Harder than Steel Read online

  And then it happened.

  Standing beneath a sidewalk awning next to a chic foreign mini car, Vanessa heard the elephant roar of tires and redlining engines and looked up. A caravan of blacked-out SUVs suddenly crashed all over the street in splayed angles. It was a mess; doors hanging open and wheels up on the sidewalk nearby. Traffic was already beginning to honk in protest. The crush of vehicles didn’t block her view of the wall of men pouring out of them, bodies all pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, shuffling and shouting at each other, pushing and pulsing, the energy coming off them over-hyped and tense, competitive.

  Two ex-military types wearing dark suits visibly straining to contain their hulk came out of the restaurant, and Vanessa backed up to avoid being associated with this group of cameramen obviously about to be bounced the hell out of there. But the crowd of men went reverently silent, and every face disappeared behind a camera.

  The tallest woman Vanessa had ever seen emerged from the building. Every aspect about her was standard celebrity: she was beautiful, lean, symmetrical, her blonde pixie-cut hair coiffed and styled. Her red circle skirt didn’t go at all with the studded leather jacket, and especially not with her floral flats, but somehow—somehow it all worked. The woman was even holding her purse in just the right way—resting below her wrist, with one elbow locked to her side, the label turned just so. Cameras chattered in bursts and the men bent their knees and dipped low to the pavement, crab-walking to jockey for position, but never getting closer than two feet to her.

  Whoever she was, actress or supermodel, the woman took her time down the short set of stairs outside the restaurant. Even a relative distance apart from the horde of photographers, Vanessa felt her pulse pick up with anxiety over the waves of energy and intensity, but with each flash, the celebrity kept choosing each movement and turn of her body patiently, as though she wanted to make sure everyone got what they wanted. No rush, certainly not the desperate and sudden moves the men around her kept making.

  It wasn’t the kind of reaction Vanessa thought celebrities had when confronted with so much aggressive attention. In the movies, stars always covered their faces with an umbrella or coat. She’d imagined them in tears, seething and feeling violated while hunched over in the back of a tinted SUV during a dangerous high-speed chase.

  And it was just about here that Vanessa realized she was standing in front of a black town car with the door being held open by a man in a driver’s hat. A few of the photographers were glaring at her over the tops of their cameras, and a muttering was beginning to pick up amongst them. Someone flapped a hand at her furiously. The goddess-made-flesh was two steps away from her when Vanessa lunged backwards and smashed her ass straight into the side of another car. Shutter-chatter started up again as the girl smoothly placed one foot then the other on a small stepstool pulled out for her convenience, then swished her way across the seat to disappear behind the closing door and opaque glass.

  Just like that, the orgy broke.

  Some of the men raced back to their cars to roar away again, but a few lingered in front of the building to look over the photos they’d taken. She got up the nerve to peek around the shoulder of a young man in Buddy Holly glasses and checkerboard slip-on shoes. The celebrity in the pictures looked effortlessly in motion, striding and flexing her calf muscles so they stood out. It already looked like the kind of photo on gossip sites.

  “Jeez, don’t sneak up like that,” the guy said to her, turning quickly and looking Vanessa up and down. He had red hair and a dusting of stubble over very pale creamy skin.

  “Oh, I wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to do anything,” said Vanessa. The young guy quirked his mouth in a half-smile, but held his camera viewfinder to his chest regardless. “Who was that?” He raised his eyebrows at her then, and actually smiled.

  “Gabriella Zahn.” He pronounced it very clearly, like letting her in on a secret.

  Vanessa thought she’d heard of her and turned to look down the street where the town car had gone. Traffic was back to normal, and the other photographers had slipped back into the sidewalk crowds. Nothing had happened here.

  She looked down at his camera.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Fast lens, good low-light performance, excellent shutter speed.” He hefted it in his palm proudly.

  “How much do you make on a picture like that?”

  “Like that?” the guy shrugged. “Couple hundred, maybe.” He sounded so dismissive about it that Vanessa had to roll the words around her mind a couple of times.

