CHAPTER 2

Morning encroached on one of the most exclusive seaside villas of the southern Italian coast like an unwelcome neighbor poking its nose into the villa’s business. And what a business it had been. A party that had run for three days, the who’s who of fashion, music, and cinema, representing over a dozen countries, had flooded the little road from the village and snaked their way to the villa where all manner of pleasurable indulgences had been on offer.

The Fletchers had hosted the party of the year and now, having exhausted itself and the restaurant staff of the entire village, the stars had gone home, the blockbuster god had finally gone to bed, and the villa had settled into its foundations, bruised, cracked, but satisfied.

The master bedroom had been the scene of a series of nightly climaxes where the most damage had been done. The room was a ruin of extravagant debauchery. The potted hibiscus shrubs, previously lining the driveway, had been brought inside. Shredded leaves and wilting beheaded flowers littered the floor. The chairs lay on their sides or upside down. One had lost a leg. The bed had been upended, its headboard wedged against the ceiling, the sheets draped so they hung like curtains around the golden bodies of the god and his consorts as they lay blissfully entwined in a sea of tangled bedding on the cool tile floor.

Though Jane imagined Daniel in such a scene, it was in fact his older brother Steve who lived the life of a prince in a pleasure palace. Daniel had made appearances at various stages of the party, mostly to check on supplies. But at ten o’clock every night, he’d taken an Ambien, secured his noise-cancelling headphones, and gone to bed.

As the sun rose on his brother’s final day in Italy, Daniel sipped espresso at an al fresco café overlooking a white pebbled beach. He sat with his back to the water, pretending to read Cloud Atlas, a book both too complicated and too depressing to be approached so early in the morning.

Even though he could not see the ocean, Daniel heard her. The white pebbles chattered as her breath washed them up the beach and then gently drew them back into her body. She called to him, whispered of her warm depths, of weightlessness, of being taken into something bigger than himself. An old promise, and an empty one at that.

Daniel ordered another espresso and resolutely turned the page of his book.

“Buon Giorno,” said the woman at the adjacent table.

Daniel continued to pretend to read, but he couldn’t help adjusting his posture. He straightened his legs beneath his chair, brought his hand down from the table to rest on his knee as though to shelter it. He could feel her watching him. The longer he remained passive, the more she would see, so he hazarded a glance up.

The woman gazed at him over the top of her sunglasses. Her translucent coverall slipped suggestively down her shoulder. Not Italian, a tourist.

“You look very familiar,” she said. “We didn’t meet at the bar last night, did we?”

“No, we did not.” Daniel checked his corners for an escape route. The villa was down the beach path at the end of the piazza, but he’d have to walk past the woman to pay his tab at the café stand, and then she would be watching him walk away for at least half a mile. He could leave money on the table and walk around the back of the café and hope he didn’t get lost on the crooked medieval streets when he tried to circle back around to the beach path once he was out of sight of the café. Or he could just talk to her. Sign an autograph, then make an excuse about time.

Daniel leaned across his little table and extended his hand. “Steve Fletcher.”

“The Steve Fletcher?” The false arch in her tone revealed she’d already known.

Daniel was mistaken for Steve so often that he’d become practiced imitating Steve’s smile, his sly pauses. Harder to replicate was the buoyant invincibility of his voice, the carefree carnival of a man who always got what he wanted with very little effort. But such nuance was usually lost on his fans.

“I’ve never thought of you as a reader.”

“Many actors are readers,” said Daniel. “It feeds the craft.” This was generally true, but Steve was not an actor who read.

“So, what are you doing here? I thought Poseidon was filming further north.”

“Production ended last week.”

“You must be keeping a very low profile.” Her bottom lip protruded in a pout.

Daniel thought of the traffic backed up for miles on the one road that ran along the coast, the special fee Daniel had paid so Steve could play music so loud its pulse became a second nervous system for the villa, feeding guests an all-encompassing sensory experience enhanced by drugs, alcohol, and a general lack of attire. No one for fifteen miles could plausibly claim not to know the Fletchers were in town.

“I’m a very private person.” Daniel pushed back his irritation at the woman for interrupting his morning, laying her trail of hints like bread-crumbs for Steve to follow like an idiot. Most irritating of all was the fact that Steve, had he been in Daniel’s place, would’ve devoured whatever she offered.

“Do you think maybe you could …” She pretended embarrassment.

“Of course.” Daniel pulled yesterday’s café receipt out of Cloud Atlas and scribbled an illegible signature on the back. He stood up and handed it to her on his way off the patio.

