So there were plenty of unhelpful twists and turns but there was fantastic stuff too. Alison flipped through the pages quickly, reviewing, then let the script drop onto the polished plywood bartop and stood, rolling onto the tips of her feet, stretching out the backs of her calves. Her arms floated up over her head and her fingers met, unbidden, in a reflexive yoga stretch which calmed her nerves and made the black cashmere sweater she was wearing creep up to her midriff, making her look for a moment like a world-class belly dancer. The costume designer, Alec, really knew his shit. That sweater fit like a glove but it would come off as soon as Bradley touched it.
She looked around, trying to spot Bradley, but he wasn’t on set yet. It was one of his behavioral trademarks, to make the set wait; he was the show’s acknowledged antihero and he had absorbed his character’s easy contempt for reality and rules. There were better-looking actors on the show, but Bradley’s bad boy with a heart of gold owned the internet. The websites oozed with estrogen gone haywire; the guy was a certifiable rock star, as far as the lonely ladies of America were concerned. He continued to drift down to the set on his own schedule, no matter how much the crew griped about it. But there was no question that today he deliberately was working her nerves. He had been abrupt in the makeup room, commenting on the way she was “letting them” ruin her hair, and announcing to Donny the hair guy that he didn’t want to have to deal with some insane twist on the back of her neck while also figuring out how to actually have sex on a pool table. When Donny earnestly tried to explain that the director had already approved the look, Bradley snapped.
“I have not had sex with her for a year,” he told Donny. “I’m not taking the time to do anything but grab her, get her on the pool table, and fuck her.” Before anyone could think of anything to say to that, he turned on her. “It’s your hair. Can you take care of this, please?”
She wanted to snap back at him, but she knew to save it up. “Sure,” she said.
“Thank you,” he replied, with an impatient edge that was much more pointed than the words. As she watched him go, she could see Irene from makeup make a small face while concentrating on the difficulties of cleaning a clotted eyebrow wand. Donny tried to recover some of his pride. “Queen Bradley is on the loose,” he observed. “It’s going to be a long day.”
“Yeah,” Alison sighed, trying to sound like she was dreading all this. “Let’s just take the pins out.”
“I love your hair up like this. You can see your face!”
“He’s right, it’s not very sexy, Donny.”
“You don’t get to the sex until the end of the scene, you’re sitting at the bar for three whole pages. And it will be so pretty, when your hair comes down, it’s classic, all he has to do is take a few pins out. Neil already approved the look.”
“Don’t throw Neil at me,” she sighed. Neil was one of the too-many executive producers who did nothing but swan around and collect a paycheck for having mediocre opinions about television shows. Honestly he was nice enough but he was sixty-seven years old and gay gay gay; what he knew about hetero sex was absolutely nothing. She was not surprised to hear that this dumb idea about taking pins out of her hair had come from him.
“I don’t want to be the one who tells one of the executive producers that the actors don’t like his taste in hair and makeup,” Donny announced. He was gay gay gay as well. It was ridiculous how they all stuck together. Alison wanted to scream but she knew that if she did they’d all be ready to take her head off as soon as she exited the trailer, and that it would get back to somebody somewhere that she was getting difficult.
“Donny, this one’s not worth fighting,” she informed him. He turned away and unplugged his heating iron with a swing of the shoulders which informed her that in spite of the fact that she was really being pretty nice, he was going to report that she was difficult anyway. Behind him, Irene caught her eye. She was in for it too; when Donny got mad at someone, it was everyone who paid. “I’ll take them out myself,” Alison sighed, and to make her point she did it right there, pulling the pins out and tossing her hair about with as much sexual verve as she could cook up at a makeup station. “Okay, that was fun but we can do better than a couple of fucking hairpins.” As long as she was pissing him off anyway, give him something to report.