CHAPTER ONE
Spy Love You
On a Saturday afternoon, like many Saturdays before, I drove my old, beat-up Honda Civic into the wide driveway of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. The valet attendants, used to the near constant invasion of entertainment reporters like me, ignored the car’s chipped paint and cracked side mirror and treated me with the same hospitality as the five-star hotel’s preferred clientele. I appreciated that and always made sure to tip well at the end of the day. As a handsome valet in a crisp uniform approached the car I shoved my makeup bag and an armful of clutter under the seat. He tugged open the door and flashed his white teeth. "Welcome to the Four Seasons,” he said with all the warmth of an old friend. He probably made more money than I did.
I scrambled out of the car and made my way to the entrance as quickly as I could, without looking like I was rushing. My friends were accustomed to my habitual tardiness, but I always made a point to be punctual for professional events. Today was the rare exception. I’d left my apartment with plenty of time, but a major accident near the Beverly Center had delayed me by at least fifteen minutes so I was running late.
A sculpture of Marilyn Monroe standing over a fake vent with her white dress billowing up — an homage to the iconic scene from The Seven Year Itch — adorned the sidewalk in front of the hotel, greeting guests with her ample cleavage. Poor Marilyn, forced to be Hollywood’s cheerful ambassador, even in death. Further along the walkway, near the entrance, there were two more painted bronze figures, a disturbingly lifelike professional couple who appeared to be discussing a newspaper article on a bench. No matter how many times I passed them, they never failed to spook me.
Another polite hotel employee stationed at the front door opened it with a flourish. The fuss always seemed a little over the top, but then that was the point. The Four Seasons was an important component of the Hollywood publicity machine, where studios paraded the talent of their latest films before eager members of the media in a ritual known as the press junket. Far from the glamour of the red carpet, these events were often repetitive and mind-numbingly tedious. Spending the time in luxurious surroundings was a small consolation.
The velvety fragrance of roses hit me as soon as I dashed through the doors. Crystal vases overflowing with flowers adorned tables scattered throughout the lobby. It was smallish for the size of the hotel, and bustling with activity. Everything inside was exquisite, from the atmosphere to the furnishings to the visitors. The first time I’d attended a junket here, almost three years ago, I’d been super intimidated. Now that I’d been back more times than I could count, the place had become familiar, even comforting. Since I worked from home most of the time, it was the closest thing I had to a workplace.
To my left, near the elevator there was an easel with a movie poster for the upcoming romantic thriller Spy Love You. A sign underneath the poster showed the number of the hospitality suite on the 14th floor where I was supposed to check in. I was relieved to see the elevator open and waiting when I reached it. Someone was already inside, talking on a mobile phone and smiling.
My first thought was that he was handsome — a superficial reaction, I know, but he wasn’t the ordinary kind of handsome. His features were in perfect proportion, the hard lines of his cheekbones and chin softened by a full lips and dark eyes that seemed familiar. Which led directly to my second thought: this was Nick Archer, the star of Spy Love You, whom I was scheduled to interview that day. Between living in Los Angeles and my job as an entertainment reporter I’d had more than my share of celebrity encounters, but something about seeing Nick in that elevator made my heart race.
He looked up, right at me, and his smile disappeared. Then he pressed the button to close the doors.
“Would you mind holding it?” I asked, reaching out my hand.
His face was impassive, his answer monosyllabic. “Yes.”
Returning to his call, he apologized in an overly warm voice to whomever was on the other line for the interruption. As if I was the one being rude. I stood in stunned silence as the doors sliced through the air between us. Then he was gone, and I was left staring at my distorted reflection in the mirrored surface.
Didn’t this hotel have a special back entrance with a service elevator for celebrities? Why did they have to use the one in the lobby, where there were regular people who might be running late? The nervous anticipation I’d felt when I first saw Nick morphed into seething indignation. This was why I’d made it a rule not to date any more actors. In my experience they were too self-absorbed to have meaningful relationships with anyone but themselves. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, and had fresh scars to prove it. His behavior shouldn’t have surprised me.
I poked the up button with my index finger and waited for another elevator to arrive.
When I got to the hospitality suite — nine minutes late — it was filled with people. I blended in with the crowd, so my arrival went unnoticed. There were two attractive young women sitting behind a desk, checking people in. Studio marketing reps tended to be attractive and a little distant, as if they’d been manufactured on an assembly line, tanned, well-moisturized, and programmed to parse every response. I stepped up to the desk and gave the PR-bots my name and outlet: “Katelyn Ferris, Hollywood Beat.” One of them checked the list and found my name. The other handed me a sheet with a link to the digital press kit and a parking validation. She said they were running behind, so I let myself relax a bit.
The only publicist I ever really liked was my best friend Madison, who was working the junket that day. Madison certainly looked the part — tall and thin with wavy brown hair — but she always spoke her mind. She had a fun-loving personality, and a warmth that made her impossible to dislike. I couldn’t find her in the suite, but that wasn’t unusual. Press days were always hectic and she never knew where she’d be assigned until the last minute.
