Page 50 of Caught in a Storm

Lawson holds his phone closer to his face. Mar is smiling, and he very much doesn’t like that, because Margot Hammer doesn’t bloody smile. “What do you think of him, though? Mr. Pasty Face here?”

Tanya sets her brushes down, gives his phone a good look.

“Go on then,” says Lawson. “Suspense is killing me, love.”

“Well, he’s not handsome. Not handsome handsome. But he has an appeal.”

“An appeal?”

“I think so,” she says. “Good for her, if you ask me. Honestly, I’m rooting for them.”

“Like a football club?” His eyes are open again, and he sees that Tanya is blushing. “Shall I have Harry get you a Team Margot shirt?”

“Don’t tease.” She touches his arm. Lawson is secretly mad at her now, though, so he doesn’t allow himself to enjoy it. Falling out of love with crew members is even easier than falling in love with them, he’s found.

“He seems like a nice person,” Tanya says. “And…”

“And?”

“She looks happy.”

Lawson has been thinking about the Grammys lately. You see a picture of yourself a million times on telly and in magazines and it sticks with you. He can still feel the weight of Mar slung over his shoulder. He remembers the way she slapped at the back of his head while the cameras popped off like machine-gun fire. He didn’t see her actual smile until later when the photograph went everywhere. He could somehow feel it, though, the warmth of her happiness radiating down from above.

“Put me down, you dickhead!” She was laughing, though, her face a burst of bloody sunshine. He couldn’t believe some twat from Us Weekly last week had the nerve to put their photo—the photo—next to a new one of her with…him. This Billy something-or-other.

Life is a series of fuckups. When you’re rich and famous, the lion’s share of those fuckups simply evaporate into the ether—forgiven, forgotten, replaced by public triumphs and shrewd management. Some fuckups linger, though, like the dog’s breakfast that he made of his marriage to Margie.

“Have you always categorized your divorce as a fuckup, Lawson, or is this a new realization? As in, new since your former wife’s reemergence?”

His therapist, Dr. Winston, asked him this yesterday in a video telesession.

Whatever, mate, the chronology is moot as far as he’s concerned. Call him old-fashioned, but Lawson is a firm believer in epiphanies, and nothing crystallizes regret like seeing someone you made so miserable look so happy.

He checks himself in the mirror mounted to Tanya’s cart. “All right, enough about all that,” he says. “How do I look? Sorted?”

Tanya smiles. “Perfect once again.”

He winks, bored now with her and this banter. “Off you go. I need to ring my daughter.”

Tanya wheels away to go eat grapes at the craft-services table, and Lawson taps Poppy’s name on his mobile screen. It rings a few times.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Pop Star!” he says.

“Hmm,” Poppy says. “I guess I like that one better than Popcorn.”

“I know you do, love. See, I listen quite well.”

“Mm-hm. If you say so.”

Lawson smiles. He loves the sound of her voice, how her accent exists between two places, like coordinates plotted over the Atlantic Ocean. “How are things up in San Fran, then? They’re treating you well? You don’t need me to bust anyone up for you? I can do that, you know. I’m famous and powerful, and I’m quite good at pretend fighting.”

He can hear her typing. His daughter is in a bloody office, of all things—in something called a cube.

“So, how’s the starlet?” she asks.

“Be nice, now,” he says. “Willa sends her love.”