Marnie
“We can still fix this,” I said, pen poised on the blank page in my notebook. “We’re going to.”
Odetta Olson rolled her eyes at me before turning her attention to Carmen.
But I wasn’t so easily discouraged.
“We know for a fact that some of the rumors aren’t true,” I continued.
“Oh, we know that?” Odetta said, mimicking me. Then, to Carmen, “Isn’t it cute how she knows how to fix all of my problems?”
Carmen silently ordered me to shut up with her gaze of steel.
We’d been huddled in Odetta’s suite for the last hour, discussing strategies for stopping the bad press coming down on the movie like a freaking monsoon. I didn’t care what either of them said. I wanted to believe that I could still fix everything, including my own life.
“Some of these stories don’t even make any sense.
If we released a statement…” I said now.
I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going with this and decided to switch tactics.
“If I don’t buy these stories, then other people don’t either.
Like the one about Odetta cutting some of the scenes with pretty young actors out of spite? At least one of them confirmed—”
Odetta exhaled loudly. “You’re sweet,” she said, like a verbal punch in the face.
Even Carmen seemed taken aback by the cutting tone, the condescension etched across Odetta’s face.
“It’s not just about us,” Carmen said. “The rumors are out of fucking control. In all my years of coming to Cannes, I’ve never seen this level of absolute garbage. I can’t believe I’m being so polite.”
I, of course, was the whole reason for the sudden spike in gossip.
Since that first time mining all the assistants for stories in the hotel lobby, I hadn’t stopped.
I couldn’t stop. I suddenly had the power to invent the truth; it was intoxicating.
And it worked. The rumors about Odetta Olson stopped for a minute.
It didn’t last long, but it was something.
If I could tell her how that had happened then, really, she would thank me.
For now, I could think of one way she could repay the favor.
“Something’s in the air for sure,” I said, a little out of breath.
“Did you hear about the writer who stole someone else’s screenplay and is passing it off as his own?
Apparently everyone in Cannes is reading it right now.
So crazy.” I addressed Odetta more specifically now. “Did anyone send it to you?”
She stared at me.
“They can’t do that, right?” I continued. “What would you do if that happened to you?”
Odetta turned to Carmen.
“Make her go away!” she yelled.
I expected Carmen to crack a joke, to lighten up the mood. Or better yet, to defend me maybe. To do anything other than what she actually did.
“Do you understand what we’re dealing with? We’re hearing that the grand jury is wondering if they could take Don’t Be Sad! out of the competition so the festival doesn’t get mixed up in all this horrible press,” Carmen barked.
“That’s just another rumor!” I said. “They won’t really do that.”
Odetta snarled. “And you know that how, Sweetie?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I’m just asking for your advice, as a veteran in this industry who knows…everything.”
I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.
“I don’t need another clueless twenty-something to dance on my grave,” Odetta said.
“I would never do that!” I said, genuinely offended. “I was just hoping you would—”
“Get her out of here,” Odetta said to Carmen, each syllable like a dagger. “Now!”
She was pointing at the door, fury seeping out of her every pore.
Carmen barely glanced at me. “What are you doing, Marnie? Just leave, okay? Go away.”
Carmen had never talked to me like that. She could be brutal, but she was never cruel.
I stayed put for another few seconds before I understood that they both meant it. They wanted me gone. I clutched my notebook to my chest and retrieved my bag before heading to the door.
Carmen wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. I barely managed to hold back the tears until I was out in the hallway. They poured out of me with a vengeance. I didn’t need to check; I knew the mascara was already streaming down my face.
At the end of the hallway, the elevator opened and out came a few men. Two of them—tall, buff, serious-looking—were dressed in simple polo shirts and jeans, and the third one, in the middle, looked like… Oh crap, the third one was Dorian Fisher.
As if my day—my week!—hadn’t been bad enough, I couldn’t face Dorian Fisher when I looked like such a hot mess. He was walking in my direction, so I had to act fast.
I clocked the exit sign at the other end of the corridor, just above the door that led to the staircase.
I lowered my head and speed walked in that direction, aware of the men’s voices behind me.
I walked through, thinking I could finally relax on my own.
But there was someone on the landing. I let out a startled yelp.
A woman leaned against the wall, looking like she was in the throes of a panic attack. She had short black hair and wore a pleated ivory skirt with a matching top. Her eyes were blasted wide, her knuckles clenched tight. She suppressed a scream as I stepped through the door and closed it behind me.
“I got lost!” she screamed, the terrified look on her face only intensifying. “I’m not here to—I’m going, I’m going!”
She glanced down the stairs but didn’t seem ready to move.
Then she really looked at me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
In response, I burst into pathetic little sobs.
Her face softened.
“You’re not wearing a badge.” She eyed me up and down. “You don’t work here?”
I shook my head.
“And you don’t work for Dorian Fisher?”
Another silent no from me.
“Do you need to sit down? There,” she added, holding on to my elbow and guiding me to the top of the stairs.
I sat down, and she did the same.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, eager for a distraction.
