Chapter 13
Lana
“This is going to sound bad,” Griffin said as they drove along narrow streets, past flat-roofed mansions and California pines, “but it’d be wise if you hide as we go into my place. Fans and paps sometimes gather outside my street at the weekends, and if I get photographed taking a woman home…”
“Say no more. I don’t want anyone looking at me.”
“There’s a windbreaker of Darnell’s in the back, if you want to use it for cover.”
Lana climbed into the back seat and curled into the footwell on the passenger side, pulling the jacket over her.
They kept ascending, taking a hairpin bend that seemed to go in a full circle before relenting.
By the time she heard a turn signal, it felt like they’d left the world behind and were heading into the sky.
“Here we go,” he muttered. There was a click as he locked the doors. “If I have to stop, don’t move. Brace yourself.”
She was about to ask what for when she heard a shout, followed by another.
People calling his name, mostly. More than one “I love you.” Someone shouted, “You’re a dick.
” What kind of person waited outside someone’s house just to tell them that?
Griffin lightly accelerated and the voices faded into a shrill bubble.
“Safe to get up,” he said. “They won’t spot you from here. Maggie was there. The redhead, too.”
Lana emerged and peeped out the darkened rear window. Beyond a tall iron gate, a couple of security guards watched over a dozen people. Most held up phones or cameras. “That’s normal for you?”
“At some point it became a game or something. Let’s play, ‘Spot the actor-hermit-guy!’ I’m hoping this Where-is-Griffin-Hart bullshit gets boring soon, otherwise I’m gonna be forced out of the street.”
They turned a corner, and Lana returned to the front seat.
Unlike in most of L.A.’s elite suburbs, the homes weren’t hidden behind walls and hedges, but they also didn’t give much away.
She rolled down her window. The warm breeze lifted her hair, and she tied it up.
The properties looked elegant and restrained—relatively modest, even, though she guessed that was literally a facade.
Rock walls, elegant masonry and perfect lawns.
Geometric breeze block and metal lattice screens.
Landscaped courtyards, manicured hedges, and silence.
The kind of entrances that architecture books called “considered.” Every home was single-level but expanded sideways to stake a claim to the view, leaving not even a glimpse of the valley between them.
“It’s like a mid-century modern Elysian Fields,” she said.
“Isn’t that where dead Greeks go? It’s basically a retirement village for old Hollywood—actors, producers, octogenarian rock stars. Their parties are something else. They’re always in trouble with the community committee.”
“It’s not where I would have pictured you. Because I know you so very well.”
“It’s not where I would have pictured myself, once.
I did leave home for a time. Had a house in Malibu.
Kind of place every actor buys when they land their first major job.
So close to the water you could almost dive off your deck.
Drifting off to sleep listening to the ocean.
That was living. But after the pipe bomb—”
“The what?”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I keep forgetting you don’t know my history. Most people at least know the top-line stuff.”
“Pipe bomb? What the hell?”
“Okay, so apparently, I ghosted this guy at a restaurant—and I probably did. I ghost a lot of people, or I’d never get through a meal.
Broke his heart, so he decided we’d be together in the next world.
Hence, pipe bomb. Fortunately, I’d stepped out to the bathroom when he tossed it into the living room.
Some regular fans were down on the beach, and they tackled him before he could throw the next one. Saved my life.”
“So you moved home?”
“Yeah. I grew up here, it’s not so bad. Neighbors all try to set me up with their granddaughters. And everyone’s into everyone else’s business, so it’s a pretty good neighborhood watch—from a security point of view. And like I say, I work insane hours, so I’m rarely here.”
“So you’re a commune kid too! Though yours is a touch more upmarket.”
At the end of the street, he pulled up to an arched metal gate along a stone wall.
He glanced at her, and she got the hint to look away as he punched in a code.
The gate slid open. At first it seemed like another classic single-level mid-century home—pale stone, floor-to-ceiling glass, tropical planting—but on one side the driveway dipped, and Griffin glided the car into a subterranean garage, which he accessed with a fingerprint lock.
