Nacho Figueras Presents (2 page)

S
ebastian,” giggled the blonde, halfheartedly swatting away his hand, “stop it!”

Seb grinned and splashed her again. “Stop what, Lily?”

The blonde stopped giggling and pouted as she bobbed in the pool. “I'm Jilly, not Lily.”

Sebastian turned to the redhead stretched out on a float next to him, “Then you must be Lily.”

She huffed in protest, wrinkling her little nose. “I'm Amy!”

“Come into the water, Amy.” Sebastian pulled her into the pool with a splash.

“Sebastian!” she cried, pushing her sopping wet hair out of her face, “you are the worst!”

Sebastian grinned. “Indeed I am. Now, should we have a bit more champagne?”

He was just reaching for the bottle sitting by the pool when a pair of boots stepped between him and the wine. The two women looked up and squealed, sinking under the water, trying to cover up their nakedness. Sebastian squinted up into the night.

Sebastian's older brother, Alejandro, loomed over him like a judgmental Greek statue.

“
Perdón
,” he said, calmly, “but might I have a word with you in the pool house, Sebastian?”

“Of course,” murmured Sebastian. “
Un momento, hermano.
”

Alejandro retreated into the pool house, shutting the door behind him.

“Oh my God,” sputtered Jilly as she emerged from under the water, “was that Alejandro Del Campo? Holy shit, he's even better looking than his Instagram!”

Seb rolled his eyes. “Those are Photoshopped.”

He climbed out of the water, not bothering to put on his clothes, and joined his brother in the pool house. Alejandro looked down at him, shaking his head.

“What can I do for you?” said Seb.

“Well, for one, you could put on some pants,” said Alejandro.

Sebastian shrugged. “Why bother? Did you see those ladies? I'd just have to take them off again. So much work.”

Alejandro's jaw tightened. “You know, my wife and eight-month-old son are sleeping in the house.”

“Oh, please, they're all the way in the west wing. They can't hear a thing. They might as well be in Argentina.”

“And our mother—”

Seb snorted. “She had three glasses of wine with dinner. You and I both know she is sleeping like the dead.”

Alejandro looked upward in frustration and ran his hands through his hair. “And I suppose it's useless for me to remind you that we have a match tomorrow?”

Sebastian nodded. “We do. So you better get your rest,
Capitán
. Don't worry, I'll do my best to keep things quiet. Though I cannot promise much.” Sebastian winked at his brother. “That Jilly is quite a lively girl.”

Alejandro shook his head, a tired look on his face. “You know, Sebastian,” he said, “what was cute at twenty-two is no longer so charming at thirty-four.”

“Thirty-three,” said Sebastian automatically.

Alejandro shrugged. “I just hope you are fit to play tomorrow,” he said as he turned away. “I would hate to have to pull you off the field.”

W
ell,” said Honey, “the good news is that Steve Meyers said he wouldn't press charges if you replaced the phone and apologized.”

Kat struggled with her house key as she balanced her own phone between her ear and shoulder. The lock had been sticking lately. She bumped the door with her hip a couple of times and finally felt it give. “And the bad news is that I didn't get the job,” she said as she stumbled into the entryway and flipped on the light. “Right?”

“Um, duh, babe. But actually, Dee liked you. She told me that she definitely wants to work with you down the line.”

Kat rolled her eyes as she bent to gather the mail on her floor. “Fat lot of good that does me now.”

“Listen, you never know, okay? Maybe Steve will get caught screwing a studio head's wife and get thrown out of town. Or maybe Dee will get a promotion and end up running the whole place. The Industry works in mysterious ways.”

Kat sighed in frustration as she sorted through the stack of envelopes and magazines. She needed a job now, not down the line. “What about the rewrite at Paramount? What happened with that?”

“One of the producers hired her boyfriend. Sorry.”

“What about the open call at Fox?”

“Filled by some Diablo Cody wannabe.”

“Well, what about—”

Honey cut her off. “Listen, Kat, what we need—aside from you learning to control your horrible, horrible temper—is a fresh writing sample. Something I can send out wide. A reason for everyone to remember just how good you really are. We gotta get that spec out. How's it coming? Are you close?”

Kat hesitated for a split second. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I mean, it's still in first-draft shape, but it's—you know, coming along. It shouldn't be too much longer.”

“Great, great. I'm excited to read.”

“But Honey, listen, if anything comes up—directing or writing—even like, you know, a commercial or maybe even a web series—”

“Just put your energy into finishing that script, girl. That's the key. And try not to break any more phones, okay?”

Kat sat down at her kitchen table and closed her eyes. “Okay. Got it. Will do. Thanks, Honey.”

