by Havana Adams
“Sure thing.” Alex nodded, as the cop snapped a photograph with her phone. Back on firm ground, he smiled widely watching in the rear-view mirror as she walked back into her squad car.
By the time he finally pulled up outside Shay’s apartment, what little alcohol there’d been in his system had dissipated leaving him stone cold sober. He left the engine running looking up at the Art Deco block of apartments as it occurred to him that he had no idea what number Shay’s apartment was. But short of ringing all of the forty or so buzzers, he’d have to call her and hope she was ready to talk to him. Alex flicked the engine off. Then he groaned a sigh of frustration as he realised that he’d left his cell phone at the house.
He grimaced unfolding his tall frame from the car. He’d already walked up the path towards the apartment block when he realised that he’d left the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. As he turned to go back to the car, Alex spotted movement at the entrance to the building, a chance to get in. He approached the doors quickly as a woman emerged from within and a tiny dog on a leash immediately beginning to yap.
“Nice dog.” The woman, a petite redhead in a pink velour jogging suit looked up at him and then a smile burst across her face.
“Wow, you’re Alex Golden,” she said. “Shay really works for you?” Alex loved these chatty types.
“Yes, do you know her?” He turned on the charm, giving the blonde the full benefit of his blue eyes.
“Sure, she’s right above me.” Alex nodded.
“That’s 4…” He trailed off hoping.
“No 5b.” Alex shot her another smile as he manoeuvred past her into the building.
“Thanks.” He called back over his shoulder.
“What the fuck?”
It was not the welcome he’d have liked but still Shay hadn’t kicked him straight out and he was sprawled on a tiny sofa, in her doll’s house proportioned apartment. Alex looked around disconcerted. He cleared his throat.
“Shay, I pay you well, don’t I?” Shay padded back into the living room. She watched Alex shaking her head with irritation and with a measure of affection that she couldn’t quite hide.
“Why have you driven all the way here, in like the middle of the night?” She set down the steaming mug of coffee on a coaster on the table.
“You weren’t answering my calls.”
“Because I didn’t want to talk to you.” Alex looked hurt and Shay clicked her tongue until he cleared the hound dog expression off his face, she’d quickly grown immune to his charms in her first months working for him.
“What am I supposed to do without you? Everything’s fallen apart since you left.” Shay took a deep breath and tried to remember all the reasons why she’d quit working for Alex. “Avital’s screwing me and now Max Maguire has signed up to do Defender.” Shay sighed, as her quiet evening watching back episodes of Medium receded further away. “Do you think I’m past it?”
“Alex, it was one bad opening, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Is that what you really think? That I’m just being paranoid?” Shay took a deep breath as she weighed her answer. Sure she’d walked out on Alex, but she expected that he’d talk her round as he always did and she’d go back to work for him. But if she told him the truth now, she knew it might end their relationship. There was that mantra she’d seen once, ‘In Hollywood truth and business don’t mix,’ yet even as she resolved to say nothing, the words were already spinning out of her.
“Alex the films are shit and you’ve turned into just another Hollywood cliché – fast cars, fast life, easy women. It’s tired. That sexy English guy, that’s what we wanted and you’ve gone all Hollywood and not in a good way. Max Maguire is sort of you 5 years ago.” Shay took a deep breath as the words finally stopped tumbling from her.
“Don’t hold back," Alex snapped and Shay sighed.
“You asked for the truth.” She read the confusion in Alex’s eyes and once again an overwhelming desire to protect him rose up in her. But she squashed it down quickly. Alex Golden was no vulnerable man-child in need of her mothering or her advice even. He was The Modeliser; he’d be fine. Men like him were always fine and yet as she stared into his troubled blue eyes, she wondered if the depths she sometimes sensed hidden, didn’t hold more vulnerability than Alex liked to admit.
“What do I do? Even if I wanted to, how do I go back to being that guy?” Alex asked the question quietly.
“I don’t know Alex, I really don’t know.”
