by Lucy Lambert
For just a moment, her mask dropped when she looked at Erin. I saw her then, saw her jealousy.
“No,” I said. “She’s good press for the film. I just got done talking with my agent on the way over and he says the buzz about the picture is good…” I lowered my voice even further. “Besides, if you do this it’s going to put a strain on our working relationship.”
“You think I give a damn about that?” Linda said.
I let some anger come through in my voice, “Yes. Stop this. Now.”
Her eyes widened at the tone in my voice. She took a few long seconds. Then she threw up her hands, “Fine. I’ll be in my trailer. Mine, not yours, Vance.”
Good, I thought.
She walked off the set and the tension left the room with her, snapping like an elastic band.
Silence reigned a little longer. I took it that shooting was supposed to continue, but without one of the key players nothing could really happen.
“Right, well, show’s over everyone,” Troy Sanders said after he gained his wits again. “Take 15 while we get everything sorted here. Good work so far, though.”
“Come with me,” I told Erin.
Chapter 8
ERIN
My nerves still sang. Cold shivers, the aftershocks of that adrenaline rush, ran up and down my body.
Vance led me outside, where the dawning sun painted the east side of Stage 9 in molten gold.
He looked good. Great, even. Before I could stop myself, I wondered what it might feel like to run my fingers through his dark, tousled hair.
What does it feel like it? Is it silky, smooth, a little rough? It looked silky.
I pushed all that aside. It was no time for that sort of foolishness.
“Did she really Bale you?” Vance asked.
“Huh?” I replied. I didn’t know what he’d been going to say. Maybe something gloating. But not that.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You call yourself a film student and you don’t know? A few years ago Christian Bale went off on some assistant adjusting the lights in his line of sight during filming.”
I shrugged. “I guess now I know where she got the idea.”
A few guys wearing yellow hard hats and toting 2x4s on their shoulders glanced at us as they walked by.
Is that Vance Tracker talking to some production assistant? I could see them asking themselves.
It was a good question.
Why? was a better one.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. Then, some of my fire went out when I remembered who I was talking to. “Not that I don’t appreciate it. But why?”
I tried not thinking about who he was too much. If I did, the giddy sensation in the pit of my stomach might overwhelm the rest of me in a terrible display of fangirlishness.
I thought you weren’t a fan anymore? I thought. Shut up, I’m not, I thought back.
Vance put one hand on his hip and then the opposite corner of his mouth cocked up. “Why are you making it a habit for me to save you?”
“A bad habit.”
That slanted smile widened. “Those are the hardest ones to break.”
He’s flirting with me. Again, I realized. That ball of giddiness in my stomach ruptured, spilled out clouds of butterflies which then battered about against my insides.
“Look, thanks,” I said. “I want to tell you that I could’ve handled that myself, but I think Mr. Sanders was one last round of screaming from having security escort me off the lot while he gave me an apologetic look.”
Vance started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. I couldn’t believe it, but I did it: I was shushing Vance Tracker.
Rather than angry, he looked amused. Which I think I liked less, though I wasn’t sure why.
“I just want all this attention to go away. I want to be behind the cameras, not in front of them. So thank you, but never again, okay?”
“It’s too late,” Vance said. “You’ve got their attention now. The media’s, that is. A pretty girl like you makes for good news. That’s why Linda is jealous, you know.”
Linda Campion, jealous of me? I thought. Then the other part hit me: Did he really just call me pretty?
Heat creeped up my throat and into my cheeks. I couldn’t stop it. I hoped the morning sun washed it out so Vance couldn’t see.
“I don’t want it…” I started.
“You can’t always get what you want,” Vance replied. His smile faltered a little.
Is… Is he actually a little nervous? Around me?
“Look, Linda’s just going to keep coming after you. My contract says I can have as many assistants as I want, and that I’m the only one able to hire or fire them. If you stay as a general PA with the studio, Linda will eventually twist Troy’s arm, figuratively and maybe literally, into getting rid of you…”
“Are you offering me a job?” I asked.
“I’m offering you a chance.”
I leaned back against the corrugated steel wall of Stage 9. They’d already absorbed enough warmth from the morning sun for it to creep in through the thin layer of my shirt. The heat helped a little with the tension in my shoulder blades.
“Will someone go get Ms. Campion?” I heard Troy ask, his voice dim and muffled by the wall.
My first instinct was to accept, then hide my glee until I could be alone. The more mature, Hollywood-jaded part of me offered caution.
Ever since last summer, after watching Vance crush Sandra’s heart on live TV, I’d hated him. I’d torn down his poster, unfollowed and ignored his pages on Twitter and Facebook and everywhere else, delighted in bad gossip and rumors about him.
But working with him the past few weeks, and actually speaking with him in the last couple days, started weakening all that hatred and bile inside of me.
He crossed his arms. “I didn’t realize it was that hard of a choice. If you want to stay in the industry, this is your best chance.”
“What’s in it for you?” I asked.
