Page 67 of All That Glitters
Seeing that his actress was ready, Craig plopped down in his director’s chair, while Todd ran the wires over to a car battery sitting on the grass.
Steve clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Okay! Places everybody! Quiet on the set!” He looked over at Craig, who gave him a nod. “And roll sound!”
Steve held up the slate. “Scene thirty, take one.”
CLACK!
“Action!” Craig yelled.
With the focus of a bomb disposal expert, Todd kneeled beside the car battery. He licked his thumb and held it up to test the wind, a completely unnecessary gesture that he probably saw in a movie. Then, he touched the wires to the battery terminals…
Just outside the cemetery gate, a loud KABOOM! ripped through the quiet afternoon. A perfect, comical mushroom cloud of black smoke rose slowly over the cemetery wall.
A beat of stunned silence… then Todd tore out of the gate at a full sprint, his face a mask of pure terror as he raced off down the street. He was followed moments later by the rest of the inmate crew, running for their lives like a scene from a Keystone Cops comedy.
And then came Carrie.
She burst out the gate swinging a baseball bat, her clothes shredded and smoldering, and face and hair covered in soot. Shewas a vision of apocalyptic fury as she chased the soon-to-be-deceased production team down the street.
Chapter twenty-six
Things Not to Say on Dates
The sign for Luke’s Diner glowed with a tired, neon buzz in the San Diego night. Two letters flickered intermittently, so it read ‘L ke’s iner,’ fitting for an all-night diner where waitresses named ‘Flo’ poured endless coffee refills. It was the kind of place you went when you had nowhere better to be, which perfectly summed up Debbie’s mood. In the span of an hour, it had gone from ‘reluctant participant in a tactical dating maneuver’ to ‘contemplating faking her own death to escape.’
“So I like to think of accounting as war,” Matt explained from across the vinyl booth, his eyes gleaming with a strange, fervent light. To anyone unfortunate enough to be seated within earshot, it was apparent that this guy in the suit jacket and tie (yes, he had worn a suit and tie to Luke’s diner) might be the only person on earth genuinely passionate about spreadsheets and tax codes.
Debbie, who was pretty sure she had died of boredom fifteen minutes ago and was now just a ghost trapped in this booth,poked at a sad-looking salad with her fork. Her head had begun to nod, her eyes glazing over as Matt droned on.
She tried to remember why she had agreed to this date in the first place. There had been a plan, something about making Tony jealous, about showing him she had options, about not sitting at home waiting for him to notice her. It had seemed like a good idea when Veronica suggested it, but now, three tax anecdotes and one detailed explanation of Excel formulas later, she was questioning every life choice that had led her to this moment.
“It’s us versus the IRS,” Matt continued, his voice filled with a passion she couldn’t begin to comprehend. “A battle of wits fought on a spreadsheet. We’re the thin polyester line protecting our clients from financial ruin.”
Debbie just nodded along, mustering the energy for a single, noncommittal word. “Oh.”
“You wanna hear about this audit we had to do last week? It was a real nail-biter. Form 1040-ES versus a Schedule C discrepancy. Classic stuff.”
Before she could answer, or, more accurately, before she could pass out face-first into her iceberg lettuce, Debbie forced a bright, slightly manic smile onto her face and whipped out her phone.
“Selfie time!” she announced, her voice a little too loud, causing a nearby elderly couple to look over with disapproval.
Matt blinked, pulled from his thrilling narrative about IRS form numbers. “A selfie?”
“Yep!” she chirped. “Gotta document our amazing, super-fun date.” She leaned across the table, angling the phone to get them both in the frame. “Okay, say ‘tax evasion’!”
She snapped the picture, her smile wide and fake, Matt’s a picture of pure confusion. She immediately started tapping on the screen.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just posting it,” she said cheerfully, adding a series of hashtags that included #BestDateEver, #AccountantsKnowHowToBalance, and most importantly, #WhoNeedsScreenwriters. “And... tagged Tony. There. Now he’ll know what a totally amazing, not-at-all-boring time I’m having. Without him.”
Meanwhile, a hundred and twenty miles to the north...
Tony found Carrie’s apartment building tucked away on a quiet side street in Marina del Rey, a three-story walk-up painted a sun-faded sea foam green. It was a world away from the glass-and-steel canyons of Century City. It felt real. When he knocked, he could hear the frantic scrabbling of tiny paws and a flurry of excited yips from the other side.
The door swung open, and Carrie stood there, a wry smile on her face. She was wearing faded jeans with a small tear in the knee, a simple gray t-shirt, and sneakers. Her hair was down and looked perfect, but her makeup was light, almost nonexistent. She looked less like a B-movie queen and more like the girl next door, if the girl next door happened to have those impossibly blue eyes.
“Hi,” she said, her voice softer than he was used to.
