Feast of Saints (9 page)

Chapter 8

Lilly’s bathroom door and the hall closet door were built with full panels of mirrored glass between the stiles. If she stood in the hallway between the bathroom and closet and angled the doors just right, she could get a full view of her back mirrored across the hall.

The short black cocktail dress was part of her Kyle collection, a Zac Posen from several seasons ago. It had columns of billowy shear ruffles from neck to hem in the front, but not nearly enough material in the back. The back was cut so low that she had used some of her special effects epoxy to secure it to her dimpled tailbone so that it didn’t gape and have her mooning her new coworkers at that night’s preproduction party at Spago’s.

Although she wasn’t quite at peace with the bare-backed dress, she did love the shoes. She’d instantly fallen for the Duccio Venturi mesh lace-ups, a consignment store find on Melrose. They’d been sitting in her closet, unworn, waiting for the perfect event.

She heard the cabbie honk and was nearly outside before she realized she’d need to print out the e-invite to get in the door at Spago’s. Zipping back into her studio, she had to weave through the multiple plaster Jake torsos to get to her desk and print out the invitation. Lilly felt a thrill of anticipation, knowing that Jake would be at the preproduction party, and chastised herself.
Do not get interested in that man. He’s way out of your league, and he’s your boss!

The invitation wasn’t clear whether or not she could bring a date, but it was an irrelevant ambiguity since she didn’t have one. She had toyed with the idea of calling Andy Hines to invite him to accompany her, but just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She hated that she lacked the confidence to compete with the intern, but she did. As hard as she’d worked since high school to get comfortable in her own skin, she just couldn’t ditch a lingering self-consciousness. It didn’t help that her one serious relationship, the only one in which she’d let down her guard enough to have sex, had ended in her humiliation.

Ben Farrow. She still had a hard time thinking about him. He’d been a fellow engineering student at KU, although he dropped out before graduation to pursue his other interest, a career in music. He had started the same year and had been in most of her freshman and sophomore classes, but he didn’t take an interest in her until after Kyle started tutoring her on improving her fashion sense.

She still remembered the spring day she’d walked into the chem lab and caught Ben eyeing her breasts, uncharacteristically highlighted by the low-cut yellow cotton tee plastered to her skin. She remembered how excited she had been when he asked her out to a local garage bar to hear his band. Ben was a keyboardist, a talented one. She’d mooned after him all that summer.

She shivered to think that she probably would have followed him to Nashville the following year when he decided not to return to school. That is, if Ben’s roommate, Tommy, hadn’t broken the news to her that when she wasn’t around, Ben brought home any one of four or five regular girls who followed the band. To this day, she wasn’t sure if Tommy was doing her a kindness, or if he had his own ax to grind with Ben.

“Now, he’s screwed,” Tommy had muttered under his breath after opening the door at Lilly’s knock. She and Ben were supposed to attend a free concert at Murphy Hall that evening.

“Ben must have gotten his wires crossed,” Tommy said louder. “He’s already gone out.”

When she said she’d just meet him there, Tommy told her not to bother.

“I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, Lilly. You’re a nice girl.” Then he’d gone on to tell her about all of the other girls.

Lilly left without another word. She’d waited for him to call, but he never did. She hadn’t even mattered that much. She’d thought she was his girlfriend. It turned out that she was just another groupie.

By the time she graduated, Ben lived in Nashville and had started a new band which had several hit songs. She heard his songs from time to time on the radio. She told herself it didn’t still hurt, but it did. She thought he had fallen for her and she’d definitely fallen for the person she thought he was. The way their relationship had ended, without him even trying to contact her, seemed worse, somehow, than if he’d flat out dumped her. It had left her feeling that she had nothing of significance to offer a man, a feeling she still fought.

Not wanting to arrive at Spago’s too early, Lilly had arrived a bit too late. Grasping the door handle of the cab in front of the over-flowing restaurant, she started to think maybe this would be awkward and that she should pass it up. She didn’t know anyone in there. There was Phillip, of course, and Monty and Jake, but they’d be surrounded by much more important people than her. She knew Bryce well enough to know that he wouldn’t have bothered to scrounge up a wardrobe suitable to attend the event.

