Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Crane Cove, Oregon
The call that the production schedule had shifted for the day came five minutes before Sybil’s alarm went off. Apparently the weather wouldn’t be sufficiently gloomy or drizzly enough to film until the afternoon.
So, until her noon call time, she spent the insufficiently gloomy and drizzly morning at Stardust, helping with the morning rush and catching up on administrative tasks. It was relaxing to be back in the chaos of the coffee shop, a place where she knew who she was and what she was supposed to do. No one paid her a lot of attention behind the bar and she liked it that way.
During the mid-morning dead time, she sent both her baristas off on their breaks because she missed the peace and quiet she normally had. Any other week, she would have been the only one on duty anyway, because the second opener would have left and the afternoon shift wouldn’t have arrived yet.
The damn movie had her turned upside down and around.
At least one thing remained consistent: her flower delivery. This week’s arrangement was gothic, with burgundy, purple, and even black flowers in a black vase. The note read: Casual – PAPG . She’d rolled her eyes, smiled, and tucked the note into her pocket before anyone else saw it.
Sybil was doing inventory when the bell above the front door jingled. The supply order would have to wait another ten minutes.
The person contemplating the menu had to be from the movie. They were too confident to be a tourist, and they definitely weren’t a local. She knew practically everyone in Crane Cove, and if she didn’t know them, she’d at least seen them around. And she’d have remembered someone who dressed like they’d time-traveled out of the ’90s grunge scene in Seattle.
“Do you know what you want to order?” Sybil asked, setting her clipboard down next to the till before picking up the marker they used to write on cups.
They sighed heavily. “Yeah. It’s kind of a big order. Do you have drink carriers?”
Sybil kicked herself internally for sending both baristas on break at the same time. “Be pretty stupid if we didn’t.”
“Perfect. Can I get a quad-shot iced dirty chai, a big black coffee, a large iced decaf soy sugar-free caramel macchiato, a flat white, and”—they paused to sigh again and adopted a look of true contrition—“Peter said you’d know his order. I told him that was unlikely, so if you want to make him something truly disgusting to teach him a lesson, I’ll look the other way.”
“Unfortunately, I know exactly what he’s talking about.” Sybil wrote Pain In The Ass on his cup and set it to the side. She took the credit card, which belonged to Peter, and ran it. “I’ll have the drinks at the end of the bar.”
“Can you make the dirty chai first? It’s mine, and I’m greedy.”
Sybil nodded and got to work. There was a flow and a rhythm to her job, and after so many years making coffee, she had it down to an art and a science.
“Oh, so this is where the flowers go.” The person at the end of the bar was admiring that week’s arrangement with a smile. “I’m Dempsey. Peter’s assistant. Are you the one who gets the flowers?”
For a moment, she considered lying, but then couldn’t find the point.
“Believe it or not, yes.” She mixed the chai, espresso, and milk. “Do you order the flowers, or does Peter order the flowers?”
“Peter does, actually. It’s one of the few things I don’t oversee. All I did was find him a flower shop.”
Sybil put Dempsey’s drink on the end of the bar. “Did he say why he needed a flower shop?”
“No, but he gets wild hares often enough that for my own sanity I don’t ask too many questions unless it might be illegal or dangerous. Do you know why my boss is sending you flowers every week?”
“Because he enjoys wasting his money?”
Dempsey chuckled. “Not going to argue with you there. Did he inquire about you catering a coffee cart for the production?”
“He did. Is there a problem?” Was that why Peter had sent his assistant instead of coming himself? He’d changed his mind again and once again couldn’t be bothered to tell her himself.
“No. I’m just doing what I always do and making sure he did the thing he swore up and down he was going to do. Not that he’s unreliable, he’s just…Peter.” They shrugged and tried their coffee. Sybil watched from the corner of her eye. Someone taking their first sip of her coffee was one of her favorite things in the world. Dempsey didn’t disappoint. Their eyes grew big, and they stared at the plastic cup. “Holy shit. This is incredible.”
“Maybe that’s why Peter sends me flowers every week.”
“I might start sending you flowers every week. This is going to be so bad for Peter’s wallet.”
