Hollywood Nights Read Online Free Page A

honestly couldn’t recall much about that night beyond the bottle service. Maybe I had done Molly.
    Shit.
    “It could have been worse,” I said. “Cocaine. Crack. Meth? At least it wasn’t any of those.”
    “I better not ever hear it is. No one wants another Robert Downey Jr. situation.” Kenneth sighed. “Least of all me.”
    “I’m not like him,” I said, but I didn’t feel so convinced anymore.
    “And of course you have to go and do this now. We were doing so well,” Kenneth said. “They were going to do an article on you in Details next month. Something nice. Fluffy. Positive. But this—this is the latest in the narrative, Tanner. People think you’re a drunk with no future. They already say you’re nothing but an alcoholic mess. Washed up. Distracted. A liability. Now they’ll start wondering if you’re a druggie. I told you what I—”
    “I know,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten what you told me that producer said at the party you were at last week. I get it.”
    “Do you? If you become too much of an insurance risk—”
    “My career is over. They won’t book me for movies or anything else. I won’t get any work.”
    “And it could go on for years, Tanner. Years.”
    “I know.” I sighed. “I know.”
    “I— we —haven’t worked this hard to throw it all away. I get you’ve been going through a tough time ever since Lana left, but don’t make me think I’ve made a mistake here.”
    Maybe Kenneth wasn’t wrong, and as his words sank in, neither of us said anything for a moment. James turned the car onto Mulholland Drive, and my stomach tied into a deep knot.
    “You need to figure something out,” Kenneth finally said. “You can’t go on like this, Tanner.”
    He hung up the phone, and silence filled the car. James didn’t say anything for a few blocks, and I didn’t either. Instead, I focused on that night at Bungalow 23. It was still a blur, just like the night before. Two nights of partying this week, but this morning, I knew I’d been lucky. I might have had a monster hangover, but waking up in Miss No Name’s apartment hadn’t been the worst thing to happen to me during the last hellish year.
    Not even close.
    James stopped the Mercedes at a red light. When I glanced out the back passenger window, my gaze locked with a haggard, weather-beaten man standing at the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly Glen. He held a cardboard sign, and deep track marks from life on the edge of society crisscrossed his face. I’d seen this man dozens of times before and always in the same spot, but I’d never looked at him until that morning.
    “Pull over,” I said to James. “Now.”
    He maneuvered the car out of traffic and I unrolled the passenger window. “Come here,” I said, already shifting around in the seat for my wallet. The man with the sign walked over to the car. “Take it.” I handed him three twenty-dollar bills—all of the cash remaining in my billfold from the previous night’s debauchery.
    The man snatched the money from my hand. When he looked down at the amount, his dry, chapped mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
    “You need it more than me.” I waved a hand at James. “Let’s go.”
    James nodded and pulled the car back into traffic before the man had time to say much more. For the rest of that drive, I didn’t stop thinking about the man. What had made him homeless? Had he come here dreaming of a better life, like me, only to have Hollywood spit him out like gristle?
    A small part of me realized something. If things didn’t change, I might wind up the same way.

 
     

     
    F or a while, I thought about Tanner a lot. I couldn’t stop reflecting on the horrible way he’d treated me after I went out of my way to help him. How many other people had he done that to in life? What an ungrateful dick. If being famous meant behaving like that, well… if I ever saw him again, he’d get a piece of my mind, and fast. That I vowed.
    I got my chance