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But Ben Adelsward simply wouldn’t go away.
Also, she’d once accidentally left something very sentimentalto her by a soap dish in his apartment in New York when she was washing her hands, and he’d never returned it.
Katie sighed. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t avoid this conversation with Madelynn. Business was business. “How bad is it?”
“I’m a publicist. Nothing is bad, everything is simply a pivot.” Madelynn smiled. “Our plan was a good one. Get you behind the camera? Check. You helped make that even better by winning that Emmy. Then option one of the best-selling novels in America for you to adapt? Check, check. Get you in front of the camera again, this time with the fire of a live audience licking at your heels, and oh! my! Is thatHonor Howellwho happens to be on set, watching the birth of the best auteur of your generation? Yes. Yes it is. What a wonderful coincidence!”
Katie laughed. Madelynn enjoyed putting on the occasional show. “I’m with you.”
“Enter Marisol Gonzales,” Madelynn said. “She’s an auteur in her own right, and she has a script everyone wants. But Marisol has something no one else in this town has, which are values. So she’s shopping. Marisol talks to Honor. Honor mentions you. The word is put out by a discreet and extremely fancy source—courtesy of me—that you and your longtime agent, April Feinstein, are starting a production company. You’re shaking off the scales of the dinosaurs of Hollywood for something real, inclusive, hot. It’s going to be amazing.”
“It is,” Katie agreed.
“Of course it is. So Marisol talks to you. Oh!Interesting.She suggests the world might need to start to learn a little about your vision. Calls are made. Chicago is booked. It’s just a small appearance, but it conveys a serious, important message. Honor Howell interviewing. There are pearls and eyeglasses and trousers. An elite but fun-funky collection of press are on hand. It’s all ripe for a smallbut intriguing mention at the best places. Did you hear Marisol Gonzales is working with Katie Price’s new production company? No! Butoh, yes. Honor and Katie? Hmm… hmm! All of it setting the stage, after Honor reads your script and loves it, for a big fat check signed by Ms. Hollywood herself, and an announcement in the form of a long-form profile inHollywood Reporteraccompanied by another pearls-and-trousers glamor shot of you in a director’s chair.” Madelynn sighed. “It was such a lovely, lovely dream.”
Katie put her fork down. “But now, pivot.”
“Indeed,” Madelynn snarled. “I wonder who booked him that sham of an interview inVariety? It wasVariety online,mind you, so it must have been some hasty work. All so Ben could run with the leak of your project.” Madelynn brightened and smiled. “Doesn’t matter. Pivot.”
Katie nodded and started cutting her burrito into bite-sized pieces. Her eyes were burning a little bit, because it felt as though Madelynn had just delivered the funeral requiem for Katie’s dream. Or, at least, the version of Katie’s dream that Ben Adelsward had no part in.
But they could pivot. They had to, because Katie wanted this. She wanted it all the way down. She wanted to write the script and direct it. She wanted Honor Howell to back her production company. She wanted Marisol Gonzales to knock on her door. She wanted theHollywood Reporterprofile and the pearls.
What Katie really wanted, most of all, was to make something that was hers. That washer. She wanted something she wasn’t even sure she could do. “What’s your new plan?”
“You won’t like it, but the only way out is through.”
“No.” Katie knew what was coming. She and Madelynn had been here before.
Madelynn rubbed her eyes under her glasses. “The fuck of it is, Katie, I like you, and I don’t like anyone I work with. I’m a sanitation worker. I pick up the garbage. But you don’t make me do that. You either don’t produce garbage or you’re composting everything, I don’t even know, but you’re a pleasure to work for, mainly because work is all you do. But my liking you so much means that it is especially egregious to have to deal with the same fucking story over and over again forever, especially when that story is, at this point, an impediment to you getting what you want. I have a dartboard with Ben’s face on it. I actually throw darts at it.”
Katie looked down at her breakfast. She reminded herself to keep her shoulders loose, her jaw relaxed. She pressed her feet into the rough wool of the rug under her dining room table.
Madelynn leaned back. “Listen. I want this not to be a thing. I want you to let me salt it out of your fields forever so you can do some coy project when you’re fifty and look like a goddamned icon while also subtweeting him so hard, and then everyone notices his neck has fallen so far that you can’t see his bow tie anymore.”
“Wow,” Katie said. “Don’t hold back.”
Her sarcasm fell flat. Probably because of the cold fear rising up her spine.
“Greta Gerwig thinks you’re a burgeoning directing genius.”
“Did Greta say that? Tell me word for word.”
“She said, ‘Katie Price was born to see the world from behind the camera, even though there’s a good reason the world loves her in front of it.’” Madelynn had a convenient eidetic memory, both a bad thing and a good thing in a publicist.
Smiling, Katie put her head down on the table next to her burrito. “Can you text that to me?”
“No. I won’t. I won’t because no matter what Greta Gerwig says, it won’t mean what you need it to mean until no one fucking cares what Ben Adelsward says.”
“Madelynn.”
“Listen to me. I have never seen the kind of organic buzz likeyou got after that live episode aired. Never. My people’s people were Korean immigrants with big ideas. They ended up in Hollywood so they could collaborate on the first movies alongside Jewish optometrists from Manhattan who were running cameras they’d bought on payments from the lens equipment man. Which is just to say, I have been in this business my whole life, so I know.Youmade that buzz, and you’re going to have to build a new shelf to hold all of the awards your live episode is going to generate. It was the work of a moment to get that Chicago Studio City gig for you so that you could talk about what you did and what it meant to you and what the world should prepare for,from your perspective. Everyone wanted to hear what you wanted to say.”
Katie swallowed over the burn in her throat. It took all of her training to hold onto the tears caused by her heart swelling big and tight in her chest.
The smallest, smallest hint of feeling what it might be to get what she wanted.
“Three out of four people in this town are fucked up, but mostly in a delightful way,” Madelynn said. “Ben is the other kind of fucked up, the kind who weaponizes absolutely everything he does so that he stays at the top by virtue of the bodies under his feet. I told you again and again that it’s my job to remove any impediment to you getting what you want, and I am telling you that ignoring Ben, holding our breath until his next move, exhausting yourself with this ridiculous business of creating a pristine image, isnot sustainable. Also, it’s not how you can possibly build a production company, make a mark as an auteur, or meet any of the goals that it’s my job to help you accomplish. Big goals require big risks. You have to give yourself some fucking margin for mistakes. Right now, the only room you are giving yourself is for silent perfection, and honestly, if that’s all you’re ever going to do, you don’t need me.”