Queen and Bandit Read online

  “Fine. But if I do this, I want automatic approval for my next three stories. I don’t care how dry you think they are.”

  “Sure, sure, whatever you want. But Evelyn Wade first. This is going to be it. This is going to be the interview that turns her from a star into a... a...”

  “Icon.”

  Swain grinned wide enough to show his teeth, and he aimed one finger at her. “That’s it, Simon! That’s why you’re my go-to guy. Go. Go, my boy, turn that girl into an icon.”

  Gracie pressed her lips together and turned her back on him, scanning the directions as she left the office. The Bronson Canyon location really wasn’t far away at all; it wouldn’t even take ten minutes to drive there. She folded the papers length-wise and slipped them into her back pocket. She tried not to be too upset about losing the Atwater story. Corruption would always be around, and maybe someone more important would screw up in a bigger way later. Still, it would’ve been nice to get a story like that in her scrapbook.

  No use crying over spilled articles, though. She was out of luck and might as well try to make the best of it.

  Maybe the movie star would have something interesting to say.

  Chapter Two

  Evelyn Wade didn’t want to come out of her trailer. It was barely even noon and it was already well past ninety-five degrees out there. The wind was blowing just enough that she knew she would end the day with grit in her eyes. And if she went out there, she knew she would just end up sitting under one of those big umbrellas that didn’t do a damn thing to keep her cool while Joe and Barry flubbed their lines. So she was content to stay inside until she was actually needed.

  Not that the trailer was much of an improvement. The couch cushions were about as thin as a newspaper, so she had taken them all and stacked them on one side. It didn’t leave her much room to stretch out, naturally, so she had her shoulders on the stack of cushions with her legs propped up on the wall. With the arm of the couch under her butt, it almost felt like she was sitting on a chair that had been turned on its side, which made the whole world feel topsy turvy.

  She didn’t mind. She liked the dizzy feeling it gave her. She had her script in front of her and tried to focus on her lines, but she kept looking past the pages at her toes, letting her mind wander. She was wearing sandals with straps that climbed up her legs in an intricate crisscross pattern. She wasn’t allowed to take them off because the process of retying all those damn leather ribbons was such a pain. She didn’t mind; the sandals were comfortable enough that she could forget she was wearing them after a while.

  This would be her fourth film with Universal. Her first had been moderately successful, and the next two did exponentially better. Everyone believed this was the one that would seal the deal and confirm she was actually a star and not just someone who got lucky a few times. It was a lot of pressure on what she had to admit was just a mediocre film.

  Evelyn lifted the page again and tried to focus. The film was called Olympus, a fantasy adventure about sailors in 1915 caught in a storm in the Mediterranean. They wash up on an island where the Greek gods have been in hiding for centuries. When they hear that the world is at war, they decide the time is right for them to make their presence known again. It ended in a big battle between gods and mortals which ends, of course, with the mortals victorious and the gods retreating back to their hidden isle.

  The movie was only being made because the studio thought RKO was going to make a killing with Sinbad the Sailor, something she couldn’t quite fathom. She’d seen the flick when it first came out and hadn’t been impressed. Okay, she’d liked Maureen O’Hara. She had liked Maureen O’Hara a lot, actually. But even a woman like that wasn’t enough to make a movie profitable. The fact she was practically alone in the theater when she saw it didn’t exactly bode well.

  But once the execs decided the next big thing had arrived, it was a fool’s errand to try changing their minds. So what if Sinbad didn’t set the world on fire? That just opened the door for Olympus to be the vanguard.

  The director originally wanted her for Aphrodite. While it was technically the bigger role, Evelyn had her agent fight for Artemis instead. Aphrodite was in almost every scene with the gods, but she was eye candy. She had a dozen lines in the entire script, and when everyone else was talking, she was “lounging seductively” in a “gauze-thin wrap that leaves just enough to the imagination.”

