Wrong City (2 page)

“Who?”

Both Toby and
Jamie turned to stare at him. “Kelsey Kirkpatrick,” Jamie said, the incredulity
plain in her voice. “From
Interstellar Boys
?”

Vish shook his
head. “I don’t have a television right now,” he said. From billboards and bus
advertisements, he was aware of the existence of a series named
Interstellar
Boys
, but he wasn’t familiar enough with it to recognize the cast members.

“She’s the hot
little blonde thing. Come on. You’ve seen her,” Toby said.

“The girl in
the bumblebee dress?”

Jamie giggled.
“Bumblebee dress,” she said. “For gosh sakes, Vish, that’s a Frederic Lanchin.
It’s couture.” Jamie’s Texas roots sometimes came out in unguarded moments, and
she pronounced it “couchure.”

“She’s hot,”
Toby said.

“She is?” Vish
spread a clean black cloth napkin on his tray and began arranging the tacos in
what he hoped was an aesthetically pleasing display. “She seemed so young.” He
pictured the girl teetering on the railing, her round face and downy-chick
hairstyle and baby-doll voice. The idea of her as an object of anyone’s fierce
passion seemed absurd, like lusting after a stuffed animal.

“Eighteen in
six weeks, man. Six weeks. Can’t wait.”

“For what? So
you can drool over her?” Jamie opened the oven door a crack, peeked in on
whatever was still in there, closed it. “Kinda seems like you’re doing plenty
of that already, sugar.”

“So I can drool
after her legally. Without feeling creepy about it.” Toby shrugged. “Biological
imperative, babe.”

Vish wasn’t
sure what that meant, and he wasn’t sure the sentiment bore careful parsing,
either. Freshly-loaded tray in hand, he glanced through the archway into the
dining room. The pretty man was in his line of sight, deep in conversation with
Maryanne and her husband. “Hey, do either of you know that guy talking to the
hosts?”

Jamie glanced
over and shrugged. “No idea. Why?”

“Not sure. He
looks familiar, sort of. Like he’s someone I’m supposed to know.”

“He’s foxy,”
Jamie said. She nudged her elbow into his ribs and winked. “Are you
interested?”

“That’s not why
I was asking.”

“No offense
meant. Just checking. You keep to yourself so much it’s hard to know where your
interests lie.”

Toby squinted
at the man. “I think he’s just some guy,” he said at last.

That seemed to
be the final word on the matter, so Vish headed out into the party once more.

T
he party deflated shortly thereafter.
Guests seeped out and slipped off into the night; the noise level ebbed. It was
still before midnight when Jamie, Toby and Vish began loading foil-wrapped
trays of leftovers into the stubby white company van.

The night air
was a relief after the stuffy kitchen. Vish could smell hot grease and smoke
clinging to his hair and clothes. The back of the van reeked of chorizo and
corn oil.

Toby scrambled
into the passenger seat. That meant Vish would be nestled in back with the
leftovers. His stomach lurched.

“You won’t need
me to unload, will you?” he asked. “I’m opening the shop in the morning. Would
you mind if I just took off from here?”

Jamie looked at
him, confused. “You mean walk?”

“Just down the
hill. I can catch a bus when I hit Hollywood.”

“It’s fine with
me, but it’s an awful long way to the beach. Let me drop you off at the shop.
That’ll get you a whole lot closer to your place.”

“No, I’m fine.
I could use some air,” Vish said. “Is there anything I should know for
tomorrow?”

Jamie thought
for a moment. “Should be pretty straightforward. Someone’s coming in for a
tasting in the morning, but I left everything marked in the fridge. That’s
about it.” She paused. “Are you absolutely sure I can’t give you a ride? It’s
late. It might be dangerous.”

“I’m sure.
Exercise will do me some good.” Jamie was right. It was a long way to Venice
Beach, and the buses at night were infrequent and erratic, but the urge for
solitude trumped that right now. “I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”

“Sure thing,
sugar. Thanks for all your help tonight.” Jamie looked concerned, but not like
she was going to push the issue. With a wave, she climbed up into the front
seat.

Jamie and Toby
drove off down the canyon road. Vish followed on foot. No sidewalk, so he kept
to the gravel shoulder. The road was narrow and twisty and dark, the only
illumination provided by the glow of the city below. A moonless night, the sky
inky and impenetrable.

All was quiet.
Rare to find this kind of tranquil darkness in the middle of Los Angeles. The
air smelled good, like eucalyptus and lemon verbena and damp earth. Early
September, and the air was crisp, but not chilly.

He heard a
rustle in the shrubbery forming a loose barrier between the road and the steep
slope of the canyon, a crunching of pebbles, a stirring of dead leaves. A
coyote, maybe, one of the many that roamed the hills in packs, sometimes
wandering into town and dragging off the occasional family pet. They avoided
humans, Vish had heard, but all the same, he quickened his pace a little.

He was crossing
beside a parked car, something sleek and sumptuous, when he heard a voice:
“Hey.”

He turned.
Leaning against the hood, arms folded across his chest, was the pretty man.
Vish could barely see him in the darkness. “You didn’t park on the hill?” the
man asked.