Sybil laughed. Dempsey could stick around as far as she was concerned. “If you want another one, I’ll bring it to set later.”
“You do delivery?”
“I’m Madelyn’s double somehow. I guess we have the same ass or something?” She shrugged. “But I’ll be there anyway, so I’ll bring you another coffee.”
“You’re an angel from heaven, and I worship at your feet.”
“So you know Peter pretty well,” Sybil began nonchalantly, keeping her eyes on the coffee she was making so she seemed very disinterested.
“I’m going to stop you before we end up in an awkward situation,” Dempsey said. “Because one, I have a signed NDA I’m not interested in breaking, and two, even if I didn’t have an NDA, this job is too good to lose over gossip. So if you read it in a tabloid, it’s probably false, except for that one set fire which was absolutely his fault. If the quote comes from anyone other than Peter or his rep, it’s likely not true. Peter doesn’t have any close sources. He’s friends with everyone, but only actually close to a few people. Did that answer your question?”
The hot blush didn’t creep up, it slapped her in the face. It was for the best Dempsey had cut her off. She hadn’t found a tactful, non-interested way to ask if Dempsey had to oil the hinges on the revolving door to Peter’s bedroom.
“Basically,” she mumbled, and secured the lid to Arthur’s black coffee. On a whim, she grabbed her marker and wrote his name with a little heart next to it, then put it in the carrier. “Peter’s a good boss?”
“If you tell him I said this, I’ll deny it, but he’s the best boss.” They took the full drink carrier. “I’ll see you later, Sybil.”
It wasn’t until after they’d left that Sybil remembered she’d never told them her name.
“Cut!”
Charlotte’s shout from the director’s chair startled Sybil and she almost dropped her book. This had become a pattern that would have been hilarious if it was happening to anyone else.
At exactly noon, Sybil had shown up at the hotel, been fussed over by hair and makeup, stuffed into a costume, and then she’d been packed into a van and driven to a wooded area to film. Except for the original lighting adjustment, her presence had so far been superfluous. Madelyn hadn’t needed her to step in, which was fine with Sybil because the fake corpse they had for the scene was terrifyingly lifelike and she didn’t mind staying as far away as possible.
From her seat at the back of the pop-up tent that housed the monitors, the director’s chair, chairs for the various department heads, and chairs at the very back if the principal actors wanted a seat, Sybil watched the merry band of PAs leave the tent and rush forward with umbrellas. A few of the PAs put puffy winter parkas over Peter and Madelyn’s shoulders to keep them warm.
The weather was truly miserable: cold, gloomy, and drizzly. And if that hadn’t been enough, there was a fog machine for extra ambiance.
She reopened the book and shifted to try and find a more comfortable position in the chair. The three pages she’d managed to read so far were very good, but between the activity on set and the small annotations Peter had written in the margins, it was taking her a lot longer than normal to make progress.
“Sybil, they need you.”
“For what?” she asked, and saw Charlotte had gone out to talk to Peter and Madelyn. “Oh, right. That.”
She left the book in the chair and carefully walked around the crime scene. They’d already had to redo shots because someone, usually a jumpsuit-clad background actor, had kicked over one of the yellow markers. She didn’t want to be the cause of another slowdown.
Madelyn looked downright apologetic when she reached them.
“I’m sorry.” She put a hand on her stomach. “My tummy doesn’t feel very good. I just need to sit down for a little while until this passes.”
Sybil shrugged. “It’s fine. This is what they’re paying me for.”
Madelyn gave her a small, grateful smile and took the path Sybil had used back to the tents.
“Should she see a doctor? This doesn’t seem normal.”
Peter and Charlotte exchanged a look.
“She’ll be fine,” Charlotte said. “Let’s get Peter’s shots done while she rests. For the first one, you’re going to crouch on either side of the body.”
Sybil’s stomach turned. “I have to go near that thing?”
“It’s not real,” Charlotte promised.
“Props did a great job,” Peter chimed in, and Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. He grinned.
Charlotte left to go tell the crew the plan, and Peter shrugged off his parka. He handed it to one of the umbrella-holding PAs, thanked them for their service, and indicated that they could leave.
