by Koko Brown
Guilt.
"I'm really grateful for her. This opportunity has been amazing." I didn't know if Alison would have told everyone about me in the trailer, but I needed to start cauterizing this. Jack Steele was good at many things, but apologizing wasn't one of them. "That she even took a chance on me is... wow."
"She really believes in you."
Gut. Punch. "What's she like, outside of work?"
Sarah pursed her lips and stared me down in the mirror, a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth and eyes. "Why do you want to know?"
Oh, shit. Did she know? "I want to find a way to thank her for doing all this extra work just to get me on set. Not a lot of people would be willing to take a chance on me."
"I think you're wrong there, but thanking the woman who helped you is never a bad thing. We're so undervalued here sometimes." Sarah let out a huge sigh. "She mostly just works all the time. The last time we had a break, she drove halfway across the country to see Maroon5 play because she was locked in a casting office when they played in LA. Aside from that, she likes shitty scary movies. And dancing. If I can ever get her to go out, she always wants to go dancing. But I guess you knew that already."
She looked at me very knowingly. I couldn't help but grin like an asshole back. That pole dance was a treasured memory in the spank bank. "I think everyone here doesn't get to enjoy life as much as they want."
"True." Sarah stepped back and cocked her head. "God, guys are so easy. You don't even understand."
I was about to ask more about Alison, because liking Maroon5 was not exactly the inside information I was looking for, when yelling from over the wall broke out. Everyone stopped what they were doing, like gazelles on the plains, and hurried over to the curtain to see what was going on.
I grabbed my script and cut through the crowd. Standing in the center was that dude who hated my guts... Josh something-rather? He flailed his arms around and shoved the script in Denver's face with more attitude than anyone should ever show to a director, much less Denver Latmini. What was this dude's problem?
"It's bullshit and you know it!" Josh flapped his script again. "Who the hell approved this? My character would not say this shit. I think I would know better than anyone, Denver. He's mine."
"Josh, you need to calm down—"
"Remember Jimmy Dean, Denver! He didn't want to accept that drink from the guy he hated because he understood the character’s motivations. The director didn't listen to him and later regretted the fuck out of it because he knew James Dean was right!"
"Are you trying to compare yourself to one of the greatest actors of all time?" I interrupted, coming up behind Denver to rest a hand on his shoulder. "You, the dude who has like twenty minutes of air time in a two-hour long movie, are trying to compare yourself to James Dean?"
Josh's whole face went red. "This doesn't concern you."
"Doesn't concern me? Bro, the entire set can hear you. Cast, crew, God…even that homeless dude dancing with his dick out for cash a few blocks away. Let me clue you in on a little secret, homeslice. You don't get to start making demands until you're a headliner. And even then, you better know what the fuck you're asking for and why."
The little dude turned a deeper shade of red. "Fuck off, Steele. You have no business telling me about set manners. Everyone knows about you."
"You're right. I'm an asshole. I fuck assistants and break props and show up late. That's what you've heard, right?"
He didn't say anything, but sure looked smug as hell.
"But I have always respected the scriptwriters and the director, because that's how I keep my fucking job. You clearly don't know your goddamn place, because you are getting in the face of one of the most brilliant minds in Hollywood because you don't know how to find your goddamn motivation."
"Like you're so great?" Josh scoffed back at me. "Like you know what you're doing up here? You're just a meathead who—"
"Hey, Little Dick, your insecurity is showing." I jabbed a finger in his shoulder. "If you want to get anywhere in this business, shut your goddamned trap and pay attention to the people who know what the hell they are doing."
"That's enough, guys." Denver put his hands between us and pushed. "No fighting on the set."
"I'm not going to fight, Denver, because I'm a professional, unlike JV Club over here. You need to prove yourself before you start slinging around demands, little man. No one will take you fucking seriously if you act like this."
Everyone in the room was staring at us. Josh took a minute to look, too, and he went from bright red to ashen. "What are you all looking at?" he yelled.
