Geek Actually Season 1 Omnibus

by Cathy Yardley

  She heard the disgusted sound Josh made and then smiled as he walked away.

  “Sure, Christina,” Javier chuckled. “Maybe a little hot sauce in there to get your eyes open?”

  “You know me so well,” she replied. “Hey, is it true you guys got a fryer? Does this mean french fries for lunch?”

  Somewhere around 6:30 (Christina had forgotten to charge her phone the night before, so she couldn’t be sure of the time), she found sides and wandered over to Warren, the first assistant director. Pulling a small, blank prescription bottle out of her jeans pocket, she passed it to him. Warren took the bottle without looking and slipped it into his own pocket. Even if the people around them hadn’t been busy with their own jobs, no one would have cared about the exchange, but Christina was fine with Warren’s desire for discretion.

  “Are we all interior today?” she asked.

  “You have the call sheet in your hand,” Warren said drily, nodding toward the sides. “But yes. We don’t go outside till tomorrow.”

  “Where do you want me today? Am I still with the warrior chick?” Christina had been assigned to Lana since last week. She was a guest star with four lines who mostly had to scream while tied to a post and could never seem to do either on cue. Lana had the personality of a torn One Direction cut-out, but she showed up on time and never asked for anything. There were worse jobs, like the production assistants who worked in the office and had to make phone calls all day. Christina would’ve offed herself ages ago doing that.

  Her fellow PAs were buzzing around the set like flies already, delivering tape and food and all manner of good and bad news. It was a job filled with sycophants and suck-ups, and Christina couldn’t be bothered. She preferred actor assignments, which meant little more than shuttling them back and forth to set and announcing arrivals and departures. It also meant that when her charges weren’t currently on set, she didn’t have to do shit.

  “We have a new recurring on set and she’s… interesting. I was hoping you’d be her handler. I’m concerned the younger kids won’t be able to keep up with her.”

  Warren deliberately looked away as he said this. He was telling her the actor was difficult and the other PAs would be unable to deal with her without outright crying. So many of them cried when an actor yelled or threw things. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, Christina wasn’t quite so fragile. “What do I get in return?” Christina replied.

  “I’ll enter you into dollar days three times this Friday,” he offered.

  On the last day of the week, people wrote their names on various bills and shoved them into a pot. On holidays and special days, sometimes an actor threw in fifty or a hundred bucks. One person’s name would get picked out of the pot and the money would be theirs. It was like landing on Free Parking in Monopoly. This being a normal week, there’d be roughly seventy names and around a hundred bucks. Christina shot him a look. She wasn’t about to point out that her fee for the bottle she’d just delivered was nearly the same. “Really? That’s your pitch?”

  Warren shrugged, thinking. “You work with this girl today and tomorrow and you can come in twenty minutes before she does. An extra hour of sleep tomorrow. More on Friday, she’s only in two scenes.”

  Now that was a good deal. Plus, she knew Josh would be furious. “Sold,” she said, reaching out and shaking hands with Warren. “What’s her name?”

  “Vivi. She’s got the trailer behind the honey wagon.”

  Christina looked down at the call sheet and saw that Vivi was expected in makeup at seven. “I’ll go make sure she’s in. And Warren, stop calling us all ‘girls.’ The cast is young, but there’s no one under twenty-three. It’s not like we’re fucking Girl Scouts.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Warren answered, rolling his eyes. He pulled the bottle from his pocket and opened it, popping two pills in his mouth and dry-swallowing. She didn’t understand how he could do that all day. “While we’re dispensing advice, please be a little nicer to Josh. He is technically your supervisor. He wants you gone in the worst way.”

  “Then I say good luck to him,” Christina said, waving away the imaginary Josh. “And do yourself a favor, Warren. Drink some water. Vikes are hard on your liver and kidneys.”

  The honey wagon was a set of outside bathrooms for extras, and in their dirt-smeared, post-apocalyptic world, it really came in handy to keep those to their own area. It quickly became tough to tell if the blood splattered across the toilet seat was real or came from the makeup department. Christina headed around the wagon and expected to find one of the split trailers, indelicately known as a double-banger. But Vivi’s was full-sized and decked out, not the usual day rental. It didn’t even have the classic fake wood-paneled stripe down the middle. Christina felt the need to double-check the name on the door before knocking.