  It was pennies, he said. Pure shit to him considering everybody else in town had the same picture. The sales girl at the agency where he worked could sell anything to the tabloids, though. He wasn’t concerned about getting paid.

  “Why, you interested in doing this?” he said, with that charming grin still in place.

  She’d felt herself nodding.

  Over the next few months Vanessa shadowed the redhead—Sam—and the agency—FB2—on freelance, or like an intern. She borrowed one of the ancient stock room cameras that couldn’t hold a battery charge and took thousands of pictures. It felt impulsive, fun, like something she was watching herself doing. Like a sociological experiment—field work, observing and recording an entire secret subculture in action. Reading college textbooks about ancient pottery-making methods didn’t compare to the modern celebrity worship on hysterical display every time some diva with good hair extensions and silicone ass implants left the gym in stiletto heels to go find her drug dealer.

  Together, Vanessa and Sam tailed his assigned stars like a daily schedule. They waited across the street from certain stoops and front doors, hung out in front of yoga studios and therapists’ buildings while eating fair trade organic food that tasted exactly the same as the regular stuff. Smoothie bowls turned out to be better than Vanessa expected. Sam shared her mix of fascination and bafflement over the whole fame industry thing. He’d only been working for about a year, but had a way with explaining paparazzi culture that seemed almost academic and above the mediocrity of grocery store checkout line papers. Gabriella Zahn’s people called Sam directly to tell him where she would be that day, and that little back-scratchy trade-off was how she maintained her permanent fixture status in the tabloids. It didn’t matter that the woman had five BAFTAs; being seen was everything.

  Vanessa skipped a lecture, then another, and then realized one afternoon while sitting in Sam’s car listening to the walkie-talkie chatter that she was supposed to be taking a test. And just as she was about to tell him thanks for the experience and get out of the car, Jax Butler walked up to the taco truck parked in front of them, and she leaned out and caught him trying to get the poor girl at the window to break a one hundred dollar bill.

  The obliviousness, the stupidity and arrogance of celebrity, all netted her enough to cover two months’ rent. Vanessa called the registrar’s office and put in for a formal deferral. She thought about quitting Garderia’s. She and Sam kissed in the front seat of his car, and went upstairs to his studio apartment, where he licked her nipples and made her come with his fingers in under a minute.

  “You could just not show up,” said Sam when they were lying next to each other on his bed. “It doesn’t require an Act of Congress to quit a job.”

  “I have to actually be able to show my face in the neighborhood,” she told him. “Besides, their chicken adobo is really good.”

  The pictures got better. There was a trick to capturing someone in motion that differed from the slow and thoughtful portraits and still lifes she’d dutifully done in the past. You had to know what the stars thought of themselves, what their best and worst angles were, and what they were going to do to try to promote that to the camera lens. And you had to learn them quickly, and act quickly.

  Vanessa moved on. And up.

  She got spat on and into arguments with bystanders who thought they were protecting the sainted celebrities from rabid stalkers. So Vanessa dressed like an art student to lo
ok even smaller and yet vaguely respectable, and it was easy enough to blend in. She was naturally petite, though not slender, and her well-toned compactness hid nicely beneath dark jackets and jeans. But then the experienced paps around her realized she wasn’t going away, and she started taking elbow jabs to the ribs, or just being pushed to the side whenever someone conveniently found a good shot in her personal space. Sam hesitated to interfere the first time, and then she knew for sure that she’d need to learn to swim on her own.

  Commissions got much better for photographers who worked alone. Partnering up meant low rates, especially after taxes and agency fees. Sure, Sam was interesting and fun to talk to, and being in his car surrounded by the chaotic wolf pack of pap photographers all racing up and down Manhattan streets together was the ultimate in fucked-up thrill rides. But doing this, going in for the money—it was a tough learning curve, and finally Vanessa started to work alone.

