2. Luke
LUKE
Avacuum cleaner runs somewhere down the hall.
Curtains opening in the living room.
That's what wakes me up.
Or the cleaning crew does.
I sit up slow.
There are strangers all over the house.
A woman asleep on the floor with somebody's jacket over her. Two guys passed out by the pool, still visible through the glass. Somebody snoring on the couch like they pay rent here.
I don't remember half of their names.
Call time was seven.
It's ten.
I go into the bedroom.
My clothes are already laid out on the bed for me.
"Thank you, Nina. Make me coffee, please."
She walks in and hands me a cup.
No judgment.
"Get rid of these people for me."
I drink half the coffee in one swallow.
Take a shower.
Out the door.
I check my phone.
Between my agent, manager, and the assistant director, there are twenty-seven messages.
I grab my Ducati.
That'll cut the drive in half.
I fly down Laurel Canyon, weaving through traffic hard enough that people lean on their horns after I pass.
The engine screams beneath me.
Good.
My head's still pounding from last night, and the speed helps drown it out.
Delia again.
"Don't," I say when I answer.
"Luke—"
"I'm on the bike on my way."
"They've been waiting for almost three hours."
I cut between two SUVs with inches to spare.
"I know."
"The director is?—"
"I said I know, Delia."
I hang up.
The phone keeps vibrating in my pocket while I race through traffic like getting there five minutes faster might somehow save the day.
They rush me straight to hair and makeup.
They cover my tattoos.
Nobody says anything.
Nobody has to.
I can feel it in the room.
The assistants are moving faster than normal. People avoiding eye contact. Everybody pretending today can still be saved if nobody says the wrong thing out loud.
Wardrobe pulls me into a quick costume change.
The set goes quiet when I walk in.
Not the good kind of quiet. The kind where everyone already knows what happened and they're watching to see what comes next.
The director, Craig, is standing by the monitor with his arms crossed. He's been doing this for thirty years. Won two awards I can't remember the names of. He doesn't yell. That's the thing about Craig — he never yells, which somehow makes it worse.
"Nice of you to come," he says.
"LA traffic, man."
"Three hours, Luke."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Be on time."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he turns to the crew. "Let's go. Scene forty-four, take one."
It's a bad day from the first take.
The scene is simple. My character confronts his brother across a kitchen table. Eight lines. Emotional containment, the scene where everything lives underneath the words.
I blow the first take on a missed line.
The second take, I'm on the wrong mark.
Third take, I'm present enough to get through the dialogue, but Craig stops it anyway. He comes out from behind the monitor and walks toward me slowly.
"What are you doing?" he says quietly.
"I'm working on it."
"What are you doing up there?"
"I heard you the first?—"
"Because what I'm seeing isn't acting. What I'm seeing is a man trying to remember where he is." He tilts his head. "Are you still drunk?"
The crew goes still.
"No. I'm hungover. There's a difference."
"I have forty people on this set who showed up at seven o'clock this morning ready to work, and I need the lead actor to be present enough to?—"
"I'm here."
"Being physically present isn't the same thing as?—"
"Craig, we can work, or you can bitch."
"You know what your problem is?"
"I'm pretty sure you're going to waste more time telling me what my problem is."
His voice stays level. "You've been doing this long enough that you think showing up is enough.
Flash a smile, hit your mark, let the camera do the work.
And it worked. For a while it worked." He pauses.
"But this isn't that kind of movie. And I'm starting to think you're not capable of giving me what this role actually needs. "
I hear it land throughout the entire room.
"Shut up. Please, just shut the fuck up. Can you do that?”
"You're an asshole."
I take one step toward him.
I shove him.
Hard. Both hands, center of the chest. Craig stumbles back, and the room explodes into movement — someone grabs my arm, someone is talking loudly.
Craig straightens his jacket.
"You want to go? We can go."
He looks at me with something worse than anger.
"We're done for the day," he says to the room.
"For real?"
"You're fired. I'm not doing this." He walks off.
"Good, I can go back to bed."
I change and get the hell out of there.
I'm back home in an hour.
The place is spotless.
No strangers. No empty glasses. No evidence anybody was here at all.
Nina erases bad decisions.
"What did you do? Kill them?"
"They're buried in the yard."
"Nina, you're the best."
"Done already?" she says.
"Easiest day ever. They fired me."
She smiles at that.
Doesn't ask questions.
"Can I get you anything, Luke?"
"Fresh juice."
I drop onto the couch. Yawn.
My head still pounds from last night.
Nina hands me the juice.
Delia walks in without knocking.
She never knocks anymore.
"What the fuck?"
"Hi Delia, would you like a fresh juice?"
"Yes, please, Nina. What the fuck, Luke? Did you walk off set?"
"Technically no. I was fired."
She stares at me for a second like she's deciding whether to scream or cry.
"Well, there's video of you shoving your director."
She pulls it out to show me.
"I don't need to see it. I was there."
"This is bad."
"It's fine."
"It's bad. Steven wants me to call him when I got here."
"Call him."
She dials my agent.
"It's Delia, I'm with him. Go ahead."
"What the fuck?" Steven says.
"Okay, hey, I'm sorry. But the guy got in my face."
"No, not okay. You were fired. Which means they have to recast, which means you cost the shoot money. You can do a lot of things — drugs, murder even — but costing people money is not one of them."
"What do you want me to do? It's done."
For the next forty-five minutes, Steven and Delia take turns telling me how badly I screwed this up.
Insurance problems. Reputation.
Same speech. Different day.
I sit there drinking juice while they talk like I'm already becoming somebody difficult to defend.
Maybe I am.
At some point, I stretch out on the couch and close my eyes.
"Do you need therapy?" Steven says.
"No, I don't."
Just tired of hearing my life explained to me.
When I wake up, Delia's gone.
I get a reminder text about a party tonight. I wasn't going to go, but luckily I'm not working.
The party is at a house in Bel Air owned by somebody in distribution.
Big enough to need valet attendants.
The crowd is the usual Hollywood mix.
Actors between jobs. Directors pretending financing isn't falling apart. Executives trying to sound artistic after two drinks.
Some of the guys I know corner me near the bar.
"I heard you checked him."
"It wasn't even a fight," I say. "You didn't even see the video."
"That's what I heard," he says.
"That's why I'm glad there's a video, so people can see the truth."
They laugh.
Not because it's funny.
"Craig's an asshole anyway," one of them says. "You should've hit him harder."
"Well, it frees you up for Sentinel."
I look over at him.
"What do you mean, they're doing that?"
"Yeah, where have you been all day? It got green-lit."
"Who's attached?"
"Max Jacoby is directing. Rebecca Anderson signed on."
That lands harder than I expected.
"No shit? They don't have the male lead yet?"
I set my drink down on the railing.
"No, they're going to read for it."
"Dead serious. It's like the Wild West out there."
I already have my phone out.
I step away from the bar and find a quiet room. There's a guy doing coke on a couch. He doesn't look up.
Steven doesn't answer.
I wait for the beep.
"Hey Steven, Sentinel is happening — how did you not tell me that? I need to go in for that. Get me in the room."
I hang up.
I call Delia. "Do you still love me?"
"Yeah. What?"
"Get me in for the Sentinel."
"Oh, you want to work?" She hangs up.