Find a quiet spot, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🌙 ✦ ‘Please don’t let it be him.
Please don’t let it be him.’ Adrian gripped the receiver in the public phone booth, nerves tightening in his chest until the call finally connected.
When the voice on the other end answered, he let out a quiet breath.
“Hey, Leanna, it’s me…
Yeah.
Of course.
Thanks.” He shifted sideways against the glass wall of the booth and tugged the leash in his hand before Puck could dart too far in his excitement.
“Hi, Mom.
How are you?
I’m fine.
Really.
I can take care of myself.
I got paid three times what I expected today.
The boss likes yelling at people, but underneath all that noise, he’s not a bad guy…
Of course it isn’t the same as home.
That’s the point.
It’s a completely different kind of experience…
No, no, Mom, can we not do this?
…
I know.
I do.
I’ll decide based on how things go…
Okay.
I love you too.
Bye.” After hanging up, Adrian stood there for a moment and sighed.
Outside, the sky had already gone dark, and the streetlights had come on early.
“Hey, Puck.
Come on.
We’re going.” He gave the leash a gentle pull.
The little pup whined twice and jumped into his arms, though he looked deeply unhappy about the arrangement.
“Don’t be dramatic.
Tomorrow’s Saturday.
You can drag me wherever you want.” Adrian rubbed the top of his head.
“We had a deal, remember?
If I need to make a call, the walk gets shorter.” It wasn’t that he enjoyed using pay phones.
It was 1998.
Cell phones were still a few years away from being truly common, and even a basic Nokia cost more than he could justify once activation and monthly charges were included.
For an ordinary family, that kind of purchase still deserved a second thought.
For Adrian, whose wallet was close to flatlining, it was out of the question.
As for making the walk longer…
Holding Puck against his chest, Adrian checked the street again.
Nothing looked immediately wrong, so he headed for his apartment at a brisk pace.
He lived west of downtown Los Angeles, not far from Westlake.
The name sounded gentle enough.
In practice, the area sat near one of the largest concentrations of homelessness in the city.
That said plenty about how rough the neighborhood could be.
America had a special talent for drawing hard lines between poverty and money.
One block could feel like a robbery waiting to happen, while the next looked like nothing bad had ever touched it.
Adrian’s building wasn’t too far from West Hollywood or Beverly Hills, and it sat close enough to the 101 to be a little safer than the worst parts around Westlake.
Even so, he had no interest in wandering around after nine at night and finding himself staring down the wrong end of a gun.
After he got home and showered, Adrian dropped onto the old sofa wearing only boxer shorts, his upper body bare, a guitar resting across his lap.
He plucked a few chords and began singing “The Sound of Silence” under his breath.
The Simon & Garfunkel song had always been one of his favorites.
Whenever he had the time, he liked to play it for himself.
The melody paired beautifully with the lyrics, quiet and haunting in a way that made the room feel less cheap than it was.
There was another reason he could never quite let the song go, but that memory could stay where it was for now.
Adrian sang well.
Accompanying himself on guitar, he came close enough to Simon & Garfunkel’s original sound to make the old apartment feel briefly bearable.
In high school, he had never been the star of everything, but he had done a little of everything: clubs, school performances, basketball as a guard, a cheerleader girlfriend, even a near miss at prom king.
And still…
“Still too impulsive,” he muttered after the song ended.
He sat in silence for a while, then scrubbed both hands through his hair.
“Two lives, and apparently I still haven’t learned.” He needed a plan.
Even if the plan turned out useless, he needed one.
That habit came from the old life.
Back then, he never did anything without preparing for it first.
Running off to Los Angeles alone on a hotheaded burst of independence was the kind of thing the old him would never have imagined doing.
All right.
That wasn’t entirely fair.
He had prepared a little.
Through his mother, he had bought the sandglow-colored Ford for two thousand dollars.
It was fifteen years old, but the body and engine were still in decent shape.
He had saved money of his own too.
Unfortunately, none of it had been enough.
The most obvious mistake was simple: before leaving home, he should have applied for a credit card.
In the old life, Adrian had been painfully ordinary.
He had grown up in a small industrial town under another name.
His mother left when he was very young.
His father spent most of his life working away from home but managed to raise him until he died when Adrian was fifteen.
After that, Adrian had more or less been raised by the neighborhood and whatever adults happened to notice him.
His childhood had been rough, but nothing miraculous ever happened to balance it out.
No hidden inheritance.
No lucky break.
No sudden genius.
He worked his way through high school, scraped into a third-rate college, and eventually took a job at a small company that manufactured headphones and microphones.
It was ordinary.
Flat.
Survivable.
Until the fire.
He had been working night shifts for several days in a row.
When he finally got back to his rented room, he collapsed into bed and slept so deeply that by the time coughing pulled him half-awake, the room was already full of smoke.
After that, maybe only a second passed.
Maybe a lifetime did.
Then he was born in 1980, in San Francisco, as Adrian Vale.
The Vale family was comfortable and kind.
