go?’ And you say yes because you were there! You fucking
did it. You tried. What the hell are you gonna say? ‘No, gimme an eight ball’?”

He laughs and watches a hooker dance to no music. “When did you go to Promises?” I ask.

But Forty doesn’t answer. He puts out his cigarette. “Earlier today, I had Ariana eat out Shelly while I fucked Shelly in the ass.”

These are things I don’t want to know. “Hey,” I say. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

He hoovers more cocaine. “What did I want to what?”

“Why am I here?”

“The million-dollar question,” he effuses. “Why are we here? Why? Personally, I think Satan sent me here to fucking fuck shit
up.
The way God sent Love to
love
shit up.”

“Forty,” I say. “Maybe you want some weed?”

He points at the hookers. He tells me again about things he
got them to do
and he might be lying about all of it. I decide I will not feel sorry for myself as Forty raves on about his
sexual exploits. Everyone has something. Some people have a difficult child and some people have a sick child and some people have a limp and some people have an impossible mother and there is
nobody on earth who has
nothing.
I have a mug of my DNA in a house in Rhode Island. And this is what Love has: a brother. A nightmare. A coked-up maniac who is now jumping on his bed like
a ten-year-old, telling me about a birthday party he and Love had as kids.

Forty jumps off the bed and falls into the credenza and bangs his head. He’s too fucked up to feel it and he’s on his feet again. “So are you psyched or are you
psyched?”

“Forty,” I say. “I think you better sit down.”

“No,” he says. “I think
you
better sit down.”

“I am sitting.”

“Fuck, yes, you better sit,” he rails. He claps. “And fuck you, Barry Stein.” He does more coke. “You know, he’s just gonna look fucking
stupid.
”

“Forty,” I say. “I think maybe you’ve had enough.”

He wipes his nose. “Megan. Fucking. Ellison.”

I put down my champagne. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you deaf?” he shouts. “Megan Fucking Ellison. So fuck
you
, Barry Stein.”

My heart beats.
Megan Ellison.
She made
Her
and
American Hustle
. The hooker who was dancing is now sitting on Forty’s lap, feeding him a taco.

“Forty,” I say. “Are you telling me that Megan Ellison is interested in
The Third Twin
?”

“No,” he says. “I am telling you that Megan Ellison is interested in
The Third Twin
and
The Mess. Both of ’em. Boom!
”

Forty found out this morning; his agent had a meeting with Megan Ellison and Megan Ellison can eat Barry Stein for breakfast. The agent says the offer will be coming any day now, and Forty and I
clink glasses of champagne and his hookers flop on the bed and watch
Wendy Williams
and make out periodically and this is not my kind of party but at least Forty knows himself. He jumps in
the middle of them and they both roll toward him.

“Now listen here, Old Sport,” he says. “Just remember it’s only interest and we don’t want to jinx it.”

We agree to wait until the news is official before we tell anyone, but I don’t know how Forty’s going to do it. He’s bouncing on the bed again, shouting, “Remember this
moment, Old Sport. It’s going to happen, it is. And the second that this is out there, your life isn’t yours anymore. This is out there, and you’re the guy, the man. Everyone is
gonna wanna piece of you. Everyone is gonna love you. So like, take this for
you
man, you know? This is
your
success and this is the magic hour, the golden time before the time.
Just be in it. You earned it. Don’t spread it and don’t pull on it and don’t push it and don’t share it and don’t examine it. This is it. If the big one hits right
now, you die a writer. You die discovered. Live like that. Live right now.”

It’s true; cokeheads can be annoying, but they also have this knack for knocking you the hell out of your head. Forty is right. This is my success and I put up with
Boots and
Puppies
and I spent all those days at Intelligentsia and Taco Bell and I
did
earn it. I jump onto the other bed and I don’t remember the last time I jumped on a bed. Forty howls
and turns on the
Boogie Nights
soundtrack and I jump and pounce and bounce and the hookers laugh and I did it. I captured the flag. I moved to Los Angeles. I found Love; I fell in love.
And now this, the hardest thing to do in this world, one of the hardest things, and I’m about to do it. I’m going to make it in Hollywood.

