She cuts me off. “And that, in turn, will make it very difficult for you to work on any future franchises at this level again. How badly do you want to keep your job, Damian?”
She’s right. It’s already starting. The headlines this morning when I checked them still included recaps from the Cannes incident, but also featured new eye-catching titles like “Damian Marshall in Barroom Brawl”and “Is it Time to Cancel Damian Marshall?”
I sink into a chair. “Hawaii is farther. I could go to Hawaii.”
Unfortunately though, Roberta is bulletproof. She’s been around the block too many times to be swayed by my appeal. Instead of melting and booking me a jet to Honolulu, she arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow—quite the feat considering her face hasn’t moved in at least the last thirty years—and says, “Would you rather it be North Dakota?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “No need to say hurtful things like that. I thought we were friends.”
“I’m never friendly with the talent. Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea about how this relationship works.”
“I don’t understand.” I’m trying not to whine, but I’m not succeeding. Roberta is the kind of woman who makes men revert to their childhood selves. Her lipstick is a slash of red across her mouth, and the rock on her left ring finger is enough to give most people arthritis. I’ve never heard of or seen any trace of the man who might have given it to her. She probably bought it for herself a long, long time ago.
“Of course you understand.” She smiles softly through her lipstick. Despite her she-wolf reputation, she’s actually one of the kindest people I know. “You were to keep your head down and you didn’t. Desperate times. It’s Alaska or you find another way to divert their attention.”
Another way. She isn’t talking about adopting a rescue puppy or letting the paparazzi take pictures of me in my sweats on the way to the grocery store. She means something big. An official announcement. A60 Minutesconfessional. A man on my arm on the next red carpet like I have nothing to hide.
I shudder.
“I know.” Roberta smiles again. Things must be pretty rough if she’s willing to crack her paint twice in one day for me. “And that’s why I’m not pushing it. Even with all this commotion, you don’t owe them that if you don’t want to.”
My agent is the grande dame of La-La Land gatekeepers, but the thing that has kept us together for the last eight years is her heart of gold. Roberta always has my back. She knows I’m gay. She flat-out asked me the first time we had lunch together and then, as I stammered through an answer, told me she’d never ask again, as long as my penis didn’t show up anywhere public that she hadn’t pre-approved. It’s an agreement that’s worked for us. Roberta’s got a foolproof formula for my career, and she’s never steered me wrong.
“It’s only two weeks,” she says. “And then we’ll see.”
“Sure.” Dread spreads down my sternum. The uncertainty is the worst part. Hollywood is fickle, and what barely makes the news with some people is a career killer for others. The video of my outburst might be buried within a week, or it might bury me for life.
Roberta taps a pointed nail on her desk like a judge with a gavel. “Good. Go home. Don’t talk to anyone. Pack your parka, and we’ll see you in fourteen days. Enjoy your vacation.”
I groan involuntarily. I haven’t had a proper vacation in... God, I can’t even remember. Before the most recentShadow Leaguepress tour, there’d been the junket forThe Iron Machine.Before that, filming for both. That takes me back almost two years. There was the two months in Malaysia filmingGod of Simple Pleasures, even though we still haven’t heard anything about a release date on that. And before that, I was doing anotherShadow League.
So yeah, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Don’t get that look.” In another era, Roberta would have taken a drag from a cigarette in a long holder to punctuate her scowl.
“What look?”
“The one where you’re planning the kinds of shenanigans you and Vin get up to without me to hold your leashes. He has his marching orders. I’m sending him to keep an eye on you, not to party with you.”
“Vin’s coming?”
“If I sent you alone, you’d hitch a ride with the first burly dogsledder you found and be back in my office by the end of the week.”
She’s not wrong on one front anyway. The rugged look is awfully appealing. I wouldn’t say no to a ride. But with the man-of-the-land image often comes the “you can take my gun from my cold dead hands” attitude and a conviction that the gay agenda is slowly disintegrating the fabric of society. I know because I grew up with those people. The ones who told me to be ashamed of who I was. When I left, I said I was going to be famous, and they laughed and said no one would ever want to see someone like me on the screen.
So yeah, the exterior may be nice to look at, but the inside is rotten.
Just like Hollywood when I think about it, which I try not to most of the time. No sense peeling back the covers on the cesspool that gave me a career and a name known around the world. Because if I look too deeply at the celebrity machine, what will I find about myself?
I laugh quietly.
“Something funny?” Roberta says.
“Nothing. Sorry. I must be tired.”
“Then this will be perfect for you. You rest. Commune with nature. Go fishing.”
“Fishing?”