His father, Anthony Vale, was a stern man with a presence that made people sit up straighter.
His mother, Alice Vale, came from New York, warm and elegant, the kind of woman neighbors trusted instinctively.
His sister, Leanna, acted serious and grown-up in public, then turned lively the moment the door closed behind her.
The old life had its problems.
This one had its own.
The clearest one was his father.
Adrian’s relationship with Anthony was bad enough that the biggest reason he had fled to Los Angeles after graduation was simple: he didn’t want to live under the same roof anymore.
The trouble was that he had underestimated how hard independent life would be.
People reborn with memories of another life were supposed to have an edge, weren’t they?
Making money should have been easy.
In reality, memory didn’t work that way.
Things didn’t truly disappear from the mind, maybe, but if an event had never mattered to him, or if he had forgotten the details years ago, recovering them took time, effort, and the right trigger.
Even then, the memories often came back in scraps.
For someone as ordinary as Adrian had been, rebirth didn’t turn him into a walking investment guide.
More often than not, he realized the opportunity only after it had already passed.
By the time he understood that Microsoft stock would have been a good place to park money, the dirt-cheap days were long gone.
In 1996, after spending most of his savings on an overseas trip chasing traces of the old life, he put the two hundred dollars he had left into Microsoft shares.
When he sold in 1998, taxes and fees left him with roughly a thousand dollars.
He could have earned nearly as much from a summer job.
In the end, he still had to borrow a little from friends to buy the car and leave for Los Angeles with enough cash to survive.
That didn’t mean he was useless.
If the old life had given him anything, it was a sharpened instinct.
In late April 1992, when his school organized a trip to Los Angeles, Adrian had been unable to shake the feeling that something terrible was waiting there.
He made up an excuse not to go and talked a few friends into staying behind too.
They missed the riots and the miserable night their classmates spent trapped on the freeway.
Whatever else happened, Adrian wasn’t easy to break.
That was why he suddenly sprang up from the sofa, swung a fist through the air, and growled at someone who wasn’t there.
“Fine.
I’ll give it a shot.” * * * “Hello.
I’m Adrian Vale.
I have an appointment with Mr.
Frederick Rogers.” As he spoke to the young woman at reception, Adrian took in the lobby.
It was bright, clean, and tastefully arranged.
Potted plants softened the corners.
Through the glass doors, he could see the Beverly Hills street outside.
Well-dressed people came and went with the brisk confidence of those who belonged here.
For a company barely past its second year, Endeavor certainly knew how to look established.
“Of course, Mr.
Vale.” The receptionist checked by phone, then smiled.
“Please take the elevator to the third floor.
When you get out, turn left.
Mr.
Rogers’s desk is the fifth cubicle.” She looked to be in her early twenties, with smooth brown hair, a gray business suit, and features that were nice enough on their own.
The freckles across her face made her genuinely cute.
“Thanks.” Adrian nodded, then gestured lightly toward her ear.
“You know, I think you should try different earrings.
Something brighter.” “Oh?” She looked surprised, then curious.
“You have a warm complexion.
Brighter earrings would stand out more.” “Really?” She leaned forward despite herself.
“At least, that’s how it looks to me.” Adrian lifted both hands, honest as a saint.
The receptionist caught herself a second later.
She straightened in her chair, cleared her throat, and put her professional voice back on.
“I see.
Thank you.” After a pause, she glanced at him again and lowered her voice.
“I’m Sarah.
Sarah Rivett.” “Nice to meet you, Sarah.
See you in a bit.” Adrian nodded and headed for the elevator, smiling to himself.
In certain areas, the old life and this one were very, very different.
On the third floor, he spotted Frederick quickly.
The agent waved from a desk not far away.
“Over here, Adrian.” “Huh.” Adrian walked over, then glanced at the glass-fronted offices nearby.
“I thought you’d have your own office.” He hadn’t wasted the weekend.
Once he decided to try, he had done what research he could.
Being prepared didn’t guarantee opportunity.
The world was full of things no one could predict; he had learned that by underestimating independent life in Los Angeles.
But being unprepared guaranteed missing the opportunity when it arrived.
If he hadn’t started saving slowly back in elementary school through Scouts and anything else that paid, he wouldn’t have had the money to move out at all, much less buy a used car.
So he had learned what he could about agents.
At the simplest level, agents procured work.
They submitted clients for roles, made introductions, and negotiated deals, usually in exchange for a commission.
Agents and managers were not the same thing, though the roles could overlap.
Agents focused on getting work and closing deals.
Managers handled more of the long-term strategy, image, and day-to-day career guidance.
For young or unproven actors, family often filled that manager role whether they meant to or not.
The details could wait.
The important thing was this: an agent with a private office and an assistant was usually either good, connected, handling important clients, or some combination of the three.
The ones in cubicles usually represented clients who were still trying to break through.
And ordinary agents representing ordinary actors still helped keep Hollywood running.
✦ ✦ ✦ Ready for more?
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS TheBacklot Thank you for reading.
I hope this chapter drew you further into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.