“Mackenzie, listen, I know you’re nervous about this,” Angie said over the phone, “but DreamWeaver turns out incredible movies, you know that. And you know me.”
It was her third week on the job, and she was working hard to convince Mackenzie Martin to sell DreamWeaver the rights to Peregrine, which was climbing the bestseller list. Joaquin was right—everyone did love stories about crazy family shit, especially true stories about crazy family shit, so much so that the book had spurred a bidding war. Mackenzie was intent on making sure that when she sold the rights or got an option, she was still protecting the integrity of her project. It was her life, after all.
That was why she hadn’t yet accepted Angie’s offer. Or anyone else’s. She had explained that she’d written Peregrine as a form of therapy, to make peace with her traumatic and peripatetic past, and as an offering to a new generation of scared kids. She wanted them to know that they, too, could survive a difficult and tumultuous upbringing.
“Getting published was a dream come true,” she told Angie. “And if it’s a movie, it can reach so many more people, but God knows how it would turn out. I mean, dramatic license and all that. This is my life.”
“Of course your story is important to you,” Angie conceded. “But think of it this way: How much control will you have if you sign the rights away to a studio where you know no one? Here, you have me. I worked for Rita. I know what books mean to writers. And your story is what DreamWeaver does best, movies that highlight the intensity and beauty and poignancy of the human experience.” She surprised herself—it was a good argument.
“I get it, and DreamWeaver is looking really good. But I don’t want to agree to something and then regret it. Can I think just a little more?”
“I understand, it’s a big decision. And if it were up to me, you could have as much time as you want. But the studio needs an answer. I can give you a few more days, but then I have to move on. So let me know by the end of the week. And if you have questions in the meantime, just shoot me an email or call.”
She hung up after a quick goodbye. She thought she was getting good at her job, the negotiating part. Much to her surprise, negotiating on behalf of DreamWeaver came naturally because she believed in the studio’s capability to make an honest, compelling film out of a personal work like Peregrine.
There was a light knock on the door, which Angie usually left ajar, and she looked up to see Nicole. “How’s Mackenzie? Getting close?”
“Still undecided. I told her I need to know this week. I’ve stressed that her kind of dramatic personal story is what this studio does well, so if she wants an opportunity to have an artistically great film come out of her book, she needs to sign with us. Or we can option it if that’s all she’s willing to do. But she’s getting a lot of interest, and she’s nervous about committing.”
“Does it sound like it’s a ‘no’ and she’s just toying with us to see if she can get more money from somebody else?” Nicole leaned against the doorframe.
“It’s definitely not a ‘no.’”
“Hey, there, sorry to interrupt.” A petite Asian woman in black stilettos and a becoming fitted pink dress appeared behind Nicole. “Charles wants to see you before his six o’clock.”
“Thanks, Kristy,” Nicole said as the messenger slipped away as quickly and quietly as she’d arrived.
Nicole addressed Angie again. “I gotta go, but I’m glad you put some pressure on Mackenzie. I don’t want to read in Variety that someone else optioned it and then have to face Charles. Let’s hope she comes around.”
“Let’s hope.” But Angie was barely listening, her heart pounding in her throat. As soon as Nicole was gone, she sprang down the hall, scanning glass-walled meeting rooms that were mostly empty. It was late, and many people were gone for the day.
She took the elevator down a floor to where some assistants sat at desks laid out in quad formations as part of an open plan. A few gathered around a desk, deep in animated conversation, and a woman and a man were typing with headphones on. But there was no one she recognized. Where did you go?
She didn’t know what she’d say when she finally tracked down Kristy, but she had to find her. Angie had read in numerous news articles that a studio assistant named Kristy Wong had found Scarlett’s body. It had to be the same person who’d just talked to Nicole. She’d been hoping to meet her ever since arriving at DreamWeaver, but their paths hadn’t crossed and she’d been too damn busy during the days and too exhausted in the evenings and on weekends to go digging.
