If Im Honest Ch 08

Chapter Eight -- Darling Nikki

Now you might think that since I have been known to hobnob with techbros from time to time that I've spent my fair share of time in mansions, but that couldn't be further from the truth. See, people like me, we aren't the kind of people who techbros invite into their homes. Sure, they'll happily schmooze us at restaurants and bars, but they never invite us into their homes. They want us to keep us at arm's length, because we're useful, but they never want us to think we're friends.

In fact, the only mansion I'd spent any real time in was Larry's, and even then I didn't really feel much at home, because Larry always made it clear that it was

his

place, and that we should be thankful he allowed us into it from time to time.

Larry's house wasn't shit compared to this place, though. Jacob Wagner had made a big name for himself the last several years doing big budget action flicks, making them for smaller than expected budgets and delivering higher than expected profits. They'd actually offered to up his budget for upcoming movies several times, but he stressed that keeping to a tighter budget made him agile and let him try unexpected things, because the investment wasn't so large that a misfire would cost anyone.

Not that the dude had had a misfire yet, the talented sumbitch.

I actually really liked his movies, and the fact that he was doing a movie with Nikki Adamsdale had been big news when they announced it two years ago. "The State Of Pain" was his first foray into genre, although it still had all the impressive fight scenes and shootouts he'd built his career on the back of. The movie was post-apocalyptic, trying to tap into the success of Mad Max: Fury Road, but instead of deserts, his film was set in snowy forests, with a backdrop of nuclear winter explaining the season. The trailer had looked amazing, and if Colleen hadn't called me up to visit this weekend, I'd probably have gone out to see it in the theaters. Jacob had even shelled out for Roger Deakins to be his cinematographer, so the damn thing looked insanely gorgeous, blood splatter on white snow under a setting sun being a particularly powerful image for the trailer to end on.

Jacob's girlfriend, Lacey Jenkins, was the top of the call sheet for "Distant Lives," so while the show was basically an ensemble piece, somebody still had to get top billing, and it wasn't any surprise that Lacey Jenkins was it. She had been the It Girl for the last couple of years in terms of zeitgeist, and after she'd broken up with one of the guys from One Direction, she'd started dating Jacob a few months later, and they seemed to apparently make a very good couple.

Keep in mind, I didn't know much of the interpersonal gossip about who was sleeping with whom, but Colleen informed me about all of it on the drive over, and now that we were walking into the mansion, it was a veritable smorgasbord of beautiful people, and bracelet on my wrist was pulsing up my nerves, reminding me how it wanted to let loose, and if I didn't pick someone soon, it would probably pick for me.

Colleen squeezed my hand with a soft smile, as Lacey and Jacob met us near the door. Jacob was in his late 30s and looked less like a director and more like he'd escaped out of central casting for a movie about jocks in the 1980s, a high school letter jacket on and giant mirrored aviator sunglasses, his feathered brown hair done up in a man bun, his face scruffy enough to be just past five o'clock shadow but not scruffy enough to be called an attempt at a beard. I'd heard Jacob had started as a fight choreographer and had worked his way up to second assistant director for some movie that Christian Slater had been in, and from there, he'd been able to parlay that into his first flick, and hadn't looked back since.

Lacey, on the other hand, was trying to shed her history as a bubblegum pop princess and evolve into a more mature look. She was only in her mid 20s, but had broken as a kid on some show for the Disney Channel before getting a successful singing career in her early teens. Around the time she was getting her driver's license, though, it became clear she couldn't do both, and had to choose one or the other -- music or acting. Acting had won out, and while she'd had some decent turns as a guest star on a handful of shows, "Distant Lives" was going to be her breakout role, assuming the show turned out okay. She had a lot riding on it, but I knew she apparently also had a small part in "The State Of Pain" that was generating some buzz as well.

"So you must be Deke," Lacey said, extending her hand out for me to shake. "The man I have to thank for cleaning up our screenplay. That means the absolute world to me," she said with a smile. "And if you want to actually come and watch some filming, you let me know and I'll make sure they bring you to sit in my chair for half an hour or so. Colleen brought your notes to us all a bit before filming, and they were

exactly

what we needed to hear. I mean, strictly speaking she wasn't supposed to show the script to anyone," the girl laughed, "but the source material's been out there for a while, so I suppose no harm no foul, and you

did

know what wasn't working."

