by Maggie Marr
“Say good-bye to your friends. You can come back to visit as soon as you’re finished shooting my film.”
Zymar lifted the sheet and Lydia caught herself looking—so did Zymar.
“It’s a big one, ain’t it, Lyd?” he asked, mischief dancing in his eyes.
Lydia blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl. “Uh, we’ll be in the hall.” She and Thuan walked out the door. Lydia’s heart raced in her chest. Zymar was correct—it indeed was a big one.
Ms. Albright and Mr. Zymar, please fasten your seat belts for the descent into Los Angeles,” the pilot said over the intercom.
For fifteen hours, Zymar had slept while Lydia read scripts, rolled phone calls, pestered her assistants, and paced the cabin of the Gulfstream 5500. Zymar finally woke two hours outside of L.A., hungover, dehydrated, and disoriented. First she had pumped him full of Fiji water. Then she fed him vitamin C tablets and multivitamins—Lydia needed him ready to roll the minute they touched down—and finally they talked about the script.
“We had one read-through, last week. It was okay. But just okay. Mary Anne is working on a couple more notes.”
“Your writer’s a cute one,” Zymar said, slurping more coffee.
“You cannot fuck my writer,” Lydia commanded. “Do you understand? This is her first film, and the experience will be overwhelming enough. She doesn’t need you mucking up her head.”
“Yes, ma’am. See we’ve got a bit of a mother hen in us. Who would have thought it? You with that set of brass balls and all.”
“Celeste Solange is playing Raphaella.”
“Don’t know how you pulled that off.”
“Magic.”
“I’d say so. Speakin’ of magic, that little short redheaded fart who reminds me of a leprechaun, the one ‘at got the Worldwide job?”
“Arnold Murphy. Yes.”
“You know, Lydia, when I heard that was when I headed inland. I wasn’t meaning to be dodgy. I just figured with the feud between you two there wouldn’t be a movie to make.”
“You and me both. I got lucky.”
“You know the saying about luck—When chance meets a prepared mind. What saved it, then, Lyd?”
“Cici. Cici and Jess.”
“Yeah, well, I always did like them in threes.” Zymar’s lascivious grin would have been offensive if Lydia didn’t think he was so damn good-looking.
“And Bradford, then. He’s out of rehab? Cleaned up?”
“He seemed clean at the second read-through. I hope it holds.”
“He’s unstoppable in front of a camera, Lyd, if you can keep him off the blow for the shoot. But it’s impossible when he’s on it.”
“You take care of him on set. I’ll take care of him at the end of the day.”
“So what are we looking at for a start date? Ten days from now?”
“Three. Arnold is already ripping me apart for dailies,” Lydia said.
“That fric frac? He wouldn’t know a good film if it spanked him on the ass.”
Lydia laughed.
“He worked on my second film years ago—right after that little thing with you. Didn’t know which side of a camera the lens was on. He’s a wanker or the waste of one.”
They both bounced as the wheels touched down on the tarmac. “He may be a wanker, Zymar,” Lydia said, looking at her watch, “but he’s our wanker for the next eight weeks.”
Chapter 11
Jessica and Her Louis Vuitton Marble Leather Pumps
Jessica looked around the CTA boardroom at the fifty-four motion picture agents in attendance. This small group of individuals, with Jessica as their leader, dominated the entertainment universe. Clustered in the room were a whole lot of ties and dark suits and not many skirts and high heels. But the heels that were in the boardroom were remarkable: Louboutin, Choo, Blahnik.
Seven female agents, including Jessica. Not even twenty percent of the motion picture department’s agents (who represented eighty percent of the world’s top stars) were women. Talent representation was a male business; it was sales. Agents sold actors, directors, writers and their ideas. This sales job was intense and competitive. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. You lived for your clients and their needs.
CTA had lost two female agents in the last eighteen months; one to a management company and the other to motherhood. Jessica was among the third generation of women in Hollywood even allowed to be agents. None of the first generation had children (few had husbands) and just a handful in the second. Even today many female agents never married, and the majority of those who did eventually divorced. What man wanted to compete with this life?
