The Bite of Betrayal

The rest of Clarise Chalmers' tiny entourage took the news of Will's latest termination in

their stride.

"Again!" said Mia when Emma told her. Emma had heard it from Will whom she had called

over what photographs to use for the social media sites. "How many times is that now?"

Emma ticked off on her fingers. "Three, I think. Has Meghan said anything?"

"Nope," said Mia. "Like the other times we just ignore it until she says otherwise."

As it happened neither Will nor Meghan were in the house-office for much of the week.

Will was helping with the pre-production for Party Town in a grimy, disused warehouse with a sub

level which Hap had been able to rent in one of the warehouse districts South East of downtown

LA.

"The warehouse will do for interior shots if we set up black screens for the CGI

projections," Hap told the others. "We'll need a beach with a park for the exterior shots. I'm still

working on that."

As LA traffic made commuting difficult, and there were basic facilities at the site, the

production team decided to squat in the warehouse for the couple of weeks of pre-production and

watch slasher/horror/grunge/SF pictures in their down time. Hap liked that part of being a producer

meant he could hang out with Will and Evan, although they sometimes did not all see eye to eye

over the choice of films.

"Slave girls from Beyond Infinity, really?" said Will, reading the title of a DVD from the

producers' personal collection which Hap had brought to their camp-out. "1 7, a classic year – I

guess."

"Is this the one where they escape by 'reversing polarity' on their chains and then stealing a

space ship which they pilot?" asked Evan.

"That's it," said Hap.

"Seen some of it a while back," said the director. "Do we want to see it again?"

"Hot girls, and we can learn something from it," said Hap.

"About what not to do, maybe," said Evan.

Eventually the other two gave way to Hap's enthusiasm for the film. Although they didn't

learn anything much about film making, they agreed that the lead actresses were "hot" in an 80shairstyle kind of way.

Meanwhile Meghan was off on a beer commercial shoot in the desert, which took a whole

three days and most certainly did not involve squatting in grimy warehouses or even nights in the

campervans/Winnebagos used by film crews to live on location. Instead the star "slummed it" in a

presidential suite of a three star hotel with production security keeping an eye on her. The

presidential suite looked like the rest of the suites except that the bed had a different cover, but

Meghan was sufficiently amused by the husband and wife owners of the hotel making such a fuss

over their famous guest that she decided not to go diva on them.

Sometimes Meghan took Mia on such shoots but as this time there would not be much for

her assistant to do but sit around in the hot desert she was left at the house, so she could go home to

Jake each night. Meghan called her if she wanted something, or often just to talk. During the first

two calls the star did not mention Will and Mia avoided talking about the writer. On the third call,

when Meghan realised that Mia was not going to broach the subject of Will, the star said, out of the

blue, "and I hate Will Moorland".

"Okay," said Mia. "You hate him. Gotit."

"And don't just indulge the Diva by saying 'okay'!"

"Umm, alright," said Mia, although she wasn't quite sure what she was being accused of. In

fact, she had spoken to Will about the reasons for the firing and thought that the writer was justified

in refusing to do the pickup, although wisely she did not say this. (When Mrs Kowalski eventually

heard of the incident, via Mia telling Madison, her already high opinion of Will rose several

notches. She strongly disapproved of her daughter's use of sticks.)

"Is Will at the house?"

"He's on site at that film of his, in some old warehouse Hap's got South of downtown. He's

squatting with the guys in it for most of this week and handling your stuff by remote."

"Ha!" said Meghan. "Tell him I hope he gets a horrible disease and dies."

"I'll tell him that," said Mia, as that seemed like a safe thing to say. She later sent the writer

a text.

Will's response: "The warehouse is grimy and has rats. Meghan may get her wish. Tell her

there's no pool to swim in and I'm suffering horribly, that'll cheer her up."

Mia sent that on, minus the comment about cheering her up, and went back to her

administration chores. It wasn't her fight.

