CHAPTER ONE
Orson Welles said that, depending where you choose to conclude it, any story can have a happy ending.
My story began the night I met Grace Chase at Cabana in Santa Monica, California.
The sun was living out its final moments, painting the sky gold, and a Pacific breeze flowed through the open-air bar. Hours removed from my first screenplay sale, I spied a beautiful blonde through a haze of tobacco. The strings of “At Last” by Etta James swelled into a crescendo of anticipation as our eyes met and she exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke, daring me to navigate the swarm of frat boys that divided us.
“Grace,” she opened.
“Dante,” I replied.
If my Hollywood story had faded to black on that moment, as the smoke cleared and I gazed into Grace’s eyes, it would indeed have had a happy ending.
Alas, shit happens, as it is wont to do, and four years, three weeks, and two days later, a naked brunette is lying in my bed, screaming, “Choke me! Choke the fucking life out of me!”
I stop kissing her neck and slow my thrusting.
“Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t—” She pauses and sighs. “You stopped. Why did you stop?”
“You want me to choke you?”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
“I…”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“A little hurt isn’t the worst thing in the world.”
“I’m not the choking type. Can I interest you in another round of oral?”
“As tempting as that is…” She guides my hand over her breast and toward her neck. I let it rest there, feeling the throbbing of her carotid as she bites her lower lip and teases me with her eyes. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but this will be especially hot for me if you tell me what a dirty little slut I am while I’m gagging and gasping for air.”
“That’s not really my style.”
“If I wanted your respect, I wouldn’t be here.” She tightens my grip around her throat. “Now choke the shit out of me and make me your fucking slut.”
I oblige, slowly applying pressure around her neck. Her pulse quickens and her face relaxes, lips slightly parting.
“Tighter,” she says, her voice strained.
I ignore her.
“Squeeze!”
I tighten my grip, cutting off the flow of blood. Her arteries expand and her pulse soars, face turning red, eyes rolling back in her head as she gasps for air.
“Tighter!”
Her head sinks deeper into the pillow, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Concerned, I stop thrusting and relax my grip.
Her eyes open. “Don’t stop,” she whispers, using her fading strength to keep my hand in place.
I silently ask if she’s sure, and she locks me in a stare that she doesn’t break until I resume. When she’s satisfied that I won’t let go, she lets go of my hand. Her body tenses, and she claws my back, digging her nails deep into my skin as she struggles to speak. “Call me a slut.”
“I’m not going to call you a slut.”
“Call me a slut!”
“I don’t want to—”
“Call me a fucking—”
I cut her off, barely aware that I’m shoving her thong in her mouth with my free hand. Her eyes widen as I pin her hand to the mattress and thrust. Deeper, harder, faster. My other hand is still a vise around her neck. She gags on the thong, the life drains from her face, and I get harder. Her body shudders, and her nails break skin as she climaxes. I can feel her melting beneath me, but I don’t let go.
Her face turns crimson. Her eyes close. She starts to flail against my grip, but I’m too far gone to react, and within moments, the constricted blood flow makes her limp to the touch. The more helpless she looks, the harder I get and the faster I thrust, a mounting frenzy that lasts as long as it takes to explode inside her. Only then do I release her neck.
Rolling over and lying on my back, I cough a little from the exertion.
She lies motionless, eyes shut, the panties in her mouth crowning.
“Are you okay?” I ask, carefully removing the thong.
No response.
I hover my hand above her mouth. Light, shallow breaths warm my palm.
“Are you—”
Her eyes flutter open.
“I’m sorry about the—”
“Well, that scratched an itch,” she says, realizing where she is. “What are you sorry about?”
“Gagging you with your—”
“That was fucking hot.”
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“That’s what makes it hot.” She pulls herself out of bed and begins getting dressed. “Apologizing, on the other hand? Not so much.”
“Sorry.”
She shoots me a look. “No one likes an apologist.”
“You’re welcome to stay.”
She glances over her shoulder and laughs again. “I’ve got work in the a.m.”
“I never asked what you do.”
“You didn’t.”
“What do you do?”
“That is such a Westside question.”
“I’m a Westside kinda guy in an Eastside kinda world.”
