The work wife, p.7
The Work Wife, page 7
Still, there was the money—six figures for administrative support, an almost unreal amount.
It always came back to the money. Because if it didn’t go well for her, if Zanne misunderstood the nuance of his requests so that he had to re-explain himself too often, or if she bungled the prep for his meetings and calls, if she did anything that subtracted rather than added minutes to his day, Ted’s critique would be scathing, and she might even be fired. Before officially firing him, Ted had once asked Raj, a staffer who’d failed to hook up the refrigerator to the backup generator during a blackout, “Which one of my children do you want to starve to death?” The family, of course, had had plenty to eat. Katya had prepared the Stablers’ favorite meals in her own kitchen in Glendale and driven the food west at 5:30 a.m. before the morning traffic picked up. And the refrigerator was eventually hooked up to the generator. But Ted simply couldn’t abide failures in logic. Everyone else cashed their checks and did their best to stay off Ted’s shit list, Zanne included.
Zanne could hear Ted and Gaby’s voices chasing after each other on the other side of the wall. How could the interview be taking this long? What were they talking about? She was dying to know. Zanne tidied the desk, moving Dawn’s tin of Altoids and a bottle of hand sanitizer back a couple of inches from the mouse, then to the left side of the keyboard, then back again to the right side where Dawn would expect to find them tomorrow.
As the person currently closest to Ted, Dawn came in for more than her share of abuse. She’d committed no fireable offenses, but she had not been a stellar chief of staff, ascending to the position due to her seniority and history with the family rather than her keen judgment. If he’d ever watched his choice of words or tone of voice when he spoke to her, he no longer did. He must have imagined that her feelings could not be hurt.
Zanne knew otherwise. Dawn worshipped Ted the way some people worshipped their fathers. When she came up short, she was devastated. More than once Zanne had caught her choking back tears in the parlor, gathering herself before going back into Ted’s office to eat more shit.
But you couldn’t let yourself get distracted by other people’s troubles. They all knew why they were here. This wasn’t some factory in China with locks on the doors.
This desk was too cluttered. The Altoids were in the way. Dawn’s futile attempt to make the place feel homey was driving Zanne crazy. She opened the drawer and put the mints and the soap inside. Zanne wouldn’t let herself be diminished the way Dawn had. She busted her ass every day to make sure of it. She scanned an email from the events team. They’d gotten their hands on twenty-five ten-gallon hats for thirty servers. Dyeing was underway, and they’d keep looking for an additional five.
Rio, any thoughts? she replied, adding Holly’s stylist to the thread in case he could help bridge the gap.
She glanced at the clock. Ted and Gaby had been talking for forty-five minutes. Soon Zanne would give him another time check. She studied the calendar. At 11:15, when it would be time to pull Ted off his call with Marty, Zanne would be up at the main house meeting with Holly. She emailed the EAs and asked them to make sure Ted made it up to the main house in time to say goodbye to his son.
She toggled from the calendar to Dawn’s inbox to see if she’d missed any emails. Theoretically IT made sure that on the days Zanne was covering, every message addressed to Ted went simultaneously to Dawn and Zanne, but sometimes there were glitches. Once, Ted had used an old address to reach Flynn’s teacher; the bounce-back error message had shown up in Dawn’s inbox but not in Zanne’s, going undiscovered until the next morning. After that, Zanne had been given provisional access—good only on the days she sat first chair—to all the archived emails to which Dawn had daily access. This included not just Dawn’s entire email history, but also Ted’s and the archives of the previous chiefs of staff: Matthew, Anna, and Todd. But what about Phoebe?
There was no folder with Phoebe’s name on it, like the other archives, but in a way, that made sense. If Phoebe stopped working for Ted before he started the company, then her emails wouldn’t be archived. Stabler Studios’ twentieth anniversary was coming up this December, and Ted’s inbox was filled these days with plans for the celebration, the logo refresh, and the upcoming release of a collector’s edition of The Starfighter trilogy. Zanne brought up IMDb and looked at Phoebe’s credits. She had two credits as a producer, The Starfighter and The Starfighter 2. An auspicious start to her career in film and then nothing. What happened?
