Flashmob Read online

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  Now I am, as the saying goes, between engagements.

  Armin greets me warmly at the elevator. A squat little man, bald on top with a fringe of dark hair around his ears. Looking at him, I find it hard to believe that Kira isn’t adopted.

  He’s all smiles on the outside, but this is a massive headache for him. There are three people hovering near his elbow: the director from Tehrangeles, who’s in charge of getting all the footage for the season finale; Kira’s wedding planner, who’s been fighting tooth and nail with the TV people at every turn; and an exec from Kira’s network, who seems to have the idea that Armin should do something about the valet parking out front.

  But he still finds time to shake my hand and ask me a few questions about my life. He even gives me a hard time about showing up without a date, although I can see in his head that it’s not terribly surprising to him.

  I’m not offended. I ask myself that question all the time.

  Then the producer and the planner and the exec all drag Armin away again. He smiles and apologizes and tells me to get myself a drink, cursing them darkly but never showing a twitch on the outside.

  Kira is supposed to be the villainess of Tehrangeles, but—try to contain your shock—reality TV is not actually all that real. It’s scripted and plotted and edited for dramatic effect, just like any other TV show, with the added bonus that everyone gets paid less.

  So the people who are supposed to hate Kira the most—her fellow cast members—are all here, wearing their very best.

  Alisha, her best friend on the show, is waiting to march up the aisle as Kira’s maid of honor—even though Kira supposedly stole the groom away from her, a plot line that took up most of last season. She’s more focused on her makeup than her former boyfriend up at the altar. Behind the scenes, they were barely a couple, but the producers decided that the show needed a love triangle. They manufactured one, and the kids went along with it because they’re not stupid.

  Likewise, the other cast members—who have all declared Kira to be out of their lives for good at one point or another, usually while throwing drinks or punches—are seated and waiting in the front rows. From my surface read of their thoughts, they’re all in a pretty good mood and more or less glad for her. They’re actors. They play their parts. But in real life, they’re rich, young, and beautiful. A couple of their friends are about to have a great big drunken celebration as they crash their lives together. If it doesn’t work out—well, it’s just a starter marriage. They’ve got time for at least two more. No matter what else happens, it’s going to be a hugely entertaining diversion.

  I head to the bar at the back of the patio for a drink. Kira may be sober, but I’ll need a buzz to handle this, and Armin made sure they stocked the good stuff.

  The only other person aside from the bartender is Kira’s bodyguard. The network hired him, because Kira gets a dozen death threats a day on Twitter alone. Goes with the territory of being America’s latest witch for burning.

  I’m just a guest, but I can’t stop a little professional judgment from creeping in around the edges. One look at him, and I know that nobody’s taking the threats seriously. He’s commandeered a tray of hors d’oeuvres that sits right on the bar in front of him, next to his drink. His gut pushes his jacket open every time he lifts another mini-quiche to his mouth, showing off his shoulder rig.

  I scan him quickly. He’s an ex-cop. He does a lot of celebrity work, which mainly involves taking cameras away from the paparazzi. He still knows enough guys on the force that when he punches somebody in the face, he never gets charged with assault. He’s not expecting any trouble here today. Obviously.

  He sees me looking at him. “Something I can help you with?” he asks, with just the right amount of attitude.

  I smile as if I didn’t hear the tone, and order a drink. He holds eye contact a few more seconds—alpha-male challenge coming off him like body odor—but I keep smiling. There’s always at least one guy at any party who comes ready to fight. Who’s looking for the excuse, who secretly hopes that someone will say something to justify throwing a punch. Today, it just happens to be the guy hired to keep things safe. He must have been a lot of fun when he was on the force.

  I get a glimpse of how he sees himself. Inside his head, he’s a good twenty pounds lighter, maybe a couple of inches taller, and looks a lot more like Tom Selleck. That’s probably where he gets his overwhelming sense of self-confidence. Even out of shape and scarfing down appetizers, he thinks he can handle anything that might come at him. It’s not that unusual. I’ve been reading people my whole life, and reality rarely ever makes a dent inside their skulls.

  By the time my drink arrives, he’s facedown in the appetizers again, his back to the crowd. I go find a seat.

  Everyone’s talking—and thinking about—Jason Davis. C-list actor who’s been charged with attempted murder.

  “He was just out walking his dog,” one woman says.

  “It’s insane,” the guy with her bleats.

  “All he was doing was protecting himself,” another man in a beautifully cut suit, no tie, says to his companion, who wears a string of diamonds worth more than a house around her neck.

  “Ohmigod, I know,” she replies, pretending not to notice as he steals a look at her beautifully installed implants. “Can you believe it? It could happen to any of us.”

