Selfie (9 page)

“Connor—your selfie hit the internet big two weeks ago. What the hell was that about?”

I stared at the reporter, caught flat-footed for a moment, before eleven years of hard-earned professionalism kicked in.

And surprised me even as I was the one with my mouth open.

“I knew Vinnie Walker for ten years,” I said baldly. And why not? Who
wouldn’t
figure out that some of that was grieving, sound off or sound on. “We were roommates, best friends, neighbors”—
lovers!
—“brothers.” The lie shriveled my throat for a moment, and I almost couldn’t go on. Jilly shifted next to me, and I remembered our conversation the night before.

And I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

“Grief isn’t predictable,” I said after a lonely moment in front of people holding their phones up to record me. “I had a drink too many—or a bottle of drinks too many. I thought about my friend who’d been gone a year, and I grieved. I’ve lived in the public for a long time. I guess the only thing I’m embarrassed about is that I thought that was a good thing to share with the world.”

There’s this moment after you’ve given a really good performance. It’s like the world holds its breath. And even though this wasn’t a play, or a bit on screen, for that moment nobody breathed.

Then the voice—a girl with half her hair scalp-trimmed and a long braid pulled to the side—spoke up again. “That was really sincere, Mr. Montgomery. Thank you.”

A sudden bout of applause broke the silence, and that was the end of the press conference.

I wasn’t aware that my hands were shaking, or that my heart was thundering in my chest, until I felt Noah’s hand on the small of my back, turning me, steering me inside the cabin for my meeting, making sure I made it up the last step on the stoop without tripping and falling on my face.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“You look really fucking pale,” Noah insisted. “You go sit down, and I’ll get you some coffee. I know how to work the machine. Steamed milk?”

“And two sugars,” I told him. “But I can go—”

“Sit down and pretend to be a movie star,” he ordered, and you’d think that, you know, as a movie star, I’d have a problem with that.

I sat docilely at the table—probably the one where everybody read lines when they weren’t doing a full cast—and Jilly shed her puffy white coat before excusing herself to go get her own coffee. It was around fifty degrees outside, which was pretty cold compared to Hollywood, and I didn’t blame her for losing the coat, but I wasn’t ready to lose my sturdy bomber jacket and scarf yet.

I was shaking like it was five degrees outside.

“How you doing?” Simon asked, looming over me now that Noah had left. I looked up at him and smiled, smooth and professional, because he was the boss. Yeah, I’d given my share of casting couch blowjobs in the early days—shocker! But being on your knees for some douche bag who wielded his power over you like a fucking mace taught you lessons, the first and foremost was to always let Daddy think he was in charge. While Simon didn’t seem like a douche bag, he was definitely “Daddy” today, and showing deference was the order of business.

Besides—he seemed like a nice guy. Interns were running around with organized efficiency, not panic, and he greeted pretty much everyone with a sincere, if sometimes absentminded, smile. No, this guy was probably not getting blowjobs from new actors—which was an even better reason to be decent to him.

“I’m doing great,” I lied. “Thanks so much for the nice intro—it makes a difference.”

Simon shrugged unhappily. “I’m not excited about that last question,” he said frankly. “That was supposed to be a hands-off topic—we picked our people, Mr. Montgomery—I promise, we won’t let her on the lot again.”

I remembered the girl’s honest gratitude for some frankness in this business.

“Please don’t,” I said impulsively. “I mean, I don’t necessarily want to talk about that again, but maybe just give her a warning or something. I mean, I
had
to talk about that eventually—I know Jilly’s been saying ‘no comment’ for the last two weeks. Maybe this way people can stop speculating, you know?”

Simon was regarding me with a little bit of shock just as Jillian came back over, nursing her coffee and a serious grudge.

“Jesus, Conklin, you were supposed to pick your fuckin’ people! Wasn’t that one of my caveats? Wasn’t it? That question did
not
come up—”

“Easy, Jilly,” I said, a reluctant smile on my face. “We all survived.”

You would have thought I dropped a bomb.

Or a psycho teleporting cow.

