Ronan’s heart kicked hard against his ribs. He straightened up on instinct, cleared his throat, tried to pull his voice into something steady, and mostly failed, because the excitement had already gotten into it.
This could be it. His future agent, right there on the other end of the line. The thought sent a jolt through him — someone new, someone willing to represent him, to put him back on solid ground. And right behind the excitement came the nerves, cold and familiar. ’What if he doesn’t like me? What if he watched whatever Hill sent him and decided I’m not worth the trouble?’
He got his voice as level as it would go. "Yes, this is Ronan Mercer. Are you the agent Director Hill told me about?"
"Yeah, that’s me. Riley Brooks." The deep voice rolled on, easy. "I’m the guy Henry called. And I just got done watching that tape he sent over." A beat. "I’ll keep this short. I want to meet you. I’m on a flight to LA as we speak, so give me a day, maybe two, and we can sit down. That work for you?"
Ronan’s pulse took off. "Ye-yes. Yes, that works."
"Good." There was a warmth in it now. "You pick the spot, boy. Wherever’s easy for you. I want to get in a room with you soon as I can."
That landed on Ronan warm and sudden. If the agent was this eager, it could only mean one thing. "Wait... Does that mean..?"
Riley let out a low chuckle, like he’d been waiting for the question. "That’s right, kid. I want to rep you. Sign you on as my client, under Crown Artists Agency."
The name hit Ronan like ice water. Crown Artists Agency. He knew it. Everybody in the business knew it — one of the Big Three that ran this whole town. CAA.
"You’re serious?" The words came out thin. "You want to sign me to CAA—" It caught up with him mid-sentence. "Wait. Hold on. You’re telling me you’re with CAA?"
Riley laughed, plainly enjoying the stunned little crack in the kid’s voice. "Yeah, man. Henry didn’t tell you? Riley Brooks, out of CAA. And I’ll be straight with you. The actors I handle run the whole spread, D-list all the way up to B-list. Nobody’s writing articles about me yet either. But yeah. CAA. That’s home."
Ronan could hardly get his head around it. An agent from CAA, an actual Big Three agent, had his eye on him.
Riley’s voice came again, unbothered. "So. Where are we doing this? Your town, your pick."
Ronan swallowed. "Could we meet in Koreatown? Here in LA. There’s a restaurant I know, good place to sit and talk."
"Koreatown, alright." A shift, some cabin noise behind him. "Send me the address, I’ll lock in a time and call you back. I’m still up in the air, matter of fact. Just cleared New York."
"You got it," Ronan said.
* * *
Two days went by faster than Ronan could track them. Before he’d caught his breath the call was behind him, and the day itself had come.
Today he was meeting the man.
At Park Eats, in the thick of Koreatown, Ronan sat waiting at a table near the back. He’d told Mr. Park about it days ago — Alberto and Carlo too — that an agent was flying in to talk about signing him with CAA.
Park had taken that news and run clear past the end zone with it. He’d closed the place down for the occasion, no customers all afternoon, the door held for exactly one man: the agent, Riley Brooks. He’d dressed the meeting table in a white tablecloth and fussed it into looking like something out of a restaurant three times as expensive as his own.
Ronan could see plain as day how worked up his boss had gotten on his behalf.
"Mr. Park, come on." He spread his hands. "Seriously. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me."
"I insist." Park set a last fork straight and stepped back to eye it. "You are meeting an agent today, Ronan. A real one. And who knows, maybe he takes one look and he don’t like that you bring him to some little restaurant, hm? People in his position, they can be picky. Very picky."
Ronan let out a dry laugh. "Mr. Park, honestly — if the guy takes one look at this place and feels insulted I brought him here, that’s a guy I’d think twice about signing with anyway—"
Park’s eyes narrowed to slits. "Shh, shh. You remember what I tell you before? Hm? The tide." He leveled a finger at him. "When the water comes in, you row. This, right now, this is the water coming in. So you row. You don’t argue."
Ronan sighed, the fight going out of him. "...I understand, boss."
That satisfied Park. The grin came back up under his mustache. "Good."
Something in the fuss got to Ronan more than he let on. Three years back, his family had packed up their place in Little Tokyo and gone east to Dallas, and when they left, they took the last of what felt like home in this city with them.
For a long stretch after that there wasn’t a single person in the whole of Los Angeles he could really lean on. Nobody close. Nobody in his corner.
