The Unnoticeables (20 page)

“Oh, are we? We're just going to walk up and ring the doorbell? That's great. How are we going to explain to the other guests what we're doing?—‘Hey, sorry to intrude, everybody, we're just here to torture a former teen-heartthrob because he's actually a hollow, indestructible monster who kidnapped my friend. Party on!' We'll be in a padded room come morning.”

Carey gave me an arch look.

“Look at the cars,” he said.

I did.

I've been through Beverly Hills during rush hour; I've seen million-dollar supercars being abused and neglected by douche bags before. But never so many all together like this. Must be some serious money at this party.

“What about them?” I asked. “They're a little dinged up.…”

“And that's not strange to you? That every single one of these extremely expensive cars is smashed to pieces? Look at the pointy red number with the white stripe—”

“That's a GT-Forty,” I supplied.

“The pointy red one,” Carey insisted; “the bumper's gone. You think anybody who drives a car like that would be caught in public with it looking that shitty—much less out here at a nice party? Look at the curvy silver one: both headlights knocked in. The little gold convertible. Check out the grill. That's blood.”

“What the hell?”

“There are no ‘guests' at this party, darlin'. They're all like him. They're all Marcos. They're Empty Ones.”

Both of my feet went numb.

I tried to say “holy shit” and “Jesus Christ” at the same time. It came out “hosus.”

Carey didn't even notice.

“You were pulling some true Evel Knievel shit on Daisy earlier. I gotta give it to you. But the two of us on that little bastard, even riding like the devil himself—you honestly think we could catch Marco's big German cock-rocket if he didn't want us to?”

“He…” I didn't even want to say it. I didn't want to validate it. But Carey was right. “He was leading us here?”

“Might as well use the front door then.”

“Why did you let me waste time planning, if you knew?”

“Jesus, girl. Gotta be a hundred of those fuckers in that house. I'm just trying to get up enough balls to go in there.”

I straightened and started moving before I could give myself a chance to think about why. Careful consideration could only reveal that this was a terrible idea, and I had to be stepping through that door well before logic caught up with me. I had no other way to find Jackie. It was walk straight into the fire smiling, or do nothing at all.

After a few seconds, I heard Carey crunching along the gravel behind me. It helped, having him here, but it was a slight comfort. He was a thin, ratty blanket thrown over your shoulders in the middle of a blizzard. Marco had plainly shown we couldn't hurt him, no matter what we tried. A crowd of those monsters could tear us apart without breaking a sweat, and here we were walking in unannounced—

“Miss Kaitlyn Barr and Mr. Carroll Horton,” a tremendous black guy bellowed, swinging both of the front doors open just before we reached them. He must have been seven feet tall and four hundred pounds. It looked like somebody had stuffed the night into a suit.

The announcement caught me off guard.

“C-Carroll?” I stammered.

“Oof, don't call me that. Only my mom calls me Carroll, and that's because she's a spiteful bitch.”

I started to ask him a question, but he was being spirited purposefully along by a sharp-faced woman in a little black dress. I followed and heard the distant music of glasses clinking. Laughter. The rustle of a hundred simultaneous conversations. I don't know what I was expecting—a great black altar and a bunch of naked people in animal masks, I guess—but on the surface, this looked like just another industry party. A high-end one, sure, but—was that the guy from
Skater Caveman
?

I tried to get a closer look, but he was turning his head away to whisper something into a thin blond woman's ear. She laughed, showing a large set of perfect white teeth.

Wendy Palmer. I almost doubled for her once, in one of those blurred-together romantic comedies she was famous for. Her character was clumsy. I would have had to do two dozen pratfalls.

“I have gone mad,” I muttered.

“Haven't we all?” A short fellow in a crisp blazer casually took my arm. He smiled up at me, and I swore he had the exact same set of teeth as Palmer. I scanned the crowd. Dozens of familiar, smiling faces.

One mouth.

