Chapter 3
Thirty minutes after Taylor reached her hotel room in Tokyo after storming off set, there was a knock on the door.
Taylor was in the bath, her ears below the surface, which meant that whoever it was had to knock and knock and knock before she realized it.
Her first thought was that it was the director, Stanley, coming to grovel, to tell her that she was right and the screenwriter was wrong, that they needed her more than anything and anyone.
Taylor reached for her fuzzy bathrobe, tied it up, and walked to the door, unhurried. She felt as though she’d won.
But on the other side of the door were three people Taylor didn’t recognize: a Japanese man of about thirty-five, flanked by two women, an Australian and an American.
“Hello?” Taylor narrowed her eyes at them.
“Taylor Charron, hello,” the American woman said, her voice bright and snappy. “Can we come in for a moment?” The way she said it meant that it wasn’t a question.
“What is this regarding?” Taylor asked.
“Your manager sent us,” the American woman said, showing all of her perfect white teeth.
A little too blurry-eyed and confused to protest, Taylor stepped back and watched as they came in single file.
They took control of the space immediately.
The American woman sat on the edge of her bed, her spine straight, while the Japanese man sat at the desk and the Australian remained standing.
They introduced themselves: the American, Mandy Berry; the Australian, Maddie Duke; and the Japanese man, Minato.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Taylor asked, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms.
“We’re a marketing strategy team here to take control of the narrative,” Mandy said. “We understand that there was a situation on set.”
“There wasn’t a situation, per se. The screenwriter and I had some creative differences, is all. I’m sure we can work it out tomorrow.” Taylor couldn’t believe what a ruckus they were stirring up.
“Yes. Maybe so. But the problem now is that a member of the set filmed the entire incident and put it online,” Maddie said.
Taylor’s stomach dropped. “I beg your pardon?”
She hurried to the counter to grab her phone, but Maddie intercepted it, shaking her head. “It’s better if you don’t see it,” she said. “It will only make things worse.”
“Shouldn’t I know what we’re dealing with?” Taylor demanded. “I like to face everything head-on.”
The three of them laughed happily, as though this was all a game to them. Maybe it was.
“We’re going to fix this,” Maddie said. “But we need you to keep a low profile for a few days while we craft a plan.”
“I have to be on set tomorrow,” Taylor said.
“Oh, no. You aren’t going back there,” Mandy said.
The Japanese man shook his head sadly.
“I beg your pardon?” She wanted to tell them that, in fact, Taylor had gotten the role more than a year ago. She’d beaten out numerous other names. She’d planned her return to cinema with this film. She and Jason had celebrated the announcement with a vacation in the Bahamas.
This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t remove her from her own movie set. Only she could do that. Maybe she was dreaming.
“Can you sit down for us?” Mandy asked, as though she were a child. “We have a few questions we want to ask you before we take over your social media.”
“You’re not taking control of my socials,” Taylor said.
Mandy walked over to her and touched her shoulder. “Honey, if you don’t let us take control of this narrative, they will eat you alive. You’ll never see another film set again.”
Taylor was so stunned that she didn’t say anything else.
Taylor sat in the cushioned chair in the corner and watched as her so-called marketing team reviewed her social media, making notes and comments on whatever was happening there.
They occasionally glanced up at her and asked her pertinent questions—mostly about her marriage and her relationship with her parents.
“Jason and I got married in 2005,” she said. “And my parents and I haven’t spoken since 2009. Well, I mean, occasionally on birthdays I talk to my dad, but never my mom.”
They nodded seriously, as though this were all essential information for their plan of attack. Taylor couldn’t fathom how this all related.
Taylor’s head began to spin. But for more than three hours, they were in her hotel room, making her feel increasingly insane. And when they finally left, they blocked all social media from her phone so that she didn’t interact with anything relating to herself and what she’d done.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered as they left. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What happened doesn’t matter,” Maddie said with a shrug. “What matters is how the world sees it. What matters is how we spin it.”