Gathering her courage, she decided she might as well have a free drink and an appetizer. She’d nod to Phillip and, if an opening presented itself, thank him again for hiring her. She would not seek out Jake’s company and risk the embarrassment of being brushed off in favor of higher-end talent. If she found herself alone and twiddling her thumbs, she’d act like she had another party and split.

The restaurant’s party room was extremely overcrowded. Over two hundred cast and crew were on the daily payroll. It seemed like all of them had crowded into this one banquet hall. Lilly made it a quarter of the way across the room before she realized that it was so tightly packed it was impossible to circulate, or escape. At her height, even in the four and a half inch heels, she was not going to see anyone she knew unless they were standing right in front of her.

Just then she realized that she did know the man standing in front of her – the property master, Harold Levitt. For Lilly, who collected film memorabilia, Harold was a good person to know. She tapped him on the shoulder.

“Mr. Levitt, it’s nice to see you again. I’m Lilly Rose. We met the other day.” Harold was equally happy to find someone he knew. “Ms. Rose, my pleasure. Quite the squeeze isn’t it?” Eyeing his empty cocktail glass, he said, “Shall we try to forge our way to the bar together?”

The way he was weaving where he stood, she realized that he must have been at the party, taking advantage of the open bar, for quite some time before it got too crowded for a refill.

There was a sudden push of bodies as Maya Trent entered with her entourage. The tipsy, portly property master couldn’t hold his ground and was propelled into her. She let out a whoosh of breath and nearly fell to the ground, where she surely would have been trampled to death.

Certain disaster was averted by a strong arm that slipped around her midsection and whisked her safely out of the way of Harold’s reeling form. Lilly was lifted to her tip toes, her bare back pressed against a silk suit-covered chest. A chest she would have recognized blindfolded, she’d touched and sculpted it so many times.

“This doesn’t seem to be a safe spot for you, Pixie,” remarked the deep tones of Jake Durant, his head bent, his lips close to her ear.

Repositioning her to tuck her firmly under his arm, he conveyed her away from the property master. The crowd naturally parted for Jake. He was so used to people kowtowing to him that he did not even notice it happening. They were out a side door and into a pebbled courtyard in less than five seconds.

Lilly took a deep breath and stepped out from under Jake’s protective arm.

“Thank you! That was just crazy in there. I was about to hit the floor and I don’t think I could have gotten back up.” Jake, always the villain, had turned out to be her personal hero. She smiled in genuine gratitude. Her nervousness about running into him had vanished in the dramatic rescue.

“Is it always like this… these parties I mean? I’m usually working with children. Our parties tend to be in gymnasiums with piñatas and costumed cartoon characters passing around cheese puffs.”

Jake grimaced, “This was not well-planned. The production office is trying to keep down costs, cutting corners by hiring a lot of green staff, including the catering coordinator whose responsibility was this party.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “Why haven’t I heard from you this week?” he asked sternly.

Jake’s inquiry, following so quickly on the heels of his disparaging observations about the caterer, washed away Lilly’s amusement and confidence in one wave. That he considered her to be “green staff,” too, was apparent.

Plucking up her courage, she said, “I promised you I’d be ready. I finished your Allegrezza yesterday and I’ve already made the appliance molds from the plaster cast.”

Jake frowned down at her. “And you were going to tell me this, when?”

“I thought I was only supposed to call you if I got under water,” she stammered.

“I distinctly recall asking you to keep me posted on your progress,” he said, as if he were speaking to a teenager who’d busted curfew.

This is bad, she thought. He must have zero confidence in her. Was he regretting having given her another chance after the Culver City meeting?

“Don’t worry,” she tried. “Allegrezza is exquisite. Like Alice Krige as the Borg Queen.” When Jake’s frown deepened, she realized that she must have overestimated his geek side when he admitted to liking
Star Wars
movies.

“Is this a reference I should know?” Jake asked.

