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He shrugged. “It’s not something I’m proud of.” And yet saying it out loud, to Erin, made him feel lighter, freer, not ashamed. It was like a heavy burden was finally being lifted from his shoulders. And then he seemed to fall back in time. “I grew up in Los Angeles,” he said. “LA is a city that is all about fantasy. It’s Hollywood with its movie stars and fancy shops along Rodeo Drive. But then there’s the side of the city that I grew up in. With its prostitutes and pimps and drug addicts and lowlifes. I never knew who my father was.” He could almost smell the stale booze and pot smoke. “My mom never should have had a kid. She waswasted most of the time on booze and drugs and, well, she got by as best she could.”
He realized he’d been staring out the window, talking without really thinking. The words were just sliding out of him, as though they’d been waiting years and years for the seams he’d stitched up so tightly to burst open.
He glanced at Erin. Again, she didn’t look shocked. She was simply nodding as though she understood him. If she was figuring out that his mother turned tricks to make enough money to buy drugs and keep a roach-infested roof over their heads, she was getting the right idea. And yet, he didn’t read pity in her eyes, because that would have stopped him dead in his tracks. Instead, he saw something like interest, and maybe a kindling respect? It felt good, but then he caught himself.
Why was he suddenly revealing his deep, dark secrets? Erin was a friend, but she was here as a reporter, not a confidante. He shook his head. She was the exact opposite of a confidante. She was doing a profile on him for the paper that everyone in town read cover to cover.
Erin must have sensed his inner conflict, because softly, she asked, “Did social services never get involved? Did no one see what was going on?”
He laughed, a short, humorless bark. “I was probably more scared of social services than I was of some of the creeps who hung out with my mom. Besides, she needed me. By the time I was seven, I was talking grocers out of food past its expiry date and just about managed to feed us both. Mostly it was milk and cereal. I learned to cut out the bad bits from bruised fruit and vegetables. I got lunch at school, so there was that. And I loved school. I loved learning.”
He stopped again. What was he doing? No one knew how he had developed the gift of the gab by sweet-talking greengrocers out of their overripe bananas. He had a sudden flash of himselfas a kid, skinny and scrappy and so darned hungry—not just for food, but for life. For living! If his mom had taught him anything, it was that he didn’t want to end up like her. Wasting away.
Erin stayed silent, but it was a comfortable silence, one that told him he was safe here, with her.
He took a breath. “I would steal money out of my mom’s purse when she was passed out, otherwise everything went on her habits. She wasn’t a bad woman, my mom. She tried. That was what was so hard. In her way, she loved me. But her addictions were stronger than any love she had.”
He paused, shocked by the stab of pain he felt at the memory. He hadn’t let himself think so much about his mom in years.
“It sounds like you had to grow up very fast,” Erin said, her voice still soft and full of understanding.
He had to stop spilling his guts and get this interview back on track and answer Erin’s original question. “By the time I was fourteen, I knew I had to get a job. I went around the fancy parts of LA to every shop and restaurant, anywhere that might hire a scrappy kid, and one place, a real nice place, had a sign in the window for a dishwasher. I marched in there and said, ‘I’ll be the best dishwasher you’ve ever seen.’ I sold them so hard I made it sound like it would be a crime if they didn’t hire me on the spot. So that’s exactly what they did. At first it was just an after-school job, but as I got older, I started working evenings, too. I began to understand that the diners were industry people. I recognized a few of them from TV and movies, but I quickly learned that the power people weren’t the pretty faces on the screen, they were the producers. I worked so hard that when the owners said they wanted to promote me to full-time dishwasher, I said yes, but only if they would train me to be a waiter. Because waiters got tips, and even better, they overheard the gossip that was going on at the tables. I dropped out of high school without giving it much thought.” He stopped again, trying to keephimself on track. He had a question to answer. “So by the time I was eighteen, I was waiting tables and charming Hollywood big shots. I made the fattest tips of all the staff. It meant my mom and I could live in a nicer apartment and eat decent food. But Mom was pretty far gone by then.” An unfamiliar lump caught in his throat. It had been so long since he’d thought about the end of his poor, messed-up mom’s life. “She died of an overdose before I turned nineteen.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erin said softly.