Angie was in by nine and usually worked past seven. There were meetings with the development team, reports to write, articles and books to scour, writers and agents to contact, and the studio’s own records of options and productions—a thicket of paper and electronic files—to wade through. She also had to keep abreast of what other studios and streaming services were producing.
Nicole was always knocking on her door, asking about this prospect or that, and priorities shifted all the time, depending on Charles’s mood. One time she stood over Angie’s desk dictating one of his whims. “He wants something set in the post-war period, like the 1950s but not the sock hop 1950s, more like . . .” She had looked down at her spiral notebook and read, “‘Levittown and the GI Bill and the nascent rise of the middle class.’ He’s called me four times in three days talking about it. Do we have anything on that?”
“I haven’t seen anything,” Angie had admitted. “But I’ll go through what’s upcoming at the big publishing houses—”
“Do more than go through it,” Nicole had snapped. “Find something!”
Angie had worked late for days to produce coverage reports on a book, a short story, and an autobiographical magazine article that tapped into Charles’s request. Nicole had been pleased, but when she showed Charles, he’d thought the stories were too bland. They were put on a back burner, and he moved on to another idea.
“So, how goes it?” Scott asked one night just as Angie was getting back to the house, her phone propped between shoulder and ear, attempting to fish her keys out of her purse on the front step.
“Um, I don’t even really know,” she confessed. “I’m keeping up, but it’s all I do. I sleep on weekends and try to recharge so I don’t totally crash and burn. I’m still dealing with books and writing so I’m not completely out of my depth, but there’s a lot more pressure and the pace is fast. I’m not sure how long I can keep it up. And I keep wondering if I’m going to have a panic attack at just the wrong time.”
“You can always come back—”
“Scotty, I’m actually surprised at myself. I mean, I think I’m actually doing okay, just really tired.”
“We miss you, you know, and, if I haven’t said this before, I think this move was good. I mean, I know you have to manage the depression and anxiety, but I’d be sad if you spent your entire life at Rita’s. You have a lot to offer, Ange. You know that, right?”
“Thanks, Scotty, that means a lot. I just hope I can last out here, at least until . . .”
“Until what?”
Angie caught herself. She hadn’t confided in her brother that she went to LA to pursue her questions about Scarlett’s death. She didn’t have the energy to try and convince him. “Oh, you know, just until I get the hang of it,” she finally supplied, and then changed the subject. “How’s Brontë? Adjusting?”
“She’s settled right in. The kids love her.”
Angie was glad for that, and for Scott’s support, but three weeks in she was starting to wonder if she’d ever find Kristy Wong.
As Angie stalked the floor of cubicles, she didn’t spot her among the other assistants, and people were starting to notice her lurking. She couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself, so she strode away from the assistants’ pen with purpose until she turned a corner and nearly slammed into a group of people waiting for the elevators.
“Well, hello. Nice to see you.” Tanya Castillo, wearing an elegant beige suit and a bemused smile, stood with two young men who were probably lawyers but could have been bodyguards. There were guys like that all over the offices. They trailed the top executives everywhere and were never introduced. Angie felt like everyone knew what they did except her.
“Hello, Tanya,” Angie said, trying to think of something, anything to say. “Nice to see you again. And to be working with you . . . here.”
The elevator dinged, and as Tanya’s group moved toward the opening doors, Angie, on impulse, joined them. She had no idea where they were headed, but she had to take every single opportunity that presented itself if she was going to learn anything about the studio, meaning Scarlett.
They rode up in an awkward silence until Tanya finally turned her way. “How are you settling in?”
“Fine, thank you.” More silence. She wondered if they would win a prize for most stilted elevator conversation ever. “I’m working for Nicole in Development, and I’m using my connections in publishing, so it’s working out well.”
“Right. I know.”
God, of course Tanya knew. She was there when Angie interviewed. Until Charles kicked her and Kevin out of his office.
The elevator doors opened, and Tanya strode out, trailed by her entourage.
It was the top floor. C-suite.
Angie followed. She couldn’t have gotten up there without an elevator key, so she was technically somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be on her own. But maybe Tanya doesn’t care. She thinks I’m meek, harmless. Good.
