Barrett dragged a palm across his face and wrinkled his nose. “Fine.” Spittle popped from between his lips. He’d battled a Colombian drug cartel on-screen, as well as predatory robots and Mexican banditos, but he couldn’t handle Johan. To have power over the powerful was a fine feeling indeed.

They entered the house, Barrett walking purposefully, pausing only for him to stumble his way through greeting Channing Tatum—“Hey, man, yeah . . . thanks for coming, everything’s out . . . you know, out . . .”—and then ascending a back staircase to the third floor. An arched hallway led from there to a small room on the east side of the house. Barrett clearly wanted to do this far away from his guests, as if him being a canary-head were some big secret. He’d cut his teeth on mindless action movies like The Zero Faction and Dynamite City, in which he did little more than point a Kel-Tec and grunt. His last picture, A Kind of Truth, was a box-office sizzler, earning $780 million worldwide. Moreover, Barrett’s performance garnered universal praise. Kerry McDaniel from The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “I have seen Barrett Lorne in a different light, and it is blinding.”

That light had a scientific name: Citromantyl-V4.

Several framed one-sheets were stacked against the wall, ready to be hung around the property. Barrett lifted one of them—A Kind of Truth, ironically—and placed it glass-up on a cardboard box. He turned to Johan and made a grabbing motion with his hand.

Johan nodded at Xander, who stepped forward, pulling an ounce bag of yellow powder from the inside pocket of his jacket. Barrett snatched it from Xander’s hand. “Fuck, yeah!” He tore the bag open, spilling powder down the front of his shirt and across the glass. “Fuck, fuck.” He pulled his wallet from the pocket of his chino shorts, plucked out a twenty, and handed it to Kitty. “Roll this.” He dropped to one knee, shook out a spoonful of the powder, and used his platinum AmEx card to shape it into a fat rail.

Xander held Kitty’s mojito while she rolled the twenty into a tight tube. Once finished, she handed it to Barrett, who took it and bowed servant-like to the glass. He had tough-guy good looks, sculpted features, a body like rock. On-screen, he appeared larger than life. Johan was altogether sold on him being able to dispatch killer robots and gun-toting gangsters. Now, on his knees, snorting a line of yellow chemicals up his left nostril, he looked incredibly small.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” He blinked, sniffed through his nose, then exhaled easily. “Yeah, there it is.”

The change in him was quick, a matter of seconds. His shoulders dropped, his jitters diminished, the muscles in his face and neck relaxed. He got to his feet and blinked again, as if he’d just inserted contact lenses, ready to see the world more clearly.