Their dismay was a hair away from comic, and I pushed it over the edge with a laugh I didn’t feel. “People, he’s going to get mentioned—around me even. Trying to pretend he never existed is only going to make more moments like this.”

Simon smiled, revealing laugh grooves. “Fair enough. We won’t treat his name like a box full of plague.” He sobered. “I worked with Vinnie, you know?”

I hadn’t. “No,” I said, keeping my smile if it killed me. “Which gig?”

“
Comet’s Tail—
you remember, the space opera one for SyFy?”

“Oh yeah!” I remembered—Vinnie had worked that gig for five years as a guest spot—maybe two or three episodes a year. He’d fit it in between film jobs because he enjoyed the cast so much. “He
loved
your show!” Another memory—Vinnie gushing about Simon this and Simon that—and how Simon was quietly out, but he wasn’t a big enough name for it to attract attention. “He couldn’t stop talking about you!”

I’d been horribly jealous.
Hellishly
jealous. Vinnie had been fresh out of rehab when he first worked that job, and the things he’d said during detox had hurt me so bad. I’d gotten over it—but yeah. Not a good time.

But meeting Simon now, a small part of my faith was restored.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “He was the greatest guy. When I first met him I was going through a breakup. He listened one afternoon—you know, just let me dump on him because he was there. Gave the best advice. Told me that a good relationship isn’t built on the flash-in-the-pan sex, but on the hand-holding that comes after it—I actually Googled it to see if it was one of his lines, but nope. He really meant that.”

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to cry. He’d been talking about me then—
me—
and he’d thought we were good. Even then, when I wasn’t so sure myself, he’d believed in us.

Cry. I really wanted to cry.

“Yeah,” I said, “Vinnie was usually sincere. I’m glad you’ve got good memories of him.”

“I don’t know how you hang out with those people, Vinnie. They’re horrible and shrill, and they make my head hurt.”

“
They give two million dollars a year to animal charities. Seriously, Connor—there has got to be a heart of gold somewhere in all that pony shit, you know?”

“Well, most of them were about how much fun you guys had. He was your brother, man—don’t think I don’t know you’re hurting.”

For the love of hell. Could this nice man stop talking to me? I was going to wave my hand and say something about shows and going on when Noah came up behind him, tripped, and spilled just a few drops of coffee on his sleeve.

“Oh my God! I’m sorry, sir! I’m so sorry, Mr. Conklin— I didn’t mean to— Are you okay?”

Conklin checked his arm and grimaced. “Yeah, but geez, Noah—you usually move like you’re on ice—when’d you get so clumsy?”

“Sorry, sir—the carpet caught my shoe just right. Here’s your coffee, Mr. Montgomery.” He held a napkin and was wiping the top off as he handed me the large, lidded paper coffee cup. “Would you like a pastry?” He also gave me a chocolate croissant, and I took them both from him gratefully, even though I wasn’t particularly hungry.

He’d gotten Conklin away from that conversation—I’d eat sawdust if he gave that to me in a cup.

“Thanks, Noah.” I took a sip from the coffee, and it was . . . perfect. “Oh wow—did you have to get the degree to learn how to make this, or are you just a natural?”

Noah’s grin popped out—the lethal one that made the angels sing and my stomach do backflips. “I waited tables at a deli while I was getting through school,” he said proudly. “They had a cappuccino machine, and I got damned good.”

I took another sip and shuddered, feeling some of the heat of the room seep into my bones finally. “You’re hired,” I told him lightly, and his courtesy laugh warmed me more.

At that moment Simon stood up at the head of the table and called order, and I looked around at the room that had grown a little more occupied while we were talking.

“Okay, folks—we’ve consolidated some of the sets to Soundstage One and added Soundstage Two. We also have three new locations to shoot at, and only one of them is accessible via golf cart from here. So returning people, you get to take the short tour, new people, you get the slightly longer tour. When the new people are done, we’re all motoring to the Global, the European Suite, and we’ll be served lunch and get a chance to mingle before we have our first reading. Hunter Easton and Kevin Hussain will be there, and they’re going to brief us on the basic story arc—you’ve all signed your NDAs, right?”

