“Am I giving him an excuse, then?” Cafferty prompted. “An early wake-up call? A production meeting first thing in the morning?”
She shook herself out of her whimsy. That was something that didn’t belong in her line of work. Whimsy led to heavy-assed costume dramas just so you could play a princess, even if the script was a bloody train wreck. Or a carriage wreck, rather. “Anticipating my every need again?” she quipped, a little too sharply.
“Not your every need.”
Now she wanted to dive into that damned whimsy again. “Boundaries,” she muttered, stacking the script pages in her lap again. Too many people clawed at her, wanted bits of her. It felt…safe, being able to tell one of them off.
“Sorry. What do you want me to do with Bannon?”
“Ask him when he wants to come by or if we’re meeting somewhere.” She stretched. “A night out will be nice.”
“And then three days of catching up on Secrets of the Zoo and finally seeing the third season of Stranger Things?”
“God, yes. I need to know what happens to Hopper and Joyce before I fly off to Brussels for four months. Why can’t Chicago be in Chicago anymore?”
“Because it’s cheaper to make Brussels look like Chicago than it is to film in actual Chicago,” he pointed out.
“Yes, I know. Just let me complain a little. I can’t do it in front of anybody else; they think spending four months away from my house while wearing spandex and hanging by my waist from a piano wire is glamorous.”
“So Teresa Woodward can fly, now?” he asked, lifting both eyebrows this time.
“Not yet. By the time I get the next rewrites, who knows?”
He grinned. “I’ll let Rod the…Mr. Bannon know you’re available tonight.”
“Thanks, Cafferty. Tell him he can call me after five, or text me before that.”
With a mock salute, he strolled out of the room. Eleanor sank back in her comfy chair and read through the script changes in more detail. It wasn’t exactly what she would call edgy, but it did look fun. Clever. And after her last gig playing a no-nonsense factory worker uncovering a flaw in car seats in Carrier, fun had a great deal of appeal. And Enrique Vance had directed the very well-regarded Last Bus to Providence last year, so she tended to think he could help her pull off being a superhero.
Before he called, she sent off a quick email to Cafferty, instructing him to double her endowment to the Wild Wind Summer Camp so they could send an additional fifty kids camping this year now that they had the permits to expand the campground facilities. City kids visiting lakes and mountains, fishing and experiencing nature for the first time—in the four years since she’d started the foundation, she’d never had a second of regret for either the time or the money spent.
Her phone vibrated and abruptly erupted with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice yelling “Get to the choppa!” She jumped, looking down at the number. “Dammit, Cafferty,” she yelled, “quit changing my text tones!”
Okay, it was a little funny, given Rod’s current obsession with being physically fit, but he was also sensitive about it. She read through the text. Rod wanted to pick her up at six sharp, and she was to dress for a fancy dinner so they could celebrate her getting the lead in Prosecutor. That was nice, since he’d just lost out to Zac Efron on his own superhero bid. As soon as she texted back her agreement, she went into the phone’s contacts and edited his text tone back to the old-fashioned car horn it had been previously.
Brian didn’t generally mess with her phone, or her private life, but he’d made it fairly clear that he wasn’t a fan of Rod Bannon. She wasn’t quite sure why; she’d gone out with a handful of guys in the four years since she’d ended their engagement, and Brian had never so much as batted an eye. Then again, Rod was the first one who’d made it past the four-date mark.
Before she could decide whether that was progress on her part or just a really sad commentary on her high-profile life, her phone rang, and she spent the next forty minutes discussing the psyche of a superhero who’d been happy with her pre super-powered life. God, she’d been after this part for so long, and even with the script changes, or perhaps because of them, the role seemed just…perfect. Or perfectly imperfect, rather. Fun, sarcastic, a bit unsure