Spin Ruin: (A Mafia Romance Two-Book Bundle) (16 page)

But I couldn’t shake the sense of profound regret. I’d dodged a bullet but fallen onto a knife.

I let the paper towel roll drop from my hand. It rolled from the kitchen island to the front door. I needed something in my life besides a job and a man. I needed a purpose. I had nothing to care about besides myself. No wonder Daniel’s infidelity had thrown me so far off the deep end.

I whipped the stepstool around to the refrigerator and reached into the cabinet above it. As a kid, I’d collected porcelain swans. I didn’t know why, but I loved swans. Their grace, their delicacy. But when we moved to the loft, the mismatched animals didn’t make sense, so I hid them in the highest cabinet, where they wouldn’t get broken.

I took the first one out. It had a blue ribbon that flew in the wind as it raised its wings to take flight. It had cost a shameful amount. I put it on the counter. The next one was Lladro. Cheap, with a little cupid. There was a black one. An ugly duckling. One with an apron. Laughing. Swimming. Necks twisted together. I put them all on the counter until I came to the little white one in the back.

It was made of Legos. It had a red collar in flattish bricks and a bright yellow beak. My nephew David had made it for me some random Christmas. Hyper and brilliant David. How old had he been? Four? Aunt Theresa loved swans, and he’d made her a bird with such care. And she’d put it in the back of a cabinet she couldn’t even reach because it didn’t go with the décor.

“Fuck you, Aunt Theresa.” I got down from the stepstool and put the Lego swan in the center of the island.

I opened my dish cabinet. I loved my dishes. They had blue stars with gold flourishes. Why were they in a cabinet? I took them out and laid them on the counter in piles that specifically made no sense. My flatware had been chosen with utmost care. With no room on the counter, I threw the silver on the floor like pick-up sticks.

All of it came out. Everything in the cabinets I’d ever chosen. Everything I liked. Everything beautiful and worthy. The glass jelly jars and inherited Depression glass. The gold-leaf embellished glass rack from my great-grandmother. I didn’t break anything, but the frosted glass tray we got as an engagement gift almost slipped off the sink. I caught it and continued. Out of style napkin holders. Stained plastic containers. A red sippy cup Sheila had left behind on some visit. Out out out.

When I got to the last cabinet and found the dust and dirt in the back of it, I stepped into the living room where I could see the open kitchen. It was a wreck. I’d left all the cabinet doors open, and nothing was neatly or safely placed.

I reached over the island and moved some stacks until I found the little Lego swan. I had a date with my empty bed. I could figure out what to do with my life in the morning.

The bed still seemed too big. The mess downstairs offered a momentary peace then irked me into wakefulness. But I refused to go down and clean it. I had put my Lego swan on the nightstand, and when I wondered if I should just go put my life back in the cabinets, the swan clearly said no. Go to sleep. Think about the mess tomorrow.

Katrina came in. Lights went on. The TV went on. The toilet flushed. The water ran. The TV went off. The lights went off. I slept.

hat happened?” Katrina asked as she pulled a swan-shaped coffee cup from the pile. Its neck was a handle, and its wings wrapped around the bowl. “I can’t find the spoons.”

I picked one up from the floor. “Here. I’ll wash it.”

She snatched it and blew on it. “Sanitizing pixie dust. Knife too, please.”

I picked one of my best silver butter knives off the floor and handed it to her without offering to wash it. The sink was full of china cruets anyway.

“I’ll put it all away later.”

“Whatever.” She cleared a space in front of the coffee pot and poured herself some.

“But we have to be on set today, then I have work on Monday. I’ll get Manuela on it when she comes Tuesday,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“Are you mad?”

“Mad? No. I almost broke all these damned dishes last night in a rage, but not because of them. Only because they were in front of me.”

I handed her a dish. “Go ahead. Break it.”

She took it and waved it up and down, balancing it on her fingertips like half a seesaw. Then she put it on top of its stack. “It’s pointless.” She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and growled in a tantrum.

“What?”

“Apogee fell through,” she shouted, as if yelling at the entire Hollywood system.

“What? They won’t distribute it?”

“No, they backed out of post-production.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She shook her hands as if she was at a loss for words. “Lenny Garsh moved to Ultimate, and the new guy’s only backing projects he believes in. Completed projects.” She stamped her feet. Full-on tantrum. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I have the editing bay and ADR place booked, and I can’t pay.”

“Okay, we can work this out.”

“There’s nothing to work out. I’m screwed. I tapped everyone I know to do production. Now there’s no point in even finishing.” Her face collapsed. It took seconds for the muscles to go slack and the tears to gather. She sniffed, hard and wet. “Fuck, what am I going to tell Michael? He was depending on this. He’s a star, you know? In his gut. And I told him... I told him we’d get this done.”

“You will get this done,” I said, taking her shoulders.

“Ernie shot it free because he believed in me.”

“Katrina—”

“It’s my job to get the money, and I let everyone down.” She was full-on blubbering and trying to talk through hitching gasps.

I put my arms around her. “Directrix?”

I was answered with sobs.

“You have another week of production. Do you have the money to finish it?”

She nodded into my shoulder. “But—”

“No buts. Get it together.”

“I don’t have enough. I missed a wide on the dinner scene.”

“You won’t be the first. Now we have twenty minutes to get out of here and get to set. People are waiting.”