  She bought a bicycle and beat the pack to Alicia Hayerworth’s infamous purse meltdown at the Late Night With Greg Alonzzo stage door. She spent the money on her own cameras so that no one, not even Trevor, the boss at FB2, would ever be able to take partial credit for her work, or accuse her of being less-than. Only hard work could pay the bills. There was no such thing as a lucky shot, not really—it was all about putting in the work and being ready to take advantage of the right opportunities.

  Some celebrities were almost better at creating the right opportunities than they were at doing whatever they were famous for. There was Jax, of course, who could never seem to make up his mind whether he wanted to be an actor or a star. Maybe that was part of his brand. His stupid, stupid brand of being a giant fuckup.

  It didn’t matter, because now, standing on the main street in front of Jax Butler’s apartment building, there was still a card in her camera. Her hands shook a little, and it wasn’t all from almost dying. There was money in that card. A lot of it.

  She could turn in the only evidence in existence that the Steel Knight himself was screwing Holland Matthews’ girlfriend, the kind of proof that Jax Butler didn’t need, the kind of proof that Card One Studios’ box office numbers and brand managers didn’t need while Jax was riding high on America’s easily granted goodwill and hard-on for savior stories. Her exclusive could set off new rumors and accusations within the hour; by morning there’d be headlines and mentions on the morning shows. Who knew where it would go after that. The royalties alone could probably cover Claudia’s medication for the next year.

  Vanessa tentatively started thinking up headlines. Trevor would immediately demand ten or fifteen as a pot-sweetener with potential buyers. Whether they used it or not was a nonissue. The Butler Did It—no, that was dumb. She opted to keep it in her pocket, though. For some reason, the more convoluted the pun, the better Trevor liked it.

  Before she’d stopped by Jax’s apartment building, she’d been on her way to the hospital pharmacy to refill some prescriptions for Claudia. There was a drug store across the street from the apartment, but she was all over the city so frequently that it just made more sense to go with the cheapest option and make good use of her location in the meantime. She’d spent $500 at the pharmacy counter, and only by chance had she stopped for a couple of shutter clicks that would earn her several times that much. Vanessa weighed the camera in her hands. She was still alive, too. More chance, luckily. She shook her head. FB2 was in this part of town, and she stopped by to gauge the day’s outcome. And to see how Trevor would take it if she came back empty-handed.

  As it turned out, not well.

  “You get paid plenty to be able to do your job right!” Trevor roared. He was Australian, and therefore on a tear. Trevor only operated at full volume. “Fuckin’ girl ridin’ a FUCKIN’ bike all over this CUNTING city, I hire you on a gamble, you get paid plenty to buy a car, something that could get you around better, but you’re just too stubborn and greedy, you know that?”

  She wasn’t even sure how they’d gotten onto the subject of her lack of a car, but she suspected that it bothered him that she did things differently than the guys around the office. It wasn’t enough to be the only woman with a camera, she had to go and use alternative transportation, which was somehow so bizarre as to be offensive and disgusting.

  A girl from Queens didn’t need to know how to drive a car. Bicycle was cheaper—and apparently reeked of financial desperation and grasping ambition that was just different enough from a man’s.

  Maybe everyone at the agency could go fuck themselves for judging her.

  “A car doesn’t do shit but get stuck in traffic and loaded up with parking tickets,” Vanessa replied. She was hoping that all the yelling had rendered him slightly deaf so he wouldn’t detect the way she was talking between her teeth. “I can move better and faster with it. It’s not an issue.”

  “Then if your bike is so goddamned perfect, you should be able to crawl up his arse and get a shot of his decaying liver!”

  “Left lobe or right lobe?”

  It had come out faster than she’d been thinking, and Trevor turned to look at her like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly.

  “You know what your problem is, Reyes?”

  Vanessa breathed deeply and concentrated on a memory of Trevor very drunk at an office bar crawl, slamming a glass on the table and shouting to everyone that she’d made him more money than anyone else that year.

  Trevor continued.

