We walked out to the lagoon pool, lit up from below the waterline with a deep blue glow. The surrounding trees had uplights as well, giving the area a fantasyland feel.
“This is really pretty,” Stephanie said. “This wasn’t part of the old studio, was it?”
“No, this is all new,” I said.
“I can’t believe how much money you guys have spent on homes, what with this place and the place in Manhattan,” Stephanie said.
“I can’t either, when I stop to think about it,” I agreed.
By this time our walk had taken us back to the motor court, where people were packing up and getting in their cars to leave.
“Hey! Steph, baby!” called out one of the guys from the band. “We back tomorrow?”
“I’ll speak with the director and let you know,” Stephanie replied. “If you’re needed tomorrow, I’ll give you the call time. This time, don’t show up drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk!” protested the guy. “I was fully baked!”
Stephanie shook her head sadly. “Zach,” she said. “If this turns out shitty, it’s on you.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “I’ll be ready tomorrow. Just- um, not too early, alright?”
“It won’t be,” Stephanie promised, and the guy got in his car and left.
Dana, the AD, came over to talk next. “We got most of what we needed the band for today. Maybe all of it, if we can salvage it in post. All we’ll need tomorrow are the actors.”
“Thank God,” Stephanie said with relief.
“I know, right?” Dana said as she turned to go back inside the sound stage.
“Not your favorite band?” I asked Stephanie as we watched Dana go back into the cavernous space, where the light and sound guys were packing everything up.
“It’s like they never graduated from seventh grade,” Stephanie said. “But kids buy their shit, so they make me money.”
“Um, excuse me. You’re Stephanie, right?” came a timid voice. We turned and saw the actress who had played the sexy teacher in the video approaching us from where the few remaining cars were parked.
“That’s me,” Stephanie replied.
“Um, one of the guys said that- Well, they said that Emmy from The Downfall owns this studio, and you know her. Is there any way- I mean, would it be possible to meet her?”
“Are you a fan?” Stephanie asked.
“I’m a huge Downfall fan!” the actress said, her eyes lighting up. “I mean, huge!”
“Well, this studio is owned by Emmy, and yes, I do know her,” Stephanie said, and I could detect a mischievous note in her voice. “As to whether you can meet her, hmmm… I don’t know." Turning to me, Stephanie asked, “What do you think? Should I introduce…”
“Solange,” the actress supplied.
“Should I introduce Solange here to Emmy?” Stephanie asked.
“Why are you asking me?” I asked, but I understood the little prank Stephanie was pulling on Solange, if that was actually her name.
“Well, I thought that maybe, just maybe, you might have some say in the matter since you are, after all, Emmy’s wife,” Stephanie said.
“What? Really?” Solange gasped, looking at me. “You’re Emmy’s wife?”
“That was kinda mean, Steph,” I said with a chuckle. Turning to Solange, I said, “Yeah, Emmy’s my wife. And yes, we do own this studio. Solange, have you had dinner? “
“Um, just what crafty set out, but it wasn’t that great…” she said.
“Then why don’t you come in and have dinner with us? Emmy loves to meet her fans, so I’m sure it’ll be O.K.,” I said, indicating that she should follow us.
I led Stephanie and Solange to the unassuming and unmarked door facing the motor court and unlocked it and waved them to enter.
“Seriously? This is the front door to your house?” Stephanie asked as she entered.
“You’d never know,” Solange breathed as she stepped into the entry.
“Hey, babes,” I said to Emmy and Angela as we entered the great room. “Do we have enough for one more for dinner?”
“Of course,” Angela replied, looking up from the cutting board.
Solange had spotted Emmy sitting at the kitchen counter, but seemed like a deer in the headlights, unsure what to do. I put a hand on her back and gently urged her forward. As we got near, I said to Emmy, “Em, this is Solange. She’s an actress, and was shooting the music video today. She’s a big fan of yours.”
“Really? That is wonderful!” Emmy said, standing up to greet the suddenly very shy actress (an unusual trait for anybody in that career, I thought).
Solange took Emmy’s offered hands and held them, visibly trembling with nerves.
After an awkward moment, Emmy asked her to sit down at the counter. “Would you care for some wine?” Emmy asked, indicating the opened bottle.
“Here you go,” Angela said, setting a glass in front of Solange so Emmy could pour.
“If you guys are O.K., Steph and I are going to continue our tour,” I said.
Assured that things were fine, I led Steph down the very long passage to my office.
“You need to change the lighting in this hallway,” Steph commented. “Dim the lighting in here, and put some exterior lights in those trees,” she said, indicating the eucalyptus trees that screened our place from the downhill neighbors. “And maybe some art to break up how plain it is.”
“Yeah, art is on the agenda,” I agreed.
“Maybe classic concert posters or something?” Stephanie suggested.
