3. Nepotize Me, Cap’n #3
“Ah, but there’s nothing like a little Hollywood glamour, is there?” Her eyes went misty, gazing at the middle distance for a nostalgia I hadn’t yet been allowed to have. “You know, ten years ago, this would have been a very different party.”
Ten years ago there would have been a network of studio predators on the loose, not that I felt like bringing it up. “I take it the rest of the guests are tech donors?”
“Dreadful, isn’t it? All those grifters.
” She seemed to be motioning to the younger set of suits who were nearly identical, sartorially speaking, like a collective For You page.
“Everything is money these days. If I hear another word about tax credits, I’ll scream.
” She turned to me with an air of conspiracy, an intimate fatigue.
“You know William’s just come in from Queensland?
They built a mimicry of Los Angeles instead of just filming here, where people actually live.
It’s like they’ve forgotten everything this city’s built on. ”
The acquaintances I had in production sang a similar lament; more than a few camera assistants and PAs had already left for Austin or Atlanta, following the jobs. “You’re not one of the people who think Hollywood is dying, are you?”
“Certainly not a natural death, darling. But too many people sold their souls; at some point, the devil will collect.”
I laughed at that, and she looked pleased, as if I’d passed the test.
“Well, I’ve got to bat my eyes at some deep pockets or William will never forgive me,” she said, but paused.
“Over there’s the new chief of police.” She pointed to a stocky Latino man in uniform.
“He’s taking over from that one, with the heinous mustache.
” She pointed to an older white man who looked like the dictionary definition of chief of police.
“You know how things are. All about diversity these days.” I had long ago disengaged the reflex to flinch at these sorts of comments; most people mistook me for white and said things they wouldn’t otherwise, particularly when I was dressed like this.
All cleaned up and plausibly Anglo-Saxon.
“Still,” she mused, “the LAPD is the LAPD. I could kill a man in this room and get away with it.”
I laughed again, but she didn’t. Another woman had spotted her and started toward us, to which Emmanuelle offered a little flutter of her fingers, like a satire of a wave.
“Influence-a,” she said in an undertone. Like affluenza. She laughed at her own ambiguous joke and squeezed my arm, draining her glass and setting it thoughtlessly on a passing tray. “Have a nice mingle, Anya darling.”
Her arms flung wide for the oncoming woman, a high, false laugh ringing in her wake as she disappeared in a flutter of overripeness, a smell I would never really adjust to even after learning what it was.
The gregariousness of the moment was an obvious performance, one I felt sure had been for me.
I didn’t think anything of it then, because people often mistook my ability to seem attentive for genuine intimacy.
People regularly told me things they wouldn’t otherwise share with a stranger. I had a look to me, I guess.
Teddy found me then, looking slightly winded.
I took his arm, smiled, schmoozed. I finished one whiskey and accepted another, then smiled, schmoozed, picked up a third.
Most of the donors I met were up-and-comers in the start-up world, interested in cybersecurity or privacy data, all sorts of things I didn’t care about, having long ago pledged my allegiance to the algorithm for the scant possibility of micro-fame.
The money was in tech, that much was obvious.
The better looking someone was or the younger they were, the less likely they were involved in the film aspect of William de Witt’s enterprise.
His Hollywood connections were older, paranoidly talking shop. Here for the open bar and nothing else.
My smiles grew more forced. Teddy’s hand slid down, lower, possessive, until at one point he leaned over and kissed the side of my neck, behind the corner of my jaw.
In the same moment, from a distance, a flash of something caught my eye. I inhaled sharply, registering a familiar profile even before I fully saw it, like recognizing a stranger from a dream.
Or a film.
Even from afar, William de Witt’s eyes were singularly arresting— that famous shade of coastal gray, the blue that edged closer to ice than to azure.
He had a distant, faraway look on his face, an obvious boredom.
In the moment I spotted him, he was scanning the crowd, idly pretending to listen to a conversation I guessed to be about the drought, given the age and mundanity of the men in his circle.
