Marnie
Ben had suddenly become a situation I needed to manage, but he wasn’t the only one.
Pull-Gate was refusing to die. In fact, it had only picked up steam in the last two days.
The first footage of Odetta Olson—allegedly—pulling Fiona Pills’s hair had been viewed a million times.
The online mob couldn’t get enough. Soon there were two new videos, from different angles.
This dragged out an army of armchair experts who apparently had unlimited free time to examine the videos.
Their verdict: the angle of Odetta Olson’s hand definitely confirmed that pulling had occurred. Guilty as charged.
Except that no one who’d been in the theater had actually seen it. Carmen and I checked with everyone we knew. But hey, strangers on the internet had an opinion. Those of us who work in public relations know all too well that beats the truth every single time. There was no undoing the harm now.
“I hate people. I hate them a whole fucking lot,” Carmen said as we regrouped in her hotel room.
The air smelled fresh, the windows were clean, and there was a lounge area with a cozy love seat.
I could have felt sorry for myself because Carmen got to be here while I stayed at Shithole-Upon-Cannes, but I knew my place in the food chain.
And now that Ben had informed me that I’d be financially supporting him for the foreseeable future, I was getting desperate to lock in that promotion.
“It’s our fault Odetta Olson is getting such horrible press,” I said.
Carmen ignored me. “She’s dragging the movie down with her. And it gets worse: She fired her PR team this morning.”
Carmen tapped her fingers against the coffee table repeatedly, her jaw tight. I preferred when she swore her heart out. This low-level anxiety really put me on edge.
“They clearly suck,” I said. “Wait, are you thinking of stepping in?”
“God no. The woman’s a train wreck. I don’t have a death wish.”
She was right, but still, the idea took up space in my head.
“If we could work with her directly… Maybe she’d listen to us.”
Carmen clasped her hands at the top of her head, a move that risked disturbing her perfect blowout. These were dire times.
“You can’t do this job and believe in the good of extremely privileged people,” she said drily.
Carmen’s cynicism was on her. I never liked indulging it.
“I’ve spoken to a few people who swear she’s nice. No one had any drama to report from set or after.”
Carmen clicked her tongue.
“Which story do you think is going to go viral? Some nobodies swearing that Odetta Olson is a nice person or Older Famous Woman Pulls Younger Famous Woman’s Hair in Front of The Whole Fucking World?”
“She didn’t really do it.”
I’d watched the videos dozens of times now. It had to have been an optical illusion. Fiona Pills must have been reacting to something unrelated at the same time Odetta Olson moved her hand. The jury of public opinion had spoken, but I needed to believe that women at the top couldn’t be this nasty.
Carmen let out a pained sigh. “I need to think. I don’t want to play dirty. It’s not how I do business. But if this account goes away, I’ll have to make changes to the team.”
Her gaze rested on me for a second too long before she looked away. Changes to the team? What was that supposed to mean?
“What can I do?” I sounded desperate, because I was.
“Find a way to stop this hellish torrent of shit press right now?” She shook her head. “We’ll talk later.”
With that, I was dismissed.
But that didn’t mean I was done.
Officially, my job description consisted of the menial tasks that befell your average junior publicist. I kept contact spreadsheets up-to-date for media and for clients.
I created schedules for events, and I made sure our guests got all the information they needed, the dress code, the menu, all the little details that matter.
I gave our clients lists of sample questions before press conferences.
I welcomed them at their car, escorted them to the venue.
I held clutches and sunglasses during photo calls.
Now, as I walked back to my hotel—I wouldn’t charge a car to the company card, given the state of things—I felt powerless. Useless even. If my promotion depended on this publicity campaign, then I should take the lead. I should be the one to come up with ideas to fix this mess.
It was late afternoon, and the bar was packed. Until now, I’d spent little time in the hotel’s common areas. The color scheme was aggressively bright, and the unframed art hanging on the walls had to be from Ikea, at best.
I was itching to get back to my room, blast on some music, and silently scream lyrics into the mirror. But I couldn’t let it all out if Ben was up there, so I made my way to the bar instead, wondering when was the last time I had a drink alone in public. Never, probably.
The line to order was five people deep. The guy right before me turned around.
“I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes and it hasn’t moved one bit,” he said. “I hope you’re not in a hurry.”
His shirt was creased and he sported three-day-old stubble.
“Ugh,” I said, already rethinking my plan.
He sighed. “What does it say about this place that we’re so desperate to get a drink in the middle of the afternoon?”
“You mean Cannes? I’m pretty sure everyone is out drinking from breakfast.”
“There’s a difference between drinking for fun and trying to drown your sorrows, like the rest of us.”
He made a vague gesture at the whole space.
I scanned the room, seeing everyone in a new light.
This was where all the nobodies had been parked away.
The overwhelmed and underpaid twenty-somethings, hair barely brushed and eyes droopy with sleep.