While Lacey was leaning in to kiss me on the cheek, Jacob took my hand to shake it. "Anything that makes Lacey happy makes me happy, so thanks for that, dude," Jacob said, his voice very surfer-ish. "If you want, I can set up a private screening of the new flick for you and Col tomorrow, my way of saying thanks."

"That'd be great, man," I told him. "I'm a big fan of your work. 'Taking Back Tonight' was a great goddamn movie, and who the hell thought that Martin Sheen would make an amazing action star. I imagine he didn't do a lot of his own stunts."

"Man's almost eighty, so no," Jacob said with a laugh, "but I think I made it look like him basically all the time. He told me 'If Liam Neeson can do this kind of shit, I've got at least one more flick in me where I play the heavy.' So I wanted to totally give him that kinda badass sendoff he wanted, since he's really only doing dramas these days."

"He was great in 'The Departed,'" Colleen chimed in.

"Right?" Jacob laughed, leaning in to kiss Colleen's cheek. "Seems like you've got yourself a man with good taste, Col, so maybe hold onto this one instead of wash-rinse-repeating him like you normally do."

Colleen rolled her eyes at him. "I am not, and have never been, that bad, Jacob, I don't care what your girlfriend's been telling you."

Jacob raised his hands in surrender, grinning. "She don't tell me shit, babe. I'm only saying what I see in the rags."

"Yeah, well, if you believe those, then Lacey ought to be pissed at you for banging your leading lady," Colleen teased with a giggle.

Lacey smirked. "Like he'd even have a

chance

with Nikki Fucking Adamsdale on his

best

day," she laughed. "I saw the story and immediately knew it was full of shit. I think they basically confused Jacob and Nate, because they both have the last name Wagner, when they took the pictures and tried to concoct some story to make it seem like they'd bought the pictures for a reason. They'd run a story that Nikki and Nate had broken up the day before, and heard that she was having lunch with someone with the last name Wagner, and didn't want to get stuck footing the bill for no reason."

"Are you related to Nate Wagner, Jacob?" I asked him.

"He's from Manchester and I'm from fucking Hawaii, so no, bruddah, I am not related to him in any way," he said, shaking his head. "Nikki was none too fucking happy about that story, though, as she'd just dumped the Late Nate a few days earlier, and here was TMZ claiming I was banging her, based on the fact that I was sitting across from her at a lunch in between doing interviews at a press junket for the film. I swear, TMZ has the common sense of a coconut."

"Bunch of parasites if you ask me," Colleen agreed.

"Have they hit you up with any weird stories yet, Col?" Lacey asked her.

"Not yet, but I'm not big enough for them to really notice me."

"You will be," Lacey assured her. "Especially once they renew the show."

"You think that's likely?"

"Based on the studio's reaction to the dailies, it seems pretty likely, although they want to see how the special effects are going to look. Assuming the FX team can deliver on what they promise, I wouldn't be surprised if we got the full 5 season pick up before we were even done filming the first season."

"That's a

lot

of TV to order all up front," I said in surprise.

"Everyone wants to get the next Game of Thrones, so we pitched HBO a full 5-season story, and Sherrie Granov, our showrunner, had all five seasons outlined in the pitch proposal. They agreed if they liked the first season to pick up the rest as a package deal," Colleen told me. "And if anyone's got the balls to pull something like that off, it's Sherrie. I wouldn't want to piss her off on my best of days, and she's been great at managing the show so that we all feel comfortable, what with the extremes."

"Extremes?" I asked.

"One day you show up and you're going to be filming a seven-minute fight scene, and the next day you've got a scene completely in the buff, so it can be quite the yo-yo," Lacey said with a smile. "But Sherrie's got intimacy coaches on set for the days where we're shooting nude, and the amount of people on the set is brought down to a complete minimum, so that it doesn't feel so awkward, although I don't think that's helped Mick any."

Colleen began to frantically giggle before bringing her hand up to her face. "Oh god, I know I shouldn't laugh, but he was

so

nervous the first day he and I were both shooting naked. It's like male actors are completely unfamiliar with having to get their bits out for a part."

"Full frontal, both men and women, huh?" I asked. "Daring."

