Chapter 14
Floundering
The next morning, just as dawn break over the flat silhouette of Table Mountain, I present myself at the main entrance to the film studios. A guard at the security checkpoint takes my name, verifies it with someone on his walkie-talkie, then opens the gate and shows me where to park.
“Someone is coming to fetch you,” he says.
I wait, wondering what the day will hold. I have almost no idea what my duties will be, but I’ve armed myself with my new face and hair and clothes, a clipboard, three pens, a multi-tool, a fully-charged phone and backup battery pack, and a small cosmetics purse filled with my newly purchased lipstick, blusher and mini-brush. And a roll of breath mints — just in case.
A red-haired young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, beetles over to me in a golf cart.
“Are you Romy? Mr Rush’s new personal assistant?” she says in an American accent.
“Yes, hi.”
“I’m Becka.” She shakes my hand and indicates for me to take the seat next to her. “Polyp sent me.”
“Who?” I ask, as we set off with a lurch down the road that leads to the warehouses.
“Cilla’s PA His name is Phillip, but we call him Polyp.”
“Why?”
“You’ll understand when you see him. Here’s your ID.”
She hands me a new photo-identification badge which I pin to my shirt.
“Hey, when I say we call him Polyp, I don’t mean to his face. So don’t make that mistake!”
“Noted.”
“I guess Polyp’s too important to give you the grand tour himself. He told me to show you the ropes, but I’m sorry, it’ll have to be really quick. Britney’s in make-up now, but as soon as she’s out, she’ll have me hopping.”
“Britney? Britney Vaux?”
At that precise moment, it strikes me — I’m really here, on the set of the latest Beast movie. I’m going to meet megastar Britney Vaux. I’m going to see a bunch of other famous actors in action. And I’m going to be spend my days with Logan Rush. The Logan Rush.
“The one and only.” There’s something sour in Becka’s tone as she says this.
“Are you her —”
“Yup, I’m her chore-whore.”
Torn between a gasp and a giggle, I say nothing. Cilla would approve.
“Here we are.” Becka parks the buggy and climbs out. “Come, this way.”
She sets a cracking pace across the lot, pointing out the various departments I’ll need to know. She’s tall and rangy, and I have to hustle to keep up with her, particularly as I’m wearing heels. So is she. I’m pretty sure this can’t be industry practice — there must be a reason PAs are called runners, after all. The heels must be one of Cilla’s cruel idiosyncrasies. I fervently hope she doesn’t have any more.
“These” — Becka points at the three massive warehouses — “are our soundstages. Most of the shooting takes place in them, except when we’re on location. Pay office,” she says, gesturing to the room where I filled out half-a-dozen forms yesterday. “That’s where you submit your time sheets, and they’ll explain about expenses and reimbursement. The canteen is that way. They make fantastic choc-chip cookies, but their coffee’s poison. Rather get your caffeine fix from the machines on the catering tables inside the soundstages. Officially, breakfast is between five and seven, and lunch between noon and one-thirty. But be prepared to grab something when you can and eat on the run, because they keep us hopping in this job. Well, Logan’s not as bad as Britney. I mean,” she adds in an afterthought, “who is?”
“Is she difficult to work for?”
I don’t care, truth be told. I’m much more interested in Logan, but don’t know how to ask about him without sounding like I’m already everything Cilla warned me against becoming — infatuated, obsessed, besotted.
“Oh, she’s a real princess, alright. Here we are — first stop: Hair and Make-up.”
She yanks open the door of another of the rooms at the back of the soundstage, and we walk into the air-conditioned coolness. Large mirrors, each bordered with rows of blue light bulbs as well as fluorescent lights, hang at regular intervals along the length of two of the walls. Black, barbershop-style chairs are set in front of the mirrors, and against the far wall are two chairs backed by hairdressing basins.
