Fame

by Susan X Meagher

  “How can that possibly be?” she asked, pushing her hair out of her eyes so she could see through the pelting rain.

  “It just is,” she said, clearly exhausted.

  “Then let me carry both of them.”

  Haley blinked up at her, so pathetic looking it was almost funny. But it wasn’t truly funny. Seeing someone you’d begun to deeply care for appear so worn-out and bedraggled was actually kind of heartbreaking. “You don’t have to,” she said, her voice soft. “This is my job.”

  “I know that.” Piper lifted the pole from her shoulders, surprised by the weight. “Damn,” she muttered. “A couple of weeks of ignoring the gym and I’m a weakling.” She settled the pole across her shoulders and tried to take a step, immediately losing a flip-flop in the muck. “Um, could you get that for me?”

  “Give me the other one, too,” Haley said. “Or they’ll be lost like mine are.”

  She kicked off the other shoe, and Haley bent to pick up both of them. Then they started to walk, with Piper laboring mightily to pick her feet up out of the thick mud. “Why wasn’t there a Jeep for you?” she asked. “You can’t expect someone to carry this kind of weight.”

  “In the morning, they bring us over first, then go back for the talent. At the end of the day…”

  “The talent goes back first,” Piper said, stating the obvious. “And they didn’t want to send you earlier in case they needed the Jeeps to rush the talent out of there.”

  “Perfectly correct,” she said, still staring at the muck as she carefully picked her way through it.

  “Other than today, did you have a good first week?”

  “It was okay,” Haley said. “The other animal trainer still thinks I’m either a spy for Spike or for Tim, so I’m spending all of my free time trying to make friends in the other departments. I’m making progress with wardrobe.”

  “You could always hang out with us,” Piper said, looking away so she didn’t have to see Haley’s face if she blew her off.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but that’s not a great idea. We’re not peers, Piper.”

  The truth of that made her a little sick to her stomach, but she couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned.

  They’d only gone about a hundred yards, but Piper felt like she was carrying cartoonishly large barbells across her shoulders. Then a Jeep appeared on the path, mud kicking up and out like it was being sprayed from a hose. “Thank god,” she muttered.

  The driver stopped, then backed up and turned around. Then he slapped at the passenger seat. “Anybody want a ride?”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Piper said, with Haley carefully removing the first cage and setting it on the front seat. She buckled it in, then put the second cage in the back and did the same. There was only one spot left, and Piper gallantly said, “That one’s for you,” when Haley gave her a questioning glance.

  “Sure?” she asked, already climbing in.

  “Positive. I hope the rest of your day’s better than the first part was.”

  “If no one murders me, it’ll be better,” Haley said, offering a smile that made her teeth look very white amidst the brown and black streaks that covered her face. “Thanks for helping. That meant a lot.”

  As the Jeep crawled through the mud, Piper stared at it, too tired to pick up her feet. Luckily, she didn’t have to. Since she mattered, another one would be along any minute.

  ***

  An hour later, Piper and Charlie sat in the dining room, having an early dinner. It was just the two of them at a table for four, but no one else made a move to sit with them, even though Charlie always enjoyed chatting with just about anyone. Given that Piper wasn’t up to talking much, she was a little surprised that Charlie hadn’t picked someone out of the crowd and forced them to sit down. Maybe she just didn’t want to subject them to Piper’s sour mood.

  They’d just gotten a fifteen minute warning that Tim was almost ready to go, and as soon as Charlie finished her meager dinner she got up to use the bathroom. “Don’t leave without me,” she said, tapping Piper’s head with her fingers.

  “We won’t.” After popping her last two fries into her mouth, Piper got up to leave. But the front door opened and a ray of sunshine, both literal and metaphorical, appeared. The skies had obviously cleared, since a golden glow hovered over Haley, sparkling clean and dressed in her usual—a snug print shirt that highlighted her breasts, and slim-cut shorts. She made eye contact with Piper, and started to walk over to her.

