Page 26 of Bad Reputation

“You’re well connected. Did something ... happen on that set?”

Zoya smiled faintly at the flattery, seeing it as the ploy it was but accepting the offering anyhow. “What do you know about Vincent Minna?”

“That he’s won a lot of Oscars.”

“I shouldn’t say anything, really. He’s technically a producer forWaverley, though it’s really Elmer Meyers at Silverlight who’s shepherding the show. But as long as you understand that this isn’t confirmed and it has to stay buried, there are certainly ... rumors about his relationships with the actresses he discovers. And he discovered Tasha. He produced that movie. I mean, I can’t say for sure that they had an affair or whatever, but there’s a lot of smoke for there to be no fire.”

Maggie considered this. Tasha’s mom had been one of the biggest stars of her era, and her daughter seemed more like a finely honed knife than a woman. It was hard to imagine Vincent Minna steamrolling someone that well connected and fierce.

But then Maggie recalled Rhiannon, who was also strong and self-possessed with a good agent who was supposed to be advocating for her, and Rhiannon hadn’t even realized that she could object if she didn’t want to bare her entire breasts on screen.

No, this industry sucked for anyone without power. And at the beginning of her career, Tasha had had very little power, especially compared to Vincent Minna.

“That would make sense,” Maggie said. “It’d be more disappointing than surprising. But even if we’re right, it could also be that I’m just not a good fit for Tasha. It could be personal. Maybe she doesn’t like me—”

“I really doubt it’s personal.”

“I wouldn’t be offended or anything.” Maggie was a grown-up. She didn’t expect everyone to like her. “But it’s a hard industry for young women.”

“It’s a hard industry for everyone. How’s Cole doing?”

Maggie took a second to make sure her I’m-an-expert-not-a-woman-with-a-crush mask was on tight before answering. “He’s sweet. Every rehearsal, he’s very professional, very conscientious of Rhiannonand of me. He clearly wants to do a good job, and he’s talented. In the meetings I’ve had with him and Tasha, I can see the relationship between them, the mutual concern. But I worry if she and I don’t have a breakthrough soon, we’re not going to get to a point where I can help. And ... this is my job.”

At its core, Maggie was here to put the humiliation of her firing behind her and to build a new career. If she couldn’t get Tasha to come around, Maggie wasn’t exactly making a strong case that she’d be a good intimacy coordinator.

It had taken way longer—way, way longer—for her to feel like a bad teacher. Even at the end of that job, she hadn’t thought she was objectively not good at it. The problem was that the field was hostile and toxic. But she couldn’t start over yetagain. She was way too old for that.

“Also, Tasha truly seems to need support.” While it would be professionally embarrassing for Maggie if she couldn’t make this work, there was an angle of this that was much larger than her piddling professional anxiety. “The entire goal of me being here is to address this dynamic—to make the intimacy easier to film and not traumatic—and I’m feeling like ... a spleen. That’s a vestigial organ, right?”

Zoya had listened to Maggie’s monologue with a focused expression that gave nothing away, but at this, she laughed. “You’re not a spleen.”

“Fine, but I am feeling stuck. I dunno, how do you get through to someone like this?”

Maggie’s high school students had been all open enthusiasm. Sometimes a kid who didn’t care ended up in one of her classes, but in her experience as a director, it was lack of talent or discipline that had been the major issues.

She had no capacity to understand the inner workings of movie stars, and Bernard hadn’t covered this subject in his lessons.

“I’d just jump into the choreography,” Zoya said. “Tasha is absolutely not a touchy-feely person. Cole, Rhiannon, Owen, Leanne: they’re going to want to work through the emotions with you. Tashahas emotions—at least, I think she does—but she doesn’t want to share them. She hates to come across as vulnerable in any way. Maybe even invite David to your next meeting. Frame it as a craft question. Where is the camera going to be? How are we going to light the scene? It helps that we aren’t filming this until we’re in the Highlands. The on-location scenes at Midlothian, plus Cole and Rhiannon’s stuff, comes sooner, so you have a longer time to figure out what’s going on with Tasha. But no one expects you to solve the riddle of Tasha Russell, I promise. Just do your best.”

That made sense.

“Is there anything else?” Zoya asked.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I feel like the squeaky wheel. But for the Madge-and-Geordie love scene, Rhiannon and Cole found the script as is to be ... underdeveloped.”

Zoya’s eyes sparkled. She was listed as the lead writer on that episode. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. So here’s what we’ve worked out.” Maggie pushed her sketches across the table. “I apologize in advance for the quality of my art.” Maggie had bought colored pencils and had painstakingly redrawn the pictures. They weren’t better, but they were in color.

After a few beats, Zoya asked carefully, “Are they snow people?”

Esme, who was young and bright and had a mass of brown curly hair, was trying very hard not to laugh. “No, it’s Stay Puft Marshmallow Man porn. It’s only missing the jaunty hat.”

Maggie whined. “Bernard insists storyboarding is necessary.”

“I think he’s, like, a classically trained artist.”

Maggie had seen his portfolio. She believed it. “Okay, what about this?” She offered her shorthand notes instead. They were broken down shot by shot and move by move, the way she used to write down dance choreography. It listed which hand went where and what it did, from the beginning of the sequence to the end.

---