“Hey. No, I’m
catching the bus,” Vish said. He paused. “Car trouble?”

The man
shrugged. “Can’t get it to start.”

“What’s wrong
with it?” Vish asked. Not that he’d have any idea how to fix it, but it seemed
only polite to ask.

Another shrug.
“Not sure. I’m not really a car person, you know? Never had the interest.” He
straightened up, popped the hood. Gestured for Vish to look closer. “At a
guess, though, I’d say this might be the problem.”

A chaos of
smashed parts. It looked like someone had wielded a sledgehammer and bashed
everything, all that finely-tuned German engineering, into crushed bits. “Wow,”
Vish said. He looked at the man. “Who did that?”

“Don’t know.”
He smiled. Very white teeth, shining in the darkness. His incisors were too
long, giving him the impression of fangs. “I probably deserved it, though.”

He said it in
such a matter-of-fact way that Vish wasn’t sure he was joking. There was
something frightening about this level of destruction, that someone had directed
so much rage and fury toward him in this specific manner. Cars were an
extension of everyone’s personalities here in Los Angeles. In the eyes of many,
Vish’s lack of his own car marked him as somehow incomplete, less than a wholly
functioning human being. The attack on the car was an attack on the man.

Vish glanced
around. The rustling in the bushes, the dark night, the empty road… “Do you
want me to call you a cab?”

“A friend’s
picking me up. Thanks, though.” The man looked thoughtful, but not worried.

All of a
sudden, Vish felt… not scared, exactly, but something in that area. The man
seemed defenseless, waiting by himself beside his ruined car with an
unidentified enemy somewhere out there. He hesitated, then made the offer. “I
could wait with you.”

The man looked
at him, his expression blank, and for a moment Vish thought he’d said something
to offend him. Then he nodded. “Sure. If you wouldn’t mind. Thanks. I was
getting bored.” He slammed down the hood and boosted himself up onto it. “Grab
a seat.”

Vish hesitated.
“I don’t want to destroy any fingerprints.”

“Doesn’t
matter. Destroy away. I’m not going to report this.”

Vish sat on the
hood next to him. The car looked clean—shiny and freshly waxed, in fact—and if
the man could trust his expensive suit to it, Vish didn’t need to fret too much
about getting his cheap work slacks dirty. “You really don’t know who did
this?”“I can think of a few possibilities. A lot of people don’t like me.”

“I don’t know
who you are,” Vish said. “It seems like I should, but I don’t.”

“No reason you
should. Our social circles probably haven’t overlapped much.” The man extended
a hand. “I’m Sparky.”

“Vish.” They
shook.

“Fish?” Sparky
asked. “Like… fish?” He made a little swimming motion with his hand.

“Vish. With a
‘V’.”

“Short for?”
Sparky’s expression was sharp, like it mattered.

“Viswanathan.”

Sparky smiled.
“I was hoping for Vicious. Or maybe Vishnu,” he said. “Viswanathan? Isn’t that
a last name?”

“It’s my
mother’s maiden name. Actually, it’s my middle name, but I don’t like my given
name.”

“Which is?”

“Michael.”

Sparky stared
at him as if he was trying to decide if Vish was making fun of him. It was an
expression Vish saw a lot. Then he shook his head.

“So it’s been
established you’re not an actor. Proceeding on the assumption you’re not a
career caterer, either, I’m guessing you’re the other one.” Off Vish’s confused
look, he elaborated: “Writer.”

“Ah. Yes. I am.
Trying to be one, at least.”

“Screenplays?”

“Yes. I’ve just
started, though. I’m not sure I have the hang of it yet.”

“How long have
you been in L.A.?” Sparky asked.

“A year,
almost. I moved out from New York. I was a contributing editor at an online
literary magazine, but it folded last year.”

“So you moved
out here. To write screenplays.”

Was there a
note of scorn in his tone, or was Vish overly sensitive on the issue? “Yeah,
pretty much. You’re in the entertainment industry?”

“Here? Who
isn’t?” Sparky smiled. “I’m on the management end of things. Nothing terribly
glamorous.” He propped his elbows against the windshield of the car and leaned
back, staring up at the moonless sky. “You have any scripts you’re shopping
around?”

Idle curiosity,
or genuine interest? “Nothing I’m happy with. Mostly I’m trying to get my book
published.”

A quick glance
over at him. “Agent?”

Vish paused.
“Ah… not right now. I had one in New York, but it didn’t work out.”

“Tell me about
your book,” Sparky said. “Pitch it to me. Really sell me on it.”

Crud. Vish
hated this kind of thing. Talking about himself made him self-conscious enough.
Talking himself up, trying to make himself sound exciting and compelling and
dynamic, made his soul wither and die. He took a deep breath and tried to
arrange his thoughts.

“It’s fiction,
though it’s sort of loosely based on my mother’s life. She passed away last
year.” Sparky made some faint sympathetic noise at this, but said nothing. Vish
continued. “She grew up in India and came to the United States and became a
cardiologist. My book begins right after she started her internship at a
hospital in Detroit.”

