Chapter 110

Denny and I resumed our seats and he reintroduced Regina Hart to the crowd. She gave a little wave and headed our way. We stood as gentlemen are supposed to when a lady enters the room.

I extended my hand to her but she slipped inside and gave me a kiss too close to my lips for my liking.

It immediately became obvious that she planned to sit next to me on the small couch.

It soon became clear that she planned to sit as close to me as humanly possible on the small couch. She took a seat and patted the spot next to her. I was in a bit of a quandary. I was left with two options, neither of them palatable. I could either have my arm pressed up against the side of the couch or have it pressed up against an excitable teenage girl.

“This isn’t going to work,” Denny said, seeing my predicament and offering an out. “Let’s change the set around. Let’s do something ... informal ... like three people just sitting around and chatting.”

He gestured to a stagehand and one of the producers. They huddled for a moment and the workers departed. They returned in a moment with three larger chairs that they arranged where I assumed the musician had performed. They even located a small table and put a vase of flowers in the center.

“I think this will work just fine,” Denny said. I had spent the time avoiding Regina Hart. It was difficult particularly since she had clasped my hand as soon as she stood from the couch. I extended our hands in front of us as I led her across to where Denny was making sure the camera angles worked.

Regina was slightly in front of me while we walked and she took the seat closest to the host. That was fine with me. I saw that she wore faded jeans that were painted onto her lower body and a sleeveless scooped neck blouse that fit her upper body tightly. It was warm on the stage but it was still evident that she had foregone the upper-body undergarments.

“That was really cool for you to step on that asshole like you did,” she said softly. We weren’t sure that the microphones were off – or at least I wasn’t. I simply nodded to acknowledge her thanks.

“I mean it,” Regina said, shifting until she was facing me. “That was ... it made me feel good that you’d do that.”

“No young lady should have that happen to her,” I said. “I hope you’re doing OK.”

“I’m OK,” Regina said with a sigh. “I wasn’t ... undressed. I had on my panties so he didn’t really touch me there. It’s just ... demeaning ... to be treated like that.”

“I know and I’m sorry it happened,” I said. “Somebody should have been watching out for you.”

“They do,” Regina said. “It was just a bad situation back there. He wasn’t supposed to be in there but he just ... barged in. My people started yelling at his people and the next thing I know ... he groped me. My mom was already on her way over and saw everything. The wardrobe assistant saw it, too.”

“You should probably press charges,” I opined.

“It’s a hassle,” Regina said. “The last thing a person wants in this town is to get the reputation as somebody that runs to the cops over everything. I can’t have negative publicity this close to the premiere. It would hurt us at the box office.”

I shook my head in disgust but I think Regina misunderstood.

“I just wanted him out of there,” she protested. “And they got him out of there. I don’t want to look like a crybaby. I have to be strong.”

“I understand,” I said, although it wasn’t true. “You know, it’s OK to let people look out for you. And it’s OK to be scared and angry over what he did. It’s OK to be ... a kid. Look, I don’t really know anything about you. I’m not trying to be a jerk but I’d never heard of either of you before today.”

“Either of us?” Regina wondered.

“You or the asshole that barged into your dressing room,” I said.

“Oh,” Regina said. “You seemed to know a lot about me. My sister seemed to think you did, at least.”

“You have so much information about you out there that it was easy to pretend,” I admitted. “It took my friend Jill about 30 seconds to give me the lowdown – and to show me a few pictures that, in my opinion, maybe should have been kept private.”

“Those pictures got me a huge online following,” Regina informed me. “That’s important!”

“I’m sure they caused people to look for your name,” I said, shrugging as best as I could. “But ... let me ask you this: Are you really happy about being followed by a bunch of 40-year-old perverts that get their jollies by looking at teenagers in underwear? Hell, are you happy about being followed by 16-year-old perverts that get their jollies by seeing you in your underwear? I wouldn’t be. And I sure as hell wouldn’t want any kid I know to have guys like that looking at her. I don’t know you at all and I don’t like it that guys look at you that way. It lessens you. It cheapens you. You don’t get as far as you have in this business without a serious amount of talent. That talent didn’t come from your butt.”

