Chapter 128

“That is super cool!” Tiffany announced when Hailey told her at lunch that Phil was flying in for a few days.

“I’m looking forward to seeing him, too,” Katelyn added with a nod. “We’ll have to put together some sort of party for him Saturday night.”

The roommates – minus Bob Prohl – were sitting at a cafeteria table along with Emma and Stacy Thomas. Even the sisters were nodding in agreement. Hailey had always known that she wasn’t the only one to feel the strain of having Phil so far away but the acknowledgement gave her pause.

“I’m not sure how it will work out,” Hailey admitted. “He’s not actually coming to Heilman. I mean, the closest flight he could get is two hours from here. I was just going to drive across and see him there.”

“Oh,” Tiffany said, clearly dejected. Everyone had talked to Phil at least a couple of times each week, but their schedules and the time difference had made it difficult. It was nothing like sitting down and sharing a meal with him five nights a week.

“I’ll talk to him this evening and we’ll see what we can work out,” Hailey promised. “His problem is that he still can’t rent a car. It was just easier for me to drive across. We were planning to stay there and I was going to come back Monday morning after he flew back to Los Angeles.”

“That makes sense,” Molly agreed. The heads that had been nodding in agreement now all wore frowns. “It seems silly for you to spend eight hours in a vehicle when you could halve it.”

“It doesn’t mean we can’t go over on Saturday or something,” Katelyn offered. “I don’t want to cut into your time with him but...”

“We miss him, too,” Tiffany finished when it was obvious Katelyn wasn’t going to press the point. “You at least get to talk to him every night. Molly totally rocked at her performance last week and by the time she got to talk to him, she forgot to tell him.”

“I know,” Hailey agreed. “I know this has been rough on all of us. I’m sorry for sounding so selfish – and I’m sure Phil didn’t mean it that way either. I think it would be cool for everyone to meet up over there on Saturday afternoon. I’m sure we can find something fun to do.”

“It’s a mite bit larger than Heilman,” Molly noted, smiling again. “Still, you need to talk it over with Phil. It’ll only be a few more weeks and we’ll survive if he’d rather just see you.”

“I’ll talk to him but I’m sure he’ll agree once he thinks about it,” Hailey said. “Honestly, I think he’s just so homesick that he sat down and started to look at airplane schedules. Once he saw he could take a direct flight nearby, he just jumped into it.”

“I thought the studio had a private plane,” Stacy pointed out.

“He sold it in September,” Hailey confided. “He’s really cut out a lot of perks and he said a place losing as much money as Lambswool had no business owning something so useless.”

“I’d love to be able to go out to see him,” Tiffany admitted. “I mean, you know, to see the studio and watch him kick ass. That’s the thing about working at Barton over the summer – just hearing how people talk about him.”

“It gave a different perspective,” Katelyn agreed. “That’s what I really noticed with him gone this semester. The way he – and you, Hailey – are perceived at Barton is different from how we know you to be. Phil is ... well, we know he’s a pretty easy-going guy. We know that you are the driven one of the pair, Hailey. But everyone inside Barton views it exactly opposite. They look at Phil like he’s a ... an ass-kicker. They look at you as the one that looks out for the little guys. I’m not really sure how that started. Everyone with a child has a story about Phil doing something with or for their kid. I didn’t have much interaction with DeeDee but I know my immediate supervisor is worried about wholesale changes coming when Phil takes over. It’s only the fact that everyone knows you and he will go into it together that keeps her sane, I think.”

“That’s silly,” Hailey said.

“The stories about what happened in Los Angeles – not only with the studio but at TravelCorp – made it back a lot earlier than he did,” Tiffany noted. “I guess ... well, I guess he wasn’t very pleasant to the CEO at TravelCorp and word got back to HQ about it.”

“He wasn’t pleasant because the man allowed a quarter of million dollars to walk away!” Hailey pointed out. “It was the same way with Lambswool. Yes, Phil has a business side and a personal side. In that, he’s no different from Beth or her father or even David. You remember what David said to us the first time we were over there. That’s a part of his personality that the people he works with probably don’t know exists. So, sure, if the people in the executive offices aren’t doing their jobs, Phil is going to come down hard on them – the same way he would if the person in the server room or on the shop floor weren’t doing his job. But he never singles someone out for abuse. I think he’s always certain the party is guilty before putting the hammer down. He’s not like some of the professors on campus that take aim at a specific target each semester and ride them unmercifully for no reason at all.”