Tanya stopped then. “Angie.”
Angie stopped too. Shit.
“Maybe we should make some time to catch up. My assistant will call to set something up.” Then she continued down the hall, her goons, or junior lawyers, in tow.
Why would the head of legal want to catch up with a lowly CE? Tanya had known Scarlett. And socialized with her. So perhaps that put Angie in a different league. Or maybe she was keeping tabs on her.
It was impossible to discern Tanya’s motive. But Angie could worry about that later. Right then, she was facing the same glass doors she and Nicole had walked through on their way to her job interview. She tentatively held out her arm and gently pushed one door. Unlocked. She looked around. No one in sight. Before she had time to think, she darted through and came to the wide-open reception area that led to Charles’s private office. The blue leather couches, the glass-and-metal tables, the enormous movie posters, the staggering views of the city.
What if someone asks what I’m doing here? Looking for . . . Nicole?
“I don’t give a flying fuck what that asshole says!”
Angie jumped. Charles’s booming voice from down the hall to his inner chamber was unmistakable, but it was impossible to tell whom he was yelling at.
“I can buy and sell that sonofabitch ten times over, you know that? FUCK HIM. He thinks he can tell Vivian Reno not to work with me? Because I’m not nice? Jesus fucking Christ. In a few years she’ll be lucky to get cast on some shit network sitcom. I want her for this. I know she’s right for it. She’ll get an Oscar. We just took home a boatload of fuckin’ Oscars and she will, too, if she does this. Do we have Gary locked in?”
Angie looked around. Still no one. She moved down the hall toward the wood door that led to Charles’s office, her heart pounding in her ears. She thought she could feel her blood pumping through her veins.
She didn’t hear anyone else’s voice. Charles’s got quieter. Was he on the phone? Or were his underlings too cowed to respond? “You call back her fucking agent and you get her to meet with me.” A murmur of a response. Then Charles speaking heartily: “We’ll have lunch. A nice lunch. Very easygoing. She’ll see that I can be very easy to work with. Congenial. I’m a congenial guy. And she will understand that there is no part better than the one I’m dangling in front of her that will ever give her the kind of clout or exposure she’s fucking lucky to get at her age.”
“Angie, do you need something?”
Angie jumped again. No more than four feet away stood Charles’s right-hand man himself—the tanned and funkily tailored-to-perfection Kevin Li.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “But I don’t usually see you up here.”
“Yes.” Angie couldn’t figure out what to say next. She instinctively backed away from the door to Charles’s office. Had it been obvious she’d been eavesdropping? “I was, um, trying to catch Nicole before her meeting with Charles. We just had a meeting, but it can wait. It sounds like he’s got people in there.”
Kevin held her gaze. “Oh, I see. Well, yes. Nicole’s in that meeting, but better to wait unless it’s an emergency. Charles doesn’t like to be interrupted.”
“Of course. No, not an emergency. I can tell her later. Thanks, Kevin. Nice to see you again.”
She made her way toward the suite door.
“Angie?”
She froze for a moment then turned back to him. She couldn’t get a read on the guy.
“How’s everything going for you out here?”
“You mean here at work? It’s good. Everything’s good, though, you know, a bit difficult at times as I get my sea legs. Lot to learn.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” There was a bit of an awkward pause. “Well, I’ll tell Nicole you wanted her when she comes out.”
“Thanks, that’s . . . thanks.” Angie moved briskly to the elevator, rode back down to her floor, and walked down the hall and into her office, where she shut the door and leaned against it, finally letting out her breath.
Well, she’d heard Charles Weaver’s temper firsthand.
Her phone beeped.
Up for Happy Hour?
Nicole. Apparently the meeting ended moments after Angie fled.
Sure, sounds good.
Angie had been slowly getting to know Nicole better since she’d started. Nicole had started taking Angie to lunches with producers, managers, and writers, ostensibly to expose her to the larger movie ecosystem, but Angie thought it was actually to leverage her post-Oscars profile for the studio’s benefit.
