I sigh. “So hard to find good help these days.” I take the bottle from Vin and pour the champagne so fast it overflows and splatters on the rug.
“To exile,” I say as I hand a flute to Vin, who takes it with a smirk.
“Oh, please. If one of us is going to get all dramatic about this, it is not you. You screwed up, and they reward you with a vacation on the set of a nature documentary.”
“And what do you get?”
“Two weeks of watching you mope.”
The champagne is drier than I usually like, and the bubbles scald my throat when I swallow too quickly. I hide my grimace by walking out to the balcony that extends the length of the suite. My fingers itch for my phone because I want to know what’s going on. What’s being said about me? Has anyone else called their director an arrogant shit weasel this week or accidentally posted a dick pic on Instagram so maybe we can move on from my gaffe?
“I’m sorry,” I say when Vin joins me. And I truly am. He has responsibilities. Plans. He’ll be the youngest agent at Roberta’s agency, and he can’t do that if he’s doing damage control and babysitting me while we wait to see what’s left in the rubble of my career.
Vin says, “Honey. You done fucked up. You know it. I know it. It’ll go away, and we’ll be back on the West Coast in no time!”
“Pretty sure this is still the West Coast.”
“Nuh-uh! This is the North Coast at least.”
“No one calls it ‘the North Coast.’”
“Well, they should.”
“This resort has to have a fitness center, right?”
“No!” Vin droops over the railing. “You can’t spend the next fourteen days running away from your problems on a treadmill. You know where that’ll get you.”
I’m not in the mood for his philosophizing any more than I was in the mood for his poetry. I go to pour myself another glass, but Vin grabs my wrist.
“Come on, babe. You can pout all you want tonight, but tomorrow we are taking in some local culture.”
I spin, laughing so loudly birds take flight in the trees. “Local culture. Do you know where we are? The only person who knows how to get here is the old guy with the seaplane who flew us in, and I’m pretty sure he only had one eye. We are in the middle of fucking nowhere. There is no culture. There is nothing! Not a single goddamned thing but you and me and...” I fling an arm out toward the wide blue ocean beyond the bay. “That.”
Vin tilts his head to down the rest of his champagne, then makes kissy noises as he squishes my cheeks between his palms. “Yes, baby. Just you and me and the army of man candy downstairs. Did you not see them?”
“Who?” I remember passing by what looked like the entire resort staff. I don’t remember any other guests.
“The squad of Alaskan Ken dolls waiting to greet us? I mean, sure, there was some lady candy too, but since neither of us swing that way, let’s focus on what’s on the buffet that matches our dietary restrictions.”
Vin always was classy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember that magazine spread you did for Polo last year?”
I hate doing those things. Roberta’s always pushing them as a way of making a quick million here and there. It’s all part of her grand scheme for my career. When we first met, I said I wanted to be famous, and she said she could make that happen if I followed her formula. Blockbusters with lots of special effects, bad guys the audience wants to hate, and a love story in every plot. Be charming in interviews and circumspect in my personal life. Select occasional luxury brand photo shoots that enhance my profile and reinforce the idea that I’m untouchable. It’s a formula that works, but as my filming and publicity schedule has gotten busier and busier, the photo shoots have all blurred together. “Was Polo the one with the dogs?”
“No, doofus. The dogs were at the Burberry shoot. That was three years ago. You remember. Polo. You and a bunch of platinum blonde clones on a boat?”
Oh. That one. The designer had brought in what looked like a troop of Scandinavian replicas. He said they would help my darker features stand out even more. We’d been bundled up on a yacht with no shade in hundred-degree Miami heat while we modeled the following year’s fall and winter collections. Two of the models were whisked away for heatstroke, and by the end of the day, my clothes stuck to my body so badly that they had to Photoshop a whole new wardrobe onto me.
“And?”
“It’s like that downstairs. But with beards!” Vin claps his hands before his smile dims. “Which is not so much my thing. But any port in a storm. I will survive. And I know you dig it.”
To say I have a type is generous. My life is so chaotic I never stay in one place long enough to be with anyone seriously. A few on-set hookups. A couple of friends who were willing to help scratch a mutual itch. And Anderson, but clearly that was a mistake. Usually, I go alone to premieres. And to bed. So yeah, not even the paparazzi can claim I have a preference in the men I’m with, but if push comes to shove, I do like a bear.
But that doesn’t make what Vin is suggesting a good idea. “Places like this get fussy when the staff sleeps with the guests.” In my younger—hornier and dumber—years, I tried. Hotel employees at this level must sign over the souls of their mothers and their firstborn, to be forfeited if they screw around with the clientele. I have never managed to get one to crack.