“Sure, babe. And no worries, okay?” Kat felt a pang of dread at the slight note of defeat in Honey's voice. “You know this business. Everyone has their ups and downs. I'm sure things will get better soon.”

Kat put her phone down and tried not to cry. She hated lying to Honey, but she couldn't bear to tell her the truth either. She had abandoned her spec weeks ago. She'd read through the first act (which was as far as she'd written) and admitted to herself what she had known all along—that it was uninspired garbage. The same story she had already told and sold in a dozen different ways without ever getting another movie actually made.

No one wanted another plucky-small-town-girl-makes-good story anymore. And the fact was, Kat was sick of writing them. Especially since the days when she could identify with that kind of character were all but dead, burned, and buried.

She knew she had to start over, find something bigger, more personal, more essential, to write about. But for the first time in her life, she didn't know where to begin.

Kat hadn't had paid work for over a year. She had taken meeting after meeting, mining all her contacts, but nothing seemed to stick. She'd plowed through her savings, sure that the next job was just around the corner. Her agent, Jimmy, had stopped calling about three months ago, and now even Honey, who had always been as much a friend as a manager, was beginning to sound defeated. Kat was sure that, if she told her that she had writer's block, it would be the final straw.

She sighed and began pulling the pins out of her hair, releasing the wild black curls in a halo around her face. She stared at the stack of mail. Bills. Mortgage. Student loans. Overdue credit cards…

She stood up and made herself a pot of coffee. The kitchen was beautiful but depressing. She'd let her housekeeper go last month, and it showed. It smelled like last night's leftovers. There were two days' worth of dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Even the things that usually gave her pleasure—the way the golden California light slanted through the big Palladian window above her sink, the brightly colored Talavera tiles on her backsplash, the cheerful robin's egg blue of her La Cornue stove—couldn't cheer her up.

In fact, the whole house felt like a rebuke.

Buying a home was one of the first thing she did after signing the contracts for
Red Hawk
. She'd been living like a college student in a tiny apartment in the valley with a revolving series of roommates, and she wanted to feel like a grown-up. She had a real career now, she reasoned, it was time to have a real home. And everyone assured her it was the thing to do, even at the height of the California real estate boom.

She'd tried to be sensible at first—looking at a sagging fixer upper in Huntington Park, a dark industrial loft in a marginal neighborhood downtown, a ranch house in Studio City that had once been owned by a somewhat famous B-list actor, but now smelled like cats and fifty years of cigarettes…But then, as if sensing her weakness, the Realtor had taken her to see this house, a 1920s three-bedroom Spanish-style cottage, tucked high up in the Hollywood Hills.

Kat had been filled with longing from the moment she walked in. The warm afternoon light poured in through every window and danced over the gleaming pine floors, the thick plaster walls, and the cheerful little beehive fireplace in the sunken living room. She got even more excited when she saw the snug, colorful kitchen with its intricately painted tiles and pretty blue stove. And when she discovered the copper slipper tub in the master bathroom, she almost made an offer on the spot. But it was when she'd walked out back and had been faced with the sparkling infinity pool overlooking the endless view of the city that she finally lost all reason. It was way out of her planned budget, but she had decided to bank on her future success and somehow make it work.

And it had worked for a little while. Jobs were offered, and checks kept coming in, and she'd started accumulating beautiful things to fill her beautiful house. She combed every flea market she stumbled across. Picking out mismatched china and silver flatware piece by intricate piece, never buying even a single fork unless she absolutely loved it, until she had a wild, colorful set big enough to feed twenty people if she wanted to. She sought out copper cookware in every size and shape, loving the substantial feeling of the heavy metal under her hands, the bright-penny look of them lined up on her stove. She drank her coffee from dusky green Wedgewood cups, the bone china so delicate and thin that she could see the shadow of her hand when she raised the cup to the light. She haunted the little boutiques on La Brea, looking for just the right mother-of-pearl inlaid side table, the softest hand-knotted wool rug, a beautifully tarnished silver platter big enough to serve an entire suckling pig if she ever had the need.

