He smiled in response.
“You would leave Carly Wolf?”
“If I found the right person,” he repeated.
He gave a little shrug, like this wasn’t the most important conversationof the rest of my life. Then he pushed his chair back. Stood up.
My heart pumped loudly in my ears.
“I’m interested.”
He tossed cash—enough to cover both our drinks—on the table, and waited.
“Now?” I asked.
“Omar will be in touch.”
With the tip of his chin, he pointed subtly at a tall man on the other side of the street, who I’d only just noticed. But I’d seen him before, pictured with Dorian. His security guard.
Then, looking down at me, Dorian said, “It was a pleasure running into you like this. Small town, isn’t it?”
Then he was gone.
I didn’t move for a long while. My heel tapped the ground over and over again, my knee hitting the table every time.
I could do this, I could do this, I could do this.
Like I said, I knew better now.
I wouldn’t ruin my life again.
Famous last words.
Marnie
Ben had suddenly become a situation I needed to manage, but he wasn’t the only one. Pull-Gate was refusing to die. In fact, it had only picked upsteam in the last two days. The first footage of Odetta Olson—allegedly—pulling Fiona Pills’s hair had been viewed a million times. The online mob couldn’t get enough. Soon there were two new videos, from different angles. This dragged out an army of armchair experts who apparently had unlimited free time to examine the videos. Their verdict: the angle of Odetta Olson’s hand definitely confirmed that pulling had occurred. Guilty as charged.
Except that no one who’d been in the theater had actually seen it. Carmen and I checked with everyone we knew. But hey, strangers on the internet had an opinion. Those of us who work in public relations know all too well that beats the truth every single time. There was no undoing the harm now.
“I hate people. I hate them a whole fucking lot,” Carmen said as we regrouped in her hotel room.
The air smelled fresh, the windows were clean, and there was a lounge area with a cozy love seat. I could have felt sorry for myself becauseCarmen got to be here while I stayed at Shithole-Upon-Cannes, but I knew my place in the food chain. And now that Ben had informed me that I’d be financially supporting him for the foreseeable future, I was getting desperate to lock in that promotion.
“It’s our fault Odetta Olson is getting such horrible press,” I said.
Carmen ignored me. “She’s dragging the movie down with her. And it gets worse: She fired her PR team this morning.”
Carmen tapped her fingers against the coffee table repeatedly, her jaw tight. I preferred when she swore her heart out. This low-level anxiety really put me on edge.
“They clearly suck,” I said. “Wait, are you thinking of stepping in?”
“God no. The woman’s a train wreck. I don’t have a death wish.”
She was right, but still, the idea took up space in my head.
“If we could work with her directly… Maybe she’d listen to us.”
Carmen clasped her hands at the top of her head, a move that risked disturbing her perfect blowout. These were dire times.