Zanne took the postcard from the notebook she’d tucked it inside, the one in which she jotted down Ted and Holly’s outlandish requests as well as...not stories, exactly, but the seeds of them, flashes of ideas that whispered in the back of her mind for days while she ran after the Stablers, too busy to finish a thought. She held the card in her hand. Why had it taken Phoebe twenty years to make Warrior Bride? Why had she left the Starfighter franchise? Zanne clicked into Todd’s archive, the oldest records saved in the chief of staff continuum, and entered Phoebe Lee in the search bar. Hundreds of results returned, far too many to search now. Here it was: Phoebe’s archive of emails swallowed whole by Todd’s. Zanne skimmed the subject lines and her eyes caught on something. She dropped the mouse like it was a hot coal her brain knew would scorch her, but the rest of her was confused. What was that she’d seen? Her heart started to gallop. She brushed the top of her mouse until she found what had startled her—the words Stabler-Lee Divorce. Phoebe and Ted were married?
Zanne looked up quickly, like the former shoplifter she was, to make sure the coast was clear. Then she glanced at the clock. Shit, she’d lost track of time.
Zanne toggled back to her own inbox. Then she dialed Ted’s line.
“Yep,” he said.
“Just giving you another time check. It’s ten fifty-five. Marty’s standing by, and you’ll want to spend a couple of minutes beforehand reviewing your talking points.”
“Thanks, we’re just wrapping up,” he said. A tone sounded. “So, yeah, Lima is very good to know about. Sounds like the smaller towns don’t have the right resources, at least right now, but maybe down the line.”
Wait, what was happening? Zanne looked down at the phone. The red light was still on, and she had an open line to Ted’s office. He never used the headset, just the speaker. He’d hit the wrong button when trying to hang up, and Zanne could hear him concluding Gaby’s interview.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you,” Gaby said. “Thanks again for taking the time.”
“Not at all. I really enjoyed our conversation.”
Their voices grew louder as they neared the door to the parlor. Zanne hung up her phone. The door opened with a “bye now” from Ted and a smile from Gaby, and closed again.
Zanne held up a finger, then pointed at the empty chair at the end of the desk as she clicked send on the talking points for Ted’s call. Gaby yawned and sat down, as naturally calm after an audience with Ted as she was when she awoke, whereas Zanne’s heart was still chirruping in her chest over the divorce discovery. How different they were! Zanne was too old and too fucked up to ever feel truly at ease, and Gaby was neither, just lost in the way of everyone so recently out of college.
Zanne dialed into the conference bridge and confirmed that Marty and the producers were on the line. She put them on hold and called Ted to make sure he’d received the talking points.
“The foreign distributor’s projects are off,” he said when he answered.
“You mean Asia.”
“The projections for Korea are higher than for Japan. Where’s Marty?”
“I asked him about it this morning. He says the director married a Korean actress this spring, and she’s looking at the project seriously, so the foreign distributors project bigger receipts in South Korea.” Zanne spoke quickly, both because it was efficient, which Ted would prize, and because if she didn’t she’d be tripped up by this moment of double consciousness. Here she was, talking to one director with a (former) Korean wife about another director’s Korean wife, and acting as if she didn’t know about the first. She still couldn’t believe that Ted and Phoebe had been married, and that she hadn’t known about it, if not at the time, then at some point after joining the personal staff.
“That would have been useful information to have in a footnote,” Ted said.
“Got it.” Zanne put Ted on speaker, freeing up both hands to type. “I’m resending the email with the footnote added.”
“What time do I need to say goodbye to Flynn?” Ted asked.
“James is taking them to the marina at 11:30. The EAs will give you a time check at 11:15.”
“Holly’s a little worried about Milo and Spencer being a bad influence on Flynn. They’ve gotten in trouble a couple times at school, though it’s hard to tell what that actually means. She wonders if we’re not being strict enough with Flynn. What do you think?”
