Imperial Bedrooms Read online

  “Why is Kelly Montrose dead?” I say, almost murmuring to myself instead of directing this at Trent. “What happened to Amanda Flew?”

  Trent isn’t cool enough to hide the desperation that quickly flashes across his face. “It’s not just about Kelly and it’s not just about Amanda.” Trent breathes in and looks around. “You don’t understand … This … thing … it has … a scope, Clay … ” Trent stops. “It has a scope … There are other people involved and it’s—”

  “Can’t you just answer my question?”

  “But you’re asking for an answer where there isn’t just one.”

  The iPhone in my pocket starts vibrating again.

  “You smell like alcohol,” he mutters, turning away. “I heard rumors but Christ.”

  I clasp my fist around the iPhone as if that will make it stop.

  “Look, she’s not going to get that part,” Trent says. “Okay? You understand?”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Anything could happen, I suppose,” Trent says. “But I don’t think that’s one of them.”

  “Well, then she won’t get the part and then it’ll be over,” I say. “And then she’ll go off with someone else. She’ll move on.”

  “No she won’t. Because you’ll offer her another one,” Trent says quickly. “You’ll just prolong it. Like you usually do. And like the others, it’ll take her a while to understand.” Trent stops. “And then, as usual, it’ll take even longer for you to understand and—”

  “Why are you here, Trent?” I ask, unable to contain the stress that’s whispering around us. “What? You’re here on Julian’s behalf? You want Rain to be with Julian? You want them to live happily ever after?”

  “No, no, you’re not paying attention. You don’t get it,” Trent says, shaking his head. “Just stop all contact with her. Starting this afternoon. Don’t see her anymore. Don’t return her calls. She’ll come back to you but don’t let her—”

  “What if I say go fuck yourself?”

  “That would be very stupid.”

  “Unless you tell me why I should stay away, I don’t think what you want is going to happen.”

  Trent stares at me, and then he tells me something that I know he doesn’t want to.

  “If she can make Rip Millar happy for a couple more months then everything will calm down.” Trent stops and looks into my face. “Do you get it, now? Do I need to explain this any further? Julian’s really not the obstacle right now. You are. Julian’s already tried to talk her out of being with you. But, in this case, you’re the only one she’s going to listen to.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because she thinks you’re the only one who can do something for her,” Trent says, and then shakes his head again. “You’re the only one who cares enough.” He pauses. “Because she thinks that you’re her only chance.”

  I force myself to laugh but it’s just a gesture to overcome the fear. When I reach into my pocket for the iPhone three consecutive texts read: why are u with him? Why Are You With Him??? WHY ARE YOU WITH HIM???

  I’m not listening to anything Trent says until I hear “As of now, you’ve officially made yourself a target” because this reminds me of what Rip Millar told me in the back of the limousine a few nights ago. “What?” I look up from the phone and then glance fearfully down the boardwalk at the guy in the windbreaker, who has appeared again, pretending to stare dreamily into the hazy distance.

  “Someone could be setting you up,” Trent says.

  “Being set up for what?”

  Trent notices something as I light a cigarette.

  “Your hand is shaking,” he says. “You can’t smoke here.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s around to enforce that.”

  On the roof of the Mexican restaurant someone is scanning the pier with a pair of binoculars. And then I realize that the guy who’s been following us is taking more pictures, his camera aimed at the ocean even though the haze makes these pictures almost impossible, unless instead he’s taking pictures of two guys leaning against the railing at the end of the Santa Monica pier, one of them smoking a cigarette, the other one backed away from him in frustration. The windbreaker guy crosses the pier again as if he’s looking for a better angle and I don’t say anything to Trent because he hasn’t noticed the guy and the empty roller-coaster cars glide slowly down their tracks, slipping in and out of the haze, and someone faintly sings you’re still the one from a radio inside a surf shop and on the beach a surfer shuffles through the sand near the water’s edge, a towel wrapped around his head like a turban.

  “You know she came on to Mark,” Trent says. “Or did you know that?”

  I keep looking at the phone.

  WHAT IS HE TELLING YOU?!?

  “She tried to fuck him,” Trent says. “He wasn’t interested. He laughed about it. It was the night after the audition and she sent him pictures of herself. She told him he could fuck her if he wanted to.”

  I look back at the roof of the restaurant and then I squint at the blond guy with the camera, now disappearing into the haze.

  “He said she was too old for him—”

  “Are you trying to make me angry?”

  Trent moves into another tactic. “Daniel Carter’s interested in doing Adrenaline. He wants to make it his next movie. We could make that happen.” Trent looks at me hopefully. “Would that mollify you?”

  “What are you doing, Trent? Why are you here?” I mutter. “If you’re not going to talk straight to me then I’m leaving.”

  “Just walk away. Just leave her alone. I’m just asking you to walk away from her and leave it alone.” Trent pauses. “You don’t need to know why. You’re not going to get any answers. I doubt it would matter to you if you had them anyway.”

  “I don’t give a shit about what you want.” I pause. “What I want to know is what happens if I go to the police? What if I lay out a scenario and I think it’s a pretty goddamn plausible one about Rip Millar and what happened to Kelly Montrose and what if I go to the police and—”

  “No, you won’t do that,” Trent says tiredly, turning away from me. “You won’t do that, Clay.”

