Hair and makeup went easily enough—I managed to house a Danish before Maya got started on my face—although Denise the hair person had to GoogleVictorian hairstylesbefore she started working on me.
“Sorry,” Denise said, snapping some gum as she set herphone down and turned back to me. “Just got here last night. Teddy flew me out to replace one of the tusk people.”
“No problem,” I assured her. She was rummaging through the kits that had been shipped out by the original team, emerging victorious with two hairpieces that would be trimmed down to be my old-timey sideburns.
“Normally, I’m getting rid of hair, not adding more on!” she explained. And then she added, “But at least I don’t have to watch someone cover up butt acne today. Or ball acne!” She chuckled to herself as she started trimming the sideburns.
Uh. Okay.
After I’d finished with hair and makeup and pulled on my newly tailored costume, the production assistant put me in a van headed to fake Frostmere Manor. I had to admit, as the van drove up the pass in the mountains that Christmas Notch was named for, that it was a gorgeous location. If I’d been a Gilded Age steel tycoon, I would have built my vacation mansion here too.
And the house itself was as stunning as the snowy views around it. Built from a pale, silvery marble and faced with columns and huge arched windows, the mansion looked like it belonged in Enlightenment-era France rather than tucked away in the Vermont hinterlands. But the tycoon’s eccentric architectural vision was Christmas Notch’s gain—the city had a pretend English manor house all ready to rent out for movies like ours.
“Hi, hello, hi!” said the production assistant, Cammy, as I opened the van door. She hovered as I stepped out, my boots crunching in the snow as she pranced in place. Red bloomed on her light bronze cheeks, either from the cold or from agitation,and she was currently trying to hand me a hundred different things at once.
Okay, it was only two things—a fresh set of script pages and a coffee—but I was trying to hold on to my top hat, cane, and phone, so itfeltlike a hundred things.
“Thank you,” I said, after we’d managed to get everything passed off.
“You’re wel—” She broke off as the watch on her wrist buzzed and she read the text message that came through. Whatever it was must have been important because she touched my shoulder to indicate that we needed to move. Quickly.
“Gretchen is in the front hall,” Cammy said as we walked. I could see her wrist flickering with texts as she gestured toward the house; a volley of staticky chatter issued from a walkie-talkie hidden somewhere in her coat. Cammy was clearly the woman of the hour—which made sense, I supposed. The Hope Channel made approximately twelve hundred of these movies a year, and that kind of quantity didn’t come without pinching some pennies. Pennies like running an entire movie with only one or two production assistants.
“Nothing’s changed from the call sheet you received last night. Your first four scenes today are here at the mansion, and then there’s one more scene back in the town at sixp.m.,” Cammy was saying as we trudged around the back of the house to the servants’ entrance so we wouldn’t track snow into the front of the mansion. “Your first three scenes are inside, two with Felicity and one with your orphaned nephew, and then you’ll be out in the garden alone near sunset. Tonight’s town square scene will also be with Felicity, down in ChristmasNotch proper. Lunch is at one, here at the mansion, and you’re on your own for dinner.”
Three scenes with Bee today.Three scenes where I’d have to remember not to think about her gorgeous face or her sexy body or the perfect mouth I was scripted to kiss...
I could do this. I could do this.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
“Awesome, thank you,” I said, “and thanks again for the coffee.”
“It keeps people happy,” Cammy said in a confidential tone. “Well, some people. I had to find turmeric tea for Pearl.”
We walked inside, and Cammy directed me down a narrow corridor to an ornate door that led to the large central hall of the house. Wreaths, poinsettias, and garlands were everywhere. A marble staircase dominated the room, greenery hanging from its gilded banisters and a massive Christmas tree set nearby. The tall windows looked out onto the snowy valley below and the tree-covered mountains just beyond it.
The morning sun—barely risen—filled the space with a soft light, hued in a pale pink-gold.
It looked so pretty and so impossiblyChristmasthat even I was impressed, and I was basically the Gordon Ramsay of judging Christmas things.
“Ms.Hobbes should be here at any minute,” Cammy finished as she walked me over to where Gretchen Young was talking to the gaffer about lighting the scene. “Just let me know if you need anything,” she added, and I turned to thank her again, but she’d already jogged off, her walkie-talkie out and her eyes on her watch.
“I just don’t want any shadows under their faces,” Gretchen was saying.
The gaffer, a skinny guy with even skinnier jeans and light brown skin, was nodding as she talked, like she wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know. “Right. Right. No shadows on the boobs.”
Gretchen opened her mouth, like she wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but then just shook her head. “I guess that’s as good a way as any to think about it. Are we ready to go?”
“One final lighting check and then we’ll be good,” he assured her. “Do you think they’ll turn up the heat in here? It’sfreezing.”
My phone buzzed as they finished up their conversation. I managed to put my top hat on my head and transfer my cane to my coffee hand so I could free my other hand to use my phone.
Kallum with a K:Snapple bit me.
Kallum with a K:Do you think it’s infected?
I swiped my screen open and saw a very gross picture of a finger that was definitely infected.
