CON
Pictures of beautiful women covered my desk. I shuffled through them, sorting them into yes and no piles. I didn’t have a maybe category. Either they fit the look the producer was looking for, or they didn’t. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to dislodge the creeping sensation that I wasn’t going to find the one in here. Irritation prickled behind my eyes as the flawless, symmetrical, dark-eyed women began to run together. Normally, I wasn’t getting my hands dirty with mid-levels and unknowns like this, but the producer was Julian Lewis, one of my closest friends.
“It’s like Tinder,” our mutual friend Garrett observed, lounging back in one of my conference chairs. “Except you actually still print shit out.” He had one ankle crossed over his knee, and he was alternating between tossing one of my autographed baseballs in the air and scrolling through his phone.
“I’m old school,” I muttered, unoffended. I skidded the last picture to the no side and stared at the empty gulf between the piles like a new one might appear if I gave it a minute. A whole new stack would appear within minutes if I told my assistant to make it happen. There was never a shortage of headshots. Hundreds of them came into the mailroom every day, unsolicited. The problem was me. I needed a break.
“Finally,” Garrett said when he saw me push back from my desk. He slapped the ball back in its holder and stood up. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”
I took another minute to straighten each pile and then adjust the baseball in its holder so that the blue-scrawled Sandy Koufax signature, sandwiched between the red stitching, was facing out. Garrett, who had headed out without checking to make sure I was behind him, came back and knocked impatiently on the glass wall between my office and the hallway.
I held up a finger and pushed in the chairs around the conference table, including the one Garrett had left pulled out and spun around to face the window. Then, just to piss him off, I watered the plants I had around my office.
When I finally joined him in the hall, he looked exasperated. “You literally pay someone to do that shit for you.”
I gave him the finger and didn’t bother answering. Garrett probably had included cleaning up after him in his EA’s job profile. I hadn’t. It wouldn’t have been worth it. I knew I was anal retentive about my space and my plants, and it was easier to do it myself than to train someone. Besides, my executive assistant Maureen she kept my life running and was a good friend . She’d laugh in my face if I asked her to clean up after me considering how much work she did already.
“We did it,” Garrett said when we made it to the street. “Another fucking week.”
“It’s only Tuesday.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. Garrett was a crisis manager. Friday through Sunday were some of his longest days. Monday wasn’t much better. By Tuesday, he was able to catch his breath. He usually took Wednesday and Thursday off, which was why our close-knit group of friends met on Tuesday nights for a drink. We were usually busy as hell ourselves the rest of the week anyway.
The others were already waiting for us at the rooftop bar we frequented. It was at the top of the tallest building this side of the city, and you couldn’t beat the view. When I first started my career at the age of nineteen, I’d look out at the sprawling city and wonder how the hell I was ever going to get my hands around her throat. I knew I would—I had to—but I didn’t know how, or what it would cost me. I just knew that LA didn’t have much middle ground, and I wasn’t going to sink to the bottom.
Because it wouldn’t be just me down there—I’d drag my daughter down with me.
Halley was born when I was nineteen and her mother was seventeen. I hadn’t wanted her until they placed her in my arms, and then I’d realized I’d do anything for her. Even take my place in the family business. My dad had started The Walker Agency before I was born. Spent more time tending to it than he did his own family, but the results weren’t much better. Just like his family, the company struggled. A few boom years followed by long stretches of nothing coming in. Clients leaving him for bigger agencies. A couple of lawsuits. When I was young, it looked to me like he spent most of his time babysitting men who had strong jawlines and no talent, women who had beautiful faces and the magnetism of chalk.
Aside from my mom, my dad had never learned how to pick them.
I quickly learned that I had the opposite problem. Halley’s mom was a thorn in my side I’d never fully be able to extract, but I could sense star power from a mile away. It was like a tingling underneath my collar. A tightening in my groin. Lust, but not for the star—for the money he or she would bring me. And Halley.
I’d taken my place in the agency because, let’s face it, no one else was offering a nineteen-year-old kid with a high school degree and a newborn a job. But I’d taken to it so well that by the time I was twenty-five and Halley was starting kindergarten, I bought my dad out. By the time I was thirty-one and Halley was going into middle school, I had an A-list agency. When she was in high school, I started taking her to the Oscars with me, which didn’t go over well with whatever starlet I was dating. After she went to college, I tried to get her to fly back for awards season, but she was always too busy.
It was wild. My friends hadn’t even started their families yet, and here I was with an empty nest. I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do twenty-one years ago. My daughter was a healthy, happy, thriving adult. I was one of the top five agents in the business. The city was mine.
I toasted it now, something that made my friends laugh. I knew they understood though. She was the white whale we’d all pursued, practically to the point of madness. We’d all sunk our spears deep into her side–almost deep enough to convince ourselves we’d mastered her. Aware she could still thrash the shit out of us if she so chose.
“Here’s to money,” Garrett said, joining me in the toast.
“And backend compensation,” added our friend Dominic, a business manager to the stars. I noticed a Richard Mille Flyback wrapped around his wrist and shook my head. It didn’t matter how rich I got, I’d never pay half a mill to know the time.
“And death threats,” said Landon, the CEO of the most elite private security firm in LA.
The women at the table behind us turned to stare at him. Smirking, he raised his drink to them.
“And to finding the right actress to play Stasia,” Julian said, but he was looking at me rather than the view.
“Shut up,” Garrett warned. “I had to drag him out of his office. He was going to look at headshots all night.”
“I’ll find her,” I said to Julian, ignoring Garrett. “I just need some more time.”
Julian checked out my face, and then nodded, his mouth tightening as he no doubt reviewed the production schedule in his head. His company had bought the movie rights to a book that the publishing industry referred to as a genre buster. It outsold every other book in its genre a thousand times over. The fan base was massive and rabid. In some ways, that was every producer’s dream. A built-in audience. It could be a nightmare too, though. Every single one of those rabid fans had an idea of who they wanted to play Stasia, and the wrong actress could sink the ship.
I’d end up going back to the office tonight. I was close to finding her. I could feel it with the sixth sense I’d discovered when I joined this business. I started to text Maureen that I’d need more headshots on my desk, but then I saw the time was 7:30. She’d gone home for the night. Even though she was seven months pregnant, she’d come back and make sure it got done, but it was a dick move. I didn’t mind being a dick in contract negotiations or when it came to telling a client the hard truth, but I made sure I treated my employees well.