Chapter 8 #2
“You’re late,” Kevin said to Rebecca, marching up to her with a pile of scripts and a nearly empty cup of what appeared to be cold brew.
“Gardner distracted me,” she said with a smile and a breezy tone. “I’m kidding, it’s terrible form to blame your cast. Even when they’re very distracting.”
“Oh, was she talking about leftovers again?” Kevin asked, and Rebecca cracked up.
“No, is that the standard topic?”
“I don’t talk about leftovers that often,” I said, even if maybe I talked about leftovers more than the average person. And I wasn’t even the average person!
“No, everyone likes it,” Kevin said quickly. “Literally I had no idea leftovers ever crossed celebrities’ minds.”
Rebecca grinned and raised her eyebrows in my direction. “Gardner’s full of surprises.”
Henry and Ashlee were already in the rehearsal hall, so I sat down next to them as Rebecca and Kevin sat down in the opposite corner of the giant room, where Stephanie and the rest of their team had already settled.
“You look nervous,” Henry said. “What did Kevin and Rebecca say to you?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, Gardner’s full of surprises and Don’t let him take this from you circling my brain. The way Rebecca’s mouth moved a split second before she smiled. “It’s unrelated nervousness.”
“Everything OK?” Ashlee asked, and waved as Kathleen arrived.
Why had I copped to nervousness at all? What was I supposed to say, that I’d buried my gayest feelings and gotten through life more successfully than most, but now that my ex-girlfriend—oh by the way, Rebecca is my ex-girlfriend—was talking to me six days a week, something inside me felt poised to—
“How was everyone’s day off?” Kathleen asked. “I got it in my head I should see the beach. Do y’all know how far away the beach is? I spent more time on the freeway than the sand. And a seagull stole my snacks.”
I laughed. “Welcome to Los Angeles.”
Michael walked in and took a seat with us. “Kathleen, your parking today is as crooked as it is left-leaning.”
“Just like my politics,” she said, which made everyone laugh, including Michael. “I’m sorry. If Tess isn’t down there to help me, I’m just fucked.”
“Employing A-list talent to park your car doesn’t seem like a tenable solution,” Michael said.
“I don’t pay her,” Kathleen said with a scoff.
“I like doing it!” I said. “I never got to be on Inside the Actors Studio but I would have said that the other profession I’d want to try is valet.”
“Tess,” Michael said with a pained expression on his face, “that’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard a person say.”
“It’s a good job!” I said. “You’d always have cash!”
We were now all laughing so hard that Rebecca, Kevin, and Stephanie glanced in our direction for a moment before turning back to each other.
It was almost impossible to think that a week before, most of us didn’t even know each other, and here we were in practically a pile of bodies shrieking with laughter.
My phone rang, and when I saw Exemplar’s office number, I excused myself and stepped back into the corridor outside the rehearsal space.
“Hi, Ms. Gardner, it’s Benjamin, I have Joyce for you if you’re available for a quick call?”
“Sure, thank you, Benjamin,” I said, and waited for the click over to Joyce’s line.
“Hi, Tess,” she said. “I hope I caught you before rehearsals.”
“Just barely. What’s up?”
“We’ve received your official offer for—well, there’s a new NDA in place, as you may have seen, and so we’re onto codename-only terms.”
The Vindicators series was so popular that once in production and before they were announced, titles were referred to only by their code names.
Even our roles were by code name only, including on set.
At the height of the Cold War, it was hard to imagine that the US and USSR were using tactics this clandestine.
“So we’ve received an offer for Plaid Thanksgiving,” Joyce said. “I think you’ll be very pleased, but I’d still like to see what else I can get for you.”
“Joyce, I’m still not sure that I want to do it.” I pictured myself at a curb, hopping into someone’s car and expertly parking it in a tightly packed lot. “It’s such a tremendous commitment—”
“I know that you don’t love to be on location for such long stretches, but I’m happy to figure out a way your schedule will allow for some trips back, or perhaps your scenes stacked in a way to get you in and out faster.”
“That does sound better,” I said. “But there’s also the global publicity tour. The months of training I assume I’d have to start the second the play’s over.”
“Let me stress,” Joyce said, “I think you’ll be very happy with the offer.”
She quoted a number that was almost double what I’d been paid for the last one. It would have been nice to say that it didn’t matter to me, but there was something about such a large sum being attached to me. It … didn’t feel terrible.
“You don’t owe me an answer today, of course,” Joyce said in a casual tone like I wasn’t certain I could do brunch or not. “Let me see what else I can shake out of Pantheon’s pockets.”
“I should get back to rehearsals,” I said, seeing movement within the room. “Keep me updated.”
“Will do. And congratulations, Tess.”
“Thank you,” I said, infusing my voice with gratitude that I didn’t feel. “Talk soon.”
I ended the call and realized that Verne was walking into the rehearsal room at the same time I was, and wondered what they’d heard. Joyce would have murdered me if she knew I’d taken her call in a wide-open space like a corridor. There was no denying that this past week had made me sloppy.
“I’m getting some content,” Verne said, holding up the two phones. I still honestly didn’t fully understand their system. “Are you ready to go?”
“Oh, uh—”
“Tess Gardner,” they said, “are you excited for the second week of rehearsals?”
I beamed at the phones. Doling out attention on red carpets had made me an expert with multiple cameras at once. “I’m genuinely more excited about this than anything else in my life right now.”
Verne frowned. “Maybe take it down a notch.”