by Jen Malone
He returned the sandwich carefully to his plate and remarked, “Not bad. You have skills.”
“Are you serious? That is like the most disgusting combination of foods possible. You can’t honestly tell me you want another bite.”
Wordlessly, he picked up the sandwich again and took an even larger bite, chewing with relish. I picked up my own turkey and mustard on wheat and managed a delicate nibble.
“Wimp,” Graham commented.
“Really? What, because I like normal flavor combinations. Although I’m from the South, so if I had my way this would be deep-fried. But still.”
“How much would it take to get you to try one bite of this?” he asked, holding up his sandwich for my inspection.
“How much you got?” I challenged. Graham leaned back in his chair and raised both eyebrows.
Oh. Right. About a zillion dollars.
His eyebrows wagged up and down at me and it was impossible not to laugh.
“So? Are you game?” he asked.
I pretended to think hard. My eyes settled on my own plate and I had an idea. “I will if you will,” I told him. “I’ll try your sandwich, if you take a bite of this pickle.” I held it up and Graham recoiled as if examining roadkill.
“Uh-uh. No way.”
“So you’ll eat that,” I said, waving my hand over his sandwich, “but you won’t try one bite of a harmless little pickle?”
“Yup, you’ve pretty much nailed it,” he answered, tucking back into his soggy mess of a lunch.
“Now who’s the wimp?”
He looked amused. “To think, your mom assured me you were the sweetest girl ever.”
Traitor. I’d get her for that one.
“So, speaking of your mom, she said last night that you were downstairs working on a heartfelt apology to me. I’m ready to hear it whenever.”
He was so serious when he said it that I choked on the sip of water I’d just taken. My face turned red as I sputtered and coughed. Graham jumped from his seat and thumped my back a few times.
“Hey, are you okay?” Graham put his hands on my shoulders and peered into my face. I nodded, mortified, before dabbing at the tears my coughing spell had produced. Graham exhaled and returned to his seat.
“I was only kidding, you know.”
Oh. Guess that’s why the guy made the big bucks. No one could say he couldn’t act.
“Uh, sorry,” I mumbled, ending on another cough.
“It’s all good. Actually, I’m the one who’s sorry. That I yelled at you like that yesterday, I mean. I swear, I’m not normally that guy. It was a rotten travel day and finding a stalker in my bed was sort of the cherry on the cake.”
“Icing,” I said, before I could stop myself.
“Huh?”
“It’s icing on the cake. Cherry on the sundae.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m sort of bad about mixing up expressions.” Graham shrugged and added a smile.
I didn’t want to admit what that smile did to my insides, so I quickly added, “Anyway, you can continue with your apology.”
“Nope. I was done. Your turn. Let’s hear what you have to say in that Southern accent of yours.”
I picked at my sandwich and sucked in some air. Fine, okay, I guess it wouldn’t kill me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you for another few hours and I thought I’d have plenty of time to be out of your bed before you got there.”
Graham smiled wickedly and said, “Hold on. I’m trying to come up with a witty response that doesn’t sound totally dirty, but it’s not easy with the bed thing in there.”
I nearly choked again and before I could compose my thoughts enough to respond, the door clicked open and Lenny and Brian clamored in, balancing plates piled high. “How’s lunch, young love?” joked Lenny.
I blushed from head to foot, mostly from Graham’s comment and partly from Lenny’s. Standing, I fumbled with my plate and glass, clinking them together in my haste. “Sorry,” I managed. For his part, Graham looked a little like the cat that ate the canary at my disjointed movements.
I struggled for the upper hand. “Oh, and by the way, I forgot. There was a sliced pickle hidden between the bologna and the marshmallow in your sandwich.”
At that, Graham turned greener than a kosher dill.
It took until the next break for Graham to speak to me again. As Mom bustled in and did some rearranging of Graham’s hairstyle, he told her matter-of-factly that I was pure evil and she was to blame for her clear lack of responsible child rearing.