They continued to sit facing each other for a long moment as their coffees went cold. Finally Alex stood, his tall frame making her tiny apartment seem even more miniature in size.
“Will you come back?” Alex asked and the hint of vulnerability was gone Shay noted and now he was all business.
“I’ll think about it.” She replied and Alex nodded.
“Well, while you think about it, could you help me figure out how to access my messages, I had a little accident with the phone.” Shaking her head Shay reached for her phone quickly tapping in a number and then when prompted an access code. She flicked the phone onto speaker, taking a sip of her lukewarm coffee.
“You have 6 new messages," the automated voice informed them.
Alex dropped back onto the sofa, closing his eyes. Shay watched him, in the dim orange light of the room. How often had she fantasised about him being here in her apartment; on the sofa, in her bed. The convoluted, ridiculous scenarios she had dreamt up that would lead him to her, that would make him see her as anything more than his girl Friday. Shay was startled from her musings by the sharp English accent.
“Alex call me.” The message clicked off abruptly.
“Shit Helena. I’ve been meaning to call her back,” Alex said, slowly sitting up as the next message clicked on and began to play.
“Christ Alex, call me back, it’s important.” Shay leaned forward and frowned. She’d rarely heard Helena, Alex’s sister sound so clipped. And yet beneath the formality of her stiff messages, there was a thread of something. She watched as Alex too straightened up, he’d heard the catch in his sister’s voice. Another message clicked on.
“Alex, it’s me. It’s Gramps. He’s dead. He died. Please call me back.” And then the sound of soft broken sobs before the message clicked off abruptly. Shay watched Alex rise to his feet; the colour had drained from his face. The easy grace with which he normally carried himself was gone and he stood like a newborn deer, awkward and ungainly, faltering. Shay was filled with compassion for him.
“Oh Alex, I am so sorry.” He turned away from her, as though looking around the room for something. Finally he looked at her, a bleakness in his blue eyes that she had never seen before.
“I have to go. I have to get to London.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Talia sat stiff as a board, her spine straight as she waited in the empty office for her boss’s appearance. Though he had asked to see her, Rick himself had yet to turn up and Talia stared stiffly around his office, her eyes darting at the papers and notes pinned up on the corkboard that lined the walls on either side of the room. As her eyes ran down the list that marked out when the show's cast had holidays booked and the various shooting schedules, Talia could sense that there was trouble on the horizon. She could feel it coming, though for now at least she could not say for sure, what form the attack would take. She might still be relatively new, had only been in the TV industry for 5 years but she’d seen too much, witnessed too many long knives in action not to anticipate, that something rotten lay in store for her. A painful knot formed in her stomach, as it did during moments of tension and stress, when suddenly the door was wrenched open and Talia turned to see Rick enter the room, followed closely by Damian Sanderson, the show’s executive producer. Talia’s stomach dropped further. Something had to be seriously amiss, to rouse Damian to come down from his tower.
The general sense of foreboding that had dogged her all day now crystallised into s
omething more certain. As she met Damian’s eyes, she knew with an instinctive sense of self-preservation that somehow, she was fucked. Damian strode casually across the room and Talia watched him fold his ridiculously tall frame into Rick’s chair behind the desk. Rick himself hovered uncertainly as he tried to figure out where to place himself in his own office. Rick finally dropped into a soft sofa, which placed him several inches below Damian and Talia watched silently as Damian pushed his jaw length hair behind his ears. He stared at her, as though he was the interrogator trying to psyche out the perp in some police procedural show that was playing out only in his imagination.
Talia knew that something had gone wrong and somehow she was now in the line of fire but with the fear came an unexpected, uncharacteristic spark of determination, she would not go down quietly. She had never liked Damian and she’d sensed that the feeling was mutual. She hated the way he cultivated a sense of avuncular detachment, the way he strode through the department like some benign earth father constantly talking about his yoga sessions, his three children at prep school, his yummy mummy wife. Even as he continued to stare at her in silence stroking his ridiculous stubble, Talia was determined that she would not be the one to break this silence.
Finally Rick spoke, “Well Talia ..”