When they left, Taylor lay on her white bed, still wearing her robe. Her hair was in a messy bun that was really more of a tangle on her head. She stared at her phone screen, daring someone to call her about the video. But nobody did.
It was then she realized she hadn’t heard from Jason all day.
It was now nearly one in the afternoon in Tokyo, which meant that Jason was probably awake or nearly awake over in Paris.
Had he seen the video yet? She shivered, then called his number.
All she wanted in the world was to hear his voice in her ear again.
All she wanted was for him to say, “Come on, baby. We’ve been through worse than this.
And it’s really great, what you did, because it shows that you actually care about art.
You actually care about the words on the page.
That screenplay wasn’t good enough for you or for anyone!
Do you know how rare that is in this business? ”
She knew she was right! She had to be right!
But as one hour drifted to two and then three, Taylor’s mind began to play tricks on her.
After calling Jason, after texting him, shouldn’t he have at least acknowledged her by now?
Maybe his assistant had told him about the video, and maybe he and his assistant were talking about how Jason should handle it.
But that didn’t mean that he could ignore his wife, his beloved, through that.
Taylor felt panicked and bloated. She both needed to eat and couldn’t imagine it.
Eventually, she called a nearby ramen place and had them deliver an enormous bowl of soup, which she let grow lukewarm on the counter.
She couldn’t imagine putting any of it in her mouth.
That night, Taylor tried and failed to sleep. She was twisted up in anger and fear, and despite the air conditioner on full blast, she sweated through her sheets.
When she got up the following morning, she called Mandy to check on things. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “How’s the strategy going?”
“It’s slow going,” Mandy said. “But it’s all a part of it.
We can’t hit people over the head with something they can’t yet believe in.
It has to be organic! They have to ride the wave, and you have to ride it along with them.
It sucks, but it’s good that you’re not online, right? Isn’t that freeing?”
Taylor squeezed her eyes shut and told herself not to panic. “I need to get out of town,” she said. “Or, I mean. I need to talk to the director?” Maybe she could fix this rather than run away from it.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Mandy said. “I have to go. Ciao.”
Before Taylor could stop herself, she called her travel agent and arranged for a private plane to take her from Tokyo to Paris.
She wanted to leave by that afternoon. She threw everything she’d brought with her into two suitcases, then put on a hooded sweatshirt so that nobody would recognize her on her way to the waiting taxi outside.
Once inside, she pulled off the hood and felt tears trailing down her cheeks.
She’d thought she would be in Tokyo till at least November, when Jason had planned to meet her here for a little vacation.
She’d imagined them celebrating their accomplishments here. She’d failed herself—and him.
But thank goodness, a private plane waited for her at the airport.
The pilot on board was Japanese and introduced himself in a perfect American accent, explaining that he’d perfected his English by watching Taylor’s first sitcoms. Taylor wore a plastic smile and told him how nice that was to hear.
“Really, I had the biggest crush on you,” the pilot said, laughing. “We all did. My brothers and me.”
Taylor’s heart soured. She sat in the luxurious seat, not so far from the cockpit, and let her smile drop.
The pilot seemed to get the hint. He launched into what she needed to know about the following flight from Tokyo to Paris, explaining that it would take fifteen hours.
Because they were seven hours ahead of Paris and the flight was fifteen hours long, they would arrive in the evening of today and the morning of tomorrow.
Taylor blinked at him. She wanted to ask him if he thought she was stupid. She understood how time zones worked.
Maybe, she thought, he did think she was stupid.
Maybe he thought she was a washed-up actress from a couple of sitcoms he’d watched when he was younger and dumber, before he flew expensive private planes around the world.
She put on her eye mask, then ripped it off as soon as the plane took off, heading for the minibar to pour herself a glass of wine.
Taylor remembered the first time she’d flown on a private plane.
It had been the early 2000s, between two sitcoms, and she and Jason had decided to go to Mexico—alone, away from the prying eyes of fans and paparazzi.
There had been a shift in paparazzi activity around that time, driven by rabid obsessions with Britney Spears and other pop stars.
Although Taylor and Jason had never suffered as much as Britney, they’d had their fair share of attention.