Her assistant buzzed her again less than a minute later to tell her that another one of their big authors was on the phone. This one was a major diva. She was scheduled for a book tour and she didn’t like a single one of the hotels where they had booked her. She said she would only stay in five-star hotels. If she was going to have to get up at five every morning for hair and makeup to do TV, then the publisher would have to get her better accommodations. She wanted a suite, which Francine was almost positive the publisher wouldn’t pay for. The author in question was successful, but her publisher was not known for its generosity.
Francine tried to tell her as simply as she could that she doubted the publisher would pay for more luxurious hotels for a book tour, and she knew the reaction she was going to get. It came within seconds. The author informed her that if they didn’t put her up at the best hotels in each city, she wouldn’t go on tour. This meant that radio and TV appearances would have to be canceled, as would the book signings, photo ops in each city, and interviews with major newspapers. A book tour had a million components and moving parts. It was up to the publisher to arrange, and the PR person if there was one.
“They’re going to be very upset if you cancel, Barbara. That’s not a small threat.” It was up to her to manage her client, and she couldn’t.
“Precisely. So tell them to get me better accommodations. And I want a car and driver in each city. I’m not going on the road like some gypsy or taking cabs to a TV show at six in the morning.” She had done tours before and knew how grisly it could get if badly arranged. “I want to go first class, in every way, or I’m not going. You should have told them that before.” So now Francine was to blame too.
Francine got up from her desk and made herself a cup of coffee after the call, to give her some energy before she called the publisher and delivered her client’s message. She knew already that it would be a heated exchange. The client in question was notoriously stubborn, and never backed down once she took a position. The author was absolutely capable of canceling the tour if she didn’t get her way, which Francine felt was a big mistake.
Francine wandered into Allie Moore’s office with her cup of coffee, just to get a break. She’d been going full speed all day. Allie had had her hands full too. They all did on a daily basis. It was the nature of the business, and the downside of being an agent. You wound up spending your whole day arguing for or against something with the client or the publisher, or a nasty journalist, or someone who had done something they shouldn’t. Half the time, she felt like a kindergarten teacher or the police. She had long since discovered that stars in any field could be surprisingly childish, either because they were spoiled, which was the case with most film stars, or they didn’t live in the real world and had no notion of how ordinary people lived or what they put up with.
Allie glanced up at Francine when she walked in with her coffee, and smiled when she saw her.
“You look like you’ve had a hard day,” she said, wearing jeans and a sexy red blouse with her blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. She was in exceptionally good spirits after a very active night with Eric Clay. They were having a ball together, which Allie considered one of the best perks of her job. A never-ending supply of young male bodies to play with, which was all she wanted. Long-term relationships were not her M.O. and not what she had in mind. She liked short, hot, and fiery with no strings attached on either side. The only thing she wanted in her life long-term was her career. But the brief affairs she embarked on with great regularity were a lot of fun while they lasted. When they stopped being fun, she cut the cord and disappeared, almost always before her partners could. She liked being in control of when they started and when they ended. And she never got in over her head. She didn’t like complications in her life. And in her opinion sex was a lot less complicated than love.
“When don’t we have a hard day?” Francine said, and sat down in a chair across from Allie’s desk, which was so big, it dwarfed her, and she looked like a beautiful child at a desk, like Alice in Wonderland.
“My days aren’t usually so bad,” Allie commented, thinking of Eric the night before. “It must be in the stars. Some days are crazy. Maybe it’s a full moon or something. At least your writers are saner than my actors and actresses. I have a young star on a series who just got pregnant for the second time in two years, by a different guy each time, and they’ll have to shoot around her. The producers are pissed, and she’s begging me not to let them fire her. I had a young client this morning who got arrested for assaulting a cop. He was drunk and on drugs at the time, and he’s scared to death he’ll lose his part on a soap. And this isn’t the first time for him either. He wanted me to find him an attorney, and I did. Then we’ve got a really nasty one coming up. A big Hollywood star whose name you’d recognize immediately. He slept with a fourteen-year-old girl, who he claims he thought was twenty. They got drunk together, and now she says he raped her. He’s ruined. They’re kicking him off the movie he’s making, and in the current atmosphere, he’ll go to prison if they convict him, as he should. It’ll all be in the headlines by tomorrow. He has a famous wife, four kids, and he just flushed his career down the toilet. His wife is going to divorce him, and I think it’s a safe bet that his career is toast. That’s the worst I dealt with all day. Then there’s this crazy old actress I love who’s on a sitcom. She wants to bring her six Chihuahuas on set with her, and the director says they bark constantly and he’s allergic to them. She says she won’t go to work without them. Sometimes I think we deal with crazy people all day. I don’t know how you go home to kids at night. If I didn’t get to play at night, I’d probably go nuts.”
“I already am nuts,” Francine said with a grin.
She went back to her office then to call the publisher about the book tour, and Allie took a call from a producer. It was the call that Eric had been waiting for, for weeks. She listened to what the producer had to say with a serious expression, and her face broke into a broad smile. He got the part he had been so desperate for. She couldn’t wait to tell him, but decided to save the news until that night. He could stand a few more hours of suspense and then they could celebrate together. The producer was as excited as Allie knew Eric would be. It was going to make his career even bigger. She was happy for him, and she loved being the bearer of good tidings.
Hailey was still at her desk, trying to make order from chaos at the end of the day, and she had made progress. She had given Jane her first big project. She’d given her a manuscript from an unknown writer who wanted the agency to represent him, and asked her to read it and report back to Hailey with her thoughts. Hailey was going to have someone else in the office read it after Jane, but it was a good project for her, to get her feet wet. And it would give Hailey a sense of what Jane was capable of and how well she could analyze a manuscript’s potential.
Hailey was finishing the last of her emails before she left for the day when Bob Benson walked into her office. He was always calm, always smooth, always pleasant, and Hailey got along well with him. He slipped into a chair across from her, and she stopped writing her emails and smiled at him. He was married to Martha Wick, the biggest entertainment lawyer in the business. They both had massive careers, and Hailey wondered how they managed it. They had two sons in college, and the youngest was a senior in high school. That seemed centuries away to Hailey, who was still in the thick of things, with three very young children. Bob admired the fact that she never made it a problem at the agency. She never even talked about them, and she worked as hard as was needed in the office, and stayed as late as she had to, sometimes later than everyone else.