Born Savages - Cora Brent Page 0,12

seemed slightly ruffled that I didn’t know who the fuck he was but he recovered nicely and even stopped calling me ‘Oscar’ when I said it would be healthier for him to take the suggestion.

“Yeah,” I always answer robotically whenever they call for the guarantee that I will somehow materialize in the desert a hundred miles outside Phoenix the day filming is set to begin.

For a while they bugged me about flying to L.A. first. They would really much rather have me land among the Arizona greasewood in a Lear jet or something, but screw that. I will drive there on my own time in my own wheels and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

“Yeah,” I respond once again in the same bored voice when reminded of my confidentiality clause.

Of course I told Brock about everything, but it’s not like he’ll be phoning the tabloids as soon as I’m out the door. If he does, then Gary Vogel can feel free to sue me for my handful of nearly worthless belongings and the pocket change in my bank account. My financial status isn’t as bleak as I’m making it sound. I just don’t have much use for acquiring stuff. If there’s anything my early life taught me it’s that too many shiny things aren’t good for you.

Before I head out I give Hal Johnson two months of rent, which he happily pockets. I don’t expect there will be a problem returning to my apartment whenever I want to. There’s not exactly a thick line of people scrambling to live upstairs to a foul-smelling old man who’s got a few checkers missing from the board and likes to use his shotgun on the gray squirrels who tiptoe their way into the front yard.

Brock, however, is sorry to see me go and gets suddenly worried about the whole thing . “So they, the Savages, really don’t know you’re coming?”

I can only shrug because all I know is what Gary Vogel has chosen to tell me. “I don’t think they know.”

I’m sure it’s true. After all, the whole point is to inflict return-of-the-prodigal-Savage surprise. Gary never asked me too much about my history with the family. That leads me to think he somehow already knows it all. Men like Gary are relentlessly calculating. They have no patience for any bombshells they don’t light the fuse to.

Of course I always knew I wasn’t to the manner born, not a blood Savage. My earliest memories include a woman with thick bristles on her upper lip and a warped left hand with six-inch fingernails. She used to hit me over and over again and shove me into a closet for long stretches of time that might have been hours as easily as they might have been days. Strangely, being inside the closet was better than being outside of it. That might explain my tendency to hang out underground.

I don’t know at what point the lip-haired, club-handed child abuser disappeared, but for a while I slid from one messy home to another. Mina Savage always insisted I was five years old when she ‘found’ me, although she invented my birthday. She always used that term to describe it though. Found. Like I was sitting primly on some urban street corner and just waiting to be discovered by a carefree fairy godmother with Louis Vuitton fixtures.

In truth, Mina went to some trouble to find a kid when she decided she wanted one. She knew she didn’t have the patience for a squalling, shitting, diapered blob, so she had her lawyers fan out and search for something more to her liking. Something cute and endearing, something that knew how to wipe its own ass and didn’t have any nearby family who might object to creative legalities. Something like a little boy who had already spent years in a system filled with crooked bureaucrats who would gladly face the other way if it meant a they could cuddle an armful of crisp green paper.

Something exactly like me.

I don’t mean to sound bitter or to make it sound like Mina Savage was a horrible woman. I’m not bitter and she wasn’t horrible. Careless, self-absorbed and perennially confused, but terrible? No.

She was the daughter and granddaughter of legends, born into the fishbowl of fame and privilege. Maybe that burden alone had fucked her up at an early age.

Mina was beautiful, stunning. Men were easily captivated by her looks and her name. They had to get a lot closer before they realized