Chapter 8
ALISON
"Have you checked out AMZ lately?" Sarah popped her head into my room. "Or Pesto Marriott?"
I craned my neck up to look at her over my book. "No...why?"
She frowned. "You should probably look."
"Goddammit," I muttered under my breath. I tried to avoid all forms of paparazzi and trash television, even if my career rested on it. So much of it was blatant lies. These jerks printed out figurative garbage that everyone ate up with rusty spoons and then dared to act surprised when someone slapped them with a libel suit. And yet, somehow, they managed to keep churning.
Sarah never told me to read them, which could only mean one thing.
I rolled over on my stomach to grab my phone and started clicking around. It took me less than two minutes to figure out what she was talking about. My charge, the obnoxious and infuriating Jack Steele, was everywhere. For some reason, everyone was talking about his stint in prison: speculation, alleged interviews with former cellmates….Christ, someone even landed an exclusive with ‘a childhood friend’.
Knowing most of these were bullshit, I bypassed all of it and kept searching. Two different OpEd pieces on StuffPo covered it, too. What the hell was going on?
As if on cue, my phone rang.
"Alison."
"Gerald." I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. A coworker once told me it was a pressure point for migraine relief. It’d never worked for me before, but a girl could hope. "How are you?"
"I am going to be kind and assume you know why I'm calling."
"Because I'm your favorite casting director of all time and you would like to—"
"Let's not play games, Alison. We have a lot of money riding on this."
My entire face scrunched up but I kept my voice steady. "I understand. But this is all old news, Gerald. This isn't a breaking report about how he killed someone or... whatever it is he did. This is someone dredging the soil."
"Exactly. Soil that is supposed to be profitable."
"I don't think that fits my analogy."
"He's your responsibility. Fix this." He hung up.
I lay there staring at the ceiling for a solid minute before I kicked my feet and screamed into a pillow. I knew it was childish, but this had become frighteningly obnoxious. This, this right here was why I worked in casting, not in production. I hired them and disappeared into the fray. Good luck, sailors, my work here is done. Except now it wasn't done and I had one asshole to blame.
Myself. Myself and that goddamned dance in that stupid club for this infuriating role for this dumb movie.
"I see you've read the news." Sarah appeared again in the doorway. "Big guys not happy?"
"They are never happy. They are miserable old dudes with too much money and not enough soul." I sat up and scrubbed my face with my hands, like I could peel away all the irritation with my nails. When it didn't, I was left even more upset. "The hell did this guy do, anyway? No one seems to have any actual dirt."
"I think he beat the crap out of a congressman's son?" Sarah licked the lid of a yogurt container thoughtfully. "I seem to remember that much when it first broke. It seemed sort of ridiculous given the crime, you know? Why was he arrested and served time in jail for just hitting someone a few times? Then again, I've never worked on a law show, so maybe that's a felony for all I know."
I frowned. "You're right. That doesn't make much sense. Are you eating my yogurt again?"
"It expires today. You're welcome for not wasting food." With that, she disappeared back into the folds of the house with my breakfast.
Okay. It was time to run damage control. First, I needed to figure out what really happened, then move on to how to spin it in a healthy direction, and finally find the asshole who decided this would be a good idea to spill to the press while he was filming the movie my entire career was currently resting on.
Because I was going to throat punch that motherfucker so, so hard.
It took some digging to get through all the garbage and trash, but I finally found some legit articles from around the time of the incident seven years ago. Turns out our attractive action hero did beat up a congressman's son. Beat him up so bad the kid was in a coma for a week. As a result, Jack got slapped with second degree attempted murder charges.
Holy. Shit.
Flashes of him getting in Josh's face filled my mind. Jack had to be a hundred times stronger now than he was seven years ago. Would he have...? I blinked the thought from my brain.
Jack was originally sentenced to six years, which surely meant the charge wasn't that serious, right? He got out on parole after five years and, at least according to the internet, hadn't had any more serious charges since. Just a few misdemeanors and an attitude that convinced the entire country he could probably kill someone if he didn't want to fuck them.
"This is...weird," I said to no one, after finishing another article. "None of this make sense."
And it didn't. Why did he try to kill this guy? Why only six years for attempted murder? No one could find a connection between the two guys, yet Jack tried to kill him? Jack was a lot of things...but a murderer? Hot-headed, sure. This just felt too big for him.
Unfortunately, the entire case had been sealed up tight and there wasn't a single shred of anything to say why this event occurred. If he was pissed because the son looked at his girlfriend wrong or scratched his tire, that was clearly problematic.
But what if he tried to save someone or...I don't know. This just didn't feel right.
Okay. Step two: spin the press.
If there was one thing they ate up faster than anything, it was the chance for an exclusive on some dirt. If we could stop the bulldozer from piling it on, they’d have to move on to other things. But how did I do that?
"Do you know any secret scandals?" I yelled across the apartment. "Someone sleeping with a director or something?"
