Page 4 of How To Plot a Payback

She—very clearly having zero interest in helping me make my escape—turns her back on me and exits the room.

“It was truly a pleasure,” I say, undeterred. “I wish you the best of luck in your future projects.”

I’m willing to leave my job for just about any substitute. But there are limits.

And Lavender Rhodes is that limit.

I can’t feel too guilty about leaving him, because the moment I step into the crowd, several guests with beady, vulturelike eyes swoop in, and Mr. Henry, with barely enough time to pop another sausage into his mouth, greets them boisterously through a mouthful and begins again.

Now to find Paula.

I maneuver through one room and into another. Then an adjoining one. Then another.

Each as packed as the others.

The house is a melting pot of two distinct types of Hollywood corporates.

Both types in their sequined garb. Both clutching neon-colored liquids in martini glasses and clouding the room with expensive fragrance. But from a mile away, I could pluck them apart. Drop each into his or her designated category.

The glitter or the glue.

Paula and I are Hollywood’s glue, those who belong to the behind-the-scenes work: the financing, the developing, the writing. Anyone from the elite creators of the biggest hits on telly to the prop designer on a B-lister who managed to secure a ticket. Yes, we have on the suits and dresses. Yes, Paula looks rather nice tonight with a nest of curls arranged by Chloe in makeup. But no amount of hair, makeup, or clothing can conceal us enough that we could be mistaken for the other type. There’s always some clue—the streak of a tan line, the slight hunch in the shoulders, general level of confidence.

And then, of course, there are the glitter. The stars who speak through blindingly white veneers the words we feed them onstage or on set. The ones who don’t wither when a crowd looks at them. The ones who can walk in wearing a costume designed to look exactly like a sheet of computer paper with an egg on it as though this is just a typical Saturday.

Two very different worlds.

Four flights of stairs up and down, twenty minutes, and one ominous text from Paula’s husband with the words STOP HER, and I find her at the other end of the house. We’re in a room that looks like an aircraft hangar, the entirety of one wall raised to reveal the side yard. The sound of barking echoes off the concrete floors, matching the noise level of an aquamarine waterfall outside flowing into a glowing pool on a clifftop overlooking the city. The view of the skyline is majestic, but surprisingly enough, fewer people stand on the green turf admiring it than beside the rectangular booth where Paula stands now. Barking is coming from at least a dozen large bins. Employees race around as men and women lean over the booth, pointing with their glossy nails. A general frenzy pulses through the air. The atmosphere falls somewhere between the Glastonbury Festival and the discovery of the Princess Diana Beanie Baby at a car boot sale in the 1990s.

A banner above the booth reads Paws with a Cause.

Leaflets are scattered on the floor all around, scribbled with words about a therapy-dog charity and where to donate. I don’t look long enough to read it through though, because taking up half the sheet is her face, beneath the bold words “Rare Appearance by . . .”

Her.

A hundred Lavender Rhodeses on leaflets all around me.

I step around them, careful not to taint my shoes by a touch.

Frankly, I’d leave the room entirely were it not for the need to grab Paula. Or more specifically, save her husband. Because I see now what Mike was referring to in that text.

“Back away from the puppies, Paula,” I say, halting behind her.

Paula freezes.

She turns slowly, revealing two cream-colored snowballs in her hands, which, upon further inspection, are living animals. Tiny brown eyes peek out behind the masses of fur. Petite teddy bears, if you will.

A woman beside us reaches towards one. Paula sticks out an elbow protectively, then swivels around to block her.

I may be too late.

“Oh good, Finn. I couldn’t hold them off much longer. Here.”

“Wha—” I say over the clamor.

And before I know it, I’m being handed off a puppy as if it’s a martini.

“What is this?” I say, looking at the thing in my hands.