The question startled him. His hands fisted. For just a second, a thin line appeared between his eyebrows and then disappeared.
It was an adorable line. One that begged for a quick kiss. Vance had this very physical, primal effect on me that no amount of rationality could ignore.
It was like that for a lot of people. It probably had something to do with his box office success.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I pushed away from the warmth of the corrugated steel. “I mean what I said. This all seems great to me. I get to put your name down on my resume, get to stay in the industry, get my last few credits to finish my program. But what do you get out of it? Nothing’s for free, especially not here.”
“Maybe I’m trying to fix my image. It seems pretty clear to me that you know I have an image problem. Maybe I’m a better man than you think I am, and that I just want to help,” Vance said. He’d been letting his eyes wander around the lot, but then they fixed on me, “Or maybe what I get out of this is you.”
A strong fist squeezed around my heart at the same time a low, smoldering heat kindled in my stomach. At least the butterflies are gone. Killed by the fire.
He came in closer. Close enough that I could smell the leather of his jacket. “So what’ll it be, Erin?”
“I have to think about it,” I said.
“Not for too long. Don’t keep me waiting.”
He leaned in closer, then closer still. Again, I wanted to thread my fingers into his hair.
Instead I ducked out of the way. Before I really knew what I was doing I grabbed the handle for the door back into Stage 9. I stepped back into the dry, air-conditioned atmosphere.
Mitch saw me and waved me over.
“Glad to see you’re still with us,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.”
I glanced back at the door. Don’t keep me waiting, he told me.
They finished shooting the bunker interrogation scene without me.
It hurt a little,
but made perfect sense. Troy didn't want me distracting Linda again. Apparently I could “Bale” her with my mere presence.
Seeing as Linda was the co-star of the film, second-billed to Vance, and therefore in many of the film’s scenes, that could be a problem.
A big problem.
Like at that moment, for instance. Troy had already conveyed all that to Mitch, who’d then told me. He’d sent Danny and me to help the props department sort through old and new stock.
“Sorry about this,” I said. I tried to not breathe through my nose when I opened a plastic tote bin filled with what appeared to be many pairs of forties trousers and an equal number of mothballs.
“Are you kidding? This is great,” Danny said. He flopped down on another pile of forties clothes, what looked like ankle-length skirts, “No one’s checked on us in, like, an hour and a half!”
“Danny, if you really don’t like working on films that much… Why did you enter the program?”
He shrugged while he contorted on the clothes pile, yanking the cell out of his pocket. Its glow bathed his face.
“Seemed like something to do. People think it’s cool when I tell them. This is all just make-work, anyway. Prison detail, digging a hole and then filling it back in sort of stuff, if you get me. So I don’t know why you’re doing it either.”
I started sorting the trousers according to size, like Mitch told me. The pants were all corduroy or khakis or chinos, many of them pre-worn and torn.
“It’s not make-work. It’s important. They need these sorted for the extras who’ll wear them.”
That sounded lame even to me. Lame compared to being on set, watching the story unfold. Even if they weren’t filming chronologically and hadn’t shared the script with the whole crew.
I thought again about Vance’s offer. I could be right in the thick of it. On set every day. Maybe even on the destination shoots.
That made my heart hurry a little faster. There’d been talk and rumors on set that many of the big guns on set would be flying out to Europe to do some on-location shooting.
They could just do the shooting here, in North America, but I figured they probably wanted a more authentic feeling, and nothing was more authentic than the real thing.
I figured Germany. Probably France. A lot of the war took place in those countries, right? My knowledge was, embarrassingly, pretty fuzzy. All I really knew for sure was that the good guys won.
He might take me, though. To France and Germany.
Entranced like that, I stopped folding and sorting.
“Did you just realize how futile your existence is or something?” Danny said, sparing me a glance from his phone.
Phone, I thought again.
“No. And how do you have that? They’re supposed to be confiscated when we come in!”
He shrugged. “Maybe I know one of the guards.”
“Maybe you’re an idiot. What if Mitch or something else walks through those doors and sees you? We’ll both get booted off the lot! Look, I know you don’t really care about this, but I do, so please don’t ruin it for me.”
His lips pressed for a moment, but he put the phone away, contorting himself on his clothes pile like a stretching cat to do so.
“I don’t see why you’re yelling at me about all that. You seem to be doing a pretty good job of getting yourself booted out of the studio all on your lonesome.”
I threw down a tattered pair of denim coveralls and turned on him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He rolled off the makeshift bed and hunted around until he found the crowbar. Then he went over to a big wooden crate in the corner. “Bet there’s more soft stuff in here. Now… if I can…”
I watched him try and pry the lid off the crate, his eyes squinting and his mouth snarling with effort.
We needed to sort through the stuff in there, too, so I went over. “Allow me.”
I took the crowbar from him, the thick steel bar heavy in my hands. I jammed the curved claw under the lid and pried. The nails squealed in protest, but gave up.
“See?” I said.
“My hero.”
