No More Pretending

by Bette Hawkins

  Sal held his arms out. “I’m a very good judge of character. My personal assistant quit and I really want to get another one before we start shooting. I could do with someone temporary until I get back home and can hire someone else. I’d pay you well. You don’t need any training, it’s just managing things for me here and there. I’m sure you can learn it on the job.”

  “I’d need to think about it,” Harper said. It was a strange offer and she would be stupid if she didn’t see why he was making it. Who would just offer a job without an interview or any idea of what she could actually do?

  “Here, take my card.” As Sal handed over the small piece of cardboard, he held onto the edge of it for a second. “I don’t just give this out to anyone.”

  Harper put the card in the pocket of her dress without looking at it. Sal nodded at her once more and walked out.

  Sue, who had been lingering behind them, came running over to her. “Did I just hear what I think I heard? Did he offer you a job?”

  “Yep. It’s crazy right? He must think I was born yesterday,” Harper said.

  “You’re not going to do it? Why the hell not?”

  “Because he’s a sleazy scumbag?”

  “You are so boring. Why don’t you just give it a try? The rest of us would kill for an opportunity like that.” Sue walked away muttering to herself. Harper looked guiltily at her back.

  Harper stewed about Sal’s proposal and Sue’s reaction to it all night. Maybe she had never pictured herself doing a job like the one Sal was asking her to do, but then she hadn’t pictured herself working at the diner forever either. The extra money he mentioned was difficult to refuse. Harper had been trying so hard to keep them all afloat, but by the time they paid the bills and her dad bought his whiskey and cigarettes, there wasn’t a whole lot left over. If she ever wanted to start her life again, it would help to have some cash saved up.

  Maybe it wouldn’t hurt just to try it. She called Sal the next day. When he came on the line, she abruptly told him her terms. “I’m not going to sleep with you. If you make rude comments to me or if I get the slightest hint that you’re only hiring me for a bit of fun, I’ll walk out immediately and sue for sexual harassment. I know the law, and I know a lot of lawyers too.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then he laughed. “We’re going to get along just fine. I like you. When can you start?”

  Chapter Four

  When Harper arrived for the first day of her new job, her heart was thudding. The address Sal gave her was for an old warehouse on the outskirts of town. It had once been the home of Hanson’s Cannery, a business that went under before she was even born. There was paint flaking from the walls. The vacant lot next to it had been turned into a car park for expensive vehicles that looked very out of place next to the crab grasses and abandoned car parts that littered the ground.

  Harper was nowhere near sure that she had made the right decision about this. She had to keep telling herself that she had done nothing irreversible, and that she could quit if this turned out to be as crazy as it seemed. It was an overnight career change. Though it went against her sense of herself as a responsible person, she hadn’t even given two weeks’ notice. Her boss Ben told her that his niece was on a break from school, so he could just get her in for a couple of months to cover.

  Harper’s father had been quietly shocked when she’d told him about her plans. Like her, he had ignored the stories about the movie shooting in town, so he had to ask her a number of questions before he understood what she was talking about. It had been a long time since he was in a position to offer her fatherly guidance, so he didn’t have much else to say about it. He congratulated her on the new job and went back to his TV show, though she saw the slight quizzical frown on his face when he did it.

  Harper wandered around, searching for Sal’s office. The partitioning of rooms with cheap wood had created thin hallways, making the whole place into a rabbit warren. A couple of people passed her in the hall, but nobody stopped her to ask who she was or what she was doing there.

  Sal’s door was marked with a big sheet of paper with his name on it. It swung open when she knocked.

  “Oh, thank God you’re here, I need coffee. Would you get something for me to eat with it too?” Sal said in a rush. Harper was relieved at being asked to do something she actually knew how to do. Until he spoke to her, she had been half expecting to be told that this was all a big practical joke.

  It made her feel a little sheepish to go back into the diner. She resisted the urge to clean up a table covered in dirty napkins set on top of a lonely plate. When Sue teased her about not being able to stay away from the diner, Harper told her that it was just as well seeing as the place was a mess. It felt good to walk in there, but it felt just as good to walk out, and to know that she wasn’t going to be stuck inside there all day.

  When she got back to the warehouse she found Sal sitting in the middle of the room, leading a meeting.

  “Is she going to take all the best lines again? Are you going to let her suck up all my screen time?” Josh was asking.

  Harper recognized the movie’s leading man thanks to Sue and her crush. Sue had been shoving pictures from magazines in Harper’s face for weeks now, trying to educate her about the film. Josh was very conventionally handsome, with chiseled cheekbones and a prominent jawline. Josh, Sal, Lauren and a woman that Harper didn’t recognize all had scripts in their laps.

  “You are so full of it. You know that’s not what happened,” Lauren said. She reached down for a second toward the small, fluffy black dog that was curled around her ankles, and scratched its head absently. Like everyone else in the room, the dog did not notice that Harper was there.

  “Are you two going to be teasing one other like this the whole shoot? I’m not sure I have the energy,” Sal said.

  “I need to keep him in line, he’s the one already acting like a world-class diva.”