Zanne didn’t like getting involved in parenting quandaries, but when Ted asked a question, it wasn’t rhetorical. What could she say? She knew that Flynn’s friends vaped; Ilya had seen them sucking on their devices when he waited for Flynn after school. The nanny had searched Flynn’s backpack but so far hadn’t found a device or a JUULpod, so Erin and Dawn had agreed it was best not to alarm Holly and Ted. Still, it didn’t take a child psychologist to see that Flynn was growing up, becoming both more secretive and bolder. He’d cut gym class twice last semester, correctly guessing that his parents wouldn’t consider that a real violation because they only cared about academics. How Ted could walk clear-eyed through the moral blight of the entertainment industry and still have these blind spots about the contradictory nature of the ones he loved, was a mystery. Still, Zanne knew Ted’s questions wouldn’t go away. The smart bet was to provide a different perspective than Erin or Dawn or the nanny or any of the other type As around here. Not every little thing was cause for panic.
“When I was around Flynn’s age, I misbehaved,” Zanne said. “Nothing major, but my father got called into the principal’s office once or twice.”
“No, Zanne. Not you.” It should have been a joke, but it wasn’t. He sounded sincerely surprised.
“Yes.”
She didn’t say that it was the year her mother died, and that up until then she hadn’t been out of California before, hadn’t known this man she’d been sent to live with. Noah Fineman was a stranger, married to someone else and with two other daughters who called him Dad like it was the easiest thing in the world. He and Zanne had clashed badly. He’d died when she was twenty-eight, and in many ways, it was as if her life had started over then. She went to rehab again; it had taken her three tries over six years, but finally it stuck. She left academia and got the job with Ted and came back to LA.
“Well, you turned out great. Thanks, Zanne.”
There was a note of attachment in Ted’s voice, a gentleness that Zanne hadn’t registered before and perhaps would never have registered if Gaby weren’t silently listening in. Gaby sat in the chair—head cocked, chewing her cuticles, studying her in return. Zanne picked up the handset.
“Happy to help. The producers are ready for you. Do you want me to take notes?”
“No,” Ted said. “As long as Marty’s there, I’ll be fine.”
“He is. I’ll connect you now.”
Zanne joined the call to the conference bridge and hung up.
“Sorry about that,” she said again to Gaby, shaking off the adrenaline she felt whenever she emerged unscathed from an exchange with Ted.
“He likes you.”
“What?” Gaby dropped her thumb from her teeth, but kept her head cocked. Her squint melted into a smolder.
“No, Zanne. Not you.” Gaby had dropped her voice, like she was Barry White. The implication—that Ted was smooth, seductive, had his eyes on Zanne; that he gave a damn—was comically off base.
“Oh, that. That was nothing.”
“And you like him.”
“He’s just feeling sentimental because Flynn’s leaving and Zoe’s gone. Trust me, it didn’t have anything to do with me.”
“If you say so.”
“Enough about me. How’d it go with you?”
“Fine, I think,” Gaby said, inspecting her thumbnails again, pushing the cuticles of one back with the other.
“What did you guys talk about?”
“Uh, my résumé?”
“What else? Peru?”
“Yeah.”
Gaby wasn’t dishing.
“That’s good,” Zanne said. “If he took an interest in your fieldwork, it means he thinks you’re interesting. And that’s half the battle.”
“What a relief,” Gaby said. She stood up. “I should get out of your way for a while, shouldn’t I?”
“I’m just saying. It seems like it went really well.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Gaby said, but her face was so deadpan that Zanne felt foolish for caring. “Do they let you take a lunch? I could wait until you’re ready. Maybe we could go into town for a burrito. Do they have burritos in the Palisades, or only health bowls?” she asked, putting air-quotes around her words.
“I know a spot.”
“Cool. I’ll go hang out by the pool. Come find me when you’re ready.”
