Page 3 of Fool Me

“Fine for you, but I’m stuck delivering late meals.”

Dana wadded her coverall into a ball before shoving it into the cubby marked with her name. “Late sandwiches taste the same as on-time sandwiches.”

“But they don’t leave the same impression, do they?” Sadie said, hurriedly gathering ingredients.

Dana blinked her generously smudged eyelids at her usual glacial pace. “What kind of impression does a ham sandwich ever give?”

“A gag-worthy one if it’s made with this,” Sadie said, picking up and then dropping a glistening, slime-coated slice. It landed on its compatriots below with a sickening squelch. “And look at the mayo.” She tapped its crusted skin with the back of a spoon. “I’d need a chisel to get through its defenses. I hope you haven’t used any of this rancid stuff today.”

Dana peered into the aluminum food bins and shrugged. “Nobody’s dead yet.”

Holding her nose with one hand, Sadie dumped the ham and mayo into the trash and tossed the containers into the sink to wash up later. “This is just a job to you, but it isn’t to me. Hollywood movie lots are crawling with producers and directors. As long I'm stuck not doing what I really want to do, it might as well be somewhere I might get discovered—but not for the lead part in a documentary about Typhoid Mary!”

“Yep. It’s just a job to me,” Dana said as she walked out the door. “See ya.”

“English majors,” Sadie said under her breath as she began thawing a new container of ham. After arranging six slices of bread on the counter, she pulled out a fresh bottle of mayo. Figuring she could decant it later, she stuck a clean knife straight down into the gelatinous stuff and pulled it out—too quickly. A giant blob flew off the blade and landed on her chest. “Oh, super,” she said as the tiny, gooey boulder rolled down her front. Swiping at it with a rag only enlarged the grease stain. “And here I thought these coveralls couldn't be any uglier.”

Sandwiches ready, Sadie placed everything into a cooler and headed toward Studio L. As always, the studio lot buzzed with actors, make-up artists, prop wranglers, and sections of sets bustling past in all directions. The energy and sights of the place had been like a drug to Sadie the moment she’d stepped foot on the premises as an eager college graduate. But after two years making substandard sandwiches for even more substandard pay, chasing that high felt more and more like desperation. When would she be one of those actors walking by?

Three voluptuous women in sequined sheath dresses and stiletto heels lounged against a nearby wall. The middle one motioned with her eyes toward Sadie and said something Sadie couldn’t make out. Whatever tidbit she’d shared, her compatriots collapsed in a fit of cackling. Sadie picked up her pace as she felt her face flush. Her form-obliterating coverall didn’t help. She’d begged her boss to switch to more modern work uniforms, but she’d refused. Sadie could act circles around any of those women, but how was she supposed to catch a casting director’s eye when she looked like a curly-haired green pepper?

Two men reached the main door to Studio L just before she did. They both glanced her way, but neither so much as acknowledged her existence let alone held the door for her. That settled it. At the tender age of 24, she was officially invisible.

She found room 114 with ease and had just raised her hand to knock lightly on the closed door when she heard shouting from within. Two male voices were discernible, but a woman’s voice soared above theirs, and it was unmistakable. Sadie would’ve recognized that voice if it had been played to her through Edison’s original telephone…underwater…from space.

It was Julia Menlo, the A-lister of A-listers. Julia Menlo, who belonged in a whole separate “lister” alphabet unknown to mere mortals. Her career spanned twenty years, but only because she’d rocketed to fame at age twelve. Since then, she’d starred in almost every movie genre, but her most successful roles were in romantic comedies, which happened to be Sadie’s favorite.

Sadie hadn’t just seen all of Julia’s movies, she’d written papers about them and performed selected scenes from them as a college theater major. For as long as she could remember, she had ached tobeJulia Menlo. Her theater friends teasingly accused her of copying Julia’s hair but, of course, Sadie’s Shirley Temple locks had decorated her head since birth. Other than their unusual hair, Sadie and Julia looked nothing alike. Julia melted men with her brooding brown eyes, aquiline nose, and legs that extended into the next century, while Sadie conjured a blue-eyed, porcelain doll that had managed to eke out a height of five foot six.

Should she enter or wait for the commotion to settle down? If the room held a producer or director, Sadie didn't want her face associated with the raging melt-down of the biggest box-office draw in recent film history. On the other hand, if her sandwiches proved a distraction that saved the producer or director from more of Julia’s wrath, they might be left with a positive, perhaps even grateful, impression of Sadie. Better yet, they might realize she’d be perfect for some small role in their next movie…

She quietly knocked and opened the door a crack. When no one yelled at her, she opened it enough to see inside. In the center of the room, Julia and two men whom Sadie didn’t recognize stood near one end of a large conference table. Julia held a stiff piece of paper in her hand—possibly a photograph—that they were all staring at. The man to Julia’s right wore an expensive-looking and well-tailored suit that matched his overall graceful stance. The taller man to Julia’s left, with his back to Sadie, nicely filled out his relatively ordinary slacks and sport coat.

No one yelled at her, so she decided to enter. She needed only to set up the lunches on a nearby side table as unobtrusively as possible and leave. After closing the door softly behind her, she tiptoed toward the table and got to work—all the while laser-focused on every word of the still-heated discussion taking place directly behind her.

“This can’t happen,” Julia said. “Mark Briddle and I have been busting our butts mooning over each other on social media and all the talk shows for two months. The release is in three weeks, and this is going to ruin everything. You have to fix it.”

“I’m thinking, Julia. Let me think,” the man in the suit replied.

“Thinking isn’t fixing!” Julia’s scream threatened to shred Sadie’s eardrums.

“Can’t we just explain it to Mark?” the second man said.

At the sound of his voice, something tingled at the back of Sadie’s brain. Where had she heard it before? He must be a movie actor too.

“We could, but it doesn’t matter,” the first man said. “Mark’s lawyers will pounce on it, and the tabloids will have a field day.”

The second man nodded as he sighed and shifted his weight, cocking a hip. “I still don’t understand how they got the shot of us. We were supposed to be on Beau’s private island—no photography.”

“It doesn’t matter how,” Julia said. “Some new maid or gardener couldn't resist. I’m Julia Menlo, for heaven’s sake, and everyone knows I’m supposed to be madly in love with Mark. That photographer can make their paparazzi career with this one photo and buy a house with the proceeds.”

“Do we know how much they want for it? Maybe it makes sense to pay them,” the second man added.

Julia’s tone shifted to syrupy condescension. “Farm Boy, I adore you, but don’t be so naïve. Whoever sent this probably has more shots than this. They picked this one to send to Ronny because it's the clearest or something.”

Ronny?The man in the suit, Sadie realized with a start, must be Ronny Widner, one of the most successful agents in all of Hollywood. He slipped into muttering mode as if he were a detective on a case. “Hm. This probablyisthe clearest they’ve got, and it’s not all that great. All we see of you is the back of your head.”

“The back of my extremely distinctive head,” Julia said gruffly before barking, “Less talky, more fixy!”

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