  “Come in!” The voice from inside sounded bright. So far, so good. It seemed unlikely that a breakfast quesadilla was going to be thrown at her as she walked in.

  Christina cracked the door and gingerly peeked around it. The trailer was as fancy inside as it was outside, complete with a fifty-inch TV and a wine fridge in the full-sized kitchen. Who’s this guest star and why does she warrant a headliner’s trailer?

  Vivi was sitting at the table, her exceptionally long legs flung over the tabletop. She was stunning, with wild, wavy brown hair that ran over her shoulders and down her back. Christina was fairly certain the actress didn’t have a smidge of makeup on, but it didn’t lessen her beauty. Unlike Christina, Vivi looked flawless.

  Vivi didn’t pay attention to her at first, so Christina studied her. Typical starlet was her first uncharitable reaction. Yes, beautiful, but in this town, that was common. Thin—again, par for the course. But despite her lack of pounds, the girl had some curves on her: nice breasts, natural, and a thin waist that flared out into reasonable hips. She wasn’t a Kardashian-style hourglass Amazon, or Kate Moss pencil thin. She was… average, Christina supposed, for Hollywood.

  Vivi clacked away on her phone until Christina actually stepped into the trailer, then lifted her head and smiled warmly. “Hi! I’m Vivi,” she said, her voice just a touch husky.

  Her undivided attention hit Christina like a sun lamp. Okay—maybe not so average.

  “And you are?” Vivi prompted, a teasing lilt to her question. Her smile got warmer somehow. It made Christina realize that she’d been silent and staring for a long second.

  Get it together. She shook off the night’s excesses and buckled down.

  “I’m Christina, and I’ll be your assigned PA for the week. Just wanted to introduce myself and let you know that you’re due in makeup at seven.” Seriously, what was so difficult about this chick? Given Warren’s avoidance of eye contact, she’d expected full-on Exorcist behavior.

  “Thanks, Christina. That gives me…” The actress looked down at her phone. “Twenty minutes. Just enough time to smoke a J. You want to join me?”

  Yes. Yes, she did. But Christina knew that you couldn’t hotbox a rental trailer; that smell never came out of the carpet. “My boss’ll kill me if Starwaggons won’t take the trailer back. Edibles, great. Maybe we don’t smoke up, though.”

  Vivi laughed. “Oh, hon, this isn’t a rental. This is mine. We can hold a blood ritual in here and I’d just get some hazmat guys to clean it up when we were done.”

  Christina choked. “Convenient,” she said.

  Vivi smirked, “So—you wanna?” patting the chair next to her.

  Christina smiled, shaking her head. She realized the door to the trailer was still open and anyone walking by could hear. She turned and shut the door behind her. “By all means, who am I to say no?”

  This week wasn’t turning out so bad after all.

  MICHELLE

  If only people would do what Michelle wanted them to, the world would be a much more orderly place. She reviewed a file of her day’s work, her brain zeroing in on incorrect dates and typos. None of them made by her, of course. She still had nearly half a
manuscript to edit, but that would have to come later in the morning. The current task was sifting through the rapidly growing pile of requests for Aditi’s launch and the press that continued to roll in. And while some editors might have felt unnerved by the pressure, it gave Michelle life. She wanted all of the publicity and awards possible. If only Aditi would play along.

  Jamie knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Michelle called out.

  “Hi, sorry to bother you,” Jamie said, peeking her head in. “I know you’ve got a ton on your plate.”

  “No problem,” Michelle replied, waving her in. “What’s up?”

  “Gwen just called and asked to see you upstairs.”

  “What time?” Michelle asked.

  “She’d like you up there now. Sorry for the late notice, but she just called.” If Jamie could have planned Michelle’s schedule two years out, she would have.

  “Gwen really didn’t give you any indication what this is about? Aditi? Sterling?” Michelle asked. She didn’t like walking into blind rooms. It was much harder to prepare.

  Jamie shrugged. “Just that it was important. She was a little… short. Un-Gwen-like. I felt I shouldn’t press her.”

