“I can’t believe how time flew. That the season is nearly over.” He was an affable Pooh Bear, and a gem of a set manager, only raising his voice if he was forced to ask for something a second time. This was her third TV series, including a soap opera, and she had definitely noticed the intangible value of working with people who were enjoying themselves. That hadn’t been the case on the soap, and it had brought out everyone’s bad side.
“Sorry about cutting your head off.” Director Melanie Rodriguez’s sleeves were already rolled up. “Unit A had to stay one more night in Joshua Tree, so we moved a few things around. Did you get the notes?”
Jennifer nodded. “I’ve got my waterproof undies on.”
Gary and Mel laughed, and Mel snapped her fingers, signaling that she was ready to start the Unit B schedule for the day. Jennifer was increasingly impressed with Mel’s cool command. Mel had initially been a little wary around her, but Jennifer put that down to her either having heard the rumors about how Jennifer had a habit of seduce-and-abandon to get ahead, or she wasn’t sure Jennifer would adapt to the hectic demands and bare-bones pampering that TV gigs offered. Whatever it had been, Melanie and she understood each other now, and everyone was pleased with the result. If she and Lena were on better terms, she’d tell Lena to get Mel into a film production. Latina directors were rare.
The next two hours included a lot of crouching, running through sets and hopping over obstacles while managing dialogue that didn’t sound out of breath. Jennifer’s body roll over a desk took four takes, but she nailed the last one, landing on both feet with her sword drawn. After a close-up shot of her boots on the floor, she got to swap them out for platform sneakers. They looked weird, but maintained her height and were much more comfortable to wear for the rest of the takes, none of which would include her feet.
By the time they broke for lunch most of Jennifer’s day was done. She limped her way back to her trailer, nursing a bruise in one thigh from a choreography gaffe by one of the extras. He’d gone left instead of right and they’d collided. For an emaciated zombie, he’d outweighed her by at least forty pounds and his knee in her thigh felt like it. Several hands had helped break the fall and the floor had only knocked the breath out of her.
She was nearly at her trailer when the extra caught up to her. Peering through his zombie makeup and mask he said, “I know I’m not supposed to talk to you, but I am so, so sorry. That’s all I wanted to say.”
“It’s okay. It happens. Don’t worry about it.”
His gaze went to someone behind her.
Rushing toward them was BeBe LaTour, her vivid red hair gleaming in the hot sun. “Precious! You’re hurt!”
“It’s just my agent.” She lowered her voice. “Speaking of the zombie apocalypse.”
He laughed and scampered away, which made Jennifer smile, because zombies weren’t known for their scampering.
“BeBe!” Air kisses completed, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Just checking on my favorite client! I am still getting calls about how good you were in all those New York talk show appearances, precious. Perfect in every way. Best of all, I know what you’re going to be doing at the end of next year.”
It was how BeBe began all of her pitches. Jennifer waved off the offer of help up the trailer stairs. Her leg hurt, but not that badly. After letting some of the heat out, she went inside. “Come on in.”
BeBe’s air of making a grand announcement was, as always, undercut by her clarinet-with-a-head-cold voice. “In a world of ancient gods and sorcerers you will be the Namibian Queen with empires at stake, and—”
“Wait a minute. Let me get settled.” Jennifer triggered the air conditioner. As with the past several years, there had been no spring season in Los Angeles. They’d gone from a dry winter to summer in two weeks. The little unit was surprisingly effective, making a midday rest feasible in the otherwise oven-like trailer. One of the reasons she specified a small trailer was that they were quicker to heat and cool. That meant a short break would be comfortable. It also meant there was no real place for anyone else to make themselves at home. Hospitality had never been her strong suit.
She peeled off her outer garment, glad she wouldn’t need it again today, and put it on the rack just inside the door for the wardrobe assistant. “I thought I was going to melt.”