He warmed to
his narrative, gaining confidence, adding more and more details. Sparky’s
expression showed reassuring interest; he nodded in the right spots, silently
encouraging Vish to go on.

When Vish
finished, there was an odd moment of silence. Sparky smiled at him. “Sounds
awful,” he said.

His tone was so
polite and cheery that for a moment Vish thought he had misheard. Before he
could say anything, Sparky continued. “I mean, it’s probably good.
Well-written, at least. You seem smart, and you have a good grasp of the basic
components of a story, and I have no doubt you can string words together in a
pleasing manner. But seriously, it sounds like something I’d need to be paid to
read.”

He didn’t need
to sound so chipper about it. Vish swallowed once. “Okay. Thank you,” he said.

Sparky gave him
a sidelong look. “That’s not much of a defense,” he said.

“If it’s not
your kind of book, it’s not your kind of book. There’s no sense in me arguing
the point.”

“You’re doing
this all wrong, you know.” Another smile. “This is the part where you tell me
why this
should
be my kind of book. Turn on the charm. Sell yourself.
Flirt with me, if applicable. Because if you’re at all perceptive, and I think
you probably are, you’ve picked up on clues that I might be someone important.”

“I’ve made a
note of that, yes.”

“So…?”

“So I’m not
comfortable promoting myself, that’s all.”

“You’re in the
wrong industry, then,” Sparky said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

“I’ve ventured.
Believe me, I’ve ventured. And I’ve never gained, have never even come close to
gaining. Nothing’s ever come of anything I’ve tried, and I’ve always ended up
feeling cheap and ridiculous for the effort.” It came out a bit sharper than
he’d intended. Hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought Sparky looked
surprised.

“So what’s the
plan then, Vish?” A note of something new in Sparky’s voice, something slinky
and coy slithering in beneath the sardonic bonhomie. “Keep serving shitty food
to the beautiful people at parties until a handsome stranger offers you fame
and fortune on a silver tray?”

Ah. Sparky was
playing with him. Sparky might also be kind of an asshole. He was bored and
killing time, and he had nothing to give him. Vish almost smiled, suddenly more
at ease. Assholes he could handle. “I suppose, if you’re offering,” he said.
“Want to be my fairy godfather, Sparky?”

Another flash
of those overlong incisors. Sparky was prettier when he didn’t smile. “So you
can flirt. I’d wondered.” He sat upright. “Send me your book. I’ll go through
it, and we’ll see what can be done.”

“You already
said you won’t like it,” Vish said. It came out a little bitchy.

“Doesn’t
matter. I don’t have to like it. We’ll do what we need to find a market for
it.” Sparky fished around in his wallet and produced a business card. He handed
it to Vish. “That’s my office. I’ll be in on Monday.”

Vish glanced at
the card. Sparky Mother, it read, with a telephone number. No title, no company
name. It also had a little line drawing on it, a fuzzy blue cartoon tiger
holding a sparkler.

It was far and
away the dumbest business card Vish had ever seen.

“Okay. Thanks,”
he said. He stuffed the card in his pants pocket. This was confusing. Was
Sparky agreeing to take on his book, despite his clear antipathy toward it?
What did he do, exactly? He’d said he was a manager… no, he’d said he was on
the management side, which wasn’t quite the same thing.

Sparky grinned.
“You’re not going to call me, are you?”

“I don’t know,”
Vish said. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know anything about you.”

“So Google me.
That’s a good place to start. See what you think after that.” Sparky shrugged.
“I can do amazing things with you, if you’ve got the balls to let me.”

Bit of a taunt
there. Unmistakable. “We’ll see.”

“We surely
will.” Sparky nodded toward the curved road, where an approaching pair of
headlights sliced through the darkness. “That’s my ride.”

A black sports
car pulled onto the shoulder just ahead of them. Sparky slid off the hood of
his own car and ambled over to the driver’s side.

A tinted window
rolled down. An Asian woman, Korean maybe, with bobbed copper hair and huge
gold hoop earrings looked up at Sparky from underneath a thick sheaf of glossy
bangs. “Hey, you,” she said. “Hop in. They’ll tow you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Poppy.
Poppy, this is Vish.” Sparky beckoned him over. “He was nice enough to keep me
company, I figure the least we can do is give him a ride home.” He turned to
Vish. “Where do you live?”

Poppy glanced
at Vish. She was extremely pretty and extremely made-up. Eyes lined in a thick
layer of smudgy black, lashes long and spiky. She wore a gold tank dress
covered in large sequins that glittered when she moved.

While Sparky’s
attention was on Vish, she caught his eye and shook her head, just a fraction
of an inch, once.

Ah. “Don’t
worry about it,” Vish said. “The bus is fine. Thanks anyway.”

Sparky frowned.
“You sure?” he asked. “We can at least run you down the hill to your bus stop.”

“I need the
walk,” Vish said. He’d grown a little cold sitting in the night air with
Sparky, and his white button-down shirt and the dumb red polyester vest Jamie
made all her employees wear so they’d look like a cohesive team weren’t
providing much warmth. A ride would be nice, actually, but Poppy had sent him a
very clear signal he shouldn’t take Sparky up on his offer. “Hollywood isn’t
far from here.”