SNAP: The World Unfolds

CHAPTER EIGHT

One day I drove myself to work.  Having the limo pick me up was great and luxe, but I wanted to run some personal errands in the afternoon and I always felt funny using the limo for this.  It probably wouldn’t matter, but I could hear my mother: Don’t take advantage of small things, you may need the big ones later.  That morning I parked and came to the staff elevator.  Down the hall was a door I’d never noticed before.  It had a key card lock so I used my card and went in.  Like most of the rest of the offices, there were no windows.  There was a reception desk with the omnipresent gurgling phone and a sign, “Open by appointment at 5 p.m.”

Beyond the reception desk, another door led into an inner room.  I stepped through into what looked like a medical lab.  Five semi-reclining couches were against the far wall with machines and IV stands next to them.  At the far right end of the space, another room held bins full of medical supplies; stretchy bandages, syringes, tubing and empty plastic bags.  To the left was another office, maybe a nurse’s or doctor’s, with books and journals on shelves and piled on the desk. Decidedly odd; probably just the company nurse’s office.  I didn’t know we had one.  None of the company information talked about one, but we did have several hundred employees in this location, so it made sense.  And appointments after 5 p.m. meant that even though a nurse was available, not much company time would be lost.

I’d have to ask Jazz about this, too.

The strange room zapped out of my brain the minute I reached my office.  Jazz was twittering around talking to herself and trying to answer three gurgling phones, my office was full of people and controlled chaos reigned.

“Hi” I said, dropping my stuff on the desk and nodding as Jazz, still talking on her earbud, put a coffee in front of me.  “Is this a meeting?  I didn’t have it in my planner.”

The crowd sorted itself out to just five people; Jean-Louis, Mira, Carola, Sasha and Gordon.

“Morning, Maxie.  We figured your office was best to float our ideas.”  This from Carola, with nods by Gordon and Mira.

I took a sip of the coffee.  “Is this something I should be sitting for?” I asked.

“That’s up to you,” from Jean-Louis.

“We’ve been talking about replacing Pen,” said Gordon.  “We’re thinking about a hunting party.”

“More like a scouting party,” Mira added.  “Just out looking.”

This was good thinking.  Pen had been a mainstay, kind of like the weather.  There were a lot of celebs we hunted or followed, not stalked, but they weren’t always available.  Having, or polishing, another woman would give us a good backup.

“Do you guys have a plan or just ideas?”

“A semi-jelled plan.  We have several people outside the U.S. that we can fill in with right now.   The American audience will like exotic places, especially Rio, and the aristos are always good.  We,” and here Carola gestured at her fellow editors, “almost never get out.  We use stringers and free-lancers to fill the gaps.  If we were out, we’d control the faces.”

It was interesting.  She exaggerated slightly because all of the senior staff went to parties and events occasionally, but there were just too many to hit everything.  We sent staff to the big ones and the rest we either assigned a stringer or freelancer or took potluck with the paparazzi.

Their plan was to pick a couple dozen smaller events, with smaller clubs thrown in, and take turns.  It was limited to Southern California, basically LA and Hollywood, and everybody would take three or four.  One of the attractive parts was that our faces weren’t known outside of our office.  Unlike the TV production of SNAP, our pictures  weren’t seen and our names only appeared on the magazine’s masthead and TV credits, which nobody read. If we spent the next few weeks, and compared photos and names at our weekly meetings, we should have a selection to hone in on.  There were drawbacks.  We couldn’t let the clubs, restaurants or events know we were coming.  We’d have to use small digital cameras or cell phones because shots had to be candid.  We came up with the first two weeks of assignments and parceled them out.  With my travel schedule, I could only take on two, one with Jean-Louis and one with Gordon. 

Gordon was first up and we went to an up-and-coming club in the Melrose area.  Beautiful people and so much sound packed the space that we communicated with gestures and shrugs.  Shooting for a couple of hours yielded only four possibilities when we downloaded them the next day.  There were hair spikes, midriffs, navels—both pierced and unpierced—tattoos and rainbows of hair colors.  There were oversized sunglasses and tiny bags.  There were even two Chihuahuas.  We saved the possibilities, but not the dogs, and waited for the next hunting party. 

After a month of this, we met again.  All we’d gleaned were three possible women.  One of them was big in the club scene and the other two were second-tier event-goers.  They were all single, daughters of  SoCal money—one oil, one movies, one insurance—and loved to party.  They were good for a few “Seen Ats”; we gave their names to our freelancers, but none of them was a Pen.

It was a game try, but our foray netted us very little.  Except the night that Jean-Louis and I spent at a fund-raiser for abandoned animals.  The dinner and speakers were bearable, lots of flashbulbs on the evening’s celebrity, a 50-something actor with a fading career and his pumped-up trophy wife.  The planned after-party, dancing and mixing, began and Jean-Louis stopped working.

We were dancing to a slower number when he pulled me close, too close for just a dance, and said “I’ve looked for years.”  It was such a cliché that I choked.

“If that’s your best line, I need to buy you a book,” I said, once I’d stopped laughing.

“I don’t know, it certainly got us beyond talking business,” his brows went up.  “I’ve watched you for the last few weeks and figured I’d have to play the humor card.  I would like to get to know you better, on a more personal level, on a level level,” and he gave me an odd closed-mouth smile, almost a smirk.

It was flattering and warming to have someone as dishy and talented as Jean-Louis express interest.  I could hear my mother’s voice, Don’t get involved with someone prettier than you; they know it.

The evening ended with a kiss on the cheek when the limo dropped me, and I planned to drop any involvement.  He was clearly prettier than me.