BeBe’s shoulder-length page boy swung madly as she shook her head in disgust. “They should have someone to fan you, precious. How can they let you be so hot? And was that an extra talking to you? Have they no respect? It’s in your contract.”
Jennifer eased down into the wide chair that had seen plenty of catnaps. “He knocked me down in a big fight scene and was really sorry—not the last time that will happen. I’m fine. I just need some Advil.”
“I’ve got Oxy if you’d like some.” BeBe was already reaching into her shoulder bag.
“That’ll put me in a coma. Seriously, no thanks. You could get me a bottle of water from the fridge, though.” Hyde Butler had warned her about the walking pharmacy that BeBe considered part of the good service she provided her clients.
She accepted the water with thanks and asked, “So what about the Namibian Queen?”
“You’ll be Queen Nefertiti.”
“She was Egyptian, not Namibian.” She uncapped the bottle and took several long swallows. “But if she’s Namibian, then she’s black. Which I’m not.”
“She’s not black in this story. She’s got dark beautiful eyes and long, thick hair, like you. You can tan—”
“I’m not tanning myself into a part for a black actor.” She tossed back two of the painkillers and half-drained the rest of the water. She’d been happy to sign up with Hyde Butler’s agent, hoping it was the last change she’d need to make. Eight years and so far so good on the work front. The woman brought her roles, wheeled and dealed some of the highest salaries for a woman in the business, and had been instrumental in making Jennifer the voice of commercials for everything from makeup to health insurance. The moment rumors had surfaced that the casting for a remake of Hitchcock’s Rope would be a woman instead of a man in the lead BeBe had been relentless. The bulk of Jennifer’s summer would be spent promoting the film’s release.
Yet, for all that she understood about the business, BeBe had blinders stapled to her forehead sometimes.
“Has anyone actually looked at a map of Africa? Who wrote this thing?”
BeBe named two men Jennifer didn’t recognize. “It’s a fantasy epic based on some real people and places. It’s got a huge budget. They’re shooting on location, authentic to the last detail, near Bangalore. And a 3-D version is guaranteed.”
“You do know that Bangalore is in India, don’t you? Which is not a part of Africa. Not that I’m a geography buff, but I have been there.” BeBe usually didn’t get on her nerves this much. “I’m not Ann Baxter and living in a time where nobody thought it was wrong to set a story entirely in the part of the world where everyone has brown skin and cast it almost completely with white people who look like they’ll burst into flames in direct sunlight.”
“You’re perfect for it.” BeBe waved a dismissive hand. “And the salary will be enormous.”
“I’m not spending six months explaining my reasons to the media.” After all that it took to build a reputation in this business, she’d watched performers lose all their ground as they squirmed through interviews trying to answer questions about the equity of casting them to specifically play a race they so obviously weren’t without any necessity to the story. If the producers and writers were as stupid as BeBe was making them out to be, it was going to flop, and they’d all wonder why after spending fifty million of other people’s dollars.
When high-budget pictures didn’t meet revenue expectations, performers got the biggest share of blame, she thought bitterly. The producers would get bankrolled for another picture while the cast went begging for another chance. The actors were always the ones tasked with, “You shou
ld have known.”
There was no piece of that scenario that worked out for her except a paycheck. One thing she didn’t need more of was money, and lucky her.
“It’ll all be on the writers. Nothing to do with you,” BeBe was saying.
“They’re not going to ask the writers, or the casting agent or you what you were all thinking. They’re going to ask me. No matter what I say it’s hashtag LamontSoWhite, and I’d deserve it. There are far too many wonderfully competent and beautiful actresses with the appropriate skin color to play a black African queen no matter how long ago in the past it was or how many sorcerers and what-have-you they throw in to bleach the world white.” A new thought struck her. “If someone in my position can’t turn down that kind of part, nobody can. But I can, so I am.”
“Well.” BeBe slid into the only other chair and gave her a sunny smile. “They can’t say I didn’t try though I told them that’s how you would feel.”