  Artemis also had a revealing outfit - a chiton that left her right shoulder and upper chest exposed, with a hem that ended mid-thigh - but she also got to take part in the battle. She had a bow and arrow, a shield, and a sword, and she used them well. Evelyn had been training with a combat instructor to make sure she didn’t embarrass herself. She’d gotten good enough to fake it, and was almost good enough to believe she could hold her own in a real fight.

  Someone knocked on the trailer door. “Evie?” The production assistant, a young man named Howie with acne scars and a permanently terrified expression on his face. “You ready in there?”

  She rolled her eyes and dropped the script onto her chest. “Be out in five.”

  “Mr. Auer told me to remind you that the Mercury is sending over their reporter today. He’s supposed to be here any minute.”

  “Bully for him,” Evelyn muttered. She swung her legs down and adjusted her costume. Her hair was probably flat in the back, but someone would plump it up for her before they started rolling film. She put on her sunglasses - a ridiculously large pair with lenses that made her look like a bug - to keep the sand out of her eyes before she opened the door.

  Howie took a step back, almost tripping over his own feet. Evelyn ignored his clumsiness and climbed down out of the trailer, squinting until her eyes adjusted to the nuclear sunlight reflecting off the sand. Only a handful of scraggly trees marked the hills in the distance but they did nothing to break up the monotony outside of their filming location. It was hard to believe there was a major city just a mile or so over the hills.

  “Have you ever been to Greece?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Or anywhere in the Mediterranean?” she asked again. “Do you think it looks anything like this?”

  Howie looked around as if he’d just arrived. “Uh. Well. I think, um, most people who watch the movie won’t know any better than I do.”

  She raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “You’re probably right. Where do they need me?”

  He pointed and scurried off toward the scrum of people standing a little distance away, and she followed him.

  There was a small village set up just outside an invisible perimeter which marked the difference between “Greek island in 1915” and “Los Angeles desert thirty-two years later.” The director, writer, a producer, and two cast members were sitting in canvas chairs underneath a white tent that flapped in the breeze. Extras milled around wearing either sailor uniforms or togas and chitons similar to hers. The girl who had eventually been cast as Aphrodite, an ingenue who swore up and down that she’d been born with the name Adora Bell, was wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe to conceal the tissue paper that made up her costume. Evelyn sympathized with the girl; she had to be sweltering in the damn robe, but she supposed it was a fair trade-off to avoid everyone ogling her.

  The director, Solomon Auer, saw her coming and unfolded himself from his chair. “Goddess of the hunt, I’ve been hunting for you all morning.”

  “Well, here I am, Sol,” she said, hands on her hips. “Where do you need me?”

  He held up his hands to frame the scene in front of him. “We’re doing the initial meeting between the two factions. You’ll be up on those rocks with your bow drawn, ready to draw blood, while the rest of the gods confront the interlopers to the island.”

  Evelyn cupped a hand over her eyes to examine the landscape. A scaffold had been set up behind the rocks where she was supposed to stand. It was a shaky, dangerous-looking construction of metal pipes and boards, but it was better than trying to get up there by climbing. She nod
ded and took off her sunglasses. She handed them to Auer, who hooked them on his vest pocket.

  Now that her eyes had fully adjusted to the brightness, she was aware of someone else standing in the shadows of the tent. Rumpled shirt and suspenders, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, lank red-brown hair falling down over one eye. A camera strap was slung around his neck, the object itself hanging down mid-chest. He had a strong chin, thin lips, and big eyes that were currently magnified by a pair of glasses.

  He was also a woman.

  Auer saw her staring. “Oh! I might as well introduce you now. This is Simon Grace, the reporter from the Merc we mentioned. He just got here and I invited him to watch you film the scene.”

  “No skin off my nose, as long as he knows how to keep quiet.”

  Simon nodded. “I won’t be a nuisance.”

  Evelyn gave him her best, shiniest smile. His voice was fantastic. She wondered how long he’d worked on it. “Well, then. Aces!” She turned back to Auer. “I just need a little brush and fluff and I’ll be ready.”