He nodded, took a sip of coffee and gave himself a moment. “But the one thing we always had was a TV, and sometimes if she was feeling good, she’d take me out to the movies and we’d sneak in without paying and live in a fantasy world for a few hours. It was my favorite time we spent together. I fell in love with movies and TV when I was a little kid with no hope. They showed me what life could be like. So by the time I was waiting tables, eavesdropping on the Hollywood bigwigs, I already knew the kind of life I wanted.
“A lot of people I worked with were actors, screenwriters, budding producers, and directors, waiting tables or tending bar until they got their big break. I got pally with a few of them, one in particular. He was about my age, already a crazy handsome guy, which I was never going to be, and we shared a similar work ethic. Unlike some of the others, he knew he wasn’t going to get his big break because somebody liked his pretty face. He took acting lessons and went to every audition. He was one of the most focused guys I’d ever met. One day we were playing pool after our shift and he told me about this great part that he knew he was born to play. I agreed that he was perfect for it. But they wouldn’t see him without an agent. We were both moaning about how unfair it was for people that weren’t already established, and then I had one of those lightbulb moments. Ithrew down my pool cue and almost knocked the poor guy out as I yelled, ‘How hard is it to be an agent?’
“And so we ran back to my apartment, spent the rest of the night putting together a cover letter and beefing up his CV, and I made up some letterhead with the name Exceptional Talent. We liked it because the initials were E.T., a movie that we both loved as kids. And it worked. It got him in the room. The studio called me—ha, I’ll never forget it. Offered him the part and I negotiated a bigger paycheck than he was expecting. All those years of hustling paid off.” He stopped and grinned. “I’m sure by now you’ve figured out the name of my first client.”
“Archer Davenport,” Erin said quietly. “My brother.”
Chapter Eight
While Jay had been talking, Buzzy had sidled up to him and laid his head on his knee. He obviously felt the pure emotion in Jay’s voice. As had Erin. In fact, she’d been completely transported by his sad but ultimately uplifting story of a tough childhood made good with hard work and raw ambition, and—although he’d downplayed it—a talent for Hollywood that was undeniable.
But more than the story itself, his personal revelations had her reeling. How could she not have known this about him? He’d been Arch’s best friend for nearly fifteen years. Sure, she’d heard the story about them working together at the restaurant countless times. But they’d both always presented Jay as an up-and-coming agent who’d taken a chance on her brother.
Neither of them had revealed how big a chance they were taking on one another.
Now that she thought about it, this had to be one of the deep things that bonded the two men together for life. Which made her feel doubly concerned about the strange flip-flop her heart was doing as she stared at Jay’s rugged face as if she were setting eyes on him for the very first time.
Yes, it was a shock to her that Jay had come from such humble and disadvantaged roots and, on the strength of his personality and his hustle alone, had made such an incredible success of himself. But Jay hadn’t even made that point. Not once had he bragged about his huge list of wildly successful clients or the fact that he was a multimillionaire. A billionaire, for all she knew. This was a different Jay.
While he was speaking, she’d decided not to take any notes for fear of breaking the sense of trust they seemed to have between them. She had a feeling that the minute she reached for her notebook and pen and acted like a reporter, he’d remember shewasone. Her article for theSea Shellaside, she was fascinated by his story and wanted to hear all of it, or at least everything he was comfortable sharing. It must have been so hard for him to reveal the truth about his early life. Could it be he was saying these things because he wanted to giveherthe big scoop about who Jay Malone really was, when up until now his past had been completely shrouded in mystery? Or was something else brewing inside of him? A need for closeness with someone, maybe. Or a need to finally take the burden of the past off his shoulders by sharing it with her.
So she asked him more about those early days, when he’d been a scrappy young agent, with just Arch as his client. She discovered that a major TV star and a bodybuilder turned action hero had also started out in that restaurant. It wasn’t long before Jay left the restaurant business and Exceptional Talent opened its first small office, where he seemed to go from success to success. He talked freely and candidly and with obvious relief that the dark days of his childhood were out of the way.
When there was a natural break in the conversation, she asked, “Do you have any regrets?”
The question seemed to take him by surprise. She didn’t even know why she asked—it wasn’t on her list of questions. It was just that it felt like the right one at the right moment.
He gave her a rueful smile. “Yeah. I regret not finishing high school. I am self-educated in every sense of the word. I’m a big reader. I’ve learned a lot from books.”
She nodded and said in understanding, “So have I. They’re also my friends when I’m lonely and encouragement when I feel blue.”
He leaned forward enthusiastically. “Exactly. Next to movies, books are the greatest.”