"He should suffer more," retorted Meghan in a text. "Tell him I'm going to buy a shark and

put it in the pool."

"In chlorinated fresh water?" Will responded. "Poor thing. Maybe she could use piranhas.

They're at least fresh water fish. Then if I'm eaten, Meghan won't hate me as much." This was duly

passed onto the star.

"I'm always going to hate him," retorted Meghan.

Will decided he would stay a while longer at the warehouse.

Meghan then tried to get Mia to come with her to the party for which she had been given an

invitation at the drug house. Mia, however, had already been told about the party by Will and, wary

of it, invented a family engagement with Jake. "Why don't you get Misty to go?" she said. "And I'll

book Henry. You don't want to go to that sort of party without backup."

Meanwhile Will's peace of mind was shattered by the arrival of Danni Devlin in a tight top

and jeans accompanied by a security man in a suit and sunglasses. He was as big as George and

unsmiling.

"I've been sent by Mr Scranton to make sure Ms Devlin isn't bothered," he said.

"Okay," said Evan who then later asked Will. "Who is Scranton?"

"Property billionaire," said Will, "and I guess her boyfriend. I saw them together at the party

where we met. She found out he was megarich and went straight in." Will also noticed, but did not

comment on, that Danni seemed more tanned than when he had seen her last. There would have

been plenty of sunbathing in the Bahamas.

"Whatever," said Evan. "She's got the looks for this, we'll see if she can act."

As it happened Danni could act, or at least well enough for a low-budget slasher film, going

through the motions in an audition, with Evan using his mobile as a stand in for a movie camera and

the porn star brandishing a toy pistol as a make-do prop. Afterwards, Danni checked out the CGI

backgrounds and monsters created by Hap and agreed to take the role.

"Not a bad script, Will," she said, tapping the printed copy on her lap. She was sitting in a

director's chair while Hap and Evan were busy discussing details of the graphics on one of the

screens. The security man glowered in the background. "You guys are serious."

"Of course," said Will. "Mind you, Evan and I had to argue a lot with Hap, who wanted

every girl topless at all times."

"Humph! You got him to cut back my topless shots to a couple of scenes?"

"Plus gratuitous nudity in the crowd scenes. Just how you handle your scenes is a matter

between you and Evan."

She shrugged. "Should be alright as is."

"You must get a lot of doubtful offers."

"I get a lot of propositions, is what I get," she said. "How's Clarise?"

"Shooting a beer commercial in the desert and mad at me for not doing exactly what I tell

her to do."

"Guys should do exactly what they are told," retorted Danni, smiling. "How did you mess

up in her eyes?"

"Prefer not to say."

"At least you're discrete," she said. "I like that in a man."

"Last I heard she wanted to buy some piranhas to put in the pool at her place for the next

time I go swimming."

"You use the pool at her place? I thought you were just staff."

"I am just staff, but I swim every day. It was a condition of my employment."

"Hers or yours?"

"Mine, although she and the ladies on staff do watch me swim." That made her laugh. "One

time her friends came and took my shirt while I was swimming and wouldn't give it back to me."

"Must be dreadful being seen as just a sex object," said Danni, in mock sympathy.

"I'm exploited it's true; it's very sad."

Hap and Evan turned their attention back to Danni who left soon thereafter waving briefly at

Will before getting back into the stretch limousine with her grim security man, leaving the core

production team of Party Town to hash through more details of just how they would shoot the

picture.

After an exhausting week, the production team adjourned for part of the weekend and Will

finally got back to an apartment on Saturday evening with his roomies off at a Goth party. Pan had

tried to get Will to come to the party to meet her single girlfriends but the writer had declined on the

grounds that he had to have a night to rest and regroup after a week of dealing with Hap's

enthusiasm. He had dinner and started a grand strategy computer game.

