Away From the Spotlight (20 page)

“I’m sorry I missed that.  I would’ve like
d
to hear you really sing.”

“I’m not that good anymore now that I haven’t
done it much
in years.”

“You were a singer?”

“Sort of.  Musicals and choir in high school and a couple of shows in college.  Nothing very serious.  I never thought to pursue it.  I can’t write music
a
nd
,
really
,
it’s the writing that matters.  There are a lot of famous bands with sing
ers who don’t have great voices, b
ut you don’t see too many great singers who can’t write other than those geared for that horrible teeny-bopper marketing machine.”

Will grimaced.

“What?  What did I say?”
I asked.

“Nothing.  It’s just . . . well, you know that
I was sort of part of that teeny-bopper marketing machine. 
Midnight
was written with 12
-to
-17 year-olds in mind.  It ended up having broader appeal, but my casting
and a lot of the early marketing
was meant to appeal to that demographic.”

“Really?”
  I then felt bad about what I had said.  I didn’t mean to insult him.

“Yes. 
And
I can tell you that I didn’t like it at first
.  I
kind of
rebelled
, I guess you would say.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just before
Midnight 1
was released and for a while afterward, I tried not to be the perfect PG-13 kind of guy.  There were a lot of tabloid photos of me with cigarettes in my mouth stumbling out of bars.  One of the worst TV tabloids even reco
rded me at a Hollywood hangout
with a
group
of
women
.
”

While he spoke, I had visions of him acting like a Hollywood bad
boy, but couldn’t reconcile that with the man sitting in front of me now.

“It was not good.  I know that the
production company was
a little worried for a while. 
I
t was Katherine who finally sat me down and asked me what I thought I was doing.  She had been in the business since she was
ten
and had seen a lot of people get sucked into the fast nightlife in L.A. and spit out.  She said she thought I was better than that.

“I knew she was right.  It wasn’t like I was really even having
any
fun.
  Most of the people I met only wanted to hang out with the star of
Midnight
.  They could
n’t
have cared less
about me personally
.

“
I dropped out of the
party
scene at that point and started reconnecting with friends I had made that were not part of that scene
,
like Stephen and Colin and the guys at the Rugby Club.”

“I think I really appreciate Katherine now
,
”
I said.
  Will’s story made me even more anxious to finally meet her.

“I’m glad
b
ecause, although I think you’re cute when you’re jealous, you really
have nothing to be jealous of.
”

A slow song came on and
Will
asked me to dance.  With our arms around each other, it was like we were the only two people in the room.  He kissed me when the song was over.

“
I think it’s starting to clear out in here.  You ready to go?  I have an idea of something that I want to do before I start getting stalked again.”

We drove up into the Hollywood Hills to a spot on private property with a panoramic view of L.A. 
We entered
a curved driveway with a small one-story house
with a partial stone façade
.  We parked at the end of the curve in the driveway that hung over the hill.

“Are you sure it’s
okay we’re here?” I asked as I noticed that there were a few lights on in the house.

“It’s fine.  This is a friend’s house and he’s gone, shooting a film in
Canada
.”

“Would I know who it is?”

“He
,
Neil
,
was with us at
the concert
back in March
.  He’s a DP – Director of Photography.”

“I think I remember
: t
all, shorter blond hair, goatee.”
  Another Brit.  Not a surprise.

“Yes, you have a good memory
.”

Will then
got out of the car and walked around to let me out
of the car
.  It was a relatively warm evening.  He put his arms around me and we looked out
over
the lights of
L.A. below.  He started to kiss me and
,
as it got a little more involved, he took me
in
to the back seat of his car to continue.

I spent most of the weekend finishing packing
.  T
he movers were due first thing Monday morning.  Will
was there to help most of the time
although he had a lunch meeting with
some
producers that were considering him for a film scheduled to shoot
just after
Midnight 4
.  My parents were there as well to help on Saturday, but only part of Sunday as they had to drive back to the Bay Area so my father could be at work on Monday morning. 
Matt
remained until h
e had to leave for h
is ev
ening flight to San Francisco.

On Monday morning, the moving trucks came. 
Kelly
’s furniture and boxes went in one truck to go to the Bay Area and mine in another to be taken to storage.  I had already packed my car with all the things I would need until I returned from Europe
in September.  It wasn’t much.