“Maybe I’ll see you around?”

He blew her a kiss. “I know I’ll be seeing you in my dreams.”

Steve rarely used such lines in real life, but they were so prominent in his movies, and he carried them off so well that fans expected them. For Steve, art imitated life much more than life imitated art.

At the villa, Daniel picked his way through apocalyptic carnage to reach the kitchen where he cleared enough space on the stove for the coffee boiler. Shot glasses, lighters, and glowsticks littered the terracotta floor. The kitchen opened onto the living room where, among bottles and discarded clothes, Daniel found Steve’s unconscious high school best friend, Kai Yukiyama, a scrawny bone sack of a man who smoked too much and drank too much, who always supported even Steve’s stupidest ideas.

Daniel collected coffee mugs from the mess. He took them back to the kitchen and washed all but the one that had been used as an ashtray.

The coffee had just started to boil when the alarm sounded on Daniel’s phone. He bunched an empty food carton into a ball and lobbed it across the kitchen bar into the living room at Kai’s head.

“Morning, sunshine.”

“Fuck you.”

Daniel handed Kai a mug of coffee. He went from room to room with his wake up greeting and coffee as a peace offering. There were three guys Steve kept around him to help make his life in the limelight more bearable. Two had been friends with Steve in high school before he’d had his big break and moved from Oahu to Los Angeles. Ziek, last name long ago jettisoned, was a bodybuilder. He’d been Daniel’s school friend, requisitioned as Steve’s friend because Steve could afford to employ full time friends. On his taxes, Ziek called himself a professional bodyguard.

Daniel found Steve’s wife, Riley, a fierce stuntwoman adrenaline junky, in bed with an Italian who had come to the villa as a catering staff member two days before and never left. She inhaled the steam of her coffee with deep satisfaction. “Make sure he checks messages,” she said to Daniel. “Garrett ditched our movie.”

“It will be fine,” said Daniel. If Steve’s life had been a movie, this would’ve been Daniel’s one memorable line. It was a lie. And his job was to make it true.

A body-shaped dent marred the varnished sheen of the master bedroom’s door. Daniel paused before it. As he listened to the grumbling stirrings in the rest of the house, he considered leaving it to someone else to wake Steve. If the entourage was late for their connection in Munich, oh well. Daniel wouldn’t be around to deal with the consequences this time. He could assert himself now, stretch his freedom just a little early. But if Rome didn’t work out, he’d have to come back to Steve, and Steve would make him pay. And then there was the worn-out sense of obligation. Steve was the brother he had, even if he wasn’t quite the brother he wanted. If this was his last day as Steve’s manager, he would finish the job well.

Daniel could only open the door part way. He had to shove it to fit through. Once he was inside, he took in the scene of conquest piece by piece, the desiccated hibiscuses, the open patio doors with a gecko sunning itself, the precariously balanced bedframe. He parted the hanging sheets and gazed down on the three perfect bodies gilded in dappled sunlight.

A small bubble of nausea bloomed in Daniel’s stomach as his eyes traveled over them. Steve lay with his face buried in the generous breasts of the woman to his right, his legs drawn up, his arms tucked against his chest while her arms encircled him. Her face was pressed into his hair. The woman on Steve’s left wrapped him from behind with her face in the valley between his shoulder blades. Her legs and arms enveloped him as they reached towards the other woman. Together, they enclosed him like a child in a womb.

Daniel again considered walking away and letting Steve try to manage his own life for the day. Daniel had tried to leave before. But without a concrete something else to leave for, it was too easy for Steve to tempt Daniel back. In Rome, there was the promise of something Steve wouldn’t be able to deny him. It would give Daniel back his career, make him independent. This is the last day, thought Daniel as he roused energy into his voice. “Time to get up.”

There was a slight stirring. One of the women smiled.

“You can’t be late this time, Steve.”

He saw Steve’s toes stretch and expand outward. The god was conscious but pretending not to be. Daniel moved towards the door. He knew how to play this game.

“You got a message from Garrett. He’s pulling out of the Hawaii project.”

“I got you,” murmured Steve.

Daniel slipped out the door and walked quickly down the hall to the kitchen. He heard a thump followed by Steve swearing. “Where’s my fucking phone? There’s no fucking way he—”

More swearing followed bruising blows to the villa as Steve yanked open the broken door, threw himself down the hallway, and lurched into the kitchen. “You’re a fucking bastard. Tell me you made that up.”

Daniel held out Steve’s phone and a steaming mug.

At the breakfast bar Kai cradled his head. “Would you please shut the fuck up?”

