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“You were in Mexico!” Katie said. “Those boots are from Léon, aren’t they?”
“I could’ve bought these boots anytime. I go to Mexico not infrequently. Three clients have homes there.” April was dimpling.
“But you didn’t.” Katie heard the suspicion in her voice and didn’t like it. She’d always been able to trust April. She’d trusted April from their very first meeting when Katie was hurting so much, having panic attacks, barely able to sleep. She didn’t want to have any reason, ever, not to trust April.
“I didn’t. I took the meeting.”
Goddamn it.“With Marisol Gonzales.”
April smiled, and Katie knew that smile was about how well the meeting had gone. April had departed from Léon to Green Bay, Wisconsin, excited to share something wonderful with Katie, and very likely there was an explanation for why April hadn’t talked to her first.
Katie wished these mental reassurances were doing more to blunt the sharp edges of her panic, but she hated, hated,hatedwhen people on her team went off-book. They’d had a plan. Marisol was part of the plan, but the Marisol part of the plan wasnot yet.
“I know Honor spooked you,” April said. “But don’t forget that the possibility of our snagging Marisol is part of why you attracted Honor’s interest in the first place.”
Katie narrowed her eyes like she knew what she was going to say, and it was very cutting and business-time, but this was a ruse. She’d walked up to the sliding door with characters’ words in her head and then witnessed the car crash of her Los Angeles life rear-ending her Green Bay life, which was happeninga lotlately, and now her brain was stuffed with an image of April in a handmade tile–decorated sunken living room, talking to Marisol Gonzales without her.
Katie was hurt. She was trying to stem that hurt, and trying to find a position for her body that didn’t remind her that she was hurt. She sat up, opened her chest, and dropped her shoulders.
Then she had to wipe away tears.
They were not business-time tears.
“Honey,” April said. “I’m sorry. Marisol reached out again, and I figured out, first, that I didn’t want to ask you to give me your blessing to meet with her, and second, that I really wanted to meet with her, and third, that we needed to talk. Probably it would’ve been nice if that all happened in a different order, but it didn’t.” April leaned forward so Katie would make eye contact with her.“I thought for a long time on my flight from Léon about why Ididn’twant your blessing, and I think it’s because I feel like we haven’t made the move from an agent-client relationship to an equal partner relationship. I have to feel like I can make decisions when they present themselves. I have as much invested in our success as you do.”
Katie closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe. When she felt settled, she opened her eyes to find April waiting, just like she always had, without judgment, without rushing her.
They were friends. That was why Katie felt scared and hurt and angry. She wasn’t afraid that April would betray her or make a bad decision. Katie was afraid that April didn’t get how easy it would be forKatieto make one wrong move and lose everything for both of them. And then she’d lose April’s friendship.
She’d lose April as part of her family.
Katie got up and put a Danish on a plate and carried it back to the sofa. She set it down on the coffee table. “Okay.” She nodded at April. “First things first. Tell me why you were afraid to talk to me.”
April nodded back. “Thank you. Well, I want to start as we mean to go on, and that means we take calls and meetings with people like Marisol Gonzales, because we are not making something that makes someone like Marisol Gonzaleswait. Right? We’re making something that flings open every gate and door as wide as possible for Marisol Gonzales. We’re making something that Marisol Gonzales wants as much as we want her. If we are waiting to satisfy what Honor Howell wants, we will wait forever, because Honor is the money, and money is conservative, and what you and I both know is that no one is going to give money to two women who aren’t C-suite for ourideas. They’re going to give us money because we’re already so good, they would look ludicrously irrelevant if they didn’t.”
Katie had to concentrate to keep her throat from constrictingaround a weepy hiccup she wasnotgoing to let out. “That’s quite a speech.”
“I practiced it on the plane.”
“On your way to Léon or on the way here?”
“The one I practiced on the way to Léon was a lot more apologetic and groveling. But the meeting was fire, so I came up with that one on the way here.” April patted her knee, and Sue leapt up beside her, making biscuits until she was comfortable along April’s thigh. It was something Katie had seen happen so many times in her own home that having April here in Diana and Craig’s basement suite started to feel inevitable.
“Who knows you’re here?”
“Only Madelynn. Not even an assistant. The nice thing about my work is that even though I’m a stacked six-foot-tall ginger, no one notices me when I’m with the caliber of clients I represent. That means this meeting didn’t happen until we both say it did.”
Katie bit her tongue to keep from saying that she wished this meeting weren’t happening, because Green Bay was supposed to be a stepbefore. It was supposed to be the step where she wrote the screenplay so they could say they had exercised the option on a wildly bestselling book.Thenthey committed Marisol. Through both those steps, Katie continued to maintain her status as both the highest-paid Oscar-winning actress in Hollywood and a serious director.ThenHonor.
Thebeforestep was the only step that had any space in it for Katie to be Katie. Maybe for the last time.
“Tell me what she said.”
April leaned forward. “She told me, stone-cold sober and multiple times, that she wouldn’t make this movie without us. She is, right now, being courted by four studios—she showed me the written offers—but she wants us.”
“People in Hollywood tell you they can’t do it without you all the time. I’m not sure they ever mean it.”
But even as Katie said it, she could feel that what April told her was true.