“
Star Trek First Contact
?” she ventured. “It wasn’t exactly A-list, but it was an incredible graphic piece at the time….” When Jake continued to stare down at her, uncomprehending, she tapered off, mumbling to herself, “Stop digging.”

“Excuse me?” Jake asked.

“My father’s first rule of holes,” she said forlornly. “When you’re in one, stop digging.”

“Good advice,” Jake said with a touch of sarcasm. “Lilly, you knew I was worried. Why didn’t you check in with me like I asked you to do?”

Feeling defensive, and a bit irritated at being spoken to like a child, Lilly blurted out, “Well, you shouldn’t have worried. You know, this is my third film working with applications and sophisticated computer graphics. If I’m not mistaken, it’ll be your first. And you know what else? Working with child actors isn’t a cakewalk. They complain, and they can’t bear some of the more complicated applications. They wriggle and scratch and can’t hold still and have to be baby-sat. I don’t expect that what I’ll be doing for you on this film will be much more complicated.”

Ignoring her outburst, Jake said, “If you’ve got the character worked out, I’d like to see it.”

“I’m bringing several storyboards to the meeting with Monty and the Art Director next week,” she told him.

“I’ll need to see the design before then,” he insisted. “If it’s done, let’s go have a look.”

“Tonight?” she squeaked.

“You’d rather rejoin the party?” he asked dryly.

Lilly looked through the patio doors. She had no desire to reenter that crowd. Thank goodness she hadn’t exaggerated when she told him she’d finished Allegrezza.

She shook her head. “Okay,” she said. “You’d better lead the way. I’m liable to get squashed. People don’t seem to see me…. Go figure,” she added, with a sweeping gesture down her frilly front, uncharacteristically taking a jab at her size.

Jake’s eyes followed her gesture, then he stepped closer to look over her shoulder at her bare back.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. The view from the back is arresting. I spotted you as soon as I walked in.”

She felt her face flame and was glad for the low lighting in the courtyard. Stepping back and giving her some much needed breathing room, Jake pulled out his phone and summoned Wil, then opened the door for her to reenter the crowded banquet hall.

As she approached him, he tucked her once more under his arm. His hand on her bare back slid around under the side of her dress and over her rib cage to pull her in tight. Lilly felt a startling surge of sexual heat at his touch against her bare skin. She immediately decided it was best ignored.

Once again, the crowd parted for Jake. Wil met them at the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. As soon as his eyes landed on Jake, he nodded and turned back the way he’d come, fending off a surge of people from the sidewalk, and opened the car door for them.

Jake was quick to nudge her in first and practically sat on her when she didn’t scoot fast enough across the leather seat. She noticed, slightly annoyed, that she was the one to apologize.

At her home, Lilly hesitated at the studio door. “My work for you is in here,” she said. She had been so fixated on him for so many weeks that she felt an overwhelming shyness at the prospect of sharing the work with the object of her obsession. But he was the one who had commissioned her for the project. She figured she’d better just get on with it. Biting her lip, she flipped the switch just inside the door.

As the light came on, Madcap darted out of the room.

“Are there more in there?” Jake asked cautiously, startled by the black and white streak of lightening.

“No, just Madcap. She’s not much on people. Well, other than me people.”

Lilly suddenly pirouetted in the doorframe, blocking his entrance into the room. Earnestly searching his face, she said, “There’s an evolution of ideas in here. I’m not sure how to present them to you, so I’ll just start from the beginning. Please don’t make any judgments until we get to the final product.”

When he didn’t answer right away, she made him promise.

“Okay, okay,” he finally said, holding up his hands.

She swung her small frame out of the way and Jake stepped into the brightly lit room. There were four full-sized busts of Jake and the walls were papered with pencil and color drawings of him in various incantations of her imagination.

Before he could light on one, she directed him to the bust on the farthest left. “This was when I first started, just playing around to see what worked on your face.”

Her muse, Grezza, had gentle, fantasy features. Jake saw his own eyes, brow, cheekbones and chin, reshaped to be whimsical and elfin.

“I like this one a lot, but there’s no malice in him.” This Jake she would love to meet in her dreams instead of the demonic creature that haunted her nightmares.