The Role Read online

  “You know who. Don’t give me that shit and I won’t tell Rory that you stole a pair of his underwear from Wardrobe to auction on eBay.”

  “Jesus, Alina. He’s right over there. Waiting for his guest of honor by the monitor bank,” she said, her voice truly annoying in its singsong pitchiness.

  “Thanks.” I dropped her arm and reluctantly turned toward Michael.

  I was within a few feet when I noticed a fuss over by the entrance—hopefully a fire that could wait to be put out. Ignoring it for the moment, I got right in Michael’s face. He looked at me with sad puppy-dog eyes, pulled a theatrical frowny face and slung his arm around me. I sighed, resting my head on his shoulder, and we chorused, “I’m sorry.” I was pretty sure he meant it. I didn’t.

  When Michael stepped away to confer with some of the lighting crew, I turned back to see what had caused all the excitement earlier. The set continued to buzz like a disturbed beehive as the swirls of crew and talent split and coalesced in new directions. It was like the center of gravity had shifted and realigned in a split second. I wasn’t sure what had happened until I saw a very tall, very thin blond man with a baseball hat gliding through the crowds. Markus Shellenberg, again, in the flesh. The fine hairs on my arms rose as if a lightning strike were imminent. I could practically smell the ozone in the air.

  He was still far enough away that the features beneath the brim of his hat were shadowed and indistinguishable, but his visual impact was undeniable. Even if he looked less than his best, he was still Markus. Fucking. Shellenberg. I saw one woman stumble, a man drop a boom mic and two of the younger assistants smash into each other. The coffees they were ferrying to their various overlords flew into the air and rained back down in a steaming brown shower that suddenly struck me as an apt metaphor for my shitty, shitty day.

  I worked my jaw back and forth as it tightened with the beginnings of a tension headache. Everything on set felt like it was changing with his arrival—from Michael’s stress levels to the way everyone was ready to drop anything for this guy. And I was one of them, which annoyed me even more. Christ, I was crabby, but I wanted to yell at the sheep, ‘Yes, he’s pretty. But he’s a rude fuckface and doesn’t deserve your adoration.’

  Everything I’d heard about him seemed to have been way off-base—he wasn’t kind or respectful. More like impolite and disinterested. Those were the words I would have used to describe him going off the previous day’s meeting.

  He was different from how he appeared in photos and interviews, too. As he navigated the crowded set, his hands were stuffed into his pockets and his shoulders shrugged up to his ears while he looked around furtively. His bone structure was sharp enough to cut glass, and there was a grayish cast to his already pale skin. While he seemed to have lost a surprising amount of weight since the last time I’d seen him in a photo or video, his shoulders were still broad and his frame hinted at the body the world had last seen in all of its cut, full-frontal glory about a year ago in Untimely Justice.

  It was a real pisser that—despite his unexpected rudeness and the changes to his appearance from his last role—he was still one of the Beautiful People. Maybe he wouldn’t have won “Hottest Man in the World” this year, but he still would have been in the top ten with his unique swagger and distinctive features. His deep-set navy-blue eyes, albeit currently ringed in red, coupled with cheekbones and a jawline that Renaissance sculptors would have killed to depict, marked him as someone to watch. The jagged edges of dirty-blond hair that peeked out from under his baseball cap did nothing to disguise him.

  It was wild how he drew the eye of everyone and managed to keep their attention focused on him. He had that level of charisma that all of the popular kids seemed to have growing up. No one could ever put a finger on what about them was special, but everyone knew they would probably walk off a cliff if one of the cool kids suggested it. Pure magnetism.

  As I looked down at the clipboard in my hand and fidgeted with the paper, his gaze skated over my face with a tangible gravity then dismissed me to focus on Michael. Stuck in some sort of fugue state, I was vaguely aware of their bro-y greeting.

  “Well, anyways, I’m glad you found your way back. You remember Alina from yesterday, right?” He waved his hand at me like a magician about to pull a rabbit from his hat.