  “Why are you so sure about that?” I toss the cigarette, half smoked, onto the pier and grind it out with my shoe.

  “That girl you beat up?” Trent says. “The actress. The one from Pasadena?”

  I immediately start walking away from Trent.

  “The one that your scumbag lawyer paid off? Two years ago?”

  Trent keeps following me.

  “She’s willing to talk,” Trent says, keeping up. “Did you know she was pregnant at the time of the assault? Did you know that she lost the baby?”

  Amanda Flew’s body is never found but a video of what appears to be her last hours is posted on the Net in a clip and you have to pretend you’re not watching it in order to get through it. Amanda is in a motel room nude and incoherent and being shot up by men wearing ski masks. She has a seizure and two of the enormous men hold her down while her body thrashes on the newspapers taped to the floor, and then tools are removed from what looks like a beer cooler. The men take turns urinating on her and they keep slapping her face to keep her awake. And then the seizures become more intense and during one of them an eyeball is dislodged, bulging from its socket, and then a semierect cock is pushed in and out of her slack mouth, and then it’s removed once blood starts running down her face, and it’s at about this point in the roughly ten minutes of footage that you finally see it: when the drugs start wearing off and Amanda realizes what’s going to happen to her and she stares into the camera lucidly for one long moment, her panicked expression becoming something else. And then the thing that makes me shut it off happens: you realize this isn’t just about Amanda. I can’t help thinking that it’s happening because of me.

  I avoid everything. Everything goes quiet once the video is posted and yet no one concedes that the video is real. There are actual arguments about its authent
icity. People think these are outtakes from a horror movie Amanda shot the year before and not even the makers of the horror movie can stop this new narrative from taking shape. I order two bottles of gin from Gil Turner’s and once they’re delivered I make plans to leave for Vegas and reserve a suite at the Mandalay Bay but then cancel it even though I’ve already packed two bags, and the moon rises over the city and for the first time in what seems like years there are no cars on Elevado Street tonight, and in a warm bath I think about calling a girl who I know would come over but then I’m just lying in bed with the Bose headphones, drinking from the second bottle of gin, and then I’m dreaming about the dead boy again and now he’s standing in the bedroom, moving softly toward the bed, whispering for me to come join him in his endless sleep, and in the dream the palm trees are taller and bending in the wind outside the sliding glass wall of 1508 and when I see the bruises on his face from where I struck the boy in the previous dream the phone starts ringing, waking me up, but not before the boy whispers Save me …

  What did Rip tell you?”

  It’s Julian and I’m just waking up and it’s late afternoon, the sky dimming into dusk. “What?” I clear my throat, and ask it again. “What?”

  “I know you saw him,” he says. “I know he’s looking for me. What did he want?”

  I barely manage to sit up. “I think … in terms of … what’s going on—”

  Julian stops me automatically. “There’s nothing that’s going to connect him to that.” The following silence confirms that we both know what he’s referencing: Amanda.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Where are you?”

  “We’re leaving tonight,” Julian says, downplaying the urgency in his voice.

  “Who’s leaving?”

  “Me and Rain,” Julian says. “We’re leaving tonight.”

  “Julian,” I start and then try and figure out what I want to say to him but I’m on the verge of tears and nothing comes out and I keep clutching the sheets bundled around me and they’re damp with sweat and for the first time it’s real: she’s actually leaving with him and not me.

  “What?” he asks impatiently. “What is it?”

  “I need to see you,” I say. “Come over. I want to help you.”

  “What?” he asks, annoyed. “Why? Help me with what?”

  “Rip wants to make a deal,” I say. “He wants this whole thing over with.”

  There’s a pause. “And what do you have to do with this?”

  “I know everything,” I say. “I’m going to make it happen.” I pause before saying, “I’ll pay him back.” Finally, though I can barely swallow I say, “I’m going to make this end.”

  Julian sends a text two hours later from somewhere close to the Doheny Plaza. Are you alone? And then: Is it safe to come over? I’ve sobered up as much as I can when I text back: Yes. When I call Rain there’s no answer and because Rain doesn’t pick up I dial another number and Rip takes my call.

  Someone’s been following me,” Julian says, brushing past me into the condo. “I took a cab. I’m going to need a ride. You’re going to have to drive me back to Westwood.” He turns and notices that I’m wearing a robe. He notices the glass of gin I’m holding. He looks at me. “Are you okay? Are you capable of that?”

  “Where’s Rain?” I ask. “I mean, how is she?”

  “Don’t bother.” Julian walks to the window wall and looks down, craning his neck as if scanning for someone.

  “I hear, um, the audition went well—”

  “Stop it,” he says, turning around.

  “She has a shot at the part—”

  “It’s over, Clay,” he says. “That’s over. Just don’t.”

  “That’s not true, Julian. Hey—”

  “I want to know why you’ve been hanging out with Rip.”

  “He, um, wants to talk to you,” I say. “He just wants to talk to you now that I’ve agreed to pay him—”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Julian cuts me off.