Immediately Damian cut him off. Even though she was the one caught in the crosshairs, Talia felt a moment of sympathy for Rick. He was the backbone of the production team, he was the one who lived and breathed the show, but he simply hadn’t played the game as well as the slimy Damian. Now he found himself saddled with a boss, who threw orders about and made demands but who had no idea about what production entailed or the ramifications and consequences of the pieces he moved about on the board in his tower office.
“Talia…,” Damian said as he leaned back in the chair. He was enjoying himself. He let her name hang in the air and then he continued. “Frankly,” he said, “You’re in something of a predicament, aren’t you?” Talia let the breath that she had been holding escape her and suddenly a face flashed into her mind. Chris Priestly, her predecessor, who one day had simply not returned to work. His desk had been cleared and Chris was gone, never to be seen or heard from again. That was how it worked in television; like the mafia, once you were out, you were out. You disappeared into the ether, into some unmarked grave never to be spoken of again. Randomly months later, during an impromptu break to visit her mother, Talia had run into him in a service station outside of London. He’d been gaunt, with a look in his eyes that had stayed with Talia, the look of a man who had given all that he had, the look of a broken man.
“The thing is,” Chris had said to Talia, “ you’ve got to be in the driving seat. TV is just one big appetite, it will take and take and take, it never says when and it’s never satisfied. But at least if you’re going to crash and burn, make sure you’re in the driving seat, make sure that you and only you drive yourself off the cliff.” He shook his head with a bitter smile and Talia had watched him climb back into a battered Volkswagon before driving away. She’d watched him go and wondered what had happened to his BMW, which had been his pride and joy when he’d worked on the show. She hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in over a year but now his words raced back into her mind.
“A predicament?" She pushed the words out through dry, parched lips. “How do you mean?” she watched as a small sneer spread across Damian’s face.
“ You’ve seen the photos, haven’t you?”
Talia nodded.
“Of course. But what has that to do with me?” Talia tried for directness even as something inside her died, so this was what Dom had been talking about, what he had tried to warn her about.
“Don’t play about Talia, we know everything.” Talia watched Damian sit back with a satisfied sneer. She’d never bought into Damian’s act and the fact that she’d once caught him exiting Tamara’s dressing room whilst doing up his fly had cemented their mutual dislike. For all his talk about his kids and his yoga-practicing wife, Damian wasn’t above fooling around with the cast. Talia turned to Rick.
“What’s going on Rick?” Talia watched as Rick shook his head a mix of confusion and anger on his face. Gruffly he spoke, barely meeting her eyes.
“It doesn’t look good Tal.” He gestured at the collection of compromising newspaper front pages. “Big bosses are going mad, saying we have to suspend Angelina, maybe even sack her.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Talia repeated.
“Don’t pretend to care now.” Damian spat the words out with irritation. “We know that the photos were leaked by you – the emails were sent from your email. You weren’t even smart enough to cover your tracks properly.”
“What?” The word exploded from Talia, as Damian threw down a sheaf of papers on the table. She glanced down at them but her mind was a whirr of activity. She barely took in the text on the printed sheets of paper as slowly it all fell into place. Between Dom and Tamara, she’d been played. She looked up at the smug look that played on Damian’s face; perhaps he had also been in on it. Slowly the scale of the shitstorm she was in became apparent to her. “I’ve been set up.” Even to her it sounded weak and she watched the disdain on Damian’s face and the look of confusion on Rick’s face. “Rick, I work harder than anyone, you know that. Why would I do this?” But she wasn’t winning him over, even in her daze she could see that.
“You’re out of here, get your things and get out. HR will ring you to sort out the finer details.” There was a note of triumph in Damian’s voice as he barked the words across the table at her. Talia sat stunned even as Damian rose, his job was done. “For the sake of morale we’ll keep this under wraps, but you’re mud in this industry, don’t forget it.” And with that he strolled out. Talia sat frozen in the seat and then she heard a movement and turned to see that Rick too had stood up to move round to reclaim his seat behind the desk.