  I thrust my hand in his direction and mumbled somewhat resentfully, “Hey, nice to see you again.”

  Markus hesitated before taking my hand and shaking gingerly. I registered the same slight electric charge I’d felt in his hand the day before. His touch lit my entire body on fire from the inside, and the muggy Savannah air was almost a relief from the sudden hot flash. Fucking Beautiful People.

  “Likewise.” His voice was rusty, as if he had woken up two minutes ago, but there was some sort of amusement in it.

  Probably because I’m still shaking his hand. I quickly dropped it and started fiddling with my headset. “Uh, yeah. Hope everything is to your liking in your trailer. Let me know if you need anything on set and I’ll take care of it.” I managed a professional nod and glanced at Michael. “I’ve got to run. Text me if you need anything.”

  I made it around the corner of the craft services tent, walking fast and breathing like I’d run a mile in the heat. A blush climbed its way from my chest to my face. I was on a permanent hiatus from men—almost two years of unintentional but self-imposed celibacy—and my career was all that mattered. Markus Shellenberg was an entitled douchebag actor who hadn’t even bothered to apologize for his rudeness. Still, I was ninety-nine percent sure that even a corpse would have reacted to him.

  * * * *

  The caterwauling wail of an antique air horn cut off abruptly as I slid into a temporary shed behind the Wardrobe trailer and gingerly shut the door. My breathing evened out slowly as I leaned against the sun-warmed wall.

  “Alina, right?”

  Hearing his quiet, lightly accented voice from the shadows of the shed made me jump. Between the low light and seemingly random groupings of rolling wardrobe racks, I hadn’t even noticed the other person in the room with me. And I should have, because Markus Shellenberg’s presence was so big it seemed to suck up all the available air in the tight space.

  “What was that siren for? Did I hear the announcement correctly? A lockdown?”

  The low, precise voice had barely said anything, but it was doing a number on my stomach, making it flip over as I contemplated the very simple question that I was unable to answer immediately.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I’m bothering you, but I don’t really get what’s going on. What are we locking down for? Not that that makes sense grammatically, but, hey! Anyone home in there?”

  He was still there. Still talking. Waving his hand at me, trying to get my attention and staring at me like I might be broken. Crickets were chirping.

  “God, no, I’m sorry. I was completely spaced. You didn’t hear incorrectly—there’s a lockdown. One of Michael’s efforts at generating ‘spontaneous creative energy’, which I think he’s confused with fear. For the most part we pretend to be scared—maybe this will be the time that the big bad wolf, or tornado or something will be out to get us when the alarm goes off. Not that you’ll need to try hard to play along. I hear you’re a pretty good actor.”

  I was talking too fast, the words tumbling over one another, completely out of control, like one of those log flume rides where people go flying, flail into a massive splash then get jerked to an abrupt halt.

  “Ugh, sorry. It’s your first day on set and I’m being a sarcastic asshole. You’re a great actor, even if you were kind of a dick the other day.”

  For a second I wondered if the explosive verbal diarrhea he inspired could have a clinical name. Maybe the Shellenberg Effect. The punch this guy could pull with his mere presence was enough to make a nun reconsider her vows.

  His smile was faint, the dimple barely popping in his left cheek, but it was there. I swear.

  “It’s fine. I see why Mic
hael likes you so much. You don’t hold back, do you? And you’re right. I was a bit of an asshole and I’m terribly sorry. I was going to try to find you to apologize but you seemed to have disappeared when I was done talking to Michael.”

  I nodded, only slightly mollified.

  He frowned for a second, like he had more to say on the apology front, but then he gestured for me to join him on the floor behind a rack of musty wardrobe changes. “Come on, sit with me. Unless we’re supposed to be somewhere specifically?”

  “No, we’re good here. Everyone knows the drill. No one’s going to come looking for us. Not that that doesn’t sound like something a serial killer would say.” I shook my head and tried to calm my nerves. “Anyways…” I dusted off a patch of floor near him and plopped down, tucking my knees up against my chest so I would have a place to rest my chin for however long Michael’s theatrics would take. “Why are you hiding out in here? We’re a little off the beaten path.”

