The Prada Paradox (7 page)

He’s probably right, but my head hasn’t managed to convince my heart. Which is why I now tuck my phone back into my purse, ignoring the chirp that signals that he’s now left a voice mail.

“So,” I say to Lindy. “Where were we?”

“Time to shop,” she says brightly, completely ignoring the fact that five seconds ago I was elbow deep in angst. Then she heads out of the bar and into the ornate lobby.

I sigh, then trot behind her, aiming needle-like glares at the back of her neck. I played a superhero two movies ago, and I had the power to force the truth out of my enemies with a single glance. That kind of power would come in real handy right about now.

The doorman holds the door open for us, and we step out into a balmy Los Angeles afternoon. The hotel opens onto Wilshire Boulevard, just steps from where that street intersects the fabulous Rodeo Drive.

I rummage in my purse for my sunglasses, then slip them on. Lindy does the same. We stand there for a moment. I don’t know about Lindy, but I’m taking stock. Because right in front of us is a shopper’s nirvana. “Shall we skip Via Rodeo?” I ask, referring to the ostentatious new walking street. Relatively new, anyway. And, in my opinion, tacky.

You reach Via Rodeo by climbing a set of stairs that rise from Wilshire. Then the road curves around until it meets up with Rodeo Drive proper more or less at Dalton Way. It’s a nice piece of real estate—and home to some of the ritziest stores on the planet—but I happen to like what I call the “old” part of Rodeo Drive best. And the stores along Rodeo aren’t slouches by any means. Tiffany’s (technically on Rodeoand Via Rodeo), Harry Winston, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana. You get the picture. And, of course, there’s Prada. Which, to my way of thinking, is the ultimate Beverly Hills destination.

Since Lindy knows my personal agenda well, she doesn’t argue. We walk the fifty or so yards to the crosswalk, then wait for the light to change. (Alwayswait for the light in Los Angeles. We’re a car culture here. Pedestrians are only good for target practice.)

I’m itching to start shopping. Although my bank account runneth over, I rarely buy anything on these outings (well, except at Prada, but that’s because of my own personal weakness), but I’m a die-hard window shopper.

The light changes, and we cross with the rest of the throng, a combination of locals and tourists. A few do a double take when they see me, but most are oblivious. I look cute, but compared to most of the shoppers, I’m hardly dressed to the nines. And I scrubbed off my makeup before I left the set. Hard-core fans and paparazzi will know me on sight. Everyone else, though? To them, I’m just another face in the crowd.

I know it’s not cool to be in love with your town, but I really do love Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills most of all. I mean, there’s anisland of tall trees right in the center of Wilshire. Clearly, this is a town concerned about aesthetics.

We reach the other side, and Lindy stops dead, making me (and a dozen or so shoppers) almost stumble over her. “What the—”

“Here,” she says, taking me by the arm. She turns us around so that we’re facing Wilshire again, right back the way we came.

“Hey! We haven’t even shopped yet.”

“Just read.” One elegant finger extends, indicating the Panic Button sign that someone has helpfully mounted where the standard Push to Walk should be. “Total Crisis Panic Button,” it says. For the standard white walking man symbol, you’re instructed, “Start running…Danger is imminent!” When the hand starts to flash, that means, “Don’t think! Stay fearful and alert!” And when the red hand stays solid, you need to “Obey orders.”

It’s a professional-looking sign, printed on thick metal and firmly attached with screws. In Beverly Hills, it seems, even the grafitti has style.

I’ll admit the thing amuses me, but I manage to keep a straight face. “And you’re showing me this because…?”

“You’re panicking,” she says, as tourists flow around us. “And you don’t need to be.” She turns around, takes my arm, and starts walking up Rodeo. For a moment, I walk beside her in confused silence. And then I realize: she’s talking about tomorrow’s scenes with Blake.

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“I’m a hard-nosed bitch lawyer,” she says with a perfect deadpan. “I don’t do touchy-feely.”

