Cole had certainly paid Iris well, their relationship coincided with her drug habit, and it would be just like him to give his escorts heroin instead of sleeping pills. What didn’t make sense was that she’d stayed with him after the holes in her arms disappeared, which was around the time the money also dried up. I could only assume that Cole fell in love with her and began seeing her regularly, while perhaps continuing to pay other women to do the unconscious sex. Now that I know him, it’s nearly as hard to imagine Cole in love as it is to believe that my mother would fall for a man who preferred to fuck her when she was unconscious. But I have to admit there were likely things about her that, as her ten-year-old daughter, I couldn’t have known.
Of course, this theory still explains nothing about Iris’s death or Stella’s involvement in it, though I’ve begun to think that maybe Stella never knew my mother at all. It’s possible Stella assumed Iris was one of Cole’s sleeping beauties, and her presence the night of her death was only coincidence.
I hope this is the case; for all her eccentricities, I’ve come to actually like Stella. I’ve never had girlfriends, and while I guess we aren’t exactly friends in the traditional sense, seeing as I’m her employee and also lying to her about pretty much everything, I do enjoy her company. Her flair for the theatrical is exaggerated, but her wit is dry, and she has a way of making everything seem grand yet at the same time a little frivolous, as though we’re characters in a high-society melodrama from a bygone era. Where at first I thought her delusional, I now see that she’s only editing the film of her life as she goes. Some scenes—possibly some entire years—she’s chosen to leave on the cutting room floor, focusing instead on the story she wants to tell, which she enhances for dramatic effect. Okay, so maybe she is delusional.
Madison was a curveball I didn’t expect. Stella had only informed me on the plane that the original actress had been replaced, and I’d been so wrapped up in my own plans that I stupidly hadn’t had the forethought to ask by whom. I nearly had a heart attack when I first saw her the day we arrived. I’d been in acting class with Madison as Nikki Nimes, and she was right—we’d even done a scene together. I now realized that acting classes were obviously a mistake, but when I first moved to LA I’d never imagined that in a city of ten million I’d cross paths with any of those people again. Hollywood, though, turned out to be just as small as everyone was always saying it was.
Madison was as terrible an actress then as she is now, and I hadn’t expected she’d actually have a career beyond whatever show she’d snaked her way onto by dating the studio exec that turned out to be Taylor’s father. Yet another example of how small Hollywood really is. I’d lied handily when Madison called me out the first day, but still wasn’t sure she totally believed me, regardless of my “much better nose” and brown eyes and hair.
The room phone rings and Stella answers. “Felicity,” she calls after a moment. “It’s Taylor, confirming our info for our plane tickets.”
Good damn thing I legally changed my name before all this. I take the handset from her. “Hi, Taylor. I thought you weren’t booking tickets until five.”
Taylor and Jackson had held a crew meeting this morning at breakfast, during which they’d announced the impending hurricane and given everyone until five this evening to decide whether they wanted to shelter on Saint Ann or fly out.
“The flights are all full,” she says. “I’m gonna have to charter a jet, so I need to get a head count. Are you guys flying?”
“A jet?” I ask, surprised. “How’d you convince Cole to pay for that?”
“Jackson’s paying for it.”
My heart involuntarily swells with—I don’t know what. “Jesus.”
“What?” Stella asks.
“Jackson’s chartering a jet,” I tell her. “Do we want to go with them?”
Stella throws a thumbs-up as there’s a rapping at the door.
“We’re in,” I say into the phone.
After I hang up, I answer the door to find none other than Jackson himself outside, shading his eyes against the noonday sun. “You talk to Taylor yet?” he asks.
“I just got off the phone with her. A jet, huh?”
He tucks a strand of unruly dark hair behind his ear, a mannerism I’ve come to recognize means he’s stressed. “No other way out at this point, and I’m not gonna risk the lives of my crew. I’m headed up to the restaurant to grab some lunch. Come with?”
“Sure.” I slip on my flip-flops and sunglasses and call out to Stella, “I’m going to get food with Jackson. You want anything?”
“I’m good,” she returns.
I sneak a glance at Jackson as we stride down the dock together beneath the cloudless blue sky. He’s tanned and has put on some muscle in his shoulders from working out with Cole’s trainer, which he credits with reducing his stress level. There’s no doubt that the shoot—and especially working with his father—has been trying. But he thrives on set. He’s in his element working with the crew and the actors to make each scene come to life. He really encourages a collaborative creative environment, listening to the desires of each department and implementing them when possible, always holding on to the ideal of what’s best for the film. He’s well liked and respected by everyone except for Cole, who undermines him every chance he