Jess glanced at her ten-thousand-dollar diamond-encrusted Rolex (a gift from a client who had won an Emmy). Nine fifty-eight A.M. Two more minutes before the Wednesday-morning meeting was finished. A weekly ritual, this staff gathering required every junior agent who was responsible for “covering” a studio to report on all the jobs that were available as well as the gossip. Tyler Bruger, the twenty-five-year-old junior agent who covered Summit Studios (and who had failed miserably at covering Holden Humphrey), was yammering on about a script Summit paid seven figures for. He floundered, his comments going nowhere.
“What director do they want?” Jess interrupted.
“Excuse me?” Tyler stopped and swallowed. Every junior agent feared being put on the spot at the Wednesday-morning meeting. It’d been less than a decade since Jessica had sat in Tyler’s spot, her unease creating pit stains on her silk shirt.
“What director? You’ve talked about our clients, but which one does the producer want?”
“Mike Fox is the producer, and he didn’t say who—”
“Didn’t say? When did you speak to Mike?”
“At the premiere.”
“Really?”
“He mentioned—”
“You’re telling me that you spoke to Mike Fox at his premiere party?” Tyler was lying. He knew it, and Jessica knew it. She could eat him alive right now. If she wanted.
“Yes, and he mentioned Van der Veen and Tuttle as our two directors he’d be most interested in for this project.”
Nice save. At least Tyler didn’t crack under the pressure. Jessica looked around the room. “Is that all?” she asked. No one else had anything. She stood, signaling the end of the meeting. And she was sure she heard Tyler breathe a sigh of relief.
For the past three years (as long as she’d been president of the company), immediately after the meeting Jessica talked with Jeremy Sullivan, the CEO of CTA.
An Americanized Brit, Jeremy had purchased his way into the entertainment business with his wife’s money (she being the favorite daughter of an obscenely wealthy oil magnate). Three years before, Jeremy had managed a semi-friendly buyout of CTA with enormous help from Jessica. He had first approached her on a movie set, where she was visiting one of her director clients. Jeremy was executive-producing the film (another investment by his father-in-law). Forever interested in cinema, Jeremy believed the fastest way to get movies made was to have access to the talent. And what better access, Jeremy believed, than to own an agency.
Still a junior agent, Jessica recognized an opportunity for rapid advancement when she saw one. She courted Jeremy, tantalizing him with CTA client lists and scripts that the agency represented and controlled. Her savvy expertise in the film industry combined with Jeremy’s money and desire to learn created a relationship primed for power.
Jeremy’s first offer to the seventy-year-old owner of CTA, Ezekiel Cohen, was summarily refused. But then Jessica truly proved her agenting skills. Ezekiel had hired Jessica. As old and hard-bitten as Ezekiel was, and still believing, as most men from his generation did, that a woman’s place was in the home, he’d nevertheless recognized Jessica’s innate talent for handling stars. Jessica leveraged his feelings for her and began to push Ezekiel from the inside of not only the agency, but also his home.
As one of the few female agents at CTA, Jessica was grante
d the privilege of monthly lunches with Mrs. Cohen. It was, in Sylvia Cohen’s good-hearted way, an attempt to make the shark-infested waters of CTA feel like a family-owned business. Jessica was aware that after forty years of sharing her husband with the film industry (and it wasn’t a fifty-fifty split, more like twenty-eighty), Mrs. Ezekiel Cohen was ready for her husband to retire. It was at one of their monthly lunches that Jessica let drop the “rumor” she’d heard that Jeremy Sullivan was interested in buying the firm. Between Mrs. Cohen’s prodding and Jessica’s persistence, Ezekiel grudgingly accepted a meeting with Jeremy Sullivan. And Jeremy Sullivan, in person, was persuasive.
It’d taken only two weeks to complete the buyout once Ezekiel met with Jeremy. Jeremy got his agency, Mrs. Cohen welcomed her husband home, and Jessica jumped from junior agent to president of CTA.