  “Taking off?” Haley asked.

  “In a few minutes.” She tried to think of the best way to propose this, but finally just spit it out. “Remember when you came to the hotel and asked if we could be friends?”

  “Sure,” Haley said, her gaze slipping to the floor.

  “I’m willing to try harder if you still want that.”

  Her head tilted as Haley looked at her quizzically. “Have you been actively—”

  “No,” Piper said. “But I haven’t gone out of my way to find you. I know we’re both busy, but there’s a lot of waiting around…”

  “I’d like to be friends,” Haley said. “I really would.”

  “Okay, then.” Piper nodded, almost offering a handshake, which would have been weird. “I’ve got to get going, but I’ll try to make some time.”

  Haley put her hand on Piper’s arm, giving it a tender squeeze. “Don’t put pressure on yourself. We’ll run into each other more often now that the birds are scheduled more frequently.”

  “Great,” Piper said. She tried to make her smile look natural, but wasn’t sure she’d managed it. Haley, however, effortlessly unleashed a devastatingly pretty one, one that threatened to once again weaken Piper’s knees.

  ***

  A few days later, Haley was sitting at a table with a bunch of people from the costume department, including a woman with Haley’s favorite job title. “Ager/dyer.” She wasn’t sure what the job opportunities would be with that on your resume, but if it was her title, she’d put it on her business card just for kicks.

  Myra, the costume designer, was one of Haley’s favorites. She was around sixty, with a big, round, open face that usually bore a contented grin. Her tent was right next to Haley’s and they’d been eating breakfast together most mornings.

  “How many films did you say you’ve worked on?” Haley asked, having missed a snippet of the conversation.

  “This is my sixty-eighth. I’m hoping to make it to seventy-five. That’s a good number.”

  “So…you either love your job, or you’re a glutton for punishment,” Haley said, smiling at Myra’s fond gaze.

  “I’ve loved some of them, hated some of them, and liked the rest. Ambivalence isn’t my thing.” She took a bite of her lunch, always going for sushi. “This one’s shaping up to land in the love column. First time in years I haven’t felt like a zombie.”

  “Because…?”

  “Turnaround. We usually get a ten-hour turnaround, but that can shrink to eight. Add in travel time and you might only be home for six, and I can never go right to sleep. Do that for a few weeks and you start to forget how to get to your house.”

  “I’d have a tough time with that,” Haley said. “I don’t function well unless I get seven hours.”

  Myra put her arm around Haley and gave her a maternal hug. “I keep forgetting that you’ve never done a movie in LA. You don’t know how much nicer it is to be on location.”

  “It’s like being on vacation,” Frankie, the ager/dyer said. “My friends think my job is glamorous, but this is the first shoot I’ve been on that actually is. I’d pay them to work on the sequels.”

  Myra slapped at her playfully. “Don’t let them hear you say that! You know someone will take you up on it.”

  Astrid, a fun-loving wardrobe assistant, finished her meal and started to clean up. “What’s going on with you today, Haley?”

  “I’ve got six Hawaiian stilts I’m trying to convince to walk across the beach in a group.”
She looked up when her comment was met with silence. Everyone across from her was casting furtive glances over her left shoulder, so Haley turned, seeing Charlie standing there, holding a tray.

  “Mind if I join you guys?”

  “Of course not.” Haley said. She was on the end of a bench, and she shifted to the right. “How’d you get away for lunch?”

  “I’m tired of eating alone.” She set her tray down and swung a leg over the bench, then put her arm around Haley to give her a hug. “I haven’t seen you much. What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing very interesting. Just trying to get a bunch of birds to behave like actors. Do you know everyone?”

  A million-dollar smile revealed those super white teeth as Charlie looked around the table. “I’ve worked with everyone, but we never have time to talk.” Astoundingly, she rattled off everyone’s name. “Myra, Frankie, Helene, Astrid, and Will, right?”

  That broke the ice, with everyone grinning at her like she’d just run the board on Jeopardy.