She pulls on a jacket.
“So…”
“What?”
“What do you do?”
“Let’s not ruin a perfectly torrid Cabana hookup with small talk.”
“It’s not small talk if I genuinely want to know.”
“If you genuinely wanted to know, you’d ask my name first.”
I bow my head in surrender. “I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly torrid Cabana hookup.”
She laughs.
“Do I get bonus points for not apologizing?”
“Nothing to apologize for. I don’t know your name either.”
She kisses me goodnight and leaves.
For a while there, I was worried all the asphyxiation would cut into valuable brooding time.
After an ice-cold shower, I return to the bedroom and settle in for a night of fun, mentally healthy introspection. Lying on top of the covers in my Calvins, I smoke a cigarette while streaming an entertainment news on YouTube. Moonlight filters through the Venetians, illuminating lingering strands of smoke.
There’s a very real possibility Grace fucked me up.
Breakups will do that to a person, but losing Grace was bad. I blame the night we met. There was a sense of kismet in the air. From the setting sun to the music to the locale, the mise-en-scène could not have been more perfect. It didn’t hurt that the conversation flowed like a Sorkin-penned walk-and-talk.
Plot to dialogue, it couldn’t have gone better if I’d written it myself, which is why I’ve never tried to recreate what I had with Grace in the three and a half years since we broke up. Sequels are seldom as good as the original, so why bother?
Fortunately, romantic comedies aren’t the only genre Los Angeles lends itself to. One Turner Classic Movies film noir marathon later, I found myself over-identifying with an archetype. It started small: sitting in the dark with a whiskey. Next thing I know, I have a nicotine habit, my iPhone is filled with Angelo Badalamenti score, and I’m driving to The Shade Store on Montana to buy Venetian blinds.
Unfortunately, one man does not a neo-noir make, and after years of brooding in isolation, a dark shadow under SoCal’s sunny skies, the rest of Los Angeles is finally on my level.
“Tinseltown is leaking like a sieve,” reports Close-Up editor-in-chief Ruby Maine. “Following the unauthorized release of development slates, wage information, and private emails procured during a series of hacks, the North Korean cyberattack on Monarch Pictures took a sexy turn this morning.”
I take a preemptive puff from my inhaler, refusing to let an impending asthma attack come between me and my cigarette.
“Buried in the data dump—alongside half the studio’s unreleased slate—were private photos belonging to Mandy McIntyre, star of the upcoming controversial movie Conquering Korea,” Ruby continues. “One more name on a leak that grows by the hour.”
I stub the cigarette out in an ashtray on the bedside and sit up.
The Close-Up Live stream is now a split screen. One half is dominated by Ruby Maine in a blood-red blouse that matches her hair and lipstick. The other half is Mandy McIntyre’s headshot. After Mandy spent her teen years as a TV star, Conquering Korea was meant to be her big feature debut. In her headshot, she’s young and hopeful with no idea her naked photos will one day be on the internet for all to see.
“Close-Up will continue to follow the fallout of The Fappening: Part Two,” says Ruby, signing off. “In the meantime, we can’t help but wonder: Are those boobs real?”
I drag myself out of bed and write, Nude photos leaked, on a Post-it, sticking it beneath Mandy’s headshot that is pinned to the Monarch Pictures hacks corkboard-slash-obsession wall above my desk.
Balancing a fresh smoke between my lips, I pour a glass of Black Label, carry my MacBook out to the balcony, and light the cigarette with the searing blue flame of a DuPont lighter.
Waves crash in the distance as strands of smoke drift toward the fluctuating rainbow lights of the Ferris wheel at the end of Santa Monica Pier.
Fingers on keyboard, I pen my latest op-ed: close-up, stolen information and accountability in journalism.
Feared and revered entertainment industry journalist Nikki Finke left a vacuum in her way when she accepted a lucrative non-compete settlement that terminated her Hollywood career. If there’s one thing Hollywood abhors, it’s a vacuum.
Two people rushed to fill it.
The first was Ruby Maine with Close-Up, a multi-platform amalgamation of industry news and celebrity gossip.
