Page 96 of We Could Be Heroes

“That only idiots skip leg day.”

“Well, yes. But what else? The trick to doing stunts safely?”

Patrick gave him a blank look.

“You’ve fallen,” Corey said. “But there’s still time for you to figure out where you want to land.”

* * *

•••••••••

The real world was waiting for Patrick when he left the canyon. He had purposely left his phone in the car and avoided wearing the smartwatch that told him how close he was to meeting his fitness goals for the day. When he was in movie-prepping mode, he was essentially paid every time he moved his body. After weeks of doing press for Kismet 2, he wanted to hike with the guys however he damn well pleased.

Patrick scrolled through notifications as he sipped water and wiped sweat and sunscreen from the back of his neck with a towel. Most were updates from Simone and the publicist she had hired about the premiere tomorrow, the logistics of where he would be and when, details that had been ironed out, balled up, and ironed again so many times that he knew them by heart. The Chinese Theatre on Hollywood at seven o’clock tomorrow.

Patrick deleted all incoming alerts, except two that had piqued his curiosity.

The first was from a number he didn’t recognize.

I got your number from Maurice. I thought you should see this.

Patrick had no idea who Maurice might be, but as soon as he opened the attached video, he realized it could only be from Jordan, and the terse tone made sense.

The footage was shaky, with a lot of background noise, but Patrick almost immediately recognized the location: the Village. The camera was trained on the stage, where Faye Runaway stood in a floor-length gown and turban à la Norma Desmond.

“Our next act is familiar to some of you,” she said over tipsy whoops and cheers. “And no, not because she can be found in the third stall of the gents’ during the interval. That would be me.” She delicately pretended to wipe the corner of her mouth, and Patrick let out a brief snort of laughter. “No, this next queen is very near and dear to my heart and yours. She’s a lady, she’s a tramp, she’s an absolute bastard…Let’s hear it for Grace Anatomy!”

Patrick’s stomach tightened, and he almost stopped the video. Even on a tiny screen, the prospect of seeing Will made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

Grace wore an ivory gown and a blond wig, with a leather jacket hanging delicately over her shoulders, like a girl whose boyfriend had just noticed she was cold. Patrick instantly recognized the visual reference—Buffy Summers, all dressed up to fight to the death on the night of her first school dance—a split second before he recognized the jacket. It was the one Will had worn that night at the Flapper. The one he’d worn while Patrick came undone.

Grace stepped up to the microphone stand.

“He said let’s get out of this town,” Will sang. “Drive out of the city, away from the crowds…”

It was a song Patrick knew, a song he happened to know Will loved, but right now he felt like he was hearing it for the first time. Oh god, Will was singing, singing live and so beautifully, the audience in thrall to this wildest dream. Until he reached the chorus, and his voice came close to cracking, his face wracked with emotion.

The knowledge that Patrick was behind that pain shattered him inside, but the pride he felt for Will in that moment rebuilt him. How he wished he could have been there, to tell anybody who would listen, See that person there? See her in all of her glory? She is the queen of my heart! To rush the stage and kiss the hem of Grace’s gown. To throw roses. To scream and clap until his throat and hands bled. To hold Will afterward, to tell him over and over again how special and important and precious and dear he was.

He reached the end of the video and started it again, taking in this time the pride in Faye’s voice as she introduced her protégé, the whistles and whoops as Grace took the stage, the crowd singing along when she reached the final chorus.

He drove back to his apartment and watched it again. Then once more after taking a shower. He was on his sixth or seventh viewing when he remembered he still had one more outstanding message: a voicemail. Patrick tapped the play button and left the phone on his bed as he pulled on a pair of sweats.

“Hello, I am trying to reach Mr. Lake.” The voice that came through was female, smoky, and, if Patrick had to hazard a guess, middle-aged. “You don’t know me, my name is Ellie Hoffman. I’ve been given your information by Simone Toussaint. A charming woman, I have to say. She seemed quite protective of you but agreed that you would probably want to hear this.”

Ellie Hoffman paused to clear her throat. Whether this was for dramatic tension or incidental, Patrick was practically hunched over the phone by the time she finished her message:

“I have the Omega Issue.”

Chapter 35

Will had been out on such a limb when asking Simone this favor, he hadn’t been fully prepared for her to actually say yes. What would have taken all of Will’s rainy-day money and Margo exhausting every last one of her precious credit card points to achieve, Simone did in a matter of seconds. She was not forthcoming about why she was using agency resources to help Will out, but he got the feeling that she had her own reasons.

And so a three-hour coach journey, two-hour wait at Heathrow, eleven-hour flight, and fifty-five-minute cab ride later, Will arrived at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

Despite Patrick’s stories, Will had been unsure of what to expect from LA. It was the city of dreams, or at least purported to be, yet most of what he saw of Sunset Boulevard from the back of the taxi had been drugstores and coffee shops and, he was pretty sure, the nightclub where River Phoenix died.

Will got out of the car and into the lobby, instantly grateful for America’s love affair with air-conditioning: He’d left an island shrouded in damp fog and landed in a desert. He approached the front desk, and the concierge—who looked as much like a movie star as anyone Will had ever met—gave him a look with which he was becoming familiar. It was the once-over that asked: Are you famous? Are you worth my time? How nice do I need to be to you?

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