  “I don’t know, to be honest,” he murmured. “I was wandering around, listening to an audiobook, when the announcement and siren started blaring. This was the first open door I found. How long is this going to take?”

  I waved my hand like a seesaw. “Eh, depends on Michael’s mood. We had one that was an hour and a half early on, but the last one was only seven minutes.”

  He chuckled quietly. “Sounds like Michael. What a drama queen.”

  I laughed, and we sat in a strangely comfortable silence for a few minutes.

  “So, since we’re stuck for the moment… I’ve worked with Michael before and never met you. He usually keeps a consistent crew from project to project. Where’d you come from? And what is this muse thing everyone is talking about?”

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one with the verbal diarrhea challenge.

  “Oh, that. Everyone is talking about it?” I groaned as he nodded.

  I sighed and looked to the ceiling for help. The dim light in the shed, the occasional dust motes winking out in stray beams of sunlight through the cracks in the slats and the grandmotherly scent of musty polyester lulled me into a confessional mood. That, combined with his deep, lightly accented voice, sent me back to sixth grade, when I had my only experience with Catholic confession—and that priest had been ancient, with wiry ear and nose hair, not an insanely hot, international sex symbol.

  Which was really my only excuse for spilling my guts, and I was mildly horrified as the words kept coming out. We started with the death of my parents back when I was in college all the way up to my filmmaking dreams. A nice little pitstop to discuss my cheating ex back in Chicago, who’d hooked up with my now estranged sister, a brief soliloquy about some recent unwanted attention from asshole actors and a final drabble regarding the loneliness of starting over in one’s late twenties. Every boring beat of my workaholic life through the last eight years.

  To his credit, he only listened, nodding occasionally, seemingly stunned by my endless spewing of words. I swear I tried to hold back, but there was something that was so elementally compelling about him, how he cocked his head at me as if assessing my words and worth. The fact that he hadn’t already won an Oscar was clearly a total travesty.

  “You know, it is good that we’re getting to know each other. I’m terrible at meeting people on sets and it’s nice to talk to someone normal. A little ridiculous that a fake lockdown was the reason, no? Maybe we need to try this again sometime in a slightly more traditional setting,” he said with another faint smile.

  I looked at him blankly, not sure if he was hitting on me or if I was dreaming that the most handsome man in the world was planning on spending time with me in the future.

  “You know, because I need more friends? Seeing as how I’m a ‘rude dickhead’, right?” He snorted when I remained quiet.

  His deadpan sarcasm failed to register. He was a cipher, hard to read in the best times, impossible here in the dim light. I changed the subject. “Anyways, yeah, enough about me, tell me about you. You’re not what I expected. I mean, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but you don’t seem okay. Is everything all right?”

  “All right is a relative term. But no. No, I’m not really okay.” He disdainfully sounded out the individual letters in the word and made a face.

  “I just finished that Sellers movie—you heard Michael yesterday?” he asked and waited for my nod. “So it was a movie about a French journalist who was shot down over North Vietnam during the height of the Conflict. He was held hostage as an accused spy for many years with no one able to get him out. Everyone in his life forgot about him. I was the journalist, and Sellers pretty much kept me in a hole in the ground for the last three months.”

  Markus shuddered as he related the experience. “It was terrible. I barely saw sunlight, ate only what prisoners would have eaten during that time period and was stuck in filthy rags. There was too much time for introspection with only me and a camera that tracked every movement. It probably didn’t help things that my girlfriend broke up with me halfway through. Sometimes I feel like I’m still down in the hole and this is a dream.”

  “Oh my god, how are you comfortable in here?” I interrupted him. “Maybe we should leave.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine here.” He waved me off. “This is cozy compared to where Sellers stuck me. Positively plush.” He shook his head. “I apologize. My head is not in a good place right now and I can’t seem to stop talking. Maybe I should go see if this lockdown is done yet—there’s no need for you to hear the rest of my sob story.”