Love texts:
Have you heard from Forty? He disappeared. Sorry. Welcome to my world.

She writes again a second later:
I love you.

I take a screen grab. I’ll have this image stitched onto a pillow, dozens of pillows, written into the sky, engraved into the walls of our home. It’s impossible for me to distinguish
the Love high from the Hollywood high and there might even be a contact high from being in this cocaine den but I don’t need to separate one from the other. I am happy. I am here. All the
fear inside of me, the
CandaceBenjiPeachBeckHendersonDelilah
of it all, has been sublimated by the joy of
LoveTheThirdTwinTheMess.

I call Love. I assure her that Forty is safe because he’s with me. Love is relieved. Forty and the hookers decide to go for a swim in the giant pool and Forty shows off, doing the crawl
and the butterfly and the breaststroke. He could be out there teaching kids to swim with his twin sister, but then, some people prefer hookers over poor children.

The whites of his eyes are red. I don’t know if it’s chlorine or cocaine. “You’re a good friend,” he says. “You know I think if I grew up without all this
pressure and all this excess, I think I’d be more like you.”

I start to tell him he’s a good friend, but before I finish the sentence, he’s submerged.

IT’S
the last day of
Boots and Puppies
and I sit on this set a changed man. Love is a ball of feelings, overjoyed, sentimental,
excited. Her movie is ending and she doesn’t know it yet but mine will begin soon. We get to have a life like this, on sets, always creating, then wrapping, then toasting. I catch
Forty’s eye and wink but he motions for me to stop. He’s back. He’s hungover. He’s not sure if we have a deal. He hasn’t heard from his agent all day. I tell him to
relax. Let today be about
Boots and Puppies
.

“You’re a good man,” he says. “You see the big picture.”

“Always,” I say. “It’s the only picture.”

I am good on a set and I have come to love it here, shooting the shit, working out in the desert; I am the only crew member who will leave this location in better physical shape than I was when
I arrived. I love my chair with my name on it and I love our squeaky bed. I love the way a set makes you live in the moment. Now I am excited when Milo calls
action
and I feel like I moved
forward in life every time he calls
cut.

I will miss it here. I love the kitchen table where Love first blew me; now she sucks my dick every chance she gets. I love Love. I love our movie family even if I don’t know all their
names. People on a set all seem interchangeable, with dry hair and tan pants. But I love that too. I love it when it’s time for the martini shot and you get to clap and the day is over and
you
did it
. I love the time before that too, the sweet building exuberance of the Abby—named in honor of first AD, Abby Singer, you learn things on a set, history—the almost of
it all,
two more to go!
If we all die right now, we have a movie in the can.

Love’s parents saw some dailies and they’re so thrilled with Love’s work that they’re insisting on flying us all to their place in Cabo for a wrap party. Most movies like
this wrap out at a dive bar with two-dollar beers, but because of Love, we’re going to La Groceria for two nights. Love says I will love La Groceria and she says Cabo is “gentle heaven
on earth.”

I laugh and she smacks me. “Watch it, wiseass.”

“Love,” I say, grabbing a water bottle from craft. “Come on. When you hear Mexico, you think
gentle
?”

Milo laughs. “Lovey, Mexico is pretty much the murder capital of the world.”

It’s funny. Now that Milo accepts his fate, that he’s not going to be with Love, he’s infinitely more bearable, likable even. I relate to him, with his fucked-up parents and
his creative impulses. “Yeah,” I say. “Milo is right. I mean, they
behead
people in Mexico.”

Just then a PA approaches. “Hey, Milo,” he says. “We have a visitor.”

Love and I turn our heads. And indeed, we do have a visitor. I drop my water bottle. The visitor is Officer Robin Fincher.

