“I liked Udi a lot,” Maddie said. “If I were a teenager, I’d probably even say I loved him, but he
died
, you guys. I felt him die on top of me. He’s gone.”
I put my hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Maddie. I didn’t mean to dredge the whole thing up again when I called you from Tokyo.”
“I know.” She smiled. “I know you didn’t.”
“All right, let’s move on,” said Jelicka, starting to appear more sober. “Udi is in a better place now. And you have your new Scottish guy, the hurler.” She threw me a look that told me none of this was close to being over.
Maddie took a sip of her drink. “Now, getting back to the pictures—any ideas about who could have sent them?”
“Jamie’s new assistant is the prime suspect,” I said. “I can’t think who else has a motive.”
“Why do you think it’s the assistant?” asked Maddie.
“Because she and Jamie are sleeping together.”
“Ahhh…” Madelyn nodded knowingly. “So she’s possibly trying to capitalize on her relationship with the boss and get a bump up at work?”
“Exactly.”
Jelicka looked confused. “Your boss is gay? I didn’t know that.”
I shrugged. “It’s not a secret. And it’s not exactly shocking these days anyway. I mean look at Rachel.”
“Rachel’s not gay; she’s just pissed at men so she experiments.”
Even as Maddie said it, I got the idea that Titania might also be an “experimenter.”
“Okay, so it sounds like the assistant is angling for your job,” said Madelyn.
“Poison could work,” Jelicka said, appearing all too serious. “I’m
kidding
.”
“What’s sort of weird,” I said, “is sure, the assistant is a suck-up, and she totally rubs most of us on the floor the wrong way. But even if she’s the one who’s trying to make me look bad, she’s not going to get my job if I’m fired; she doesn’t have the experience.”
Maddie and Jelicka were either deep in thought, or I’d lost them completely. But I pressed on. “The thing is, the agency is downsizing, and it
could
be that having a reason to fire me—even if it’s a sort of trumped up reason—helps Jamie’s bottom line. So, in a way, it still gets the girl
points
, even if she doesn’t get my job.”
“Don’t you make the agency a lot of money in commissions?”
“That’s another thing; I
do
. Though they’d probably say that all I’m doing is booking
their
talent and that a trained monkey could do it. Not true, by the way. And the last thing is, if Titania
was
the one who sent the photos, and doing that leads to my ouster, she would get credit for my demise. Even if she didn’t get my job, she’d move up the ladder faster. They’d just spread pieces of my job to the remaining agents.”
Another pause with the two of them staring at me blankly. “Makes a sort of sense,” Madelyn said. “Do you think it could be one of the other agents who’s competitive with you?”
“Possibly,” I said. “But I doubt it. Titania is still the most likely perpetrator.”
Jelicka smirked. “
Titania
? Really—that’s her name?” She sat up a bit taller, assuming the countenance of her version of an enraged monarch.
“ ‘What, jealous Oberon! Fairy, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed and company.’ ”
Jelicka was transformed into another Titania—this one the Faerie Queen from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. She reminded me of Jennifer Lopez.
“If I were you, Jel, I wouldn’t make fun of unusual names,” Madelyn said gently.
Jelicka considered this. “Actually, it’s precisely
because
I have an unusual name that I am uniquely qualified to—” She pushed her drink away. “Even I recognize how stupid that sounded.”
“What I haven’t been able to figure out,” I said, “is who
took
the pictures? Even if it was Titania who sent them, who did she get them from?”
“That is freaky,” said Jelicka. “Do you remember seeing anyone at the airport who looked out of place? I mean, other than Udi? God damn it. Sorry, Maddie.”
No one came to mind. I shook my head.
“Maybe if you snoop around her desk, you’d find something to get her back with,” Jelicka suggested.
I considered this. “I like that. I just can’t get caught in the act.”
“Obviously,” she said.
“Legally, I’m not sure what you can do,” said Maddie. “Corporate sabotage was never my field of expertise. You need to get proof that there was some sort of malicious intent, I think. However, the fact remains, there are photographs out there showing you in an unflattering light, and they’re real. On the other hand, what you have going for you is you are not a public figure and so even though you handle public figures, you are not one yourself and shouldn’t be put in that category. I don’t think Talent Partners can legitimately claim your behavior has damaged them.”
