Hollywood Girls Club (11 page)

The whole idea of someone who cared whether you stayed or left appealed to her. Someone who checked in throughout the day. Someone to miss. She hadn’t really had companionship in years. The irony astounded her. Married, biggest star in the world, and no one to make her feel missed?
Jeez
, Celeste thought,
I’m getting sappy. It’s a bad romantic comedy for sure.
She was going home.

Chapter 10

Lydia Albright and Her Christian Louboutin Peekaboo Pumps

Lydia was glad she'd traded in her Christian Louboutin peekaboo pumps for Pumas before disembarking Worldwide Pictures’ private jet, because she wasn’t sure what was in the brown sludge she’d just walked through to get to this Balinese hellhole, but the muck was near her ankles and sticking to her shoes (it would have demolished her nine-hundred-dollar heels). Lydia gazed at the dilapidated building before her. She’d read somewhere that Balinese women were the most beautiful in the world, but that little tidbit of information didn’t apply to the ninety-year-old toothless crone squatting in front of the hotel. If nothing else, this woman’s existence proved that Balinese women didn’t age well.

At least it was meant to be a quick trip (if you disregarded the eighteen-hour flight each way). Lydia hoped to spend less time on the ground than the round-trip took in the air. She only had the Worldwide jet for another twenty-six hours (it was the longest she could keep it out without Arnold knowing). Shit. She had to find Zymar.

She’d started south of Kuta, on the coast, where Zymar was famous for hibernating between films. But his home, a hut with a porcelain pot in which to pee and no running water, was empty. His neighbor, a tiny stick of a man, told Lydia’s interpreter (Thuan, a local she’d snagged at the airport and offered a hundred U.S. dollars to if he’d translate for her for the day) that Zymar had left the day before to visit Denpasar. So she and Thuan loaded into Thuan’s Volkswagen Bug (he demanded that he drive his car as part of his services) and headed inland. Three hours later, Lydia’s legs were cramped after slogging through brown sludge. She watched her interpreter try to communicate with the toothless old woman.

“She say go on up. But leave her five first.”

“Five?” Lydia asked. Then she realized—of course, the universal translator—cash. Lydia smiled at the woman and handed her a five-dollar bill. The old woman cackled and said something to Thuan.

“She say room six and thank you. She also say if you are wife to knock first.”

“Tell her not to worry—not his wife. Not anybody’s wife,” Lydia said, and moved toward the front entrance of the hotel. There, between Lydia and the door, sat a giant baboon defecating on the step. The baboon finished and scampered up a palm tree beside the hotel. Lydia stepped over the steaming pile of shit, realizing what, in part, made up the brown sludge she’d waded through.

The lobby was filled with orange vinyl chairs that looked as if they came straight from a Denny’s in Sherman Oaks. Once past the lobby, there were, of course, no lights to illuminate the creaky wooden staircase. Room six was on the top floor. She felt as if she was in a scene from
Apocalypse Now
as they ascended. She might as well get a gunboat and go upriver. She hoped Zymar didn’t have a machete. Lydia reached for the doorknob and Thuan cleared his throat.

“Lady, maybe I go first. You might get a surprise.”

“I promise it’s nothing I haven’t seen. I’m from L.A.”

And it wasn’t. Weston may have liked Asian twins, but Zymar preferred Balinese triplets. Lucky for Lydia, all four were taking a breather. One was in the bathroom and two were passed out on the bed, where Zymar lay smoking a Thai stick with his eyelids half closed.

“Bollocks, this must be good stuff,” Zymar said as he exhaled. “I see Lydia Albright.”

She’d never determined exactly where Zymar’s accent was from. It sounded to her like British-Australian with a hint of New Zealand thrown in. Pacific Eurotrash. Damn, she’d always been a sucker for accents. Weston’s was New York Jew. It didn’t matter the type of accent, she just loved how it sounded on a man.

“Not such good stuff, Zymar. It’s actually me,” Lydia said.

“Eh. She even talks. Sounds like Lydia Albright, too.” A wicked gleam lit up Zymar’s eyes as he took another toke on his Thai stick.

Lydia looked around the room. She needed Zymar’s clothes and—she hoped for his sake—his shoes. She couldn’t imagine what kind of parasite you could pick up slogging barefoot through baboon shit.

“Girls. Looky here. It’s Lydia Albright from ‘Ollywood.” Zymar laughed and nudged one of the sleeping triplets. The third one emerged nude from the bathroom and curled up on a divan in the corner.