Some other reporters were hanging out by the lunch buffet in the adjacent room, so I joined them. There were a few faces I recognized. We lifted our chins in acknowledgement and made small talk as we tonged finger food from silver catering trays onto our plates. Once mine was filled I took an empty chair at the end of a polished wooden dining table and looked over the press notes while I filled up on upscale bar food — lobster nachos, crispy onion strings, truffle fries, and Kobe beef sliders.
I’d seen Spy Love You the night before and left the theater unimpressed. I was curious to see how the marketing team planned to sell it to the masses. The plot centered around a secret agent — played by noted elevator hog Nick Archer — who goes on a mission to investigate a sultry art dealer in Europe. The two of them wind up falling in love and being chased by bad guys from one picturesque capital to the next. It was a loud, predictable, dumbed-down pastiche of every espionage thriller ever made. And I was there to help promote it.
To be honest, the only thing Spy Love You had going for it was Nick’s performance. I’d always considered him a talented actor, and still did, despite his bad manners in person. He had a screen presence that drew your attention, no matter what else was going on in a scene. There was something enigmatic in his eyes that drew you in and made you want to know more. I’d seen his breakout film, The Carriage House, so many times I’d lost count. I wasn’t alone; it was the universal romantic escape for those times when real life relationships didn’t live up to the fantasy. Nick had made lots of movies since, but The Carriage House got me through some rough times and would always be my favorite.
Besides Nick, I was also scheduled to interview his co-star Tina Veracruz, and the film’s director. These were the easiest kinds of press days — three individual interviews, four minutes each, in a room with a couple of cameras. I didn’t have to transcribe or write anything, just deliver the digital footage to the site’s video editors and they did the rest. It wasn’t what I imagined I’d be doing when I graduated from journalism school, but it was a living. I still dreamed of being a real journalist someday, but for now it was red carpets and press junkets and Hollywood hype. Sometimes the job felt like the movie Groundhog Day, the same thing over and over again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I was sitting at the table sipping a cold ginger ale, trying to tune out an intrusive conversation between two reporters about an upcoming film festival, when a production assistant with a headset called my name. He gave me a five-minute warning before my first interview, enough time to pop into the bathroom for a last-minute makeup and hair check.
There wasn’t much to do, since I’d left my cosmetic bag in the car and my short, pixie-cut hairstyle hardly needed any maintenance. That was the idea when I’d chopped it off the previous summer, though I’d found the style suited me beyond just the convenience. I settled for fluffing up my bangs and applying a fresh coat of plum lipstick. The soft lighting in the bathroom was forgiving. My pasty white skin wasn’t as pale as it usually looked, or as sharply contrasted with my dark brown hair. I knew it wouldn’t look as good on the footage later. Some people are naturals in front of the camera; I wasn’t one of them. Getting over that awkwardness was the only difficult part about these video junkets.
Headset Guy informed me I had Tina’s room first and led the way to the end of the hall, where a line of chairs were set up outside the room. Like all the rooms on this floor, it was an ordinary hotel suite with the furniture removed to make space for lighting and camera equipment. I doubted these suites were ever booked for any other purpose. Just as life forms evolve to survive in a hostile environment, everything in L.A. eventually adapts to show business, even the Four Seasons.
There was one reporter on deck before me. I recognized him from the local news. He paced up and down the hallway in his shiny suit and tie, lips moving as he rehearsed his questions. I used to come up with a list of questions in advance too, but with experience I’d found it was better to let the conversation flow organically. The door opened and a sour-looking reporter emerged, asking the studio rep where she should head to next. Shiny Suit straightened his lapels and stepped inside. Five minutes later he came out shaking his head. Maybe I should have prepared after all.
The studio rep gave me the go-ahead and I stepped into the room. It was chilly and dim outside the circle of white-hot studio lights in the center, where two director’s chairs sat in front of a fancy backdrop with a European skyline and a mockup of the film poster. Tina sat in the far chair, wearing a low-cut, skin-tight sweater-dress. I caught myself wondering whether her perfectly shaped breasts were real. I was envious; I could never fill out a sweater like that.
Best known for playing a feisty second wife in a popular network sitcom, Tina Veracruz had only a few movies to her credit, none of them terrible, but not memorable either. Spy Love You was the vehicle that was supposed take her career to the next level. The press notes described her character as “a mysterious woman at the center of an international conspiracy.” She was lucky she had the sitcom to go back to. If the movie performed as poorly at the box office as I expected — and I was pretty good at spotting a box-office flop — she might not get another big-screen offer for a while. Women in show business didn’t get as many chances to fail as men.
As I sat down she didn’t even look up from the glittery gold phone in her hand. Actors always seemed to be on their phones, as if to remind you of your insignificance within their world. Someone tapped her on the shoulder to let her know it was time to begin. She put down the phone, flipped her hair, and waited for her cue. When the cameraman nodded, she turned to me, lips parted and curled up at the ends, not quite a smile but an allusion to one.