  He was already gesturing toward hair and makeup. “Can we get a touchup for Miss Wade here, please? Thank you!”

  Evelyn stepped away and, seconds later, was flanked by two elves from the Pretty Posse, what she called the people who made her look good for the cameras. One fussed with her hair, and the other dabbed and patted at her lips and eyes to make sure everything looked perfect.

  “You’ve gotta stop lying on your back in the trailer,” the hair girl muttered. “You’re ruining all our hard work here.”

  “Telling an actress to stop lying on her back is like asking a fish to stop swimming, darling,” Evelyn said, adding a pout to her voice.

  The hair girl snorted and shoved her shoulder. “Go, you’re gorgeous.”

  “Thank you, elves,” Evelyn called as she strode toward her position.

  The other actors began to migrate toward their marks. Evelyn climbed the ladder on one side of the scaffold and walked across to where her bow and arrows had been left. She slung the strap of her quiver over one shoulder and carefully stepped from the shaky security of the board to the sloped and hazardous surface of the stone. The sandals slipped a little but not enough to worry her. She braced herself against an outcropping and swung the bow out from her waist in a wide arc.

  A few feet below her, Joe Singer puffed out his chest and stretched his arms out to either side. He was a picture perfect movie star, from the strong chin to the shining blue eyes. He looked like he had stepped directly out of a recruiting poster to play Henry King, the heroic captain of the shipwrecked mortals. Standing next to him was Barry Denton, olive-skinned with his hair slicked back to draw attention to the slant of his forehead. He had a goatee to frame his square jaw and high cheekbones. Barry was their Ares, the main antagonist of the film, and no one had to wonder why he’d been cast as a god.

  Barry’s outfit was similar to Evelyn’s, but cut lower to reveal his pecs and a hint of his abs. It was probably the only time her male costar had been more exposed than she was, she realized with a smirk.

  Auer shouted to be heard by everyone. “Let’s get this one in the can, people. Places!”

  Joe and Barry moved so that they were facing each other. Joe telegraphed a punch toward Barry’s jaw, Barry responded by waving his head from side to side in a cartoonish daze.

  “Stop clowning around, fellas,” Auer scolded.

  Evelyn raised her bow and nocked an arrow. She aimed it at Joe’s chest. She’d accidentally fired the arrow on their last run-through, and they were all relieved to discover the plastic tips weren’t hard enough to do more than bruise. Luckily Joe hadn’t held the slip against her, but she was determined it would be the last mistake she made on this set.

  “First positions! Clear the frame! Everybody ready...”

  The cast moved to where they were supposed to be and held.

  “Action!” Auer called.

  “We have no quarrel with you,” Joe said, his voice projecting as if he was standing on a stage. He raised his hands in a placating gesture as he scanned the extras flanking Barry. “We just want to get home.”

  “They are warriors!” Evelyn barked, holding a scowl on her face as everyone turned to look at her. “Their ship bears weapons of war.”

  “We do not seek out battle,” Joe said. “Our country is at war, that is true. But you are not our enemy. There is no reason for us to fight.”

  “And even less reason for us to be allies,” Barry countered. “Leave this land before we are forced to send you to po-sigh-a-done.”

  “Cut!” Auer said.

  Joe dropped his hands to his sides and rolled his shoulders. Barry brought up a fist and racked it against his forehead a few times.

  “I know, I know, I know,” he said. “Poseidon. Poseidon.”

  “You got it?” Auer said.

  “I have it,” Barry said, reassuring both director and his costars.

  Auer said, “Okay, let’s take it again from the top.”

  Everybody reset. They went through their lines, and Barry sailed past the word he’d flubbed. The scene continued perfectly until the gods decided they would take the mortals back to Zeus for judgment. When they reached the last line, Auer called cut again and asked them to do one more take. “Poseidon, Barry. You also hit your mark a little hard. Try to make it smoother this time. And... action!”

  They went through one more time without a hitch, and Auer declared the scene complete.

