Entourage FF: Women's whole existence [Barbara, Shauna, Dana, Sloan, Mrs Ari; R]
Title: Women's whole existence
Fandom: Entourage
Characters: Barbara, Shauna, Dana, Sloan, Mrs Ari (Mrs Ari/Ari, and another historical canon het)
Rating: R for language and sexual implication
Length: 4,600 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Doug Ellin and HBO.
Spoilers: Through S5
Summary: These women aren't just sitting around waiting for the men to call.
AN: For deepad, for the very loose prompt of 'Five times the women of Entourage pwned the men' ;) And with thanks to dancinbutterfly for canon help. There's another author's note at the bottom that waffles about intention more.
Most days, Barbara is in the office before her assistant. She’s always in the office before Ari. If she was feeling generous, she would say that this is because Ari has young children, and she doesn’t. She’s not normally that generous. Ari just likes to hold his meetings out of the office, where she can’t keep an eye on him - breakfast cocktails with a client beats coffee and a bagel grabbed from the conference room. So she’s naturally suspicious when her assistant buzzes the intercom at nine a.m. and says, “Mr Gold for you, Ms Miller.”
“Okay, send him in.”
“Babs! It’s a beautiful fucking morning, what are you doing in here with the blinds down? Don’t tell me you’re hiding one of those pretty mailroom boys you keep hiring down there?” He crooks his neck to try and look under her desk.
“What do you want, Ari?”
He frowns in pretended offence for a moment, but he’s too smart to keep it up for long. “I need a favour.”
“Let me guess: Vincent Chase.”
“Hard as it may be for you to understand, Babs, I do have other clients.”
“Yeah, Ari? So it’s Johnny Chase then?”
“I’m just going to ignore that one. We have a writer with a film in development - Andy June.”
“Yeah?”
There’s a triumphant gleam in Ari’s eyes. “And what with all the personal interest I invest in my clients, I can tell you that his script’s gonna get us the awards buzz we need in the long cold winter. Cause it’s gonna be a long cold winter, Babs, and I’m just looking out for the agency. The script’s practically a fucking blowjob for the Academy voters.”
“So?”
“The director walked.”
“Ari, do you want to reach the point anytime soon? I have work to do.”
“Candace Taylor. She takes meetings on your side of the building.”
“She’s a brilliant director.”
“She loved the script.”
“So call her up. I promise I won’t get jealous.”
“She loved the script before we offered it to Redding. Now she won’t pick up the goddamn phone. I need you to-”
“Ari.”
“Would you,” he corrects himself. “Babs, would you, please. Please consider saving your own motherfucking agency by making this call for me. And anyway, my money is your money, you made sure of that.”
No, she thinks. My money is your money. Like your wife’s money is your money. And he has the nerve to say that she’s riding her ex-husband’s coattails to success. He married money, and she divorced it. At least she has the good sense not to be gambling with what she has now. She has a portfolio of clients; he has a monomaniacal obsession with turning an actor with average talent and above average looks into a movie star. Fucking Vincent Chase.
She sighs. “I’ll call her, Ari. But get Lloyd to send me a copy of the script first. And you’ll have to do the wooing - all I can promise is getting her into the building for a meeting.”
“I do all the work, you get all the credit.” He smirks. “Business as usual in the wonderful world of MGA.”
She only gets the credit from the people that matter. She makes lists of women in media; he makes the cover of Variety. Her lists call her by name: Barbara Miller, cofounder of Miller Gold Agency. She was Babs when she was twenty-five, and wanted to be one of the boys. When she tolerated men like her ex-husband because it was the only way into the club. (Because she had been young, and he had sometimes listened when she spoke, when they weren’t fighting or fucking). Now, she tolerates men like Ari. He calls her Babs because he knew her when, and because she couldn’t stop him. Because despite all the cracks (and she’s heard them all) about how she’s hiding the biggest cock in the industry under her dress pants, some assholes want a man’s name on the door. Why should she care what the morons think? She signs the checks, she holds veto power, and her name still comes first.
He’s heading towards her door. She coughs, and he stops. “Oh, and Ari?” she says.
“Hmm?”
“Next time you try and screw with me, I won’t just play along.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Vince’s fucking movie, and Eric’s fucking writer. Try and at least be man enough to admit that you’re his bitch.”
Ari blows out the door, which slams behind him. Barbara’s assistant hides behind her computer, but then she’s still new. Barbara doesn’t flinch. She dials the intercom. “Get me Candace Taylor. Tell her Ari Gold finally came to his senses.”
* * * *
Shauna is in the process of finding a new nanny. The previous one didn’t have the right attitude, and Shauna doesn’t have time for that. Just because she won’t give up work to play peek-a-boo doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her son. Certainly doesn’t mean she’s reckless enough about his upbringing to allow a cooing moron with a college degree and no common sense anywhere near him. So he is sitting on the floor of her office while Christy runs in and out with proofs for Shauna to check before they get released. He’s colouring, which means he’s happy enough, though in a moment or two one of the girls is going to realise he’s drawing with a sixty dollar Chanel lipstick. Shauna’s looking forward to it. They’ve been warned not to leave things lying around reception - he’s not even two for Christ’s sake.
But they’re not much older themselves, Shauna thinks sometimes. Barely twenty and not enough life experience to fill a teacup. Unless you count sex, which they do, and she doesn’t. Sex is easy. Kids are hard. Although not, obviously, harder than looking after some of her clients. Her son doesn’t end up on TMZ throwing beer bottles against the wall. It’s just that it would be socially acceptable to throw everything else aside to deal with it if he did. What she does isn’t at that level of female importance. Luckily, she doesn’t give a damn.
Her cell phone rings, a solid thirty minutes after she has the story, and two hours too late to do any good. “Eric,” she says, “I quit. You hear me? I’m sick to death of this fucking bullshit of his.”
“I know, Shauna. What do we do?”
