Torn Roses

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For as long as it was possible, he fought off Ashley's attempts to get him from the apartment. He was happy in the solitude of his apartment, he didn't need anyone else but his characters that grew closer to his heart with every paragraph. 

"Honey, humans are social beings. Going against the nature of law results in madness," was her argument that didn't really impress Michael that much. 

"But mad people are happy in their madness. It's everyone else that think something is wrong," he, as per usual, replied with something that knew his agent would find triggering.

Her response was something he expected. After all this time, after all these years, her reaction still hadn't changed. The stare remained the same; it tried to scold him or make him realise the joke he had made wasn't funny at all.

"Relax, Ashley," he tried to calm her, "I'm not Proust.". He started dressing up, obeying her wish to go among people for a day. 

She waited for him outside the room to give him privacy and remain silent until she wasn't sure if her memory served her right "Is that the one with biscuits?"

Michael snorted in the bathroom while he was pulling on a new pair of jeans, or at least, a newly discovered pair of jeans for which he believed was lost for years. "That's him, but I didn't mention him because I like tea and biscuits as well."

"Why then?"

He came from the bathroom fully dressed in an outfit that had been more or less approved by her. "Towards the end, he'd only leave his place to remind himself how humans interacted in order to write realistically."

Ashley cringed. She rarely approved of weird things writers did, and Michael was no exception. For her, he was a whole different species. She smacked her lips together in an annoyed manner and started fixing his ruffled dirty blonde hair. "Well, you're not far from him, which is why I need to act. Come, now."

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Ashley led him on a stroll through a city of Los Angeles and stopped in front of a building that reminded Michael of a palace of glass his mother included in her stories of vicious goblins. He was losing himself in the memories of stories his mother told him when he was a young boy. Without closing his eyes, he could still see how he imagined each character, and how the goblins crawled over the palace like leeches with claws. With all the memories in his mind, he barely noticed a familiar black man in an expensive suit who approach them. It took Michael a moment to leave the world of fiction and interact with the world around him. 

Michael looked at Ashley "To get a drink I need a lawyer?". His agent only sighed uneasily and Michael knew she had lied to him earlier. "Just tell me what did you do behind my back in my name, right now."

"Big day today, huh?" Said Jesse when he was close enough, and encouragingly punched Michael's shoulder. The only thing Michael did was direct a clueless but angry look at Ashley, but to Jesse, everything was more than clear "He doesn't know, does he?"

"No, I don't know," judgingly exclaimed Michael, but his agent pretended not to be moved by it. 

He saw Jesse felt extremely uncomfortable. It was unlikely he and Ashley crashed because he always succumbed to her will because she's his agent. Seeing him angry must have terrified the lawyer. 

Ashley checked herself in the mirror she always carried around in her Louis Vuitton handbag and started walking towards the entrance of the glass palace. "We should be going. I'll tell you everything on the way."

Jesse stopped Michael in the first step "Don't be angry with her, man. She only cares about your best interest."

I'm sure, yeah.