"Only every other C-list actress wannabe that no one cares about," Sarah yelled back. A moment later, she was back in my doorway. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to fix this." I gestured to my phone to symbolize the giant clusterfuck it was holding. "I need to spin all this shit in a positive light."
"Isn't that what the PR guy is for? Or his agent, even?"
I glowered at the phone, thinking of Gerald. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"Well...yeah." Sarah looked confused. Then, she snapped her fingers. "Address it head on."
"What?"
"When Molly Blueton had that sex scandal last year, she went straight to the cameras and gave her own side of the story. Told everyone off for digging in her business and provided pictures and stuff to prove her innocence."
"Oh my god, that's right. That's why Pierce Thomas couldn't get a job for like, six months."
"Exactly. She owned that shit and everyone shut up."
"This, though." I wrinkled my nose. "This isn't a sex scandal, this is a legal issue. Everything is sealed and locked. I'm not sure what he can even talk about."
"God, I need to get on Law & Order. You know so much more than me." Sarah shook her head. "Still, if you can get him talking about it from his point of view, and make it go viral, it could help things."
"Viral..." A lightbulb went off in my head. "You're a genius, you know that?"
"Tell that to my mother, please." Sarah winked. "Okay, I'm off to Bikram. Are you coming?"
I dug out my laptop and shook my head. "Can't. Work."
"Girl, they better be paying you a hell of a lot of money to do all this shit. Tell me how it goes when I get back."
I waved her off and started making phone calls, starting with Jack's agent, Bobby, and a hopeful text to Danny. He said I'd owe him for my next favor, but if I could get this to work, I'd do anything he asked. Except sleep with him, because gross. Gross forever.
Bobby was frantic on the phone. "I'm trying to spin as hard as I can, but these people are voracious. You're telling me someone isn't screwing someone else they aren't supposed to right now? How the hell has this whole damn town gone abstinent?"
"I said the same thing," I replied, then sighed. "Listen, I have an idea. I want Jack to make a video about the incident, from his side, that we can spread around."
"That's a bit complicated, Alison. This is a legal issue."
"I know, I know. If we play up how he's changed, what he learned, all that shit, I think we can spin it as a redemption story. It doesn’t look like he ever spoke publicly about it. The tiniest tidbit can make a difference, I think. Can you get him to do it?"
Bobby was quiet. "He doesn’t like to talk about it."
"Fine. I'll keep doing your job, then," I snapped and hung up on him. Before I dialed Jack's number, Danny sent me a text back. He'd help if I got his cousin a small role in the movie. Fine. I'd throw him into a crowd scene, whatever. Being on set now afforded me some space I otherwise wouldn't have. Whatever we had to do.
I let him know we could do it and dialed Jack. "You're quite the popular man, Mr. Steele."
"I like hearing you call me that."
I made a face at the phone. "You should really cut that shit out when I'm trying to save your ass."
"You're right, I'm sorry. You just sound so imposing and—"
"Shut up and listen. This is how we are going to do this. You are going to sit your ass down in front of a computer camera and you are going to tell a sob story about how you made a big mistake as a kid, but that your time in jail caused you to dwell on your life circumstances and how you need to make a positive change in yourself and the world. Then, you are going to send it to me and I'll take care of the rest."
He was quiet, just like Bobby. "I don't talk about that."
"And I don't sit around on set babysitting actors. But here we are, Jack. I want it done in twenty minutes. Listen, I don't know what happened and I'm sure it was traumatic as hell to be there, but I've got producers breathing down my neck about the bad publicity this is spinning for your movie."
More silence. I pinched my nose again and took a deep breath. Time to change tactics?
"Jack, please. I would say you could just lie, but I don't want someone to refute you. I know this is shitty, but this is someone threatening everything important to you. If we lose you in this role, the movie tanks. You become unemployable. I want to help salvage your career. I want to help jettison it. I can't do this without you. Can you do this for me?"
He sighed heavily into the phone. "Fine. Fine. You're right. I'll have it to you in twenty minutes."
"Great. You'll do great."
While he was filming, I was spinning. With Danny's help, we were able to secure space for his video on virtually every shitty platform out there and all the social media sites. When Jack sent me the video, I shot it off to Danny and Bobby and crossed my fingers.
He didn't go into too much detail, but he looked heartfelt. He said exactly what I needed him to say and vowed that he wanted to be a role model for the troubled youth out there who didn't think the world could give them a second chance. Nice touch.
Within an hour, Bobby left me a voicemail saying that his phone had been ringing off the hook for exclusives. Jack was even trending online as #SecondChanceSteele. It worked.
Holy shit. It worked!
Maybe one day, as a thanks, he could tell me what actually happened all those years ago. Until then, I’d be content to know that if I ever wanted to change careers to Public Relations, I could kick ass at it.
Right now, I felt like I could kick ass at anything.