“That’s a thought,” I said. “My problem with this as a sort of art gallery is that I’d be the only one that would see any of it on the regular, since the only place this leads to is my office.”
I led Stephanie up the stairs, past my sim rig room and to the top floor home office. It was still a mostly bare giant space, containing only my desk, a filing cabinet and a couple of chairs.
“This is a big, empty room,” Stephanie said, looking around. “When you get it up and running, how many people will be working here?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Just me,” I said with a shrug. “I hadn’t really thought anybody else would be using it.”
“I think all this space would drive me nuts,” Stephanie said. “I mean, not only is this room three times as big as it needs to be for a home office, it has all these windows, making it seem even huger.”
“Honestly, I like it,” I said.
“Yeah, but you’re, like, huge so you take up as much room as at least two normal people,” Stephanie said with that familiar smile.
“Well, there is that,” I admitted, laughing.
“Um, Leah, can I ask you a question?” Stephanie asked, sitting on the edge of my desk.
“Of course,” I replied.
“I kinda got the vibes from, um, Angela, right? I got the vibes that she’s- well, she…”
Enjoying Stephanie’s discomfort a bit too much, I asked, “She what?”
“Is there something going on?” Stephanie blurted out.
“Yeah, there is,” I said, nodding.
“Um, what?”
“There is something going on. I’m pretty sure Emmy and Angela are sleeping together,” I replied, keeping my face serious. “In fact, I know they are.”
“Seriously?” Stephanie asked, her eyes wide with shock.
“But I guess that’s only fair,” I said with a shrug. “Since they're both sleeping with me, too. Every night.”
Stephanie looked at me for a long moment, her mouth open to say something, but nothing came out.
“Steph, Angela is our… lover,” I said, for lack of a better way to phrase it. “If we could somehow marry her, too, we would, but we can’t. She’s committed to us, and we are to her.”
“So, it’s like some sort of polyamorous thing? You guys are a threesome?” Stephanie asked, still struggling with the idea
“Emmy calls it a menàge a trois- a household of three. But yeah,” I agreed.
“How does that even work?” Stephanie asked, fascinated.
“Really well, actually. I can feel good knowing that Emmy has somebody when I go out of town for work or something, and Emmy has someone she can take shopping or whatever, too. Ange likes to go driving with me, but Emmy doesn’t, so Em doesn’t have to feel guilty about not wanting to spend that time with me. The only real downside is that sometimes it gets really warm in the middle in bed at night.”
Shaking her head, Stephanie said, “You have never once been boring, Leah.”
Back in the great room, we found Solange setting the table, under Angela’s direction.
“Where’s Em?” I asked.
“Getting more wine,” Angela said.
“Anything we can do?" Stephanie asked.
“Not really, no,” Angela answered. “Dinner is almost ready- so maybe just take your seats?”
Solange was very shy and quiet as we ate dinner, even though the rest of us tried to keep her involved in the conversation. It wasn’t until her second (or maybe third) glass of wine that she loosened up and started talking.
She lamented that acting was not working out for her. “It’s really hard to get any roles when you look like this,” she said, indicating herself, “but won’t do nudity. It’s like every casting director asks to see my tits, you know? They don’t care if I can actually act. All they want to know is if I’ll do sex scenes.”
Really looking at Solange for the first time, I could understand what she meant. She was wearing casual jeans and a hoodie, but that didn’t hide her high-set fake boobs very well, and I’d seen her long, slender legs in that pencil skirt earlier. She had iced pink hair, high cheekbones and a cute little razor-thin nose. Unfortunately, she also had collagen-plumped lips, which I think are terrible. Still, she looked like a sexy Barbie doll, so I could imagine those sorts of roles would be the only kind offered to her.
Solange and Stephanie cleaned up after dinner, which was nice of them. Solange volunteered first, prompting Stephanie to join her. Angela doesn’t make much of a mess when cooking, so it’s not as if it was that arduous a task, but as they say, it’s the thought that counts.
After dinner we found ourselves in the living room. Angela turned on the fireplace for ambience rather than actual heat, but it was nice. Emmy put a jazz samba record on, but kept it low enough that we could talk with no problems. With the lights dimmed about halfway, it was a nice, intimate space, despite the fact that it was just a corner of a much larger room.
Emmy coaxed Solange into telling us about her life and what it was like to be a struggling actress, genuinely curious.
“Acting doesn’t pay my bills, right?” Solange said. “So I work as a server at a restaurant in Van Nuys. They have a few of us in the same sort of situation, and the manager used to act, so he’s really cool about us swapping shifts if we have a shoot and need somebody to cover or something. It’s actually a pretty good place to work until I get established.”
“How long have you been acting?” Stephanie asked from the opposite end of the same couch as Solange.
“I started when I was little,” was the reply. “All through my childhood, I got parts here and there, you know? Guest star on an episode of CSI, a few ads, a couple of minor parts in some movies. I got to meet Will Smith and Jeff Bridges when I was little…” Solange said. “But then I hit thirteen, and that was that.”