Regina blinked at me. I knew I was hopelessly out of touch. I didn’t do Facebook or Twitter or Instagram before I met Liz again. I didn’t have my own website and I used my email account to correspond mostly with my mother. To a young girl like Regina, it might be immensely important to have “followers.”

Regina nodded after a long moment.

“I see what you’re saying,” she told me. “You’re telling me that Liz Larimer didn’t get to where she is today by flashing her butt at everybody. She got there by crafting an image that was based on her singing ability. Is that where you were going?”

“In a general sense,” I said. “But you have something that Liz didn’t have to worry about: sisters that want to emulate you. You know, Vicki would love to look up to you. She tries to hide it but I can see that she’s proud of what you have accomplished. She wants to find her own path in the world because she doesn’t want to be compared to you. Does that make sense?”

Again, I got nothing but blinks from the young woman across from me.

“When you just say it like that, it makes perfect sense,” she said eventually.

“I just don’t want you to sell yourself short,” I continued. “I don’t want you to be perceived as anything less than you are: a talented actress with the potential to be a major star someday. I also don’t want to see you miss out on the fun of childhood. I’m going to let you in on a secret: Being an adult blows.”

Regina laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “It’s all about responsibility and obligations. It’s about getting up for work every day and getting the bills paid on time. It sucks because there is so little time for fun. When I was 16 or 17, I couldn’t wait to get older. It seemed like adults had all the cool toys; they got to make their own decisions. You know, since I got to be about... 25 ... I can’t count the number of times I wished I were 16 or 17 again. When I could do wild stuff without a whole lot of consequences. I’m not talking about burning down a building. I’m talking about playing hooky and going to the shore or taking off and just doing nothing for an entire day.

“Adults don’t get to do that very often. If you skip work, they fire you. If you don’t pay the mortgage, they kick you out on the street. You get a week or two every year when you can just drop everything and have fun – but even then you have to worry about a bunch of stuff. Even now that I’m with Liz, I still have to go to work to pay my bills. I don’t live off her money. I respect her too much, and I respect me too much, to do that. I actually have more to worry about now than I did before I ran into her again. Now I have to think about how my actions might reflect on her, too. I wouldn’t mind being a kid again.”

“Yeah,” Regina said wistfully. I wondered if she had ever had the chance to be a kid.

“That’s what Vicki wants to be ... a normal kid,” I said. “I’m not trying to lecture you. I just don’t want you to miss out on something. And I don’t want you to look back in 10 or 15 years and realize that you missed the chance to have a real relationship with a sister that might be pretty cool if you give her half a chance.”

Regina closed her eyes for a moment and nodded.

“So you think I should stop showing my ass to the world?” she asked bluntly.

Again, I only shrugged.

“That’s entirely up to you,” I said. “If you do it because it’s fun and you enjoy it ... have at it. It isn’t hurting anybody. But if you’re doing it because somebody says you should do it or because somebody told you it will help your career ... I’d recommend you stop. Even if it helps you get parts in movies ... do you really want your success to be predicated on how your backside looks?”

“No,” Regina said immediately. “That isn’t what I want. All that will lead to is crappy roles in B-movies. I’ll go from a couple of pictures of me on Instagram to doing full-frontal on cable TV. I’m not interested in that at all.”

“I think you should identify somebody you trust and talk to them about it,” I offered. “It should be somebody without a stake in your career – somebody that doesn’t benefit from ... you.”

“So not my mom,” Regina correctly interpreted.

“You’ll have to decide who to talk to,” I said. “I don’t know you well enough to offer any suggestions. I know that it’s very likely that you could be marketed completely differently and still see the same success or even more in the future.”

“Thanks,” Regina said. I thought I detected sincerity in her voice. “Uh, if I need some marketing advice ... can I call you?”

I glanced at my arm.

“I’m sort of on the DL right now,” I said.

“The down-low?” Regina wondered.