“What do you mean ‘What do we do?’ I quit, didn’t you hear me? Or do you still have the sound of breaking fucking beer bottles ringing in your ears?”
“It was one bottle. And it cracked, he didn’t smash it.”
“You know they’re saying he threw it at the damn waitress.”
“The fuck they are. You know he wouldn’t do anything like that. Vince hasn’t been in a bar fight in his life.”
“Throwing glass at an eighteen year old girl doesn’t count as a bar fight, Eric - it’s assault with a goddamn deadly weapon.”
“So it’s a good thing he didn’t do it then, isn’t it? He knocked it off the bar, Shauna, that’s it. Maybe he was a little pissed off when he did it.”
“Let me make this perfectly clear to you and Vince, okay? He’s not motherfucking Christian Bale. That one’s batshit crazy, and he’s nearly driving his publicist into an early grave, but he has a franchise and a list of iconic roles a mile long, not to mention tens of millions of dollars in the bank. Vince has precisely none of those things.”
“Vince has you though.” Eric has never quite learned charm, but he has sincerity going for him. It doesn’t stop her being mad as hell at him, but it means she’s more likely to get over it eventually. Enough to fix this, anyway.
“Swallow your pride, and call your ex-girlfriend,” she says.
“What?”
“Sloan McQuewick. One of her charities is having a house-build, or renovate, or some other damn thing this weekend. Get Vince covered in paint, or dust, or dirt. Young star, out helping those who need it, looking healthy and virile at the same time. If he has to take his shirt off, so much the better. Maybe we can get some nice romantic comedy out of all the housewives who want to fuck him.”
“Shauna-”
“You asked, Eric. Let’s get him back in the public eye for something good first, okay? Because there is such a thing as bad publicity and even I can’t work magic. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Shauna,” he sighs back at her. Then: “Thanks. From both of us.”
“It’s what you pay me for,” she says. “Bye, Eric. Don’t let him screw this up too.”
She hangs up, and walks across the office to pick up her son. He smiles happily at her, and waves the lipstick in the air. She wonders if she should worry about him drawing on the walls, and if vandalism is the first step towards throwing glasses across bars.
The thing is, she’s called herself Vince’s mother before, but she doesn’t want her kid to grow up anything like him.
She tugs him onto her lap and murmurs, “Because you have the sense God gave a fucking emu, don’t you, baby? Which makes you smarter than all of your mom’s clients put together.”
He laughs, and burbles a string of words at her: mommy, and red, and pretty. He points at the wall with the lipstick, like he’s trying to explain what it all means. Maybe he’s going to be an artist, or a writer. She kisses the top of his head. “Just as long as you’re not an actor or an agent, okay? That’s all Mommy asks. I’m gonna make you so much better than that.”
* * * *
She’s the studio head - she should be able to do whatever the hell she wants. Alan certainly did - ruining careers and spending God knows how much on screenplays just to put them in a drawer. Just to be spiteful. But she isn’t Alan, and John doesn’t trust her. Doesn’t even trust her as much as he would have trusted Ari, now, and it’s Ari’s fucking fault she’s getting her spending scrutinised like this. John keeps sending minions to ask her questions.
“Look,” she says, “We have a great script, a great director, and a concept that’ll kill come summertime. What more does John want?”
“He wants a star, Dana.”
“Stars cost. Comic book movies sell without them, they don’t need stars.”
“Christian Bale. Tobey Maguire. Hugh Jackman. And don’t bring up Brandon Routh, Dana, because we all know how that one turned out. Singer should just have called it the Death of fucking Superman and had done with it. Comic book movies without stars are Superman Returns or The Punisher. Nobody wants that.”
Dana had enjoyed Superman Returns, actually. She thought melding a classic Hollywood screwball comedy with a modern blockbuster was brave. But then she loves Katharine Hepburn movies, and no one cares what she thinks. Anyway: “Tobey Maguire’s barely a star now. Hugh Jackman was just some Australian singing show tunes before X-Men.”
“Look, Dana.” Low-level executive assistant Joel has his hands held wide and placating. She wants very badly to snap them off his wrists. He says, “Even X-Men had established names. Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen for Christ’s sake. I’m not saying the whole cast, but marketing needs something to put on the poster.”
“You put the tagline of the fucking comic on the poster and let the internet take care of the rest. Aquaman-”
“I don’t think we want to get into that particular stretch of history now, do we?”
“Get out of my office.”
“Dana.”
“First off, Joel, Superman Returns had Kevin Spacey and The Punisher had John Travolta. Stop pretending you know shit about movies and just talk to me like the bean counter you are.”
He’s gaping at her. She doesn’t care.
She says, “More importantly, I’m the head of this studio until John Ellis himself tells me differently. Get out of my office and stop telling me how to do my job. Tell John I’ll call him later with a name.”
It doesn’t consume the rest of her day (she doesn’t have time for pet projects anymore) but they hit three p.m. and she’s still working on the problem. She wouldn’t care, if the script wasn’t so good. If it didn’t have a perfectly balanced cast - a mix of teenagers and adults, and a sensible spread of gender and race. It’s the kind of movie they should be making, and the kind of movie she promised she’d make if she ever got to this place. It’s not about responsibility, exactly, but- Who is she kidding? She has a responsibility. There aren’t enough female studio heads for her to pretend she’s just like everyone else. She doesn’t want to just be making movies for Joel from the executive assistant pool - that’s not an under-tapped market. When John asks, she’ll tell him that they’re carving out a different niche for themselves. That may not be why he hired her, but that’s what he got.
Ari calls, again. “Dana Gordon. Finally you pick up. Where’s the love, Dana, I thought we were pals?”
“We were, Ari, until you nearly lost me my job. You’ve been harassing my assistant all day. What do you want?”
“I want to offer you an opportunity.”
“No.”
“Dana-“
“No, Ari. I can’t afford to lose any more of the studio’s money on one of your Vince pipe-dreams.”