“Yeah,” I say, hiding a smile. “I noticed.”

The truth is, just by reassuring me, she is doing touchy-feely. She knows how weird I get about my acting. Couple that with my general neurosis about Blake, and I’m a walking time bomb.

She hooks her arm through mine and gives me a friendly squeeze. “Dev, sweetie, all you need to nail a scene is an actor to play against that you trust. You may not trust him in a relationship anymore, but I know you trust him professionally. Blake’s a good guy. He’s solid. And you two are going to sizzle on the screen.”

I want to press her for more, but I don’t. Because she’s right. Ido trust Blake. Or at least, I did. Before Blake, I’d never truly had a real, serious relationship with a man. It was just too hard getting past all the celebrity stuff. I love my life—don’t get me wrong—but finding the time for a relationship was just as hard as finding a guy who wasn’t either jealous or awed by my money and fame. I’d been burned a couple of times early on, and by the time I hit twenty-two, I realized there just weren’t that many men out there that I could put my faith into.

After the attack, I didn’t even try to date. I was nervous and jittery around everyone, but men especially. Blake, though…Well, somehow he eased in through the cracks in my heart. Slowly at first, and then so much that I let down my defenses. He was there. It felt right. And I truly believed that I had finally found a man who truly loved me. A man who could soothe my fears and share my life. A man I could trust with my heart.

I was wrong, though, and that miscalculation was one of the reasons it hurt so bad when he betrayed me on television. But even now, I know that I can work with him. I might hate him, but I can definitely work with him.

“You’re right,” I say. “But I still feel…I don’t know. Antsy.”

She looks at me appraisingly. “Is it the scene? Coming home and finding a stranger in your apartment?”

“You sound like Mac,” I say. “She said pretty much the same thing earlier today.”

“Maybe we’re right.”

“Maybe…” I trail off with a shrug. “At any rate, whatever the reason, Iam nervous about it. So I guess it’s good that Andy’s coming over tonight to rehearse.”

“To the house?” Her brows rise a bit with the question.

“Yes,” I say, feigning casualness. I know she’s not fooled, though. Lindy knows me better than anyone, so she knows just how few people I’ve opened myself to since the attack. I’ve had like zero new friends, so inviting Andy over is a big step.

Blake, actually, is the only new person in the last few years who has squeezed through my walls. And look howthat turned out. I’d opened my heart to him—shared things I’d never shared with anyone else. I’d believed it was for real and for forever. And then he’d gone and twisted the knife.

Lindy flashes me an understanding smile, then hooks her arm through mine and tugs me along. “Come on, my insecure friend. Let’s go spend money.”

Since that sounds like a truly fabulous idea, I walk with her in silence for a good ten seconds. But this whole invite-someone-over thing is now on my mind, and after a few moments I can’t take it any longer. I pause in front of Tiffany’s extravagant windows. “I didn’t screw up or anything by inviting him over, did I?”

She smacks me in the arm with her purse, and that shuts me up. “Oh, honey. He’s a working member of the team. That’s why you invited him over in the first place. He’s not Janus. You know that.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.”

“Besides, Andy probably understands what you’re going through better than anyone. I mean, wasn’t he stalked himself? Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Sort of,” I said. “He got sucked into the game as a protector.”

“Explain that to me again? I still don’t get this whole Play.Survive.Win thing.” Considering that she has an IQ high enough to be the gross national product of an emerging nation, I don’t believe her. But I do appreciate what she’s doing. So I humor her and give her the rundown of the game, explaining about the target, protector, and assassin roles.

“And that’s just the structure,” I continue. “It’s the actual scavenger-hunt part of the game that makes it really cool.”

“That’s right. I remember from the script you let me read. The target has to follow clues around the city.”

“Exactly,” I say. “But the really neat part is that each of the clues is based on a profile that the player fills out the first time they play the game. I think some early players lied—I mean, who doesn’t in cyberspace?—but later folks realized that the clues keyed off their interests.”

