Hollywood: Winner Takes America by The Backlot at Inkitt

001 - Homecoming

1994.

The Beverly Hilton, ballroom level.

8:45 p.m.

Beverly Hills High School's homecoming dance was already in full swing.

ABBA's "Dancing Queen" rolled through the ballroom speakers, all glittering keyboards and '70s disco shine, as Nolan Callahan walked in like he belonged there.

He stood at least six-three, broad through the chest, his outdated suit pulled a little too tight across his shoulders. His blond hair was mussed rather than styled, but the mess looked intentional. He had pale skin, no freckles, a long, lean face with the sharp angles of a Renaissance statue, deep-set eyes, and irises so blue they almost looked unreal.

The last time he remembered hearing this song was at a Christmas party his freshman year of college. That was the night he met the girl who would eventually become his girlfriend.

Nearly ten years later, she had children of her own, and he was still single.

Now he was thirty years in the past, in Los Angeles, wearing another life's face.

Lucky him. He could start over.

Unlucky him. He had to start over.

Tonight, though, he wasn't here for the music.

Not for the dancing.

He was here to make money.

Nolan lifted one side of his jacket. Tucked against his ribs was a wrinkled green drugstore bag.

Inside were eleven bright little boxes of Trojans, plus two improvised emergency-contraception packets he had managed to buy from a pharmacy clerk who cared more about cash than questions. People could get this sort of thing if they knew where to ask, and at a dance, they might suddenly need it badly.

He moved through the crowd.

The guys were in tuxedos, or close enough: black bow ties, one-button jackets, cummerbunds, cuff links, pocket squares, satin-striped trousers, glossy black shoes. Every one of them looked like he had spent the afternoon trying to become somebody's idea of a grown man.

The girls had taken it even further. Strapless dresses, sleeveless gowns, low necklines, ruffles, A-lines, satin, silk, open backs, bright colors, heels, polished makeup. The ballroom looked expensive, hormonal, and carefully supervised, though the supervision was mostly decorative.

Beverly Hills High's juniors and seniors packed the place for the annual homecoming dance. For many of them, it was one of the last formal school rituals before adulthood, so everyone dressed like the night mattered.

Small groups gathered under the lights. Glasses clinked. Amber liquid swirled in tall stemmed glasses. Given the venue and the chaperones, it was probably tea.

Probably.

But tea did not make people drunk. Anticipation did. A look held too long. A smile that slipped out before anyone had permission to claim it. Under the dim lights and the push of the music, the air went thick with perfume, aftershave, money, and bad decisions waiting for the right excuse.

The whole room ran on impulse.

Hormones just gave it a steering wheel.

Before long, he reached his target: the corridor near the ballroom's private restrooms. Each one had polished marble floors, soft lighting, and an expensive little dish of potpourri pretending not to know what the room was really for.

He stopped at the corner, plucked a small metal label from his pocket, and clipped it to his lapel. It read:

Lemon Cream Pie.

He had stolen it from the dessert table three minutes earlier.

Then he unfolded his pocket square, draped it over his forearm, spotted a passing server, and stepped into the man's path.

"How long have you been on banquet staff?" Nolan asked, brows drawn tight as he looked the server up and down.

The man froze with his tray. "Three months, sir."

"That's what I thought." Nolan pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling like a supervisor one complaint away from a migraine. Then he looked up. "Do you know what you did wrong?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you know what you did wrong?" he repeated, harder this time, his jaw tight.

"I... I'm sorry, sir."

"Last warning." He shook his head, disappointed but merciful. "Give me the tray. I'll handle this."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

The server handed it over with relief in his eyes, never realizing he'd done nothing wrong except walk by at the wrong time.

He drained the glasses, tucked the empties aside, and arranged his merchandise on the tray in a neat little pyramid.

Five minutes later, Nolan looked like a professional hotel employee stationed outside the restrooms: name tag, folded pocket square, and a tray full of emergency supplies.

Business came quickly.

The first customers were a couple holding hands and walking too fast to look casual. Nolan quoted them fifty dollars for a box.

Outside, the same thing cost ten.

That was the rule of urgent business. You did not charge for the product. You charged for the moment.

Besides, no one at Beverly Hills High was poor enough to haggle in a restroom hallway.

They paid.

He had picked his spot well: beside the trash can, close enough to the restrooms that people could find him without admitting they were looking. In half an hour, he moved five boxes. At one point, three separate customers crowded around the tray, and for one glorious minute the hallway became a private little marketplace.