“Now, why would you assume it’s about Vince?”
“Because you’re short half your cash for his new movie. You’ve been calling around all day and now you’re back where you started. The answer’s still no, Ari. You don’t get to fool me twice.”
She hangs up while he’s still protesting. She can fill in his end of the conversation anyway. It starts with them fucking in the mail room and ends with him getting her this job. Ancient history.
Ari had asked her to marry him, once. Before his wife was his wife, the night of their first big break, when they were drunk and stupid and filled with the glory of their triumph. She had frozen, he had slurred, “We could do this forever, Dana, we might as well make it official.” And she had said no, because of the times like this. He only ever makes entries on her side of the debts owed column. He had only got her the job because he didn’t want it and because he hates Amanda Daniels. (Because he had screwed her six or seven times literally and thirty or forty times figuratively, and he knew it. Because he has some twisted sense of honour but fairness to her came below anything for Vince). They’re as close to even now as makes no difference.
The phone comes up ‘Miller Gold Agency’ no matter who’s calling. Dana says, “Lloyd?” because Ari doesn’t place his own calls.
“Not quite,” a dry voice answers. “This is Barbara Miller. Is that Dana?”
“Barbara? What can I do for you?”
“Let’s turn that one on its end, shall we? What can I do for you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What do you want, Dana? Ari won’t shut up about this movie for Vince. It’s a good script, and Candace Taylor’s going to direct if we can secure the funding. Knowing Ari, he didn’t try and deal first. So what do you want? I heard about your little comic movie.”
Dana takes a breath. “I need a star.”
“Yeah? There’s a vampire in it, right? You want Pattinson? Because I can get you fucking Pattinson.”
“Really?”
“No, not really, the kid’s got an agent who knows better than that. All he wants to do now are indie movies where he’s allowed to tan and mess up his hair. This is what comes of casting English boys. So who else? I have half the High School Musical cast on retainer for times just like this. Teenagers, right?”
“There are parents too. I just need someone to tell John he can put on the poster.”
“The title won’t do that? ‘Runaways’ - very on point, very young.”
“John doesn’t think so.”
Barbara hums for a moment, and then says, “If I get someone for you, you’ll approve the funds for Candace?”
“And Vince and Ari and Eric.”
“And them, yes. Do we have a deal?”
“If you really have-”
“Off-hand, I can get you Alia Shawkat for the one with glasses. Arrested Development’s a critical darling, anything with one of their cast gets you buzz. We’re repping the Gossip Girl writers - you need a blonde girl, right?”
“Barbara-”
“I’ll send you the script. Read it while I talk to some people. This can be mutually beneficial, Dana. You’re the studio head now, you don’t have to like Ari to work with him - it’s allowed to be just business. They’re still going to think you’re fucking him, but they don’t get to say it out loud any more.” She hangs up.
Dana reads the script, and when Barbara calls her at seven with a list of names, she says yes. She even picks up the phone when Ari calls to congratulate her on seeing sense. She pretends she’s doing this as a favour for him, or because he pushed her, whatever spin he’ll take from it. It’ll do him good to think he owes her for a little while.
* * * *
Sloan doesn’t know why she stays in LA. She left for a while, for college, to be someplace where no one knew who Terrence McQuewick was, let alone what his daughter looked like. She should have stayed there.
Tori agrees with her. She says, “Baby, you should come out to DC. Okay, it’s still a company town, but none of the company boys could pick your dad out of a line-up. They’re all good-looking, busy, and horny as fuck. You can do so much better than this.”
“I have things here.”
“You can’t hold benefits in DC?”
“I have to go, it’s crazy down here. Talk to you soon.”
The florist is holding up an arrangement for her approval. It’s a sad statement on Hollywood that the quality of the centrepieces affects the level of donations, but it does. It’s just that kind of town, and she knows it well enough by now.
Her father doesn’t get it. Throwing charity galas is a perfectly respectable side-project for a Hollywood wife. She’s too smart to be a wife; he doesn’t understand that it’s not a side-project. This is what she wants to do. It’s one of maybe two things she knows how to do well, and she likes this one so much better. She sees what working in the industry does to good people.
Eric calls sometime between approving the flowers and picking the tablecloths. She goes outside to take it. “Eric.”
“Sloan, hey.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Why would you assume something’s wrong?”
“If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be calling me. So what’s up?”
“Shauna said you had some kind of event coming up. Like a house-building thing?”
“On Saturday, yeah. Why, you boys still homeless?”
“Very funny. No, I kinda need a PR boost for Vince. You maybe looking for some extra publicity? I can probably get Drama and Turtle along if it’ll help.”
“And you? Or are you letting Vince out on his own?”
“I’ll-” he stumbles over his words. “I’ll be along. I have a thing with Charlie in the middle, but I’ll be around before and I can stay after.”
“Okay. I’ll get a press release out and see you boys on Saturday. Nine a.m. sharp.”
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“Honestly? I was expecting to have to beg a little bit.”
Two minutes and she already has a headache. She leans against the wall and takes a breath. “Eric. You know what I need, right now? More than money, and new laws, and to get one over on my ex-boyfriend? I need willing hands, and I need news coverage. What makes you think I would care that it helps Vince out of his media problem at the same time?”
“I don’t-”
“What would make me that petty? The last time I checked, I thought we were still friends, Eric.”
“We are, it’s just that-”
“I need to go, Eric. I’m busy here.”
“Can I call you?”
“If it’s important.” She hangs up, and if she breaks stride for a moment on her way back to the ballroom, no one sees. When she gets in, she’s surrounded by people who need her attention, now if not sooner. She smiles brightly at them. “Guess what? Vince Chase is going to come help out on Saturday. I need my publicity guys in the office in ten, okay?”
