Chapter 5

Max wished he could hate Nick Coyle sometimes.

Nick was his best friend and had been since Kindergarten. Throughout school, he’d been Max’s first defender against kids who tormented him for being poor or heavy or unathletic. In tenth grade, when the hyenas had gotten too numerous, Nick had convinced Lev to join their merry band - even though it ultimately meant losing the girl he’d had a crush on forever to the big Israeli.

So, it was impossible ... not to mention self-defeating to actually hate Nick, but Max wanted to sometimes - like now, when he came back from running to the drugstore for a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some mints for Nick’s nervous stomach to find his best friend and Kiki stepping away from each other and looking guilty about whatever he’d just missed walking in on.

It was just further proof of what Max already knew: of all the people he’d grown up with, Nick was probably the last person who needed billions of dollars to have a good life. He was personable and easy to get along with. Everybody at school thought he was their friend. Based on the way girls talked about him, he apparently wasn’t hard on the eyes, either.

And now, somehow, he’d pulled a lingerie model after vomiting and before brushing his teeth. If it had been anybody else, Max would have assumed he’d told Kiki about his fortune, but Nick couldn’t even talk about being rich with people who knew he was rich. There was no way he was going to brag about it.

When Max handed him the bag, Nick said, “Thanks, Max. I really appreciate that.” As he turned to head into the bathroom, he said, “Can you tell Stephen I’ll be there in like ten minutes?”

“Sure. Oh, and Connie Carlyle says she’ll be ready for you whenever you need her.” Of course Connie Carlyle was randomly here and happy to oblige. Nick could fall onto a pile of cow shit and discover it was hiding the entrance to a goldmine.

“Thanks.” Nick turned to Kiki. “You work for Connie. Do you think she’d be willing to meet my father some time? He’s been a huge fan of hers forever.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Kiki. “Connie’s pretty nice.”

“I’m sure she’ll do it if you ask,” said Max. “By the way, have I ever mentioned how much I like Mila Kunis ... you know, in case you’re ever waiting for a bus and she happens to be at the bus stop?”

“I’ll ... keep that in mind.” Nick looked confused.

Max walked away, trying not to mutter to himself. If Nick did randomly run into Mila Kunis someday, he’d probably tell her about this conversation. There were certainly worse lives than one spent standing next to the guy that good fortune seemed to regularly fall out of the sky onto.

When Max stepped back into the conference room, Paige peeled herself off from the rest of the crew and came over. “How is he? Are we going to be able to keep shooting today?”

Max shook his head. “Nick’s fine. He and Kiki are going to be here in like ten minutes.”

“You ... don’t sound happy about that,” said Paige.

“No. I’m glad Nick’s doing well ... in everything,” said Max. “He’s just unbelievable. I’m pretty sure he just ... made a connection with Kiki without even telling her he’s rich.”

Paige laughed. “At least I’m not the only one feeling overshadowed today.”

“You?” Max raised an eyebrow. “The khaleesi?”

“Please.” Paige waved him off. “Compared to these girls? I could tapdance naked on the conference table and nobody would notice today.”

Max took a moment to savor the mental image before he said, “I’m pretty sure you need to at least be wearing shoes to tapdance.”

Paige laughed. “I like that. Avoid the obvious answer. Quickly analyze the scenario and take a sharp right turn. You sure you don’t want to stay with Outside Joke once this wraps?”

Max shook his head. “I’m more of a software guy.”

“Right. I saw in your bio that you wrote Creepy Clown Bulletstorm. It was fun,” said Paige.

“You played it?” Max’s eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘girls can’t play video games’ jerks.” Paige crossed her arms.

“No. Definitely not.” Max shook his head. “I just never met anyone out in the wild who played it before. It only sold like eleven hundred copies. I thought I might have that many relatives.”

“I don’t think we’re related,” said Paige. “Was your father away on business in Indiana twenty two years ago?”

“Before my time,” said Max. “I can ask.”

“Are you working on anything else? Besides clowns with automatic weapons?”

Max laughed. “I guess you weren’t impressed with Creepy Clown Bulletstorm II.”

“It was ... less fun,” admitted Paige.

“I know.” Max raised his hands. “My heart wasn’t in it, but my ... backers thought I should stick with a winning franchise.”

“Got mixed up with the mafia, didn’t you?” Paige smirked.

“Let’s go with that,” said Max. “I did start a side scroller involving a homicidal chimp that ... uh, throws things.”

