Chapter 136

Phil awoke to the sound of his phone trilling and glanced at it to see what time it might be. The clock read 5:37 a.m. and the screen showed a familiar face.

He’d only been asleep for three hours – courtesy of his neighbor’s party with what sounded like 20 others from the strip club. He wasn’t certain what event might be happening on a Monday night but it was obviously something important because the scantily dressed women had started to arrive about 10 p.m. It was almost two in the morning before the loud music and louder voices ceased as the group headed out for whatever the night held. Phil had wondered if he’d be awakened by police asking for someone to identify his neighbor’s body.

Instead, the first words he heard that day came from Tiffany Grayling.

“You’re a dick!” she said.

“What?” Phil asked sleepily.

“You heard me,” she said. “You’re a total fucking asshole!”

“Uh, sure,” Phil said. “What did I do now?”

“You know what you did,” Tiffany informed him.

Phil started to search his groggy mind. He had talked to Hailey the night before – twice. She had called him before the movie just to say hello and afterward to give him her impressions. He discounted that Tiffany might be calling on Hailey’s behalf. That left the others and he couldn’t come up with any reason they might be pissed off at him.

“I don’t,” Phil said as he sat up in his bed.

“You set up something totally cool here and froze me out of it,” Tiffany said.

“Oh, the screenings,” Phil muttered. “I didn’t freeze you out. I mean, yeah, I sort of did. But I froze out everyone. I had Anna working directly with the professional staff there.”

“Because you thought I couldn’t handle it,” Tiffany said. “After all the stuff I put together for your mother last summer, you thought I wasn’t up to the task of organizing something like this.”

“Wait,” Phil said. “Christ, Tiffany, That didn’t even cross my mind. I mean, I know you have your own stuff to work on and I pay someone out here to do shit like this. It wasn’t a ... a slight. I just wanted to surprise you guys. No one knew about it but Heilman’s PR director.”

“Oh,” Tiffany said, suitably abashed.

“It’s way early,” Phil said. “Can I call you later? I haven’t been asleep more than a couple of hours.”

Her first impression had proven incorrect but Tiffany was still peeved. She turned her attention to Phil’s second statement.

“Were you out partying with the Hollywood crowd?” she asked.

“What?” Phil said again. He had deemed the conversation over and had put his head back on the pillow.

“Your movie star friends,” Tiffany clarified. “Were you out raving with them last night?”

“I was in my apartment and my neighbor was raving with her strip-club friends,” Phil answered. “Christ, will you get off my ass?”

Tiffany let out a sigh.

“I guess,” she said. “I still wish you would have told me about this.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to wish that myself,” Phil muttered. “Then I’d still be asleep.”

“Sorry,” Tiffany said. “I sort of forgot about the time difference. I’ll let you go.”

“My fucking alarm is going to go off in ten minutes,” Phil grumbled.

“Good,” Tiffany said. “I don’t have to feel guilty. Anna is way cool. And get this: She asked the media director who would be best to handle the on-site marketing. She picked me. Isn’t that awesome?”

“It is,” Phil said as he stood up and turned on the light.

“Did you tell her to do that?” Tiffany asked when the thought hit her.

“I didn’t say anything about anyone,” Phil told her. “This was my deal, not Anna’s. I ran the idea past the event coordinator at the CACC. Once I had that done, I talked to the marketing director. I asked her to keep it quiet until I could finalize the movie. She agreed, probably because she knew this would create a positive buzz for the campus. Anna only found out about it last week. If you were appointed to anything, it’s solely on merit.”

“You should have lied about it,” Tiffany said. “I would have set up a three-girl blowjob for you for this opportunity. Oh, well, I guess maybe we’ll just have to find a new reason. Did Hailey know?”

“Sort of,” Phil said. “I sort of screwed up and mentioned that Grace, Skyler and Chris would be in town in a couple of weeks. Once she had that pinned down, I had to ‘fess up.”

“I knew she was hiding something from us,” Tiffany said. “I need to call her to tell her to keep her trap shut. I want to break the news to everyone else.”

“Of course you do,” Phil said.

“Go back to bed and dream of something naughty,” Tiffany said.

“I’m already up,” Phil answered.

“See, if you were here, we’d find some way to get that back down for you,” Tiffany giggled. “Anyway, I’m going to call everyone else. See you in a couple weeks. Love you, bye!”

Phil was left with a dead phone in one hand and his dick in the other as he stood near the toilet.

“Shit,” he mumbled. He had a meeting with a prospective replacement at 10 a.m. and he looked and felt like shit. He had dark circles beneath his eyes – courtesy of a lack of sleep extending back to the week before when he gave up sleep to fly home for a weekend.

He had too much going on during the week to even slip away early to catch up on sleep. He wondered if he could find an unused set with a bed and put his head down for a couple of hours later in the day. He decided he would definitely look into that idea if he found himself starting to falter.

The security guard gave a wave as Phil pulled his Mustang into the lot. At least the early morning commute from his apartment to the studio could be measured in minutes.

Phil got a cup of coffee from the cantina and picked up the daily trade magazines. He had taken only a couple of steps when his eyes landed on the headline.

“Rumor says Major Player Set to Bail Out Lambswool,” he read.

“What the fuck is this?” he mumbled as he sat down in the lobby to read the story.