  Here’s what happened. Davis. Third-string heartthrob in a series on the CW. Something about a kid who comes back home to his town, finds it’s changed, something like that. I’ve never watched it. Almost nobody knew his name. Even TMZ wouldn’t follow him around. He still lived in Van Nuys.

  So he could walk his dog, just like a normal person. And then, out of nowhere, this kid comes up to him and—Davis says—begins threatening to kill him.

  Davis panics. He’s been receiving threats online for weeks, which has made him a little paranoid. So he pulls a Glock from a concealed holster under his shirt and plugs the kid five times out of a clip of fifteen. Amazingly, none of the wounds was fatal.

  The kid later says he just wanted an autograph. He wasn’t even armed. Davis is up for attempted murder. His lawyers are claiming self-defense. The prosecutors probably would have let him plead to assault, but suddenly there was a firestorm of outrage on Twitter—people pissed off that celebrities always get away with everything in Los Angeles. So this is where the D.A.’s office decided to draw the line.

  As a result, Davis joined the A-list almost as soon as he made bail. He’s got a new agent, a high-dollar lawyer, interviews on every TV show. Behind the scenes, he’s become a cause for a certain class of people out here. There’s a legal defense fund, and from what I hear, most of the big agencies and studios have donated.

  They are rallying around him because they worry it could happen to them. It’s like a shadow behind all their other thoughts.

 

  Anyone who’s famous—in any way—lives with this fear. That because they put their heads above the crowd, because they’re on a screen and people know their names, they will become a target. That something they do will draw the attention of a pissed-off fan or an online mob. They know, better than most people, that once someone pays attention to you, they usually feel you owe them something in return.

  That can turn ugly very quickly. I’ve protected more than a few people from deranged stalkers. The crazy ones didn’t disturb me as much as the ones who were nominally sane. A guy who believes his refrigerator is delivering coded me
ssages that must be passed along to Bruce Willis so they can ride off and defeat the Kodan Armada together—that’s just a severe malfunction in the pattern-seeking parts of the brain, a chemical imbalance pulling the steering wheel away from the driver and forcing the car off the road. They have trouble getting dressed in the morning. I could see them coming from a mile away.

  The ones who really worry me are the ones who are perfectly normal in every other aspect of their lives—who still hold down their jobs, feed their kids, get the car to the shop when the check-engine light goes on—and yet still have a burning hate for someone they’ve seen only on TV.

  Because those are the ones who almost make sense. I look at this wedding—this hotel where the rooms are a grand a night, the crowd of people who are paid more in a week than most people make in a year—and there’s still a part of me that sees it all through the eyes of a kid who grew up wearing clothes from a bin at Goodwill. It’s easy to envy all of this, to write it off as undeserved. You want to tell me anyone here works harder than the Mexican who mows a hundred lawns a week in ninety-degree heat?

  From a distance, it can seem as random as a meteor strike. Everyone knows the world is unfair. We hear it from our first day at elementary school. It doesn’t remove the sting. Especially when the world never seems to be unfair in your direction. Some people out there get cancer. Other people get a first-look deal at Fox.

  But as always, I get to see underneath the surface. For instance, that guy over there—the financial adviser in the suit that costs even more than mine. I’d probably envy him if I didn’t see the anxiety that rides on his shoulder like a cartoon devil. He’s dropping $15,000 a month on his mortgage alone, and another 100K every year for tuition for his three daughters. And the IRS just came up with a bill for $250,000 for back taxes from 2010, plus penalties and interest, and his clients are all ready to bolt, because the market is all over the place, and he can’t get any more fees out of them without turning them upside down and shaking them. That’s why he wakes up sweating at 4:30 a.m. every day. Lately he’s been having chest pains too.

  I know, I know. Rich people problems. We should all be so lucky.

  He looks over at one of the waiters passing drinks through the crowd, and he remembers doing the same thing when he was in college, working summers at a resort. For a few seconds, he’s happily lost in memories of days without obligations or deadlines, without kids or a house, just mindless labor, long sunny days followed by drunken nights, instant friends and lovers.

  The waiter, in the meantime, is looking at the people in the crowd and wondering which one of them could help his career.

  I’ve spent my whole life inside other people’s heads, and it’s all so depressingly familiar. Poor people think about being rich; rich people think about being poor.

  I drag myself out of the crowd’s thoughts as the string quartet begins warming up. Almost showtime.

  Because this will be the finale of season three, there are cameramen in every corner. They all snap to attention. Kira’s fellow cast members put on their game faces. Conversations drop to a whisper.

  At least out loud. I’m still getting everything that’s not being said.

