She retrieved three champagne glasses from a shelf and blew the dust from each. Like a witch she felt, pouring champagne into dirty glasses. Waddling around her chilly basement. She offered him a glass of champagne. He took it but didn’t drink.
She drank from her own glass to prove it was safe. Champagne and sleeping pills, her baby was being raised on them.
This Foster drank from his. The glass left a line of dirt across his lips. He offered only a search-me shrug. “I’m looking in particular for a scream used in the movie Babysitter Bloodbath.”
The buzzer sounded once again. It drew Mitzi’s attention to a new image on the monitor. A view of the sidewalk just outside the building’s front door. There stood a young woman with wavy, dark hair worn across her shoulders. Around her neck she wore a gleaming double strand of natural pearls. This figure at the door lifted a finger to press a button on the doorframe.
“If you’ll forgive me,” Mitzi said, “I’m expecting someone for a recording session.” She leaned toward a microphone and said, “Won’t you come in, please?” She touched a button. A door opened at the top of the stairs. Footsteps descended.
Both the actress and the stranger, this Gates something, they froze at the sight of each other. After the hesitation the actress, she stepped forward. She extended a hand, saying pointedly, “My name is Meredith. Meredith Marshall. And I’m here for an audition.”
He accepted her hand. Then jerked his hand away as if her grip had crushed his fingers.
Mitzi went to the console and brought back the third glass of champagne. Presenting it, she said, “Perhaps you’d like a drink before you read for the part?”
To avoid making introductions, Mitzi said flatly, “Mr. Forester…”
“Foster,” he corrected her.
She repeated, “Mr. Foster was just leaving.”
Foster had left. What choice did he have? If he flat out warned this Lucinda that the Foley artist was a kidnapper or worse, he’d never find his kid. And she’d never have believed him. Not after he’d threatened her with a gun. He’d humiliated her.
So he’d left the Foley studio. He’d driven back to the foreclosed house on the ridge. Pulled aside the plywood that hid the street door. Crossed through the vast, dusty chambers. Used the landline in the panic room to call a number he knew by heart.
A voice answered, “Talents Unlimited.”
Foster said, “Hello. This is member number 4471.”
The voice, a man’s voice, asked for a password.
“Pot roast,” said Foster.
The voice softened, genial. “What can I do for you, Mr. Foster, my man?”
“You know that girl,” Foster began. He stepped up and switched on the room’s television. Muted the sound. “I always book the same girl.”
Over the phone the sound of keystrokes filled the pause. On television Blush Gentry sat upright in a hospital bed crowded by bouquets of flowers. Billows of orchids and roses. A scene so like Lucinda’s funeral.
Over the phone the man said, “Sorry, man, your girl’s booked.”
Foster watched Blush preen and bat her eyes on the TV. A clear tube fed a needle in her arm. Whatever the painkillers were, they only made her face more smooth and relaxed. Her head lolled, exposing her lovely neck and the cleavage at the top of her lace bed jacket. He told the phone, “That’s why I’m calling.” He said, “I saw her with some unsavory people. She might be in trouble.”
A scroll along the bottom of the television screen announced that the crowdfunding for Blush’s medical expenses had topped three million dollars.
The man on the phone laughed. “On the contrary, your girl’s on a legit audition.”
Blush received an armful of lilies in her hospital bed. Her face and gestures looked so serene, so graceful, the pain meds had to be potent. Her fingertips kept softly touching her cheeks and lips as if feeling for proof she was still alive. The press leaned very near her as if she were answering their questions in a whisper.
Juggling the landline, Foster texted the girl, the latest Lucinda. Or Meredith. Neither one responded.
“You hear me?” the man over the phone said. “This is our girl’s break.” He explained that a casting director had been calling around. A casting director had been phoning and emailing, trying to book a girl the same age and looks as some missing girl on a milk carton.
The girl on the bed stirred. She blinked slowly, and her lips curved into a loopy, dopey smile. Her bare arms and legs twisted, stretching against the rope that held her wrists and ankles tied to the posts of a bed.
Mitzi lowered a Shure Vocal SM57 until it almost touched the girl’s lips. Next to it, an old-school ribbon mic waited. Reaching in from other directions were can mics. A shotgun mic dangled down. Each connected to its own preamp. She waited for the girl to speak, watching for the needles to jump on each of the VU meters.
The needles twitched as the girl spoke. “Are we rolling?” She gave Mitzi a slow-motion, underwater wink. Lifting her chin, she looked down at her exposed breasts, her complete nakedness.
Mitzi nudged a mic closer. “You fell asleep during our talk.” In response to a monitor, Mitzi withdrew a mic a smidgen. She said, “I need to check my levels. Meredith, can you tell me what you had for breakfast?”
Still woozy from the sedative, the girl lifted her face toward the Shure. Coming so close she looked at it cross-eyed, she began, “Almonds…yogurt…”
Mitzi chewed another Ambien and washed down the taste with champagne. She considered if she should readjust for room tone.
Mitzi pressed on. “Do you know what the Wilhelm scream is, dear?” The girl’s eyes found her own.
The girl shook her head.
Mitzi gave the standard lecture. How ordinary people give everything and never see the huge profits generated from their life and death. How even the most intimate moments of