The other was me. Fade Out began as a flight of fancy, birthed in a moment of professional ennui. After an exposé on vote tampering during the 2014 award season, the site’s traffic skyrocketed, becoming an industry must-read.
Fade Out’s USP is my moral rigidity, and it’s those scruples that inform my latest sixteen-hundred-word tour de force. Ruby Maine feeds off secrets and paranoia and, thanks to the hacks, Los Angeles is currently an all-you-can-eat buffet. Close-Up has no problem running a leaked email and calling it news. I, however, am more than happy to call it what it is: exploiting stolen information for clicks under the cover of journalism. After venting my moral objections, of which there are many, I sign off:
There are rumblings that the cyberattacks may escalate into a full-blown terrorist attack at Conquering Korea’s Hollywood premiere in a week and a half. Industry sources tell me that, from publicists to the FBI, Hollywood is on high alert. POTUS and Monarch Pictures President Ted Gourd remain adamant that the show must go on, citing First Amendment concerns. If the worst happens, it is my belief that Ruby Maine, the staff of Close-Up, and every journalist who allows themselves to be manipulated into trafficking stolen information will have as much blood on their hands as the terrorists.
I finish my cigarette and author the article under “Editor-in-Chief.” Anonymity is key. I may be a jaded screenwriter, but I’m not a suicidal one.
Lighting another cigarette, I breathe in the view until a notification appears in the corner of the screen. An email from an unknown Korean address with an embedded video.
I hit play and footage rolls from inside a private sauna. The video plays like homemade gay porn. Just one naked man pile-driving another. I’m about to close the video when I recognize the men in it and realize why it was sent to me. Struggling actor and career barista Blaine Colby recently alleged that Monarch Pictures’ Mike Leibowitz sexually assaulted him. This video is the proof.
It’s not unusual for anonymous sources to email me big-ticket exclusives, but the ticket is seldom this big.
I run the body of the email, written in Korean, through a translator. It reads, We enjoyed your article and thought you might be interested in this video. We hope you do the right thing.
The right thing would be to report the content of the video—the stolen video—and expose the defendants of a lengthy civil suit as the rapists they’re accused of being. The right thing would also make me a hypocrite.
This dilemma isn’t going to help my insomnia—an insomnia that began on the fourth anniversary of the night I met Grace. I really should move on, take down the Venetians, hang some curtains. I’m trying, but I’m not there yet.
Instead, I finish my whiskey, stub out my cigarette, and watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in bed.
The hope is that the movie will lull me to sleep. The reality is that the moment I close my eyes, coughing will take hold, and I’ll be the one gagging and gasping for air.
CHAPTER TWO
The sun creeps over the Century City skyline, bathing my ’66 Ford Mustang in its golden hues. I’m driving east on the 10, “Where Is My Mind?” blasting through the stereo. Ray-Bans I’ve owned since my first week in LA shield my eyes. The breeze rushes over the windshield, tousling my already unkempt hair.
If this cinematic moment were captured on 35mm film, it would be a sun-drenched endorsement of SoCal living. What film can’t capture is the CO2 hovering above the LA Basin, filling my lungs with every labored breath.
I fight fire with fire and light the cigarette hanging from my mouth with the DuPont. Combining LA smog with tobacco may seem like overkill, but I’m nothing if not the author of my own story.
Asphyxiation or no, I hate driving this far east. The farther I am from the ocean, the worse everything becomes. Goodbye, sunny Santa Monica living. Hello, industry bullshit. And if you keep driving beyond the city limits of Los Angeles, there’s a very real risk of contracting terminal boredom. LA may suck, but at least it has stakes.
Santa Monica is the perfect distance from the hub of the entertainment industry. Close enough to hop on the 10 and take a meeting. Far enough that no one ever comes and visits. Unfortunately, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has other ideas. Construction on the Expo Light Rail, which will bridge the divide between Downtown and Santa Monica, is nearing completion. Once it’s up and running, the barriers between Santa Monica and the rest of LA will be all but non-existent.
I take the Robertson off-ramp and drive north toward Wilshire until I arrive at the STA offices in Beverly Hills. An elevator takes me from the underground parking garage to the eighth floor, where my agent, Dave Chaikin, greets me with a dap and tells me to take a seat in his office.
