-In which a paparazzi does something stupid
The problem, Trent decided, was Jamie-T’s vicious little smile.
He was no stranger to this sort of thing. He could’ve looked past all the blow, the shitty loud music. He could’ve even looked past the young girl’s crying. Of all the things he’d ever been called, a saint sure as fuck wasn’t one of them.
But then this loser piece of trash kept…
Fucking…
Smiling.
She kept crying, he kept smiling, and that just wasn’t good enough for Trent.
So he started being stupid again.
“Hey, Jamie!” he called out, stepping out from behind the car, striding across the street, still clicking away with the camera— the telephoto bobbing up and down, vulgar—phallic.
“Oh, for—fuck off, man!” the young rapper snarled, yanking on the young girl’s arm as though to accent his frustration. “I ain’t got no fucking time for you vultures, man.”
Click.
Click.
“Smile for the camera, dipshit!”
Clickclickclickclick.
He wasn’t even looking through the viewfinder, and Lacy would kill him for this. All of this. She’d lecture him about integrity, and he’d laugh, and she’d threaten to fire him or some shit.
Ten minutes later, they’d be working through their differences across her desk with the door locked, and when they were done, he’d still hate her, he’d still hate the job, he’d still fucking hate everything—
But it would all be nothing new.
And this idiot was pissing him off.
Two hardass hunks of muscle with likely half a brain between them started moving in, parting the onlookers like a rum-soaked dream. The one guy was carrying visibly, his giant compensator printing against the inside of his shirt—some obnoxious billboard for Jamie-T’s trashfire career, sporting a washed-out rendition of the rapper’s face, and text with the oh-so-original urging of “FLY HIGH”.
The other human obstacle was rocking an ostentatious black leather coat, chains around his thick tattooed neck, with dreadlocks for days, and a widening smile made of bad hygiene gone gold.
Well, Trent thought. This is certainly about to get ugly for some of us, isn’t it?
“Gimmie the camera, bitch,” Fly High said, his syllables hitting like drum kicks.
“It’s very expensive,” Trent said, offering his best smile, left over from his better days. “It costs almost as much as your friend’s molars.”
Dreads moved up with a snarl, and Trent quickly added, “Seriously, fellas, are we gonna do this in the street?”
Before his flunkies could say anything about that, Jamie-T raised his voice.
“Ayo! Boys! Bitch got a point! Bring him around back. Show him a good time. VIP treatment, y’all know what I mean? Tina and I are gonna go inside. Finish our business. Ain’t that right, Tina?”
More crying. Beyond that, it was hard for Trent to see past the rapidly broadening wall of hired meat in front of him.
“You’re about to have a bad night, whiteboy,” Fly High hissed, as he and Dreads started frog-marching Trent around the side of Club Vayne.
“My safeword is platypus,” Trent whispered back in earnest.
“You some kinda faggot?” Dreads asked him, wrenching Trent’s arm behind his back as they moved deep into the dingy alleyway. “Some kinda crazy gay faggot?”
“Absolutely. Crazy gay. It’s contagious, actually. Touch me and you’ll crave dick. It’s inevitable.”
It was at that point they must’ve decided they’d gone far enough, because they heaved Trent to the ground.
Shaking his head, Trent spat phlegm out on the grime-coated floor.
“Okay. First of all. Fuck you guys. I like this jacket. Shit.”
He pushed himself up off the ground, more to see if they’d let him than anything else.
They did.
“Second of all. Mr. Sexually Insecure over here. Words themselves aren’t very hurtful. It’s about context. Intent. Your intent appears to be to do harm. Which—I have to tell you—is not very nice.”
“My in-ten-tio-nality,” Dreads said, “is to beat the piss outta yo faggot ass, and leave you here with yo ‘spensive camera crammed up in you. Feel me?”
Trent shuddered.
“That… sentence structure was almost more offensive than that word. Jesus. Would you guys mind if I called my boss first?”
Fly High actually blinked.
“Fuckin’… what?”
“My boss,” Trent said again. “Do you mind if I call her? Just—really quickly, I swear. One sec. It’s just—she’ll get all bent out of shape if I start demanding she cover any of my medical bills, and if you leave me half dead, I can’t make her feel better about the whole thing in my usual way, so it—”
They were staring at him.
“Shit. Will you guys at least give me back the camera? Is that—could we do that, or…?”
They just started moving for him.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “All right, then.”
Not five minutes later, he let himself in through the side door, hands stuffed in his pockets, bobbing his head to the nuclear break-your-brain beats blasting throughout the club. He barely got ten feet before a buxom girl, all smiles, ready to rip him off, started cooing at him and reaching for his face.
“Thanks, sweetheart, but I’m delicate,” he said, dodging around her.
He’d switched to the action cam inside his jacket pocket, and it sat there, peering out, disguised as a button. Honestly, he didn’t even give a shit if he got anything that would make Lacy happy. He didn’t give a shit about much of anything. He just wanted to grab a drink and then go the fuck home.
He could remember when he’d have been after bigger fish, looking for angles on power players doing body-shots off of college coeds and hookers, just so he could leverage them for information on the shit that actually mattered. The backroom deals. The looming legislation. The corporate espionage. The mafia handjobs in-between the stock tips and the sordid dalliances.
Now, his job ended at the body-shots.
He found his way to the bar. The girl behind it was bronze skinned, with thick red hair and a smile made from lots of favors.
“What’ll it be?”
Her voice was too happy for this place.
“Old fashioned,” he said.
When he took his drink, she saw his hands.
“What happened there?” she said.
He looked at the battered knuckles. “Hit ‘em on something stupid,” Trent said.