“I didn’t do this, you know that, you know me.” But all she saw reflected in Rick’s eyes was doubt and fear. He’d championed her, helped push her up the ranks and now he was afraid that her fuck up might ricochet back on him and bring him down. Rick wasn’t going to go out on a limb for her.
“I need your key fob.” In a fog, Talia reached up pulling off the security fob and ID card, which hung around her neck. There was a knock at the door and Talia turned as two men from security entered the room. Men that she’d greeted every morning as she entered the studio. Their eyes were averted and they wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“You’ll be escorted off the premises and your personal things will be posted to you.” Talia felt a roar in her head, like the sound of a wounded animal dying as everything she had worked for was obliterated by the storm that she now found herself unwittingly at the centre of.
If it were a movie, the scene would have played out in slow motion. In the days that would follow, Talia would not remember the walk down to the main exit, she would not remember who had met her eyes and who averted their gaze. She didn’t remember what Wayne on security with the kind eyes had said to her as she’d stepped off the premises. Those moments after she was sacked were a blank. What she remembered was this – sitting on the train with only her battered handbag on her lap. The script bag, which she always carried with her had been left behind, she would not need it now. There was something almost surreal about the empty train and the sunshine that warmed the carriage in which she sat. Talia was unused to being out so early in the middle of the day. Usually she’d still have another four maybe five hours at her desk. She knew that by now passwords would be being changed, storyline re-writes would be beginning and even with the embargo, slowly the news would be trickling out that she was gone. Tomorrow, it would be confirmed and like Chris who had gone before her, stories, and half-truths would grow and settle around her name to explain her mysterious disappearance. But what with the Angelina scandal on the cover of the papers and her sudden departure, it would not be long before someone put the rest of the story together
. Talia sat in silence as a headache pounded through her head shooting needles of pain around her temples. On autopilot she climbed off the train at her stop, noticing how empty the station was. It was the middle of afternoon, people were at work; she should be at work. A loud sob rose in her throat but she held it back and composed herself as she tapped her ticket on the reader and exited the station.
Without thought Talia headed towards Hampstead Heath, a long diversion through the park, which she rarely allowed herself to enjoy. The sunny day had brought the yummy mummies out in force and barely aware, Talia slipped her shoes off and sat on the grass watching as super slim women with Pilates toned arms laughed and talked and rocked prams or kept one eye on toddlers running around. Talia put her head in her hands, as once again tears threatened. This morning her world had been on track and now in the space of hours, it had all fallen apart. For a moment she reached into her bag for her mobile phone and then stopped remembering that her phone had been on her desk, it would be mailed to her. Perhaps, she thought, it was just as well. She thought briefly of calling Simone or Helena but dismissed the thought quickly, she wasn’t yet ready to talk to anyone. Anything she said would surely end with her sobbing on Hampstead Heath. Talia started as she felt the cold sprinkle of water on her bare feet, followed by tinkering, childish giggles. She turned to see a small girl watching her with curious eyes, a small water pistol in her hand.
“Where’s your baby?” The little girl asked and for a moment Talia’s brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of the child’s babyish speech and then she glanced around, her forehead clearing as she realised the reason for the child’s question and understood. All around her, apart from the occasional jogger, were young mums and their babies. With a small stiff smile, Talia rose to her feet; she didn’t belong here. She slipped her shoes back on and continued the walk towards the flat. As she made her way down the high street, her eyes were caught by something and her quick footsteps slowed to a dead halt. She stopped outside a small exclusive boutique staring at their window display. There in the window was the Mulberry handbag, the one that she would have been buying for herself this weekend. Now the tears came hard and fast, a tide that could not be stemmed. Pride and embarrassment were cast aside and Talia sobbed for the bag that she wouldn’t now buy with the fruits of her promotion. She cried for the script commission that was gone. She cried for the job that she loved and the sacrifices she had made as she finally realised that Damian was right, no one would ever employ her again. Like Chris, she was dead to the world of TV. Her career was over and now all she had left was some unmarked grave to crawl into.