Mom merely laughed.
“I was just trying to keep things interesting around here,” I protested. “I mean, seriously, do they give these guys the questions ahead of time or something? Is that why they’re all the same?”
“Nope, they’re free to ask whatever they want. They’re just all automatons by this point. I guess they figure the interviews are all going to broadcast in different cities, so it doesn’t matter if the exchanges are verbatim. But I’m awfully sorry if it’s boring you,” Graham teased.
Mom looked from Graham to me and back again, then ducked her head with a Mona Lisa smile. Annoying. Nothing going on here, Mom.
I answered him in a mocking tone. “Adrian Porter’s an amazing director and any actor would count themselves lucky to work with him. I’m just flattered that I had the chance to at this point in my career.”
“Touché,” Graham said, with a laugh. “I’ll see what I can do to make today more interesting for you. After all, I live to serve.” With that Graham stood and gave a deep bow. Mom yanked her comb out of the way just in time.
“Okay, you two. I guess I don’t need to tell you to have fun. As for me, I’m just glad this day’s halfway over. I’m exhausted. It’s a good thing you found other lunch plans, Ans, because I only had time to grab some grapes standing up.”
Graham said, “Just think, we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Except with even more talking because it’ll be the newspaper reporters’ turn and they get twenty minutes. Good times.”
Mom groaned. “I don’t know how you do it. I feel like this and I don’t even have to be ‘on’ all day.”
“All part of the glitz and glamour,” Graham joked.
Mom tapped him playfully with a makeup brush, waved at me, then slid out the door. I settled myself with resignation into my seat with my stopwatch and waited for the next interview. Graham waited too, a small smile playing in the corners of his mouth.
Reporter: So Graham, tell us a little about Triton.
Graham: Well, Triton is about the son of Poseidon, who fights evil underwater with his trident and a magical conch shell. My character has to battle Ladon, a hundred-headed sea serpent, for control of the sea. And of course, I’m in love with the mermaid Coralia.
Reporter: I had a chance to see it last night and I just loved it! I’ll bet the filming underwater part wasn’t fun, though. Tell us about what that was like.
Graham: (laughs) That wasn’t so great. You’re right there. The tank that we used was the same one they used for Titanic, so we were in Mexico for months and it was really warm outside, but for whatever reason the tank was always absolutely freezing. I’m talking hypothermia, which I never knew would be a career hazard when I signed up for this movie star thing. (Laugh, laugh, laugh. Ha, ha, ha.)
Reporter: So then, what was your favorite part?
Graham: Can I be honest with you, Brad, is it? Yes? Okay, then. It was the fish tacos. Yup. They were a-mazing. There was this one beach shack down the strip from where we were filming and I used to hit it every morning on my way to the set. Sheer perfection.
Graham mimed licking his fingers as I went slack-jawed.
It got better.
Next reporter: Tell us a little about Triton.
Graham: Well, I play the son of Poseidon and I battle a sea mons
ter. Along the way I fall in love with the mermaid Coralia.
Reporter: Boy, I bet you were sick of swimming by the end, huh?
Graham: (laughs) Actually it wasn’t so bad. I had a lot of time between takes, so I decided I would train to do free diving. You know, where you dive as far down as you can without taking a breath? I’m really into it. I got pretty good too. I’m thinking about competing in the world finals next spring.
Reporter: Oh. Uh, wow. That’s, um, great. So, I guess that was your favorite part then, huh?
Graham: Oh no, not at all. My favorite part was getting to work with Adrian Porter. He’s an amazing director and any actor would count themselves lucky to work with him. I’m just flattered that I had the chance to at this point in my career.
Graham waited for the camera light to blink off before grinning broadly at me.
The next reporter was even less composed. Graham answered his first question (“Can you tell me what the movie is about?”) with, “Well, Ron, I think Triton is, at its heart, an examination of the existential crisis we all face. An exposé on the conflicted motives with which we each approach new situations and the underlying value system of our society.”