“So doctors would have medical lingo, and attorneys would have legal clues to follow?”

“Exactly,” I say. “And after people started putting down the truth, the game’s popularity grew even more. The guy who invented it became hugely rich. Scary rich.”

“What’s he doing now? Does he have any ideas about who started playing the game in the real world?”

“Nope,” I say. “He’s dead.” Archibald Grimaldi had started out a poor, abused kid who’d been failed by the system. He’d climbed out of the muck, though, and made a fortune at a very young age by inventing and marketing PSW. None of that money did him any good in the end, though. He disappeared one night, sucked into the sea. Finis. Game over. For Grimaldi, at least, but not for the millions of players around the globe who kept pumping energy into the PSW machine.

“How sad,” Lindy says when I tell her all that.

“I know. Very.”

“You played once, didn’t you?” she asks. “In real life, I mean?”

“Once,” I admit. “Lost right off the bat.”

“I can’t even win at Spider Solitaire. PSW sounds like it’s way out of my league.”

“Mine, too.”

“But back to Andy,” she says, twisting the conversation back to where we started.

“He was sucked in as a protector,” I say.

“But something happened,” she prompts. I can’t remember if I’ve told her the whole story or not, but she definitely knows where we’re heading.

“Andy took a bullet trying to save his target, but it didn’t matter. In the end the assassin killed the target, and Andy…” I trail off with a shrug. Because what can I say?

“Wow,” Lindy says.

“Exactly.”

“He must be a mess.”

“I think he’s dealt with it pretty well,” I say, feeling the need to stick up for him. “He was in an impossible situation, and he did his damnedest to keep the guy alive. And once it was over, he found Mel, and now they’re doing whatever they can to help other folks who get caught up in the game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mel used the money she won by surviving the game to fund a kind of project. She and Stryker and some other folks who survived now visit computer gaming conventions and post on bulletin boards and generally do all sorts of investigation to try to find other people who’ve played and lived to tell about it.”

I shudder a little. The whole thing just sounds too horrible. Getting caught up in some maniac’s version of a good time. I mean, how terrifying is that? (Actually, considering I’d gotten caught up in Janus’s version of a good time, I suppose I could answer that. And the answer is:way terrifying.)

“So, a lot of people must survive, right? You said she’s got other people helping her?”

I lift a shoulder. “I don’t think so. Last I heard there was just Andy and two others. Jennifer Crane and her fiancé, an FBI agent named Devlin Brady.”

“Jennifer,” Lindy says, her forehead scrunching up. “Why is that familiar?”

“Because you read the script,” I say. “She’s my roommate. Or Mel’s roommate.”

“Oh, right,” she says. “So is the movie all part of Mel’s grand plan? To get the word out, I mean?”

“Apparently,” I say. “Andy’s the one who’s actually been shepherding the film rights through, though. I guess he convinced Mel that getting her story out there and clueing the public in to what’s been going on would not only bring more players out of the woodwork, but also might put a stop to the whole thing.”

“Shine a bright light on the fungus and kill it,” Lindy says.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I say, as we start walking again.

“So do you feel better?” she asks after a moment.

I stop and squint, because I don’t know what we’re talking about. “About what?”

She just laughs. “You’re so predictable! Not five minutes ago, you were totally second-guessing yourself for inviting Andy over. You need to stop that. You do it all the time.”

“I do not,” I say, but that’s a big fat lie. Ido. I always have, but it got worse after the attack. And doubly worse after the breakup.

“You told me yourself you did it today,” she argues. “Kicked Blake out of your trailer and then raced after him to do the interview yourself.”

“Oh, that is so not fair,” I counter. But I start walking again, which my therapist would undoubtedly say is my attempt to move away from the truth.

Lindy rushes to keep up with me. “You’d totally decided that he was the love of your life, and then he goes and makes one mistake, and you do a complete one-eighty. I mean, sweetie, Olympic gymnasts don’t flip that fast.”