“And what did you mean I’m doing a good job myself?”
He shrugged even while he leaned over and reached in to the crate, pulling out the khaki tunic that looked like the one Vance wore the day he rescued me from the ladder.
“You know. I’ll bet you if Linda sees you again you’re gone. She’ll throw some sort of epic temper tantrum. So if you have any pull with anyone at school I’d say use it now. Get yourself moved to a different assistantship.”
Don’t keep me waiting, Vance said. Even over the mothballs I recalled the scent of his jacket, the smell of his aftershave when he leaned in close.
I realized I wanted to tell someone. Talk about it. It was eating me up inside with its desire to get out.
But I knew I couldn’t tell Danny everything. If he was as lazy with his secret keeping as he was with his job, I couldn’t.
I can tell him something though, right?
I bit my lower lip while I tried to focus and make a decision.
He saw.
“You do! You know someone.”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“It’s Davis, isn’t it? Professor Davis? That man knows all the female students, if you get me. Bet he’s willing to pull a few strings.”
“What? Eww, no. He’s in his sixties and he’s married, Danny! What is wrong with you?”
“It’s something wrong with him, actually, if you get me.”
I wished I didn’t, but I did. “It’s not Davis.”
“Then who…?”
“Look, I can’t go into detail right now, but I did actually get another job offer here, on this film. If I took it I wouldn’t have to worry about what Linda thought. It would look better on my CV than this job I have now. There might even be some travel involved,” I added, looking down at the old-timey clothes and wondering what the weather was like in France and Germany right about then.
This felt good, telling someone. Even if that someone was Danny. Some of those thin threads of anxiety stitched across my stomach loosened. A little, at least.
“But?”
“But what?” I said.
“There’s always a but. And I think it’s a big but, in your case. Though not the fun kind of big butts.”
I shook my head, “Grow up, Danny. Yes, there’s a catch. And that catch is working with someone I don’t think I can work with.”
“It’s Sanders, isn’t it? Guy felt bad about almost firing you, now he wants to give you another job.”
“I can’t say,” I replied. “What would you do? Stay and do these… make-work jobs or get back into the action of being on set? Even if it meant maybe compromising some things you thought about yourself?”
I thought I might just do the opposite of whatever Danny replied. But he surprised me.
He grabbed the lid of the crate and put it back in place. Then he sat, straddling one corner and letting his legs flap.
“Get back on set, of course. Sounds like fun. Suck up any of the bad stuff. What’s the worst that’s gonna happen? Sanders gives your butt a pat every now and then? I could live with that.”
“Eww, Danny! Troy Sanders is married, too!”
“So it is him, isn’t it? And you never know with people. Guy is probably into some freaky stuff, I’ll bet. You never can tell what’s the truth about people,” Danny said, grinning a wolf’s grin at me like he’d just caught the scent of something good in the breeze.
“I never said it was him.” I ignored the last bit.
Except I thought about how Vance acted. The first few weeks on set he’d been the aloof actor. But these last couple days I’d seen a different person.
Which was the act?
You never could tell about some people.
“You never said it wasn’t him. So what are you going to do?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know. But I think it’s a time-sensitive off
er,” I said
“Better choose quick, then.”
Yeah, I’d better.
Rather than feeling more certain one way or the other, I felt more confused. Because in between the jokes Danny did make a few good points.
And still I didn’t know exactly what Vance stood to get out of the arrangement.
I got back to my apartment around ten that night. I stank of mothballs, and bone-deep aches throbbed in my lower back and feet.
After sorting through all those costumes, Mitch had me literally stacking boxes. Mostly wooden crates. I never even got near the set.
By the time we finished, even Danny didn’t have the strength for a single joke.
I leaned against the wall and pulled off my tennis shoes. I sucked in a breath through my teeth. It hurt and felt good at the same time, relieving the pressure of the laces and pulling the shoes off.
I knew I should have made myself some sort of late supper. But being home flicked a switch in my brain. Said switch went from the up position marked “Work” to the low position marked “Crash into bed. Try and remember to take clothes off first.”
Exhaustion joined the aches in my bones. My hands, despite Mitch giving me some work gloves, were tender and they throbbed hotly if I tried curling my fingers.
Bed, I thought.
But then Sam, a freckled brunette who was one of my roommates, popped her face out the kitchen door. The rest of her followed. A pretty girl, if a bit too fitness-obsessed, I thought. She regularly woke the rest of us up dancing and hopping in our small excuse for a living room to old Jillian Michaels DVDs.
“Erin! Long day? It looks like they had you running tourists around the set on your shoulders all day!”
I managed something I hoped looked more like a smile than a snarl. “Something like that, Sam. I don’t mean to be rude, but I really just want to hit the sack.”
To try and forestall any further conversation, I squeezed past her down the hall. My feet sent jags of pain up through my calves every time I settled my weight down on them.
Bed never sounded so good.
“Oh, yeah, sure. You maybe want to grab the package first?”
