Page 5 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
“You can’t swap it out with something else?”
“Not now that we already shot with it. Continuity’s a bitch.” Elaine extracted the sole existing uniform from the rack. It was a lemon-yellow shirtwaist dress with a white piqué collar and cuffs. The show was set in modern day but the design had a 1950s feel with a comic book color palette and punchy details that required building a lot of pieces from scratch rather than shopping them off the rack. Marlowe remembered the dress from a recent shoot. She also remembered the actress who wore the dress. Narrow-waisted, small-chested, long in the torso, hips that were almost as nonexistent as her own.
She looked over at the dozen or so background actors who were sipping coffee and scrolling through their phones on the other sideof the tent. The actors were all fit, sun-kissed, and conventionally attractive, from the twentysomething girl with the impossible-to-ignore cleavage to the sixtysomething guy with the impressive silver pompadour.
“Surely someone here fits,” she said.
“If only.” Elaine put the dress back on the rack. “It’s a non-speaking role, so any of the background actors can do it, but only those few are called in today, none of them are the right size, and our alteration time’s limited. Casting can call in someone else, but the clock’s ticking. If filming gets held up and everyone knows it’s our fault, production will come down hard on Babs, and Babs will come down hard on Cherry.”
Marlowe went still. “How hard?”
Elaine pursed her lips and cast a sympathetic glance at Cherry, who was bent over in a chair, muttering sharply, her phone pressed to her ear and a fist knotted in her hair.
“She wouldn’t,” Marlowe whispered to Elaine.
“She might. Especially if she’s looking for a scapegoat.”
“Cherry’s worked way too hard all these years to get fired over a stupid uniform. The situation’s not even her fault. Not entirely. And it’s one simple mistake.”
“Yes, but in film and TV, mistakes are expensive. If the cameras are waiting, so are a lot of people being paid by the hour.”
Marlowe peered toward an opening in the tent as though Babs was about to burst in on cue, waving a fistful of hot-pink termination notices. God, Marlowe missed theater. If an item wasn’t perfect, people fixed it when they could get to it, not always right away. Production companies weren’t hemorrhaging millions on A-list actors and massive crews and the need to get the angle of a collar positionedpreciselythe same way every time.
As she wilted beside Elaine, Cherry launched herself off the chair.
“They’re notdone!” She shot an agonized look at Marlowe.
Marlowe spun toward Elaine. “Give me the dress.” She whisked it from Elaine’s outstretched hands and held it up against her chest. “If I fit, can I go on?”
Elaine eyed her skeptically. “Do you act?”
“I’m no Meryl Streep but I took a few classes as an undergrad theater major. I’m sure I can handle pouring coffee and handing out menus. Or do I need to be union?”
“Exceptions are made, but Babs must be running you ragged with other tasks.”
“Today it’s mostly paperwork.” Marlowe flicked open the dress buttons. “I can multitask from set. Anything I don’t finish, I’ll take home with me tonight.” She slipped the dress on over her shirt and trousers and buttoned it up, smoothing the front as she backed away from Elaine. “Does it work? Close enough?”
Cherry marched over, phone in hand. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Marlowe spun around, making the skirt splay out as if she was Cinderella in her ball gown, though her current attire lacked the requisite wow factor, especially with her corduroys and sneakers poking out below the dress hem.
“You can’t,” Cherry said.
Elaine laughed to herself. “Actually, I think she can.”
Chapter Three
Two hours after first donning the uniform, Marlowe stepped into the wardrobe trailer, bubbling with anticipation. Her brows had been plucked, her makeup done, and her hair cut and styled, now with blunt bangs and a perfect, shiny corkscrew ponytail that stopped at the nape of her neck. She wore cute little white sneakers and folded ankle socks, plus a light crinoline that kicked out the skirt of the uniform. Cherry sat at a desk at the far end of the trailer, her eyes glued to a laptop. Babs perched by a makeup counter, scowling at a seaweed salad. Neither of them noticed her.
“Well?” Marlowe asked. “What do you think?”
Babs looked up, offering Marlowe a light but perceptible sneer.
“I think you owe me two hours of work,” she said.
Marlowe held out the skirt, trying not to deflate. “I meant about the costume.”
Babs’s expression didn’t budge. “The receipts won’t tally themselves, you can’t sort fabric samples while on set, and I had to get my lunch delivered. They were late, you know. They still expect such high tipsandthey forgot the chopsticks.”