“I read A Clean Pair of Hands,” he says, collapsing in his chair. “Cover to cover.”
On the desk between us sits the printed and bound hundred-twenty-page tome I emailed him last week. Once upon a time, Dave was a fledgling literary agent in search of the screenplay that would make him a player. Dave would have me believe the moment he read The Last Honest Liar by Hollywood unknown Dante Lee, it was love at first sight. He championed it, generated enough buzz to drive a bidding war, and sold it to the highest bidder. That was the beginning of the end.
“And?” I ask.
“I love it.” He slams a fist on the desk between each word, a poor man’s Ari Gold in an Armani Collezioni suit. “I fucking love it.”
“But…”
He sighs. “I can’t sell it.”
“You haven’t tried.”
“I don’t need to. Let me paint you a picture. Me, sitting down on a lounger by the pool with my favorite writer’s latest script for a hundred-million-dollar movie about a girl who gets drafted into a war between good and evil. Ten pages in, I’m already excited. It’s got everything: action, drama, spectacle, big themes, female lead, franchise potential, the works. In my head, I’m already putting the package together. And then I get to page thirty.”
“The twist?”
“She’s a fucking pacifist!”
I do jazz hands. “Ta da.”
“A hundred-million-dollar war movie where the heroine won’t fight.” Dave leans back. “I know what last time did to you—the gunfight in the third act, some hack rewriting your baby, the whole thing. I was there. I was your shoulder to cry on. I get it, I do, but a gun-proof premise isn’t the answer.”
“It’s a good script.”
“Oh, it’s a great script. A great, big unsellable script.” He pauses. “Here’s a thought. If you don’t want some director sticking a shootout in your baby, why not try a genre where nobody expects one? A rom-com, maybe?”
“I don’t have any ideas for a rom-com.”
“Can you find one?”
“They usually find me.”
“This,” Dave says, pointing at me with both hands, “is why everyone hates writers.”
“Are you going to send it out?”
“Of course I’m going to send it out. I’m your agent, not your therapist. But I’m telling you now to keep your expectations in check, ’cause no one’s going to bite.”
“Thank you.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re my favorite agent.”
“Write me a rom-com.”
Alice is waiting for me in the underground parking garage beneath STA. She’s leaning against my Mustang, a lone, rust-encrusted classic in a sea of brand-new Beamers. With bleached-blond hair, a black tee, dark jeans, and Doc Martens, Alice embodies the hard-boiled character of Fade Out staff writer “Sasha McLean,” a proxy created by me to do the in-person, face-to-face work I can’t.
“How’d it go?” I ask, unlocking the car so we can enter.
“I stuck to the script. Played Leibowitz the video, told him I wouldn’t publish a thing as long as he signed the letter of resignation and gave Fade Out the exclusive.”
“And…?”
“I had to work overtime to convince him I wasn’t bluffing. Fade Out’s reputation for not trafficking in stolen information precedes it.”
“How’d you convince him?”
“Told him there are worse things in life than crossing ethical lines. Like, you know, rape.”
“Atta girl.”
“There’s something you should know…”
“What?”
“When he was begging for me to let him keep his job, he offered to be a source, feed you big-ticket items. I pushed him on what, and he started muttering about stuff he’d heard around the office… Stuff about the hacks and sexual harassment allegations no one knows about.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him it wasn’t a negotiation.”
“This is why I pay you the big bucks.”
“You don’t pay me at all.”
“Only because you won’t let me.”
“A girl’s gotta have a hobby.”
“So, he signed it?”
“There and then.” My phone pings, and Alice smiles. “That’s probably him now.”
I check the screen. She’s right. An email confirms Mike has resigned from Monarch, effective immediately.
“Good work. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” she says. “How’d the meeting with Dave go?”
“He loved the script.”
“That’s great.”
“He also can’t sell it.”
“Ah.”
“He wants me to write a rom-com.”
“You’d write a great rom-com.”
“I’m not a romantic.”
“Oh, Dante,” she says.
“What?”
“You’re the most romantic person I know.”
“What does that mean?”
In lieu of an answer, she leans across the console, kisses me on the cheek, and exits the car.