“Yes, Simon,” came an amused voice. “None of us are going to the Pentagon with our secrets.” I looked and saw, oh my God! Blond, blue-eyed, the darling of the small screen and everybody’s favorite boy-wonder actor, Carter Samuels! The star of
Wolf’s Landing
had actually come in unannounced, which was pretty impressive given that he and his husband Levi Pritchard were together and their bodyguard was right on their heels.

My eyes widened as I took in the three of them, the bodyguard looming large in the background. Carter’s career had
taken off
as a result of this show—and Levi’s had revitalized in the extreme. It was a good idea to remember that. I may have been coming from the big screen, but as of yet I hadn’t been beating the paparazzi off my lawn with a stick the way they had.

“Thinking of trading up?” Noah murmured in my ear, and I grinned at him.

“I already got the premium model,” I joked, and he gave me a “damned straight” nod in return. But Simon wasn’t done talking yet, and I didn’t want to be a shitty student on the first day of class.

“You laugh!” Simon complained good-naturedly, because as I looked around most of the cast and crew
were
laughing. “But Finn Larson is going to meet us at the Global, and he’s going to be jumping up and down and screaming to make sure we understand—no spoilers, no dropping hints, not even to our special sources, you all understand?”

“I understand Larson’s a douche bag,” Levi Pritchard muttered not so quietly.

A mid-sized woman with Jilly-style maquillage
and
impressive heels spoke up. She was the only woman in the trailer not casually dressed in jeans or stretch pants, and her no-bullshit black business suit and bun told me that this was someone with clout.

“You need to keep that to yourself,” she said sternly. “
Selves
,” she corrected with a look around at the rest of us. “We are a small cast and crew working in an isolated location—we need to be the proverbial big happy family or we
will
end up at each other’s throats, do we get that?”

Conklin grimaced. “Thanks, Anna—we were going to try to keep the scary teacher lectures in reserve for the mid-season, when we get the fuck on each other’s nerves, but it’s good you broke that out now. We know what’s coming. Ladies and gentleman, if you haven’t met Anna Maxwell, she’s usually a little less uptight than this.” Ah—Anna. She was one of the show’s producers, so, yes, she did get to be the scary mean teacher, didn’t she?

Anna rolled her eyes and visibly relaxed. “Yes, well,” she said, sending a comic glare at Levi and Carter, “if you had to work with these two overgrown fifth graders, you’d pull out your ruler and your dunce caps too!”

General laughter, and Simon went on talking while Anna started pulling packets and folders from the desk at his back to hand out to us. Noah got a copy too, and as I glanced around I saw that bodyguards, PAs, and gofers were all getting the same set of papers. I took a look—shooting schedules, what was needed when, availability of everything from food to gum to soda to cigarettes, including feminine protection and extra clothes.

Impressive—and considerate.

I leafed through my own packet and realized everything pertaining to me personally had been highlighted. “Anna, I think I love you,” I said facetiously, and she turned from her duties with surprise.

“Why? What’d I do?”

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d worked on shoots so disorganized the
director
didn’t know where he was shooting next or from what part of the script.

“This right here is a work of art—even an idiot like me can find his way around with this. Thank you!”

She smiled at me like I was her favorite son. “Honey, praise like that will get you asked back at the very least. You’re welcome.”

“Nice job kissing up,” Jilly murmured in my ear. “Now stop being so earnest, you’re going to make everyone else fuckin’ puke.”

The meeting was moving on, so I didn’t have time to retort. What I wanted to say was that she’d been right about this move. Looking at my shooting schedule, at the envelope with my script pages in it, at the maps and the facilities and the whole shooting match, had actually started my heart beating again.

I was going to walk onto a soundstage and become another person again. I wasn’t going to have to hide a thing—it was going to be my
job
to make that person on the pages as transparent, as perfectly obvious as possible.

I remembered that feeling, saying words that weren’t mine, having reactions, emotions,
presence
that had nothing to do with me. It was like getting struck by lightning and filled with someone else’s soul.

Oh, holy God, blessed were the actors—I was going to be somebody
new
.