  “You’ve got loads of potential, but you refuse to use the weapons at your disposal properly. And you need to start, or you’re gonna get nowhere in this business.” Trevor set his fist on the desk and leaned into it. “I don’t care if you have to start boosting taxis to get everywhere. I don’t care if you have to charter a bloody Greyhound bus. I don’t care if you have to personally spread your legs and fuck Jax Butler.”

  Vanessa crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the vein just barely making itself known in the landscape of Trevor’s neck.

  “GET. ME,” he was saying very loudly and slowly, as though his accent had been too much for her feeble brain to understand, “an EXCLUSIVE. OF JAX BUTLER. He is in town. He is a hot property. He will be at home. Or somewhere else. On the moon. Whatever! Just get the fuckin’ photo!”

  She released her clenched fingers slowly and tried not to think about what was in her camera bag. The nuclear bomb on the memory card was too good a trump card to give away in a moment like this—not only had the thought of shopping it around to other agencies behind Trevor’s back suddenly become very attractive, but hanging on to it for just the right release date could pay dividends upon dividends.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Vanessa. “I’ll get my shot.”

  Chapter Three

  “KEEP IN MIND you won’t necessarily be hitting this mark quickly,” Adriana was saying. Jax looked at where the director was pointing along the floor. “Give it a couple beats first.” He hmmed and nodded, making sure to squint thoughtfully at the blue tape on the plywood boards. There was no point to rehashing the stage directions, but a set photographer was in, and it would look nice for the glossy summer blockbuster issue of Movies Now to have an “exclusive” inset shot of Jax Butler filming his scenes on the set of The Protectorate.

  This one was the first ensemble, with two characters new to the franchise being introduced before their own standalone, coming next summer. He’d breezed through the script, had his assistant Natalie highlight anything related to Dirk Masterson, and then, in a moment of creative genius and boredom, come up with what he predicted was the most likely blurb the studio would send out with their review screeners:

  His new identity made public, Steel Knight takes on the role of America’s defender against global conspiracies and government corruption to right the wrongs of his own past. But a new age begins when The Patriot and Red Rogue offer him an intriguing chance to join forces and infiltrate a plot that goes deeper and further than Dirk Masterson could ever imagine.

  He’d tried to
make a bet with Natalie over how accurate it was, but she wouldn’t go for it, saying it sounded like the inevitable porn parody. Jax liked the plot of this one—it felt exciting for the characters to start meeting up and fighting side by side.

  And that was why Holland Matthews was on set today. Holland was. . . Jax had trouble describing him to other people because he had always thought of the guy as the human form of a golden retriever, and it didn’t seem like a good career move to voice that thought out loud. He was The Patriot, a lab-grown test-tube baby cloned from the DNA of the Founding Fathers, who’d been groomed into a gay State Department bureaucrat’s wet dream: an oiled-up muscled blond beacon standing righteously erect for America. At least until he broke free of his government masters and went on the lam, fighting for everyone everywhere, or something. Oh, and he wore a tricorne hat and duster coat.

  Currently Holland was laughing and flirting with—oh shit, that was Georgina over there, tilting her chin down and eyefucking Jax from under her eyelashes. He turned to face Adriana, who was talking about putting together a tracking shot as Dirk Masterson did a walk-and-talk with The Patriot in the script.

  Adriana Peace was the first female director Card One Studios had hired to head up one of their superhero movies; the web series spin-off had a few, but Peace was the big entry point. The camera clicked a few times when Jax gestured with his hands; it probably looked to the photographer like they were conferring together, making joint decisions on Dirk Masterson’s internal motivation and conflict.

  “Absolutely, absolutely,” he said to whatever she’d said, nodding and putting his hands on his hips. Adriana gave him a flat look, not remotely convinced. The shutter went off in a chattering burst that made him freeze out of habit for just a moment, and then the reprieve finally came when the photographer thanked them both and packed up his gear.

  It looked great for the studio’s purposes, very diverse and inclusive, but it wasn’t how their dynamic actually worked. Mostly it went like this: Adriana was smart and told Jax to shut up a lot.