I tried to shake him off, but he clung to me like a smarmy limpet. His tiny fingers dug painfully into my arm, but his expression stayed friendly. Unshifting. His smile was charming but carefully constructed. The mischievous twinkle in his eyes was painted on. When he looked at you, he didn't quite focus all the way—like you were just an obstacle obstructing the view of what he really wanted to see. He was moving now, and I was moving with him, because if I didn't, those vise-grip fingers tore into my flesh like talons.

“Let me introduce you,” the little guy said, and gestured around the room.

We approached a familiar-looking woman with thick hips and olive skin. I knew her from somewhere. I think she had a sex tape. I couldn't place her name—something with too many consonants.

“I love your look,” she said, downing a thin flute of champagne. “It's so
accessible.
”

She said the word like it was the vilest of profanities.

A guy that looked like Asian Dracula asked me where I got my teeth done. He laughed and turned away before I could answer. A gorgeous old woman in a pristine pink pantsuit gave me an assuring smile and told me not to listen to the rest of these bastards. She thought I was perfectly lovely. I reminded her of her dog. A pug. “He's gorgeous,” she said.

A handsome guy with carefully nurtured stubble and perpetual bed head introduced himself as “
People
magazine's current Sexiest Man Alive.” He rolled his eyes when I tried to tell him my name.

Another good-looking dude in an immaculate white tuxedo informed me I could be in movies—somewhere in the background, at least. He gnashed his teeth as the little man guided us away.

“My friend has that same shirt!” proclaimed a red-haired, pale-skinned woman I recognized from … something. Insurance commercials? “At least she used to have it. I think she might have given it to Goodwill a few years back. Hey, it might literally be the same one!”

A fight choreographer I recognized from a straight-to-video sequel we'd worked on together was talking to the faded action star who graced the production with a brief cameo at the start of the film. He must have starred in the first one but gotten too big to do the second. He was only on set for a day—just long enough to die in the opening sequence. I'd never actually met him.

“You've got a great body,” Faded Action Man said, after scanning me thoroughly. “It seems very functional.”

A river of faces and voices swept past, each with some cutting passive-aggressive comment or scathing assessment. I got the sense that we were rudely interrupting these people's conversations when the little guy had first started parading me around the room. But after a while, I noticed they weren't really talking to each other. They made words, they laughed, they smiled—but nobody was responding appropriately. Somebody would mention the traffic, and another would laugh, then start talking about a new project he was working on. A brunette called me “definitely passable,” then turned to resume her conversation, which consisted of loudly insisting that she drove better drunk. Her conversational partner replied that he thought it was supposed to be muggy tomorrow, and he was happy to live by the beach.

They weren't talking. They were practicing.

I watched the eyes of the partygoers across the room. Their faces pointed at each other, but their eyes were in constant motion, keeping me in view at all times. The entire room was just waiting for me to get close enough to criticize and insult. After a solid hour of being called “exotically ordinary” and “the perfect supporting type,” the little man guided me to a relatively empty section of hallway, released his painful grip on my arm, turned, and left without a word. I nursed the tiny purple bruises already welling up there. It looked like I'd been attacked by a superpowered baby.

I leaned against the wall and tried to keep my hands from shaking.

“I'm not saying he's right for the part,” a younger, red-faced man in a tight white T-shirt said. “I'm saying the part is right for him.”

“I get you,” another, older man replied, this one dressed in a rumpled but finely tailored charcoal suit. “I get what you're trying to do: I know you're using me here, and I love it, and I love you for it—but buy a girl dinner before you throat-fuck her in the bathroom, all right?”

White T-shirt laughed. “Geoff, I'd be happy to put a steak and a baby in you. You saying you want to be wooed?”

“I want to be wooed,” Geoff confirmed. “Is that too much to ask, Chaz? A little song, a little dance, a little reach-around…”

“I love when you're coy. You know that. Makes me feel like a sexual predator. But there's a limit, baby. Be forthright. Just tell me what you need to make this happen, and I'll make
that
happen.”