Zanne didn’t understand. All that careful strategizing she’d done to get Gaby the interview, all their late-night pillow talk about Zanne’s famous boss and what it was like to work for someone that eccentric—and then nothing. Gaby didn’t seem angry or upset, just...uninterested. Most people who met Ted were dying to talk about him afterward. Zanne watched Gaby step out into the sunshine and disappear, like in a movie when someone went to heaven. Maybe she was in a better place now.
Out of the corner of her eye, the red light flickered on Zanne’s phone. The call with Marty was over—so soon?—and Ted was calling someone else. Zanne’s line rang. It was Ted.
“Reschedule Marty for tomorrow. And can you come in for a minute?” he asked.
Ted was looking at his screen when Zanne entered, her cue to wait quietly until his thought was finished. She put a few things in his inbox and collected the papers in his outbox, Gaby’s résumé among them.
“Go ahead and sit, Zanne.”
Sit? Apart from her interview, Ted had never asked her to sit. She always stood. The butterflies returned to swarm in her stomach. Zanne lowered herself into one of the Barcelona chairs across from Ted’s desk. It was insanely comfortable.
On the shelves behind Ted’s desk were the two Oscars he’d won for directing, all of his scripts, the original galaxyfinder from The Starfighter, and a cardboard replica of a row house that Flynn had made for his second-grade architecture residency. One of Zanne’s first special projects had been cataloguing bins of the Stablers’ personal items and selecting which to archive, which to convert to digital, and which to display. It had been an excruciatingly intimate task. For weeks, she’d pored over report cards, loose photographs, newspaper clippings, knitting needles, candy wrappers, novelty key rings, joke glasses, postcards, sketches, figure studies, various items with the children’s handprints inscribed, onesies, even a pair of Christmas boxers she hoped Ted had never worn. She’d had the scripts bound in leather, the way she used to dream she might do for her own one day, and she’d selected Flynn’s art project for this shelf. For the bookcase by the door—the bragging bookcase, Zanne came to think of it, because there were pictures of Holly and the kids with presidents, Bill Gates, and Muhammad Ali, and several of the other trophies Ted had won—Zanne had rescued a framed photo of Ted squatting beside a river. Over time, that photo had migrated across the room to join the galaxyfinder behind the desk, grouped with the mementos that clearly meant the most to him. In the picture he was laughing, looking happier than she’d ever witnessed herself.
“I liked Gabriela,” Ted said, still drafting whatever it was he was working on. “Friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Smart.” He scratched behind his ear and nodded for emphasis, causing Zanne’s heart to swell with pride. She felt the little prickly quills encasing it go pop. “Not sure she wants the job, though.”
“Oh.” Zanne squinted. “Did she say she didn’t want it?”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Ted tapped his touch pad. “Majors in public health, minors in anthropology, opens a tuberculosis clinic in Peru—and then what? Comes here?”
“I think she’s genuine. She says she wants to explore other things.” But Zanne remembered that deadly yawn of Gaby’s after the interview. It was obvious that he was right. Zanne’s swollen heart throbbed, and something in limited supply began to leak out.
Ted shrugged. “They all do.”
Zanne felt her cheeks flush hot and red. He wasn’t going to make Gaby an offer, and the only one bothered by that was Zanne. “I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think the interview was a waste of your time.”
“Not at all. Peru is a really interesting idea for second unit work. Mexico is getting too expensive.”
“I’ll let Marty know you’d like more information on that.” Was Gaby what Ted had called her in to talk about? If that was all, then she should leave and get back to her to-do list. Zanne put her hands on the arms of the chair, but Ted looked up. He folded his hands and made an effort to smile.
“Yes, fine. How about you, Zanne? How do you like working here?”
“Very well, thanks.”
“It’s a far cry from academia, I know.”
“True.”
“You don’t miss it?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“It’s true I didn’t expect to work in a place like this.”
“Hollywood?”
“A family office. I didn’t know things like that even existed.”
“Family office—is that what they’re called? There are others?”