  Great. Michelle couldn’t remember the last time Gwen was short with anyone. She nodded to Jamie and stood up, looking down at her blazer. Before she could ask, Jamie grabbed a lint roller from a shelf by the door. “Thanks.” Michelle took it gratefully and ran it along her sleeves. Gwen could wander around in palazzo pants and Chucks, but for Michelle, Faraday was a major company and she felt the need to dress accordingly.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Jamie said, affecting her best reassuring tone. But even she didn’t sound convinced.

  Michelle paused in front of Jamie and opened her mouth in a stretched smile, showing her teeth. Jamie scanned for food, then gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Looking good, boss,” Jamie said.

  At least she looked confident on the outside. “I’ll be back.”

  Gwen’s door was glass, so she waved Michelle in before Michelle was even halfway down the hall. “Michelle!” she called. “Come on in. Have a seat.”

  Gwen’s office looked like a hobby shop. Funko Game of Thrones dolls, a near life-sized Tardis in the corner, framed photos of the woman with nearly every geek icon she’d ever met at a con—from Chris Evans/Captain America to the guys from Supernatural. She had framed photos of herself mugging with Margaret Atwood, Patrick Rothfuss, even Tom Doherty. She had figurines of steampunk zeppelins and D&D dragons. And a few Disney snow globes.

  Gwen was a well-respected and high-powered publisher, and while her work was second to none, her life was a geek rummage sale. Just stepping inside the office practically made Michelle’s eyes twitch.

  “You wanted to see me?” Michelle asked, taking a seat on the other side of the desk.

  Gwen was already up out of her seat. “Need anything to drink? Water? Diet Coke?”

  “No, thank you,” Michelle replied. What she needed was to get through whatever this was and back to her much more pressing tasks.

  This didn’t make Gwen settle back in; instead, she went to the mini-fridge and pulled out a Diet Coke for herself. “So let’s have a rap session about the state of things.”

  “All right.” From an ordinary person, a “rap session” sounded like one of those time-wasting conversations about what was on TV last night or a general sense of how your day was going. From the granola geek across the desk, Michelle recognized it for what it was—a serious conversation.

  “Tell me, how are things between you and Aditi Sodhi?”

  Oh, shit. “Good. Great.”

  “I know you two have been friends for a long time, so this must put you in an awkward position, being a sort of boss to her,” Gwen said, tilting her head sympathetically.

  That was an understatement. “Not at all,” Michelle lied. “As her friend, I’m so proud of her talent and I’m immensely honored to be the one bringing it out into the world.”

  There was so much left unsaid, but Michelle didn’t think it was appropriate—or wise—to share her concerns with Gwen. Aditi had talent, there was no doubt. But she didn’t have the same drive as Michelle and the real struggle wasn’t the work or shaping her into the right kind of author. It was working around the sensitive spots. All authors had them, but Aditi’s were particular. Aditi was both lazy and stubborn, and deadlines didn’t seem to matter to her. To get anywhere as her editor you had to get her to want the same things you wanted. When that was finishing a novel that Aditi’s brain had been in love with for three years, they’d both had the same objective. Now that Michelle needed guest blog posts on things Aditi didn’t care about, she felt like she was pulling teeth.

  “I agree, she is a talent,” Gwen agreed, nodding. “That’s why I was so pleased to have her join the family.”

  She really does think of all of us as family, Michelle thought. People said that in business settings, but it usually meant that the company expected total loyalty without being expected to provide the same in return. In Gwen’s case, she actually seemed to feel that Faraday writers and editors were more than employees. Part of Michelle admired this, but part of her found it strange and naive.

  “That said, she just blew past another deadline this morning without a word.”

  Michelle could feel her ears grow hot. “She did? I thought she had until Friday for the guest posts.”

  “I had a meeting this morning with Liz, and she said Pam’s been complaining about Aditi’s work ethic, or lack thereof. She’s apparently calling Aditi your ‘special snowflake’?”

  “She said as much to me,” Michelle acknowledged.