 

  The groom, for his part, practically shines with boredom. I can’t tell how he really feels about Kira, but he doesn’t seem like a man thrilled to spend the rest of his life with his soul mate. Mainly he seems anxious to get the whole thing over with.

  Then the music begins and everyone turns, their heads swiveling as if on cue. I look back, just like they all do, and I see Armin escorting his daughter down the aisle.

  For that moment, everything else—all the hype, the spectacle, the cameras—fades away.

  It’s just Kira. She looks radiant.

  And even the most sneering inner voices in the crowd quiet down for a second. is the only word going through the head of more than one person.

  The priest—Armenian Orthodox, from the church where Kira was baptized as a girl, because her mother insisted—gestures to all of us to stand, and we do.

  Kira and the groom hold hands as the ceremony begins.

  I do my best not to read her thoughts, or anyone else’s. No need to spoil the moment with whatever is lurking underneath.

  But I still pick up on something.

  There’s a manic sense of anticipation coming from somewhere close by. Pure adrenaline. A pulse of fear and power, surging through their brains and bodies like electricity.

  I recognize the feeling. For an instant, I am back in Iraq. Afghanistan. Standing with the other guys in my unit. About to go out and fire our weapons at live targets for the first time.

  It’s so out of place that for a brief moment I am utterly lost.

  And then I feel them. I feel the guns they have hidden under their jackets, the trembling of their hands, the tension in their limbs.

  They rush out of their hiding place by the service entrance that leads down to the beach. I can feel the grit under their shoes as they sprint.

  They round the corner, and I see them as they begin crossing the short distance to the pool.

  Black ties, white jackets, cheap polyester slacks. Bad wigs on their heads and mirrored sunglasses on their faces. Fake mustaches. Their idea of disguises.

  I’d think it was a joke if I didn’t know what they’re planning.

  They lift their guns.

  I’m already moving toward them, screaming at people to get down.

  Then the shooting starts.

  4

  Teach Her a Lesson

  Inertia is a powerful force. Nobody ever wants to be the first one to stand up, speak out, or change seats. It’s the reason people will not move to a new checkout line at the grocery store, even when the line is shorter. People will stick with a terrible job rather than look for a new one. It’s got to be something wired deep within us, some instinct to stay safe by staying in the herd.

  It will even keep people frozen in place while guns are going off.

  I get a lot of disbelief from the crowd.

 

  The cameras do not help. They swivel and turn from the wedding party to the men with guns, so it looks like just another scene from an action movie.

  But I know it isn’t.

  Most of the crowd just stand there, unsure of what to do.

  Then the blood appears on Kira’s white dress, and people begin to figure it out.

  She slumps to the ground and disappears from my view as people finally start to run.

  The couple closest to me stands openmouthed, unable to comprehend what they’re seeing. I take them down to the ground and then roll back to my feet.

  I start to move toward Kira, but I’m caught in the tide of bodies, my mind filled with their shrill panic. People are screaming, but it sounds hollow and weak compared to the echo of the gunshots.

  The gunmen are not experienced. They’re spraying and praying—firing almost at random, the guns kicking wildly in their hands.

  But this is a small space, and the crowd can’t get past the gunmen, who stand behind the railing, on the higher level of the pool. We are fish in a barrel. Ducks in a pond. The gunmen are not running away. They are planning to shoot until they run out of bullets.

  I get a sensation of disbelief and glee from one of the gunmen.

  He’s first, I decide.

  I change direction, away from Kira and the wedding party, and cut across the patio toward the shooters.

  I
don’t have a gun. (I considered it. I decided it ruined the line of my jacket. I am an idiot.) A man beside me drops, and I feel the sudden agony in his leg where the bullet hit.

  I use the pain for motivation. I put one foot on a folding chair and I leap—and then I’m over the railing, right next to the shooter in his clownish disguise.

  He stops shooting, he’s so surprised. He cannot believe someone actually ran toward the guns.

  While he hesitates I punch him in the throat.

  He makes a noise like a chicken bone caught in a garbage disposal, and falls to his knees. I grab for his gun, but he drops it, and it goes under the railing, down among the guests and the scattered chairs.

  His friends begin to realize something is wrong as he goes down. They are distracted by all the noise and the panic——but then they see him drop, and they see me standing there.

  The second shooter turns and lifts his gun in my direction. I think hard. I give him the stabbing pain of a bursting appendix.

  He shrieks and doubles over as he feels something go horribly wrong in his midsection.

  He still manages to squeeze off a shot. I feel something tug at my jacket and a sudden burning in my side. That’s going to slow me down, but it could have been my heart or lungs.

  The second shooter is on the deck, clutching his gut. Now I’m getting the feedback from his imaginary appendicitis even as my shirt is getting wet with my own blood.