Alas that hooking up with my bodyguard wasn’t part of the plan, and also that I was sure Krysta had a healthy, if mild, dislike of me.
It could have been a fun cruise.
Chapter Two
Krysta had done her cruise ship homework and led us straight to the theater via service doors and back hallways to avoid the still-embarking passengers. We emerged into the backstage hallway-cum-dressing-room, which was filled with open pots of glittery makeup and what could only be described as panic.
God, I hated stage entertainment. Had since I was a kid and my mom strapped Dansoft shoes to my feet and made me go twirl on a stage. Something about having an audience right there, able to see the edge of your wig or the sweaty creases in your makeup, was just unbearable. But ships needed sure-to-be-beloved shows, and there was only one sure-to-be-beloved story I loved enough to imagine commissioning a cruise ship musical for.
“Where is my brother-doctor-dad?” the makeup artist called over the fray. “I need brother-doctor-dad in the chair right now. And tell flannel-dad not to touch that mustache until the adhesive dries!”
I skirted around some extras slurping iced coffee while they waited in line for costumes, and stepped onto the stage, looking for the director and the scriptwriter. I heard Bailey ask one ofthe extras where they got their drinks and resigned myself to losing my assistant to the siren song of caffeine.
But I didn’t have time to argue with her about it. I needed to be done in the theater in ten minutes so I could go check on the kitchens, the spa, the margarita bar, and then make it through the mandatory muster drill before I went to my suite and had exactly forty-five minutes to change, refresh my hair, and practice my welcome speech.
As I spotted the person I’d hand selected to pen my musical tribute toTwilightat the far end of the theater, my watch buzzed. I looked down to see a text from my manager and caught the wordsAugustandsit-down interviewfloating on the tiny screen.
My stomach sank to my slouchy boots and then slithered across the stage floor. No, I couldn’t think about this now—
I’d deal with it later.
Decision made, I scampered over to my scriptwriter, Pearl Purkiss. She was even paler than Krysta, with skin the color of cold milk, and silky hair now dyed a light pink. She was currently holding hands with her girlfriend, Gretchen Young, who was in an oversize racerback onesie, with long twists hanging to her waist and her nose piercing winking in the low light of the theater. She had warm medium-brown skin, a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones, and a tropical cocktail in one hand that she was currently most of the way through.
I was relieved to see Gretchen, because Pearl—while very budget-friendly and surprisingly aTwilightfan—was famously a migratory bird when it came to work. Gretchen, however, was an industry veteran like me, and even though we’d taken very different paths, the paths had been paved with getting shit done.
“I am here entirely in the capacity of supporting my girlfriend and lying flat on my back with no one talking to me, so I can’thelp you—ask Pearl,” Gretchen said all in one breath, holding up her drink to demonstrate that she was indeed in vacation mode.
“I’m just checking in, seeing how things are going, making sure that we have everything we need,” I reassured her. “Do you both like your room?”
“Love the minibar,” Gretchen said at the same time as Pearl said, “The waves are already speaking their language to me, Addison. Shhhhh, boooom.Shhhhh, boooom.”
That presumably was the language of the waves.
“So about the show,” I chirped, since I was short on time, and also didn’t speak ocean, “last time we spoke, you and the director were reworking the music for the final scene. Is it ready, you think, or is the mind battle still better with a ballad rather than an up-tempo song?”
From my position next to her, I saw the faintest quiver of Krysta’s mouth.
I wanted that quiver to be a GIF so I could watch it over and over again, so I could figure out what itmeant. So I could figure out how she could make the smallest movements of that shell-pink mouth seem earthshaking.
Gretchen, who’d met Krysta once or twice back in Krysta’s guarding-Isaac days, seemed to interpret the quiver as a question. “It’s aTwilight-themed musical,” she explained. “But for legal reasons, it’s notTwilight, and instead a love story between two characters named Isabel and Edmund.”
“Don’t forget Jason,” said Pearl, with an artist’s affront.
“Right, and Jason. Anyway, it’s calledThe Lion and the Lamb, and Pearl did an amazing job, and... I need to go.”
Gretchen kissed Pearl on the cheek and then practically bolted away without looking behind her once. I realized why once the show’s director appeared next to me.
Mack Anderson was a steal. On paper, he was a Broadway director with a résumé so stacked, Stephen Sondheim wouldprobably come back from the grave just to create a new show for him to direct. That was until three years ago when Mack was found to have been living in the attic of his theater after gambling away a rent-controlled apartment when he bet wrong in Atlantic City on the Tonys. That part wasn’t ideal, but the story went from bad to worse when rumors began to swirl about him solving the theater’s rat problem with a newly found DIY taxidermy hobby.
I heard there were dollhouses. Dollhouses full of dead rats.
But he was a genius. A desperate genius. Mack was more than ready to take a West Coast job with a living stipend and housing, albeit temporary and at sea. I only hoped he hadn’t brought the rats.
Macktsked as he flung his silk scarf over his shoulder. “Gretchen!” he called. “I’d love to talk to you about a musical you might be interested in adapting with me.” But Gretchen was already long gone, so he turned to Pearl and me. “The property I have in mind would be such a box office gimme. It was a book first, then a movie, then a Broadway musical, and now I’d like to adapt the musical back into a movie. Genius, isn’t it? Adapting adaptations is the future. There are no new stories. Truly.”
Pearl sighed a thoughtful sigh.
“Give the people what they want,” I said. My watch buzzed, and again, my stomach threatened to drop right into the sea, but I realized it was just my alarm and not my manager pushing me to confirm his plans for August.