  “Liz said that Pam was concerned about having too many posts due in one day, so she asked for one each day until the end of the week,” Gwen replied. “And that Aditi responded that she’d start with the Bustle piece because it was ‘easy peasy.’ Except that nothing showed up this morning, post or explanation.”

  “I’ll… talk to her. Right now.” Michelle made a move to rise, but Gwen held up her hand.

  Michelle settled back into the chair, realizing escape wouldn’t be that simple.

  “You know what this book means to us, yes? Not just you and me, but Faraday as a whole?” Gwen asked.

  “Of course. I know the advance we paid was sizeable—”

  “Huge. Probably more than I should have offered,” Gwen responded. “We may be owned by a big five publisher, but on our own, we’re a small house. Every book we publish matters to our bottom line. And we didn’t just invest a little in Aditi Sodhi. We bet the year on her.” The expression on Gwen’s face was one Michelle had never seen before. The woman looked worried, unfamiliar frown lines settling in around her mouth.

  Oh God, Michelle thought. Aditi’s given her wrinkles.

  “So when I tell you that the book needs to succeed, I really mean it. This isn’t a ‘let’s sell out the first run’ kind of book. It needs to make the list, and for multiple weeks. I want to see teenage stars snapped by paparazzi carrying this book to lunch. Conflicting invites from festivals and cons. I want calls from Lionsgate and Universal begging for the rights. Aditi Sodhi has the potential to be the next Sabaa Tahir—if only we can get her to buckle down.”

  “You mean, if I can get her to fall in line,” Michelle said.

  Gwen shrugged, which Michelle took to mean yes. “I hate to put all of this on you,” she continued. “I know the pride you take in your work. And because of that, it’s only fair that I am really clear about the stakes here.”

  “I appreciate that,” Michelle replied. She really didn’t, but she couldn’t say that out loud. This added pressure didn’t help. Michelle would have done her damnedest regardless of the “stakes,” but now she also needed to be concerned about losing her job. Or at least that was the way Gwen was making it sound. Michelle wasn’t going to press the publisher for confirmation on that. “Thanks for the straight talk.”

  “I
’m sure it’ll all work out just great,” Gwen said, slipping back into earth mother mode. “I know it will.”

  TANEESHA

  Taneesha was beginning to feel invisible. Not dateless-middle-schooler-at-the-dance invisible, but Sue Storm, actually see-through kind of invisible. Every time she went to the bathroom, she found herself staring into the mirror for a few extra seconds, making sure that she was the same person she’d always been.

  Perhaps she had been naive to buy into the hype that the merger meant she’d suddenly be playing in the big leagues. She should have known how it would turn out once the product leads from Maniac had begun fleeing to Silicon Valley and LA. Everyone claimed it was because they needed to be cutting edge, stay in the risky start-up world, but now she knew it was an excuse.

  After their introduction meeting and their little “talk” with her about her raise and job title change, her new bosses went back to Seattle and the programmer and architect they’d brought in had ignored her completely. Sure, she’d had people overlook her before, but never to this extent. In the week since the meeting, they’d shuffled and reassigned people to various teams. She had a new “home,” but still felt at loose ends. She was supposed to be “on-hand,” for her new team, but strangely enough, nobody seemed to need her. It was even more infuriating because she knew for a fact that two other teams were hurting for coders. If they were still Maniac, she’d be working her ass off right now.

  It was a very strange turn of events.

  So now Taneesha sat at her desk all day, waiting for someone to tell her what to do. Except that no one did. No projects, no code, not even a quick, “Hey, Neesha, can you look over something for me?”

  Taneesha finished up in the bathroom by splashing cold water on her face. A quick glance at herself showed she probably should’ve worn a little makeup—she looked more tired than usual, and she got the feeling that while wearing no makeup had helped her blend in at Maniac, here at Starwisp, she’d probably need to up her “professional” (or at least “grown-up”) visual presentation a little. With a little sigh, she then walked to the elevator and headed down to the atrium. Today was an all-hands meeting. Every major company had them, but Maniac had been fairly small and very loose about that kind of thing. Their largest meetings had fit comfortably in the conference room, but this behemoth, Hulk-buster version of the company needed to rent chairs and bring in catering. It was weird.