Jessica and Jeremy formed an impressive team and an ideal working relationship: Each had complete trust in the skills and loyalty of the other. Jeremy, an erudite Brit, preferred to hobnob with celebrity clients while on set in exotic locales such as Greece or Spain, having little patience for the day-to-day affairs of CTA. He gave Jessica full authority to oversee the operations of what was now, thanks to her tireless efforts, the biggest agency in the world.
Jessica walked into Jeremy’s corner office without bothering to have any of his three assistants announce her. She visited his office daily (when he wasn’t sailing on his yacht or jetting to Spain), but she didn’t often see a man sitting in front of Jeremy’s desk, as she did today.
“Oh, sorry, Jeremy, I’ll come back. I didn’t realize you were in a meeting,” she said.
“Jess, no, come in. We’ve been waiting for you. I believe you know Tolliver Jones.”
Jessica did, in fact, know Tolliver Jones. He was a senior vice president at DTA, one of CTA’s biggest rivals. She had met him years ago at a wrap party for Gruesome, a film she’d coproduced while still an executive for Mike Fox. Jessica remembered being unimpressed with both Tolliver’s work ethic (he’d represented the director of Gruesome, someone Jessica believed to be exceptionally talented and completely underrepresented) and his agenting skills. A complete blowhard, during negotiations Tolliver often resorted to both lying about the amount his clients were paid and screaming at attorneys in studio business affairs.
Tolliver turned his head and rose, extending his hand toward Jessica. “Jessica, it’s been too long,” he said.
Jessica gazed at Tolliver’s well-tanned face and blond hair. He could easily pass for a celebrity. His suit was perfectly tailored and pressed, without a crease, and she was certain his shirt was handmade. All the accoutrements of a successful agent.
Jessica shook Tolliver’s hand, and an alarm bell blasted in her head. This wasn’t going to be good.
“Seems Tolliver is in the market, shall we say,” Jeremy said, smiling at Jessica.
“I was telling Jeremy that my contract at DTA is up in two weeks, and I want to try something new. I’ve spent my entire career at one shop, and now that my client list is so exceptional, if I’m going to move, now is the time. So I came to you first. After all, why not try to play for the Yankees if you’re going to play?”
“Indeed.” Jeremy laughed. “Baseball; afraid I know nothing of it. But as far as us being the best in town, you’ll have to thank Jessica for that. I had very little to do with it.”
Tolliver’s obvious disregard for protocol irritated Jessica. Tolliver knew how this town ran; he’d been in the business for at least ten years. If he wanted to move agencies, he should have come to her, as president of the company, before approaching Jeremy.
“I was telling Tolliver how CTA always has room for someone of his caliber. Especially after reviewing his client list.” Jeremy held out a piece of paper. Jessica took it and scanned the names. Admittedly, it was impressive, but she knew for a fact that the majority of names on the list were not Tolliver’s clients; most were represented by other agents at DTA. But when an agent jumped to a new shop, you never knew for sure which clients would come with him.
“Of course, always, if we can make a deal,” Jessica said, handing the list back to Jeremy.
“Always the agent, aren’t you, Jess,” Tolliver said, his tone snide while he smiled. Jessica realized that he, too, knew you could say anything in Hollywood as long as you smiled. “Well, I need to get back.” Tolliver stood. “I still have two weeks, and I want to make sure that my employer gets what they paid for.”
Jeremy and Jessica both stood as Tolliver shook their hands in turn.
“Excellent, then. Tolliver, we’ll be in touch,” Jeremy said as Tolliver strolled out of the office.
Jessica watched as Jeremy read over Tolliver’s supposed client list yet again, enthusiasm building on his face. “Exceptional, isn’t it, Jess.” Jeremy grinned as if he’d found a nugget of gold in a piece of dirt. “I think he’d be a tremendous addition to the team, especially with all these fellows.”
“If the price is right. How much is the ask?”
“One-point-two.”
Jessica was surprised; she thought that was actually reasonable. She doubted that Tolliver made much less money at DTA. “Really? That seems a bit low.” Maybe it was a good deal.
“And copresident,” Jeremy said, looking into Jessica’s eyes.