I
am not jaywalking and this is not Officer Robin Fincher’s territory. He has no right to be here in uniform, standing on my set, looking at my
girlfriend. I pick up my water bottle, and stay on the ground a moment too long, and curse under my breath.

Milo shakes his hand. “Officer,” he says. “Did you need to see our permits?”

Fincher laughs. “I just need one or two lines and a close-up.”

Poor Milo can’t tell whether or not the fucker is serious, but this is serious for me. What the fuck is he doing here?

“I wish,” Milo says. “But it’s a two-person cast. Hopefully we’ll be back up this way for a sequel though, yeah?”

Fincher swallows. “I was kidding,” he says, and he narrows his small blue eyes at me. “I popped by as part of a courtesy. We’re just cruising through the area, addressing
a theft situation,” he says. “A couple places nearby have been robbed and we see you’re rigged up pretty good here. We just wanted to make sure you lock down tight
tonight.”

Milo shakes his hand. “A horror movie within a movie, right?”

I touch Love’s arm and tell her I have to go to the bathroom but what I really have to do is figure out why the fuck Fincher is here. I sneak out of the house through a side door and run
around to the front where I see Fincher’s car. He has headshots in the front seat but before I can explore further, I hear footsteps and turn around. Fincher lowers his sunglasses and I wish
I had a pair.

“Officer,” I say, sweat beading the back of my neck. “I’m a little confused.”

“Did you get a California license yet?”

“No,” I say. “I’ve been here.”

“Hmm. So you haven’t been back to your apartment?” he says. “Because neither has your neighbor.”

Delilah.
Fuck. “Which neighbor?”

He takes off his sunglasses and wipes them down with a handkerchief. “You know, your friend Delilah. She has a California state ID, lives in the same building as you. Well, not that
you’re official yet.”

“She’s missing?” I play dumb.

He nods. “You know anything about that?”

“I barely know her,” I insist.

He punches me in the stomach and he is not allowed to do that and I buckle. I am in the dirt. My gut is nothing but muscles and I have no fat there, no padding to soften the blow. The fucker
spits and his loogie lands next to my face. “Get the fuck up,” he says. “I went easy on you just now.”

I haven’t been punched since Nanny Rachel and I don’t like the feeling, the way my muscles are all individual things again with singular nerve endings. He kicks my knee. “I
said, get the fuck up.”

I stand. I will not give in. I will not reveal anything and his steely little eyes can’t possibly hold anything important. “You’re a fucker,” he says. And it’s a
generic word,
fucker
.

“I don’t know what you think,” I say. “But I didn’t do anything.”

“Except kill Delilah,” he says, and we have a problem. I can’t allow those words to come out of that mouth where someone might hear them. “You did that. So you know, that
matters to me, an officer of the law. I imagine it matters to your little fuck doll in there and I am sure that it matters to Delilah’s parents. Jim and Regina, by the way. You ever think
about that, Goldberg?”

He steps closer. If he hits me again I will kill him. I turn my head.

“Jim and Regina,” he seethes. “Jim and Regina, Mom and Dad. They love their baby.”

I turn my head and I meet his eyes head on. “I barely know Delilah,” I say. “And I’m sure her parents will do everything they can to find her.”

“You barely know her?” he asks, squinting at me.

“She’s a neighbor,” I say.

He raises a fist and he comes at me and I cower and he backs off. He laughs. “According to your neighbor Dez, you actually knew Delilah pretty well.”

That drug dealer fucker. I will not be unnerved. “If you mean that I slept with her, yes,” I say. “But I didn’t know her very well.”

“Phone records, Joe,” he says. “Do you forget that I’m an officer of the law and that I have access to the missing persons database? Do you think her parents don’t
go out there and see to it that the LAPD talk to each and every individual who communicated with their daughter? The State of California cares about its residents. This isn’t
Bed-Stuy.
We give a fuck here. We care.”

He pronounces it incorrectly,
Bed-Stooey
, and I hate this kind of Californian, the type who doesn’t know anything about the East Coast, the type who thinks Rhode Island is
adjacent to Maine.