  Because nobody was looking at her, Harper took a moment to study Lauren. It wasn’t difficult to believe that she was a movie star. She somehow shone brighter than other people and projected a strong presence even when she wasn’t speaking.

  “You’re the only diva around here, I think you’ll find.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes and then, apparently feeling eyes on her, she looked up at Harper. She stared at Harper’s face impassively.

  “See, look at this. My notes say I could drop this line here about my mom. I don’t think we need it. Does that sound like I’m trying to beef up my role?” Lauren said, her eyes moving down Harper’s body before returning to the script.

  Harper looked down at her own outfit, sure that Lauren had just been judging the way she was dressed. It had not been easy to decide what to wear this morning. Harper was accustomed to her waitress’s uniform. She hadn’t needed to think about what to wear to work for a long time. Eventually, she had chosen a skirt and blouse that she’d found in the back of her closet from back when she’d worked in the city. When she tried the clothes on, she had thought she looked professional but not too dressed up. Now that she was here, she could see there was no real dress code. Nobody would think twice if she wore jeans. Harper looked straight ahead of her, making sure she didn’t look at Lauren again.

  Finally, Sal beckoned her to come closer. She handed him his coffee and sandwich.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” Sal said. Harper gave him a warning look but decided to let it go for now, knowing it would be a bad move to say anything when there were so many people around. But he needed to know that they weren’t at the diner anymore. Lauren’s eyes were on her again; she could feel it.

  “What would you like me to do now?” Harper asked.

  Sal waved his hand at her. “Take it easy on your first day, I don’t need much. Go around and introduce yourself, take a look at how things run. To begin with, this is Loretta, the script supervisor. You’ve met Lauren, and this is Josh, my leading man.”

  Harper shook hands with Loretta and t
hen with Josh.

  “I’ll come and find you when we’re done, and I’ll take you through some stuff,” Sal said.

  Harper nodded and closed the door behind her, standing with her hand pressed to it for a moment. Sal seemed like a very relaxed boss, which didn’t actually sit that well with her. She didn’t like the idea of just floating around without any direction. Harper stopped short of pulling the door all the way shut. It was still open half an inch or so. She could hear someone laughing and guessed that it must be Lauren. There was a sarcastic edge to it, and she knew with a sinking feeling that they were all talking about her. Harper quickly looked around to make sure there was nobody else out in the hallway, and then stood close to the door so she could hear properly.

  “What are you doing, Sal?”

  “What? I needed an assistant.”

  “So you recruited from the local diner?”

  “She’s clearly smart and competent. I think she’ll be great.”

  “That may be the case, but it’s obviously not why you hired her.”

  Harper resented the statement, not to mention the way the other people in the room laughed as though they agreed with it.

  “I used the resources available to me. What was I supposed to do? Halt production and fly back to LA to hire someone? I don’t have time to worry about things like that.” Sal sounded bored, like he couldn’t be bothered arguing.

  “You know you could have arranged someone to do that for you, and had a real assistant out on the next plane. You’re such a pig.”

  “Why do you care who my assistant is?” Sal replied.

  “I don’t care. But there was no need to go out and buy yourself a toy to play with while we’re supposed to be working,” Lauren snapped. “You just use them up and throw them away, it’s not nice.”

  Harper stepped away from the door. She didn’t need to hear any more, given how uncomfortable she was around Lauren already. It was a mystery why Lauren was so hostile toward her when they had barely interacted. Harper usually had a pretty thick skin, but Lauren’s comments were upsetting. She wanted to believe that Sal really had only hired her for the reasons he had just mentioned, and not because he wanted to get into her pants. It was so humiliating to hear her fears being articulated by someone else like they were a fact.

  Harper turned and walked away down the hall. Nobody else might know it, but she was ridiculously overqualified for this role. She could run errands for Sal standing on her head. She was determined to act professionally, and to show Lauren and everyone else that she was more than worthy of being here.

  Over the next few days, Harper threw herself into her work, and was surprised at how much she enjoyed it. It was low in responsibility, but fun for her to have such a varied role. She was given a small office with a desk and computer so she had a base from which to answer Sal’s emails and take phone calls. She spent a lot of time running around doing whatever Sal asked her to do, but at least it was never boring.

  Harper had never given a lot of thought to how movies were made, or to how many people were involved. There were whole professions that she’d never imagined existing. They were preparing a bunch of locations around town, in houses and ranches and old empty buildings. Someone explained to her that Sal had wanted everything to be as natural as possible, and that was why it was all happening right here in town rather than on a soundstage. There were days when she would ride along in vans and watch as it all came together. It was fascinating.

  The only downside of her new job was there were long periods during which there wasn’t a lot for her to do. She had quickly learned that making movies meant a lot of waiting around. Sal didn’t seem to care how she spent her time as long as she was around when he needed something. She made the best of the situation, downloading law journals and reading articles so that she could keep up with changes. It had been a long time since she had done much reading. It was good to feel stimulated in the way the law made her feel. When she tired of that and needed a break, she would read books or the gossip magazines Sue had always foisted off on her and that she had never cracked open before.