  “Yeah, he really does … now that … ” I’m trying not to stammer. “Don’t you get it? I’m paying him back.”

  Julian’s stance changes: he takes a step toward me, then stops. “How did you know about that?” he says. “The money, I mean. Who told you?”

  “Trent did,” I say. “It was Trent.”

  “Fuck.” Julian turns away again and starts pacing the length of the living room.

  I try to come up with something else.

  “Hey, I just talked to Rip,” I say. “And he said it was cool and … I think he just wants to talk.”

  “He wants Rain,” Julian says. “That’s what he really wants. And that’s not going to happen.”

  “He gets it,” I say. “He just wants to talk to you about … something. He just wants to, I don’t know, clear things up.” I’m struggling to keep my voice steady. “He wants reassurance … ” I clear my throat and then calmly say: “He thinks you know something that connects him to Kelly.”

  Julian stares at me and says after a beat, “That’s not true.”

  “He knows that people think he wanted Kelly out of the way,” I’m saying.

  “That’s just a dumb rumor,” Julian says, but his voice has changed and something in the room shifts. “Rip doesn’t really give a fuck about me.”

  “Julian,” I say, slowly moving toward him, “he had you beaten up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I swallow. “Because Rip told me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah, Julian,” I say, nodding as I move closer to him. “It was Rip. Rip did that to you … ”

  “No he didn’t.” Julian waves me off. “That was something else. That wasn’t Rip. You’re making that up.”

  “Look,” I say, “all I know is that part of the condition on taking the money is that he wants to see you. Tonight. Before you guys leave.” I pause. “Otherwise there’s no deal.”

  “Why the fuck does he want to see me when I know he’s pissed off? Why doesn’t he just take the money?” Julian asks this almost pleadingly. “Don’t you think I should probably stay the fuck away from him? Jesus, Clay.”

  “Because once I told him I’d pay him back—” I start.

  “Why are you doing this?” Julian looks at me and then almost automatically realizes why.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’d do it for her,” I say softly, pulling out my iPhone, and then trying to calm him down: “What’s he going to do to you? I’ll be there. I’ll be with you.”

  I find Rip’s contact info and send him a blank e-mail.

  Julian looks at me. He’s changing his mind about something. “You’ve become friends with him? A month ago you told me he was a freak.”

  The only thing I can do is counter with: “Why did you go to Rip when you needed the money to pay back Blair?”

  “I didn’t go to Rip,” Julian says. “Rip came to me. Because of Rain he came to me and offered to help me out in exchange for … ” Julian pauses. “I was trying to figure out another way to pay back Blair, but when Rip came to me it just seemed easier … But I didn’t go to Rip. He came to me. I didn’t go to him.”

  “Wait, Julian. Hold on.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I’m looking at the response I just received. Is he with you now?

  I text back: Give me the address.

  I wait, pretending to read something on the screen.

  “Clay,” Julian asks, walking toward me. “What are you doing?”

  And then: You’ll bring him here?

  An address in Los Feliz appears on the screen barely a second after I text back: yes.

  Julian calls Rain and I only hear his side of the conversation. It lasts a minute as he tries to calm her down. “We don’t know it was him,” Julian says. “Hey, chill out … We don’t know if he took the money.” He pauses while pacing the room. “Clay said—” and then he has to stop. “Calm down,” he says, almost stunned by the ferocity of the voice coming over the
phone. “If you’re so worried then confirm it with Rip,” he says softly. “Make sure it’s happening.” Finally Julian looks over at me and says, “No, you don’t need to talk to him” and that’s my cue to nod. “He’s helping us out,” Julian says. Once Julian hangs up, my phone immediately starts vibrating in the pocket of the robe I’m wearing and it’s Rain and I ignore it.

  Julian stands in the bedroom doorway, drinking a bottle of water, watching as I get dressed. I’m pulling on jeans, a T-shirt, a black hoodie. I’m debating whether to give him another chance.

  “Rip loaned you the money to pay Blair back?” I ask. “And then what happened?”

  “He only loaned part of it,” Julian says. “But this has nothing to do with the money. Rip’s just using that as an excuse. It’s not about the money.” He sounds almost scornful.

  “You lied to me when you told me you hadn’t talked to Blair,” I say. “You lied when you said you hadn’t talked to her since June and I believed you.”

  “I know. It was awkward. I felt bad about that. I’m sorry.”

  I move to the bathroom. I try to brush my hair. My hand is shaking so hard I can’t hold the brush.

  “I didn’t mean to fuck with you,” he says.

  “I just want to know one thing,” I say. “It keeps bothering me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why did you set me up with Rain if—”

  Julian cuts me off as if he knows the rest of the question. “You’ve been around a long time. You know how this town works. You’ve been through it before.” And then his voice softens. “I just didn’t know how fucked up you got over Meghan Reynolds until it was too late.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that but what I can’t understand is that if you knew Rip was so crazy about Rain why did you … ” I stand in front of Julian, my arms at my sides, but I can’t look at him until I force myself to. “Why did you put me in danger?” I ask. “You pushed her onto me even after you knew how Rip felt? You pushed her onto me even though you thought he maybe had something to do with Kelly?”