MONDAY, OCTOBER 22
Is this lip gloss too extra?”
Naomi didn’t even glance up from her phone as she replied to her assistant. “Deena, there’s not a thing about you that’s not extra.”
“Which normally I take as a compliment . . .”
“Meant as one.” Naomi continued to type on her phone.
“But, I’m worried the sparkle will look too garish on camera.”
“Wait, what?” Naomi finally looked up. She and her assistant were sitting at a conference room table at StarZone’s Flatiron headquarters while they waited for Dylan and the rest of the team to join them. “You know that we’re not actually filming today, or anytime soon, right? They’ve barely started the script.”
“But the casting director will be here, right?” Deena asked, adding an extra coat of gloss that really did seem to have more glitter than a kindergarten art project.
“I want it to be known that the best person to play Deena is, in fact, the actual Deena. Not some bimbo poser.”
“Noted. But I’m pretty sure the first season is going to be all about my childhood. Pre-Deena.”
“Damn.” Deena dropped the gloss back in her purse and pulled out a pack of gum. “Wintergreen?”
Naomi shook her head.
Her assistant shoved a stick in her mouth and studied Naomi. “So. This producer guy. Dylan Day. He’s hot, right?”
“Don’t make me regret inviting you,” Naomi muttered, turning her attention back to her phone.
“You need me. I’m going to take notes.”
“On what?” Naomi looked pointedly at the lack of notebook, laptop, or tablet.
Deena tapped her temple. “All up here. Big hair, big brain. So is he hot, or what? He looked hot that day in the office, but I only saw his butt. Do you know he dated the actress from that show about the sorority? She was pretty, but like half his age.”
Naomi nodded, even as she zoomed in on a picture of Audrey and Clarke on Instagram. Damn, that woman had good skin, even with those bitterness wrinkles.
“So are you guys dating?”
Naomi gave in and laughed. “Deena!”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that he’s basically the only person who has your direct number.”
“Which must mean we’ve eloped, right?”
“Your sarcasm is extra thick, which means I’m onto something.”
“Fine. Okay. We went to one dinner that was half date, half business meeting, and he was my date to a friend’s dinner party.”
“But he wants to do it again.” Deena didn’t ask it as a question, and she wasn’t wrong. Dylan had made no secret of his interest in seeing her again now that he was back from Dallas, but she’d been dodging, saying she was busy.
Which was true. Her job took up most of her days, and that was before she’d agreed to take on Walter Cunningham. Still, she didn’t regret offering to help. Walter had stayed with her all day last Wednesday and most of this morning before Serena had taken over so Naomi could attend this meeting. And as much as Naomi had enjoyed her time with Walter, she’d been even more surprised, and alarmed, to realize that she’d enjoyed the moment Oliver had come home in the evening even more.
And the way it had felt so right for the two of them to have dinner—for the second night in a row—was downright terrifying.
“Have you kissed yet?” Deena asked, snapping her gum.
“No! I’m just helping out with his dad for a few days.”
Deena’s jaw stopped working her gum for a moment. “You know Dylan Day’s dad? Damn, woman, you work fast.”
She was saved from having to explain—or trying to explain—the mess she’d gotten herself into with her new neighbor and ex-nemesis as the conference room doors opened.
“Sorry for the delay,” Dylan said, greeting them with a grin. “You must be Deena.”
“In the flesh,” Deena said, shaking his hand and giving him an unabashed once-over. “Yep. Hot.”
Naomi groaned, but Dylan only laughed and gave Naomi a quick wink.
How was it that a wink from Oliver Cunningham could keep her up all night, but a wink from this guy, who was exactly the type of guy she’d always gravitated toward . . . nothing.
The group took their places around the table, and a tall, wiry woman who introduced herself as Libby, the casting director, got right down to business.
“I’ve got our little Naomi.”
Naomi blinked. “What? Already?”
“Well, we’ll still have full casting calls to make sure, but I guarantee you’re going to flip over this kid. She’s based in LA, but her Bronx accent is spot-on.”
Naomi nodded, trying not to get hung up on the irony that she’d spent years trying to get rid of her New York accent, only to have some child star from Hollywood put on that very same accent for entertainment.
No, not just entertainment, Naomi reminded herself. Accuracy. The entire reason for doing this in the first place was so that girls growing up like Naomi did would know there was more than hairstylist and waitress jobs in their future if they wanted it.
“I’m sure she’s perfect,” Naomi said with a smile. “But when we do open it up for casting, can we be sure to put feelers out in the outer boroughs? It may be a long shot, but I’d love if we could find a girl actually from the Bronx.”
“Absolutely. You got it,” Dylan said. Naomi thought she might have seen Libby give just the slightest eye-roll, but the other woman nodded and jotted something in her black notebook.
“Naomi, Caleb Davis, head screenwriter,” a bald guy to her right said, standing to shake her hand. “I’m delighted to say we’ve already got some homework for you.”
Caleb pushed a fat stack of paper across the table. “The pilot. I’ll send you a PDF, too, but I find sometimes the old-fashioned way is best.”
“Wow.” Naomi blinked down at it.
“Told ya we were moving fast on this,” Dylan said.
“Take your time reviewing it,” Caleb said. “And by take your time, I mean if you could have any feedback by next Monday, that’s my deadline.”
Naomi laughed as Deena pulled the script toward her and took a peek at the first few pages. “Got it. Anything I should look out for?”
“Actually, yeah.” Caleb shot a quick look at Dylan, who took over.