“This is Angela Norris,” she’d say by way of introduction at one of their various meetings around town. “She’s just joined our development staff at DreamWeaver. You probably heard her speak at the Oscars this year?”
But Angie didn’t care if she was being used. The reality was that she had the right skills for her job and was getting better at it all the time. If she was hired as much for Scarlett’s name as her abilities and contacts, so what? It got her where she needed to be. It’s not like she didn’t have her own ulterior motives.
Though finding answers about Scarlett was even harder than she’d thought it would be. DreamWeaver was a tightly controlled environment. When she’d first arrived, she’d assumed she’d hear some talk about what went on behind closed doors. But no one openly gossiped. Angie only ever heard chatter about the business at hand or innocuous mentions of what was happening at other studios or who had spotted which actors or directors at which restaurant or film premier or screening. And people got suspicious if you poked around too much.
She cautiously broached the topic one morning with Sandra, another CE, as they chatted at the studio’s espresso station. “It seems pretty buttoned-up around here.” It was an awkward opener and Angie knew it the second it was out of her mouth.
“What do you mean?” Sandra was a bit reserved and smart, a Midwesterner by birth, and Angie and she had become friendly, if not exactly friends.
“I think I was expecting more of an open culture.” Angie chose her words with care. “There are so many creative people around, but I never hear any discussions, people giving their opinions about this actor or that project. But maybe it’s happening and I’m just not part of it.”
Sandra gave a short, tense laugh. “No, you’re not missing out, it’s just not a place where people talk freely outside their own responsibilities. Charles doesn’t go in for a lot of freethinking. He prefers to set the agenda.”
I’ll bet.
“Plus, well, we had something happen once,” Sandra said as they sat at a small table with their coffees.
“Something?”
Sandra hesitated, then started typing into her phone. “Someone talked to a journalist who was doing a behind-the-scenes look at how stories make it to the big screen. They were quoted, anonymously, saying that some studios try to lock in A-list actors for future projects that aren’t even far along in development yet, just to keep them away from rivals. Anyway, once the story came out, Charles went crazy.” She looked around before lowering her voice. “We had all these new people show up around the studio, and everybody thought they were private investigators who were trying to find the leak. Two days later, we got this.”
She slid her phone over to Angie. It was open to an email attachment, which read:
To the DreamWeaver staff:
By now we’ve all seen the Hollywood Highways story. I was deeply disappointed to see that one of our own spoke to the press under the cloak of anonymity.
Perhaps I have not been sufficiently clear. For those of you toiling under the assumption that you are free to speak to reporters, allow me to clarify: You are not.
We have a media relations department staffed by professionals who are paid to handle such inquiries. If there is something particular someone outside that department should speak to, the department will authorize an interview, with my express permission and questions approved beforehand.
We work in a highly competitive industry. We guard our trade secrets. They help us succeed and make the kinds of films we can all be proud of.
I’m personally hurt that one of us would breach the trust of the DreamWeaver family. My door is always open if any of you have concerns or questions. In the meantime, I trust I shall never again open a newspaper to find an unvetted, anonymous quote from someone in my employ.
~C.
“Did they ever find who gave the interview?” Angie asked when she was finished reading.
Sandra shook her head. “But, like, half a dozen people were fired. That was the rumor anyway. I think they signed NDAs, so no one talked about it officially, like in the entertainment press. But everyone knew what happened. And after that, no more anonymous comments showed up in the news.”
***
“You’re good at this,” Nicole said that evening at a trendy bar on Wilshire, all wood and exposed brick with some neon to give it a kick. The crowd was a nice mix of business professionals, hipsters, and, it appeared, screenwriters who sat with their laptops, drinking cocktails, thinking pensively, and then furiously typing when inspiration struck. “You rip through reading and write good coverage reports, but you also handle yourself pretty well with people when we’re talking business. You’re sure you’re an introvert?” She grinned then took a long sip of a blood-orange margarita.
“I’m not great at socializing but talking about books and stories, it’s what I know, and how stories might work as films just seems to come naturally.”
