Page 4 of The Producer: Aaron

I turn to her, trying to figure out if she is serious or just trying to throw a hook for a compromise. Forcing Dakota to live with the assistant did not solve our problems. It mitigated them but didn’t solve them.

“And who do you have in mind?” I ask when I see a half-smile on her face.

“You.”

The silence that falls into the room lasts an eternity. I’m waiting for her to tell me she is joking, but her lips remain sealed.

“Have you gone crazy?” I burst out when no one admits this is the worst idea ever proposed.

Tracy rolls her eyes, as she usually does with her insolent attitude that I like when it is aimed at someone else, but it makes me lose my temper when it is turned to me.

“Before you freak out, try to think about it. In six months, the third season will be over, there will be a long pause where she disappears for some exotic vacation, and we hope the newspapers will no longer cry scandal when she comes back. In the meantime, she stays with you. You are the boss of her boss’s boss, she will be intimidated, and she will hold back. Impose rules and you will see that she will not be able to say no to you. She is smart. She recognizes that you hold the power to ruin her career. If she flies below the radar for six months, they will forget her wild days. At the end of the day, this is Hollywood, nothing last more than a few weeks, not even marriages last so long here.” Her enthusiastic tone irritates me.

“What if someone discovers it? They will assume I’m sleeping with her. Don’t you think it’s a bit inappropriate?” I ask incredulously.

Tracy looks at Sharon who thinks about it.

“We ask her to keep it quiet. She is the only one who can spill the beans. Everyone around you has already signed a non-disclosure agreement to work with you. Nobody enters and exits your house without signing it. It’s six months, you can keep it quiet for six months.”

“But what if this comes out?” I insist.

“We will work on a reasonable justification for that. We will be prepared if it happens,” Sharon adds.

I think about it, and I can’t shake the feeling this is a bad, bad idea.

“No. I’m used to my home, to my spaces. I don’t want to share them with a twenty-three-year-old. It’s not a frat house!”Although from a certain point of view, she is right. When I met Dakota in person, she always treated me with great respect and seemed intimidated by my presence. Surely if I order her to do something, she’d do it.

“You are a cynical and antisocial thirty-six-year-old who hates people,” Tracy replies.

“That’s not true! I’m all day among people. I just need peace when I get home. I want to walk around in my underwear without feeling compelled to cover myself because someone lives under the same roof.” I cling to any excuse because I know this might be the last resort not to make more drastic decisions. We really need this show and the money it brings into our division.

“Do you often walk around the house in your underwear?” She raises an eyebrow in defiance because she knows me well enough to know that I don’t even leave my room without being dressed.

“You live in such a huge mansion. There is a reasonable possibility that you will never run into her. And then, it does you good to have some company. When was the last time you conversed with someone for the sheer pleasure of doing so?”

“I speak every day with dozens of people!”

“I’m not talking about your job or the club where you take refuge with other hermits. I’m talking about a real outing with someone you don’t give orders to or contract a deal,” she says, emphasizing my inability to cultivate a social life.

“I’m a man busy managing millions of dollars. I don’t have time to go out and waste time on completely irrelevant activities.”

“Put it this way, if she doesn’t come to live with you, you’ll deal with the loss of millions of dollars shutting down the show.” She throws her final punch, leaving me with no argument to counter.

Do I really go so far as to babysit a young woman? From a certain point of view, Tracy is right, because closing our most crucial show means giving a win to my father, who sees me as anamateur. I’m not used to throwing in the towel, especially when the show is a success, and giving it up because of a person who can’t control herself is ridiculous.

On the one hand, she is an intelligent, attentive, scrupulous professional like most consummate actresses. On the other hand, when she leaves the set, she turns into another person. I want to understand what drives her to behave this way.

“Okay. Six months and then I want her out of my house.”

The headache hammering my brain is unbearable, but the rancid taste in my mouth is the worst part after I called an Uber from the party at Lionel’s house this afternoon. I didn’t even want to go to that pool party, but people from the studio invited me, and I didn’t want to play the part of the haughty actress. If I keep turning down their invitations, I will look like someone who doesn’t stoop to hang out with those who work with her day and night on set. I felt almost compelled, and in the end, I gave in, knowing that I would feel embarrassed if I didn’t.

I shouldn’t have to start with Jelly shots or continue with tequila and drinking vodka from the bottle to try to relax. But at the time, it seemed like a good idea to get rid of the taste of nervous anxiety on my lips. And then I felt euphoric, invincible, and sexy. Everyone was smiling at me, and there weren’t those awkward conversations that crowd my social life when I’m sober.

The cold surface under my cheek forces me to open my eyes and I recognize the toilet bowl in my bathroom on which I am resting my face. I remember running in here to vomit, but I don’t remember falling asleep.

“What a crap,” my hoarse voice resonates between the bathroom walls, so low that I can hardly recognize it.

“Yes, I would say it just sucks.”

---