Shooting Stars Read Online Free Page A

go to be photographed and other diners go to see celebrities. All lunch entrées are $28.50 and mediocre. I’ve eaten there once, and (obviously) didn’t see anyone famous…or at least didn’trecognize them. “It’ll be a gangbang,” Aaron warns, “but it’s good practice for you.”
    That makes me nervous. I’ve only ever witnessed a gangbang, never joined one. As we drive past, I see a mass of bodies surrounding the restaurant. We find a metered spot a few blocks away, and Aaron gets out fast, fiddling with his camera. Since my camera has one functioning setting—Automatic—I don’t have anything to fiddle with.
    We walk briskly. When we are two blocks from the Ivy, Aaron looks up and points to a convertible sports car stopped at the light ahead. “Hey, is that the kind of car Dempsey drives?” he says.
    â€œYeah, it looked something like that.”
    I grab his arm. “Aaron, I think it’s him.”
    â€œRun,” he says without missing a beat.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œRun,” he says again and pushes me forward. “Go get it.”
    I’m thinking, if Aaron really believed Dempsey were in that car, he’d be running with me. But I run anyway, something I will get good at, and when I get to the intersection, the car is still waiting, and—you’re not gonna believe this—the same smoking-hot guy is inside! The light changes and he wants to turn, but two girls are walking the crosswalk in front of him so he must wait. My camera is to my face now, and I call out, “Patrick!” He looks up, then back at the road like he doesn’t see me. I snap five frames before he drives off.
    I feel higher than I’ve felt in months as I walk, beaming, toward the gangbang. It’s in this moment I realize I will succeed at this job.
    Aaron stands tall and fair in the crowd of mostly Latino men. He’s easy to spot outside the Ivy.
    â€œIt was him, Aaron! Can you believe it?”
    â€œDid you get it?”
    â€œI think so. I took five pictures.”
    â€œLet’s see ’em.”
    â€œRemember, I gotta preserve the batteries. We shouldn’t.”
    â€œAhh, right. Well, I’m sure you got him. That’s great, mate. Your firstset. Congratulations.” Aaron appears excited for me. He’s told me this business is cutthroat and competitive, but he doesn’t seem that way. How bad could it be?
    â€œWhat should I do here?” I ask, ready for another hit of adrenaline. There doesn’t look to be a way to move closer to the restaurant, and I can’t see over the thirty-something paparazzi heads crowded up against the patio rail, much less shoot.
    â€œNuzzle up in there,” he says, softly pushing me into the pack.
    I wish to blend in, but know I do not. I feel like the new kid at a school where no one speaks my language. The pap crowd rocks like gentle waves, up and back, and eventually I make my way in and off to one side. I’m elbow-to-elbow with bunches of non-Beverly-Hills-looking guys wearing baseball caps and droopy gangsta-like trousers, all toting massive cameras. No one speaks to me and no one makes eye contact, but I can feel I am noticed furtively. Aaron, who stands with Brian on the other side of the heap, winks at me every once in a while.
    We wait an hour. Just when Gwen Stefani is about to come out—and we know this because the Ivy’s security team posts up on the patio like military guards—the paps hush and cameras move into position. Gwen walks out and down the steps leisurely, smiling, head held high. She’s even lovelier in person than she is in the magazines—all eyes and lips on baby white skin. It’s a shame though that her equally luscious husband, British singer Gavin Rossdale, isn’t accompanying her. Gavin, like Dempsey, is another spectacular male who appears, from my occasional tabloid perusals, to be extremely in love