Angie felt comfortable with Nicole. But she also had to remind herself not to relax too much. She was there for a reason and if she got found out before she could uncover what had driven Scarlett to suicide, everything she had done so far would have been for nothing.
“So, what was it like being an agent? Or an agent’s assistant? No offense, but no one likes dealing with agents. Maybe New York book agents are better than the assholes out here?”
“Rita’s pretty old school.” Angie ran a finger along the rim of her white wine spritzer. “New York is just very different. There’s a lot of money, but people don’t show off in the same way. New Yorkers are very direct. It’s all mean-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean, at least in my experience. They can be real hotheads, too, but you know where you stand. I can’t read people out here.”
“There’s not much to read. In fact, we don’t read, per se. We watch. We watch movies, we watch people, we watch famous actors, and then we watch the sun set over the Pacific.”
Angie laughed mostly as a cover so she could study Nicole. Her boss’s hair was pulled into a high bun with ringlets toppling out. She wore a sleeveless red silk blouse and black skirt, gold jewelry, and dressy open-toed platforms. She always looked great but never tried too hard—that was for the insecure, and Nicole came across to Angie as very secure.
Watching her, Angie wanted to know more about her, like where she’d grown up and gone to school, what kind of books she liked. She wanted to know who she was, not just who she presented to the world. But that would take time, have to happen organically, and she had something far more pressing to tackle.
“I ended up near Charles’s office late today,” she offered, eager to get out in front of any information Kevin may have relayed. “I overheard part of a conversation. Didn’t mean to, but Charles sounded pretty worked up.”
Nicole assessed her carefully. “I was actually in that meeting. And, yes, he was worked up. Charles wants what he wants, and he was getting very impatient that this actress . . . Anyway, that doesn’t matter. Why were you up there? Were you looking for me?”
“Yeah. Kevin was supposed to let you know. I was going to, uh, call Mackenzie back and I wanted to run something by you before I suggested it to her . . .” Angie felt bad about lying, but she had to gauge Nicole’s reaction. She had no idea how close Nicole and Charles were. Did he ever confide in her?
“Hmmm,” Nicole said without supplying anything meaningful. “If I can give you a bit of advice: Don’t look like you’re hanging around. If Charles starts seeing you milling about, he’s going to wonder why you don’t have better things to do. He’s suspicious of people who aren’t doing what he thinks they should be doing.”
“Do you like working for him?”
Nicole looked at Angie. “It’s business. DreamWeaver is one of the best places to be right now, so I make it work.”
Angie felt she needed to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Did you always know you wanted to work in movies?”
“Always. My sisters and I would watch movies with my mom and dad on weekends. My folks always had so much to do, so many concerns about jobs and parenting and, you know, all the usual. But then we’d sit down and watch great old movies with Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Angela Bassett, and, of course, Denzel, who is essentially God at our house. I just thought, gosh, if you could make movies, these magical spaces where people could be lovers or killers, from any time or place, doing things they’d never do in real life, why would you do anything else? Everything else seemed hopelessly dull in comparison.”
Angie smiled. “Did your sisters feel the same way?” She felt a pang at that word—“sisters.”
“Hell, no. They loved watching the movies but mostly because it was fun and we were all together. Jenna, who’s older than me, is an accountant. Deidre, the baby, is a physical therapist.”
“Did you study film?”
“I actually went to school for nursing.” Nicole played with her napkin, ripping small tears in its border. “Fulfilling a dream of my mother’s, who’s an RN. But I didn’t have the focus for science. I switched sophomore year to creative writing and media studies. And after college, I worked in casting for a few years and then talked my way into a production internship at Paramount. When that ended, I was hired full-time and worked my way into development. Then I got hired at DreamWeaver. So that’s my bio in under a minute.”
“You’ve done well,” Angie said, wondering, Do I go there? She decided there was no time like the present. “Did you ever meet my sister?”
“A couple of times, at screenings, that kind of thing. Everyone was excited about Catapult. Your sister made a huge leap with that movie. And she was well-liked. I never heard that she treated people on set badly or anything like that. And that stuff gets around. It’s really a very small town. You know who’s a pain in the ass to work with and who isn’t. Patricia Bartlett, for instance, can be a total ass, to be polite about it.”