“Disabled List,” I corrected. “I’m not doing a whole lot of work until I get a little better. But if you find you can’t talk to anybody else about it ... I’ll help or I’ll find you somebody to talk to. Liz has a legion of PR people at her beck and call.”

“Cool,” Regina said. “And thanks ... not just for telling off Dax Venom but for actually talking to me like ... I’m a person and not a commodity.”

I saw Denny Daniels waiting in the wings – and keeping the crew from interrupting the conversation. He waited until Regina let out a long sigh and turned away to contemplate what we’d talked about before coming forward and joining us.

“So I’m thinking just sort of a roundtable thing,” Denny offered as he sat down. “Are you up for that, Travis?”

“That sounds OK,” I said. “So long as you don’t expect a lot of contributions from me. I’m not real knowledgeable about Hollywood or entertainment in general. I focus mostly on Liz and I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about some aspects of her future.”

“No, that’s fine,” Denny said. “We’ve all heard about the contract thing and I know you can’t really delve into it. But I think you’ll be able to offer a fresh perspective on a lot of topics. Regina? What do you think?”

“Yeah,” the young actress said. “He ... he looks at things a lot differently than a lot of people out here. I think it would be cool. It might make some people think for once.”

“Great,” Denny said. “Thank you both so much for agreeing to this. We’ll get started in just a minute.”

It was more like 45 seconds. They checked our makeup and microphones and then counted down from 10.

“Welcome back,” Denny said, smiling into the camera. “We had such great guests tonight that we didn’t want to end just yet. Let me reintroduce our first guest. She’s the queen of the coven on KidsTV’s ‘Witches Brew’ and she’s going to make her feature film debut next week in ‘Feel the Fear.’ Ladies and gentleman, the lovely Miss Regina Hart.”

The audience gave Regina a warm round of applause that she acknowledged with the grace of Liz Larimer.

“Our next guest needs no real introduction,” Denny said, smiling at me.

“And has no discernible claim to fame,” I added to the amusement of the people near me and the studio audience.

“I think most of America would disagree with that statement, Travis,” Denny said, chuckling.

“I certainly do,” Regina chimed in.

“We just spent 25 minutes talking about the horrendous attack in Nashville and the aftermath it left in its wake for those that were a part of it,” Denny said. “I don’t want to go back to that. But I do want to ask Regina if she’s seen the effects in her career.”

“Absolutely,” Regina answered. “We all saw it. I actually watched parts of it live on a national news channel. It was scary – even 2,000 miles away. The thought that somebody like Liz Larimer could be ... targeted ... was bad enough. I was on the set of my TV show and we all sort of closed ranks and watched it together. The whole thing was just awful. Then the news came that it was somebody from her agency and ... it made a lot of people think. It made us take a hard look at some of the people that were around us ... and it made us realize that not everybody we trust has our best interests at heart.”

“To be fair, there was very little trust between the main perpetrator and the victim in this case,” I noted. “There hadn’t been for many years and that was one of the factors that led up to what happened.”

“But that’s not unusual in the entertainment industry,” Denny pointed out. “I’ve been doing this for ... longer than I’m going to admit on television. There has always been a level of ... paranoia. Every entertainer thinks his agent isn’t working hard enough to get parts. They think the studio isn’t doing enough to promote their show or their movie. They think their PR team isn’t doing enough to get their name out there. What happened with Liz isn’t new. But the scale and scope of it amazed everybody.”

“Exactly,” Regina said. “We’ve all had harsh words with our agent or our manager. But for something to get to the level of a physical attack is just ... astounding. It made everybody I know in the industry take a step back to consider if they wanted to continue some of the relationships they’d built. I’m going to tell you, a lot of us decided not to. But the biggest change came when we started to analyze why Liz was still safe. I watched from backstage as Travis talked about that day. Every man and woman around Liz was willing to protect her. That was what I took away from it. It made us take a look at who we keep closest – how we treat the people nearest to us. And a lot of us were disappointed in ourselves because we didn’t have the sort of relationships with our people with us that Liz has with hers.”