She looked at her watch, then sighed. “I—I needed to see him. I can’t—”
“Were you waiting for Dorian Fisher?”
“Why?”
I could practically see the red flashing light blaring inside her head.
“He just walked past.”
Her face fell. “Shit. Oh God.”
“I’m sorry.”
I had no idea what I was sorry for, but it seemed like the right thing to say.
“There,” she said, fishing a tissue out of her tote bag.
“How bad do I look?” I asked.
She cocked her head to the side, not denying that I did look awful but not piling on either.
I dabbed the tissue on my face.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m Marnie, by the way.”
“Constance,” she responded.
It was my turn to be alarmed. Her face had looked familiar when I first walked through the door, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d met her before. Turned out, I hadn’t met her, but I knew that face. Because I’d googled her.
“You’re Tyler Charles’s stylist,” I said, breathless.
Her expression was unreadable. “I’m not.”
But this had to be the woman who had sent those videos to Dorian Fisher. The sex maniac who now worked with Tyler Charles. The one whose story I’d heard from some personal assistant then shared with Dis-Moi Tout, because I was trying to do my job and protect Odetta Olson from all the vultures.
“Didn’t you work for Carly Wolf?”
Her jaw clenched, her black eyes piercing through me. She got up in a huff.
“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
She turned around and sighed. “I was Tyler Charles’s stylist. But I had to quit, for Dorian Fisher.”
She eyed our surroundings, the fire escape, the harsh fluorescent light, the door out to the hallway, to a world with suites and world-famous celebrities.
“Working with big stars can be challenging,” she added drily.
She sat back down with effort, like she was so tired her body was caving in. I could relate.
“No shit,” I said with a pained exhale.
I felt a little lighter already. So much time spent trying to keep it together. To pretend. Chin up, smile on. It was exhausting.
“I hate Cannes,” I said. “Fucking red carpet and spotlights and all those palm trees, like, please. For one person who enjoys being here, there are twenty of us who dream of punching a few too many people in the face.”
“Accurate,” Constance said. “Whose face?”
I frowned. “What?”
“If we’re going to punch someone in the face, can I get a name?”
“Ben,” I said with a grimace, like that was an insult. “My boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend, also known as the worst person in the entire world.”
“What’d he do?” she asked, after a comfortable silence had settled in.
It took me a while to find the appropriate answer. “He stole something from me.”
She made a curious face. “So are we punching him in the face or trying to get whatever he stole back?”
“I don’t know how to get it back,” I admitted.
“Maybe you need to try harder,” she said with an uptight air.
“Isn’t that what people always say? We just need to try harder, to do better, to be better.
And then, maybe we’ll get what we want. Maybe we can pull our heads out of the freaking water and actually breathe without feeling like our lungs are being crushed with their bare hands. ”
She had a point, but still, one thing kept nagging at me.
“What if it’s my own fault?” I asked. “What if I made some bad decisions?”
Carmen had given me those producer contacts for Ben and I’d kept them for myself. You might even say I’d stolen them from Ben before he took the screenplay from me. And I should never have spread all those rumors without running them past my boss first. I had screwed this up all by myself.
“I can’t talk about bad decisions. Trust me when I say you don’t want any advice from me.”
Was she talking about the sex videos? But looking at her now, I couldn’t believe she’d done something like that. There had to be more to the story. Though it was a little late to realize that. I’d already shared it, without even fact-checking it. I was the one who should be punched in the face.
“Talk to me about good decisions then,” I said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “What would that look like?”
She let out a sad laugh.
“Well, there are a few days left of the festival. So I’d say finding a new client would be a good decision. Not a man, dear god, at least not a straight man. But someone who can get serious publicity would probably change my life right about now.”
I tried my hardest to keep my face still.
That story about her hadn’t come out yet, but if it did—when it did—she would get serious publicity, just not the kind she was hoping for.
And this would be all my fault. Ruining my life was one thing, but what had I been doing, destroying this perfectly nice woman’s life?
Just because I was trying to salvage my job.
Just because my boyfriend had betrayed my trust so deeply that a part of me had felt the need to pay the pain forward.
“What would be a good decision for you?” she asked when I remained silent.
“Exacting revenge,” I said deadpan.
It was a joke. Or was it? Maybe I hated Ben so much right now because I hadn’t gone after what I wanted the way he had. I’d sent my screenplay to that producer, then had ignored her emails for weeks, too chickenshit to deal with the consequences of my own actions.
Meanwhile, Ben was fearless. He hadn’t thought twice about lifting that file off my computer and claiming it as his.
Since we’d arrived in Cannes, he’d been putting himself out there, gaining access to the right people almost instantly.
He’d managed to get seen, to get his work acknowledged.
Of course, it wasn’t his work, but the strategy was sound. And it had worked.
So why couldn’t I make that happen for myself?
I turned to Constance, alight with a new spark.
“I have an idea.”
She looked at me with such hopeful eyes that I knew then that I had to fix this. For her and also for me. If my instincts were right, there might be a way to do both all at once.
I jolted upright and held out my hand, signaling her to do the same.
“Come with me. There’s someone I need you to meet.”