Reggie was gratified. “So where are we hanging it?”
“Upstairs.”
“Stand back, then. I can manage it myself now it’s out of the bloody box.” Andy followed Reggie and the painting upstairs. “Hell’s bells, so this is how movie stars live.”
“Wait till you see the bathroom. And the closet. Our neighbor designed those, she’s basically a genius.”
Reggie set the painting by the wall and gave himself a tour. “A turret in your closet? An effing turret. Christ save us.” He crossed the room, ignoring Andy and his giggles, and went into the master bathroom. There was a prolonged silence. When he returned, he leaned against the bathroom door frame, pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, and said, “You’d never get me out of there.”
Andy cracked up. “That’s what our friend Patrick said. My King Lear.”
“Your friend who designed it, she did the stairs, the coffee bar, all that?”
“I told you she’s a genius. The sunroom was actually me. We had to have exit stairs,” Andy explained. “It’s code. You have to have a way to escape the building. But you don’t want an exit door right there in the bathroom, right? So after Sharon showed us the princess closet and the palace bathroom I had to think, how can we not fuck that up, and having a private space to sit together seemed right.”
Reggie nodded agreement. “I’ve never thought myself an envious chap.
Clearly I simply hadn’t seen anything I wanted before.” He sighed. “Right then. Which wall?”
Victor knew Reggie was flying in that day. He’d apologized for having all those appointments lined up, but Andy told him not to worry about it, that he and Reggie would probably be looking over the Shakespeare shit for hours and Victor would have wanted to flee the scene anyway. Victor accepted this, because he had seen the gallery images selected and processed so far (which was nearly all of them). Still, Andy had an air of sneaky glee about him.
Considering Reggie’s profession, Victor thought he could be excused for wondering what they were up to.
The meeting with Valerie was efficient. All she needed to do with any of the songs he and Andy had on their list was create arrangements in the correct range for their voices. Whatever instrumentation she thought was appropriate, they could contract the musicians later. Victor’s lawyers were already working on clearing the music rights, for the performance and for a proposed album. Andy had given him carte blanche to clear anything else that came to mind; they probably wouldn’t add anything to the concert set, but there was certainly room on a disc for a few more. Once Valerie knew what they were after, Victor headed off to his next meeting.
He’d blocked out more time for Tanith, because they hadn’t spent any
time one-on-one for a year, and had a lot of catching up to do. “What you and Vicky did on the screenplay was ace,” she told him, once they moved on to business. “Really good. Solved all my problems.”
“We were a little nervous about it,” he said. “We had to start actually writing, and that’s way different from tweaking a line or a bit of business here and there.”
“No, it’s good. Remember what we were talking about back in August?
The art wants what it wants. I am more interested in getting a working story on-screen than in who wrote what. Also, frankly, I want this to be commercial. It’s already got two big hurdles to jump.”
Victor knew what she meant. “Forties setting and female-centric. We’ll need to get the word out to all those people who are pissed about Agent Carter.” Tanith laughed. “Hey, I know people. They’re like, the best part of the whole Captain America story was the World War II thing, that shit’s interesting.”
“It is interesting. So all that new stuff with the post-war mob angle was really great, especially since it let you get some action scenes in there. All my action was either dancing in the club, or people getting quietly killed. Now, even though it is apparently set in San Francisco, it’s more L.A. Confidential.
It was getting too Agatha Christie.”
“Eh,” he said. “That’s actually what Vicky said.” Tanith gave him a dirty look. “She did! Sorry. Anyway, good. I figured you could still film all the great nightclub stuff, the dances and the songs, and cut them in the way you did those Tanguera scenes last year.”
“You haven’t done a historical piece before, have you? Aside from the play inside our thing last year.”
“No I haven’t. Andy’s doing one next year. He’s stoked.” Tanith wasn’t sure she knew about this; she made a ‘tell me more’ face, so Victor told her about the project. “It’s that thing he was working on with Nick, back in August. He aced the audition, of course, so he’ll be in Europe with me next summer.”
“I’m glad he didn’t hang up his spurs after all. He was like, never again, for quite a while there.”
“Well.” Victor looked away for a second, then back at her. “Our TV
show was not fun for him, after the novelty wore off. And your movie, you know.” He shrugged. “He learned a lot, and he always loves that. But
learning he could do that was kind of a shock. Finding out he was capable of violence. And that he could bring it against me.”
Tanith understood. “How is the whole aftermath thing for both of you these days?”
“We’re both still seeing our counselor, but it’s for maintenance now. We do a joint session once a month, and then each of us makes an appointment whenever we have something we want to dig into. A lot of times we’ll talk something through with her, then go home and talk it over with each other right after. We’ve both had a few moments. Cranky, impatient, frustrated moments. Mean
