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CHAPTER
13
Most people who had never been to L.A. held the glamorous view that movies and TV were made in Hollywood and that the Sunset Strip was actually a desirable place to hang out.
Most people were wrong.
Many of the film studios were in and around Burbank, on the backside of the Hollywood Hills, which meant Lucy had to haul it up the 405 and pray she didn’t get stuck in traffic. She threw her faith in midafternoon on a Thursday being an open window, pending any brake-slamming fender benders clogging up the highway. She passed the Getty, Mulholland, Ventura Boulevard; all the storied landmarks of the greater Los Angeles area. By the time she hit the 101, Ms. Ma’s song came on her satellite radio, and she blared it as loud as her stock speakers could handle, singing along with every inappropriate and vulgar lyric. She hadn’t had time to check if her official statement on behalf of J&J had hit the web yet, but she was sure it was only a matter of time. And she was just as sure that Ms. Ma wouldn’t give one damn that she’d said something so blunt on her behalf because all the controversy would only lead to more streams, downloads, and purchases anyway. Ms. Ma had probably been saying the same thing she had said all day anyway.
She used the song and the drive to distract herself from thoughts of Adam. She needed to focus on her job, and the scene on the sidewalk kept looping through her head like a rerun binge on Netflix. She allowed herself another heart-fluttering smile and indulgent memory of his kiss before she stored it away for later.
Her nerves sparked like live wires the closer she got to the studio lot. Begging Lily Chu not to fire her before she even hired her felt like calling after a first date and proposing marriage. It was risky and desperate, but she wanted to clear the air and make sure Lily knew which side of the scandal she was on. And she was working against the clock seeing that Monica was going to drop the story any second. Maybe she already had.
She made it to the studio lot and told the man at the gate she was with J&J Public and had a meeting with Lily Chu on stage 6. She tried to read his reaction to see if the news had already broken; he probably spent a fair amount of time on his phone while he sat waiting in his booth, so he could have seen it on the internet. He gave nothing away, but that may have just been conditioned numbness to yet another industry meltdown, she couldn’t say.
She drove toward stage 6, passing by outdoor sets, people in costume whizzing by in golf carts, trucks full of props. The land of make-believe was in full swing despite yet another scandal imploding in its midst.
Sure enough, by the time she parked and checked her phone, she had a notification from Deadline, posted two minutes earlier. “Hollywood Publicity Agency Exposed in Sexual Harassment Scandal.” She swiped it and watched Monica’s article fill her screen. She saw her own words and felt a swell of pride crash into one of fear.
No turning back now.
The news would spread like wildfire, she knew. To see just how far it had already gone, she opened Twitter. She went to search the trending hashtags, but the algorithms blessed her with a smack in the face.
Right at the top of her feed was a tweet from her favorite rock star and problem client, @LeoAshOfficial. He quote-tweeted the Deadline story with a note declaring, “Zero tolerance for this shit.” The tweet went out to his thirty-five million followers and already had two hundred thousand hearts and counting.
Definitely no turning back now.
Lucy knew there wasn’t a risk of Leo parting with J&J; she was the only one who would tolerate him, and they both knew it. But she also knew the tweet would land Leo in trouble one way or another, and she would have to clean it up.
She’d get to that after she talked to Lily.
She entered the soundstage through a side door and stepped into another world.
Her job rarely entailed visiting actual movie sets, and every time she got to, she felt a little like Dorothy looking behind the curtain. Cables and cords ran across the floor, powering the cameras and lights. A huge green screen covered the main stage’s back wall. The set looked like a city street after a bomb went off. Large pieces of concrete were placed like fallen boulders; rubble filled the ground. Lucy spotted Lily in the middle of it wearing a skintight black outfit that looked suited for the apocalypse with a chest plate and shoulder pads. She had two swords strapped to her back. She had just started filming the lead role in a sci-fi franchise based on a series of novels that would haul in an obscene amount of money over the next three years. They were mid-scene, which gave Lucy hope Lily had no idea of the news yet.
A large man—much larger than Lily—dressed in shiny black nylon from head to toe with a collection of motion-capture balls glued to his arms, legs, and face stood opposite Lily. For the moment, he just looked like a guy in a wetsuit with pom-pom polka dots, but Lucy knew movie magic would turn him into the terrifying alien Lily’s character was battling. He and Lily were sharing a laugh before the next shot. Lily’s hair had been twisted into complicated braids that tucked and dove around her head; a practical hairstyle for the apocalyptic warrior on the go. She had a small, fake scrape on her cheek courtesy of the makeup department. A man with huge arms and a tight tee shirt approached her, explaining something Lucy couldn’t hear. He pointed to the floor like he was blocking out dance moves. Then he spun around and turned his back to the alien actor and held his arms in an X over his head before driving his hands down toward his hips. Lily nodded along.
The director called for places, and Lucy’s heart kicked up that she was about to see something spectacular, even if it was green-screened and void of postproduction edits. Lily backed way up on one side of the stage, and the alien actor stayed put. The man in the tee shirt hopped down to watch.
When the director called action, the alien crouched into a fighting stance. Lily let out a battle cry and ran full bore at him, dodging the fallen concrete blocks and looking like a woman on a mission. About five feet in front of him, she planted her feet right where the man in the tee shirt had pointed, hitting each mark and reaching back for her swords at the same time. She looked like the most terrifying little ballerina as she drew the blades, spun, stopped with her back to the alien man, lifted her arms in a perfect X over her head, and drove both swords backward into what would be a gruesome death once all the CGI was incorporated.
“Cut!” the director called. “Beautiful. I think that’s the take.”
Lily smiled, and a few people clapped.
“Let’s take five,” someone hollered, and the crowd disintegrated into muffled chatter.
Lucy waited for the stage to clear before she waved at Lily. She caught her eye, and Lily jumped down, alien-slaying swords replaced on her back and looking like she was ready to slash the patriarchy to pieces herself.
“Hey, you made it.” She smiled as she approached. Someone called her name, causing her to turn around and ask for a minute. When she turned, Lucy saw up close that the swords were just well-made props and not actual blades. She let go of the niggling worry that Lily might turn them on her when she delivered her news. “What’s up?” Lily asked, slightly out of breath from the climax of her battle scene.
Lucy studied the intricacy of her costume: the rubbery shoulder pads, the loops and twists of her hair, the fake dirt smudged on her face along with the fake abrasion. Lily’s bright smile was positively out of place in the midst of it all. And just as Lucy thought about her smile, it dropped.
“What’s wrong?”
Lily had no idea, and that was exactly what Lucy wanted.
She knew the main reason people were looking at her was because she was talking to the star of the movie, but she couldn’t shake the feeling everyone knew about the scandal. Even though it had only broke minutes before, Hollywood was an endless party line of gossip. And normally, on any day other than her day of honesty, Lucy would hold her chin high and assure her client that everything was fine, but she knew by the look on Lily’s face that the look on her face said otherwise. She had to tell Lily the truth—it was the reason she came, and of course she had no choice. As she prepared to do so, she felt the strain of every time she lied about everything being fine evaporate in the way that the grating discomfort of white noise only became noticeable when it stopped. The relief was instant and so profound, her ears almost rang.