Low lights eased on as they drove in, and Lana realized calling it a “garage” was like calling the Statue of Liberty a garden gnome.
It was more a luxury car court, with half a dozen gleaming vehicles parked in precise angles, the soft lighting designed more for display than visibility. “Is that a turntable? For cars?”
“If Dad had his way, this entire floor would be a garage,” Griffin said, parking beside a classic Porsche. “But then there’d be no room for the his-and-hers home cinemas.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“My folks like to have the option of watching separate films. I’m aware this is not how most people live—though this house is modest compared with some of the giga-mansions around here.”
“Is anyone home?” Lana suddenly felt nervous at the prospect of meeting Griffin’s parents.
“My folks are away. Their housekeeper and groundskeeper might be around.”
They took an eerily quiet elevator up one level.
It opened into a foyer dominated by a curving, glossy bronze wall.
It took her a second to realize that the gloss was a sheen of water that flowed into a pond.
She followed Griffin through a curved living room, all shiny black and white, accented by strategically placed mirrored surfaces.
The longest wall was made entirely of glass, and beyond it lay a rectangular pool and a hazy view that stretched across the L.A.
Basin to the ocean. A white terrazzo floor flowed through the interior and the terrace.
Lana didn’t know what to say— “Nice place you have here?”—so she stayed silent.
She remembered she was well overdue for a shower.
He opened a door to one side and let them out onto a covered path. They took a few broad steps down to pool level, and came to a wooden door. The pool house. He took off his sunglasses and looked into what she guessed was a retinal scan. The door clicked and he held it open.
She walked in, her shoes squeaking on the floor—more white terrazzo.
It was a single rectangular room with a kitchen island in the middle.
At the far end, a cozy cream L-shaped sofa and an armchair were arranged around a glass coffee table.
Next to Lana was a large futon bed. The longest wall was lined with thin horizontal slats, possibly teak, while the walls facing the pool and the view were floor-to-ceiling glass.
“It’s a little stuffy, sorry,” Griffin said. “It’s been shut up all week.”
It did have the lived-in smell of a home that hadn’t been aired recently. Not an unpleasant smell—it was somehow a Griffin scent, not that she could yet identify what that was.
Griffin touched a tablet inset into a wall beside the door, and the glass walls slid back, so noiselessly that it was a little creepy.
A welcome breeze coasted in. With just a few steps, you could dive into the pool, though it’d be a shame to burst its glossy blue skin.
Going the other way, you could step down to a smaller terrace and sit on a white outdoor sofa.
“This is it? It’s only about twice the size of my apartment!”
“Your apartment is half the size of this?” Griffin scooted past her, touching her upper arms on the way.
She flinched. He picked up a hoodie from the hastily made bed and shoved it into a roll-out drawer underneath, then grabbed a pair of sneakers from the middle of the floor, tossing them beside the door.
“I could feasibly cook dinner while sitting in bed. You’d have to take a few steps.”
Stylistically, though, Griffin’s pool house belonged in an interiors magazine.
White linen curtains pooled on the floor.
Round blown-glass lights were suspended from the ceiling, not quite in sync with the furniture placement, as if designed for a different configuration.
Alcoves in the slat wall held sculptural ceramics, their smooth, matte whiteness contrasting with the glossy warmth of the wood.
A large-screen TV was recessed into the timber—the sofa was arranged so one half of the L-shape faced the view and the other the TV.
From nowhere, she got a mind picture of curling up there with Griffin, watching something, and suddenly she understood the appeal of films.
The thought of cozying up with Griffin drew her gaze to the bed.
Beside it, a stack of books doubled as a nightstand—A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey…
At the top, a pair of reading glasses with thin black frames rested on a small green hardcover.
Griffin wearing glasses was a thing she had to see.
Griffin lying in bed, reading, was a thing she had to see.
What did it say about her that her immediate fantasy, upon sighting his bed, was of him reading in it?
“Do you approve?”
She spun around. “What?”
“The books,” he said with a slightly puzzled grin.
“Oh.” She collected herself. “You don’t need to seek approval from anyone for your book choices.”
“Spoken like a true badass librarian.”