Angie nodded. “I don’t know Patricia well, but I know she was tight with Scarlett. And you’re right—about Scarlett, I mean. She was the nicest, well, really the best person I knew. She looked out for me my whole life.” Her voice faltered.
Nicole put out her hand and covered one of Angie’s. “I really am so sorry. I can’t imagine.”
“Thanks.” Angie suddenly felt a wave of fatigue and wanted to get home. But she wasn’t done. She took a sip of her spritzer for courage. “I read a journal Scarlett kept,” she ventured. “She sounded as though she was losing it in her last days. Said she didn’t like the studio but liked being on set. Rambling on and on about all sorts of things, Charles . . .”
“Sorry—” Nicole drained her drink. “I wouldn’t know about any of that.” She gave Angie a little look of sympathy. “Shall we head out?”
Angie decided not to press further. Prying more information out of Nicole would have to wait.
***
The next day was the weekly pitch session, and the CEs gathered as usual in Nicole’s office, brainstorming ideas and where to find scripts or books to match them. Mackenzie still hadn’t called, which made Angie nervous, but she was up to speed with her work so she at least felt confident about that.
“What about an adventure set in the Calico silver mines?” Mark, one of the CEs asked. He was a native Angeleno and knew a lot about Southern California history and heritage. “We could go scout it out, it’s just over in San Bernardino. I grew up near there and was always fascinated by the old mine towns.”
“I saw at least two westerns in the pipeline already, one of which is moving into pre-production.” Angie moved her laptop so he could see the spreadsheet Nicole had shown her on her first day. “Cabin Fever and Whiskey Barrel.”
“I like the sound of Calico,” Nicole said. “We’ve never done anything local, it would be easy to get press, and the setting sounds novel. But I don’t know if we’d want a historic setting. How about a contemporary adventure?”
“I thought we didn’t want too many similar concepts at once,” Angie countered.
“Sure, but we have to be prepared if those projects fail.”
Angie didn’t know what to say to that.
“Financing may not come through or something else may unravel to kill a project,” Nicole explained.
“But if something is already in pre-production . . .” Angie faltered.
“We need to have the rights to as many interesting prospects as possible so we can move on if something fizzles,” Nicole said flatly. “If there’s a bunch of sci-fi or westerns or rom-coms somewhere in the pipeline, it’s not a problem.” She looked at everyone, slowly, her eyes resting on each of them in turn as she spoke. “Possibilities. Charles wants to see lots of great possibilities.”
Angie’s phone beeped. Email.
Dear Angie,
I’ve thought a lot about what you said. And I’m going with DreamWeaver. If I sell my rights to the highest bidder, I could end up with something I barely recognize as my own work. DreamWeaver didn’t offer me the most money, to be honest, but I believe it will do the best job with my story. Let me know what the next step is. Excited for this! Thanks!
~ Mackenzie Martin
She gasped, covering her mouth with one hand. When she looked up, she realized she had the room’s attention. “Well?” Nicole prodded. “Good news? Bad news?”
“Great news. For us. That was Mackenzie Martin. She’s going with us for Peregrine.”
Nicole surveyed the group. “That is what I’m talking about. Possibilities. This is one of the hottest book titles about to drop and now we have our fingers in the pot.”
Angie was a little stunned. Somehow, the victory seemed almost anticlimactic. Did I oversell to Mackenzie? Nicole makes everything sound much more tentative than I thought.
“This will get made, right?” she asked. Everyone grew quiet.
“What do you mean?” Nicole gave her a quizzical look.
“You just said how so many things can go wrong. I just hope, I mean, this story means so much to Mackenzie and Rita, and I hope a really great film does come out of it, that the financing comes through, and, well, whatever else it actually takes to get it made . . .” Angie looked at Nicole and her colleagues.
“Oh, my God, Angie, this isn’t group therapy,” Sandra tossed out without looking up from her phone. “We can’t worry about every writer. If Charles wants to make a film out of it, he’ll make a film. That’s not our job. Our job is to lock in the rights.”