His follow-up question (“What was your favorite part of filming?”) received this: “If I’m being honest, it was the lack of wardrobe. Actually, I chose Triton because it was the best vehicle for getting me on screen without a shirt for the maximum amount of time possible.” With that he pushed his sleeves up and flexed his biceps.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t stifle the burst of laughter that escaped my lips and ruined the recording. Graham, of course, was counting on that. He cheerfully retaped the interview with perfectly on-point answers, much to the dismay of the reporter who’d had a major scoop a few moments before. As I retrieved the recording from Lenny and Brian, neither could resist adding their two cents.
“I don’t know about you, Brian,” Lenny teased, “but this is the most fun I’ve had at one of these things in ages. My heart is all aflutter with the possibilities in the air.” I rolled my eyes with great exaggeration and purposefully swung the door between the rooms closed.
To my total annoyance, I was back in the control room with Lenny and Brian as the interviews wrapped up. Graham had mostly behaved himself for the rest of the afternoon and I’d spent the last hour alternating between convincing myself that it would be perfectly acceptable to ask him to hang out later to dismissing the idea as pure crazy. Sure, he’d been totally friendly and even a little flirty, but he was still the biggest teen movie star on the planet and the idea that he’d want to spend a night in NYC hanging out with me was sort of insane.
In the end, it didn’t even matter. While I grabbed the last recording from Lenny, the tiny headshot-wielding handler from the night before appeared out of nowhere and shepherded Graham from the room before I could even say good-bye.
Mom and I settled for takeout from Shake Shack and a bad cable movie that neither of us managed to stay awake for.
Chapter Six
The sensor in the airport metal detector sounded a loud alarm as a sleepy-looking Graham passed through it in the early hours of Sunday morning.
I hadn’t seen him once on Saturday, though I knew from the schedule that he’d had interviews with print reporters all day long. He certainly hadn’t sought me out in any free time he might have had. Which bothered me way more than it should have. What happened to sticking together?
Mom was on loan to Warner Brothers after a whole crew of their makeup artists had failed to heed the steer-clear-of-the-oyster-bar warnings, and I got stuck monitoring roundtable interviews for Triton’s producer. This entailed using my now-trusty stopwatch to time out twenty-minute interviews and shuttling crews of six to ten reporters in and out of the room between sit-downs.
During the interviews, which surprisingly did not take place at a round table but at a very rectangular one, the reporters set out a slew of tape recorders and each took turns asking one or two questions. The only interesting thing about it was watching the journalists try to outdo one another with their insightful questions about a cheesy popcorn movie. Well, that and anytime the producer answered a question about working with the talented Graham Cabot.
Then I’d spend the rest of the allotted time trying to pretend my ears didn’t perk up at the mere mention of Graham’s name, because I was not going to turn into a crushing-hard fangirl over one stupid lunch. Was NOT!
Now it was practically the middle of the night and we were waiting to get on the charter plane while a shaggy-haired Graham held up the line at security and backed through the sensor to empty his pockets. I watched with interest from a few spots back. He stuffed his hand into his perfectly fitted dark-wash jeans pocket and pulled out one shiny penny, which he popped into a plastic container while giving a sheepish grin to his pocket-size handler.
“At least we know they won’t take off without us,” I overheard him say. She responded by putting her finger to her lips and he turned forward again with a scowl.
He had not yet acknowledged me and I was pretty much at the point where I’d convinced myself any flirting I thought was taking place the other day was probably just Graham in movie star mode and meant absolutely nothing. He disappeared down the ramp and through a door onto the tarmac.
In front of me, Mom was still taking off about ten different strands of silver necklaces while the line grew longer behind us. Nothing like advertising the fact that we’d never flown anywhere, except from LA to NYC a few days ago. At least it gave me a few extra minutes to stall before stepping onto the steel death trap. I was NOT a fan of flying. Even in style.