"Yelling at the crew won't help your shit, either." I bulked myself up as large as I could go and crossed my arms. Big. Imposing. "Do I need to help you find your motivation to play this shit-eating character? I'd be happy to help."
Snorts of laughter slithered through the crowd. Not a lot, but enough to be known. Josh's whole face screwed up. He stormed away, kicking a large set piece as he left, muttering a bunch of nonsense that was riddled with ‘fuck’.
His bad.
"I'm sorry, Denver." I turned to the director and stretched out a hand. "I didn't want to cause a fuss, but I didn't want that dude to think he could dress you down, either."
Denver rested his hand on my shoulder. "I appreciate that, Jack. You're a good man. But I have had more than my fair share of egotistical actors. I don't need you to be my knight in shining armor."
"Shame, though." I winked at him. "I look good in plate mail."
"I don't even want to know." Denver rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Are you ready to go?"
"Let's do this."
We knocked out a few scenes after that, all of them without the douchebag Josh. I hoped that asshat was crying a river in his tiny little trailer. The nerve of the guy was ridiculous. I got shit because of my criminal record but I still respected a movie set. That guy... that guy was half the problem with Hollywood these days. Upstarts who thought they could do whatever they wanted because they were holding a script. He'd never be anything more than a bottom feeder.
Denver called for a break, so I went to find Alison. I needed to apologize for earlier. Especially after calling Josh out on his shit. I needed an ally somewhere and she was it. Also, I really didn't need her to tell anyone and give them more reasons to fire me. I was a fucking idiot.
"Ah, there you are." Her sweet voice was full of poison, but I didn't care. I turned to meet her, trademark smile on my face. "Your scenes were great this morning. Good job."
"Thank you. That means a lot coming from you." I leaned against the wall next to her. "Listen, I wanted to—"
"You need to be careful, though." She interrupted me. "Josh's dad is a producer on the film. Pissing him off is not the smartest course of action here."
"His dad is a producer? Well, that explains a lot."
"He is. And you need to keep your mouth shut and stop rocking the boat. If word gets around that you're verbally assaulting his son, there will be a lot of pressure to move you out of the role."
When she was frustrated, her mouth did this amazing thing where it looked naughty and sexier than ever. I couldn’t quite figure it out—maybe the way she pursed it—but it reinvigorated all the dirty thoughts I had earlier in my trailer. And at the club. And at the audition.
This girl... I needed her in my bed. Immediately.
She cleared her throat, eyebrows looking unfriendly. "Did you hear me?"
Time for the trademark smile again. "Listen, I'm not worried about it. He tried to start shit with the director and I defended our boss. It's his bad."
Alison didn't seem to like my answer very much. She rolled her eyes and walked away without a goodbye. My god, that ass.
"I'll see you later!" I called after her. She didn't wave.
That was okay. I'd get her to come around eventually. It would just take a little more work. Lucky for me, I liked a good chase…
EIGHT
ALISON
"Have you checked out AMZ lately?" Sarah popped her head into my room. "Or Pesto Marriott?"
I craned my neck up to look at her over my book. "No...why?"
She frowned. "You should probably look."
"Goddammit," I muttered under my breath. I tried to avoid all forms of paparazzi and trash television, even if my career rested on it. So much of it was blatant lies. These jerks printed out figurative garbage that everyone ate up with rusty spoons and then dared to act surprised when someone slapped them with a libel suit. And yet, somehow, they managed to keep churning.
Sarah never told me to read them, which could only mean one thing.
I rolled over on my stomach to grab my phone and started clicking around. It took me less than two minutes to figure out what she was talking about. My charge, the obnoxious and infuriating Jack Steele, was everywhere. For some reason, everyone was talking about his stint in prison: speculation, alleged interviews with former cellmates….Christ, someone even landed an exclusive with ‘a childhood friend’.
