I exhale slowly, calmly, surveying the damage to the room, and decide one way to let people know they should start heading home is to begin cleaning up.
A few minutes later, a shadow appears at my side. I can sense by its tense, annoyed presence exactly who it is. “Did you see where Rusty went?”
I look up at James McCann: tall, lanky, always exuding superiority.
“I’m not in charge of Rusty,” I say. “He’s yours.”
He stares for an annoyed beat, but I know it’s only partially meant for me. I’m an assistant and have been for the entirety of my adult life. By contrast, James—a nerdy engineering type—wasn’t hired to work as Rusty’s right-hand man, but that’s exactly how his job has panned out. Midnight beer runs, dry-cleaning duty, sports ticket procurement, and daily coffee retrieval. Not what he bargained for at all.
“We have an early meeting with the Netflix folks tomorrow,” he tells me, as if it hasn’t been a topic of conversation—the date all but branded onto my brain—for weeks. As if we aren’t all sweating bullets about how the new show is going to fare with audiences and what that will mean for the company.
“I remember, James.” I slide a cluster of empty beer cans into a recycling bin.
“In fairness, you never write anything down or log in to the shared calendar. I thought I’d check in.” Unfortunately he misses my eye roll when he blinks down to his watch and then out over the room, tense again. “Don’t you think we should be wrapping this up?”
This question could only come from someone who works for Rusty, a boss who is used to being bossed around. Anyone who works for Melissa Tripp would know that trying to shepherd her out of a party in her honor is like trying to get a cat to tap-dance.
“Probably,” I say.
I carefully drop a few empty champagne bottles into the recycling bin before shaking out my hands. It’s been a long day, and the left one is starting to act up. At this point, massage doesn’t really help, but I try to casually rub out my fingers before moving on.
“I don’t know why you’re following me when he’s over there,” I say, and motion toward the front of the room, where Melly gave their speech.
“Over where?”
I groan in frustration and turn to show him. But my irritated smugness dissipates when I find only Melly near the remains of the frilly pink cake. I don’t see Rusty anywhere. “Have you texted him?”
James gives me a blank stare through the perfectly unsmudged lenses of his glasses. From this close, it’s impossible to miss that he has really pretty eyes. But, like many men, he ruins the effect by speaking. “Don’t you think I’d do that before asking you?”
“Just checking,” I say.
His brows come together in irritation, which makes his glasses slide down his nose. “I texted him. He’s not answering.”
“Maybe he’s in the bathroom.” I step around him, tired of being in charge of everyone every second of the day.
“He’d definitely answer if he was in the bathroom,” James says, following close behind. “He takes his phone everywhere so he can check sports scores.”
James is obviously a smart man—Lord knows he reminds me all the time—but like my dad used to say, sometimes I wonder if he’s only got one oar in the water. Is he incapable of walking around a set and finding a six-foot-four grown man by himself? I’m about to blow up and ask him, but when I look up I’m surprised by the desperation in his eyes. The dread and suspicion there make my stomach sink.
I pass my gaze around the room—to the back corner where some of the set designers are opening fresh beers, to the small seating area where Dan is now pretending to enjoy chatting with Melly. In the crowd of nearly seventy people, I don’t see Rusty, either.
“You don’t want to go searching, do you?” I ask quietly, on instinct.
James shakes his head slowly, and we share an extended beat of eye contact. It’s not that I immediately suspect anything, but like I said, Rusty can be impulsive. Who knows what kind of trouble he could be getting into?
“Maybe he’s out getting high with some of the camera guys,” I say.
Another shake of his head. “He doesn’t like to smoke, and he tried edibles a few weeks ago and said he’d never do that again.”
“Maybe he left?” I say.
“Without telling us?”
I exhale a shaky breath, growing a little uneasy myself. “I swear to God, if he’s cheating on his diet …” On Rusty’s current honey-do list is Melly’s instruction that he lose a few pounds before the new show is announced. According to her, he looks puffy on-screen. If he’s hiding somewhere with cake in his lap I’ll never hear the end of it.
For the most part James and I have kept to our own schedules since he joined Comb+Honey two months ago. It’s not that I dislike him, exactly, but the way he writes off my job as disposable and frivolous and treats me like I’m only intelligent enough for remedial assistant activities—unless he needs help performing one himself, of course—really pisses me off. But I don’t want to pretend the Tripps’ world would be an easy one to walk into and immediately comprehend, either. Even I sometimes have no idea what’s going on with them. Rusty and Melly pay well and make it possible for me to keep the health coverage I need, but their relationship is obviously complicated.
“Okay,” I finally say. “Let’s go find him.”
With a grimace, James follows me out of the main room and down the hall that leads to the warehouse. The air conditioner seems abnormally loud in the small space, loud enough to drown out James’s clunky footsteps on the industrial carpet behind me. Along the way there are five doors, each closed. One is an A/V room, the next is a janitor closet. After that there’s a greenroom for visiting guests, a small crew lounge, and the editing studio. Trying to imagine what we’ll find inside any of these tonight makes me queasy.
The A/V room is dark and empty. The door hinge squeaks into the quiet room.
The janitor closet is locked, and too small to be useful as a hiding place for a grown man.
The greenroom is empty; the crew lounge, too.
The soundproof editing booth is last, and the door is locked.
I’m not sure why I’m nervous as I pull my key ring off my belt and find the right key, focusing to keep my right hand still as I carefully slide it into the lock.
We both hold our breaths as the knob slowly turns.
The sound hits us first—deep groans, skin slapping against skin—followed by the briefest flash of thrusting white butt cheeks, swinging testicles, and a bright red floral dress pushed up over a woman’s shoulders, her dark hair really all that is visible of her. It takes a couple of grunts and thrusts before my brain connects the dots and melts. Unspotted, I carefully pull the door shut again.
Rusty was definitely not eating cake.
I slowly turn around. James is still staring past me at the now-closed door, unblinking, mouth open.
“That was Rusty,” he whispers.
I give Captain Obvious a nod. “Yes.”
They have a TV show and a book coming out. A book on relationships. Rusty—and his thrusting butt—has impeccable timing. “And Stephanie,” James adds.