Chapter 10 Griffin
Griffin
“I’m guessing her ex didn’t mention a pregnancy,” Griffin said, heading up the ranges en route to the freeway. No point taking the scenic route tonight.
“But if she didn’t want anyone to know, including her ex? If she was working on Gods and Mortals while obviously pregnant, word would have gotten back to him—Hollywood’s a company town, everyone’s linked up. You have his number?”
“No. And I don’t know where he lives—or what he’s working on.”
“Social media?”
“I’m not connected.” She tapped on her phone for a while. “Okay, I’ve reached out, but doesn’t look like he uses it much.” She placed a hand over her heart and took an audible breath.
“Need me to quote some library numbers?”
She grinned, her teeth gleaming in the moonlight, and the sight filled him up.
The relaxed vibe they’d settled into earlier had been solidly blown.
Which was probably just as well—he’d been uncharacteristically attracted to her.
Still was. Was he so starved of easy company that he was seduced by the first genuine smile he’d seen in what felt like forever?
“Can you quote the number for any book?” he said. She wasn’t the only one who could use a distraction.
“Most of them. It’s my party trick. Well, it would be if I went to parties. And they’d have to be librarian parties.”
“A Brief History of Time. Go.”
She laughed, and again, it was a nice thing to hear. “Okay, that’s five-hundred thirty, for natural sciences-slash-physics. Then point … one-one for theoretical physics-slash-relativity. And then H.A.W.K.”
“Diana: Her True Story.”
“Ooh, buckle in. Nine hundred for history and geography, then forty-one for Europe-slash-British Isles. Then point zero for historical periods and…” She made a ticking noise.
“You can do it.”
“I’m gonna say … point zero-eight for the Victorian period and House of Windsor, and then … five? For 1945 to 1999. There, boom.”
“Feel better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I feel like this is a talent you could make money from.”
“I do. It’s called a job in a library.”
“Oh, shit, sorry. Of course you do.”
“To be fair, it doesn’t pay much.”
“Did you become a librarian because you liked reading?”
“It’s okay, I’m feeling calm again. No need to ask me about my job.”
“I’m genuinely interested.” He could feel her side-eyeing him. “I am!”
“Why did I become a librarian?” she said to herself. “You could say I was inspired by my middle-school librarian, Miss Coleman.”
“That’s cool. Does she know that?”
“I hope not.”
“Huh?”
“She once tried to ban me from the library for sub-lending a book to a commune neighbor whose parents didn’t let her read novels. Poor girl got caught returning it with a creased cover.”
“So, when you say you were ‘inspired…’”
“I was inspired to be the librarian I’d always wanted to have—the Matilda librarian. Miss Coleman was a fierce defender of borrowing limits and enforcer of due dates. And she was suspicious of the commune kids—considered alternative lifestylers a personal threat.”
“Did you get banned?”
“My mom marched to the principal’s office and announced that all the commune kids would be withdrawn from the school unless my ban was immediately lifted. She was bluffing, but the commune propped up the school’s numbers, so…”
“I’m taking a stab that you’re not a fierce defender of borrowing limits and enforcer of due dates?”
“More a fierce defender of truth and an enforcer of ‘you should be allowed to read any damn book you please.’”
“Oh, now that is smoking hot.” She laughed, but he wasn’t kidding. The thought of Lana wearing glasses and a cardigan and shushing him…
Dear God, what was happening?
“A library should be a refuge,” Lana said, her mind in more cerebral places.
“Peace, ideas, acceptance, open minds… Safety,” she added, after enough of a pause that he glanced over, eyebrows raised.
“We get a lot of vulnerable people coming in,” she explained.
“Kids escaping bullies or a bad home environment, homeless people, people falling through the cracks of the mental health system, addicts. Lots of addicts, these days. We try to link people with the help they need, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes?”
“We get a few overdoses. We’re trained to administer Narcan.”
“Have you ever had to?”
“Tried once, but it was too late. Took us a while to get our shit together. After that, we did drills to get quicker at it—assessing, deciding, administering. She was exactly my age, and I watched her die.”
Griffin didn’t trust his voice, so he reached for Lana’s hand and squeezed it. After a few seconds’ hesitation, she squeezed back. He could tell she was searching his face for something.