And then there’d been Mr. Park. A boss who had turned into something a good deal more than a boss somewhere down the line, without either of them ever putting a word to it.
They were still talking, easy, letting the wait fill itself, when Carlo came in quick from the front.
"He’s here." He hooked a thumb back toward the door. "Guy in a suit just walked up. Says his name’s Riley Brooks."
Park was on his feet at once, waving toward the front to bring the man through.
A moment later he came in. Riley Brooks stood maybe five-eleven, dark-skinned, and built solid enough that the suit couldn’t hide it, broad through the shoulders and thick in the arms, the kind of frame you’d sooner expect on an athlete than an agent. His face was hard-set, not unfriendly but a long way from soft, and his hair was cut down close in a sharp fade. A slim leather briefcase hung from one hand.
His eyes swept the room and settled on Ronan.
Ronan got up and crossed to meet him. "Hi. You’re Mr. Brooks?"
"That’s me." Riley looked him over, chin lifting a fraction. Ronan had an inch on him. "So you’re Ronan Mercer." It wasn’t quite a question. His gaze ran across the kid, taking his measure.
"Yes, sir. That’s me." Ronan turned toward the dressed-up table. "Come on, let’s sit down first."
Riley nodded and followed him over, lowering into the chair and letting his eyes travel around the empty room.
"Not a bad spot." Then his eyes narrowed a touch. "We the only ones in here? Don’t tell me you rented out the whole restaurant for this."
Ronan rubbed the back of his neck, not quite sure how to put it. "Ah, no. Nothing like that. Place belongs to a friend of mine. Let’s just say he’s... being supportive."
Riley caught the meaning right off, and something in his face eased. "I hear you. I hear you." He glanced around again, a small smile on him this time, a man who knew a thing or two about the people who show up for you. "That’s a lucky thing, a friend like that. You hold onto folks like that, understand me? Don’t let go."
"I know," Ronan said quietly.
They’d barely settled before Alberto drifted over, order pad in hand.
Riley picked up the menu and lit right up. "Oh, now we’re talking. I love Korean food. The kimchi, man. And that Korean fried chicken? The real KFC, right there." He laughed at his own joke and tapped the page. "Let me get the number two, the three, and the five."
He looked over at Ronan. "What’re you having? I called this meeting, so it’s on me. Don’t argue with me on it."
"Oh, no, that’s fine, really—"
"Just let me handle it." Riley waved him off, easy. "I might be your agent by the time we’re done here, after all."
There wasn’t much to say to that. Ronan gave Alberto his order, and on his way off Alberto caught his eye and threw him a quick, silent you got this behind Riley’s back.
Once he’d gone, Riley sat back and got comfortable, folding his hands on the white tablecloth.
"Alright. I’m not gonna sit here and dance around it with you, Ronan." The tone had gone all business, though the warmth stayed under it. "I want to sign you. To CAA, with me as your agent. Straight up." He leaned in a little. "I watched that audition tape Henry sent over, and I’m telling you, the second it finished I couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t sleep right. Knew I had to get on a plane, come out here, and put myself in front of you before anybody else got the chance."
The words warmed Ronan clean through. "Thank you. That means a lot." Then he gathered himself. "Could I take a look at the offer?"
"Of course, of course." Riley straightened like he’d been waiting on the cue. "And I’ll tell you straight, I built this thing to be good to you. Specifically you. You are not gonna regret putting your name with CAA, or with me." He clicked the briefcase open and slid a small sheaf of papers across the table.
Ronan took them and read down the page. He didn’t need to work through every line to catch the shape of it, and the shape of it was fair. More than fair.
The commission sat at ten percent, the standard rate, the most an agent was even allowed to take, with nothing stacked on top of it. And it applied only to work the agency actually brought in for him. Anything he booked on his own, he kept whole.
The term was short, a single year to start, so he wasn’t chaining himself to anybody, and there was a line in plain print that let him walk away clean if Riley failed to put a real offer in front of him inside ninety days. The agency swallowed its own costs on top of that. No submissions or messenger fees or any of the small ways some outfits nickeled their people down to the bone.
Then came the part that made him look up. On «Castaway in Time», his first job, the lead, Riley had marked his own cut down from ten percent to five. A first-project rate, the paper called it. The man was leaving money on the table just to get himself in the door.
Ronan read it through a second time. His old agency had never once put terms like these in front of him. Nobody had.