“Hollywood could see a shakeup as a major on-screen star is poised to take on the task of running foundering Lambswool Studios,” the story reported. “Sources close to the industry have told ‘Tinsel Town Tattler’ that a large chunk of Lambswool stock recently changed hands and speculation is rampant that Jenvieve Borchard is the one to step in to rescue the cash-strapped studio.”

Phil’s had to read the sentence twice for his muddled brain to process the information.

“Borchard, whose daughter is a player in one of the studio’s productions, recently had a closed-door meeting with youngster Philip Warner to discuss details of acquiring majority ownership. Warner, who created quite a stir in recent months with his unorthodox management style, couldn’t be reached for comment and Borchard’s agent refused to make the starlet available. But an informed source says that Borchard is preparing to make a run at the studio regardless of Warner’s wishes. Borchard is said to be planning to assume control of the studio after the purchase, essentially forcing out the upstart Warner.”

“Is something wrong, Mr. Warner?” the lobby guard asked.

Phil looked up but shook his head before returning to the story.

“Hollywood insiders have revealed that Borchard recently purchased 22 percent of the studio’s stock through a pair of Paris attorneys,” the story continued. “‘She’s poised to make a play,’ said a source close to the actress that wished to remain anonymous because he isn’t authorized to speak on her behalf. ‘She’s been diversifying her portfolio over the past few years and she’s talked openly about her desire to operate her own studio. And face it, Lambswool is ripe for the plucking. The kid over there is in way over his head. Jenvieve has the power to really turn the place around.’”

Phil shook his head in confusion. Grace’s mother hadn’t mentioned anything about buying into the studio. If Hailey was correct about Dani and Maddy, there was no way Jenvieve Borchard could have anywhere near 22 percent. The trust he controlled owned the 57 percent. Dani and Maddy said they bought another 14 percent. He personally knew where another 15 percent was. He was trying to do the math in his head but he was having trouble putting his thoughts in order. He decided a large gulp of coffee would help. He was wrong.

“This makes no sense,” he said. Phil knew that the gossip magazines rarely got the entire story correct but he also understood that they were often right about a lot of it. He decided to have Marc Edmonds check into the veracity of the report before getting too excited.

He only hoped that the news wouldn’t scuttle whatever deal he might be able to work out with Tracey Lewinberg that morning.

Anna Goldblum stood in the middle of Heilman’s Convention and Convocation Center and tried to figure out the best way to break up a large passel of students into groups small enough to make a discussion worthwhile.

“I’ve been thinking about this since you told me the plan,” Tiffany said from her side. “I think you show the film in the main arena. You split them afterward. The CACC has been used for it before and I know they have curtains that attach to the ceiling.”

Anna looked up and saw hooks. It wouldn’t be the best solution but at least it was more than she had a few minutes earlier.

“Ideally, we’d want to keep the groups to 30 or so people,” Anna mentioned. “I’m not sure Mr. Warner understands the concept of focus groups.”

“No,” Tiffany agreed. “That’s the problem with someone without marketing background trying to step in.”

“Agreed,” Anna said. Her phone buzzed and she looked down at it with a puzzled expression. “That’s odd.”

“What?” Tiffany asked.

Anna didn’t reply but scrolled through the web site of one of Hollywood’s notorious gossip magazines. Her eyes went wide when she got the bones of the story.

“Oh, sh ... shoot,” she amended when she remembered a student was with her. Tiffany tried to read what was on the screen but the glare from the lights made it impossible.

“What?” she asked again.

“It’s nothing,” Anna said. “It’s just something I need to deal with back in L.A.”

She looked at the clock and subtracted three hours. It was barely past 7 a.m. in Los Angeles and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Uh, I need to call the office to make sure Mr. Warner doesn’t get upset over something that just came across the wire,” she said. “Luckily, I doubt he’s seen it yet. He usually gets into the office at eight on the dot.”

“I figure he went in early this morning,” Tiffany said with a sigh. Anna gave her a questioning look so Tiffany continued. “I called him and gave him crap for not including me in the planning.”

“Oh, you’re that Tiffany,” Anna said with a nod. “He’s mentioned you a few times.”

She smiled at Tiffany’s surprised reaction.

“He calls you his unpaid public relations guru,” Anna said with a wink. “Let me try to get in touch with him.”

“What is it?” Tiffany asked as Anna dialed.

“Just something on a web site,” Anna told her. “It’s garbage but Mr. Warner can get a bit upset over gossip and innuendo – but you already know that.”

“He’s an honest guy,” Tiffany said with a shrug. “Most honest people get pissed off when someone tells lies about them.”

“True,” Anna said as the receptionist picked up. She didn’t really know many honest people – and you couldn’t go into marketing and keep your virtue intact – so she couldn’t say for certain. She closed her eyes when she found out Phil was in a closed door meeting with Marc Edmonds.

“I’ll call him,” Tiffany said with a shrug.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Anna said. “He and Marc share an assistant and she said he was pretty unhappy when he got upstairs this morning. I think he called Marc at home and made him come in.”

“He’s been mad at me before and got over it,” Tiffany said with a wink. “Hailey won’t let him stay pissed at us for very long. It’s sort of a rule.”

She punched in the speed dial number for Phil and listened as it rang twice.

“Sorry, Tiff,” he answered. “I don’t really have time to talk right now. I’ll call you later tonight and you can wow me with what you came up with.”