Will left early
in the morning
to meet with his personal trainer.  I laughed when he told me that he would spend a good portion of
Midnight 4
with his shirt off and that the
p
roducers had
recommended
that he work a little more on his definition.
I considered
it funny how much thought and effort went into an actor’s appearance.  I imagined that it had to be
one-
hundred
times worse for the women.  I sighed, thanking God I didn’t have to put up with that kind of scrutiny.
At the same time, I considered the fact that Will may have been used to women who spen
t
a lot of
time
and money
on their appearance and wondered
whether or not he wished I did.
  Since there was nothing I could do about
it
, I tried to put it out of my mind.

Kelly
and I went over the apartment with the vacuum, which was the last thing to go into the truck.  We had a few cleaning supplies that I was going to take into
USC
Housing with me and
we
went over the apartment again to try to ensure that we
would get most of our
deposit back.

We turned in our keys, and headed out to our tandem space in the underground parking to depart.
We gave each other hugs.

“Are you going to be okay?”
Kelly
asked with concern.

“Yes, o
f course.  W
hy?”  I had no ide
a what she could possibly mean.

“Well, you know things might change when the spotlight hits Will again in a few weeks.
  Will was mentioning it the other day and seemed worried.
”

“Will is worried about me, not about us.  I think that, if we’r
e careful, it should be fine.”

“If you say so.  Talk to you when I get into the City.” 
Kelly
was moving
with two friends of hers
in
to the top floor of a Victorian row house
in the Pacific Heights
area
of San Francisco.

Kelly
got into her car, backed out of the tandem space,
and wa
ved behind her after running over the sens
or that opened the garage gate.

I waved,
climbed
in
to
my car
,
and headed
out
to
USC
to pick up my new keys and move into my
o
ne-
bedroom furnished apartment
that would be my temporary home until the Bar
E
xam
.

That
very
night was my first Bar
r
eview class from 6-to-10 p.m.
on the Westside
.  My new roommate
,
Carrie
,
and I went to dinner beforehand and drove to class together as w
as our planned
routine for the next two months
.
Carrie
and I
had registered for
the
Bar review
live lectures as opposed to the
DVD
classes.  We figured that we were more
likely to stay awake that way.

Carrie
was younger than almost all of us in
my
law school
class as she had graduated from
h
igh
s
chool at
sixteen
, college at
twenty
, and was therefore only
twenty-three
years-old. 
S
he seemed even younger than that. 
Carrie
was
waif-like
and a little shorter than me,
and
had shaggy dark brown hair, very pale skin with no freckles, and deep blue eyes.  It was quite clear that
her ancestors had been Irish.

It was not
immediately
obvious how intelligent
Carrie
was as she mostly acted like a goofball.  Notwithstanding,
Carrie
had a photographic memory and graduated third in my class.  That was really saying something since number one in our class was a middle
-aged woman who had been a high-
level
v
ice
p
resident at a large national bank
and
was aiming at a second high-powered career, and number two was a
p
rofessor who had become a professional student at
USC
, compiling as many
different degrees as he could.

Carrie
was kind of quirky, which gave her a lot of her charm.  She was an avid tabloid reader, the
sleazier
the tabloid, the better. 
S
he planned on sleeping in a sleep
ing bag on top of her bed fully-
dressed
every night
.  Sheets, comforters and nightgowns were not her thing. 
It m
ust have been an interesting adjustment for her boyfriend,
Jeff
, ten years her senior.

The first
Bar review i
nstructor was the
Con
stitutional
Law p
rofessor
from
USC
. 
Carrie
had been one of his researchers and I had him for several classes over
the course of
my tenure at
USC
.  Consequently, we
,
along with others in the class from
USC
,
felt comfortable heckling him every once in a while.  This made the class a little more entertaining as he was so earnest and would turn bright red when we did so.  We wondered if it would show up on the
DVD
for the other classes or whether they would edit
out
th
o
se parts.

After class, w
e drove to the
Royalist
because I wanted
Carrie
to get to know Will a little better since she was bound to see him
quite
a bit over the summer.  She had met him briefly at graduation and
at
the party afterward, but neither
provided
much of
a
n opportunity for them to talk.