  Myra was the mother hen, and she stood up and made her excuses. “I wish we could hang out for a while, but we’ve got to lace two dozen people into their costumes in the next hour. Let’s hit it, Will,” she said, giving him a pointed look. He seemed unable to move, gazing at Charlie as if she were a heavenly body.

  When Myra was a few feet away she yelled, “Will!” then kept moving. He shook himself, got up, and started to walk backward, keeping his eyes on Charlie as he banged into a table. Myra put an arm around him and guided him out, always protective of her chicks.

  Charlie acted like she hadn’t noticed Will drooling over her. “We’ve got a good crew, don’t we?” she asked. There was almost nothing on her tray. Just a raw vegetable salad and a huge glass of ice water with a slice of lemon. She couldn’t have wanted to eat so little, but Haley didn’t know if she was still trying to lose weight or simply hoping to stay where she was—emaciated.

  “Yeah, we do.” Haley still had a lot on her tray, but she pushed it away, not wanting to tempt Charlie with the food she’d left. “Everyone’s been saying this is a particularly fun shoot.”

  “Oh, it is.” Charlie poked at her salad, spearing a chunk of red pepper and popping it into her mouth. “I always laugh when actors talk about how grueling shoots are. Such babies! You can’t have more fun than you do on a movie set.”

  “Ha!” Helene said, giving Haley a look. “She didn’t have to work on Quote The Raven, did she.”

  “Oh, you know each other?” Charlie said.

  “Yeah.” Haley nodded, reaching over for another bite of salmon. It really was good. “Helene and I didn’t actually work together, but we were both in Romania, freezing our butts off.”

  “Worst shoot ever,” Helene said, shaking her head. “But this one’s the best.”

  “How many is this for you?” Charlie asked.

  “Thirty-two. I think I’m going to make that my new lucky number.” She stood, and when she did the others at the table got up as well. “We’ve gotta get cracking,” she said. “Nice having a minute to talk.”

  “Same here,” Charlie said, beaming a grin. As they walked away, she added, “How about you? Are you having a decent time? Be honest.”

  “It’s been…a lot better than I thought it would be,” Haley said. “So much better than being in Romania I can hardly believe it. The hours are reasonable, the people are nice, and the food’s awesome. Honestly better than I get at home.” She pushed the tray farther away, refusing to give into more temptation.

  “So?” Charlie asked, lowering her voice. “Any thoughts about getting back with Pip?”

  Blinking away her surprise, Haley said, “Did she ask you to propose that?”

  “God, no!” She laughed, her expression so charming Haley felt herself fall under its spell. “She’d kill me if she knew I was even talking to you.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because she doesn’t want me to interfere,” Charlie said, as if that should be obvious. “But she was so happy with you, Haley. It’s been years… Actually, it’s been never since she seemed as interested in anyone. I know Piper really well, and even though she hasn’t told me many details, I can see how sad she is.”

  “I’m sad too,” Haley said, pulling her salad over and picking up an artichoke heart. She couldn’t just sit there and ignore the damn thing. Thoughts of the weight she’d gained after the Alicia fiasco nudged her brain, but she simply couldn’t stop herself. “But I know what kind of life I want, Charlie, and being with someone who’s going to make her living in the business isn’t it for me.”

  She gazed at Haley for a few seconds, her head slightly cocked. “Piper’s going to go back to cutting hair. Didn’t she tell you that?”

  “She did.” Haley patted her on the shoulder as she got up. “And I’ll believe it when I see it. Gotta go,” she said, hustling her tray over to dump the trash. “My birdies are chirping for me.”

  ***

  Piper was falling further and further behind, finding it impossible to be on set with Charlie while keeping up with email and phone calls. It didn’t help that they were two hours behind LA, especially since they always worked through the golden hour at the end of the day. Finishing at seven meant it was nine o’clock in LA, way too late to catch even the most work-obsessed person in any given office.

