Vivian stared at her until she obliged. When she did, the sound punched Vivian in the ear again.
“Take them off,” Vivian demanded.
“What?” Bryn’s nervous laugh was even higher-pitched than her damn shoe. “I can’t?—”
“Take them off, or the production team will have to spend hours editing out that damn noise.”
Bryn paled, revealing a smattering of freckles on her nose. “Sorry,” she said in a voice so soft Vivian might have felt bad. She didn’t.
Bryn stepped out of the loathsome shoes and stood in her stocking feet. Standing while shoeless wouldn’t be easy, but it might teach Bryn to think before getting in her booth. If only she could remain still for long enough to finish a damn sentence.
Centering herself, Vivian started recording. She got as far as the opening line before a new and even more ungodly sound echoed in her headphones. This time, she recognized the noise.
Vivian closed her eyes and prayed to some ancient goddess to grant her strength. To take from her the overwhelming desire to yell. To prevent her from questioning Bryn’s professionalism and work ethic and suitability for the job.
Instead of recreating her own Christian Bale outburst, she asked as calmly as humanly possible, “Bryn, did you have breakfast this morning?”
“Well, I didn’t want to be late,” she replied, as if that answered Vivian’s question.
“So, that is a no, then.”
Bryn shifted her weight between her socked feet. “I had coffee? Does that count?”
Vivian closed her eyes again, counted backward from ten, and slowly pulled off her headphones. She hung them carefully from the edge of the tablet stand under the microphone and walked out of the booth.
The air-conditioned room blasted her damp skin with welcome fresh air. The booth was always hot. Her mic was so sensitive that it picked up any fan. She’d gotten so used to it that most of the time it didn’t bother her anymore. She hardly noticed it. But with an interloper in her space, it was impossible not to be crushed by the sticky, stagnant air.
“Um, are you coming back?” Bryn peeked out of the booth.
“No,” Vivian snapped, but she started for the kitchen despite having half a mind to walk out the front door.
“What are you doing?” Bryn asked when she joined her at the counter.
“Making you a tea to muffle the sound of your digestive tract impersonating a sandworm.” She put the kettle under the tap.
To Vivian’s horror, Bryn laughed. “What kind of worm are we talking here?BeetlejuiceorDune?” She grinned, face flushed. “Oh, man. Or that crazy maw that swallowed Boba Fett.”
Vivian narrowed her gaze, openly unamused.
“I’m sorry.” Bryn’s apology preceded a gulp louder than her stomach. “I’m nervous.”
Years of acting experience made it so that Vivian rarely had an outward reaction against her will. As a kid on set, a giggle fit was never amusing and always judged more harshly than if an adult caused a reset. By the time she’d earned a top spot on the call sheet, and a little latitude, she was an expert at resisting breaking character. Of course, that made her a “frigid and humorless bitch,” as she was affectionately called by an EP, rather than a professional protecting people’s time and labor.
But Bryn’s quiet admission forced Vivian to do a double take. To furrow her brow involuntarily, even if for the briefest moment.
Bryn’s face turned the red of her natural hair color hidden under a supermarket dye-job. “Jesus,” she gasped, eyes closed like she wished she could teleport out of her own body. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud, I just?—”
“You shouldn’t skip meals,” Vivian said when the secondhand embarrassment crested in her gut and threatened to give her a sympathetic bout of anxiety. “And you should never have coffee on an empty stomach. It increases the acid and makes noise. Noise that the microphone picks up.”
Vivian reached up to the floating shelf above the sink and grabbed a metal canister of loose herbal tea. Her own potent blend of ginger, peppermint, and licorice root. She packed it into the infuser and dropped it into an empty mug.
“When it beeps, pour the hot water in. Think you can handle that?”
Bryn flashed a lopsided smile before she exaggerated her confusion. “Pour it directly into the mug or?—”
Vivian cut her off with the arch of her eyebrow, but Bryn’s smile lingered. Turning her back to her, Vivian took a green apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and cut it into slices.
“Eat that,” she demanded and took over tea preparation.
