“Let’s offline this conversation and see what we can agree on,” Chloe says, smiles from her colleagues appearing all around her on the screen.
Paul leans back in his chair. Smug. Chin lifted. Eyes resolute. If it didn’t create even more work for me than I’m already grappling with, I’d be impressed.
The rest of the meeting passes with relative ease, no major issues arising, and everyone takes their action points away as we end the call.
“Can I grab a quick word?” Connie’s eyes narrow on me as she pulls me gently aside. Everyone else other than Paul is filing out of the boardroom.
“Do you mind if we use the room?” Paul asks as he shakes Pietro’s hand.
“Julie?” Pietro turns to her to find out if it’s free.
“The room’s free all evening,” Julie says, missing the death stare I shoot her. Her attention is focused instead on collecting the glasses and tray, now void of any snacks that could settle my grumbling stomach.
“Great,” Paul says, and motions at me to sit down opposite of him rather than where I’ve been for the whole meeting. It’s clearly a power play unfolding in real time, and I’m not about to concede on the first move, so I opt to stay at the head of the table instead as Connie returns next to Paul.
“What would you like to discuss?”
I close my laptop and sit down, placing my hands underneath my legs and waiting for the trembling to subside.
“Things have changed somewhat since we last spoke,” Connie says. Her sharp exhale is tinged with the sound of a thousand unspoken thoughts. “And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about the agreement you signed back in June.”
Fury floods my mind at the mention of the agreement.
I try to put a cap on my anger, become a better person, but the flood barriers are unable to hold it all inside.
“Look, I didn’t ask to be part of this campaign. None of this was my idea. In fact, it was your client who demanded I be on the shoot.” I slide my hands out from underneath my legs and lean forward onto the table. Connie looks at me with the eyes of someone who’s had to deal with this many times before. Paul wears the kind of frown reserved for children when an adult is explaining the Easter bunny.
“I was quite happy never to see or speak to Alexander ever again.” I suppress a pang at the lie. “I planned to honor the contract you made me sign. It seems the conversation you should be having isn’t with me, it’s with Alexander.”
Acid burns the back of my throat. The sight of them makes me sick. Gone are the million questions I wanted answered. Instead, a red mist blurs my vision. Just as I was making progress with my anger management, these two send me ten steps backward.
Paul raises his hands in surrender, stopping me from continuing.
“We appreciate you honoring the agreement, but we are where we are now, and there’s nothing we can do to change that. The bigger issue we have is something Rob has alerted us to.” Paul’s cynical diplomacy is disconcerting. “Alex’s behavior has become more and more erratic, and we believe he’s relapsed into drinking and using drugs again.”
Paul’s stoic poise is unable to hide the fear in his eyes as confusion swirls in me.
Alexander has an addiction problem? He’d never mentioned that.
The red mist engulfs me further as I grapple with this new piece of information.
Am I drawn to addicts? Is this what my therapist meant about me being attracted to narcissistic and emotionally unavailable substance abusers that remind me of my father?
“You believe?” I ask, needing clarity.
R Kelly believed he could fly and look where he ended up.
“I spoke to Alex the other day, but he completely denied it. He was insistent he was just getting into character. That people are noticing him becoming more off-kilter because the character he plays becomes more erratic throughout the film.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The clock on the wall behind them counts down the minutes I’m wasting sitting here listening to them both. I still have a shit ton of work to do before packing and catching the red eye to New York.
“Alex had a breakdown on set while shooting one of his scenes. Rob found him wandering the hotel hallway in a psychotic state a few hours later. We think a guy from the film crew has secretly been bringing Alex alcohol and drugs.”
A.
Guy.
