“And you’re okay?”
“Der. Of course I am. I can handle my shit, lady.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“I’m on the lam—the place is surrounded by reporters and photographers. They were trying to break into our wing of the hospital. Security hated us. The cop fell asleep and I made a break for it. It’s all very exciting.”
“You’re insane.”
“Okay, well, you don’t sound too excited to hear from me and I do need to call my Uber.”
“Nuh-uh,” Nicola barked. “I have a story. It’s better than your story!”
“Can it wait till morning? I’ll call you from the road. I’ll be back in the afternoon, traffic gods willing.”
“You’re so not going to hang up without hearing my story.”
“If it’s that good, I’d rather hear it in person,” he laughed. “Love you, mean it. And call your mom.”
He disconnected the call and summoned his ride. He flicked through the photos of Ethan on his hospital bed and texted the best one to Nicola. Then he scrolled through his contacts until he found the number of a hotel publicist who’d been trying to bed him for a year. He messaged him that he was in town working on a last-minute travel story and had missed his flight and needed a room. Within ten minutes, he had a confirmation number for a free suite at the Wynn. The day wasn’t a complete loss.
CHAPTER 5
SQUINTING INTO THE DARK OF her West Hollywood street, Nicola prayed for a gap between the parked cars. There was nothing at all on her block.
“Crap.”
This was her nightly ritual. The hunt for a street parking spot big enough to squeeze her car into. She cursed at the NO CRUISING NO TURNS AFTER 10 P.M. sign at the next two intersections that forced her to continue to Melrose. They’d warned her about the traffic before she moved to LA, but nobody had warned her about West Hollywood parking.
Her two-bedroom apartment came with only one parking spot, and her roommate, Kara, had claimed squatter’s rights on it when Nicola moved in. Their shady landlord illegally rented the other one to some lawyer who had an office up on Santa Monica. She routinely spent at least twenty minutes searching for a place to park her blue beast.
She found a spot on Melrose that needed to be cleared before nine a.m. the next morning. Killing the engine, she sat for a minute, thinking back on the party. She might as well have been wearing a Dayton Flyers jersey and Ugg boots. It was a good thing she’d never aspired to Hollywood stardom.
The Tercel door creaked loudly as she swung it open to get out and then closed it. At the corner of Melrose and Harper, she skirted a drunken guy sitting in the doorway of a boutique and ignored his garbled request for a blow job.
“Cunt,” he sneered as she walked past him.
She bridled, considered going back and slamming her heavy purse into his head, took a deep breath, and turned onto her leafy, dark street. In Ohio, that was a bad word. In LA she heard it more often than she heard “thanks.”
It still freaked her out, how rapidly the nightlife of Sunset Boulevard, just two blocks north, dissipated into a silent wasteland. At night the streets were always empty, the residents always hidden inside their homes.
Nicola crossed the street, still one long block from her apartment, and stifled a scream as a figure emerged from the darkness right in front of her, as if materializing from behind the bushes. She reached into her purse and wrapped her fingers around the small rock she carried for occasions just like this, and wished it were a baseball bat.
Nicola squinted to see better in the dark, and softened as she realized it was only Jean, her favorite unstable homeless person. The wizened old lady walked her street all day and night selling crayon portraits to pay for her drinking habit.
“Oh, uh, Jean, hi … you scared me,” she said.
Jean stood in front of her silently, and slowly pulled from behind her back another one of her artworks. It was too dark to make out what it was, but they were usually Jesus, some hummingbirds, flowers, or Michael Jackson.
“That’s lovely.” Nicola smiled. “It’s your best one yet.”
Jean stood there, a vague figure dappled in shadows from the streetlight through the trees. She appeared to have done her hair into a high curly beehive, and she was wearing an old floral dress with a moth-eaten cream sweater and what appeared to be a baby’s rattle pinned to her chest.
“You want it or not, sister?” she croaked.
“I’d love it,” Nicola said. “How much for this one?”
“Ten bucks,” Jean slurred. “Thish one wash a lot of work.”
“But all the other ones are five bucks.” Nicola smiled, used to this exchange.