Jennifer sincerely doubted it. “Anything else?”
“Actually, darling, the much better offer is a thriller with enormous box office potential. I’m sure I can talk them into a justified base for you. You are so easy to work with and everybody knows it.” BeBe mimed taking Jennifer’s picture. “The most beautiful girl in the world, and she’s not complicated, doesn’t want a larger trailer for a nanny or a kid. Your extras are so reasonable, why shouldn’t you get the little you ask for?”
Jennifer sighed. “It just means I have no life.”
“You’re one of the hardest working women in the business and Hollywood’s most eligible bachelorette. It’s part of your appeal, darling. That you’re not asking for breastfeeding time or Fridays always off makes you much more valuable. They can put more into the paycheck.”
That was one of the standard operating explanations, that it cost more to accommodate women than men on the set, so they paid women less. “If I don’t have more extras than men want, they should be offering me something in the ballpark of what the men are getting, right?”
“I will certainly take that position with them. You know I always do.”
Jennifer wondered if Suzanne ever had to put up with this kind of nonsense in the financial or tech worlds she straddled. The pay and opportunity inequities in Hollywood were woven through every aspect of production. BeBe didn’t question them at all, but today the realities were working her last nerve. Like she was some kind of Carina Estevez or Sydney Van Allen, which she wasn’t. “The part—I presume I’m the wife of the detective or something?”
“You’re the victim, but you’re onscreen the whole movie. Nearly. You’re just…You know. Dead.”
“Sounds like it might be worth pursuing.” Jennifer finished the water and hoped BeBe was done.
“Good luck with shooting the end of this season here. You’ll knock ’em dead! I wish I could be there.” BeBe gave a wiggle of anticipation that a passerby might have mistaken for a seizure. “Is there anything you can’t do? You are just the best client in the world, precious. The best. I have to run.”
BeBe flung open the trailer door and nearly knocked over the wardrobe assistant. Jennifer saw her veer in the direction of the production offices and didn’t give it another thought. Forty minutes later, the veggie and hummus plate from the caterer completely consumed, Jennifer could manage a limp-free walk across the asphalt to the very welcome shade of the hangar.
Sets had been redressed or changed out. She was in the first two scenes and then done for the day. A long soak in a hot bath was high on her list.
Mel waved her over as everyone else assembled on the set. It was unusually quiet, and Mel lowered her voice. “I just wanted to let you know that he’ll be gone at the end of the day. I can’t replace him now, there’s nobody made up.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mel tipped her head. “I—nothing.”
Jennifer wasn’t sure what to make of the look Mel was giving her. Disappointment? Wariness? “I really don’t know what you mean.”
“The extra, the one who took you out.”
“Yes?”
“Your agent was all up in my face in front of everybody about getting rid of him. She said you were upset. Very upset.”
“No.” Jennifer shook her head. Now she knew why it was so quiet. A quick glance showed that she was getting the evil eye from all directions. Damn BeBe, damn her to hell. These people had actually liked her, or at least working with her. Now they thought Jennifer the Royal Bitch was the real her. “No, I absolutely did not tell her to do that. He apologized, I said it was okay and I meant it. He didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I thought she was giving you deniability.” It was almost a question.
“Have I ever needed a proxy to express my unhappiness about something?”
Mel’s expression was carefully neutral and Jennifer wasn’t sure Mel believed her. “Then it was just a misunderstanding?”
Jennifer wanted to find a bus, throw BeBe under it and then drive it back and forth over her. What would Lauren Bacall do, she asked herself. Not air private business with sixty people listening, that’s for sure. “I guess… She misunderstood me. I did say I was hurt, but it’s better now. She’s very protective.”
Mel’s lips twitched. “Zealous is the word that comes to mind.”
“You’re not wrong.” Jennifer followed Mel toward the cluster of assembled cast. “What can I do to reassure him and everybody else?”
Mel pitched her voice to carry. “Everyone, just FYI. Jennifer’s agent took something she said the wrong way. Nobody’s getting sent home.”