Knowing most of these were bullshit, I bypassed all of it and kept searching. Two different OpEd pieces on StuffPo covered it, too. What the hell was going on?
As if on cue, my phone rang.
"Alison."
"Gerald." I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. A coworker once told me it was a pressure point for migraine relief. It’d never worked for me before, but a girl could hope. "How are you?"
"I am going to be kind and assume you know why I'm calling."
"Because I'm your favorite casting director of all time and you would like to—"
"Let's not play games, Alison. We have a lot of money riding on this."
My entire face scrunched up but I kept my voice steady. "I understand. But this is all old news, Gerald. This isn't a breaking report about how he killed someone or... whatever it is he did. This is someone dredging the soil."
"Exactly. Soil that is supposed to be profitable."
"I don't think that fits my analogy."
"He's your responsibility. Fix this." He hung up.
I lay there staring at the ceiling for a solid minute before I kicked my feet and screamed into a pillow. I knew it was childish, but this had become frighteningly obnoxious. This, this right here was why I worked in casting, not in production. I hired them and disappeared into the fray. Good luck, sailors, my work here is done. Except now it wasn't done and I had one asshole to blame.
Myself. Myself and that goddamned dance in that stupid club for this infuriating role for this dumb movie.
"I see you've read the news." Sarah appeared again in the doorway. "Big guys not happy?"
"They are never happy. They are miserable old dudes with too much money and not enough soul." I sat up and scrubbed my face with my hands, like I could peel away all the irritation with my nails. When it didn't, I was left even more upset. "The hell did this guy do, anyway? No one seems to have any actual dirt."
"I think he beat the crap out of a congressman's son?" Sarah licked the lid of a yogurt container thoughtfully. "I seem to remember that much when it first broke. It seemed sort of ridiculous given the crime, you know? Why was he arrested and served time in jail for just hitting someone a few times? Then again, I've never worked on a law show, so maybe that's a felony for all I know."
I frowned. "You're right. That doesn't make much sense. Are you eating my yogurt again?"
"It expires today. You're welcome for not wasting food." With that, she disappeared back into the folds of the house with my breakfast.
Okay. It was time to run damage control. First, I needed to figure out what really happened, then move on to how to spin it in a healthy direction, and finally find the asshole who decided this would be a good idea to spill to the press while he was filming the movie my entire career was currently resting on.
Because I was going to throat punch that motherfucker so, so hard.
It took some digging to get through all the garbage and trash, but I finally found some legit articles from around the time of the incident seven years ago. Turns out our attractive action hero did beat up a congressman's son. Beat him up so bad the kid was in a coma for a week. As a result, Jack got slapped with second degree attempted murder charges.
Holy. Shit.
Flashes of him getting in Josh's face filled my mind. Jack had to be a hundred times stronger now than he was seven years ago. Would he have...? I blinked the thought from my brain.
Jack was originally sentenced to six years, which surely meant the charge wasn't that serious, right? He got out on parole after five years and, at least according to the internet, hadn't had any more serious charges since. Just a few misdemeanors and an attitude that convinced the entire country he could probably kill someone if he didn't want to fuck them.
"This is...weird," I said to no one, after finishing another article. "None of this make sense."
And it didn't. Why did he try to kill this guy? Why only six years for attempted murder? No one could find a connection between the two guys, yet Jack tried to kill him? Jack was a lot of things...but a murderer? Hot-headed, sure. This just felt too big for him.
Unfortunately, the entire case had been sealed up tight and there wasn't a single shred of anything to say why this event occurred. If he was pissed because the son looked at his girlfriend wrong or scratched his tire, that was clearly problematic.
But what if he tried to save someone or...I don't know. This just didn't feel right.
Okay. Step two: spin the press.
If there was one thing they ate up faster than anything, it was the chance for an exclusive on some dirt. If we could stop the bulldozer from piling it on, they’d have to move on to other things. But how did I do that?
"Do you know any secret scandals?" I yelled across the apartment. "Someone sleeping with a director or something?"