For her part, once she had finished with the beer commercial, Meghan moved on to a watch

endorsement photo shoot. This involved a lot of work with costumes, lighting, backgrounds,

makeup and much else besides, all requiring adjustment and discussion in order for the

photographer to take hundreds of images, out of which perhaps two or three would be chosen as

showing the "essence" of the product. Meghan would collect a fee for all this, but at the end of what

she also found to be an exhausting week the star thought that she could do with a party. She found

the invitation given to her at the drug house and called Henry.

The first Will knew of any of this was when Henry called him.

"Hey man, what's up!"

"I'm at the house where Ms Chalmers wanted to go for a party, and she's called me on my

cell but she doesn't make sense."

"You can't get in to grab her?"

"They won't let me in without an invitation. They let her and Ms Dawn go, and the ladies

said they'd call if there was any trouble."

"Misty is with her? Where is this party?"

The address George gave rang an alarm bell with the writer. "It's that drug house party. You

remember the house we went to and came out with Ty Leighton?"

"Ohhhh man, I remember that place," said George.

"They were handing out invitations then. I might even still have the one they gave me…"

Will looked in his closet and felt in the pocket of the jacket which was still hanging where he had

left it when he came home that night, the invitation still in the jacket pocket. "Got it. I can get in,

but it says specifically 'admit one' on this invite. How come Misty got in?"

"They recognised her at the door. Celebrities count but bodyguards don't."

"I'll have to come. I'll be as fast as I can."

"Worried," said George.

Will changed, put on the jacket and dashed through the streets. It did not seem to matter

what time of day or what day of the week, there was always plenty of traffic in Los Angeles. Will

wondered, as he always did, where could all the people in all the cars be going?

George was standing in the street at the front gate of a white, two-story house in the neoGeorgian style meaning, among other things, that it had large, muti-pane windows on two floors set

symmetrically about an entrance way. As Will drove past the bodyguard was resisting attempts by

the party's doorman – the same man with smouldering black eyes that had been on the door at the

drug house – to get him to move on. The writer had to drive almost another block before finding a

place to park and then ran back, to arrive just as the black-eyed man had been joined by another

heavy set thug with a distinctly Eastern vibe.

"George, there you are," said Will, slowing down to a brisk walk. "Let's go in."

"Invitation only, sir," said the second thug.

"Good thing I have one," said Will, producing his invitation for inspection. "This other

gentleman might remember me from last weekend when I picked up Ty Leighton from your

establishment. You were doorman then."

"Remember Mr Leighton leaving," said the black-eyed gentleman, eyeing the invitation.

"You can come in but not him." He pointed at George.

"Okay, but George stays right here. It's a public walkway he can stand where he wants."

Will dodged past the two men and got to the door without further argument to find it unlocked.

Another man inside glanced briefly at the two doormen still at the front gate and at Will's invitation

and then ignored him.

Beyond the door the music pulsed. Party goers in different states of undress drifted around

the foyer and corridors. No one seemed to be in a hurry and no one paid any attention to the writer,

except for a man behind a table in the foyer selling drugs. These included a selection of powders,

pills in little plastic bags and a few cigarette-like objects on the side. All were expensive.

"Just come to get my boss," he said.

He called George: "On second thoughts just move to the other side of the street, so our

friends on the door can't complain. I'll put this phone in my pocket but I'll put you on speaker and

won't hang up. Stay on the line."

"Got it," said George.

Will looked into a couple of rooms. What must be the house's main living room had bodies

draped everywhere. In the midst of this on the carpet a couple was having sex, the woman on top

moving slowly and apparently enjoying herself. She looked up and smiled at the writer, who got the

impression that the woman was performing rather than drugged up.

"You can be next if you like?" she said. The man on the carpet, who was also obviously

enjoying himself, paid no attention to this interaction.

"Thanks but I have to find someone," said Will. He checked the kitchen, to find one young

gentleman with a punk hairdo saying that he was God and would destroy the earth but no Meg.

Upstairs, another couple was having sex in the corridor, this time with the man on top, while the

other party goers stepped over the couple. Then he found Meghan in one of the bedrooms, crowded

with drugged-up people.