1. Finn #2
I attempted to act affronted, but he was only asking because… well, because I probably wasn’t making logical sense right now with the amount of things I wanted to say.
“Of course, I did.”
He stared at me—looking for the lie. But there was one thing I never skipped, and that was my Adderall. All of this unfocused-me was just a result of the overwhelming excitement at the chance of making a movie that mattered. That was my explanation, and I was sticking to it.
Atlas sighed dramatically. “Did you even read the spec?”
“Yep,” I lied. All I saw was Grierson’s name on a script when I read the first page.
Picture my character, sweating, exhausted, staring at a countdown to the end of a quarter, or a period, or whatever, as his uninspired team headed for a loss.
I could imagine the expression I would use, exhausted, broken, resentful even, but maybe hopeful even as the clock ticked down.
That one page was close to the limit of my acting ability, but shit, I wanted to emote the broken hockey player more than do anything with freaking Rapid 4.
“Stay with me, Finn… Finn.” This time, Atlas was right up in my face.
I reared back. Curse my squirrel brain, but I was staying with him.
I was undeniably in the goddamn room right now, but I did pinch my knee to make sure.
I peered back at the posters and the one for Rapid Recall which was movie three in the franchise, and noticed someone had missed airbrushing the freckle under my left eye.
Not good art-guys, not good.
I should get on to that.
No wait—I have an agent—Atlas can sort that out.
“They left a freckle on my poster,” I informed him. “They either leave all of my freckles or not—we can’t have anything in between.”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I wasn’t. But a freckle is a freckle and—”
“Stay on task Finn.”
“Sorry.”
“Look, you understand Grierson demands full commitment, immersive—he’ll want you to understand the pain of pushing yourself to the limit. He’ll want you to freaking live the part and act your heart out.”
I waved at the huge images of Rapid 1, 2, and 3, plus the much smaller poster for the indie film, Where the Ladybugs Live, which made up the full movie resume of Finn Kerrigan, former soap star turned Hollywood star. “I can act.”
I can.
Atlas leaned over me and placed his hands on my shoulders, my chest tightening because I really didn’t like being hemmed in or trapped.
“When I took you on, son, I promised you one thing. Do you remember that?” How was it that he managed to sound sixty, when he was only ten years older than my twenty-seven?
“Um. That you’d only take twenty percent of my money?”
He rolled his eyes. “I promised I’d never lie to you.”
“And?” I focused back on his face, shrugging off his hands.
“You know, and I know, that under the action hero is not another layer where an Oscar-worthy character actor lives, Finn. You’re at the level you should be at—you’re not the type to live and breathe your part and immerse yourself in understanding what makes a character real.”
I winced because this was some character assassination.
“It’s not a bad thing, okay? You’re great at what you do, flashing your abs, looking pretty, leaving the messy stuff to the stuntmen, and it’s made you more money than you could spend in a lifetime. But if Grierson thinks there is another layer, then you and me… we know he’s wrong.”
I listened to the words, but none of what he said meant I couldn’t do this movie—if Grierson was willing to take a chance on me in his gritty piece of art, then why shouldn’t I believe I could do it?
“I signed the contract; I’ll figure the rest out.”
“I want you to reconsider Rapid 4.”
“No.”
“You can’t skate.”
I puffed out my chest. “I’m Canadian, I’ll figure it out.”
Okay, so figuring it out wasn’t going so well, and I’d already gone three days into my thirty-five until filming, paralyzed with indecision.
I wrote a list, checked it twice, laughed at my own stupid joke in my huge empty house, and then it hit me.
Like I did with Jeff the mountain climber, all I needed to do was find an expert in skating, in hockey, someone who would sign an NDA, someone who could make me the best goddamn hockey-playing actor in the entire world.
In the thirty-two days left to me.
We had a team near here, the LA something or other, Thunder? Or Lightning? I looked them up, feeling remiss that I didn’t even know the name of the local hockey team. The first entry in the search showed LA Storm, so I was close. I knew it was something to do with the weather.
I clicked into an article—the LA Storm were one game away from doing something amazing in the Stanley Cup, which was the cup of all cups in hockey.
I may not love hockey as much as my bloodline insisted I should, but even I recall riots in Vancouver after the local team there lost in a cup final.
The LA Storm—and what a cool name that was—were fighting the Boston Rebels.
Okay, so I needed to find someone with the Storm team willing to sign an NDA and teach me. Any one of them would do, and I clicked on the fourth thing on the list: Hockey’s sexiest players.
Now this I could get into.
Number one was some pretty boy out in PA, all flicked hair and flirty eyes. Oh and married to a guy.
Gay.
How did he manage to be gay and play professional sports?
I crossed him off my mental list. That would be way too dangerous, because what if he was attracted to me, and me to him, and then we fucked, and he told my secret, and I lost all the parts, and maybe not even the team behind the Rapid franchise would want me.
No one wants a gay action hero. Right?
Second was some kid out of Florida, a rookie who looked as if he wasn’t old enough to shave.
Third was an actual LA Player. Interesting.
Cameron Chavkin, twenty-six, single, and whoa… he was all bad boy oozing with brooding sexiness.
“Jesus, look at that ass!” I said to no one.
I clicked the link to a recommended video, one from a previous year’s run for the Stanley Cup, and fell down a rabbit hole of sexy, exciting men.
LA had been knocked out in the second-round last year, and there was a video of the team reactions. I sought Cameron out.
There was one image of him staring up at the big scoreboard over the center of the ice and he was broken. I thought he seemed as if he was going to cry, but not in a weepy way, instead in a manly, stoic I’m-too-tough-to-cry-but-I’ll-let-my-eyes-water-up, kind of way.
His attention was fixed on a replay of a goal hitting the back of the net, in the background the other team was celebrating, and I took note of the narrowing of his gray eyes as this Cameron Chavkin emoted his pain and loss with resigned grief.
This was me.
Well, not me, but the character I was due to play in The Cup.
I wanted this Cameron guy to show me how to be like that, how to do that.
I channeled my best Liam Neeson monologue voice. “Cameron Chavkin, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you’ll say. If you are looking for money, I can tell you I have a lot of money, and a very particular set of skills in persuasion. I will track you down. And I will hire you.”
I laughed at my own joke.
And in my empty ten-room house in the hills, with its three pools and the marble Italianate kitchen, no one laughed back.
I was all alone, and I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t my agent.
I considered calling my sister, but she was pregnant with a third nibling, and so over my regular freakouts over a lot of things… so that was a no.
Or Natalie? She was my beard, or I was hers. Either way, we did promo every so often to keep things settled.
But she was filming in Brazil and the last text exchange we had was all about her falling in love with a woman called Chloe, and I couldn’t rain on her loved-up parade with my misery.
Maybe I could call Luca Bennetto? He played my sidekick in the Rapid films, and he was also one of my few friends in Tinseltown—growing up on a soap set was hard on friendships but he’d followed more or less the same route, albeit ten years before me.
I liked Luca, and he liked me.
So, Luca it was.
I tried his cell, but it went to voicemail, and I didn’t have the heart to leave a message as convoluted as what I needed to explain.
So much for talking to anyone.
Suck it up, buttercup.