She doesn’t need to hear them, off in the background while she makes final approvals on name-cards and displays for this round of appeals. She’s heard it all before: well, it’s easy for her, with Daddy’s money and Daddy’s connections. If she does nothing she’s Paris Hilton and if she does something then she’s Paris Hilton playing at being someone else. They’re not all wrong. It’s easier for her, of course it is. It’s just not easy.
DC would be easy and she misses her friends. She misses Tori so much that it aches, nights when she goes to parties and can’t find anyone she knows enough to want to talk to. Sloan squares her shoulders, and heads to the office. Her Dad’s a jackass sometimes, but he loves her enough not to have lied. He showed her war movies and romances and let her make up her own mind. She wasn’t raised to make the easy choice.
* * * *
She looks up to find Sarah hovering near the doorway to her bedroom. “What is it, baby?”
“Mom?”
“Yeah? Come in here, what’s wrong?”
Sarah slips into the room, and folds herself onto her side on the bed. Through the mirror above the dressing table, she looks like a child again, curled up small.
When she turns around though, there lies her daughter, a young woman, her face pulled into a frown. She sits beside Sarah on the bed.
“Mom?”
She looks down at Sarah. “Yes, honey. Are you okay?”
“I’m- yeah, I’m fine. I want to- There’s this guy.”
Her heart plummets. Sarah has been given ‘the talk’, by her mother, and then another, when Ari felt it was appropriate, about teenage boys and what they wanted.
“Does it hurt?” Sarah’s cheeks are flushed with embarrassment, but she meets her mother’s eyes. “I mean, does it-?”
They stay silent for a long moment. Then, finally, “Yes, it does. A little, the first time. If the boy,” (she can’t say guy, this is her baby girl, and she doesn’t remember ever being this young), “if he’s careful, it doesn’t hurt for long.”
“And it gets better, right?”
“Sarah, are you asking what it’s going to be like, or is this-?”
“Mom! No. I haven’t even brought a guy home, you think I’d-?”
“So? What’s with the-?”
Sarah shakes her head. “A friend. No, Mom, really a friend. She said it- And I thought-”
She takes Sarah’s hand in both of hers. “It gets better. With practice, and care, and the right boy. Just like everything else.”
Looking at the blankets, Sarah nods. She sighs, suddenly, and slips sideways to rest her head against her mother’s knee. Her hair is soft, stroked back from her forehead, like they have not done since she was much younger than this.
They had a Parent’s Meeting at the school last year sometime, after a janitor found used condoms in the girl’s bathrooms. She had said, “Am I the only one grateful they had the good sense to be using protection?” and ended up on the receiving end of the usual mildly horrified stares. She gets tarred with the same brush as Ari, who is too loud, and too crude, and kisses her senseless over the top of his new convertible.
She’s not the only mom who stays home, and if she were still working, she wouldn’t be the only one of those either. The difference isn’t anything like that. She would bet she’s the only one whose daughter ever came to them with a question like this one.
“It’s fun,” she says, and strokes Sarah’s hair. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. Just make sure the boy knows how exceedingly lucky he is to be allowed anywhere near you. Make sure you’re safe. And make sure the boy knows that if he hurts you in any way-“
“You’ll go to his house and cut his balls off?”
“Well, I was going to say your father will go down there and tear him apart, but actually that works too.” Sarah laughs, and she joins in.
Sarah stretches back up, and climbs off the bed. “Thanks, Mom.” Not quite grown-up again, she kisses her mother on the cheek, her own face still flushed. She bumps into Ari in the hallway, and gives him another impulsive kiss before dancing back to her bedroom.
Ari walks to the bed, throwing his jacket on the floor. “What was that about?”
She shrugs. If Sarah had wanted her father to know, she wouldn’t have waited until he was out for the evening. It’s nearly midnight now.
Ari gives her a questioning look, but doesn’t press. He looks tired.
“Tough day?” she asks.
“No tougher than usual. But here’s my beautiful wife awake and waiting for me - what more could any man ask for?”
“Ari, I swear, if this is a set-up to one of your-”
“No set-up, sweetheart, I promise. I’m just happy to see you.”
“Oh, really?”
He leans over her on the bed, kissing her collarbone where it’s bare, and working up to her lips. “Really.” He kisses her again. He says, “Maybe my day was a little tough.”
“Vince?”
“Why does everyone always assume-? Yes, Vince. Script problems, director problems, PR problems... You name it, we had it.”
“Is everything okay?” Last time, she was the last one to know. Ari doesn’t want her to worry; he’d rather she didn’t notice the hole beneath their feet until her cheques are bouncing all over town. Last time he used up all his opportunities to lie to her. There isn’t going to be a next time.
Ari pulls back to smile at her. He loves her, is the thing. He’s an asshole some days, and if he knew their daughter was thinking about sex he’d be yelling the house down. He’d be driving to the school and accosting teenage boys at random. He makes her life nearly impossible sometimes. But she loves him, and she chose to make her life with him. She knows how to give as good as she gets. She still considers herself a feminist, and a wife and mother too. She knows what her breaking point is, and she warns Ari when he gets anywhere near to it.
Ari slips his hand up her thigh and into her underwear. “I fixed it,” he says. “Well. E helped. But it’s all under control, baby, don’t even worry about it.”
She knows there is more of a story than that, but she has her secrets too. She turns them around until he is flat on the bed, and she kneels over him. His shirt comes easily undone in her hands, and his eyes close. “I love you,” he says, his voice going hoarse when she touches him.
“I know you do,” she says. “Don’t ever forget it.”
FIN.
AN2: Title is from Byron, used mostly ironically: "Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence.". And because I was trying to show the spectrum of their lives, not just how they fit into the lives of the men. While also showing how they're short-changed by the men, and have their own reasons for acting as they do towards the men. The intention, mostly, was to be in the POV of the women in turn throughout the day, reacting to the phonecalls, rather than following the guy as they make the call. I still don't feel I did Sloan justice, and I wanted more women talking to each other, but the show doesn't give me enough of that for me to guess what it's like. Any other judging of success or failure as regards the prompt, I leave to other people ;)
Fandom: Entourage
Characters: Barbara, Shauna, Dana, Sloan, Mrs Ari (Mrs Ari/Ari, and another historical canon het)
Rating: R for language and sexual implication
Length: 4,600 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Doug Ellin and HBO.