She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I have to tell them.”

“No.” I put up my hands. “What is wrong with you? That’ll kill the momentum.”

She put her head in her hands. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Go take a shower, and let’s go. Come on. I took a week off work to finish this with you. We have to get this thing in the can by Friday. Reschedule your ADR. It’s a phone call, right?”

“If they have space. They book months in advance.”

“Fast, cheap, or good,” I said, quoting the old filmmaking motto that no one can get more than two of the three. “Fast isn’t happening.”

“I have to eat. I can’t mooch off you forever.”

“Whatever. Let’s deal with today. Okay? We’re shooting at the café again?”

“Yes.”

“If you start freaking out, you come to me, right?”

“I love you, Tee Dray. You’re so together.”

 checked my phone after the thirty-fifth take. It was a long shot of Michael watching the woman in question over the food counter, and with so many moving parts, it was difficult to get. But the shot was meant to show infinite hours of longing for a woman who didn’t want him, and on the thirty-sixth try, it was stunning.

I didn’t expect Antonio to try to reach me, but I was surprised by my burning hope. Did I want him? Or did I want him to want me? He was toxic, and I shouldn’t touch him even if I was operating on all emotional cylinders, which I wasn’t. I had to keep in the front of my mind the fact that I couldn’t trust any man with my body or heart. No matter how intense. No matter how strong. No matter how much the sex was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Even thinking about Antonio, I felt a familiar throb between my legs. Even as I noted the placement of every extra’s arms and legs, I ached for that treacherous man, his pine scent, his rock of a dick.

“Cut!”

Katrina was barely finished with her encouragements to the actors before I had my phone out. Nothing from Antonio. Three from Gerry, Daniel’s strategist. I got back to business making my notes. I needed to arrange my finances so I could get Katrina half a million dollars in such a way that she would accept it.

I didn’t know how I’d get it done in time. I had a week before she lost her mind. I was incorporated, but not as an investor. I couldn’t decide if I wanted her to know it was me who was fronting the money. It was two in the morning, and I was tired. Hardly ready for Gerry to show up in a three-piece suit looking as though he’d just woken up, showered, shaved, and taken his vitamins.

“Almost the first lady of the city,” he said with a jovial tone, “packing binders in a parking lot.”

“What are you doing here?” I stuffed the last of the day’s work into a duffel.

“Los Angeles never sleeps.”

“Daniel Brower does. A good five hours between midnight and dawn.”

“That’s when I get to work. Can we talk?”

I slung the bag over my shoulder. Katrina would get home on her own. “Sure. You’re driving though. My car’s busted.”

***

The front seat of Gerry’s Caddy SUV was bigger than the couch in my first apartment. The bag was in the back like a dead body.

“He’s not performing,” Gerry said, turning onto the 110. “Every time he flubs or goes back to some old habit, it’s like a snowball. It hasn’t affected his polling yet, but soon, it’s gonna get obvious.”

“After the election, he’ll get it together again.”

“He started biting his nails.”

“The ring finger?”

“Yeah. In a meeting with Harold Genter. I think I bruised his calf.”

I sighed. Years, I’d spent years in media skills sessions. We’d discussed that every movement, every breath, was ten times bigger on camera, and those moves flowed into real life. People wanted their leaders polished. Policy was secondary, and politics took third rung. If he was seen biting his nails, flipping his hair, or slouching, he’d be a laughingstock.

“He needs you,” Gerry said.

“He should have thought of that.”

“Okay, lady, yes. You can be bitter and aggrieved. You earned it. You happy? Are you going to hold your bag of self-righteousness into your dotage? It gets heavy when you get old. Believe me.”

“I can’t trust him ever again. How am I supposed to carry that around? And for how long? Into the presidency?”

“As long as you want.” He drove on the surface streets—stop start stop start—obeying the lights even though no one was around.

I knew I’d let it go eventually. I’d learn to trust another man. He wouldn’t be Daniel, of course. I would have to invest in someone else all over again. Get hurt, move on. Hurt someone, move on. Antonio had proven how easy that was. One day, I’d fall in love. Maybe. I was thirty-four. I’d never felt too late until Gerry asked about my dotage.

“I hurt all over,” I said. “All the time. I don’t know what I feel any more. I don’t know what I want. I feel separate from my own thoughts. The fact that I’m telling this to a political strategist is enough of a red flag that I need to be medicated or institutionalized.”

I didn’t say that I think about hurting but not killing myself. I couldn’t cry. I felt unanchored. I loved Daniel still. The last time I’d felt marginally alive was with Antonio. I’d always depended on men for my happiness.

“
Big Girls
is opening Friday,” Gerry said as he pulled up in front of my building.

“Yeah.”

“It’s about domestic violence. We pitched that as your hot button during the campaign. I’ve seen the picture. It’s good.”

“You’re making a movie recommendation?” I asked.

“Daniel is making it a point to see it and release a statement after.”

“You’re trying to set me up on a date? Are you serious?”

“This is a high stakes date, Theresa. Please.”

I opened the car door and stepped out, slamming it shut and opening the back for my bag. “You’re a crappy Cupid.”

I should have taken a cab.

***

Fucking Gerry. I walked in the door cursing him, flinging my bag into a corner.

Fucking fucking Gerry. The man was made of the finest, most indestructible plastic in the universe. He didn’t have a feeling in him.