When we staggered on board a few minutes later, the rest of the group was all settled in and waiting for takeoff. Roddy the bodyguard had already gone to sleep in his seat. I didn’t spot Graham, but the other faces gave us tight smiles as we bumped past them carting our bags of makeup supplies. I was just cramming the last case into the coat closet at the back of the plane when the cockpit door opened and Graham slipped out, acting as if he owned the place. Was there anywhere that guy didn’t look completely at home?
He spotted me and gave the tiniest of waves before settling onto a leather couch in the front row, facing forward. I slid down next to Mom and fastened my seat belt, trying hard not to be conscious of every movement from his seat. One long leg had poked out into the aisle and I forced myself to ignore it.
Far from our experience flying cross-country earlier in the week, this time there would be no fighting over armrests or stuffing our bags under the seat in front of us or trying not to get breathed on by the lung hacker beside me. Mom and I each had our own creamy leather captain’s chair that was more like a La-Z-Boy than a seat. They had plush headrests but also a puffy pillow propped against them and a soft wool blanket draped over the arm. The floor was carpeted in something that looked like it belonged in a living room and there were actual couches in the front and last rows of the plane.
As we settled in, a flight attendant offered a tray of champagne to Mom and an array of sodas to me. We shook our heads and concentrated instead on arranging ourselves for a transcontinental nap.
The captain announcing that we were third in line for takeoff sent me straight into panic mode. I stole a glance at my mother. How was she not the least bit freaked? She’d been this calm on our last flight too, while I basically clawed off my armrest. I mean, I’m a pretty logical person. And logic tells me that a small tin box should not be hurtling through the atmosphere at many hundreds of miles an hour.
Mom wordlessly held out her hand and I clasped it with a death grip until we reached cruising altitude. Somehow, despite my messing with her circulation, she managed to fall back asleep. Which sounded pretty good to me, actually. The alarm had gone off this morning at 1:05, ridiculously soon after I’d nodded off. Not humane. We deserved hazard pay for the effect this disruption to my sleeping patterns would
have on me. I purposefully avoided glancing toward the front of the plane as I snuggled under my blanket.
I don’t know how much time had passed when my lap buzzed. I startled out of a deep sleep, only exhaling when I realized it was my phone. Yikes. Was I supposed to have turned it off for the flight? No one had said anything like they had on the last flight. I recovered it from under the blanket and stole a peek at the text.
Hey, Pickles, wanna come up here?
I didn’t recognize the number, which was from a 310 area code.
Maybe it was for someone else? It wasn’t like anyone I knew in LA had my cell number. I slid my phone into my bag on the floor. Immediately it buzzed again.
I looked around to see if it was a problem that my phone was on, but everyone else was catching Zs. Only the running lights along the aisle were on and the rest of the plane was dim and quiet. I reached back into my bag.
Rude much?
I looked around again, and then, squinting, made out Graham, who was turned around on his couch and looking right at me. He held up his phone. I looked down at mine. Was Graham Cabot asking me if I was being rude? Wait, how did he even get my number?
How did U get my #? I typed.
I have my ways. Mwah ha ha.
I glanced over the top of the seat in front of me to see him grinning impishly at me. His perfectly white teeth gleamed in the little light that there was. I raised my eyebrows, though he probably couldn’t see that. My phone vibrated.
Fine, Melba gave it 2 me. She has everything but nuclear launch codes in her master itinerary.
Melba? I typed.
Handler. Kylie. Frm Melbourne. W/ her accent, sounds like Melba. U know? Like toast old people eat. Nickname stuck.
UR big into nicknames, huh? Not sure I’m down w/ Pickles. I was actually amazing myself with my easy banter. That’s right. Because this was just a guy who wanted nothing at all from me and in fact, spent as much time ignoring me as he did paying attention to me. Which meant that I had no need to worry about impressing him with witty repartee. As if I’d even want to impress him anyway. Nope. I’m nothing but calm, cool, and collected.