Spoilers: Through S5
Summary: These women aren't just sitting around waiting for the men to call.
AN: For deepad, for the very loose prompt of 'Five times the women of Entourage pwned the men' ;) And with thanks to dancinbutterfly for canon help. There's another author's note at the bottom that waffles about intention more.
Most days, Barbara is in the office before her assistant. She’s always in the office before Ari. If she was feeling generous, she would say that this is because Ari has young children, and she doesn’t. She’s not normally that generous. Ari just likes to hold his meetings out of the office, where she can’t keep an eye on him - breakfast cocktails with a client beats coffee and a bagel grabbed from the conference room. So she’s naturally suspicious when her assistant buzzes the intercom at nine a.m. and says, “Mr Gold for you, Ms Miller.”
“Okay, send him in.”
“Babs! It’s a beautiful fucking morning, what are you doing in here with the blinds down? Don’t tell me you’re hiding one of those pretty mailroom boys you keep hiring down there?” He crooks his neck to try and look under her desk.
“What do you want, Ari?”
He frowns in pretended offence for a moment, but he’s too smart to keep it up for long. “I need a favour.”
“Let me guess: Vincent Chase.”
“Hard as it may be for you to understand, Babs, I do have other clients.”
“Yeah, Ari? So it’s Johnny Chase then?”
“I’m just going to ignore that one. We have a writer with a film in development - Andy June.”
“Yeah?”
There’s a triumphant gleam in Ari’s eyes. “And what with all the personal interest I invest in my clients, I can tell you that his script’s gonna get us the awards buzz we need in the long cold winter. Cause it’s gonna be a long cold winter, Babs, and I’m just looking out for the agency. The script’s practically a fucking blowjob for the Academy voters.”
“So?”
“The director walked.”
“Ari, do you want to reach the point anytime soon? I have work to do.”
“Candace Taylor. She takes meetings on your side of the building.”
“She’s a brilliant director.”
“She loved the script.”
“So call her up. I promise I won’t get jealous.”
“She loved the script before we offered it to Redding. Now she won’t pick up the goddamn phone. I need you to-”
“Ari.”
“Would you,” he corrects himself. “Babs, would you, please. Please consider saving your own motherfucking agency by making this call for me. And anyway, my money is your money, you made sure of that.”
No, she thinks. My money is your money. Like your wife’s money is your money. And he has the nerve to say that she’s riding her ex-husband’s coattails to success. He married money, and she divorced it. At least she has the good sense not to be gambling with what she has now. She has a portfolio of clients; he has a monomaniacal obsession with turning an actor with average talent and above average looks into a movie star. Fucking Vincent Chase.
She sighs. “I’ll call her, Ari. But get Lloyd to send me a copy of the script first. And you’ll have to do the wooing - all I can promise is getting her into the building for a meeting.”
“I do all the work, you get all the credit.” He smirks. “Business as usual in the wonderful world of MGA.”
She only gets the credit from the people that matter. She makes lists of women in media; he makes the cover of Variety. Her lists call her by name: Barbara Miller, cofounder of Miller Gold Agency. She was Babs when she was twenty-five, and wanted to be one of the boys. When she tolerated men like her ex-husband because it was the only way into the club. (Because she had been young, and he had sometimes listened when she spoke, when they weren’t fighting or fucking). Now, she tolerates men like Ari. He calls her Babs because he knew her when, and because she couldn’t stop him. Because despite all the cracks (and she’s heard them all) about how she’s hiding the biggest cock in the industry under her dress pants, some assholes want a man’s name on the door. Why should she care what the morons think? She signs the checks, she holds veto power, and her name still comes first.
He’s heading towards her door. She coughs, and he stops. “Oh, and Ari?” she says.
“Hmm?”
“Next time you try and screw with me, I won’t just play along.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Vince’s fucking movie, and Eric’s fucking writer. Try and at least be man enough to admit that you’re his bitch.”
Ari blows out the door, which slams behind him. Barbara’s assistant hides behind her computer, but then she’s still new. Barbara doesn’t flinch. She dials the intercom. “Get me Candace Taylor. Tell her Ari Gold finally came to his senses.”
* * * *
Shauna is in the process of finding a new nanny. The previous one didn’t have the right attitude, and Shauna doesn’t have time for that. Just because she won’t give up work to play peek-a-boo doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her son. Certainly doesn’t mean she’s reckless enough about his upbringing to allow a cooing moron with a college degree and no common sense anywhere near him. So he is sitting on the floor of her office while Christy runs in and out with proofs for Shauna to check before they get released. He’s colouring, which means he’s happy enough, though in a moment or two one of the girls is going to realise he’s drawing with a sixty dollar Chanel lipstick. Shauna’s looking forward to it. They’ve been warned not to leave things lying around reception - he’s not even two for Christ’s sake.
But they’re not much older themselves, Shauna thinks sometimes. Barely twenty and not enough life experience to fill a teacup. Unless you count sex, which they do, and she doesn’t. Sex is easy. Kids are hard. Although not, obviously, harder than looking after some of her clients. Her son doesn’t end up on TMZ throwing beer bottles against the wall. It’s just that it would be socially acceptable to throw everything else aside to deal with it if he did. What she does isn’t at that level of female importance. Luckily, she doesn’t give a damn.
Her cell phone rings, a solid thirty minutes after she has the story, and two hours too late to do any good. “Eric,” she says, “I quit. You hear me? I’m sick to death of this fucking bullshit of his.”
“I know, Shauna. What do we do?”
“What do you mean ‘What do we do?’ I quit, didn’t you hear me? Or do you still have the sound of breaking fucking beer bottles ringing in your ears?”
