KW 09:Shot on Location Read Online Free Page A

shouldn’t take that. It isn’t yours.”
    This time the answer didn’t come in words. There was a momentary scuffle, so one-sided that it barely made a sound. Just a single low grunt and a quick small whimper. Then there was a splash.
    Jake got to the window just in time to see Bryce righting himself in the pool, his sarong floating up around his legs like a dying tulip or a dirndl skirt. A large man in tight black shorts was leaving through the yanked open compound gate, kicking out a thick leg to clear the fabric from his butt crack. The gate slammed closed behind him, quaking on its hinges for a second or two, then all was quiet once again.
    Peace and mayhem, Joey had said. Maybe there was something to it. Jake gave a private little shrug and went back to his unpacking.
    ---
    A little while later, in the glorified shed back behind the pool pump and filter where he lived rent-free in exchange for chores, Bryce was sulking in his damp sarong. This wasn’t because he’d been called names and tossed into the pool; that really didn’t bother him at all. He was sulking because Joey was mad at him.
    He felt he’d let Joey down and that this was fated to happen again and again because Joey didn’t really understand him. Joey thought he was just a slacker. Which, admittedly, he was. But the part that Joey didn’t quite get — what hardly anyone really got — was what his slacking was about. It’s not that he was lazy. True, he spent an awful lot of time lying in his bed or on any convenient couch. But when he did so he wasn’t just lying there; he was doing something else as well. He was waiting
.
Waiting for something worth getting out of bed or off the couch to do. This waiting wasn’t passive; it was active and suspenseful. In fact it was exhausting, the more so because he had no idea what it was he was waiting for, or if it would ever come, or even if he’d recognize it soon enough if it appeared right there in front of him.
    So he had to stay ready and he needed to be alert, if only drowsily alert, poised to identify his moment and to pounce on it. It was this dull but constant buzz of anticipation that was fatiguing, that made him need a nap after skimming half the pool or testing the pH in the hot tub or vacuuming the new guy’s living room. That’s the part he badly wished he could get Joey, or anyone, to understand. The waiting part. The staying ready. The numb suspense that gave a secret drama to his entirely uneventful life.

6.
    At twenty of six, showered and changed, Jake was ready to head to the Flagler House hotel for his meeting with the producer of
Adrift.
    He strolled past the now vacant pool and over the white gravel path toward the compound gate. He’d intended to walk to his appointment but then he saw the rack of bicycles. Best way to get around town, Joey had said. The only problem was that Jake hadn’t ridden a bike in probably twenty years, except for stationary ones at the gym, and those did not tip over. But he did have his goofy side, and a sudden feeling of what-the-hell had overtaken him, and he grabbed a cruiser, a purple one.
    He rolled it through the gate, mounted very gingerly, as if climbing onto a horse that might shy, and wobbled off. The seat was much too low for him and his bony knees cranked high and splayed out as he pedaled. His elbows flapped too, giving him the aspect of a prehistoric bird attempting liftoff.
    But he got the hang of it, the motion of the bike creating its own delicious breeze. The sun was low; light slanted through and underneath the canopies of dracaenas and palms. The streets were cooling except in little patches where glare was reflected from hot parked cars; on a bike, the feel and smell of the air changed with every second. By the time Jake reached the big hotel he was feeling almost giddy with the pleasure of the changes.
    Even so, his meeting with Quentin Dole got off to a rather rocky start.
    He’d been shown to the producer’s table in the