Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper Page A

how she’d moved into PR, got a job at a big firm with offices on Wilshire. Three weeks into the new job her boss, a woman with cigarette-stained hands and an acid-peeled face, told her to give a blow job to a movie star they were handling. The woman told Sarah the star needed to relax before a press junket. It was part of the job, the woman had said. Sarah tells Green about the gleam in the woman’s eyes. How some people get an evil done to them and they can’t wait for their chance to pass it on to the next person in line.
    Sarah had done what the woman asked of her, in a closet, on her knees. Sarah tells Green how it made her feel, like something hollow, like something you might keep your hats and umbrellas in. The star had texted with a buddy while she did it. He rested the phone on her head. Word got out. She got labeled. So she’d moved over. Switched to black-bag PR. A month later she met Green.
    She tells Green about her last few months. She’d turned one actress’s botched tit job into a struggle with cancer. A meth-fueled freak-out turned into exhaustion. She’d done a lot. But she’d never gotten back down on her knees.
    She’s quiet. UNSAID: it’s your turn. Time for your moral inventory.
    Green couldn’t. Not yet.
    She understands. She drains her glass. She comes across the room and she kisses him. He kisses back. He pulls away.
    â€œWhy me?” he asks her.
    â€œBecause,” she says, “you’re as scared as I am.”
    He knew she was different. She is the only one who has ever been able to tell.
    They undress quickly. Everything else, slow. They are gentle with each other. They know they’re both so bruised.
    She gets up first. Green pretends to sleep as she crawls naked out of bed. He watches her dress through half-closed eyes. She is so beautiful, even now, hungover, her hair hanging in her face.
    Back at his apartment he watches bad teevee in the dark. He orders pizza. He wonders if he should call her. He wonders where that would go. Could go.
    He watches cable. An action movie from twenty years back. Oh yeah, movies. Somewhere right now in this town, grips move lights. Prop guys dig through their trailers looking for just the right prop. Actors do vocal exercises and learn their lines. Writers type. Scripties time scenes. The place where that happens seems a million miles away from Green. He is in a place in a faraway corner of that world, one of the places marked Here Be There Dragons on old maps.
    He doesn’t call Sarah. Not then, and not ever before it becomes too late. Sleep comes and the next day he is normal again.He goes back to work. It’s award show season. They always keep him busy.
    Oscar night. Late. The helicopters have quit their endless loops above the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. Victor calls him. Victor says, “Cleanup on aisle seven.”
    â€œOkay,” Green says.
    â€œCan you handle some heavy stuff?”
    Victor has never asked him that before.
    â€œYeah,” Green says.
    Green enters one of the Hollywood hotels. He takes the elevator to the eleventh floor. He goes to room 1103. He knocks. He listens. He takes gloves out of his pockets. He puts them on. He opens the door. He smells spilled champagne and something else, something wet and sharp and rich. His heart climbs into his throat and starts kicking. He turns on the light.
    A body.
    A skull-print scarf in a pool of blood, red on red.
    Sarah’s head is split open. Her eyes, once blue flowers, are now gray dull mushrooms. Her nails broken. The arms slashed. She fought. Fought hard.
    Crisscross welts on her legs.
    A mad pattern to the violence.
    He cleans the scene as best he can. He wipes down surfaces. He tries not to look at her. But she’s everywhere he turns.
    While he cleans, he thinks. He makes a plan. He doesn’t think Sarah would approve of it. But one thing he knows: he’s done worse for less.
    Green knows Aaron