Read Page 20

"Why don't you just tell me now?"

"Because it's ... intimate," Rip says. "Yeah. It's a very intimate thing."Advertisement

Later that week I'm roaming the fifth floor of the Barneys on Wilshire, stoned, constantly checking my iPhone for messages from Rain that never appear, glancing at the price tags on the sleeves of shiny shirts, things to show off in, unable to concentrate on anything but Rain's absence, and in the men's department I can't even keep up the most rudimentary conversation with a salesman over a Prada suit and I end up at the bar in Barney Greengrass ordering a Bloody Mary and drinking it with my sunglasses on. Rip is having lunch with Griffin Dyer and Eric Thomas, a city councilman who resembles a lifeguard, and whom Rip had been complaining about but now seems friendly with, and Rip's wearing a skull T-shirt he's too old for and baggy Japanese pants and he shakes my hand and when he sees the Bloody Mary and that I'm alone he murmurs, "So, you're really busy, huh?"

Behind him I can feel the burning wind coming in from the patio. Rip's shocked-open eyes are bloodshot and I notice how muscular his arms are.

"Yeah."

"Sitting here? Brooding at Barneys?"

"Yeah." I shift on the bar stool and grip the icy glass.

"Getting a little scruffy there."

I touch my cheek, surprised at how thick the stubble is and by how long it's been since I shaved and I quickly do the math: the day after Rain left.

"Yeah."

The orange face contemplates something and as it leans into me it says, "You're so much further out there than I thought, dude."

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A trainer at Equinox introduces himself after I noticed him gazing at me while I work out with my trainer and asks me if I'd like to have coffee with him at Caffe Primo next door to the gym. Cade is wearing a black T-shirt with the word TRAINER on it in small block letters and he has full lips and a white smile and wide blue eyes and carefully groomed stubble and he smells clean, almost antiseptic, and his voice manages to sound both cheerful and hostile at the same time and he's sucking on a water bottle filled with a reddish liquid and sitting in a way that makes you realize he's waiting for someone to notice him and beneath the shade of an umbrella strewn with Christmas lights I'm staring at the traffic on Sunset as we sit at an outdoor table and I'm thinking about the beautiful boy on the treadmill wearing the I STILL HAVE A DREAM T-shirt and realize that it might not have been ironic.

"I read The Listeners," Cade says, glancing away from his cell phone, a text that had been bothering him.

"Really?" I sip my coffee and offer a tight smile, unsure of why I'm here.

"Yeah, a buddy of mine auditioned for the role of Tim."

"Cool," I say. "Are you auditioning?"

"I'd like to," Cade says. "Do you think you can get me in?"

"Oh," I say, now getting it. "Yeah. Sure."

Softly and with a rehearsed shyness he says, "Maybe we can hang out sometime."

"Like ... when?" I'm momentarily confused.

"Like, I don't know, just hang," he says. "Maybe go to a concert, see a band ... "

"Yeah, that sounds cool."

Young girls walk by in a trance holding yoga mats, the scent of patchouli and rosemary breezing over us, the glimpse of a butterfly tattoo on a shoulder, and I'm so keyed up about not talking to Rain in almost five days that I keep expecting a car to crash on Sunset because everything seems imminent with disaster and Cade keeps posing constantly as if he'd been photographed his entire life and in front of the H&M store across the plaza men are rolling out a short red carpet.

"Why did you come to me?" I ask Cade.

"Someone pointed you out," he says.

"No, I mean, why me? Why not someone else connected with the movie?"

"Well ... " Cade tries to figure out why I'm playing it like this. "I heard you help people."

"Yeah?" I ask. "Who told you that?" The question sounds like a dare. The way it sounds forces Cade to be more open with me than he might have been.

"I think you know him."

"Who?"

"Julian. You know Julian Wells, right?"

I tense up even though he said the name innocently. But suddenly Cade is someone different because of his connection to Julian.

"Right," I say. "How do you know Julian?"

"I worked for him briefly."

"Doing what?"

Cade shrugs. "Personal stuff." pqdm.com