"Once Spartacus did it, it was like the floodgates were open, and suddenly everyone wanted to capture those eyeballs," Lacey said. "And the actresses of the show agreed to it as long as there were several male cast members being asked to show as much as we were."

"Lacey tells me it caused a couple of actors to drop from the show, but if they can't do their part, then fuck'em I say," Jacob laughed.

"I suspect at least one of them just wasn't up to the size of their, ahem,

part

," Lacey said with a giggle.

"Oh god, who? Who?" Colleen said, as Lacey shook her head fiercely.

"You will never get it out of me!" She looked around conspiratorially, then grinned. "Not here, anyway. Ask me again later."

"You

know

that I will."

"So what do you do for a living, Deke?"

"I set up call centers for other companies. Basically, somebody decides their company needs to offer phone support of some kind, so they contact us, and my team builds the script, sets up the location, gets the phone lines, trains the people then hands it over to the company that contracted us. It's certainly not what I'd call exciting work, but it keeps me busy."

"So any time I call a company and talk to someone in India, that's your fault?" Lacey asked.

"Well, partially, but not entirely," I laughed. "We set up the center where the client wants us to, so, sure, I've set up a bunch in India, but I've also set up a bunch in Ireland, in the Midwest, in some of the rust belt states... I don't tell the client which location to choose -- I just present them all the options and then do what they want. And labor's cheap in India, so it is what it is."

"That what you wanted to do for a living growing up?" Jacob said.

"Nah," I replied. "I wanted to own and manage my own bar, but that kind of thing is a very unstable business, and I needed to make sure I had a job that kept me fed and sheltered, and it turned out I was pretty good at this."

"Would you consider doing a little script doctoring on the side?" he asked me.

"Dunno. Why, you got a script you want me to take a look at?"

"Yeah, here," he said, handing me a business card. "Shoot me an email and I'll shoot you back a contract and NDA for a project I'm working on. Maybe you can give me a little of the magic you gave Lacey and Col."

"Hell, I won't say no to at least giving it a try."

"That's the spirit," Lacey said to me.

"Speaking of giving it a try, do you want me to provide an introduction to Nikki, Col?" Jacob asked. "I know you haven't met her, and she can be a little prickly to people who just randomly walk up to her and start talking. If I introduce you, it should make the first few minutes a whole lot smoother."

"I'd definitely appreciate that, Jacob," Colleen said, kissing his cheek.

"Sure, let's go say hi."

The party was full of all sorts of well known actors, all of which would make the gall and gumption of what I was going to do shortly work even better. Jacob led us over towards Nikki, who was holding court with a handful of men who seemed to be hanging on her every word, as well as one or two women, who were either doing the same thing or were hoping to leech off of her rejects, peeling them away as their best second option.

"Nikki my dear!" Jacob said loudly enough to draw all the eyes onto him. "Let me introduce you to one of my dear Lacey's coworkers and her friend. This is Colleen Yi, who's working with Lacey on 'Distant Lives' and her friend Derrick King."

So let me tell you friends, Nikki Adamsdale is everything you would expect her to be and more in person, with a presence that practically commanded the attention of everyone in the room. She was gorgeous, sure, but lots of Hollywood people are gorgeous, so you have to be

exceptionally

gorgeous to be considered so when you're surrounded by movie stars. She was shorter than most of the people around her, maybe five and a half feet tall, but those heels of her were doing a lot of work, and I wondered if she was even five foot tall without them.

Her extremely dark brown hair was done up into a bun with chopsticks stuck through it, and her icy blue eyes were behind a pair of 1950s librarian wing shaped glasses. While most of the people at the party were showing a

lot

of skin, she had on a crimson dress with sleeves that covered most of her body in silk, except for < shaped line of exposed flesh that ran down the middle of the front, letting the curve of one of those perfectly handful sized tits be exposed on the side only a little. She also had on a diamond pendant that probably cost more than I'd made in the last five years put together.

"Ah, certainly," she said to us, her accident dripping with London posh and erudite upbringing. "Any friend of Lacey's must certainly be a friend of mine. How is the television business these days, Miss Yi? My agent, Walter, keeps trying to convince me to consider it, but I must confess it seems as though it is a lot more work for a lot less reward, and why should I sully myself with even more work, especially in a lesser field, when I am able to do so well at the box office?"

