Page 6 of Making His Bones

It was a corny thing to say, but her smile seemed genuine. Sorrow still edged the corners of her eyes, but I was succeeding in bringing her out of the dumps. She tossed her pretty head a little. “So why’d you come here from LA?”

“I’m an actor,” I said modestly. Or at least I hoped I sounded modest. “I was a model as a teen, then I got into acting. Light stuff, mostly. No Othello.”

“So your light acting drove you here.”

“In a way, yeah. You wouldn’t believe the phony air of the lights, camera, action. Everyone’s a fucking phony out to backstab each other. Girls have phony boobs and men have phony teeth.”

“Did someone want you to get phony teeth?”

I smiled widely, knowing my teeth were like driven snow. Naturally. “Nope. But I had a thousand guys competing for my position on the show.”

“And what show was that?”

I could tell she’d never seen me on TV before. I was sure they didn’t have a TV to distract them in the lab. “Untamed and Unchained. You might not’ve seen it. We take a chopper full of contestants out to the boondocks and make them do shit like climb trees and cross rivers, except there’s a . . . “ I trailed off, certain my occupation was too lowlife for her. No doubt she had a master’s degree or maybe even a PhD in chemistry, like our Veep, Lytton Driving Hawk. I started stroking my cellphone in the pocket of my khakis. The club wouldn’t let me wear shorts with my cut, but at least I could wear khakis. Maybe Lytton can come in and help me pump this hellafine woman for info.

“A?” she prompted.

I ran my fingers through my hair. I did that when nervous. I liked to keep it short and spiky so I could pretend this nervous habit was just grooming. “There’s a pack of dogs, like, chasing them, so they have to outrun them. I’m the host.”

She could’ve said a lot of shit, but she didn’t. Her amusement overflowed from her eyes, but she kept it in check, I’ve got to hand her that. “So there were a bunch of people all vying to be the host of this show?”

Relieved, I said, “Oh, hell, yeah! Are you kidding me? Not to make a stale reference, but in that dog eat dog world, it was every man for himself! Don’t get me wrong. I was crushing it, and I didn’t even have to get in bed with anyone. But I got burned out, you know? I thought I’d just leave at the top of my game.”

“So you had some kind of a breakdown?”

How the fuck did she know all this shit? Did colleges teach you how to look into someone’s soul and read them like a palm? I decided to act coy, like her. “In a way. So that’s how I learned archery!” I changed the subject like a pro. I showed her my right shoulder and bicep, perfectly framed by my wifebeater and black leather cut. “I met Knoxie while I was modeling, and he was inking people all over Hollywood. See? This skull represents duality, because it has flowers alongside it. This skull has colored eye sockets, just to be more badass. This sugar skull tat is Mexican, from Day of the Dead.”

She finally seemed interested in me. “Knoxie did all those?”

I sort of flexed my bicep. “Yeah. He did the top three in LA, and he just did the sugar skull when I moved here.”

“After you had a breakdown.”

Man! Was she pushy! She was the one with the dead daughter she wouldn’t talk about, but she wanted to know every detail of my fucking life. Well, it was flattering, in a way. “Right,” I admitted. I forked my fingers through my hair. “Every time I turned around, in between the ass-licking and false applause, I never knew who to trust. You wouldn’t believe how many times the producer told me this guy or that guy was angling for my job. So one day, in the middle of filming a pretty dicey action scene where contestants scaled cliffs using only their belts—“

“How did the dogs get up the cliff?”

“What?”

“You said packs of dogs chased the contestants.”

“Oh. Well, normally, yeah, but you’re right, dogs can’t get up cliffs. We were in Morocco’s Argan Forest, so we let a band of goats loose after them. We sometimes varied the animals. When we were in Brazil crossing a river, we let loose a bunch of sloths after the contestants.”

Understandably, Elektra frowned. “Sloths?”

“Yeah. They’re incredibly slow on land, but you’d be surprised, they make good swimmers.”

“So they were scaling the cliff in Morocco . . .”

“Ah, right. And all of a sudden, you know? I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was saying something like ‘Tyler’s in the lead with a supremely smug and satisfied look on his face, but Emma is close on his tail. She’s smiling too because Tyler’s about to grab onto a spiny euphorbia plant. Yup, there he goes! Amazing! He tumbled at least fifteen yards and landed on a goat!’ And suddenly I just couldn’t do it anymore. I made a big speech. It was actually quoted and retweeted thousands of times. Tens of thousands of times, actually.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said something like, ‘Folks, Unchained has done right by me, but I can no longer keep up with this rat race. Hollywood is a joke and a half. If anyone has any integrity and pride, they will not aspire to Hollywood. What do you think my life has become? Watching guys’ naked asses and swinging dicks as they pole vault over a line of box turtles.’ Except that line had everyone speculating that I was gay, just because I said, ‘guys’ asses.’”

“And ‘swinging dicks.’”

“But who cared? I didn’t care anymore. I said ‘People, let one of these shallow morons with his knitted fisherman beanie and leopard-spotted sneakers take my place. Let one of them keep you up to speed on the world of Unchained, where an episode won’t air unless one person has their balls bitten by a killer whale.’”