This place was swarming with the little people who made the whole shebang happen from behind the scenes.
“What are you here for?” I asked.
“I’m an assistant for a production company. I interned here last year and I’m doing exactly the same thing, just getting paid a slightly less offensively low salary.”
“That’s good, I guess?”
“Yesterday I spent an hour trying to calm down a C-list actor who was hell-bent on getting his driver fired. There was a tiny delay in the schedule, and the guy, the actor, was furious. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t walk to the red carpet or book his own car.”
“Cannes and all the rules!” I said, trying to sound light.
The French liked their protocols. You had to take one of the festival cars to the premiere at the time assigned to you.
“Right?” he said. “If Dorian Fisher can do it, then so can he. But the dude was mad. I felt like I was negotiating a hostage situation. As if they were going to start the premiere without the main cast anyway!”
I chuckled. “Who was the actor?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t.”
“No, of course.”
Did I really care who the C-list actor was?
No. I probably didn’t even know him anyway.
And I understood the importance of secrecy.
Just riding along in the back of cars with Carmen, I’d heard my fair share of juicy secrets.
I never even told Ben. Carmen liked me because she could trust me.
That trust was what would get me promoted.
But at this rate, there might be no job at all.
Still, an idea was making its way through my brain.
“What if you turned around and whispered his name, not to me, but to the air in front of you.”
I was kidding, sort of. To my surprise, there was a spark in his eyes. He was tempted.
“I can’t get in trouble. I’m only an assistant.”
“I bet you’ve been dying to tell that story all day. Us little people are human, too. We need to blow off steam.”
He was giving in. I could tell. The line had finally moved, but only by two people.
“You’re an assistant for now,” I continued. “No one’s getting in trouble, except maybe that douchebag with his publicist. I don’t know your name anyway. We’re just anonymous worker bees.”
He sighed and looked from left to right, but no one was paying attention.
“It’s Will Thompson,” he whispered under his breath. “Ugh, I have to run after him all day tomorrow. Weed isn’t even legal in France, and I don’t want to get arrested in a foreign country. I really need that drink.”
But I didn’t. Not anymore.
Being invisible had some perks. The one thing we had going for us was access.
To movie studio executives. To stylists, makeup artists, hair people.
We didn’t matter, which meant that people rarely worried about what they said or did in front of us.
Case in point, Will Thompson and his tantrum.
And whatever information we had, no one could stop us from letting it seep out into the world like water through the hairline fracture of a crystal glass.
I mumbled “Good luck” to the guy and stepped out of the line, scanning my surroundings with renewed interest. But first, I googled Will Thompson and made notes of what my new bestie had just shared.
That’s just basic publicity training.
And really, it was Carmen who’d planted the seed of this idea, talking about how she didn’t want to play dirty, but.
I knew what she really meant. She couldn’t be caught playing dirty.
And she wouldn’t. I could give up on my screenplay and act like the perfect girlfriend.
But I was not letting go of that promotion.
I deserved this, if nothing else. Whatever it took, I would make it happen.
I did it right away, before I could change my mind.
I had an old, generic email address I hadn’t used in years, and it took only a few seconds to find the contact on Dis-Moi Tout’s website.
The one where people sent anonymous tips.
I didn’t include Will Thompson’s name, just enough identifying details along with the story of his diva act.
Hitting Send gave me a delicious jolt of adrenaline. A little kick to get me started.
I had a mission now. A new purpose.
For the next hour, I worked the room. Put on the charm. Commiserated about the shitty service or marveled at the beauty of Cannes, depending on the vibe I was getting. I shared the story about the actor’s meltdown as if it had happened to me.
Lips loosened. Secrets spilled. I heard about who’d had a fit in the lobby of the Martinez because their suite wasn’t the biggest one they had and demanded new arrangements be made, only to have to swallow their anger when a brutal “not possible” came in response.
I chuckled at the movie star who cried wet sloppy tears during her fitting with Dior because her dress showed the tiniest bit of stomach definition.
Deep down I felt total sympathy about the pregnancy rumors that were about to be chucked at her, like peanuts at a monkey, but I was trying to make friends here.
I nodded somberly at the major producer who seemed to get a kick out of discussing the gory details of his divorce in front of the help.
I shook my head at the other producer who complained that it had become too risky to try to bed hot young things, loudly enough for the hot young things to hear. You know, in case that turned them on.
On the surface I was a listening ear, there to commiserate with my people. Underneath, I was mining them all for content. For a brief moment, I considered running this strategy by Carmen. She praised me when I took the initiative, but I never ran away with them without her expressed consent.
But if I thought about it—though clearly I didn’t think about it enough—it was better if she didn’t know. That way, she could deny any shady practices.
So I’d be doing this on my own. And no one would know anyway. The anonymous tips couldn’t be traced back to me. It was all very manageable. A plan I could, and would, execute without a fault.
In my defense, I don’t think anyone could have predicted how spectacularly wrong it would go.