“Let me give you a ride…”
“I’m good,” she says. “My shift doesn’t start ’til ten.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“I know you will.” She shuts the door behind her.
I pull my MacBook Air from under the passenger seat and write a news item for Fade Out: monarch vp of talent relations mike leibowitz resigns amidst sexual assault scandal.
The article goes live in the time it takes to hit publish, and I reward myself with a smoke.
The Mustang fills the garage with a thick black cloud of exhaust as I drive away.
I swing by Century City on the way home. GPS guides me to the offices of Olsen, Kim & Serkis. Another underground parking lot, another elevator. It takes all of two minutes to bullshit my way from the reception desk to an impromptu meeting with May Torres, a junior partner at the firm and the lead attorney in the Blaine Colby case.
“I don’t normally take meetings at such short notice,” she says. “The desk said you asked for me specifically. What can I do for you?”
“I’m actually here because of what I can do for you.”
“Oh?”
I load the Blaine Colby video on my phone and hold it up for her to see. Her expression shifts from confused to disgusted to elated as she realizes what she’s watching.
She looks beyond the phone, to me. “How did you get this?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if it’s inadmissible in court.”
“Legal advice isn’t my specialty. But if it was—”
“You’d tell me to use it as leverage, get a settlement.”
“I knew there was a reason I watched all five seasons of Damages.”
“And to think I wasted two hundred grand on law school,” she sighs. “What do you want for the video?”
“It’s all yours.”
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Just a condition.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who spent two hundy large on law school.”
She tilts her head, annoyed.
“Drop Monarch from the suit,” I tell her.
“That’s an eight-figure condition.”
“Leibowitz resigned an hour ago. Monarch wasn’t aware of his extracurricular activities.”
“I don’t think my client will agree to your ‘condition.’”
“The hacks are crippling Monarch. You sue them and win, maybe Apex National cuts its losses and sells Monarch for scraps. Hundreds of people lose their jobs, corporations consolidate, and the California economy takes another hit. Or you sue them and lose because Monarch brings the full weight of their legal team crashing down on you, and Blaine gets diddly. Leibowitz is good for mid seven figures. Blaine will be fine.”
“You make a compelling argument.”
“Video’s all yours as soon as your client signs off on the ‘condition.’”
“How do I know you’re not working for Monarch?”
I attach the video to an email and show her the screen. “Ready to send the moment you hang up.”
She nods, warming to the exchange. “What did you say you do?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“I’m an entertainment journalist.”
“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“I’ll call my client.”
The toxic fumes engulfing LA thin out the closer I get to Santa Monica. Traffic on the 10 isn’t as bad as it could be, and I’m home in time to watch the sunset from my balcony with my MacBook, a notebook, and a whiskey.
I draft another news item: monarch sexual assault scandal: plaintiff drops monarch pictures from suit, focuses on leibowitz.
I hit publish, take a few deep breaths of ocean air, and light up.
Then I find a clean page in the notebook I haven’t opened in three and a half years and write a title at the top: ROM-COM IDEAS.
I underline it and stare at it until the cigarette burns down to the filter.
Beneath ROM-COM IDEAS, I write: A man meets a woman at a bar.
When I try to imagine a happy ending to this imaginary scenario, I come up empty. I can’t tell if it’s a failure of craft or a failure of self, so I close the notebook, finish my whiskey, and head out. There’s a lot of five-dollar happy hour whiskeys in Santa Monica that aren’t going to drink themselves.
CHAPTER THREE
It has come to my attention that I may have an addictive personality.
I’m not saying this because I’m currently smoking my twenty-third cigarette of the day. Truth be told, I could take or leave cigarettes. I truly believe that. My addiction runs deeper than nicotine.
The last of the day’s sun sinks beneath the ocean, turning Santa Monica Beach golden. The posers and fitness freaks of Muscle Beach don’t let the fading daylight deter them from their showy displays of physical prowess—HIIT circuits with trainers, Tarzan swings on traveling rings, couples doing Acroyoga. Watching these people do things I can’t is just the beginning of my evening brood.
