Chapter Twelve
THE PRODUCER HAS A corner office, a wall of framed posters, and a way of saying the word dinner that comes with fine print.
"Just the two of us," he clarifies, in case I've made the amateur mistake of hearing it as a work thing. "Somewhere private. We'll talk about the role."
"The role I already auditioned for."
"The role I have a great deal of say over." He smiles. It doesn't reach any part of his face that matters. "Friday. I'll send a car."
And the worst part, the truly humiliating part, is that I hesitate.
A smart girl walks straight out of that office.
But this smart girl is broke, and it's a real part in a real film, and I have exactly enough money to be dangerous to my own dignity, and for one ugly second I do the math on what I'd trade for it.
Then I go home and I tell Maximo because I tell Maximo everything now, and I watch his whole face turn to winter.
"You're not going," he tells me.
"It's a career meeting."
"It's not, and you know it's not, which is why you told me." He's already reaching for his phone. "That man has a reputation two decades long. He's had complaints buried that would end most careers."
"So I just lose the part."
"You lose nothing." He doesn't look up. "Because I'm taking you Friday. And he can hold his career meeting in front of me."
And there goes my borrowed heart, carrying on like the man just said something romantic instead of something furious. He's rearranged his whole Friday to stand between me and trouble, and my chest has decided that's the same thing as a love letter.
Which is how I end up at the nicest restaurant I've ever been too nervous to touch the cutlery in, sitting between a producer who can't stop sweating and a man who orders for the table, mafia-boss-cool, in a voice that ends conversations.
The producer talks about the role for exactly as long as it takes to understand that no version of Friday is going the way he planned.
He remembers an early morning. He leaves before the entrees.
"He's not going to give me the part now," I point out, watching him flee.
"He was never going to give you the part," Maximo says. "He was going to give you an invoice."
Fair.
We're most of the way home before I can't hold it in.
"Were you jealous?"
"No."
I turn to look at him full-on, this man who cancelled his entire evening to sit through a bad dinner just so a bad man couldn't. "You crashed my date."
"One does not crash a transaction."
"You wore the good watch."
He doesn't answer that one. He watches the road like it's the only thing in the car worth looking at, which is exactly how I know it isn't, and a muscle in his jaw quietly gives up a point he has no intention of conceding out loud.
So I face front and I grin at the dark road and I let him keep his silence because I already got the only answer I came for.
He wore the good watch.