“Right,” Nicole concluded. “Angie, the takeaway here is that you did a great job. You got the rights. The rest is out of your hands. You didn’t promise a film.”
“I just . . .”
“Your job is to find intellectual property. That’s it. But if you have concerns, come to me privately.”
“Sure. Sorry.” Angie kept a low profile for the rest of the meeting, trying to look engaged. When it finally, mercifully ended, she slunk back to her office, where she sat in silence for a few minutes. The day was drawing to a close, and nothing was keeping her there. But something nagged at her.
She opened her computer and looked at the spreadsheet again. There were more than 150 titles listed. Two were categorized under “Casting.” Two were categorized as “Shooting.” The others were listed as “Pending.” She hadn’t studied the categories before as her focus had been on familiarizing herself with the kinds of stories and settings the studio had already gone after versus where they were in the pipeline.
She minimized the spreadsheet and started clicking around the company’s internal website, finally choosing one of the titles listed on the spreadsheet—Alabaster Cove. She got a one-line result: “The title cannot be found.”
She tried a few more titles.
Atlantic Memories
Criminal Error
Night Lights and Day Dreams
Nothing. She clicked around the website some more. There was a huge section about Charles, pages in black and white about DreamWeaver’s early days in Jersey City and New York, tabs for each film DreamWeaver had produced going back twenty years to when it had first opened shop in LA.
But who was Charles really? At work, he was so different from the man she’d met at the Oscars. His temper. That bizarre baseball bat story. The way he’d kept Scarlett off-balance on the Catapult set by pressuring her one day and fawning over her the next. The intent to cajole that actress, Vivian Reno, to sign after a “congenial” schmoozy lunch. What if something had happened to make him angry with Scarlett, like he’d gotten angry with Vivian Reno? He had sounded enraged. He intended to destroy her if she didn’t sign with DreamWeaver. He was used to getting what he wanted, no matter how big or small, no matter the damage. Was Scarlett just collateral damage?
Her breathing grew shallow. Sweat broke out on her forehead, under her arms.
Oh, God, oh, no, oh, God, not here, not at work, not here, please, no.
She stood and gripped the edge of her desk before shakily crossing the room, shutting her office door, locking it. She turned off the light, closed the blinds, and sank to the floor. Pulling her knees into her chest, she wrapped her arms around them and lowered her head, focusing on her breathing. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
Breathing wasn’t enough. She crawled across the floor to her desk and pulled down her handbag, spilling the contents. She grappled for the vial of lavender essential oil and rubbed it on her temples and her wrists, inhaling deeply. Then she lay down on her side, curled up in the fetal position, breathing rhythmically, four times in, four times out, four times in. She clutched the lavender and brought it to her nose.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. What made me think I could do this? Oh, God, make it stop. Please, please, please. Not here, not here . . . She made little rocking movements curled up on the floor.
It took time, but eventually her breath grew more regular. She sat up, drew her knees to her chest again, and gently rested her head on them. The attack was powerful but she realized somehow she was more so.
When it finally ebbed, Angie gathered the contents of her bag and put it all back in. Feeling ragged, she stood, smoothed her clothing, collected her things, and left her office. She just had to get home. She just had to get home.
The offices were dark and hushed. The lights were on in the halls as usual, but most of the employees had vacated.
And it gave her an idea.
Nicole hadn’t reacted at all when Angie mentioned Scarlett at happy hour. She wondered what Nicole knew, if anything. If something had happened at the studio, or in the corporate offices, there would be some kind of evidence of it. Right?
She went to the bank of elevators and hit the Up button. A vacuum ran somewhere down the hall and as it got louder, she stifled flickers of panic. She could just as easily be heading down to the parking garage. “Oops, I hit Up by accident. I was looking at my phone,” she could say should a cleaning person come by and ask her where she was going. A wave of relief flooded through her when the bell dinged and an empty car presented itself. She slipped inside, and then she realized she needed the goddamn key card to get up to C-suite.