“This film is a bit of a departure for you—” I began. She interrupted before I could finish.
“I wouldn’t say it was a departure.” She had a thick accent, so the word came out sounding like “depart tour.”
“Okay,” I granted her, playing nice. “Maybe not a departure. So what would you say it means for you at this point in your career?”
She looked at me as though I’d asked her a question so obvious it barely merited an answer. “It means I made a film.”
“Are you a fan of this genre? James Bond? Jason Bourne? Mission Impossible?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve heard of them. Of course. But I don’t go to the movies much.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere with the overhead view, so I changed tactics. I needed something to give the video editor to cut together, anything specific about the movie. “Can you tell us a little about your character?”
“I play Carmen, a mysterious woman at the center of an international conspiracy,” she said, cribbing from the press notes. She continued to recite the details of the film by rote, sometimes paraphrasing, sometimes quoting verbatim. I fought hard not to roll my eyes, and resisted the urge to tune her out.
It went on like that for three minutes. I resorted to my pocket questions, the ones I saved for stiff interviews like this. “Do you have any fun stories from the set?” “What’s your favorite scene in the movie?” “What was the most difficult scene to film?” She answered in bland generalizations. I was glad I didn’t have to edit the video myself.
With about fifteen seconds to go, a crew member standing behind her held up an index finger and waved it around in a circle, signaling I was on my last question. I threw out one about her co-star.
“What about working with Nick Archer? What was he like?”
“Well, gorgeous, obviously,” she said. Her smile faltered a bit. “Very . . . professional. He’s dedicated to the work, I’ll say that. We have lots of chemistry on screen. That’s the important thing, right?”
It was true, they had loads of chemistry in the film. But that wasn’t what I’d asked. I was about to follow up when the crew guy called out, “Time!” It was over just as it was getting good. I should have asked about Nick from the start. My four minutes spent, I thanked her and climbed out of the chair. She picked up her phone again as I let myself out.
The director was next. To his credit, he was well aware he’d ripped off other romantic spy thrillers, only he called it an “homage.” He was nice enough, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t always the director’s fault when a movie failed. Having learned my lesson from the last interview, I didn’t wait until the end to ask about Nick Archer.
“He was great,” the director said. “You know, you hear things. I’d heard he was a private guy, bit of a recluse, and that’s probably true. But he showed up to the set on day one. I don’t mean physically being there, I mean he showed up. He really dedicated himself. Took direction well, always open to suggestions and ways to make the scene better. I appreciated that. He’s a great guy. You’d never know he was a big movie star. Very modest.”
That didn’t sound like the guy I’d run into downstairs. Was I overreacting? Maybe I’d been too harsh. Maybe he was just having a bad day. I briefly entertained the possibility that the slight wasn’t what I’d made it out to be, then just as quickly dismissed it. I knew what I saw.
The director and I wound up spending most of our time talking about a Hitchcock documentary we’d both seen on cable. We could have talked about the weather for three minutes and it wouldn’t have mattered. The editors probably weren’t going to use anything but the quote about Nick. Directors themselves didn’t generate a lot of traffic unless they were big names. But it was considered bad form to skip any of the available talent at a junket, so I let him ramble all he wanted.
With two of my three interviews for the day finished I returned to the hospitality suite. Nick’s room was still running behind, so I sat down in a comfy armchair to wait. There were a few TV monitors there, playing a video package with footage and interviews from the set. A clip from the film came on, a fight scene on a pier. At one point Nick, or possibly a stuntman, jumped into the water. Then the package cut to behind-the-scenes footage as the director played back the scene on a small monitor while Nick watched over his shoulder. He must have done the stunt himself, because his white shirt and khaki pants were still wet. The fabric clung to his body, revealing the sleek, toned muscles underneath. I had to look away.
Nick’s reputation for keeping a low profile was well known. As a handsome, eligible bachelor in Hollywood who had built a career playing romantic heroes, his dating life was the subject of constant speculation. He attended movie premieres and awards shows with pretty women on his arm, but just as often he’d brought his mom as his date. He didn’t frequent the usual celebrity hotspots or make a lot of personal appearances. There were stalkerazzi photos of him on the street, of course, but nothing scandalous. Somehow he’d managed to keep his love life out of the public eye, a rare circumstance in a city where everyone had a camera in their pocket and social media at their fingertips. According to the press notes, he grew up in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in drama. That was the extent of the personal information available on him, not just in the notes but anywhere. I knew because I’d done my research.
Half an hour passed before another assistant found me alone in the suite. Nearly everyone else had left. She directed me down the hallway to Nick’s room and said I could go right in. It was larger than the other two, and more crowded. When the interview was cut together and posted on the site it would look like an intimate talk between the two of us, but in reality we were surrounded. There were publicists, a camera operator, a makeup artist and a few random entourage types hanging out in the corners, their function unknown.
The only person missing was Nick himself.