Paige laughed. “I tell you what. If you promise to send me an early access key, I’ll send you a link to a video where I play Beyonce. I think it’s funny as hell, but Stephen was afraid people would call it racist.”

“I’d like that.” Max said. “Uh ... shoot me your digits?”

“I’ve got your number on the call sheet. I’ll text you a link.” Paige turned to go. “By the way, I also would have accepted ‘I think I would notice’ to the whole tapdancing on the conference table thing.”

Max snapped his fingers. “The flirty choice. Unless I have a walkthrough, I always go for the conservative choice too long.” He’d always been awful at flirting, but even he could take a hint eventually. “Will it help if I let you catch me the next time I’m checking you out?”

“God help me, but it will.” Paige turned to head back to the rest of the crew. Max watched her go and, when she turned to look at him, he just raised an eyebrow and kept checking her out. She laughed and kept going.

Max knew that Paige probably wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he weren’t Nick’s friend. But, in that moment, he was too happy to care. She had noticed him and, as a chirp from his phone told him, she’d texted him her number. Being friends with Nick was awesome.

GuidoJihad: If you were going to cast somebody as a lawyer, you shouldn’t have used another lingerie model.

StephenOJ: Miss Davenport is flattered that so many people think she’s a lingerie model, but she is genuinely one of Nick’s lawyers. If we’d cast a lingerie model as a lawyer, we totally would have named her Miranda.

Once everyone was seated in the conference room again, Hall said, “As you’re packing your things and getting ready for another day of tracking the wolfen, the high priest of the monastery knocks on the door and comes into the room. He...”

From outside the conference room, Paige tapped on the glass door and opened it. “Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Coyle, one of your attorneys is here. She says she needs to talk to you for a few minutes.”

Nick looked up from his character sheet. He’d been looking forward to getting back to playing the game and momentarily allowed himself to forget the semi-scripted nature of the whole shoot. He looked up into the puzzled faces of the four models and found himself wishing he hadn’t created so much artifice up until this point or that, having created it, he could leave it in place indefinitely.

He gave a genuinely apologetic smile and rose. “Sorry. This shouldn’t take long.”

As he walked along the glass wall, he heard Kiki through the glass ask, “Why does Nick need a lawyer? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

At least he got to see his favorite lawyer in her full lawyer drag. Ainsley Davenport was a young woman of impeccable credentials - Yale undergrad and Yale law with blood so blue, it was probably black. Nick hadn’t asked, but he suspected she’d been conceived and born on the Yale campus and found a way to go to Kindergarten there. Naturally, he called her, “Miss Andretti.”

“Mr. Coyle.” She wore an impeccable gray suit and skirt, a starched white blouse, hose, glasses she didn’t need, and heels. She carried a thin, leather attache case that she now zipped open to extract a thin, manila folder, which she handed him. “How’s the game going? Are you winning?”

“Dungeons and Dragons isn’t that kind of game.” Nick opened the folder. It was full of blank letterhead from Black and Stringer. “There wasn’t anything you actually needed me to sign?”

“There’s always something for you to sign. But, you have this annoying habit of reading the things I hand you before you sign them.” Ainsley handed him a slim, gold pen. “Don’t actually sign your name on those, by the way. You don’t need your signature floating around the firm just waiting for some unscrupulous associate to print a contract over.”

Nick gave a grunt of agreement and draw a cat face on the first page. “Do you have a lot of that going on over at Black and Stringer?”

“It’s never happened as far as I know. And I would shred anything you signed before I went back to the office anyway. But, we have almost a thousand lawyers working over there. I can’t promise none of them would ever be tempted to abuse their position.” Ainsley turned over the page Nick had signed and pointed to a random spot. “Is it going all right in there?”

“It’s going great.” Nick drew a cat walking away on the back of the page. “Everybody’s been pretty friendly and easy to get along with. Apparently, I’m the only asshole here.”

“Nobody ever died from feeling like an asshole,” said Ainsley. When Nick raised an eyebrow, she added. “Sorry. My father said that a lot while my brothers and I were growing up. Why do you feel like an asshole?”

Nick started drawing a geometric pattern on the next page of letterhead. “I thought the girls would be ... not meaner, exactly, but less engaged I guess. But, they’re having fun. They’re enjoying the game. And they’ve been super-nice to me.”

