Blonde Ambition (9 page)

“First stop, the writers’ room,” Clark explained. “Sit down and listen up; you’ll get a feel for what’s going on with the show.”

The door was open, so Anna followed Clark into a long conference room not half the size of the gargantuan conference room at Apex. And not nearly so scenic. There were no windows. On each of the two long walls hung three white boards, and on the short walls were two of the same kind of boards. On the shelf of each white board was an assortment of colored erasable markers.

That was it. No artwork, no posters, no nothing. The lighting was fluorescent, and the whole room smelled of stale coffee. The table itself was a mess, covered with notebooks, scripts, old newspapers, and half-eaten sandwiches. Around the table sat half a dozen writers, four men and two women. They all looked to be under the age of forty.

A short but very cute guy in a baseball cap was pacing, addressing the group, even though he looked like he was the youngest one there. He took a brief moment to utter a deferential greeting to Mr. Sheppard, who didn’t bother to introduce Anna. Clark sat, so Anna did, too.

“Okay,” said the short guy in the baseball cap. “Chyme is intimidated by Alexandra’s old money confidence, yada, yada, yada. Big fucking deal. But where’s Cruise fit into this equation? Why does Chyme feel so fucking threatened? Why the fuck does Alexandra scare her, really?”

A few writers offered some responses, all liberally peppering even the most ordinary sentence with the word
fuck.
Anna couldn’t make any sense out of the conversation, other than to decide that a TV writers’ room had to be the most profane place in the universe. But eventually she caught on to the story—the brunette actress she’d seen in the hotel lobby was East Coast rich Alexandra. She and Chyme were going to be in a love triangle with Cruise. The writers were trying to figure out how to make this triangle work.

After about forty-five minutes—in which the word
fuck
was uttered at least a hundred times and not a single sentence had been written on the white board—the staff took a break. They fled the room quickly, except for the young guy who had been running the discussion. He walked over to Clark and Anna.

“Danny, how’s it going?” Mr. Sheppard asked, shaking his hand.

“Great, can’tcha tell? A million-four in salaries and they’ve got nothing,” the guy said. His friendly brown eyes fixed on Anna. “Hi, I’m Danny Bluestone.”

“Danny’s our boy genius co–exec producer,” Mr. Sheppard explained.

Anna frowned. “Sorry?”

“Guy in charge of this room. If the show tanks, so does he,” Mr. Sheppard translated. “Danny, I want you to meet my new intern, Anna Percy. Her pedigree is just about as snooty as the one you cooked up for Alexandra.”

Danny shook Anna’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” He grinned at her. “Actually, you look like you could
play
Alexandra.”

“I’m not an actress,” Anna assured him.

“Did you see Pegasus out there?”

Anna’s brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

“Pegasus Patton, she’s playing Alexandra,” he explained. “The brunette in the lobby?”

“She’s hot right now,” Mr. Sheppard added. “Just came off an indie film with Nicole Kidman that’s showing at Sundance in a couple of weeks. She’s an Apex client.”

Anna nodded politely, though she understood only about fifty percent of what he’d just said. Then Mr. Sheppard and Danny got into a long technical discussion about costs for shooting certain scenes and whether those scenes could be rewritten so they’d be cheaper to shoot. Neither of them looked in her direction or even motioned for her to take a seat, so she drifted back toward one of the white boards that were filled with writing, feeling rather idiotic.

Finally Danny glanced at his watch. “Okay, we’ll summon the writers in ten for dinner. We’re ordering from La Scala. Can we get you anything?” He looked from Mr. Sheppard to Anna.

She was about to decline when her boss said to bring them both pasta with mussels. “If you’re a hit,” he told Danny, “next year we’ll squeeze enough money out of those sons of bitches to cover dinner and lunch. Anna, I need to go over a few things with Mason. Danny, give Anna the new pages. When the food comes, call me.” Without saying goodbye, he walked out.

Danny motioned Anna into a seat. “How do you like your internship?”

“It’s my first day, so I actually don’t know yet,” Anna admitted, grateful to be off her feet. “And honestly, I hardly know anything about TV.”

“That won’t last. Try not to let Clark intimidate you—it’s one of his specialties.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Anna said dryly. “But I’m not all that easily intimidated.”

Danny nodded. “Good for you.”

