Giving myself a shake I stood up and went into the tiny kitchen area. I opened the fridge, contemplated the contents, and decided to settle for a Trader Joe’s prepackaged seafood salad. After dressing it, and dumping it out onto a plate I wandered through the apartment, nibbling. The call had really disturbed me. It had left me shaky and very sad. Was this any less depressing than a hotel room? I missed my female colleagues back at the New York firm. Suddenly the city seemed very large and I seemed very small, lost in a vast, sprawling web of lights, roads, houses, and people.
The phone rang. I studied it with apprehension, forced my feet to move, and picked up the handset.
“Hello?” came Jeff Montolbano’s voice. “Linnet? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Hi, Jeff, what’s up?”
“I just got word that there’s only going to be a morning session tomorrow because of some of the participants’ shooting schedules. That made me think, hey, I bet Linnet has never been on a movie set.”
“You’d be right.”
“Want to change that? I’m an executive producer on a new spy thriller starring Jondin. I was going by the set tomorrow afternoon. I could take you along.”
Jondin was the female version of Kerrinan, who was now occupying a cell in county lockup. “This isn’t going to be a repeat of Ketchup, right? Not using me for a prop.”
“No. This is me trying to make up for that.”
“In that case, I would love to go with you. Where are they filming?”
“On a soundstage at Warner’s,” he said.
“Well, it just so happens I was looking at the water tower at Warner’s from my balcony this evening.”
“Perfect. How about we just go from the office tomorrow. We can grab lunch in Toluca Lake.”
“I rented a car and it will be at the office.”
He dismissed the problem. “I can take you back there after we’re done.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Good. See you tomorrow.”
This was going to be my first day driving myself to the IMG office, so I left absurdly early. And found myself in a long line of cars inching their way up Barham Boulevard. Apparently everybody had the same idea. I had rented a portable GPS system when I rented the car, and I had the address to the office entered into the Garmin. I selected a male voice as the guide because the default woman reminded me of a first-grade teacher I had really hated. The softly accented Brit voice, which I had dubbed Nigel, suggested I take a right in five hundred feet onto Highway 101.
Nigel guided me onto the I-405 freeway heading south. Now it was easy. Just ride this to the Santa Monica exit. I listened to the radio as I drove, flipping back and forth between a contemporary pop and a classical station. My average speed seemed to hover around five miles an hour. Getting to shoot up to fifteen miles an hour was exciting, but this was quickly dispelled when the traffic would inexplicably stop. After twenty minutes I gave up stressing about it, and cultivated a Zen attitude. It would take as long as it took.
Eventually I reached the office and pulled into a space reserved for IMG employees. I dumped my computer and the files I’d been reading at home and headed into the break room for a cup of coffee. It was a more utilitarian space then the opulent kitchen on the partner’s floor in New York. White refrigerator and microwave, no china plates or cups. A toaster but no stove.
Merlin, Junie, and a few other people were present, toasting bagels, doctoring coffee, brewing tea. Merlin was drinking a Coke and eating a cupcake. He grinned at my expression.
“Breakfast of champions,” he said.
“Ugh,” was my articulate response. I poured out a cup of coffee and the rich smell was like a hug. I wasn’t really hungry, but I opened up the full-size refrigerator just to see what might be lurking and found myself staring at a carton of nonfat half-and-half surrounded by premade salads and lots of diet drinks.
I took out the container of half-and-half and held it out to the room. “What is the point?”
“Calories,” said Junie. “But if you want real half-and-half just put it on the shopping list. She indicated a small notebook.
“No, thanks. I take mine black,” I said.
“Like your heart?” Merlin asked.
“No, like my mood.”
“You do look frazzled,” Junie remarked.
“I am. I drove for the first time. How do you people stand it?”
“How did you come?” a young male PA asked.
“The 101 to the 405.”
“Well, there’s your problem,” Merlin said. “Where do you live?”
“I took your advice. I’m in the Barham Oakwood.”
“Okay.” He took a big swig of Coke. “You’ve got to use surface streets to get over the hill and into the Basin. You want to get on Riverside and go down to Laurel Canyon and over.”
Junie was shaking her head. “No, Laurel Canyon’s a nightmare at rush hour. Coldwater Canyon is better.”
“No, too many curves and too many accidents,” said the PA. “One wreck and the road is shut down for hours.”
“What if she went down Cahuenga past the Rose Bowl, caught Santa Monica, and headed west?”
The others considered Merlin’s suggestion. “Yeah, that makes sense,” Junie said. “Then she’d have the option to bail out onto Sunset or Melrose depending on what she’s hearing on the radio.”
I just stared at them. I hadn’t seen this much focus since the New York office wrote an amicus brief for the Supreme Court. They correctly interpreted my expression.
Merlin was grinning again. “You have just experienced the most common LA conversation. It breaks the ice, it can be used as a pickup method, and it covers all social gaffs.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got the same thing in New York. Except we discuss apartments. I would submit that our discussions are ultimately more useful,” I said.
Merlin grinned at me, enjoying the sparring. “Big-city rivalry. We’re more exciting.”
“We’re more sophisticated.”
“We’ve got movie stars.”
“We’ve got skyscrapers.”
He threw up a hand. “Okay, I call it a draw.”
“You do know to tune your radio to 1070 am for traffic updates?” asked the PA. She clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that we were teasing now.
“No, but I guess I do now. Okay, all you California dreamers, this hard-charging New Yorker is going to work.” I gave them a finger wave and went back to my office to prepare for the day’s testimony.
6
David had called for a fifteen-minute recess while we waited for the next witness to arrive. This was going to be the big enchilada, the world-famous director George Campos, who was going to talk about human versus Álfar actors. The previous three hours had been taken up with a statistician, and my brain felt as numb as my butt. Barbara Gabaldon hadn’t even bothered to question the man because she could sense he wasn’t having that much impact. My three days of burrowing into the reports had only intensified the sense that humans were getting the short end of the stick. But what to do about it?
As I bolted for the bathroom I reflected that this was another problem with vampires: they tended to forget that humans had bodily functions. The ladies room was outside the office proper, down the hall past the elevators. Missy had already beaten me to the facility. While I was in the stall I heard her washing her hands, but I didn’t hear the door close. Sure enough, she was waiting for me when I emerged. She leaned against the wall by the towel dispenser and glared at me. I let the warm water roll across my hands and tried to think of something to say. The soap offered a conversational opening, and I seized it like a drowning woman.