  During one of her quiet times, she was flipping through one of the magazines. She had glanced at the front page and somehow managed to miss the picture of Lauren in the corner. When she turned to the article she saw a big pink headline that said, “Lauren’s Ultimatum: Marry Me or It’s Splits Ville.”There was a picture of Lauren and Josh walking through an airport with blank expressions on their faces beneath their sunglasses.

  Harper’s eyebrows went up but only slightly. She had not had any idea that Josh and Lauren were a couple, but then why would she? There was nothing that surprising about it anyway. The most shocking thing about it was that Sue hadn’t mentioned it to her in all that time she was mooning over Josh.

  Now that she was thinking about Lauren, she looked up the app she’d downloaded in an attempt to learn a bit more about movies. She had looked up Sal’s entry so far, but nothing else. She wanted to jog her memory about that movie she had seen so long ago, the one she thought about when she found out who Lauren was. Harper typed in Lauren’s name to bring up her filmography. The movie was Edge of the Sea.She recognized the name now that she saw it, and more details came flooding back.

  When she looked up the blurb, Harper noticed that Lauren had her only co-writing credit on the film. When Harper looked through the list of movies she had done, it looked as though Lauren’s career had changed course not long after that movie came out. There was a string of fluffy-looking titles right after it, names that she vaguely recognized. She wondered why Lauren had never written anything else.

  Harper was still browsing the list of credits when Sal called her to his office. Distractedly, he handed her a page of notes to deliver to the wardrobe designer, Sherri. Sal had assistant directors who were often out at various locations, so running around to deliver instructions sometimes fell to her. By now Harper had learned her way around, so she easily located the wardrobe department. When she stepped inside, she looked around at racks and racks of clothing and mannequins, taking a moment to find the main floor where Sherri was working.

  “Hey guys,” Harper said, feeling a twinge of guilt when she realized the person she had just been stalking via her filmography was in the room with Sherri. Lauren was standing on a raised block while Sherri kneeled at her feet.

  “Hey Harper,” Sherri said warmly, taking pins out of her mouth to speak. They had met a couple of times, and Harper really liked Sherri. She was a warm older woman, who always looked stylish in an eccentric way.

  Harper started to smile back at her but stopped when she glanced behind Sherri and met Lauren’s eyes. Lauren was standing with her arms crossed over her chest. Harper just now realized that she was clad only in a skirt and black bra. Harper also noticed, with a flush of embarrassment, just how perfect Lauren’s body was.

  When she glanced back up at Lauren’s face, she saw that it was red, and Harper wasn’t sure whether it was due to anger or embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” Harper said.

  “It would be great if you could knock before you come in,” Lauren said, more gently than Harper expected.

  “Of course, I’ll do that in future,” Harper said, trying to sound diligent and eager to please, like this was just another direction that someone had given her.

  What was she supposed to do now? Lauren’s green eyes never left hers. She realized they’d never made eye contact for such a long time, though they had come close that first day in the diner. She was used to Lauren’s gaze slipping away, like her eyes didn’t know what to catch on.

  This was different. It felt like it was only the two of them in the room. There was something in the way that Lauren stared at her that made her feel like she was exposed too.

  “Um, can I…” she said, flailing and shifting her focus to Sherri. It seemed wise to put her energy into not looking at Lauren at all.

  “Oh sure, hon, just put them on the floor over here,” She
rri said. Harper nodded and set the papers down, aware of Lauren’s gaze following her the whole time.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Sherri said, oblivious to the undercurrent in the room.

  Harper walked out knowing that she was only going to be more uneasy around Lauren from now on. It made her feel strange, that she had felt that powerful of an attraction toward someone she neither liked nor respected. It was as though something were happening between them, like Lauren had known what she was thinking. She had noticed the curve of Lauren’s breasts, and the way her body tapered in at the waist.

  Harper tried to put the thoughts out of her head. Lauren wasn’t a mind reader, and in fact probably was too self-absorbed to give much thought to her at all.

  Chapter Five

  It unsettled Lauren that Sal had brought Harper into her workplace. She always became anxious at the start of a shoot, when she was still getting to know everyone and figuring out who was who. This time it helped that she had already worked with Sal and Josh, but she hadn’t expected to have Harper walking past her in the halls and into meetings. Avoiding Harper by staying away from the diner had been relatively easy. This was not.

  It threw her just a little bit off balance every time Harper walked into a room. She strode around with her shoulders back and her hips swaying, ready to take on whatever might be thrown at her. When Lauren examined the sense of intimidation she felt, she knew that it wasn’t just about the pull of desire toward Harper. It was the way Harper carried herself, the way she was so sure of who she was. Being around her made Lauren feel weak and even more shy than usual. All the relaxation she had done in the lead up to the shoot had gone to waste. She was back to being tightly wound again. She found herself doling out tight smiles and stiff greetings if she had to speak to Harper at all.

  The truth was that Lauren really wanted to get to know Harper better and just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her curiosity increased each time Sal talked about how whip-smart she was, how interesting and easy to get along with she was. Sometimes it felt like all Lauren wanted was for Harper to like her and to be seen by her, but it would be dangerous to open herself up like that and risk rejection. She was fearful that if she got to know Harper any more, she would only want her more.