Ainsley craned her neck a little to try to see into the conference room. “It’s their job to have fun and be engaged today. That’s not nice. That’s just professional. If you want pretty girls to be mean to you, that’s a different profession.”

Nick sighed. “Hall and Stephen both tried to tell me that, I think. I just buffaloed over them. None of the girls I know who want to be models would be caught dead playing nerd games like this.”

“I doubt Hall or Stephen tried very hard to convince you. Nobody’s going to argue very aggressively that you shouldn’t do the thing you’re paying them to help you do.” Ainsley moved in closer to speak more quietly. “If you think those girls have been nice so far, I bet they get even nicer once your friend Hall tells them that you basically shit Krugerrands.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “I’m not taking that bet. It turns out, I’m terrible at predicting how people are going to act.”

“You’ll learn.” Ainsley took the folder back from him, closing it and sliding it back into her case. “Speaking of predictable, Colleen Moreau filed suit against you this morning. I’ll have some real paperwork for you to sign when I come by on Monday.”

Nick frowned. “That name ... sounds familiar. Should I know who that is?”

“Colleen is Lauren Moreau’s natural-born daughter, but not Colin Grayson-Stone’s. There have been at least a dozen tests to confirm that. Her mother sued your estate seven times in the last twenty years, attempting to claim it as belonging to her daughter Colleen. Now that the daughter’s reached the age of majority, she’s inherited that particular windmill to tilt at. Has she tried to contact you?”

“Not that I know of. I’ve got about a million friend requests to process, though.” Nick frowned. “What does she look like?”

“I’ll send you a picture. If she hasn’t tried to contact you yet, she will. When she does, don’t talk to her without me.” Ainsley took out her phone and brought something up with a few finger swipes. Her eyes widened fractionally. “Oh.”

“What happened now?” asked Nick.

Ainsley gave a quick half-shake of her head. “Nothing. She’s just a ... strikingly attractive young woman. So, let me reiterate. If she approaches you, resist the urge to sit down with her and discuss things like rational adults. Anything you say to her, we’ll be hearing repeated in a courtroom for the next twenty years. Let me talk to whatever ambulance chasing asbestos ghoul she’s dug up to take her case. You’ll save yourself thousands of billable hours and a small, but very real chance that she’ll find some hack judge and/or jury willing to say that she’s entitled to some significant portion of the Trust’s assets.”

Nick couldn’t resist baiting his lawyer. “How attractive exactly?”

Ainsley laid a hand on his forearm and looked him in the eyes. “Nick, she could be a pansexual, double-jointed Helen of Troy with no gag reflex and it still wouldn’t be worth what one honest, ill-considered conversation could cost you. Her mother is bugfuck insane and she’s a ... problem child to put it mildly. Don’t talk to her...”

“Without you. Got it.” Nick covered his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh on camera. “This is why you’re my favorite lawyer, Andretti.”

“I thought it was for my top-notch driving skills,” said Ainsley. Two weeks ago, she’d driven Nick from a meeting in the city to Dennis and Simon’s house for his regular D&D game, rarely letting the speedometer on her zippy, little Audi drop below eighty miles an hour. It was what had gotten her the nickname “Miss Andretti.”

“They don’t hold a candle to your colorful metaphors.” Nick looked back at the conference room. “I’m having a housewarming-slash-Fourth-of-July-slash-video-premier party here a week from tomorrow. Will you come see your Internet debut?”

“Should I invite anyone else from Black and Stringer?” she tucked the folder away.

“Not if I’ve met them ... and no strangers. So, let’s say no. And, I’m going to be peeved if you bill me for it. So, no talking business.” Nick turned to look back towards the conference room. “They were nice even before they knew I was the one paying them, you know.”

Ainsley shrugged. “So, maybe you lucked into four models with hearts of gold. Even nice people can be inspired to unusual heights of agreeability by large sums of money.”

Nick frowned. “We’ll see. I’m just afraid they’re going to like me less because I tricked them.”

“I suspect they’ll forgive you,” said Ainsley. “Hell, Nick. Even I want to be nice to you and I’m a lawyer.”

[Account Deleted by Moderator]: Great video. Watch our porn parody “A Billionaire Plays Monopoly with Whores Before Fucking Them” at [url deleted.]

“Why does Nick need a lawyer? Is he in some kind of trouble?” Kiki’s heart sank. Whatever Nick was accused of, she was willing to bet he hadn’t done it.