She looked up from her phone. “In a place like this? I don’t think so. As you can see, there aren’t exactly any megastars here.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. To me, you’re a megastar.” Barf, barf, barf. Gray, lying barf with a side of yellowy-olive disgust.
She didn’t respond for a while, then said, to her phone, “You’ve never heard of him. It’s his first film.”
I dragged the straightener through a swatch of her hair, tugging her head backward slightly. She resisted a little but didn’t complain. I straightened another.
“Do you think you’ll ever get to work with someone like Steven Spielberg?” I asked.
She barked out a laugh. “Well, I guess anything is possible.”
I smiled. She seemed comfortable with me. I decided to go the direct approach. “Speaking of directors, wasn’t it crazy what happened with Bill Hollis? I mean, he was, like, a big deal when I was a kid. I personally think he was innocent. But nobody ever asks me what I think.” I chuckled, hoping she couldn’t hear the nerves behind it. “And his son,” I said, my lips going numb. “He was superhot. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“I mean, I saw the news, I guess.” She was still fiddling with her phone. If she had a Hollis connection, she wasn’t showing it.
I raced to think of another way to approach it. Somehow bring Luna into the conversation. But before I could gather a thought together, a woman whisked behind me. She threw a toolbox down on the counter and immediately began unpacking it. Vials and tubes and powders and brushes, all expertly placed in order.
“Oh. My. God. I can’t even tell you. So sorry I’m late. The guard is freaking stupid. When are they going to fire him? He acted like I wasn’t supposed to be here. Like I haven’t been here every freaking day for the past month. I step out to grab a coffee and the moron doesn’t want to let me back in? I swear, we need to call the staffing company about him. Get someone good out here. I mean, he’s supposed to be security. We can’t have some idiot in charge of who’s—what the hell happened to you?”
She had finished unpacking and had turned to Celeste with brush in hand, but had stopped short and was staring at Celeste’s forehead.
Celeste lowered her phone into her lap and blinked, confused. “Your replacement.”
“My replacement?” The woman—obviously Jayelle—turned to take me in. “What replacement?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
“Not really a replacement,” I said. “More like a floater.” I bent to meet Celeste’s eyes in the mirror. “Sorry, you must have misunderstood.” I straightened. “I’m just supposed to fill in here and there when someone needs to step out or something. It’s a new thing the agency is doing.”
Jayelle stared at me with her mouth hanging open. My palms began to sweat, the straightener sliding against my skin. This was what Chris was always complaining about—that I dove headfirst into situations with no plans on how I would get myself out of them. He had a point. But somehow things always just seemed to work out for me. It was the synesthesia. It helped me read a room and know when to get out. Problem was, my synesthesia was telling me two conflicting things right now. The greens that radiated off Celeste also pooled around Jayelle’s feet, but they were much weaker. And the longer she stared at me, the weaker they got. But as they got weaker, Celeste’s got stronger, until I felt like I was in a forest. Celeste was pretending to be cool, but I was making her nervous as hell.
Jayelle broke the tension by abruptly tossing her brush into her kit and fumbling around for something else, turning her attention away from me completely, the greens evaporating.
“Just like the agency to make a change without filling everyone in. Whatever. I’m back, so I don’t need you now.” She turned to Celeste. “Why don’t you go wash that nonsense off, and I’ll just work fast when you get back.”
Celeste hopped out of her chair and sped toward the ladies’ room.
“Don’t worry. They can’t have the show without the star,” Jayelle said to Celeste’s back, still searching in her kit. “You won’t miss anything. Now where is that blusher . . . ?”
Without even acknowledging that I was still standing there, she scurried back the way she’d come, patting her apron pockets bewilderedly.
I was left standing behind an empty chair, holding a hot straightener in my hand, looking absolutely ridiculous in my braids and headband. One thing was clear. It was time to move, or I was going to end up caught. Chris was going to be full of I told you so’s when I showed up at the car with nothing for my efforts once again. Maybe Celeste was just an actress who Luna admired. Or someone Jones wanted to hook up with. Or maybe the pad was already in the truck when they bought it and Celeste Day had nothing to do with them whatsoever. Without flat-out asking Celeste, I would never know. And I’d already managed to make myself look suspicious enough. The last thing I needed was to have some overzealous security dork call the cops on me. Then the I told you so’s would be full of laughter that I would never live down.
I stepped forward to put the straightener on the counter, my eyes landing on the bag that had been tucked beneath. It was a Givenchy—a little pricey for a B-list actress, if you asked me, but I would never understand the people of Hollywood, even if you gave me a billion years—and it was yawning open. Something inside the bag caught my eye. A familiar flicker of color.
Orange and lunch-meat pink. A and E. But it was the shape that they were in that triggered a memory.
Mom, proudly carrying a black canvas bag as she headed off to work. The bag was full of props and lights and cameras and odds and ends that she thought she might need on one of her locations. I loved that bag, because she always slipped a few toys into the very bottom of it, just in case I should be tagging along and she needed to keep me busy. When Mom was carrying that bag, it was a mix of emotions for me. She was leaving. But she was always so happy when she was carrying it, like she was in the middle of her own dream.
And I could clearly remember the colors that emanated from the side of that bag. Orange and pink. A and E, shaped into a couple of angry-looking eyebrows, over the swoosh of an elephant trunk.
Angry Elephant.
The studio where my mom worked all the way up until the day she was killed.
I did a double take, leaning closer to the bag. I was so confused at this point, my synesthesia wanted me to see things that maybe weren’t even there. It was a matchbook. Why would Celeste Day be carrying a matchbook from my mom’s studio? She couldn’t be. No way.
But the closer I leaned, the more sure I was. The letters swooped and swayed and dipped into the shape I was so familiar with. Angry Elephant.
I could hear Jayelle’s voice. I peeked over my shoulder and saw her coming closer to the dressing table, still patting herself down and ranting about missing something that the star needed immediately.
Time to boogie.
I didn’t give it any more thought. I reached into the bag and snatched out the matchbook, ignoring what felt like tingles of electricity shooting through my palm. I closed my fist around it and left, going the opposite way of where Jayelle was coming from and hoping that I wouldn’t run into Celeste Day on my way out.
I stole around the costume rack and into a hallway that was painted all black, even the ceiling, and I felt like I’d been thrust into a tunnel. The walls felt very close. I could still hear Jayelle’s voice, and then Celeste’s too, and I thought maybe I heard the word floater and I hurried through the hall, one hand clutching the matchbook and the other running along the wall.
The hallway took a sharp turn and I could see a lobby at the end, which housed the front double doors. It let out onto a different parking lot from where Chris was waiting, but I felt like I could more easily get to the car unnoticed outside than in.
I picked up my pace and was almost at a run when I popped out the end of the hallway.