“Are you thinking of that actor, the one who died?” she said gently.
He tensed. “So you do know about that?”
“Well, yeah, it’s all anyone could talk about on set. And then the moment of silence.”
“Oh, Toby. Yeah.”
“Who were you referring to?” A silence descended.
He’d already let her in way too deeply. “It’s okay.
Whatever it is, you don’t have to share.
” She kept holding his hand though. He liked that—both things: the physical comfort, and the fact she was giving him space, mentally.
Crazy thing was, he felt like he could talk to her about Ethan—he even wanted to.
Luckily, he wasn’t that na?ve. It wasn’t something to discuss with a stranger.
It wasn’t something he discussed with people he’d known for a decade.
He once wrote about it in a journal, but it disappeared from his bedside the day their maid went AWOL, and those intensely private thoughts turned up on a website.
Ever since, his thoughts stayed inside his head, where they couldn’t be stolen.
And he did his own cleaning. He felt bad, though—Lana had shared a lot about her life, and her sister.
“I could have helped Toby Fong, and I didn’t,” he said abruptly, giving her something, even if it wasn’t Ethan. “I saw where his path was taking him, and I did nothing.”
“Oh, Griffin, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
He told her about the awards show, and his half-assed attempt to connect.
“Do I need to tell you it’s not your fault?” she said gently. “There’s a good chance he wouldn’t have listened.”
He scoffed a little. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind yesterday—until you came along and gave me something else to worry about.”
“Ah,” she said, like that explained something.
“What?”
“I did think you were punishing yourself for something—all those fight scenes.”
“Was I? I guess, maybe. It’s just…”
“Yeah,” she said, when he couldn’t finish his thought.
He stared ahead, the darkness broken only by road markings and distant taillights. How did she get him so effortlessly? Was she like this with everyone she met? “Why don’t you get some sleep? Might be a long day.”
“I’m too wired to sleep. But I can drive if you want a nap?”
“Nah, too much adrenaline.”
A phone rang, jolting him. His phone. He reluctantly released Lana’s hand and answered on speakerphone.
“Natasha.” To Lana, he whispered, “My manager.”
“What the holy hell is going on with you?” Natasha demanded.
“I just got off the phone with the head of security for Gods and Mortals. Something about you getting left behind on set, and trespassers, and drugged security guards, and cops getting called, and bullet holes in a hair and makeup trailer.”
“Did the cops catch them?”
“No. Just found a couple of abandoned cars. No plates, no VIN. There’s no security footage—seems the power was out. They’re looking for prints and DNA but they’re not hopeful. You okay?”
“I’m safe. Heading back to L.A. with a friend.”
“You have a friend?”
“Very funny. A colleague.”
“Cops are asking if you can give a description.”
“Nothing beyond body shape—they wore balaclavas. Seemed like private security. Hey, can you do me a favor?”
“I live to do you favors,” she said sarcastically.
“Look up a guy for me? Find where he’s working?”
He gave Natasha the name of Vivien’s ex, and ended the call, putting his phone on silent—his publicist would surely be on at him next.
Lana pulled a case from the glove compartment. She took out a disc and slipped it into the music player.
“I haven’t seen a CD player in a car since 2005,” he said. “Wait, did you even have music, growing up? Or was it like Footloose?”
“Like what?”
“You weren’t allowed to watch Footloose?”
“We had music. It was mostly the live streaming of the world that my folks wanted to avoid, though they called it ‘mainlining’ media, back then. It was about avoiding 24-hour news, gossip mags, consumerism, unrealistic beauty ideals, celebrity culture. No offense.”
“Why would that offend me? Celebrity culture is toxic—and that kind of media wasn’t welcome in my home either, growing up.
We had the trades, big stacks of them—Hollywood Reporter, Variety—plus Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker.
But nothing too gossipy. Except People magazine, once a year. ”
“Just once?”
“To see which of us was on its ‘most beautiful’ people list. Every year my parents pretend not to care and claim it’s rigged but every year it slips into the grocery order. Dad lost out to Keanu Reeves for Sexiest Man Alive in 1994 and he never recovered.”
“How many times have you won?”
Griffin grinned. “I think there’s a rule against awarding it more than twice to the same person.”
“Hashtag ‘humble brag.’”