“Could your boss have arranged for the photos to be sent?” Jelicka asked. “For one of the reasons you mentioned?”
“Jamie?” I hadn’t thought about that. “I guess it’s possible.” But I didn’t really think so. And there was something about the way Titania had been acting today at work. Usually she was both aloof and smug, but today she was being way too nice to me. Something was up.
“Well,” said Jelicka. “I have to say, you’re right not to let her know you suspect anything until you get proof. But what I really think—between what happened with Udi, threats from the deranged office staff, and the minefield of Internet dating—is that we’ve reached that time again.”
“What time is that?” Maddie asked with trepidation.
“Any guesses?” Jelicka tried once more to raise her eyebrows.
“Koreatown massages?” I actually knew full well what Jelicka was about to say.
“I shudder to think” Maddie winced.
“It’s time the Muffs paid another visit to Shooters Paradise,” Jelicka beamed. In her element, she now appeared to be completely sober.
“Of course it is,” said Maddie. “Silly me not to get it.”
Though hardly a zealous advocate for the NRA, Jelicka was still The Muffia’s link to gun culture. Don’t get me wrong, she believed in making it tougher to buy a gun; but she already had hers. In any event, she was always on the lookout for the opportunity to share her gun and her knowledge with us. She thought she was simply being realistic.
After six weeks spent in Israel in her late teens, Jelicka had come to the conclusion that everyone should know how to shoot so as to protect oneself against threats both known and unknown. She would launch into her gun spiel upon hearing any word that might possibly be interpreted as militaristic. Words like
rifle
(as in search),
shoot
(a film or syringe),
kill
(as in perform brilliantly) and
aim
(have a goal) were the
trigger
to get her
fired
up. Most of the Muffs were amused and left it at that. But both Maddie and I had taken her up on previous offers to teach us how to hold and shoot a gun. And now we both felt reasonably equipped to handle one.
“I’m in,” I said. With this latest threat to my livelihood, I don’t fear for my life—I just wanted to get through the next couple of weeks. Almost any distraction was welcome, which is why I doubled down on acquiring them.
The next morning, I slipped into the office an hour earlier than usual, planning to go through Titania’s desk in search of anything that would prove she was complicit in the attempts to take me down.
To my knowledge, Talent Partners had not yet put cameras on every floor, but only at the elevators to track comings and goings of angry producers, divorcing actors, and any errant agents, messengers, and delivery people—just in case one of them went “off” one day. So I felt reasonably certain that the minutia of what I planned on doing would go unrecorded. There’s just not a lot of suspicious activity that occurs on the floor of a talent agency.
As I stepped off the elevator, averting my eyes from the lens of the camera, my cellphone rang, giving me the perfect opportunity to appear nonchalant and otherwise engaged. Pulling out the phone, I saw Steven’s name. Since our last rendezvous, we’d had two very short conversations, the second of which occurred last night while I was driving home from Firefly, during which I informed him, in no uncertain terms, that
this
time I was serious—I was breaking it off. But here it was, early the next day, and he just had to make sure.
It was my fault. We’d been here before, and I’d always been too weak to hold my ground for long. But this time, I thought I’d made it clear that I was turning over a new leaf, wiping the slate, cleaning my clock, frying a different fish—however you wanted to say it. I was determined this time not to let myself be drawn in. I hit “ignore,” imagine someone like Chief Justice Sotomayor patting me on the back, deposit the phone into my bag, and keep walking.
Using my passkey, I opened the back outer door to the office floor and strode through the carpeted corridor off the break room—which all the agents, subagents, and assistants share—and from there, moved into the main workspace. Most days, when everyone was busy, we were so close we could overhear parts of each other’s conversations, which was what usually discouraged gossip. This was probably why management only put those who’d been with the company a long time—the people who are, in essence, partners—into private offices with a door to close; like Jamie.
Titania’s desk was the closest to Jamie’s office, whereas mine, inside my cubiffice, was against an interior opposite wall, positioned nearest Sameer. I figured if someone came onto the floor and saw me near Titania’s desk, it wouldn’t look completely wrong for me to be there. After all, Titania is Jamie’s assistant, and Jamie is my boss. So it was within the realm of possibility for Titania to have something on her desk relating to
my
work—even if I were the one to put it there. Anyway, that’s the story I had ready if someone
did
come in.