And then his gaze landed on mine.
There was a pinch of confusion between his brows when he saw me, something I didn’t understand at first, until it struck me as familiar—a moment of focused assessment, like a mirror of my own experience the previous night.
Like he was trying to place me, to determine who I was from a Rolodex of previous encounters.
For a wild pulse of paranoia I thought he might remember me from that fateful high school assembly, which was beyond unlikely.
Marginally more possible was that we’d met in some collective subconscious, the intensity of my teenage imagination having reached him from the drowsy heat of sleep.
But then someone else caught his attention, and the moment of premonition—I’m sure now that’s what it was, a subtle sign of everything to come—vanished in a blink.
My new friend Emmanuelle strode arm in arm with the slightly tipsy new police chief, regaling him theatrically as they traversed the margins of the crowd.
It was she who had caught William’s eye, and as she moved to slip by him, he reached out on what appeared to be impulse, one hand landing on the small of her back to pause her in her tracks.
Just a brush of contact, a sudden halt, and then a smooth transition, the choreography of an old, familiar dance.
She adjusted her position then, falling back slightly as William peeled off from his circle to address the police chief—greeting him not like a prospective donor, but an old friend.
I noticed then another man who’d followed William; it was Fred Dennings, the only other person I recognized, most famous for being the best-looking man in tech.
A more handsome Mark Zuckerberg and a more ethical one, too, he’d had his back to me the first time I’d looked over but was unmistakable now.
He, I noticed, had stepped almost directly in front of Emmanuelle, his expression animating as he spoke, like he’d opened with a joke.
In response, the new police chief doubled over, guffawing about something, probably golf.
I must have been staring; Emmanuelle had caught my eye through the crowd.
“There you are, Anya darling!” Emmanuelle abandoned the conversation and wove toward me, casting the men off like a shadow for which she had no use. A newly materialized circle of acolytes had already formed around William de Witt, drawn like moths to the flame of his fame.
William’s gaze followed Emmanuelle for only a moment before cutting away at a quick, fraternal shove from Fred; no further curiosity was reserved for me.
“I’ve been looking all over for you, my dear,” Emmanuelle purred when she reached me, one hand snaking out for mine.
“Have you?” I let her pull me away from where I’d been dutifully tucked under Teddy’s arm, smiling and nodding at routine intervals.
Teddy, for his part, didn’t put up a fight.
He seemed to shrink a little upon Emmanuelle’s arrival, which I suspected had something to do with his occupational littleness, his insignificance to the woman who was so intimately connected to his boss.
Considering that I hadn’t seen William de Witt speak to Teddy directly so far this evening, I doubted theirs was any significant relationship—possibly William didn’t even know Teddy worked for him.
A pity, but I wasn’t any better off myself, and I was warm enough on drinks and attention to feel fondly toward the boy who’d adored me so long from afar, even if that adoration had always been a matter of typecasting.
“You can do much better,” Emmanuelle told me briskly, once we’d gotten out of earshot. “Edward is hardly a suitable match.”
“You do know he’s a Finch,” I blithely pointed out. I might not have done it under other circumstances, but three drinks in with a stranger, I felt this was within the realm of reason to remark aloud.
“Oh, I know Ariana.” Emmanuelle waved this away, another unspoken thing disappearing into the ether.
She said something else, inaudible or incomprehensible, and my mind wandered for a moment before I heard her say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, dear, but would you consider a slightly more rewarding investment? ”
“Investment?” I echoed.
“Yes. Not quite a role, I’m afraid. With things as they are in the industry these days …
Anyway, not yet. I’ll have to sweeten William first, you know how it is.
He’s not doing much with film these days, new friends and all that.
But I’m just desperate for something sexy and loud.
I’ve had enough of these depressing elephant things, those dog adoption commercials.
” She’d lost me again. “I’m quite sure I can convince him.
He knows I’ve been out of sorts—everything’s been hell since he started up with the philanthropy.
You can’t imagine the toll, what with the company and then everything to do with the goddamn house—”