Steve squinted at his phone. “No, no no no. He can’t do this to me.” He scrolled through his contacts for Garrett’s number.

“It’s the middle of the night stateside,” said Daniel, the voice of reason.

“Then he’ll be home.” Steve gulped down his coffee while the phone rang. “If that coward is fucking screening his calls, I—Rett-o, what’s up brah?”

Daniel and Kai exchanged knowing glances as Steve, all cheerful friendliness drifted out to the deck to ply his charm. Riley shuffled down the hallway with her Italian caterer in tow. “How much time we got?”

“Car should be here in half an hour,” said Daniel.

“And you’ve got a guy for me in Munich so this whole thing doesn’t get fucked up?”

Daniel flipped open Cloud Atlas to the envelope of documents he kept in the back jacket. He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “He’ll find you when you land and get you through customs. Anything you need, ask him.” Daniel handed Riley another card. “This is Steve’s salon appointment, don’t let him miss it. He’s got that interview on Thursday.”

She leaned into him and whispered so Kai couldn’t hear. “It’s really going to suck breaking in a new manager.”

“We’ll worry about that when we have to.”

“You’ll get the job. I hope you don’t of course. He’s worse when you’re not around.”

Daniel shrugged. Riley had her own mechanisms for manipulation. He hated even having to trust her with his secret errand in Rome. But someone had to take responsibility for the group and she was the only one capable of withholding information from Steve; she liked wielding bits of knowledge like weapons revealed at just the right moment. She would probably find a reason to tell his secret before the plane touched down at LAX. But that would be enough. By then Daniel would know if he had the part.

Steve spent the entire ride to the airstrip on the phone, but nothing he said could change the fact that Garrett’s TV show had been renewed, thanks to fan petition, and the filming dates conflicted with Steve’s movie. Garrett couldn’t break his contract.

As the conversation went on Steve became more desperate. His voice lost its friendliness. The limo became a metal box of blustering reverberating sound waves. Riley huddled in a corner behind her sunglasses. Kai had headphones on, his hoodie up. He pressed against the limo’s wall and gazed out at the passing landscape in desperation. Kyle, Steve’s other high school friend, played a game on his phone.

“A niche movie? Are you serious? Garrett, think about who’s telling you this bullshit, man. You’ve been in Hollywood too long. You know they’ve got a name for that disease now—when you start buying in and can’t tell what’s real? Is Point Break niche? James Bond?”

“Steve, could you just—” Ziek thought better of what he’d planned to say as Steve swiveled to glare at him.

While he was distracted, Daniel plucked Steve’s phone from his hand and hung it up.

“What the fuck?”

“He got the point.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

“Rowan probably has a list of guys to replace him already.”

“This late in the game, they’ll all be shit. Garrett was the one for a reason. I can’t have some small wave mainlander costarring in a movie about our life.”

From within the cave of his hoodie Kai snorted with laughter. “I don’t remember training to sabotage Soviet spies when we were skipping seventh period.”

“I mean our culture you fucking idiot.” Steve punched Kai in the shoulder.

“I could do it,” said Daniel.

The limo fell silent. Riley peeled her sunglasses down the front of her face. Her bright eyes darted between the two brothers. Neither looked at each other. Zeik studied the floor. Kai looked to Steve for a clue on how to react. Kyle played his game.

“Interesting idea,” said Riley.

“I thought you were done with acting,” said Steve.

Daniel shrugged.

“You don’t surf anymore. This movie is about surfing.”

“I’ve been thinking of getting back into it.”

Something particular to the cruelty of brothers flickered behind Steve’s eyes, but whatever he’d thought to say he decided against it. Instead, he broke into his trademark grin. “That’d be fucking awesome! The Fletcher brothers starring in a movie together.”

“People used to talk about it,” said Daniel. “Remember that martial arts movie Universal pitched us?”

Steve’s grin faded. “Maybe you should start smaller. Like figure out how to get yourself a girl first. No one’s gonna believe you’re worth anything on screen if they know you live like a monk.”

Daniel deflected this truth disguised as a joke with a jocular smile. “I’ll get right on that.”

“Bet that’s what he’s being so secretive about,” said Kai. “Dan’s got a girl in Rome. He’s afraid one of us will filch her.”

“Right on, brah,” Kyle murmured to his screen.

Steve latched onto this idea. “That’s exactly what I’m saying! Because no woman is gonna pass up this,” he pointed at the pectorals straining his T shirt, “for that,” he pointed at Daniel. “Unless she’s got something wrong with her.”