Turn me on - Kristin Hardy

1

"What I want from you, honey, is sex." Royce Schuyler, the Home Cinema vice president of programming, stared across the restaurant table to where Sabrina Pantolini sat-poised, sleek and dark like a silky cat. "You give me that, and everything else will follow."

"Royce, honey, I'll give you the best sex you've ever had." Sabrina smiled, her eyes ripe with promise and fun. A golden topaz hung winking from a gold chain around her neck. "This documentary series is going to have people stopping to take cold showers."
"Swingers are old hat. Don't give me swingers."

Sabrina snorted and pushed her short, dark hair back behind her ears. "Forget swingers. That's practically pedestrian. I'm talking about blow job tutors, exhibitionist hotels, you name it. It's perfect for cable-all the stuff that the networks would never have the nerve to touch, and you guys will be putting it right in the late-night living rooms of Middle America."

"With a guarantee like that, I'm looking forward to the pilot."

"Great. Does that mean you're ready to sign on for it?" Her goat cheese and heirloom tomato salad sat in front of her, forgotten.

Royce shook his head and scanned the restaurant with a practiced eye. "Not yet. I want to see what you've got when you finish the pilot."

"I need working capital, Royce."

"I'm sure you do, but I can't give it to you." He took a drink of his seltzer water. "Right now, you've got no track record and no staff on board."

Sabrina suppressed a surge of annoyance. The money she was asking for was chump change for a cable network like Home Cinema and Schuyler knew it. On the other hand, she was fortunate he was even here talking to her. If she'd been anyone else, she'd have been lucky to meet some mid-level flunky in the city offices. Instead, she was here talking with Home Cinema's vice president of programming in a see-and-be-seen restaurant.

She had no illusions about why she was getting the VIP treatment. Her father, Michael Pantolini, had been the kind of director people talked about in hushed whispers. Even five years after his death in an auto accident, Sabrina was still connected to the Hollywood power structure though her producer uncle, her action-star cousin and her set-designer mother. Sabrina was Hollywood royalty, but if it gave her some small edge, it also made her chafe.

"I can make a better pilot if I have Home Cinema behind me," she said in a slightly bored voice, waving across the room to an actress she knew slightly.

"Find a way to make a hot pilot on your own. That's the mark of a good producer. Bring it to me and we'll talk." Royce took a sip of his drink. "Hey, isn't that your cousin who just came in?"

Sabrina glanced over at the door where Matt Ramsay had just arrived with this month's hot starlet on his arm. Oh yeah, she knew how this worked. Royce expected her to call Matt over and introduce them. It would up Royce's collateral with everyone in the room to be seen talking to the big box-office hero. And maybe the next time Royce was looking to cast an action miniseries, he'd have a better chance of getting Matt. Sabrina stifled a sigh. Sometimes she found the treacly, sycophantic side of Hollywood almost impossible to tolerate.

If she were smart, she'd use Matt to work Royce and get her funding. That was how it was done in Hollywood. Sabrina wasn't always smart that way, though. She had a feisty disposition as classically Italian as the arc of her cheekbones, her vivid coloring and the hollows of her eyelids that somehow lent an extra importance to her every expression. She didn't want to use her family connections to make this happen. She wanted to make True Sex fly on its own. If she could have gotten away with it, she'd have used her mother's name. Unfortunately, Sabrina Pantolini was far too well-known from her years in the media spotlight to work incognito.

Matt waved and started over to where she sat.

Sabrina sighed. "All right, Schuyler, I'll get you your pilot in six weeks. You like it, you give me a series contract." She rose. "Thanks for lunch."

* * *

"So are you an auntie yet, Laeticia?" Sabrina asked her assistant as she breezed into the office of Pantolini Productions. Offices, really, if you counted the tiny reception/waiting area as separate from the cramped room behind it. Though her offices were tucked in an old building off Hollywood Boulevard instead of in Westwood, they were hers. Besides, they were big enough in a town where all the important meetings took place in restaurants.