Anna cocked her head at him. “If you don’t mind my asking … I know he called you a ‘boy wonder,’ but you do look really young to be the—what was it— co–exec producer.”

Danny leaned close. “I’m twenty-three, but don’t let it get around. I try to pass for twenty-eight.” He shrugged. “I just got lucky early. Right out of UCLA, I wrote a spec
Buffy
that—”

A chubby, bespectacled girl with a pencil stuck inside her messy bun and a clipboard in hand ran into the conference room. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, Danny,” she began. “But Pegasus is tweaking the dialogue with Chyme in the next scene. She says her character would never say the things we’ve got her saying.”

Danny rolled his eyes as the girl pushed her clipboard at him. He took it and scanned it quickly. “What’s so complicated? Chyme tries to befriend her and invites her to play tennis; Alexandra says something about not wanting to mess up her nails.” He flipped to the next page. “Cruise shows up and Alexandra comes on to him.”

Anna watched as the chubby girl shrugged. “Hey, I’m a lowly PA. She’s not about to tell me. But she’s yelling at Mason and he said that you have to fix it. Now. And please don’t kill the messenger.” She waggled her fingers at them and walked out.

“Shit. I knew they shouldn’t have cast her,” Danny muttered.

“The brunette in the lobby?” Anna asked.

Danny nodded. “She’s supposed to be this rich-ass preppy girl. You know any girls like that?”

“I suppose I
am
a girl like that,” Anna confessed. “And I couldn’t help noticing—please tell me to shut up if I’m out of line …”

“No, go ahead, really,” Danny urged her.

“Well, her nails. And the way she’s dressed. New York prep school girls don’t have red fingernails. And they don’t wear Versace.”

“Come on,” Danny guffawed.

“I’m serious,” Anna insisted. “I realize I’m speaking in generalities but … short nails, no polish. Not even French manicures—prep school girls like to pretend they don’t care about things like that. And the Versace …” Anna shook her head.

“Wrong, huh?”

“An East Side prep school girl in New York would wear something vintage, maybe. She could have found it in a thrift shop for five bucks. It could have holes in it. It looks like you don’t care.”

“But Alexandra—this character—her father is a billionaire. She comes from five generations of money.”

So do I, Anna thought, but wasn’t about to say so. “Even more reason for her not to wear it on her back. Unless it’s, say, vintage Chanel. Or she’s being ironic, or—” Anna stopped herself and bit her lower lip. “God. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Danny insisted. “I asked. And I think I just got an inkling of why Clark glommed onto you. I’ll let the costume people know about it later. And hair and makeup.”

Anna was flattered. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Be right back. No, come watch this.”

Anna followed Danny into the hallway, where a two-foot-high Chinese gong rested atop some filing cabinets. “You want to do the honors?” Danny asked. When Anna shook her head, Danny picked up a mallet and smacked the gong. The reverb filled the hallway.

“Low tech,” Danny joked. “They’ll be pissed. No time to work on their specs.”

Summoned by the gong, the writers drifted back into the room. Some different production assistants came in and took dinner orders, which for some reason was a very big deal, with a lot of planning and menu consultation. Clark hadn’t returned, so Anna sat apart from the group, feeling self-conscious all over again. But just as the assistants were finally departing, Danny leaned his chair back and whispered to her, “Hope you can hang out. We’ll wrap up late, but we’re going to hit Dublin’s later; you should come with.”

Anna had no idea what Dublin’s was, but she was flattered by the invitation. As she sat there for the next hour listening to Danny Bluestone run the room, she grew more and more impressed with his talent and personality. Plus he was so cute in an offbeat, non-Hollywood kind of way.

Maybe she’d just take him up on his offer.

“It’s nice. But I like your jacket better,” Mia said, a bit petulantly. She stood in front of the mirror in Cammie’s room in her new Moschino Cheap & Chic crepe blazer; black, with pink and yellow piping and buttons. Mia had wondered aloud why the clothing line was called “Cheap & Chic” when the jacket cost over a thousand dollars. Cammie explained that by their standards, that
was
cheap.

Cammie’s new Champagne Jones metallic brocade, mink-lined clutch jacket had cost more than twice that, which had everything to do with why Mia wanted it.