“What?” Her stomach lurched. So Tolliver was after the direct access to Jeremy, and the power that being copresident of CTA provided. “Jeremy, I hardly think—”
“Come on, Jess, we discussed this, you and I, that if the right person came along, you’d be willing to share the crown, so to speak.”
“Yes, if the right person came around. But I hardly think that Tolliver is that person. His reputation around town isn’t pristine.”
“Whose is? Jess, this is big, I can feel it. With this list, we’d have everyone that we wanted.”
Jessica wasn’t convinced, and it wasn’t her ego. She truly believed that Tolliver wasn’t the right fit, that he would topple the precarious balance she and Jeremy had struck. Not having come up through the trenches, Jeremy wasn’t aware of how cutthroat the film business was. It was unusual to find a trustworthy counterpart within the viper’s nest, and when you did, you didn’t fuck around with it.
“I want this, Jess. I think it’s a good move.” Jeremy’s enthusiasm didn’t dampen even with Jessica’s hesitancy. “Besides, we both know he’ll be copresident in name only. You, my dear, have done too much to ever not be the one truly leading this agency.”
“Jeremy, I don’t know. I’ve always trusted your instincts, but this time it doesn’t feel right to me.”
Jeremy gave her his euphoric grin. “Come on, Jess, have I ever been wrong?”
Jessica brushed by the three assistants sitting outside her office. She didn’t own any part of CTA, so she knew hiring Tolliver was entirely Jeremy’s decision. And it appeared that the decision was already made. Jeremy had called CTA’s Business Affairs attorney while she was still in his office. She’d never seen Jeremy so enthusiastic and willing to move on something so quickly. He was decisive by nature, but this bordered on impulsive. Jeramy told CTA’s attorney to make a preliminary offer, with a substantial increase in the money Tolliver asked for but with a different title than copresident. Jessica knew that Tolliver would refuse. He wanted the title.
Jessica entered her office and stopped.
“What the fuck?” A sea of red flooded the room. Jessica’s number one assistant, Kim, appeared beside her.
“The florist said there are exactly one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three red roses in there.”
Jessica looked at Kim. “One thousand eight hundred and ninety-three? Is that number supposed to be significant to me? Did he say why?”
“Nope.”
“Is there a card?” Jessica asked.
“Yep.” Kim handed her a red silk envelope. “And it’s sealed with wax, so you can tell if it’s been opened.”
“It’s been opened.”
“I open all your mail,” Kim said. “I didn’t read it.”
The scent engulfed Jessica as she walked farther into the room. Every table, console, and bookcase held a bouquet. There were vases overflowing with roses packed on the floor. Jessica squeezed past them to her desk, put her finger under the silk flap, and pulled out the ecru card. The writing was in black fountain pen.
Jess:
One rose for every day I’ve spent without you. Please, don’t make me buy any more.
All my love, M. Fox
Jessica’s head spun. This had to be a joke. She’d seen Mike at the premiere, but they hadn’t slept together. They’d barely talked. What the hell was this?
“Mike Fox on line one,” Kim called out.
Jessica put on her wireless headset and took a deep breath. “Are you crazy?” Jessica asked.
“Good morning to you, too,” Mike said.
“I already told you that you can’t have Holden for less than his fifteen-million-dollar quote—”
“Jess—”
“He’s worth every penny, and if you think some roses—”
“Jess—”
“—are going to make me change my mind … His last film made—”
“JESS! This isn’t about Holden.”
She paused and inhaled. The sweet scent of 1,893 roses filled her nose. No, no, no! This was typical Mike Fox, all show and no substance. He’d come on like gangbusters, and then as soon as he got bored or there was a new hottie on the cover of Maxim or FHM, he’d be gone. Just like last time, no big blowout, just no more Mike and only the photos in People of him canoodling in Paris with a supermodel to keep Jessica company.
“Then what is it?”
“You got my card?”
Jess fingered the red silk envelope. “Yes.”
“I’m very serious. I’m ready to settle down, be a father, a husband, a committed stand-up guy.”
Jess heard a collective gasp from her three assistants sitting outside her office. She’d forgotten they were on the line.