“The script’s good,” Dylan said, leaning forward with a smile. “Caleb’s a genius, and pulled together a pretty compelling story of your childhood from the dozens of interviews you’ve done over the years, plus interviews with people who knew you back then—”
“Wait.” Naomi held up her hand. “What?”
A man from her left wearing the most boring blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie combo on the planet jumped all over her incredulous tone. “It was in the contract. Page twenty-three, section 5C, specifically authorizes us to interview all sources we find relevant.”
“Don’t know if you could tell, but lawyer alert,” Dylan whispered loudly, nodding toward Blue Suit.
Everyone chuckled, and Naomi forced a polite smile. “I read the contract. I guess I didn’t expect that people who knew me twenty years ago would be considered relevant.”
“Well, they’re not, really,” Caleb admitted. “We rounded up a few former classmates, but while there was no shortage of people who wanted to tell us about how they ‘knew you when,’ nobody seems to really know you.”
“I was a shy kid.”
It was her standard line, but it wasn’t really true. She’d just been a smart kid. Smart enough to know that most people would throw you under the bus to save their own ass. She could thank Oliver Cunningham for that lesson.
“There is one gap we’re hoping you can fill,” Caleb said, flipping through a yellow legal pad until he found the note he was looking for. “One of our researchers discovered that you briefly transferred out of the Bronx school district when you attended the third grade in school District Two?”
Naomi went still. She didn’t know crap about school zones, but she knew exactly where she’d spent the third grade.
“What does that mean?” Deena asked.
Dylan studied Naomi for a moment, then looked at Deena. “It means Naomi went to third grade in Manhattan.”
Deena shook her head. “Nope. They got it wrong.”
Dylan looked back at Naomi, and she realized she should have seen this coming.
That they wouldn’t be satisfied summarizing her childhood with a series of inspirational anecdotes about how instead of a lemonade stand, she’d sold her own jewelry made out of paper clips and buttons, or how she’d made her own Barbie clothes out of bits of cloth she’d swiped from the mean seamstress who’d lived upstairs. Of course they would want the drama.
And she had to give them credit. They’d gone sniffing and found the jugular of Naomi’s childhood in under a week. Might as well admit the bare minimum now to stop them from digging further.
“They’re not wrong,” she told her assistant quietly.
Deena gave her a startled look. “Really? You grew up in Manhattan?”
Naomi snorted. “Hardly. I lived there for a year. Less than.”
“Why? Where?” Caleb already had his pen ready.
“Park Avenue.”
Deena’s gum stopped smacking for a moment, then resumed a moment later, and she wisely kept from mentioning the calls from 517 Park Avenue and the fact that Naomi had made a last-minute decision to buy that apartment after signing a lease on the Tribeca condo.
Caleb frowned, flipping through his notes. “You live on Park Avenue currently, right?”
“Right.” She sat back and crossed her legs, hoping her clipped tone and cool demeanor would signal nothing to see here, move along.
“What brought you and your mom to the Upper East Side?”
Naomi swallowed. “My mom was sort of a housekeeper/cook/nanny for a family on Park Ave for a while. We lived with them.”
Caleb nodded, jotting something down in his notebook. “Good, this is good stuff. Cinderella stuff. You said you were there for about a year?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you guys leave to head back to the Bronx?”
You and your daughter are trash, and you will always be trash. Get out of my home before I call the authorities.
It was funny that what Naomi remembered most about that awful day was the way Margaret Cunningham never used contractions, chose words like authorities instead of cops, police, or any of the other less flattering terms Naomi was used to hearing, even by age nine.
“The gig had to end sometime, right?” Naomi said, keeping her voice light.
“Sure, I guess,” Caleb said, sounding a little deflated. Again, he flipped back through his pages, frowning. “You said she was a housekeeper?”
“Yep.”
“You haven’t mentioned that before. You said she was a cocktail waitress. A bartender. Manicure gal . . .”
“Oh, they’re called nail artists now,” Deena chimed in.
Caleb gave her a fleeting smile, then turned back to Naomi, clicking the end of his ballpoint pen. “She have any other housekeeping gigs?”
“No.”
The Cunninghams had made sure of that. Naomi didn’t remember much about those days after the incident other than the god-awful mildewy smell of the homeless shelters in February, but she remembered watching her mother’s face grow angrier and angrier as she was systematically rejected from every housekeeper job she’d applied to, live-in or otherwise.
“All right,” Caleb said, tossing his pen down and putting his head between his hands, expression thoughtful. “That’s fine. This is still good stuff. If the first six episodes are about Naomi’s childhood, I’m thinking this year in Park Avenue can be an entire episode, at least—”
“No,” Naomi interjected.
Caleb frowned. “No?”
“That year is off-limits. You can refer to it, or whatever, but I don’t want to show it.”
“But it’s a huge part of your childhood—”
“I said no,” Naomi gritted out.
Oliver, is that true? Did you and Naomi see your father with that woman? Angry blue eyes had drilled into Naomi’s that day as the lie spilled out of his mouth. I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“Off-limits,” she repeated, her voice a little ragged as the memory of Oliver’s betrayal ripped through her.
There was a long silence in the room, and some other guy whose name she’d already forgotten spoke up. “Respectfully, Ms. Powell, our aim here is to show the full story—”
“Dude.” This time it was Dylan who interrupted. “She said it’s off-limits. Drop it.”
Naomi’s head jerked up in surprise, and she met the producer’s gaze across the table. He gave her a smile and a brief nod, and Naomi made up her mind then and there.
Dylan Day deserved a chance.