Shadows Among the Stars

"There's a small change and shower place just here," said Clarise pointing to the study wall.

"You have to go out to the patio to get to it. You can use that. Two fifty, then."

"I reserve the right to work on my own projects when there's nothing to do here – you don't

pay me for that time."

"That's fair," Clarise said.

Will made a showing of spitting into his hand and then offering to shake on it, that being a

ritual where he came from. Clarise also symbolically spat into the hand and they shook on it. The

by-play amused her.

"Another thing, non-negotiable, is that you don't get romantic ideas about the person paying

your daily fee."

"Got it, boss. All friendly."

"And don't call me boss. It makes me feel old. Call me Meghan in private, and I don't mind

Meg," she said.

"No problem, but why Meghan?"

"Because it's my name. I'm still legally Meghan Kowalski. Clarise Chalmers is just a

branding thing. I never really liked Clarise especially. A stripper's name. Now where are my

manners? I should have already offered coffee as I would to any guest, but it's just me to make it.

The housekeeper would have gone by now."

"If you don't mind I can make it. I worked as a barista for a time."

"Okay, sure, so there's something about you that's not sad or hopeless."

"Yep, my life's not totally miserable, just almost so." They walked through to the kitchen

where Clarise sat on a stool while Will looked through cupboards. "I couldn't help but notice," he

said as he filled the kettle, "that there was some material on a cryptocurrency on your desk."

"Cryptocurrency?"

"Yeah, Be-coin."

"Oh that, is that a cryptocurrency?"

"There's a whole heap of those sort of digital exchange currencies. I've heard of Be-coin but

never looked at it. Were you thinking of investing?"

"I was asking a friend about investing," she said - in fact, it was her boyfriend Robin Hawke

- "and he gave me that. What have you heard about it?"

"Nothing much about that one specifically. My only comment is that I wouldn't go into

cryptocurrencies lightly; just because a friend gave you a pamphlet. It's high risk, high reward. You

could make a lot of money, but you could also lose your whole investment. It's for those who want

to take the risk and are willing to study the market. You already have money and are too busy

making it to have time to work out what any of that stuff means."

"Well, yes," she said. "When would you recommend then?"

"Advising anyone on investment is a serious matter, Ms Ch… Meg, but at least as a starting

point I can ask how much risk are you willing to take? Do you want to go in for crash through or

crash, or better returns than simply putting the money into a bank account?'

"Better returns," she said after a moment's thought.

"Then you're set and forget and to start you might as well use mutual funds," said Will.

"Looks like you'll have to settle for expresso. I can do a mean Mocha, but not today."

"That's fine," said Meghan. "How do I invest in these mutual funds?"

"Get yourself set up on a digital platform connected with a major bank and then you'll be

able to invest in whatever you want, including index funds, particularly market index funds which

are a topic for another time. I can at least show you what to look for and the different classes of

investment and lecture you about diversifying your investments, but the choice of the investment

must remain yours."

"That's on your list when you start tomorrow," said Meghan. "How do you know about this

stuff, anyway?"

"Part of my reporting was on personal investment, on the Lakes Guardian in the Chicago

district which competes with the Daily Herald and there is no finer newspaper unless you happen to

work for the Herald, the Sun-Times or the Tribune, but let's not go there."

"Let's not," agreed Meghan, smiling.

"For one reason or another I also did property, and I have to say a high-end apartment

building with all the tenants busy paying rent is not such a bad investment if you can get the

location and gearing right. You can put a property manager in place and walk away."

Meghan thought that sounded like an excellent idea.

"Gearing?" she asked.

"How much debt you take on to pay for the building. You want it low enough so that if

there's a problem with a couple of tenants then your interest payments are still covered."

"Okay," said Meghan. "You've never had money to do any of this yourself?"

"Nope. No-one's going to pay to see me on the big screen, so I have to toil away at contract

work for major stars who go out of their way to tell me how romantically uninteresting I am."

"I never said uninteresting," protested Meghan. "I just have to be careful, especially as I

rang you. You know how it is."