“Accidents happen,” Jennifer interjected. “That I nearly finished out the season before I got even mildly hurt just shows how good you all are at this.”
“So let’s forget all about it and move on, no more drama, nothing to see here, get to your places.” Mel snapped her fingers and everybody moved quickly.
With the zombies all back in full makeup, Jennifer had no idea who was who, so she mouthed a huge, “I’m so sorry,” at all of them and hoped it was convincing. She was inwardly seething and wanted to vent, but nobody needed to see that side of her, not right now. She’d been nothing but tired and out of sorts since that miserable party. Weeks later and she was still picking at it.
Decapitating waves of zombies with efficient glee and the occasional pithy remark got rid of some of her anger. The cast was laughing with her at the end of takes, treating her like one of them again.
Making her weary way to the trailer to get into street clothes and head for home, she couldn’t shake the not very pleasant feeling she’d had at the party of being the self-absorbed lightweight in the room. Meanwhile, the people she’d been working with for a couple of months now had easily believed that every evil thing they’d ever heard about Jennifer was true.
These were the choices you made, remember? Fear is better than apathy.
She knew BeBe would claim she’d thought that’s what Jennifer wanted, just like BeBe was probably going to tell the Namibian Queen people Jennifer might be more interested if there was more money. It’s my job, she’d say.
With the A/C and Taylor Swift cranked up in the car, she felt better by the time she turned off Santa Monica toward Sunset. She loved where she lived, right at the western edge of the Sunset Strip with a penthouse view in all directions. The heat today made pedestrians far and few between, otherwise the Strip was known for its foot traffic.
Dinner. Shower. Maybe yoga. Definitely sleep. In that order, though she desperately wanted to sleep first.
After parking her car in the secure garage below the building, she keyed open the elevator and entered the code for her floor. From the table next to her door she scooped up a package—probably a script—and a pouch with the few pieces of mail the publicist had cleared for her to see. There was also a thick envelope from her business manager. Probably quarterly updates. The little table where they were left for her was the only furnishing in the tiny lobby of the thirty-first floor
.
She waved a salute toward the security camera and punched in her security code to open the only door. The moment it latched behind her she relaxed, letting her handbag and the packages slide to the floor.
A light touch on the remote control triggered a whoosh of moving curtains as they rolled back, panel after panel, to reveal the floor-to-ceiling, south-facing windows that stretched the length of the floor. Right now, in mid-afternoon, the sky was a muddy orange of heat and smog dotted with airplanes and innumerable helicopters. The ground below was thick with the straightline streets and pulsing freeway mazes of Los Angeles. Later, when the sun went down, she would see nothing but twinkling lights and red stripes of taillights on Sunset Boulevard as it bordered her corner of the grid. If it was still too warm, she could walk around the balcony to the north side, where cooler breezes drifted down from the Hollywood Hills. The shorter, cozier balcony off the master bedroom on the western side would frame a stunning sunset that she’d watch as she got ready for bed.
The intercom buzzer sounded before she had a chance to change out of her crumpled clothes. Her dinner, probably, ordered by app from a local restaurant. She liked the food, but even more liked that she could buy with a nickname that the guard downstairs would know meant her. The address alone told the restaurant it was a celebrity, but they didn’t have to know which one. She had always thought Lena was super paranoid about security, but some precautions were easy to take.
“Would you like me to bring it up?” It sounded like Billy was on duty.
“Please. I really appreciate it.”
“I’ll leave it on the table. Have a good evening.”
“Thanks.” She went to shower. The housekeeper, who came and went with quiet efficiency several times a week, had taken care of last week’s laundry, and several new dry cleaning bags were hanging in the closet. What had been two two-bedroom condos had been converted by a pop diva into a four-bedroom penthouse. Jennifer had had the smallest bedroom outfitted as a walk-in closet. Finally, one that was big enough.
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