The huge fishing tackles boxes which perch on counters below the mirrors, overflow with cotton-wool and cotton-buds; bottles, tubs, tubes and colourful palettes; make-up brushes as big as feather-dusters, as small as toothpicks, and every size in between. Baskets filled with combs, hairbrushes, tongs, dryers and flat-irons are wedged into the corners. And a tall rack of shelves is crammed with wigs, false eyelashes, silicone nails, flesh-coloured bits of “skin,” a few bulbous false noses, and silicone bags that could only be for padding bras.
A handwritten sign stuck on the wall between two mirrors reads:
The impossible we do at once. Miracles may take a little longer!
“Let me introduce you to the miracle workers — Lindy, Mindy, and Ed,” Becka says.
I greet the man and two women who’re all working on the face, hair and nails of a blonde woman reclining in one of the chairs. The man positions a tool resembling a medieval torture device on her lashes, and clamps down hard.
“Becka? Is that you?” the woman says.
“Yes, Miss Vaux. Something I can get for you?”
“A skinny soy latte. And did you find the wheatgrass, Becka?”
“On it, Miss Vaux.”
“This year, Becka?”
“Yes, Miss Vaux.” To me, Becka says, “We need to keep moving. But remember where this room is — you’ll have to take and fetch Logan every day.”
“Can’t he find the way himself?”
“Honey, sometimes I don’t know how the stars find their own noses to blow. But, no, it’s more to make sure he gets there and back on time. This way, I’ll take you to his room.”
I swallowed. This is happening.
“For some reason, he wanted the one farthest away. Likes his privacy, I guess. Britney’s room is next to Cilla’s. They all overnight at the hotel — the Cape Majesty for stars and PAs, though not you because you’re local — and then get transported by courtesy bus to and from the set every day. But they like to have a place to crash between scenes. Around there, at the back of Stage 2, is the viewing room. That’s where they watch the rushes — the day’s filming,” she clarifies, catching my puzzled expression. “Hey, you don’t happen to know where I can get fresh wheatgrass, do you, for smoothies?”
“There’s a health bar on the Waterfront. I’m pretty sure they could help you.”
“Excellent! Her highness has been kvetching about that grass for days now. I know twenty-two places I could source it in L.A., but I don’t know this town.”
“I hope Mr Rush doesn’t ask for too many odd things.”
“Ah, he’s a sweetie, not too demanding, just kinda helpless, you know? And he needs to be hustled along, because he dawdles, and that drives Cilla crazy. Be thankful you’re not her PA. She’s a total control freak. Now Britney positively enjoys being demanding and difficult. I’ve got to do everything for her — well, except going through her lines. She’s got some freakish kind of memory thing going on there. Only needs to read or even hear a line once and it’s memorized. But she makes me do everything else, including forging her autograph on stacks of photos for fans. Do you know — oh, special effects and animatronics are that way, beyond the pay office — that in June, when her dog got cancer, I had to take him to the vet to get him put down, then find a place that would cremate him and turn the ashes into a diamond?”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I am not. Some days she wears him in a ring on her little finger, and acts like a deeply grieving dog widow. As if! She hardly knew that dog. A little Chihuahua called Bugeye. I had to walk him and play with him. Once she called me at two in the morning to come clean up where he’d been sick on the stairs of her house. This here is Stage 3. But she loved having her picture taken with it. Good for her image — the public are such saps for dogs. When it died, I had to hunt around for another dog that looked just like it.”
“Logan also has a dog,” I say, pleased that I know something about my star, too. “It’s a beagle called Toffee.”
“Oh? Never seen it — wonder where he keeps it? Right, here we are.”
She thumps on a door at the back of the third warehouse labelled Star Room 3A. The nameplate beside the door states: The Beast.
There’s no reply.
“Why is his different? I mean, everyone else has their name, but he has the movie title.”
Becka shrugs and knocks again. “It’s like he is the Beast, isn’t he?”
“Well, no. I mean, he’s Logan Rush — the actor who plays the Beast.”
“Same diffs. Either way he’s supposed to be in hair already. You better go on in and bring him out.”
“Me?”
“You’re his PA, not me. Go on,” she says, giving my back a little push, “you got this.”