“Is that happening to you?” Stacy asked.

“Not to me but to a guy in one of my classes,” Hailey said. “I’ve got my business stats class and there is a kid in there that Dr. Harkness just annihilates every single day. I’ve never seen the guy do or say anything out of line but she just jumps on every single error he makes.”

“Have you tried to stand up for him?” Katelyn asked. As the junior class’s representative to the student congress, she found the thought of a professor with a vendetta to be troubling.

“I’ve tried, a bunch of people have tried,” Hailey said. “She just ignores us and focuses on him. I even tried to talk to him after class but he told me not to worry about it. There was no use in having her get pissy with me because I tried to help him out.”

“Who is the guy?” Tiffany wondered. “Is he in Beta Club?”

Hailey shook her head.

“He’s a transfer this semester, I think,” she answered. “His name is Jeff Bailey. I can’t remember seeing him around campus before this semester. I think he’s like the anti-Phil. He transferred from UCLA or USC. I don’t remember which. I just recall it was in Los Angeles. But you can’t transfer into here without a solid profile. I think he’ll be a candidate next semester though – unless Dr. Harkness destroys his GPA.”

“Just let him know that if he wants to file a grievance, I’ll walk him through the process,” Katelyn said. “I’ll go through the Congress records this evening and see if anyone else filed a formal complaint against Dr. Harkness. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve even heard her name before.”

“Me, either,” Hailey admitted. “Dr. Millstone was supposed to have the class but he left.”

“He’s the dean of the business school at Georgia now,” Tiffany put in. “My Public Relations class did the original press release last spring when it was announced. It was right at the end of school. I’m not sure who Dr. Harkness is, though. I guess I can look into her background a little bit. You can bet the college sent out a media packet on her when she was hired.”

“So, about next Saturday... ?” Molly asked, moving the topic back to the original topic.

The car service picked up Phil at the studio Saturday afternoon. The game didn’t start until eight o’clock but Skyler and her co-stars – Chris Ransome and Grace Karstens – wanted to go to dinner beforehand and Phil had no reason to ask them to return to the studio for him.

He had sent Clark Withers home an hour earlier. The man had spent 20 hours a day at the studio for the past week shepherding the re-editing of “Kismet.” Phil had to admit the man was giving it his all. Clark had provided him with updates every afternoon and he seemed to think they were a bit ahead of the ambitious schedule he’d put together.

But after a week of burning the candle at both ends, Clark was starting to show the wear. Phil sent him home with orders not to think about work again until he woke up Monday morning and not to come to the office until 10 a.m. that day. He knew Clark was divorced with no children at home so he hoped the man would sleep 30 straight hours.

The black Town Car pulled into the circle and Skyler alit with a smile. She wore a pair of low-riding jeans and a tight T-shirt with the NBA team’s logo across her breasts. Phil was glad that he had brought a change of clothes with him that morning. He always wore a suit and tie at work – even on the weekends – but now he was dressed in a pair of jeans, a white Polo and his Heilman Highlanders baseball cap.

Skyler gave him the traditional Hollywood greeting – a kiss on the cheek – and Phil shook hands with Chris before Grace provided a kiss in the same spot Skyler had vacated only second earlier.

“Any food preference?” Skyler asked when they got back in the car.

“Something that doesn’t come in a wrapper,” Phil said. “I’ve been living on greasy cheeseburgers and greasier tacos for two months. I’m going to have to bust my ass over the winter to get back into game shape.”

“Game shape?” Grace asked. She was a tall, busty blonde who looked like she was maybe a year or two older than Phil – although he knew, in Hollywood, looks were often deceiving. One of the shows Lambswool produced had a 32-year-old woman playing a teenager (and rather effectively because she looked like she was 17 even without makeup).

“I’m on my college baseball team,” Phil said.

“Damn,” Chris said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re our age and running the studio! That’s fucking insane.”

“It really is,” Phil agreed. “I wouldn’t be in this situation if I hadn’t been such a horse’s ass last summer.”