“It was one bottle. And it cracked, he didn’t smash it.”
“You know they’re saying he threw it at the damn waitress.”
“The fuck they are. You know he wouldn’t do anything like that. Vince hasn’t been in a bar fight in his life.”
“Throwing glass at an eighteen year old girl doesn’t count as a bar fight, Eric - it’s assault with a goddamn deadly weapon.”
“So it’s a good thing he didn’t do it then, isn’t it? He knocked it off the bar, Shauna, that’s it. Maybe he was a little pissed off when he did it.”
“Let me make this perfectly clear to you and Vince, okay? He’s not motherfucking Christian Bale. That one’s batshit crazy, and he’s nearly driving his publicist into an early grave, but he has a franchise and a list of iconic roles a mile long, not to mention tens of millions of dollars in the bank. Vince has precisely none of those things.”
“Vince has you though.” Eric has never quite learned charm, but he has sincerity going for him. It doesn’t stop her being mad as hell at him, but it means she’s more likely to get over it eventually. Enough to fix this, anyway.
“Swallow your pride, and call your ex-girlfriend,” she says.
“What?”
“Sloan McQuewick. One of her charities is having a house-build, or renovate, or some other damn thing this weekend. Get Vince covered in paint, or dust, or dirt. Young star, out helping those who need it, looking healthy and virile at the same time. If he has to take his shirt off, so much the better. Maybe we can get some nice romantic comedy out of all the housewives who want to fuck him.”
“Shauna-”
“You asked, Eric. Let’s get him back in the public eye for something good first, okay? Because there is such a thing as bad publicity and even I can’t work magic. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Shauna,” he sighs back at her. Then: “Thanks. From both of us.”
“It’s what you pay me for,” she says. “Bye, Eric. Don’t let him screw this up too.”
She hangs up, and walks across the office to pick up her son. He smiles happily at her, and waves the lipstick in the air. She wonders if she should worry about him drawing on the walls, and if vandalism is the first step towards throwing glasses across bars.
The thing is, she’s called herself Vince’s mother before, but she doesn’t want her kid to grow up anything like him.
She tugs him onto her lap and murmurs, “Because you have the sense God gave a fucking emu, don’t you, baby? Which makes you smarter than all of your mom’s clients put together.”
He laughs, and burbles a string of words at her: mommy, and red, and pretty. He points at the wall with the lipstick, like he’s trying to explain what it all means. Maybe he’s going to be an artist, or a writer. She kisses the top of his head. “Just as long as you’re not an actor or an agent, okay? That’s all Mommy asks. I’m gonna make you so much better than that.”
* * * *
She’s the studio head - she should be able to do whatever the hell she wants. Alan certainly did - ruining careers and spending God knows how much on screenplays just to put them in a drawer. Just to be spiteful. But she isn’t Alan, and John doesn’t trust her. Doesn’t even trust her as much as he would have trusted Ari, now, and it’s Ari’s fucking fault she’s getting her spending scrutinised like this. John keeps sending minions to ask her questions.
“Look,” she says, “We have a great script, a great director, and a concept that’ll kill come summertime. What more does John want?”
“He wants a star, Dana.”
“Stars cost. Comic book movies sell without them, they don’t need stars.”
“Christian Bale. Tobey Maguire. Hugh Jackman. And don’t bring up Brandon Routh, Dana, because we all know how that one turned out. Singer should just have called it the Death of fucking Superman and had done with it. Comic book movies without stars are Superman Returns or The Punisher. Nobody wants that.”
Dana had enjoyed Superman Returns, actually. She thought melding a classic Hollywood screwball comedy with a modern blockbuster was brave. But then she loves Katharine Hepburn movies, and no one cares what she thinks. Anyway: “Tobey Maguire’s barely a star now. Hugh Jackman was just some Australian singing show tunes before X-Men.”
“Look, Dana.” Low-level executive assistant Joel has his hands held wide and placating. She wants very badly to snap them off his wrists. He says, “Even X-Men had established names. Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen for Christ’s sake. I’m not saying the whole cast, but marketing needs something to put on the poster.”
“You put the tagline of the fucking comic on the poster and let the internet take care of the rest. Aquaman-”
“I don’t think we want to get into that particular stretch of history now, do we?”
“Get out of my office.”
“Dana.”
“First off, Joel, Superman Returns had Kevin Spacey and The Punisher had John Travolta. Stop pretending you know shit about movies and just talk to me like the bean counter you are.”
He’s gaping at her. She doesn’t care.
She says, “More importantly, I’m the head of this studio until John Ellis himself tells me differently. Get out of my office and stop telling me how to do my job. Tell John I’ll call him later with a name.”
It doesn’t consume the rest of her day (she doesn’t have time for pet projects anymore) but they hit three p.m. and she’s still working on the problem. She wouldn’t care, if the script wasn’t so good. If it didn’t have a perfectly balanced cast - a mix of teenagers and adults, and a sensible spread of gender and race. It’s the kind of movie they should be making, and the kind of movie she promised she’d make if she ever got to this place. It’s not about responsibility, exactly, but- Who is she kidding? She has a responsibility. There aren’t enough female studio heads for her to pretend she’s just like everyone else. She doesn’t want to just be making movies for Joel from the executive assistant pool - that’s not an under-tapped market. When John asks, she’ll tell him that they’re carving out a different niche for themselves. That may not be why he hired her, but that’s what he got.
Ari calls, again. “Dana Gordon. Finally you pick up. Where’s the love, Dana, I thought we were pals?”
“We were, Ari, until you nearly lost me my job. You’ve been harassing my assistant all day. What do you want?”
“I want to offer you an opportunity.”
“No.”
“Dana-“
“No, Ari. I can’t afford to lose any more of the studio’s money on one of your Vince pipe-dreams.”
“Now, why would you assume it’s about Vince?”
