Page 7 of Making His Bones

“Wow,” said Elektra. Her eyes were large with curiosity, but you never knew. She was probably wondering what to order for her dinner with that FBI goon.

“So, I’m here,” I said, just to gauge her interest level.

She fell for it. “So you just walked off the set? I guess you couldn’t walk very far, in the Argan Forest of Morocco.”

“No, that was the problem. The producer ran after me begging me to stay, but I couldn’t get very far anyway. I eventually paid some guy about forty dollars to take me back to the hotel in Agadir. But it was kind of feeble and powerless of me, storming out and making a big scene when all I could do was stand by some camels.”

“But that’s good you did it!” cried Elektra. She seemed sincere.

“You think so?”

“Of course! You had the power of your convictions. That’s incredibly admirable! Who is the last person in Hollywood you can think of who did that?”

“Well, Jim Carrey showed up to Fashion Week babbling how he was in the middle of a peyote-induced vision quest.” I’d only heard that on the endless Twitter thread about my own meltdown.

Elektra held up a hand. “No, you stormed out with dignity. You didn’t get drunk and cause a babyish scene. You told them where you were getting off the bus.”

I made a lip fart. “Madonna got drunk onstage in Australia and asked everyone to fuck her. Then she fell off a children’s tricycle.”

I was shocked by her touch when she grabbed me by the shoulders. It was electric like her name. I allowed myself to be pushed back toward the counter. “No.” She shook her head with deliberation. “You had guts and spine and balls. You didn’t just fall all over in front of some cameras, and you didn’t use substances to loosen your lips.”

“Well,” I said, a bit nervously. I’d had thousands of women—and men—physically, literally come onto me, but that’s not what Elektra was doing. She didn’t press her large, round boobs up against my nearly bare chest to make me hard. No. She was trying to make a philosophical point. “The night before, we got pretty hammered on some Moroccan grey wine. So maybe my hangover had a little to do with it.”

Elektra poked me in the chest. “Take credit for it, Gray. Own it. You went cowboy because you couldn’t take their bullshit rat race.”

This seemed to be getting personal. I mean, like it had something to do with her, not me. I crunched her hand in mine not to be holding it, but to make her stop poking me. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m good with that. I’ve been getting in touch with my soft side out here in Pure and Easy. Totally different lifestyle. Are you sticking around awhile? I thought, ah, I thought I heard you telling that FBI guy that.”

Again with the pouty, sullen face. Sticking around didn’t seem to make her happy. She backed away from me a step and looked at my belt buckle. “Yeah. I guess I’ll get a hotel in Seeker.”

“Hey!” I threw up both my hands, like Kneecap had earlier, surrendering. “This is perfect. I’m renting a gigantic house on Mescal Mountain. It’s this huge, glassy thing with a giant kitchen under skylights, I mean it’s built right into the red rocks. There’s a pool where you can just float and look up at spires and towers. I have an outdoor grilling area where I watch the fire for hours. I mean, it’s way too big for me and—“

“What are you trying to say?” Elektra had her arms folded under her buoyant bosom.

I was confused. I didn’t know what she meant. “Say? Well, I guess I’m telling you that you can stay with me. It’s only a ten-minute ride from downtown here.”

She nodded, but she was frowning. Glowering at me. She sure changed personalities quickly. I was offering to help her, and she was mad about something. “They just let people build homes into these incredible sandstone formations.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Uh-huh. They do.”

“They should be designated a national monument!” she cried.

Oh. I understood where she was coming from. “Yeah. I thought so too, at first. But there is a state park on the south side of town. Huge. That’s where all the real intense rock formations are. The ones near the homes, well, not so much.”

I couldn’t tell if I’d made a great save, though, because Knoxie came busting in the side door. All the Boners had keys for that door in case they needed to see Slushy in a hurry.

He barely nodded at Elektra. “Gray, my man. You’ve got to come over to The Missing Ink. Tobiah is hacking into this dark web server to take it down and we need you.”

I was so shocked I almost forgot about Elektra, standing with her hands at her sides, her glossy hair flowing over her shoulders. “Why the hell would you need me for that?”

Knoxie’s hands dangled, too, and he looked sort of sheepish. “Well. We need some young guy, a model like, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

Knoxie looked at the ceiling for assistance. “It’s a kiddie porn server, Gray. And you, you know—you’ve had experience with that sort of thing.”

Oh. Experience. Yeah. I did. Unfortunately. “Yes, that’s right. You want me to, like, tell you how they think?”

“That, and . . . we need a model.”