That was exactly what I wanted to hear. Despite her charming demeanor, there was something incredibly snobbish about the woman. It was funny, because I'd read two different articles about Nikki Adamsdale when I'd been waiting for Colleen to get ready for the party. In the first, she had come across as incredibly warm and inviting, the kind of person you would want to go on holiday with, but as it turned out, the writer of that article was an old boarding school friend of Nikki's. In the other, written by someone at the New Yorker who had only just met her, she'd come across as a control freak with a superiority complex you'd have to strap to a semi-truck to move, and the New Yorker article had also interviewed a couple of Nikki's ex-assistants, anonymously, since she seemed to hire and fire them with the changing of the seasons, and they had all described her as someone unwilling to let anyone in her life decide anything for her ever, even when it came to minor things as whether to refill her glass of water, something she'd fired an assistant for doing, because apparently she

hadn't

wanted her water refilled, and the assistant, trying to be proactive, had 'overstepped her bounds.'

As beautiful as this woman was on the outside, she seemed like she might truly be ugly through and through on the inside, and her immediate dismissal of television as 'lesser' would've normally put this room, which was

full

of television actors, writers, directors and producers, up in arms, but because she was who she was, they were simply swallowing her pride and letting her get away with it.

Go get her

, I told the bracelet inside of my head.

YYYYYEEEESSSSS

, it shot back at me.

"Television is a great business to--" Colleen started before I grabbed her hand.

"Look, Ms. Adamsdale," I said, interrupting, "I'm sure that you're used to being the most important person in the room, but I'm not going to stand here and let you denigrate all the hard work that people in television do just to make yourself feel big. One form of entertainment isn't any more or less important than any other, and if you can't see that, I don't see that we have any need to talk to you further. Excuse us."

I pulled a gob struck Colleen away as we moved from the crowd and started to head over towards a different part of the room, where I'd seen a television actor I'd recognized from a sci-fi show about half a decade ago who had turned into a director, and I gleefully ignored the cacophony of voices behind us.

"What the

fuck

are you

doing

, Deke?" Colleen whispered to me angrily.

"Have you ever heard the story of Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra in the restaurant?"

"What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"I'll guess that's a no then. So comedian Don Rickles is in a restaurant one night and comes across Frank Sinatra eating dinner. Now Frank and Don go way back, and Don says to Frank, 'Hey Frank, I'm trying to score with this girl over there. Could you do me a favor and just swing by and say hi, so she sees that I know you?' Frank says sure, he'll stop by after he's done with his meal, and help his buddy out. After Frank finishes his meal, he heads back into the restaurant and heads over to Don's table and says in the loudest voice possible, 'Hey, how's it going Don?' And Don Rickles, without missing a beat, looks up at him and says 'Frank! Can't you see I'm eating here?'" I smirked a little bit. "It was never Don Rickles who told that story. Frank himself always told it, as a reminder that nobody should be allowed to crawl too far up their own ass."

"Jesus," Colleen hissed, as we approached the bar. "You probably just ended my fucking career and you're telling me fucking Frank Sinatra stories. I am

so

fucked. Double shot of whiskey, neat please. And hurry. I may be dying here."

Before the bartender could even get her drink out, I felt a soft hand resting on my shoulder, and I turned to look behind me to see Nikki Adamsdale standing there, having shed her entourage, a very embarrassed look on her face, some amazing combination of mortification and mollification, as she inhaled a breath, as if being nervous, before she spoke. "Mr. King, I'm sorry, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I certainly didn't mean to offend you in any way, and if anything I said was inappropriate, then you must accept my most sincerest apologies."

I wanted to grin from ear to ear, but there was no way in hell I was going to let that slip. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, Ms. Adamsdale. You need to apologize to my friend Colleen here, and to everyone else in this room whose careers you just so callously tossed under the bus." The embarrassment on the woman's face seemed to deepen, and I hadn't even thought that was possible. "I know you're proud of being a movie star, and this is a movie release party, but Vancouver, more than anything, is a TV town. That means most of the people here are working in a 'lesser field,' as you call it, and I think that's a great disservice to all the hard work these people put in day in and day out. Hell, your director's

partner

is the lead actress on an upcoming TV show, and if everyone else here is too scared of your reprisal to speak up to you, then let me be their voice. Television is just as important as cinema, regardless of what you think."