"Only every other C-list actress wannabe that no one cares about," Sarah yelled back. A moment later, she was back in my doorway. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to fix this." I gestured to my phone to symbolize the giant clusterfuck it was holding. "I need to spin all this shit in a positive light."
"Isn't that what the PR guy is for? Or his agent, even?"
I glowered at the phone, thinking of Gerald. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"Well...yeah." Sarah looked confused. Then, she snapped her fingers. "Address it head on."
"What?"
"When Molly Blueton had that sex scandal last year, she went straight to the cameras and gave her own side of the story. Told everyone off for digging in her business and provided pictures and stuff to prove her innocence."
"Oh my god, that's right. That's why Pierce Thomas couldn't get a job for like, six months."
"Exactly. She owned that shit and everyone shut up."
"This, though." I wrinkled my nose. "This isn't a sex scandal, this is a legal issue. Everything is sealed and locked. I'm not sure what he can even talk about."
"God, I need to get on Law & Order. You know so much more than me." Sarah shook her head. "Still, if you can get him talking about it from his point of view, and make it go viral, it could help things."
"Viral..." A lightbulb went off in my head. "You're a genius, you know that?"
"Tell that to my mother, please." Sarah winked. "Okay, I'm off to Bikram. Are you coming?"
I dug out my laptop and shook my head. "Can't. Work."
"Girl, they better be paying you a hell of a lot of money to do all this shit. Tell me how it goes when I get back."
I waved her off and started making phone calls, starting with Jack's agent, Bobby, and a hopeful text to Danny. He said I'd owe him for my next favor, but if I could get this to work, I'd do anything he asked. Except sleep with him, because gross. Gross forever.
Bobby was frantic on the phone. "I'm trying to spin as hard as I can, but these people are voracious. You're telling me someone isn't screwing someone else they aren't supposed to right now? How the hell has this whole d
amn town gone abstinent?"
"I said the same thing," I replied, then sighed. "Listen, I have an idea. I want Jack to make a video about the incident, from his side, that we can spread around."
"That's a bit complicated, Alison. This is a legal issue."
"I know, I know. If we play up how he's changed, what he learned, all that shit, I think we can spin it as a redemption story. It doesn’t look like he ever spoke publicly about it. The tiniest tidbit can make a difference, I think. Can you get him to do it?"
Bobby was quiet. "He doesn’t like to talk about it."
"Fine. I'll keep doing your job, then," I snapped and hung up on him. Before I dialed Jack's number, Danny sent me a text back. He'd help if I got his cousin a small role in the movie. Fine. I'd throw him into a crowd scene, whatever. Being on set now afforded me some space I otherwise wouldn't have. Whatever we had to do.
I let him know we could do it and dialed Jack. "You're quite the popular man, Mr. Steele."
"I like hearing you call me that."
I made a face at the phone. "You should really cut that shit out when I'm trying to save your ass."
"You're right, I'm sorry. You just sound so imposing and—"
"Shut up and listen. This is how we are going to do this. You are going to sit your ass down in front of a computer camera and you are going to tell a sob story about how you made a big mistake as a kid, but that your time in jail caused you to dwell on your life circumstances and how you need to make a positive change in yourself and the world. Then, you are going to send it to me and I'll take care of the rest."
He was quiet, just like Bobby. "I don't talk about that."
"And I don't sit around on set babysitting actors. But here we are, Jack. I want it done in twenty minutes. Listen, I don't know what happened and I'm sure it was traumatic as hell to be there, but I've got producers breathing down my neck about the bad publicity this is spinning for your movie."
More silence. I pinched my nose again and took a deep breath. Time to change tactics?
"Jack, please. I would say you could just lie, but I don't want someone to refute you. I know this is shitty, but this is someone threatening everything important to you. If we lose you in this role, the movie tanks. You become unemployable. I want to help salvage your career. I want to help jettison it. I can't do this without you. Can you do this for me?"