Coexist by The xx is the soundtrack to my walk along the beach. Each track’s dreamy instrumentals bleed seamlessly into the next as I pass rollerbladers, surfers, tourists, and homeless. The wind carries the sounds of hustling street performers and awestruck children overhead as I walk beneath the pier. I make it to the other side in time to see the floodlights above the parking lot flicker to life.
The steps that lead to the pedestrian bridge linking the beach and Ocean Avenue challenge my asthma. On the bridge, padlocks hang from the chain-link fence, symbols of eternal love. One of these padlocks used to belong to Grace and me until the powers that be removed it. As far as Santa Monica City Council is concerned, eighteen months is an eternity.
Beyond the padlocks, traffic builds on the Pacific Coast Highway below, and the sky—a vibrant golden pink gradient—serves as a backdrop for the incoming tide. This view haunts me. Or maybe I haunt it, a specter with unfinished business, doomed to stalk the Westside until the end of eternity. Or eighteen months. Whichever comes first.
This walk, these sights, the salt-tinged air, and smells of seafood, grilled meats, and fast-food trucks set the stage for my nightly bar hop.
Setting aside time to brood is key. Brooding buffers a day of working and a night of drinking. Knowing I have brooding to look forward to at the end of each day helps me get through twelve hours of screenwriting and hard-hitting entertainment-industry journalism. It’s my light at the end of the tunnel and the silver lining around my rain cloud. Sometimes I think time spent brooding is time wasted, but then I tell myself time I enjoy wasting is not wasted time. This invariably leads me to wonder whether this can really qualify as brooding if I enjoy it so much.
This is why I’m a screenwriter. I ask the big questions.
In many ways, my relationship with Santa Monica is a love affair, and like any romance, when the honeymoon ends, the routine begins. Or, in my case, the ritual. I may have an addictive personality, but it’s not because I’m an unrepentant chain smoker. Cigarettes and alcohol are just another part of my ritual. The ritual is Santa Monica, and Santa Monica is my addiction.
The night begins with a five-dollar happy hour whiskey at Copa d’Oro, an intimate refuge from the final moments of sunlight. I wash the whiskey down with an El Mirador and leave. A homeless man vomits outside a Big Blue Bus stop, and another shakes a Starbucks cup filled with coins. I tell him I don’t have change, and he says, “God bless, have a great night.”
Next stop: The Craftsman. Burger sliders soak up the alcohol, and an acoustic cover band pays homage to Maroon 5.
After the Craftsman, I walk west of Broadway and turn right on Ocean. Latin music pumps out of Ma’kai. Homeless people dance on the street while thirty-something professionals dance within. The two don’t mix.
Arriving at Hotel Shangri-La, I ride the claustrophobic Art Deco elevator to Onyx, the penthouse bar. A couple of hours into the evening, and whiskey tastes like water, and I wonder how many nights like this I have left until my life turns into a Bukowski novel.
On the rooftop of Shangri-La, I swirl a finger of whiskey around a tumbler as darkness devours Santa Monica, transforming the pier into a beacon.
The ghostly white Clock Tower Building on Santa Monica and Third watches over the city. Built in 1929, it’s one of the tallest structures around the promenade. That may not be the case for much longer. The Santa Monica Cares Facebook group—whose members are as dedicated to preserving the city’s integrity as they are the city’s property values—is trying to block a proposal to erect an equally large structure on Fourth and Arizona. If this plan is approved, it would open the floodgates for similar developments across downtown Santa Monica, transforming the skyline beyond recognition. Word on the street is that one such proposal would require bulldozing Cabana—the bar where I met Grace—to make way for an office building. I hate change.
Sultry dream pop inspires me to light up. Two women—one blond, the other brunette—ask me for a light. I oblige. They remark on the DuPont’s blue flame, and we make polite small talk until I tell them I have to go.
“Where?”
“Cabana.”
“We’ve just come from there!”
“Oh, really?” I ask, exhaling a thin stream of smoke out of my nostrils.
I sound surprised, but I’m not. Bar hopping in Santa Monica is an incestuous, transitory experience that involves the same people visiting the same bars repeatedly and often—albeit in different configurations, lest things get stale.
“You meeting friends?” they ask.