“My wife's shithead brother's shithead kid wants to break into the biz—his words”—Geoff made a wanking gesture with his hand—“so I need a major film, but a minor part. Something action-oriented. Maybe sci-fi. Make that a reality, and I'll get Nic into the tights for you.”

“Is that it?” Chaz laughed. “I thought I was gonna have to buy you lobster and take you dancing, and all you're asking for is a McRib and the bowling alley? Consider it done! It's already happened, baby!”

On the table across from me, I spotted a framed photo: Marco, his arm wrapped around an old Asian man in a maroon robe. Eyeglasses in large square frames.

The fucking Dalai Lama.

Marco was making bunny ears behind the man's head with his fingers, all with that same plastic smile and those glinting shark eyes.

This is his home. You are in his home.

My head was swimming. My breath came shallow. I was in way over my head here. I needed help.

“What are you thinking?” Geoff asked Chaz.

“Shit, I don't know. How about the next
Transformers
? He can be, like, a fucking GoBot or whatever.”

“There's a next
Transformers
?”

“There's always a next
Transformers.
It's like the tide.”

I decided to chance it.

“Excuse me?” I stepped up between the two men, and it took a full minute for them to get their heads pointed at me. Their nostrils were red and inflamed. White T-shirt—Chaz, I gathered—still had powder on his upper lip. They didn't look like they'd be much help, but they were the only people here having anything resembling a human conversation.

“I'm looking for my friend,” I continued.

“Oh, yeah. Busted-up old guy?”

“Right!” Geoff said. “I saw him come in, and I thought,
That's Mickey Rourke, if nobody fed him for a year.
Love the look. Totally unique.”

“I don't know, I feel like haggard old dudes are out this year. It's due for a swing back to young and fit any day n—”

“I was actually talking about another friend.” I waved my hand in front of Chaz's face, trying to get his focus back. “A girl. Short hair, brunette, thick cat's-eye glasses … Maybe she was wearing a kind of tuxedo thing?”

“Oh, her?” Geoff's head executed a lazy orbit around his own neck. “Yeah. I seen her. In the back, I think.”

“Jackie something?” Chaz asked.

“Yes!” A surge of adrenaline shot through me.

She was here!

“This way.” Chaz snapped his fingers and stumbled down the hallway.

“I saw her, and I thought,
Oof, not another one of these chicks.
This hipster thing is played out,” Geoff droned behind me. “Like, we got over Ally Sheedy when Ally Sheedy was still around, you know?”

“I disagree,” Chaz said, swinging open a door and motioning me through it. “I'll never get sick of banging girls that dress like my grandma. It adds a much-needed element for me.”

My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the dimmer light. Wan yellow shapes swam around the room, making wet slapping sounds. When my sight returned, I saw that they were girls, mostly. A few pale, skinny Asian boys mixed in. All naked. All screwing. All in a nearly catatonic, drugged haze. My chest clenched. I looked for Jackie's face, her hair, the Steamboat Willie tattoo on her butt—but she wasn't there. I sighed with relief.

Then I heard the door lock behind me.

I turned and found the two men blocking the exit. From the way they'd been talking to each other earlier, I thought they were human. Douche bags, certainly—but human ones. Some oblivious bystanders attending what they thought was another industry party. Now I realized they weren't people at all—they were just well practiced. Standing this close, I now recognized the vacant, unfocused stare of the Empty Ones.

“I don't see my friend here,” I tried, knowing it was futile.

“She's got a vibe to her, doesn't she?” Chaz asked, gesturing vaguely in my direction.

“Yeah, kind of a Buffy-meets-young-Linda-Hamilton feel,” Geoff responded, sliding out of his blazer and slowly unbuttoning his shirt. “But that finger will have to go.”

“I disagree,” Chaz said. He wrenched his jeans down over his hips and kicked them across the room. They landed on the face of a writhing blond girl with a buzz cut and dull eyes. She didn't duck. She didn't even pull them off her head.

“Ha.” Geoff laughed. He was down to his purple silk boxers. “Now I know you're just twisting my dick. Mutations will never play with the flyover states.”