Lydia grabbed Zymar’s jeans and Paul Frank T-shirt off the floor and dumped them on the bed next to her director.

“Work with me here, big guy. I’ve only got the plane for twenty-six more hours. We need to get going.”

“Going? Lyd, look around you. Do you think a man like me would leave this lot?”

Lydia spotted Zymar’s flip-flop sandals (covered in brown goo) in the corner. Careful not to touch the soles, she walked them to the edge of the bed.

“No, but I do think you have a pay-or-play contract to do my film, which means that either you come back with me to do my movie, or forget about your ten-million-dollar fee and pay the studio back the two million they already paid you. Plus go to movie jail for the next five to ten years because I will make it my
personal
mission in life to make sure you don’t work in film—
any
kind of film—for at least that long.”

Zymar’s lips turned upward into a soft curve. “Lyd, if you’d get rid of them tits and grow a wank, you’d be me best mate for sure.”

“Say good-bye to your friends. You can come back to visit as soon as you’re finished shooting my film.”

Zymar lifted the sheet and Lydia caught herself looking—so did Zymar.

“It’s a big one, ain’t it, Lyd?” he asked, mischief dancing in his eyes.

Lydia blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl. “Uh, we’ll be in the hall.” She and Thuan walked out the door. Lydia’s heart raced in her chest. Zymar was correct—it indeed was a big one.

Ms. Albright and Mr. Zymar, please fasten your seat belts for the descent into Los Angeles,” the pilot said over the intercom.

For fifteen hours, Zymar had slept while Lydia read scripts, rolled phone calls, pestered her assistants, and paced the cabin of the Gulfstream 5500. Zymar finally woke two hours outside of L.A., hungover, dehydrated, and disoriented. First she had pumped him full of Fiji water. Then she fed him vitamin C tablets and multivitamins—Lydia needed him ready to roll the minute they touched down—and finally they talked about the script.

“We had one read-through, last week. It was okay. But just okay. Mary Anne is working on a couple more notes.”

“Your writer’s a cute one,” Zymar said, slurping more coffee.

“You cannot fuck my writer,” Lydia commanded. “Do you understand? This is her first film, and the experience will be overwhelming enough. She doesn’t need you mucking up her head.”

“Yes, ma’am. See we’ve got a bit of a mother hen in us. Who would have thought it? You with that set of brass balls and all.”

“Celeste Solange is playing Raphaella.”

“Don’t know how you pulled that off.”

“Magic.”

“I’d say so. Speakin’ of magic, that little short redheaded fart who reminds me of a leprechaun, the one ‘at got the Worldwide job?”

“Arnold Murphy. Yes.”

“You know, Lydia, when I heard that was when I headed inland. I wasn’t meaning to be dodgy. I just figured with the feud between you two there wouldn’t be a movie to make.”

“You and me both. I got lucky.”

“You know the saying about luck—When chance meets a prepared mind. What saved it, then, Lyd?”

“Cici. Cici and Jess.”

“Yeah, well, I always did like them in threes.” Zymar’s lascivious grin would have been offensive if Lydia didn’t think he was so damn good-looking.

“And Bradford, then. He’s out of rehab? Cleaned up?”

“He seemed clean at the second read-through. I hope it holds.”

“He’s unstoppable in front of a camera, Lyd, if you can keep him off the blow for the shoot. But it’s impossible when he’s on it.”

“You take care of him on set. I’ll take care of him at the end of the day.”

“So what are we looking at for a start date? Ten days from now?”

“Three. Arnold is already ripping me apart for dailies,” Lydia said.

“That fric frac? He wouldn’t know a good film if it spanked him on the ass.”

Lydia laughed.

“He worked on my second film years ago—right after that little thing with you. Didn’t know which side of a camera the lens was on. He’s a wanker or the waste of one.”

They both bounced as the wheels touched down on the tarmac. “He may be a wanker, Zymar,” Lydia said, looking at her watch, “but he’s our wanker for the next eight weeks.”

Chapter 11

Jessica and Her Louis Vuitton Marble Leather Pumps

Jessica looked around the CTA boardroom at the fifty-four motion picture agents in attendance. This small group of individuals, with Jessica as their leader, dominated the entertainment universe. Clustered in the room were a whole lot of ties and dark suits and not many skirts and high heels. But the heels that were in the boardroom were remarkable: Louboutin, Choo, Blahnik.