She unearthed a perfectly distressed harvest table in the back of a barn in Ojai, worn with the patina of a hundred years of farm wives shelling peas and hulling strawberries on its surface. She worked at an enormous Arts and Crafts desk in her office. It was bursting with pocket drawers, sliding doors, and secret compartments. She had a couch upholstered in yards and yards of the prettiest Liberty of London calico print, and so overstuffed with down that it felt like she had fallen into a cloud whenever she sat upon it. She found local artists she liked and splurged on their paintings and photographs for her walls. She filled her shelves with novels and cookbooks, art books, and biographies. She had a solid silver tea service and a queen-sized bed carved with such intricate designs of birds and roses that Frida Kahlo herself would have been thrilled to sleep on it. She slept under a crazy quilt so beautifully embroidered, it should have been in a museum instead of draped over her at night…

And she didn't stop with just household stuff. She had a closet stuffed with designer clothes tailored to fit her exactly right. There was a bureau bursting with silk and lace lingerie. She had expensive lotions, vials of perfume, and countless pots and tubes of high-end cosmetics. She never bathed in her slipper tub without dropping in some scented oil or a handful of dried herbs and petals that she had specially mixed for her at a little shop in Silver Lake. Afterward, she would dry herself off with huge, thirsty Egyptian cotton towels and then slip between her antique linen sheets.

These things used to make her feel safe. They made her feel surrounded by treasures so beautiful that they somehow lent their magic to her work and day-to-day life. But now they just made her panic because she had spent, she hadn't saved, and all she could see around her now were things to lose, things that were slipping from her hands.

Ten years in L.A. and what did she have left? A couple thousand dollars in the bank; this beautiful house full of beautiful things that she could no longer afford; a string of broken relationships; one small, good movie—
Winter's Passing
—and one huge, horrendous bomb—
Red Hawk
.

Red Hawk
was the film that was supposed to propel her firmly onto the A-list, to smash the tinsel ceiling for women writer-directors once and for all. A film that, instead, had broken her heart and pretty much ruined her career.

She had been so young. And everyone had made such a big deal about what a pioneering moment it would be—a woman director taking on a major comic book franchise. It was a huge opportunity. The money was great. She loved the source material. The project already had an enormous, built-in fan base. She knew that there were hundreds of directors who would've happily crawled over broken glass and her own dead body to get the kind of break she was being offered. It seemed like a home run.

So she signed on. Even though the script they gave her had already gone through half a dozen writers and still needed serious work. Even though the producers managed to say at least one incredibly offensive and/or sexist thing to her in almost every conversation she had with them. Even though her only real experience had been with a low-budget indie. Even though she hadn't been given the cast she wanted. Even though she was refused final cut.

It had been a disaster from day one. There were swarms of producers and studio execs on set. There was a huge cast, many of whom were A-list stars. There were agents and managers, all watching from the sides. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had an agenda. Everyone felt she needed to be micromanaged. And no one thought twice about foisting their point of view onto Kat.

She tried to make everyone happy, and that was terrible. And then she tried to just make herself happy, and that was even worse. She lost her temper on an almost daily basis. She nearly cried in front of the entire cast and crew twice. And then, one day, while she was hiding in a supply closet, trying to will herself to take on the next scene, Jack Hayes stumbled in, looking for a hidden place to smoke a cigarette. It was his first big movie, he had a sizable part, and he was cocky and gorgeous—everyone could already see what a huge star he was going to become—and he offered to share his forbidden cigarette with Kat, and then suddenly, before she knew it, Kat was sleeping with one of her actors.

It went downhill from there. The film ran way over budget. The execs second-guessed every creative decision she made. The lead actress quit to go to rehab halfway through. The release date was pushed twice. And then the studio commandeered the final cut and butchered her vision of the story. Kat actually did cry when she saw the version they released. It was terrible, nothing like what she had imagined—she wished she could take her name off the whole thing. And the critics had agreed with her; the reviews were merciless. The box office had been painfully small. On lots all over town, people had clucked their tongues and made jokes about sending in a girl to do a man's job.

Plus, she came home one night to find Jack in bed with her Pilates instructor.

Overnight, Kat went from being a wunderkind to the purest type of poison. People literally turned their eyes away from her when she entered a room. She became invisible in an industry that was all about being seen.

She'd survived on dribs and drabs of work after that, waiting to break in again, but nothing ever stuck, and now it seemed that even the regular trickle of rewrites and punch-ups she'd been able to count on had dried up at last.

Kat sighed and sipped her coffee. She knew that Honey was right, there was only one way back in. As much as everyone enjoyed gloating over an epic failure, they loved a comeback even more, and industry memories could be conveniently short when it suited them. Kat knew that people would, at least, still read what she wrote. And if she wrote something great, all would be forgiven.

Kat looked at the dirty dishes in the sink, the kitchen full of high-end appliances, the view out the window of her glimmering pool, the house full of her intricate, lovely things that she had thoughtlessly spent her money on, always expecting more cash to come. None of this was inspiring greatness.

Her phone rang and a capital
M
appeared on the screen.

“Hi, Mama.”

“Katy Ann?” Her mother's voice sounded far away and worried. “It's about your daddy…”