The Midnight House by Alex Berenson Read Free Book Online Page B

pretax. Not bad.
    When Wyly quit the army, he figured on staying in North Carolina, his home state. Working security in Charlotte. Then his wife, Caitlin, told him they were moving to Los Angeles. She’d always wanted to be an actress. She was twenty-four now, and if she waited any longer, she’d be too old.
    Caitlin certainly had the looks. She’d been in a “Girls of the ACC” spread in Playboy five years before. But she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. Wyly had seen her try. He told her she would miss her family and friends; she could act in Charlotte.
    No dice. She told him she’d divorce him if he didn’t “support her dream, help her reach her potentialities.” He’d always been “an avatar of failure” for her, she said. “Potentialities”? “Avatar”? Wyly didn’t even know what an avatar was, and he was sure Caitlin didn’t, either. He could always tell when she’d been talking to her sorority sisters.
    He should have let the marriage come to its inevitable sorry end right then. He’d hardly seen her for two years. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up. And he figured he could work security in Los Angeles as easy as Charlotte. They could live by the ocean. He’d learn how to surf. So off to California they went.
    But Los Angeles was more expensive than either of them figured. They got stuck renting in Chatsworth, the northwest corner of the Valley, a five-room house for $1,625 a month. Robbery. As for surfing, the traffic meant that they were an hour from the beach, on a good day.
    To nobody’s surprise but her own, Caitlin didn’t land any gigs. To help pay the rent, she started waitressing at a restaurant called the Smoke House, by the Warner Bros. studio lot. A month later, barely three months after they moved to California, she told Wyly she was leaving. She’d met her soul mate. He made the mistake of asking Who is he? and got the dude’s résumé in return. Bart Gruber. He made the kind of movies that went right to the video store. Gruber had convinced Caitlin her career would take off if she would let the world peek at her C cups in his next movie, The Smartest Girls in the Room, something about lesbian scam artists. Even worse, Caitlin had convinced herself she was in love with him. Probably the best acting she’d ever done.
    Wyly was through arguing. Thank God she hadn’t listened when he told her, that first year together, that they should have kids right away. He dragged her suitcases out of the bedroom closet.
    “Careful,” Caitlin said, when he started tossing her clothes onto the bed. “A lot of that stuff is new.”
    “Now I know where your money’s been going.”
    “Mike. Aren’t you even going to fight for me? ”
    A single tear ran down her cheek. Typical. Now that she was an actress, she wanted some drama. He almost laughed. “Fight for you. No.”
    “Because you never loved me.”
    “No, Cate, I loved you, best I could considering we’ve hardly seen each other. I don’t think you ever loved me. And I’m not inclined to take on a fight I’m bound to lose. But I do feel a tiny bit bad for you. You oughta marry a doctor back home, like Cindy and Sandy”—her favorite sorority sisters. “Put those tits to use before it’s too late. You’re gonna whore, get yourself paid.”
    “Michael Steven Wyly. I won’t let you speak to me that way.” She hauled off and slapped him across the face. He let her. If he grabbed back, she’d probably call 911. He did not need a domestic violence charge on his back.
    “Listen to me here,” he said. “I know you don’t think so, but I’m looking out for you. You wind up staying out here too long, these guys like Geller—”
    “His name’s Gruber—”
    “They’re gonna use you up. Go home while you still have it.”
    “I love California.”
    “Love. Sure. That word again. You wouldn’t know love if it gave you a hundred bucks to suck it off.” He guessed he was angrier than he knew. He’d never said