“I am,” I lie, throwing my cigarette butt into a fire pit. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“Thank you for the light,” the blonde offers.
“You’re welcome,” I reply. “I’ll see you around.”
That may sound like a lie cushioned in an empty pleasantry, but it’s actually a truth cushioned in an empty pleasantry. Santa Monica is a small community. Not only am I likely to see them around, I’m pretty sure I sat a few stools down from them at Bar Chloe last week.
I take the scenic route to Cabana. A busker singing “Hallelujah” hangs over the promenade. Fairy lights and storefronts light the way—True Religion, Diesel, Sunglass Hut, you name it, Santa Monica has it.
I can hear Cabana’s boho beach anthems playlist—everything from the Beach Boys to The Who—before I even reach the entrance. A group of kids, no older than twenty-two—fresh out of college, living large with mommy and daddy’s money—hover in the entrance as the door guy checks their IDs. One of the guys in the group rests his hand on the small of his girlfriend’s back, she says something cute, and they kiss, unaware that their friends have already entered. The door guy spots me hovering behind them and waves me in without as much as an ID check or a second look.
Walking through the open-air venue en route to the bar, I pass a sign that reads closed for private gathering on the entrance of the indoor lounge.
Glasses filled with citrus line the bar, and a boogie board hangs from the ceiling above Kat, the bartender. She’s making Old Fashioneds for a group of suit-wearing B-school grads at the far end. Eyes glazed, she pretends to care about the business deals that brought them to town, the apps they want to invest in, and the millions they plan to make. She lights up when she spots me pulling up a stool at the other end of the bar and excuses herself, mid-conversation.
“I’ve never been more relieved to see you!” she says, casually leaning on the bar.
“You looked like you were in need of an exit strategy.”
“You’re literally a lifesaver.”
“Literally?”
“Dying from boredom is totally a thing, right?”
“I often think so, but the CDC has yet to recognize it.”
“Fuck them and their clinical trials.” Her smile widens, and she takes a moment to search my eyes. I reciprocate the smile but look away. “Your usual?”
“You even have to ask?”
“No,” she says, producing a half-filled glass of Black Label from beneath the bar.
I pull out my wallet.
“On the house.”
“You’re good to me.”
“You tip well. You’re good to me, I’m good to you.”
The whiskey flows over my taste buds, setting them alight in its wake. Gesturing to the access-restricted indoor lounge, I ask, “What’s the occasion?”
“Private party,” she tells me. “And you’re invited.”
“Huh? Why? Who?”
“That’s all I know. Dante Lee. Only name on the guest list.”
I study her eyes. She’s serious.
“At Last” by Etta James fills Cabana. A chill runs down my spine, and time stands still, the ambient noise of the bar dims, and the song is all I hear. I down the rest of the whiskey in one go, place the glass on top of a ten-dollar tip, and slide off my barstool. Everything happens in slow motion as I make my way to the lounge, where a security guard steps to the side and lets me through.
The lounge is barren, populated only by faux-log cabin furnishings. The haunting vocals of Etta James spark memories that are never far from my mind. Memories of a simpler time that predates the nightly ritual of bars, alcohol, and tobacco. A time that, truth be told, gave birth to the ritual—a golden age that laid the groundwork upon which many a nostalgia-filled night has been built.
I walk through the room toward the back door. Heat radiates from the other side. Opening the door reveals a fire pit, and beyond the flames stands a woman, her back to me, blond hair flowing below her bare shoulders, cigarette smoke rising above her head. She wears a white top that doesn’t quite meet the waist of her long white skirt. A vertical slit exposes the length of her right leg.
I choke back my disbelief. “Grace?”
Her decorated fingers lower the cigarette from her mouth as she turns to face me. She hasn’t aged a day since we broke up. Her ivory skin is as smooth as ever, untouched by the unforgiving California sun and a smoking habit developed in her teens. The world-weary tiredness in her eyes is the only difference between the Grace standing before me now and the Grace I once knew.
She offers a small smile as our eyes meet.
I’m about to ask her why she’s here, now, after all these years, but I stop when her lips part, and she speaks the four words that tell me everything I need to know.
“I need your help.”