“Because you’re short half your cash for his new movie. You’ve been calling around all day and now you’re back where you started. The answer’s still no, Ari. You don’t get to fool me twice.”
She hangs up while he’s still protesting. She can fill in his end of the conversation anyway. It starts with them fucking in the mail room and ends with him getting her this job. Ancient history.
Ari had asked her to marry him, once. Before his wife was his wife, the night of their first big break, when they were drunk and stupid and filled with the glory of their triumph. She had frozen, he had slurred, “We could do this forever, Dana, we might as well make it official.” And she had said no, because of the times like this. He only ever makes entries on her side of the debts owed column. He had only got her the job because he didn’t want it and because he hates Amanda Daniels. (Because he had screwed her six or seven times literally and thirty or forty times figuratively, and he knew it. Because he has some twisted sense of honour but fairness to her came below anything for Vince). They’re as close to even now as makes no difference.
The phone comes up ‘Miller Gold Agency’ no matter who’s calling. Dana says, “Lloyd?” because Ari doesn’t place his own calls.
“Not quite,” a dry voice answers. “This is Barbara Miller. Is that Dana?”
“Barbara? What can I do for you?”
“Let’s turn that one on its end, shall we? What can I do for you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What do you want, Dana? Ari won’t shut up about this movie for Vince. It’s a good script, and Candace Taylor’s going to direct if we can secure the funding. Knowing Ari, he didn’t try and deal first. So what do you want? I heard about your little comic movie.”
Dana takes a breath. “I need a star.”
“Yeah? There’s a vampire in it, right? You want Pattinson? Because I can get you fucking Pattinson.”
“Really?”
“No, not really, the kid’s got an agent who knows better than that. All he wants to do now are indie movies where he’s allowed to tan and mess up his hair. This is what comes of casting English boys. So who else? I have half the High School Musical cast on retainer for times just like this. Teenagers, right?”
“There are parents too. I just need someone to tell John he can put on the poster.”
“The title won’t do that? ‘Runaways’ - very on point, very young.”
“John doesn’t think so.”
Barbara hums for a moment, and then says, “If I get someone for you, you’ll approve the funds for Candace?”
“And Vince and Ari and Eric.”
“And them, yes. Do we have a deal?”
“If you really have-”
“Off-hand, I can get you Alia Shawkat for the one with glasses. Arrested Development’s a critical darling, anything with one of their cast gets you buzz. We’re repping the Gossip Girl writers - you need a blonde girl, right?”
“Barbara-”
“I’ll send you the script. Read it while I talk to some people. This can be mutually beneficial, Dana. You’re the studio head now, you don’t have to like Ari to work with him - it’s allowed to be just business. They’re still going to think you’re fucking him, but they don’t get to say it out loud any more.” She hangs up.
Dana reads the script, and when Barbara calls her at seven with a list of names, she says yes. She even picks up the phone when Ari calls to congratulate her on seeing sense. She pretends she’s doing this as a favour for him, or because he pushed her, whatever spin he’ll take from it. It’ll do him good to think he owes her for a little while.
* * * *
Sloan doesn’t know why she stays in LA. She left for a while, for college, to be someplace where no one knew who Terrence McQuewick was, let alone what his daughter looked like. She should have stayed there.
Tori agrees with her. She says, “Baby, you should come out to DC. Okay, it’s still a company town, but none of the company boys could pick your dad out of a line-up. They’re all good-looking, busy, and horny as fuck. You can do so much better than this.”
“I have things here.”
“You can’t hold benefits in DC?”
“I have to go, it’s crazy down here. Talk to you soon.”
The florist is holding up an arrangement for her approval. It’s a sad statement on Hollywood that the quality of the centrepieces affects the level of donations, but it does. It’s just that kind of town, and she knows it well enough by now.
Her father doesn’t get it. Throwing charity galas is a perfectly respectable side-project for a Hollywood wife. She’s too smart to be a wife; he doesn’t understand that it’s not a side-project. This is what she wants to do. It’s one of maybe two things she knows how to do well, and she likes this one so much better. She sees what working in the industry does to good people.
Eric calls sometime between approving the flowers and picking the tablecloths. She goes outside to take it. “Eric.”
“Sloan, hey.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Why would you assume something’s wrong?”
“If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be calling me. So what’s up?”
“Shauna said you had some kind of event coming up. Like a house-building thing?”
“On Saturday, yeah. Why, you boys still homeless?”
“Very funny. No, I kinda need a PR boost for Vince. You maybe looking for some extra publicity? I can probably get Drama and Turtle along if it’ll help.”
“And you? Or are you letting Vince out on his own?”
“I’ll-” he stumbles over his words. “I’ll be along. I have a thing with Charlie in the middle, but I’ll be around before and I can stay after.”
“Okay. I’ll get a press release out and see you boys on Saturday. Nine a.m. sharp.”
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“Honestly? I was expecting to have to beg a little bit.”
Two minutes and she already has a headache. She leans against the wall and takes a breath. “Eric. You know what I need, right now? More than money, and new laws, and to get one over on my ex-boyfriend? I need willing hands, and I need news coverage. What makes you think I would care that it helps Vince out of his media problem at the same time?”
“I don’t-”
“What would make me that petty? The last time I checked, I thought we were still friends, Eric.”
“We are, it’s just that-”
“I need to go, Eric. I’m busy here.”
“Can I call you?”
“If it’s important.” She hangs up, and if she breaks stride for a moment on her way back to the ballroom, no one sees. When she gets in, she’s surrounded by people who need her attention, now if not sooner. She smiles brightly at them. “Guess what? Vince Chase is going to come help out on Saturday. I need my publicity guys in the office in ten, okay?”
She doesn’t need to hear them, off in the background while she makes final approvals on name-cards and displays for this round of appeals. She’s heard it all before: well, it’s easy for her, with Daddy’s money and Daddy’s connections. If she does nothing she’s Paris Hilton and if she does something then she’s Paris Hilton playing at being someone else. They’re not all wrong. It’s easier for her, of course it is. It’s just not easy.