The doors were sliding shut when a wooden pole was suddenly lodged between them, causing them to separate again. A cleaning woman with unruly red hair and sparkling blue eyes stood there holding the handle of a mop, her cart loaded with supplies behind her.
“Going up?” she chimed.
“Um. Yes. Of course. I mean . . .” Angie gestured to the control panel. “My boss needs to . . . needs me to get something from her office. She had to . . . go to a premiere. And she . . . forgot her shoes.”
“So you need a scan?”
“A scan?”
The custodian stepped into the car and held up a key card. “A scan.” She scanned the card and the doors closed.
Angie hit the button for C-suite. “Thank you so much.”
“Of course.”
They stood in silence, the custodian keeping her eyes straight ahead. Angie was terrified she’d ask questions, her name, her clearance on other floors. But she said nothing. Angie held her breath and prayed when she arrived no straggler would be standing there waiting to go home. God forbid if it was Charles himself.
She swallowed down another rush of anxiety as she watched the floors slowly tick upward.
When the doors finally slid open, she inhaled deeply before stepping out into the hall. She looked in both directions and exhaled. Nothing but shadows. The custodian, thankfully, toddled off in the opposite direction to Nicole’s office, which was at the end of the hall. Angie could only hope that it was unlocked, but she was afraid she was running out of good fortune.
When she got there, the office was dark and the door was open.
Do you always leave your office unlocked?
But it couldn’t be a trap. Angie herself hadn’t known she’d be sneaking around until just minutes earlier. Still, she felt like she was being watched.
Despite the darkness of the room, she knocked and called out, “Hey, Nicole?” and waited a moment before poking her head inside. Dim lights from neighboring buildings glowed softly through the windows, but otherwise the space was still. She darted into the room, closed the door behind her, and made her way to the desk, where she turned on a small lamp.
But she didn’t have time to relax. Who knew why the door had been open? Who knew when a cleaning person could come by? Or a workaholic coworker.
Nicole’s desk was tidy, as usual. The clear glass top was barely smudged, a folder and her laptop taking up the only real estate. Two charcoal-gray drawers were on one side. She opened the top one to reveal the usual office paraphernalia: stapler, Post-its, pens, Sharpies, plus one plain key ring with a small brass key.
She closed the drawer and went to open the one beneath it. Locked.
“Shit.” She wished she hadn’t spoken aloud the second it was out.
Then she had a thought. She opened the top drawer again, withdrew the key, and inserted it into the lock on the bottom drawer. It turned, it clicked, the drawer slid open. At least thirty hanging folders waved back and forth. There were no tabs on top designating the contents, so she flipped through them until she came to one that was thicker than the rest. She selected it, set it on the top of the desk, and opened it. On top of a sheaf of papers was a spreadsheet similar to the one she’d been accessing, but it looked like it contained many more titles and pages. She thumbed through pages and pages of titles she’d never heard of. Options from years earlier?
Despite it not seeming to be anything to do with Scarlett, she sensed she needed to investigate more deeply, so she pulled out her phone to snap images. But what if the flash attracted attention? She really had to get out.
She closed the folder and was slipping it back into its place when something clattered to the floor. She gasped and froze. Nothing more came.
“Fuck.”
She got on her hands and knees, shining her phone’s light under the desk, across the floor, and there, under one of the chairs for guests, was a small metallic object. She crawled over and grabbed it: a flash drive. Had it fallen from the folder? Was it buried under the documents? Did Nicole even use it?
A muffled voice drifted in from the hall and Angie stood so abruptly she almost knocked the chair over. The custodian. Singing to herself.
In a panic, Angie slipped the flash drive into her pocket and closed the drawer as gently as possible. Opening the door, she startled the cleaning lady who removed her ear buds, putting a hand to her heart.
“Sorry to give you a fright,” Angie said brightly. “Just finishing up.”
She didn’t give the woman a chance to rejoin. She closed the door and strode toward the bank of elevators.
At home, she inserted the flash drive into Scarlett’s laptop only to find that it was password-protected. Damn! She couldn’t catch a break.