Beautiful Box Set

Chapter 8-2

Johnny’s only up to page thirty of the script when they reach DreamWorks’ studios. The part he’d play hasn’t even appeared yet, and that worries him. He thinks again about complaining to Lou—he wants to be a serious actor, damn it, not the love interest in some campy teenage skit—but he knows enough about the business to know summer movies are usually big draws. And hell, look at Will Smith. Who’d have thought all those years ago that the same dorky kid who rapped without cursing could ever become the box office monster Smith is today? And he did his fair share of crap movies, too. Hello, Wild Wild West?

Lou slows the vehicle amid excited chatter and a steady click click clicking sound fills the air. Johnny looks up from the script to see a crowd of people pressing in around them. At first he thinks it’s just the line for auditions, but then he notices the cameras pointing his way. He turns to glance out the window and a sudden flash blinds him. “Johnny!” someone calls out. “It’s him, it’s Johnny Thomas!”

Another flash, and the crowd surges toward the SUV. “Damn it the hell,” Lou swears. “What are they doing here?”

He hits the power buttons on his door and Johnny’s window rises between him and the blind lens of a camera staring him in the face. The locks engage on all the doors, sealing them in. The script falls off Johnny’s knees to land on the floor, forgotten. His heart has begun to stutter in his chest. “What’s going on?”

“Paparazzi.” Keeping his foot on the clutch, Lou steps on the gas to rev the engine. The cameramen in front of the vehicle scatter and Lou eases forward another few feet before they swarm back again.

Johnny can see the flashes of light through the tinted windows. His name is coming from all directions now—“Johnny!” “JT!” “Over here, look over here, smile for me!”

His hands grip the headrest of Lou’s seat. “How are we going to get through them?” God, he can’t do this. He can’t go out there. They’ll tear him alive….

“Sit back,” Lou tells him, “and hold on.”

He guns the engine again. The SUV leaps ahead, causing more men to move out of the way. Johnny ducks down in his seat, scared and for the first time wondering if this is what he really wants. This madhouse everywhere he goes? These vultures circling him every time he’s out in public? Can he live like this?

Does he want to?

Lou parks as close as he can to the studio where the auditions are being held. “Hold the script up over your face,” he tells Johnny, who hurries to comply. “Turn it around, don’t let them see the front page. I don’t want anyone knowing we have a copy of that.”

When he opens the door, Johnny grabs his arm. “Wait, Lou—”

Lou shakes him off. “Just follow me.”

The door shuts, and for one blissful minute, Johnny’s alone. The cameras and shouts outside seem a world away—he feels like he’s in a submarine, far below the waves, and the noise out there is nothing but the water raging around him, wanting to get in, wanting to wash him out and drown him. God. He’s going to blow this, he knows it. These paps have totally thrown him off his guard, and what little concentration he had is now shot to hell. He has half a mind to call this whole thing off….

Then his door opens, and a hand reaches in for him. Johnny takes a deep breath as Lou’s fingers close over his. “Stand back!” his manager shouts, opening the door wider. “Make room! Stand back or there won’t be any more pictures today, you hear me?”

Someone nearby calls out, “Aw, Lou!” Someone else laughs, but as Johnny steps from the vehicle, a gap widens between himself and the paparazzi and, miraculously, he isn’t crushed. The flashes, on the other hand, are blinding as they snap around him, pinning him in their light.

He starts to raise the script to hide his face, but Lou catches his arm and stops him. “Give them three seconds,” he mutters from the corner of his mouth. “Smile, wave, whatever. Let them get their money shot.”

So Johnny stands there, a dazed grin in place. The cameras snap at him like hungry sharks, and when he waves, they go into a frenzy. An eternity seems to pass before Lou releases his arm and lets him duck under the script in some effort to protect himself from the flashes raining down around them. With Lou’s hand still firmly in his, Johnny lets his manager guide him through the crowd and into the studio building.

The paps fall back—they know their place, it seems, know just how far to go without overstepping their boundaries. Johnny hears his name on a dozen lips, called out in a dozen tongues, and the cameras flash without relief. Johnny keeps his head down and doesn’t look any one person in the eye. Not that he can see the men behind the cameras, anyway. It’s a sea out there, unrecognizable faces shiny with lust and hunger, cameras snapping away with eager abandon.

When they reach the studio, Lou opens the door for Johnny. He starts to duck inside when one of the paps steps into his personal space, on his right side where Lou isn’t standing. Hot breath curls down the back of his neck and he hears a familiar voice whisper his name. “Hey, Johnny.”

Brett?

It can’t be—it isn’t. But Johnny doesn’t know for sure because when he turns to look, a camera is shoved into his face and he’s blinded by the sudden flash. “Brett?” he asks.

Someone nearby hears him and latches on the name. “Who’s Brett?” he calls out. Another photographer picks up the question and repeats it. “Hey Johnny, who’s Brett? Lou? Do you know—”

“No one,” Lou growls. He pinches Johnny’s arm as he pulls him inside. “We have an audition scheduled, gentlemen. Good day.”

Then the door is shut, but Johnny only gets a moment to savor the silence that descends before Lou whirls on him, face ruddy and livid. “What the hell did you bring him up for?”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t talk to them,” Lou says, anger blotching his cheeks. “Anything you say will be sucked up, picked apart, and spat out in a dozen different ways.”

Johnny glances at the closed door behind him. “I thought I heard….”

But did he? Did he really?

“Heard what?” Lou asks. “How’d you hear anything over that?”

Johnny shrugs. Lou waits a moment, then grabs Johnny’s shirtsleeve and pulls him along down the hall. “Never mind. We’re running late. Who told the damn paps we’d be here early, I don’t know. Probably that flighty office assistant. Never trust someone who bucks the rules for you, Johnny. Because you never know who else they’re tipping off, too.”

With a last look over his shoulder, Johnny hurries to keep up with Lou. It hadn’t been Brett, he tells himself. The guy had to get to work, he said so himself, and Lou’s right—there was too much noise and confusion outside to know what he’d heard.