Shooting Stars Read Online Free

begin with.
    â€œNo action. No action,” Aaron responds.
    â€œYou need to get a Nextel,” he tells me.
    Paps use Nextels more than their phones. “Especially on follows,” Aaron says. “If you got a partner, you don’t have time to dial and wait. Ring, ring. Pick up. When a follow’s trying to lose you, ya gotta get to your mate, now. ”
    Aaron’s body jitters and his leg shakes when he talks. I don’t mask my study of him: he’s wearing well-worn designer jeans that hang loosely on his skinny frame, black Converse lace-ups with holes in them, and a vintage plaid button-down. His thick blond hair falls in his eyes and could use a trim, and he wears horn-rimmed glasses that make him look like he could be working on a PhD. He’s trendy , I think. Just like everybody in L.A. I also notice that he has a mole on his cheek in the same spot as Cindy Crawford does. I don’t know Aaron’s age—haven’t asked ’cause I don’t want him to ask mine—but I imagine he’s about thirty.
    The morning passes. Aaron has gone through both packets of sunflower seeds plus yesterday’s “leftovers” from his pocket. These seeds are his breakfast and lunch, I notice. He eats them like a bird—pops one into his mouth, cracks it between his teeth, digs the seed out with his tongue, then spits out the shell. “Dexterous tongue. Important,” he mumbles at one point. Not sure how to reply, I say nothing.
    By noon, Aaron’s bored. “Let’s go find someone,” he says as he jumps down from the hood and chucks his very expensive camera on the front seat. “We’re going to trawl. Get in.”
    â€œYou mean troll ?”
    â€œNo. I mean trawl .”
    â€œTrawling” or “trolling” is the equivalent of police “cruising,” and according to Aaron, paps, like the cops, spend significantly more time trawling and waiting for celebrities to appear than being in action. Trawl is British for “troll.”
    So, we take off. On the way into town, Brian, another CXN pap with a sexy accent I can’t yet place, beeps in on the Nextel and we make a plan tomeet at “Halle’s.” Apparently, Halle Berry’s house is in the heart of West Hollywood and a central place for paps to convene. Aaron says if you gotta meet up, you might as well do it at a celeb’s house. “You’re always keeping tabs on ’em. Gotta know who’s in town, who’s staying at home, who’s shagging at their boyfriend’s,” he says.
    With light traffic, it takes us about twenty minutes to get there. Just as we pull up, Brian’s SUV is U-turning, and he circles his arm out the window and motions for Aaron to follow.
    â€œSweet. There’s the vixen.” Aaron points to the white SUV that’s two cars in front of Brian’s. “That’s her.”
    â€œNo way!” I squeal. The novelty of seeing a celebrity will not wear off for quite some time.
    We follow Halle for barely a mile. Then she pulls into the parking lot of a veterinary office. Aaron whips his car into position, as does Brian, and the two hang out their windows taking pictures of her from about fifty feet away as she walks into the vet holding her dog.
    The camera echoes a fast chuh-chuh-chuh, chuh-chuh-chuh . “You’ll start to love that sound,” Aaron says when he’s done.
    I agree. It is a lovely sound, like money coming out of a slot machine.
    Brian pulls his SUV around next to us. “Think she saw us?” he says to Aaron.
    â€œI think so. She obviously didn’t care.”
    â€œWe got it anyway.”
    â€œIt’s nailed ,” Aaron agrees. “Let’s get outta here.”
    â€œI heard Gwen’s at the Ivy.”
    â€œYeah, me too. See ya there.”
    * * *
    I know the Ivy. Everyone in L.A. knows the Ivy. It’s a restaurant on Robertson where celebrities