  Wi-Fi was available on the island, but only in and around the cabins. Since they were shooting on different parts of the island, her only salvation was the production office. But it was filled with people who belonged there, and Piper could only find space to spread out when they were at lunch. That meant that she grabbed her laptop the minute they got back to the hotel and worked diligently until she fell asleep, usually no more than two hours later.

  After two weeks of this, she was ready to raise the white flag. Lamar was angry with her, the publicity people for the Aaron Evert movie were ready to wring her neck, and every other person angling for a piece of her sister was at least miffed.

  They’d worked six consecutive days, and Tim decided he needed a day to get his ducks in a row. While he and his director of photography labored in the editing room that Sunday afternoon, in this case a room in the hotel filled with computers, Piper sat by the pool, chugging through email thanks to the speedy WiFi signal.

  Charlie helped out by going through her old phone and deleting any texts and voice mails she wasn’t interested in, leaving the important ones for Piper to deal with. In all, it was a mountain of paperwork, and she was only chipping away at it.

  Zandra had checked in that morning, and Piper happily handed dog-watching duties over to her for the day. While Delta certainly didn’t mind lying by the pool, he needed more activity than she or Charlie could give him at the moment.

  She was so deep in her focus that she let out a squeal when something licked the bottom of her foot, with her head jerking up to see Delta, joyously bouncing on his little back legs.

  “We missed you!” Charlie crooned, leaning over to pick him up and let him lick all over her face.

  “He missed you guys, too,” Zandra said. “But, you still look really busy. Should we…go somewhere else?”

  Piper took a look at the clock in the corner of her screen. “Tell me it’s not five o’clock.”

  “It is,” Zandra said, sounding regretful. She perched on the edge of the lounge chair next to Piper and said, “Is there anything I can do to help? I know I’m just a PA, but I minored in business at SC.”

  Piper cocked her head, spending a minute assessing Zandra. Even though she’d only watched Delta, it was obvious she could do more. Zandra reminded Piper of one of the very few go-getters at her high school. The kind of kid who started a chess club or volunteered to try to get the president to give the commencement speech. The kind of kid Piper had avoided like the plague, preferring to hang out with girls who did the minimum and kept their heads down so they weren’t called on. “You graduated from USC?”

  “Uh-huh. Film school. B
ut I thought it was important to know the business end, so I minored in finance.”

  “We didn’t go to college,” Charlie chimed in.

  “We sure didn’t,” Piper admitted, “but the stuff I’m doing isn’t complex. There’s just a lot of it.” She shrugged. “It’s not anything you need a degree to do, Zandra. You’d be bored.”

  “I’m playing with a puppy, Piper. I’m very fond of him, but I could have managed that when I was five. Let’s kick this around and see if we can think of a way that I can help.” Zandra leaned over, her dark eyes boring into Piper, one hundred percent down to business. “Your main problem is access, right? You can’t get to your phone or your email when you’re on set.”

  “Right. Then everything backs up so much that if I respond to incoming stuff I ignore everything that arrived earlier.”

  Nodding, Zandra thought about that for a few minutes. “There’s WiFi near the cabins, but the signal isn’t great.”

  “Too many people are using it during the lunch break,” Piper said. “That’s when I sneak into the production office and hook in with an Ethernet cable. That works great, but I have to time it right.”

  “Do you trust me?” Zandra asked, blinking slowly, with her dark lashes kind of mesmerizing.

  “I let you take Delta on a long flight,” Piper said, chuckling. “That answers that.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding decisively. “Let me dash into the production office every hour. They won’t mind if I plug in if I’m quick. I’ll download your mail and listen to your voice mails, then call you on a walkie-talkie if anything looks critical. I think I’ll be able to tell,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Wanna try?” Piper handed over her laptop. “There’s twenty messages in the inbox I haven’t looked at yet. Read them and tell me if any of them are important.”

  Zandra jumped right to it while Piper got up and dove into the pool, doing a few laps to get the kinks out of her back. After she was winded, she got out and dried off a bit, then came back and stood next to Zandra’s lounge chair.