“No way,” Grace said, sitting forward in the rear-facing seat. She wore a denim miniskirt that showed off legs that had to stop traffic. “This place wouldn’t be around today if you hadn’t stepped in. I don’t know about the inner workings but my Mom has been in this business for three decades. She said that Lambswool wouldn’t have lasted another six months if you hadn’t stepped in.”

“Your mom is a studio executive?” Phil asked.

The other three burst into laughter and Phil wondered what he’d said that was so funny.

“My mom is Jenvieve Borchard,” Grace said. Phil’s mouth dropped at the news. The woman was one of the most influential actresses in the business.

“I had no idea,” he admitted.

“I know,” Grace said, grinning. “Otherwise, you’d have been like that asshole Steinmetz and tried to hit me up for some capital.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Phil countered.

“I’m kidding,” Grace told him. “I can see you’re not like that. I looked you up, you know. You know what it’s like to have a powerful mother.”

“Not really,” Phil said with a shrug. “To me, she was always ‘Mom.’ I mean, yeah, I knew what she did and who she was. But it’s only been the past couple of years that I really understood. You know?”

“Exactly!” Grace said. “Mom is just ... Mom. I mean, yeah, she’s famous but she still cooked me breakfast in the morning. Until I was 12, I went with her on location shoots. I was ... I guess ‘home-schooled’ but not really. I learned from tutors on the set. She always put that into her contract. Once I started to middle school, she took a break from acting until I graduated high school. She didn’t send me off to prep school or tuck me away in a Swiss boarding school. I went to Hollywood High. She always did her best to keep me out of the limelight. It was my choice to follow in her footsteps. She told me that she’d be happy so long as I’m happy.

“I admit I asked her to pull a few strings to get me the role on ‘Roman Reign’ but other than that, I’ve tried to make it on my own. I think I’m doing OK. I got a role in a feature film next summer and I’m planning to read for a major role in a film that’s pre-production right now.”

“I’ve tried to do make my own way, too,” Phil told her. “Mom offered stop-gap funding to keep Lambswool going.”

“Why didn’t you let her?” Skyler asked.

Phil gave half a shrug.

“First off, it’s a piss-poor investment,” he admitted. “Even now, we’re going to be lucky to be in business this time next year.”

“The buzz is that we’re coming out the other side of the tunnel,” Chris chimed in. “People have really started to notice us. I mean, yeah, we had a few TV shows and some really lame-ass movies but we’re small potatoes. To be honest, I hoped that ‘Roman Reign’ wouldn’t get picked up last season. It was a miserable place to work but, I’m a lot like Grace. This is my first major role so I took it when it was offered. Now, it’s getting a little better all the time. Uh, Sky told us how you reacted to her ... overture. That’s how life should be but it’s not how it is here. The deal with ‘Iconoclast’ could have been a disaster but you even made that come out OK. Everyone on the cast and crew is happy that there is going to be some resolution to the arc.

“The fans were disappointed and I think it threw them a little when you went on YouTube to explain things in plain English. I’m from Pittsburgh. I’ve been out here three years now but I can tell you that I had no idea how the business side of Hollywood worked before I arrived. I mean, the average fan – which is what I was and probably still am in a lot of ways – everything in Hollywood is glitz and glamour. Every project makes billions of dollars and every studio has a vault in the basement. You’ve helped to pull the curtain back a little bit, I think. I know Dirk Hardwell was a little pissed off when you flat-out told the world that ‘Iconoclast’ was ... How did you phrase it? ‘A bottomless pit where everyone but the studio came out wealthy.’ I thought that was great. My Dad is an accountant. He tried to explain things to me but I finally got it when you cut it down to nuts and bolts.”

“It’s still going to cost us market share on ‘Kismet,’” Phil admitted. “I hope it’s only half a percent but it’s going to hit us. I did a cost analysis and figured that we’d lose less with half a season of ‘Iconoclast’ than with the half percent on ‘Kismet.’ It was a hard choice. My fiancée loves the show. She went shopping with Randi when we were out here this summer and they still text each other. I really tried to find a way to make it work.”

“That was clear in the video,” Skyler told him. “I don’t see Randi much but the word is that she was cool with how things worked out. She is looking to focus on other projects and so is Tiffany. Tiffany had to turn down a role in a feature last year because it conflicted and ‘Iconoclast’ has first option.”