“No bitching from you,” Cammie ordered, slipping out of her heels to stretch her insoles on the plush carpet. Why did it have to hurt so much to wear expensive shoes? “Thanks to my dad’s credit card, you now own a jacket that is worth more than your entire ratty valley girl wardrobe paid for by your mother.”

Cammie had taken Mia to the Fred Segal in Santa Monica, the favorite shopping site of (a) the rich and famous, (b) the pretending to be rich and famous, and (c) the desperate to rub elbows with the rich and famous. She didn’t like Fred Segal that much—the combination of the drive to Santa Monica and the gawking tourists was almost enough to make Cammie turn to a personal shopper when she wanted something from that store. Not today, though. She knew from experience that the acquisition of crafted fabrics—new clothing—would be far better for her wounded psyche than dozens of hours of psychotherapy.

After Fred Segal they drove back toward West Hollywood, where they trolled Melrose Avenue and stocked up on cute beaded T-shirts that went for eighty dollars a pop. These were so inexpensive that Cammie bought them in every color for herself and for Mia. Price wasn’t much of an object: her father’s accountant paid off the credit card bills every month in their entirety. She’d never heard a word about what she bought or how much it had cost.

The last stop on their excursion had been the Spanish Kitchen for dinner. Mia was practically hyper-ventilating to be taken there since she’d read in one of her teen rags that Jennifer and Brad were regular customers. Through their brief dinner movie stars and rumors about movie stars were the younger girl’s sole topic of conversation.

For a while Cammie amused herself with shameless name-dropping, ninety-nine percent of it true. Cammie had been at Sarah Michelle’s birthday party. She’d partied with Lenny Kravitz, pre-Nicole. She’d flown to New York with Sam and Dee in Jackson Sharpe’s jet for Fashion Week and had front-row seats at Baby Phat and Imitation of Christ.

Mia hung on every word. In a way, it was fun to be with someone who was actually impressed with a life that Cammie took for granted. But the moment that Cammie tried to shift the conversation around to Mia, or why Mia was living with relatives in the valley instead of with her mother, or why her mother hadn’t even mentioned a daughter until just a few days ago, Mia either dodged the question or changed the subject.

Not that Cammie cared. It was just that without more info on the newest family member, she couldn’t leverage that information to her own benefit.

“Can I try on your jacket at least?” Mia asked.

“No.” Cammie disappeared into her palatial bathroom, with its pale pink sunken Jacuzzi tub, separate stall shower with twelve jets at various levels, and antique French bidet. She used the facilities, then shed her clothes, dropping them wherever. She grabbed her hot pink velvet Aubade robe and shrugged into it, then padded back into the bedroom.

Mia stood in front of Cammie’s mirror, wearing Cammie’s new jacket.

Cammie’s hands went to her narrow hips. “What did I tell you?”

“I’m not
contaminating
it, okay?”

“Take it off.”

“Jeez, hold on, I’m just—”

“I said take it off!” Cammie thundered. This had been such a miserable day. That she had begun to plan her own eighteenth birthday party because no one else had thought to do it made her blood boil. Of course, Mia didn’t know about that. But this girl was just one more example of how Cammie’s nearest and dearest didn’t consider her or her feelings at all.

Mia shook hair out of her eyes and started to take off the jacket. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

For chrissake. What was taking her so long? Cammie reached for the free sleeve of the jacket to yank it off the younger girl. A sickening ripping sound filled the air as the sleeve detached.

“Look what you did!” Mia cried.

“What
I
did?”

Mia slipped off the rest of the jacket and threw it on the bed. “It’s not my fault, you know. Besides, for what you spent, the jacket should be made better, don’t you think?” Mia picked up her shopping bag and headed swiftly for the door, where she spun back to Cammie. She looked less than certain. “The store will take it back, right?”

Cammie sat down on her bed and shook her head, though there was every chance that it would. Let the girl sweat.

“Cammie?” Mia’s voice was soft and tentative. “I just want to say that—”

“Hey, what’s up, girls?” came Clark Sheppard’s booming voice.

“Dad, hi! You’re home early!” Cammie said brightly, bouncing up as her father stepped into her room.

It wasn’t much after eight o’clock. Her father didn’t usually show up until hours later. “Patrice and I have a charity thing to go to tonight,” he explained, then took in the shopping bags arrayed on the floor. “You two hit the stores?”

“Cammie took me,” Mia said. “It was really nice of her.”