  “No, no. You can stay, I’ll go check. But wait—Kate—I mean, your girlfriend, she broke up with you? I hadn’t heard. How does no one know about that? Fuck, man. That’s seriously rough.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted ruefully. “And I didn’t handle it well at all. Five years of my life, gone.” He inhaled aggressively, like he was trying to hold back a strongly worded statement about the situation. “Perhaps we can change the subject now, though. Something slightly less personal. How do you feel about yellow mustard versus Dijon? I think it’s gross, personally.”

  I gagged and laughed at the same time. “You had to pick mustard? Blergh.”

  His rusty laugh twined around my own much more breathy one. Maybe it was the darkness and the closeness of the rolling racks, but everything about that moment seemed out of time. The level of vulnerability and openness he shared with me was surprising considering his earlier rude standoffishness.

  “Sorry, didn’t realize mustard required a trigger warning,” he said once his laughter had died down to the occasional hiccup-y giggle. “Since we’re stuck here, do you want to run some lines with me? I know I’m only in a few episodes, but we’re supposed to be shooting all of my scenes in one big chunk and I’ve barely looked at the script.”

  “Sure?” I couldn’t help my response coming as more of a question than an affirmative answer. Hardly anyone on set asked me to run lines with them. In fact, the divide between cast and crew here was especially strong. I’d worked on one indie film previously and it had been a much different story—I’d run lines with more than a few of the actors on that project.

  “Great, thank you.” He rolled onto one hip and pulled a flattened tube of papers out of his back pocket. “Here,” he said and thrust it at me. “I think I’ve memorized most of today’s scenes, but let’s start on page eighteen.”

  I flipped the pages slowly and noted all of the annotations he’d made, most of them in German. I had no idea what they meant, but there sure were a lot of exclamation points and question marks. “Okay, you ready?” I glanced at him and he nodded expectantly.

  “Sebastian, we need you to take on this task. You are the only one who can convince them to join us,” I read slowly and clearly. I didn’t bother trying to emote. I was merely a backboard for him to shoot off of.

  “Vivian, I can only try. You know it’s not going to be that easy. They may—” He paused, as if frantically racking his memory.

  “Try something,”
I inserted.

  “Yes. Try something,” he muttered, then started speaking again in the deeper, in-charge voice of his character. “We need to be ready for anything.”

  We went on like that for a few more scenes and he only got tied up one or two other times. I couldn’t help but think that if this was an unprepared Markus Shellenberg, a prepared one would be a director’s wet dream.

  “Okay, that’s good enough. Those are the scenes we’re doing today and I think I’m ready. Would you have time to do this again sometime? Maybe not today or anything, I’m sure you’re busy. But some day?” he asked a little tentatively.

  I grinned at him in the half-light. “Not bad, huh. Sure, I’d love to. This was fun.” He was so talented, even sitting on his butt in a dark dusty space, that I’d started to fall under his spell. Suddenly, the script seemed less silly to me and much more real. I stood and brushed myself off.

  “Great, I’m going to hold you to that,” he said with a smile. “Let’s go check to see if we’re free to get back to work.”

  “Cool—you’re supposed to be over at the big house today, do you know where that is?” I asked as I scrambled through my set schedule.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it. Thanks, Alina. See you around?”

  “Definitely,” I said and laughed. I had a date—well, not really a date—with Markus Shellenberg to run lines. Not that I was starstruck at all.

  He walked out and I waited a beat to leave a few steps behind him. That ass was a lovely view on an even lovelier day.

  Chapter Four

  Alina

  “Nooo, no, this isn’t happening,” I whispered as I attempted to wipe my bangs back with a sweaty forearm. “I am not stuck on a tiny overhang without a way down, please, no.”

  I frantically re-scanned my surroundings—a thin ledge on the rock wall I was climbing, well over ten feet from the bounds of my crash mat. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them to look briefly down. Nothing had changed, despite my desperate wish otherwise. I blew out a pissed-off breath and my sweat-darkened bangs floated up only to decisively flop back into my eyes.