"Yes, I know how it is," said Will. "I'm a dumb guy who has to be warned off or he gets all

sorts of ideas. If I ever have a daughter I'm going to warn her about dumb guys."

They adjourned to the kitchen table and the talk turned to Meghan's role as a blonde

barbarian queen, with the star saying she was a strange choice for the role.

"You made it work, Meghan, I thought. Anyway, guys don't care whether the eye candy

really fits the role."

Meghan smiled over the compliment.

"The most ludicrous piece of female miscasting must be of Susan Hayward in an old film

'The Conqueror'," continued Will.

"Don't think I've heard of it," said Meghan.

"It was made in the 1950s. The story is John Wayne, the archetype cowboy star, picked up

the script in an agent's office and decided he really wanted the lead role, although it's about

Genghis Khan, the Mongol warlord who conquered most of the world."

"John Wayne as a Mongol?"

"It gets worse," said Will. "Susan Hayward, a typical full-figured, red-haired leading lady of

the time, was cast as a Mongol princess."

Meghan laughed. "Now I don't feel so bad as a barbarian queen who showers under water

falls."

"The actress herself thought it was hilarious but only the critics seemed to notice. It's on

those lists you see of the worst movies of all time …."

"None of mine are on those lists yet," said Megan.

"… But the film didn't do too badly at the box office although it's still considered a

financial failure. Shows you what star power can do, I guess."

They talked for some time after that before Will declared that he should go, as he had work

to do.

"What work do you have now, if you're going to start working for me tomorrow," asked

Meghan as she walked with Will out to the front gate. With her boyfriend on a film set somewhere,

as he often was, she had enjoyed the company.

"I was writing real estate blurbs when you called," said Will, "and you remember Hap from

last night? He is thinking of producing a slasher film and wants me to rewrite the script he's written

for it."

"That's more impressive than anything else you've told me," said Meghan. "You should bill

yourself as a script writer."

"You'd be way less impressed if you saw the script he gave me," said Will. "It has a sex

scene with kitchen appliances."

"Urgh!"

"And he's paying me a pittance for the rewrite. Like I said I'm at the bottom end of the

Hollywood pecking order."

"Will we're going to have to work on how you pitch yourself," Meghan said. By that time

they were out in the street, but the star could not see any vehicle apart from what she took to be an

abandoned compact in front of her house. "Where's your car?"

"Right in front of you," said Will, unlocking the door of the compact.

"This thing?" said Meghan, looking with horror at what she was later told was a Saturn ION.

Recognised as one of the models that helped kill the GM offshoot that made it, the red Saturn

showed evidence of a long, hard life. She had a high-end BMW in the garage and her boyfriend

drove a Ferrari.

Will leant against the car and laughed. "The look on your face," he said after a time.

Meghan laughed as well, then looked at the dents in the hood with concern. "It still runs?"

"I'll see you tomorrow, Meghan," Will said chuckling and he drove off.

The star went back into the house thinking that Will was the most extraordinary man that

she knew, although she could not decide whether that was good or bad extraordinary. Later she

settled for interesting, extraordinary.

On his way home, Will rang Buck from his mobile phone clamped to a part of the car's

fittings, so that he still had both hands free to drive. Buck was in the middle of a shift at the

digimart.

"Buck, hi, I've got this strange gig that may make enough to afford the audio project we

talked about."

Then he said who had hired him and why.

"One of her staff called us," said Buck, "and asked what you were like. Against our better

judgment we gave you a good reference. So that's what it was about, Clarise Chalmers actually rang

you?"

"Yep, she went out of her way to tell me it was not a romantic thing, but the result was a

paying job. I'm a sort of court Eunuch to a big-time star."

"You don't have much experience as a journalist and you've never organised a big event

like that," said Buck, evidently astonished.

"Not sure how long this'll last," admitted Will, "but I seem to get on with the star herself, so

maybe I'll get enough cash together to pay for the narration, and maybe even marketing."

"At least someone's earning money," said Buck.