After lunch, Aaron left the glass monolith of CAA to run the desk’s errands.
He dropped off a royalty check at a client’s estate in Santa Monica.
He pulled his ’82 Chevy Malibu—bought off a desperate grip for seven hundred bucks cash—onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
The ocean breeze bit through his jacket.
Exhaustion kept him moving.
The mailroom was pure hazing.
The desk wasn’t much better.
He operated as a glorified courier.
CAA drilled one absolute rule into the staff: Clients come first.
To be a player, he needed his own roster.
By the first week of January, he settled into a brutal rhythm.
He ran Paula’s life all morning.
He spent his afternoons freezing on university campuses and lingering around independent film sets.
He needed to spot talent.
Aaron stood outside the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
He exhaled a cloud of smoke and pulled his thin jacket tight.
“This is a waste of time.
We’re fishing in a dead lake.”
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets.
“What else do we do?
Cast a wide net, find fresh faces.
It’s the only way.”
“What about the New York theater scene?” Aaron asked.
He spent days combing LA.
He hoped to bump into faces he recognized from his past life.
The streets offered nothing.
“Ten years ago, maybe,” Jack said.
“They used to get off the bus as free agents.”
The gold rush was over.
The heavyweights strip-mined the industry.
They snatched up anyone who could hit a mark.
You didn’t discover talent anymore.
You hunted it down and locked it in before the rival agencies even knew it existed.
Aaron dropped his cigarette.
He ground it out under his boot.
Stalking college campuses was a rookie’s game.
To build real leverage, he needed the people pulling the strings.
Directors and producers.
That evening, he returned to Koreatown.
The manicured lawns of Beverly Hills sat on a different planet.
The streetlights flickered over the cracked pavement.
The busted deadbolt on his building’s front door offered a standing invitation to every junkie on the block.
Inside his shoebox apartment, Aaron dragged a heavy metal lockbox from under his bed.
He popped the latch.
Two Glock 17s sat on the foam lining.
He picked one up.
His thumb found the slide stop.
In his past life, handling a weapon wasn’t for show.
It was the necessary reality of sitting at the top of the food chain.
He spent twenty minutes stripping and reassembling the 9mms.
The rhythmic click of cold steel echoed in the small room.
His mind knew the mechanics perfectly.
He just needed this untested, nineteen-year-old nervous system to catch up.
He racked the slide.
He leveled the sights at a crack in the plaster and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Smooth, quiet, and steady.
He locked the weapons away.
The next morning at CAA, Paula stared at him across her desk.
“Utah?
You want time off to go to Sundance?”
“I’m going to work.” Aaron met her stare.
“I’m looking for independent directors.
Wandering around LA waiting for a star to fall in my lap is a losing bet.”
Paula crossed her arms.
“You’re nineteen, Anderson.
You didn’t go to film school, and you don’t know anyone in the indie circuit.
What makes you think you know what a good movie looks like?”
Sundance was Robert Redford’s pet project.
It was turning into a breeding ground for raw talent.
The major studios owned Los Angeles, but the indie market was about to explode.
Aaron knew exactly what was coming.
“I know what sells.” Aaron kept his voice dead flat.
“But if I find someone real, I need the agency to back my play.”
Paula studied him.
She didn’t say another word.
She opened her desk drawer, pulled out a petty-cash voucher, and scrawled her signature across the line.
“Seven hundred bucks.” She slid it across the desk.
“Consider it an advance for keeping Cruise happy this month.
Don’t waste it.”
“I won’t.” Aaron pocketed the slip.
Between his savings and his next paycheck, it was enough to cover a flight and a cheap motel in Park City.
That night, he stepped into the dim, airless hallway of his Koreatown walk-up.
His landlord, Rafael, loitered by the stairs.
The man rubbed his stomach like a toll collector at a border crossing.
He stuck out a hand.
“Rent’s due.”
Aaron didn’t break his stride.
He pulled the hundred-and-fifty-dollar check from his coat and pressed it into the landlord’s palm.
“Fix the lock,” Aaron said.
“And handle the noise next door.
I need to sleep.”
“You get what you pay for, Aaron,” Rafael muttered.
He looked down at the check with a helpless shrug.
Aaron didn’t bother to answer.
He unlocked his door and stepped inside.
He left the landlord talking to the empty hallway.
He walked straight into the bedroom and pulled a suitcase from the closet.
It was time to pack for Utah.
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Thanks for reading!
P.S.
I dropped some reference picture in the chapter comments.
check it out!