DC would be easy and she misses her friends. She misses Tori so much that it aches, nights when she goes to parties and can’t find anyone she knows enough to want to talk to. Sloan squares her shoulders, and heads to the office. Her Dad’s a jackass sometimes, but he loves her enough not to have lied. He showed her war movies and romances and let her make up her own mind. She wasn’t raised to make the easy choice.
* * * *
She looks up to find Sarah hovering near the doorway to her bedroom. “What is it, baby?”
“Mom?”
“Yeah? Come in here, what’s wrong?”
Sarah slips into the room, and folds herself onto her side on the bed. Through the mirror above the dressing table, she looks like a child again, curled up small.
When she turns around though, there lies her daughter, a young woman, her face pulled into a frown. She sits beside Sarah on the bed.
“Mom?”
She looks down at Sarah. “Yes, honey. Are you okay?”
“I’m- yeah, I’m fine. I want to- There’s this guy.”
Her heart plummets. Sarah has been given ‘the talk’, by her mother, and then another, when Ari felt it was appropriate, about teenage boys and what they wanted.
“Does it hurt?” Sarah’s cheeks are flushed with embarrassment, but she meets her mother’s eyes. “I mean, does it-?”
They stay silent for a long moment. Then, finally, “Yes, it does. A little, the first time. If the boy,” (she can’t say guy, this is her baby girl, and she doesn’t remember ever being this young), “if he’s careful, it doesn’t hurt for long.”
“And it gets better, right?”
“Sarah, are you asking what it’s going to be like, or is this-?”
“Mom! No. I haven’t even brought a guy home, you think I’d-?”
“So? What’s with the-?”
Sarah shakes her head. “A friend. No, Mom, really a friend. She said it- And I thought-”
She takes Sarah’s hand in both of hers. “It gets better. With practice, and care, and the right boy. Just like everything else.”
Looking at the blankets, Sarah nods. She sighs, suddenly, and slips sideways to rest her head against her mother’s knee. Her hair is soft, stroked back from her forehead, like they have not done since she was much younger than this.
They had a Parent’s Meeting at the school last year sometime, after a janitor found used condoms in the girl’s bathrooms. She had said, “Am I the only one grateful they had the good sense to be using protection?” and ended up on the receiving end of the usual mildly horrified stares. She gets tarred with the same brush as Ari, who is too loud, and too crude, and kisses her senseless over the top of his new convertible.
She’s not the only mom who stays home, and if she were still working, she wouldn’t be the only one of those either. The difference isn’t anything like that. She would bet she’s the only one whose daughter ever came to them with a question like this one.
“It’s fun,” she says, and strokes Sarah’s hair. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. Just make sure the boy knows how exceedingly lucky he is to be allowed anywhere near you. Make sure you’re safe. And make sure the boy knows that if he hurts you in any way-“
“You’ll go to his house and cut his balls off?”
“Well, I was going to say your father will go down there and tear him apart, but actually that works too.” Sarah laughs, and she joins in.
Sarah stretches back up, and climbs off the bed. “Thanks, Mom.” Not quite grown-up again, she kisses her mother on the cheek, her own face still flushed. She bumps into Ari in the hallway, and gives him another impulsive kiss before dancing back to her bedroom.
Ari walks to the bed, throwing his jacket on the floor. “What was that about?”
She shrugs. If Sarah had wanted her father to know, she wouldn’t have waited until he was out for the evening. It’s nearly midnight now.
Ari gives her a questioning look, but doesn’t press. He looks tired.
“Tough day?” she asks.
“No tougher than usual. But here’s my beautiful wife awake and waiting for me - what more could any man ask for?”
“Ari, I swear, if this is a set-up to one of your-”
“No set-up, sweetheart, I promise. I’m just happy to see you.”
“Oh, really?”
He leans over her on the bed, kissing her collarbone where it’s bare, and working up to her lips. “Really.” He kisses her again. He says, “Maybe my day was a little tough.”
“Vince?”
“Why does everyone always assume-? Yes, Vince. Script problems, director problems, PR problems... You name it, we had it.”
“Is everything okay?” Last time, she was the last one to know. Ari doesn’t want her to worry; he’d rather she didn’t notice the hole beneath their feet until her cheques are bouncing all over town. Last time he used up all his opportunities to lie to her. There isn’t going to be a next time.
Ari pulls back to smile at her. He loves her, is the thing. He’s an asshole some days, and if he knew their daughter was thinking about sex he’d be yelling the house down. He’d be driving to the school and accosting teenage boys at random. He makes her life nearly impossible sometimes. But she loves him, and she chose to make her life with him. She knows how to give as good as she gets. She still considers herself a feminist, and a wife and mother too. She knows what her breaking point is, and she warns Ari when he gets anywhere near to it.
Ari slips his hand up her thigh and into her underwear. “I fixed it,” he says. “Well. E helped. But it’s all under control, baby, don’t even worry about it.”
She knows there is more of a story than that, but she has her secrets too. She turns them around until he is flat on the bed, and she kneels over him. His shirt comes easily undone in her hands, and his eyes close. “I love you,” he says, his voice going hoarse when she touches him.
“I know you do,” she says. “Don’t ever forget it.”
FIN.
AN2: Title is from Byron, used mostly ironically: "Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence.". And because I was trying to show the spectrum of their lives, not just how they fit into the lives of the men. While also showing how they're short-changed by the men, and have their own reasons for acting as they do towards the men. The intention, mostly, was to be in the POV of the women in turn throughout the day, reacting to the phonecalls, rather than following the guy as they make the call. I still don't feel I did Sloan justice, and I wanted more women talking to each other, but the show doesn't give me enough of that for me to guess what it's like. Any other judging of success or failure as regards the prompt, I leave to other people ;)