Seven female agents, including Jessica. Not even twenty percent of the motion picture department’s agents (who represented eighty percent of the world’s top stars) were women. Talent representation was a male business; it was sales. Agents sold actors, directors, writers and their ideas. This sales job was intense and competitive. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. You lived for your clients and their needs.

CTA had lost two female agents in the last eighteen months; one to a management company and the other to motherhood. Jessica was among the third generation of women in Hollywood even allowed to be agents. None of the first generation had children (few had husbands) and just a handful in the second. Even today many female agents never married, and the majority of those who did eventually divorced. What man wanted to compete with this life?

Jess glanced at her ten-thousand-dollar diamond-encrusted Rolex (a gift from a client who had won an Emmy). Nine fifty-eight A.M. Two more minutes before the Wednesday-morning meeting was finished. A weekly ritual, this staff gathering required every junior agent who was responsible for “covering” a studio to report on all the jobs that were available as well as the gossip. Tyler Bruger, the twenty-five-year-old junior agent who covered Summit Studios (and who had failed miserably at covering Holden Humphrey), was yammering on about a script Summit paid seven figures for. He floundered, his comments going nowhere.

“What director do they want?” Jess interrupted.

“Excuse me?” Tyler stopped and swallowed. Every junior agent feared being put on the spot at the Wednesday-morning meeting. It’d been less than a decade since Jessica had sat in Tyler’s spot, her unease creating pit stains on her silk shirt.

“What director? You’ve talked about our clients, but which one does the producer want?”

“Mike Fox is the producer, and he didn’t say who—”

“Didn’t say? When did you speak to Mike?”

“At the premiere.”

“Really?”

“He mentioned—”

“You’re telling me that you spoke to Mike Fox at his premiere party?” Tyler was lying. He knew it, and Jessica knew it. She could eat him alive right now. If she wanted.

“Yes, and he mentioned Van der Veen and Tuttle as our two directors he’d be most interested in for this project.”

Nice save. At least Tyler didn’t crack under the pressure. Jessica looked around the room. “Is that all?” she asked. No one else had anything. She stood, signaling the end of the meeting. And she was sure she heard Tyler breathe a sigh of relief.

For the past three years (as long as she’d been president of the company), immediately after the meeting Jessica talked with Jeremy Sullivan, the CEO of CTA.

An Americanized Brit, Jeremy had purchased his way into the entertainment business with his wife’s money (she being the favorite daughter of an obscenely wealthy oil magnate). Three years before, Jeremy had managed a semi-friendly buyout of CTA with enormous help from Jessica. He had first approached her on a movie set, where she was visiting one of her director clients. Jeremy was executive-producing the film (another investment by his father-in-law). Forever interested in cinema, Jeremy believed the fastest way to get movies made was to have access to the talent. And what better access, Jeremy believed, than to own an agency.

Still a junior agent, Jessica recognized an opportunity for rapid advancement when she saw one. She courted Jeremy, tantalizing him with CTA client lists and scripts that the agency represented and controlled. Her savvy expertise in the film industry combined with Jeremy’s money and desire to learn created a relationship primed for power.

Jeremy’s first offer to the seventy-year-old owner of CTA, Ezekiel Cohen, was summarily refused. But then Jessica truly proved her agenting skills. Ezekiel had hired Jessica. As old and hard-bitten as Ezekiel was, and still believing, as most men from his generation did, that a woman’s place was in the home, he’d nevertheless recognized Jessica’s innate talent for handling stars. Jessica leveraged his feelings for her and began to push Ezekiel from the inside of not only the agency, but also his home.

As one of the
few
female agents at CTA, Jessica was granted the privilege of monthly lunches with Mrs. Cohen. It was, in Sylvia Cohen’s good-hearted way, an attempt to make the shark-infested waters of CTA feel like a family-owned business. Jessica was aware that after forty years of sharing her husband with the film industry (and it wasn’t a fifty-fifty split, more like twenty-eighty), Mrs. Ezekiel Cohen was ready for her husband to retire. It was at one of their monthly lunches that Jessica let drop the “rumor” she’d heard that Jeremy Sullivan was interested in buying the firm. Between Mrs. Cohen’s prodding and Jessica’s persistence, Ezekiel grudgingly accepted a meeting with Jeremy Sullivan. And Jeremy Sullivan, in person, was persuasive.