“What do you mean?” Emmy asked, interested.
“Well, because of child labor laws, nobody wants to hire a kid unless they have no choice. Like, I mean, the role calls for a nine year-old, you have to cast a kid, right? But if the role calls for a fourteen year-old, well, you can find a legal adult, an eighteen year-old or maybe even a sixteen year-old who’s legally emancipated to play younger. Child labor laws won’t apply to them, so they can work unlimited hours and not need to have a teacher on the set, right? So as a result, kids in their teens very rarely ever get work.”
“I’d never thought of that, but that makes a lot of sense,” I said.
“And that’s why everybody in a so-called ‘teen drama’ is always, like, mid-twenties, right?” Solange said. “So anyway, I hit thirteen and work just dried up, so I quit for a while. When I was nineteen, I decided to try to get back into the biz, but my old agent had moved on and so I had to start from nearly zero again.”
“Nearly?” Stephanie prompted.
“Well, I still had my SAG membership, and my credits, so it wasn’t like I was completely new,” Solange said. “But like they say, Hollywood is a ‘but what have you done lately?’ business, and those credits were back from when I was a cute kid. In the meantime, I’d grown up.”
Solange had become more comfortable and involved in the conversation as the evening had worn on, but now that she was talking about something she was familiar with, she was really opening up.
“And you won’t do nudity,” Stephanie prompted. “And since you’re sexy as hell and have a great body, those are the roles you’d naturally get offered.”
“You think I’m sexy?” Solange asked, flattered.
“It’s how you got the gig in the Murder Ballot video,” Stephanie said with a shrug.
“Yeah, it is,” Solange said with a sigh. “I want serious roles, you know? I mean, I can act. I’m not just a pair of tits.”
When I walked Stephanie and Solange out to their cars, Solange surprised me by giving me a quick hug.
“Thanks a ton, Leah. The Downfall has been my favorite band ever since their first videos on Youtube- it was amazing to not just meet Emmy, but to actually have dinner with you guys. It was like a dream. And Emmy invited me to your party coming up!”
“I’m glad you had a good time,” I replied. “It was nice having you.” After making sure I had her phone number so we could send her the details of the party, she gave me another quick hug, then got into her little car and left.
Stephanie had been watching all that, and when I turned to talk to her she gave me a smile. She stepped in to me, and I wrapped my arms around her for another hug. We didn’t say anything, just held each other for maybe a minute or so. When she finally let go and stepped back, she looked up at me.
“I swear, you’re like six inches taller than you were back in Fallbrook,” she said.
“It’s funny- I was just thinking that I hadn’t remembered you being so tiny,” I replied.
“I’m serious,” Stephanie said, her hands on her hips. “I’m the same height I’ve been since tenth grade, but you’re a lot taller than when we were seniors.”
“Yeah, I kept getting taller my first couple of years in college,” I admitted. “My senior year the Stanford roster listed me as six foot three, but I was really just a little bit over six foot two.”
“Jesus. I’m just five foot two and a half,” Stephanie said. “But it’s not just height. Hugging you, it’s like hugging, I don’t know, a marble statue or something. You’re, like, rock solid.”
“A lot of time in the gym,” I said.
“You know what?” Stephanie asked as she got into her coupe.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’m gonna be thinking about what you look like under those clothes tonight in my bath. I’m gonna be imagining you, all huge and ripped…”
“Don’t ever change, Steph,” I said with a laugh. “Hey, you’re coming to dinner on Wednesday, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she replied as she started her car.
“I feel sorry for that girl,” Angela said when I returned to the living room. “She doesn’t even know what she’s doing wrong.”
“I know,” I agreed. “And I don’t think telling her would help.”
Angela patted the seat beside her, so I sat where she indicated. She leaned against me, putting her hand on my leg
“Emmy went to bed,” Angela said.
“You didn’t need to wait up for me,” I said, leaning down to give her a kiss.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she replied, so I reached over and wrapped my arm around her waist.
“What’s up?”
“Emmy told me that Stephanie was a friend of you two from back in school,” she said.
“Yeah, high school, in Fallbrook,” I agreed.
“It seemed like more than that,” Angela said, leaning into me.
Sighing, I said, “It was. It was a lot more than just that.” I went on to tell Angela about all of it, even including the fact that Stephanie still stirs a little something in me.
“I’ll never act on it, but yeah, I never really stopped caring for her, you know? These days she’s just a friend, but it’s hard to look at her and not…”
“I think I understand,” Angela said, cuddled up against me. “She’s very pretty, and smart, and it’s obvious she still has a crush on you, too.”
“Nah, she’s over me,” I said. “Really, we’ve both moved on.”
“Sure you both have,” Angela said, twining her fingers in mine.