Two couples came back out and bought an emergency-contraception packet too. Seventy dollars each.

None of this was luck.

The expired Trojans were deliberate.

Expired Trojans weren't safe. That was the point.

Just before 10:30 p.m., after he sold his last box to a swaggering senior with a girl under one arm and a Beverly Hills Normans pin on his chest, the actual banquet staff finally caught up with him.

The server came first.

Then the banquet manager.

Then hotel security.

By the time Nolan left the Hilton, he was no longer welcome inside.

The cash, however, was still in his pocket.

...

"Well, look who's back."

Nolan was pedaling into the motel parking lot when a whistle came from the second-floor walkway.

He looked up.

Katherine Walker, who had grown up with him, leaned over the railing, waiting as if she'd known exactly when he would get back.

She rested her chin in her left hand. The turquoise bracelet around her wrist slid toward her elbow, catching a cold little flash of moonlight.

She was two grades ahead of him at Beverly Hills High. She was also the reason he had gotten into the homecoming dance in the first place. The invitation had come from her.

As for the bracelet, it was just polished stone and cheap string. It wasn't worth much.

The things worth real money were gone.

That story started with Nolan's father.

Thomas Callahan had once been a successful Hollywood producer. Then came two projects that lost him money, first Barton Fink and then Life Is Sweet, and the man found his way back to an old habit he was supposed to have buried years ago.

Over the next two years, across eight casinos in Las Vegas, he ran up five million dollars in gambling debt.

His wife knew nothing.

Neither did the son already in college or the two children still in high school.

They learned three days after the coward put a gun in his mouth and left them with the bill.

When Nolan woke up in this life, he did not even get one night to enjoy the fantasy of waking up rich in Beverly Hills.

That same evening, he, his mother, and Katherine were forced out of the Bauhaus-style house at 9370 Monte Leon in Beverly Hills. It had a private pool, a five-car garage, a balcony view of the Hollywood sign, and a walk to Madonna's place short enough to feel obscene. On paper, it was worth more than four million dollars.

Then the creditors arrived.

The Beverly Hills house went first. Then the luxury SUV, the Mercedes gullwing, a vintage Corvette, Katherine's convertible BMW, and the Mustang that had once been his older brother's birthday gift.

Most of his mother's jewelry went too, including the emerald necklace passed down through her family. His brother's Power Macintosh. A Gerhard Richter abstract from the wall. An ivory pipe. Even a custom Fendi bathtub imported from Italy.

Anything with a price tag was gone.

Legally.

Efficiently.

Like robbery with better paperwork.

Now home was a cheap motel in Compton, south of Los Angeles. One of his mother's friends owned a stake in the place and had arranged a discount: two long-term rooms for eight hundred dollars a month.

There was no hot water.

The toilet clogged every three days.

The television only worked after being slapped twice.

Nolan usually didn't bother watching it.

He carried his bike upstairs.

"I thought you weren't coming back tonight," Katherine teased from the railing. "I figured some Beverly Hills heiress invited you to inspect her bedroom. Guess the senior girls weren't interested in a lowly underclassman after all."

When he reached the second-floor walkway, her smile faded.

There was a small scrape on his cheek.

"What happened?" Katherine straightened at once, worry pinching her brow. Once she saw it was shallow, she let out the breath she'd been holding. "You got hit?"

Nolan ignored the scrape and checked the suit first.

He had borrowed it from the motel owner downstairs. If he'd torn it, he couldn't have afforded to replace it.

Luckily, the old thing had survived.

He had scuffled with security on the way out of the hotel, but he had not exactly lost.

With this body, working bar security did not sound like the worst idea. He was big enough for it, and his afternoons and evenings were wide open.

Then he pulled the folded stack of bills from his pocket.

Katherine stared.

"Where the hell did you get that much money?" Her eyes narrowed as a new possibility hit her. "Did you sell drugs? Or... Nolan, please tell me you didn't go to that dance and do some sleazy striptease."

"Medicine," he said.

"Medicine?"

So he told her the story. Not all of it, but enough.

He bought a batch of supplies from a pharmacy near the school. The cost was around two hundred dollars. Total sales came in just under seven hundred.

About five hundred dollars in profit.

He had made about a week's pay in one night, and if they were careful, it was enough to cover lunch for a month.

Life wasn't what it used to be.

Every dollar mattered now.

Katherine took that in, then folded her arms.

"By the way," she said, too casually, "that football tryout I told you about? I signed you up."

So that was why she'd been waiting outside his room.

✦