“So, I’m a pain in the ass, hm?” He tried to look stern and disappointed, but the twitch in the corner of his mouth gave him away.
“What would you rather I have written? ‘Smarmy bastard’? ‘Attention whore’? ‘Cocky asshole’?”
He pondered those suggestions with irritating calmness, then said, “‘Love of my life’? ‘Light of my day’? Your phone number?”
“Places, please,” Charlotte barked from the tent.
“My phone number is in the phone book,” she said as they carefully made their way through the set to the body. She couldn’t look at the pale, plastic corpse as she edged around it to be on the opposite side from Peter.
“I guess I’ll have to find a phone book,” he said and crouched down next to the body.“Is your cell number in there, too?”
Sybil crouched too, but didn’t get to answer him because Charlotte began her countdown instructions and then shouted, “Action!”
Peter delivered his lines flawlessly. Or at least she thought he did. She didn’t know what his lines were supposed to be, but the way he said them was captivating. Instead of looking at the body, Sybil watched his mouth. It wasn’t hard to remember how his lips had felt against hers yesterday, and any anxious doubts she’d had about asking him to be casual faded away.
“Cut! Good job.”
“I have another question,” Peter said, standing and stretching. “Why did my dad get a heart on his cup and I didn’t?”
“You have to earn the heart. Arthur has put in the hours.”
“How do I put in the hours?”
The flutter in her chest was as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. Hopefully he would think the blush that warmed her cheeks was from the cold air.
“Sybil, you can come out. Madelyn is coming back in.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. The quicker she got away from the body, the better.
“The back of your head did a great job,” Madelyn told her.
“Thanks. The back of my head tries its best,” Sybil replied.
Sybil spent the rest of the shoot in the chair reading Peter’s book. She found a pen buried in the bottom of her purse and began to add her own annotations. Then she was packed back into a van with some other background actors and shuttled back to the hotel. She turned her costume in to wardrobe, picked up her call sheet for the next day, and groaned at the early call time. Early mornings were her stock and trade, but at least at Stardust she didn’t have to interact with anyone for the first half hour.
She folded her call sheet, put it in her purse, and went outside where she wavered on the sidewalk, torn between going to her car and looking for Peter.
She wanted to ask him to come over. To spend time with her at her house, to make good on all the unspoken promises his lips had made when he kissed her. She wanted to start being casual with him. But how could she get him alone? And what if he said no? It was unlikely, but a possibility. Was having him over and luring him to her bed even a good idea?
She squeezed the book in her hands to ground herself with something solid. It gave her an idea. She went inside and marched up to the front desk.
“Hello, Kevin,” she said and rummaged for the pen in her purse. She opened the book to the title page, wrote her cell phone number, and below that Tonight? She could let fate decide if Peter was supposed to come to her house.
“Are you defacing a book?” Kevin asked, trying to loom over the counter to get a look at what she was writing.
She closed the book. “Could you give this to Peter Green for me? It’s his.”
“What’s Peter’s?” a vaguely familiar voice asked from behind her.
Sybil turned, still holding the book, and Dempsey was behind her.
“Peter let me borrow his book. Could you give it back to him and tell him I enjoyed his annotations?”
Better to give it to Dempsey than Kevin. Kevin was a snoop and a gossip.
“Sure.” They took the book. “Thanks for leaving the coffee here. I had a lot of work to catch up on, and it was the only thing that kept me going. What do I owe you?”
“That one is on the house. We can call it a book delivery fee.”
“I am completely willing to exchange menial errands for caffeine.” Dempsey grinned. “Also, Peter was very smug that you remembered his coffee order.”
“Oh, that’s easy. It’s how he takes his tea.”
The factoid slipped out before it even had time to register as something she shouldn’t have shared. Dempsey’s head tilted ever so slightly. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but they probably had a lot of practice keeping a straight face around Peter. Still, it was enough that Sybil knew she’d fucked up.
The best course of action was to quickly exit stage left before she said anything else stupid.
“Well, I should go make sure my business hasn’t burned down. No rest for the wicked.”
Sybil took a few backwards steps, then turned and hurried out the door.