The assistants at Talent Partners all have the same type of desk—the partners insisting on uniformity. They’re birch with tasteful chrome details and, on the non-working side of the desk, each is finished with a clean shelf about eighteen inches higher than the desk surface, which means you would only know if someone were working at one if you got close enough.
On the working side of the desk, there are numerous slats, slots, and compartments under the shelf, and all those compartments are filled with things the partners don’t want to see when they walk through the floor—papers, pen holders, tchotchkes—hence the design.
Titania’s desk was no different, though her stuff was arranged more neatly than some of the other assistants’. Amongst all that “stuff,” I was hoping to find a clue to her guilt.
Scanning the vast floor one last time for movement, I walked a little closer. I wasn’t sure what I was really looking for. Maybe a receipt that said, “One compromising photo of Quinn Cunningham, $500?” No. But Lauren’s semi-offer of help, provided George agreed, might not pan out, and the girls had convinced me that doing something was better than waiting around. Even though I’d made up my mind that I was both ready to accept the situation and adapt to whatever change was coming, I wasn’t about to let that fair-haired Moldovan transplant get away with her plan without a fight.
There didn’t seem to be anything obviously amiss on her desk; certainly no receipt. I pulled on a drawer—locked. Then another—also locked. I pulled the chair out and suddenly heard a door close somewhere on the floor.
Damn it!
I scooted back to my desk just as Sameer turned the corner. “Do you have to call a faraway place as well?” he asked. For a split second, I thought he might find it odd I was there so early...might even suspect something.
Recovering quickly, I said, “Preparing to, yes.” I really hated to lie, but I figured it was best not to tell the truth, for Sameer’s own protection. “Singapore.”
He wagged his head. “Tiger is going to be a spokesperson for Scottish whisky, but there is a bidding war transpiring. Orkney wants him for Bruichladdich and Islay for Bunnahabhain.”
“Better you than me. He should get both just because his agent can pronounce them. All I’ve got is Sarah Michelle Gellar for a new vacuum cleaner.”
“Good luck.” He glanced at his watch. “We will see who gets the Tiger.”
He skittered away and with him, so went the day’s attempt to probe Titania’s desk. Obviously, I’d have to try again.
The rest of the workday passed uneventfully. Titania was back to her aloof self, and Jamie once again brought me into her office to ask if I’d made any progress, to which, of course, I replied, “No.” Lauren hadn’t called, so whatever she had in mind to get me out of my predicament remained a mystery. Vicki and I connected about online dating—I’d posted my profile, she’d done nothing— and finally, it was evening, and I headed for dance class for the first time since my return from Japan and injuring my ankle. It was still a little sore, but within fifteen minutes, K-Love had me searching for, finding, and releasing my inner goddess. The lights in Studio A were turned down low, and up went the rhythmic sounds of Paloma Faith, Four Tet, and Rage Against the Machine. It was perfect; I needed to rage.
K-Love is a thirtyish multi-hyphenate with a million followers on Instagram, and she gets an instant 200 likes for any pic she posts with a pole dancer in it. She’s a beautiful soul and talent, and like so many in L.A., hasn’t gotten her due. The warm-up she leads us through might seem to the uninitiated to be a glorified masturbation session, and maybe it is a little. She tells us to run our hands over our spandex-clad bodies, allowing our fingers to really feel what they touch and encourage our bodies to respond—
ha!
Like I need any help
. My take is, when you have no one lovin’ on you, lovin’ yourself becomes even more critical, but any actual masturbation, removal of spandex, would need to wait until we got to our respective homes. Tonight, however, sex was the last thing on my mind. In fact, freeing my mind of anything except freeing my mind was the only thing on my mind. When I walked into S-Factor so twisted and tense, K-Love had come over to the mat to unwind me. It didn’t take too long, though, before I was back into it—the music, the candles, the deep breathing of all of us together in the room, the inner release. Soon I was just being and moving and expressing myself for nobody but me. Like a lot of people, I just needed a little encouragement—more so now that I’ve entered my second half. Gone are the days—I hoped not forever—when cutting free seemed easy.