  Evelyn lowered her arm and rubbed her shoulder. She returned to the scaffold and carefully climbed down, leaving her props at the foot of the ladder so someone could secure them somewhere until she needed them again. Close to half an hour standing on a rock in the blazing sun so she could say one line. It could’ve been worse, she reminded herself as she watched Adora Bell slip back into her robe. She could’ve gone through all of this just to be eye candy in the background of the scene while everyone else got to work. She almost felt bad for the kid. There but for the grace of God, she thought.

  “Wonderful,” Auer said when she was back in the tent’s shadow. “Just fabulous. The way you held that bow, it’s like you actually know how.”

  “I do know how.”

  He ignored her and waved over the reporter. “Let’s get a shot of you in the costume. That’ll look great with the interview, right?”

  “Um, sure,” the reporter said. He awkwardly moved into position and fumbled a little with the camera.

  Evelyn stepped back into the sun and put her hands on her hips. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin for a heroic pose.

  “What are you doing, sweetie?” Auer said. “Men don’t want that. Right?” He slapped the back of his hand on the reporter’s shoulder with a laugh. “Come on. Give ‘em a good shot.”

  Evelyn raised an eyebrow at him. Auer raised his eyebrows and gestured.

  “I don’t--” The reporter stammered.

  “It’s all right,” Evelyn said. “He’s right.” She bent her knee and turned to the side, raising her shoulder so it touched her chin. She plucked at the hem of her chiton and lifted it just enough to show almost all of her thigh. She pursed her lips and widened her eyes, sucking in her cheeks. The reporter watched her, looked at the director as if confirming this was what he wanted, and then raised the camera again.

  “Say cheese, doll,” Auer said.

  “I already took the picture,” the reporter said.

  “Quick on the trigger, ey?” Auer laughed and slapped the reporter’s shoulder again. “Who can blame you with a dame like this?”

  Evelyn smoothed down the front of her chiton. “I’m not in the next few scenes, Sol. Why don’t I take Mr. Grace back to my trailer so we can have the interview?”

  Auer and the screenwriter exchanged grins. Evelyn pretended not to know what they were thinking. She plucked her sunglasses from Auer’s pocket and slipped them back on.

  “Sure, sure. Take your time, sweetie.”

  Evelyn smi
led warmly at the reporter and motioned for him to walk with her. He turned on the ball of his foot and fell into step beside her, walking quickly as if he was just as eager to escape the tent as she was. When they were almost to the trailer, he looked back to make sure they were out of earshot before he leaned closer and whispered to her.

  “I took the first picture.”

  “Pardon?” Evelyn said.

  “The first one?” Grace clarified. “Arms akimbo, like Superman from the comics. That’s the picture I took. The second one I just pretended.”

  Evelyn said, “You did? Well, Mr. Grace, there might be hope for this interview yet.”

  She opened the door to her trailer and motioned for him to lead the way. It wasn’t gallantry, rather just habit to prevent anyone from peeking up her skirt as they followed her inside. She had half a theory that trailers were elevated for that very reason, to give a reason for stairs that allowed stares. Grace didn’t hesitate as he went up. She went in behind him and closed the door, grateful for the relatively cool air of the interior. She put her sunglasses down on the counter and patted her hair to knock out any sand that might have gotten caught in the waves.

  Grace was standing by the couch, eyeing the cushions. “You can just rearrange those however you want and have a seat. Can I get you something to drink? I have tea, lemonade...”

  “Ice water would be great, if you have that.”

  “Oh, I most certainly do.” She went into the kitchenette at the back of the trailer. “I have a question I want to ask you, but it’s not something one just blurts out. Normally I would preface something like this by saying something along the lines of ‘I hate to be rude’, but given the reason you’re here, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “No, I mean, of course. I’m going to be asking you questions so it’s only fair that it goes both ways.” He sat down on the couch and put his camera down on the cushion next to him. He fumbled in his pockets and produced a notepad and pencil. “Ask away.”