Never Yours Again novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Producer of Record

My boss called me into her office on Monday with the door shut and her glasses pushed up into her hair.

"Sit," she said. "Don't make a face."

I sat and made a face.

"Palgrave House signed with us this morning," she said. "The fall show. The whole production, the runway, the seating, the after-party at the Lakeshore Hall."

My stomach dropped through the chair.

"We're a twelve-person firm," I said. "They have never hired us."

"They hired us at four times our usual rate." She slid a contract across the desk. "With one condition, written in. The producer of record is Lucy Tannen."

"I won't do it."

"Lucy."

"I won't. He left me a midnight voicemail about buying me a bed."

"And you played it to two hundred reporters."

"He still made it."

She took off her glasses.

She was fifty-eight and had built the firm from one folding table, and she looked at me with a tired kind of honesty.

"The deposit covers four months of payroll for everyone out there," she said. "Shawna's rent. Two new babies on the team. It's your call, and I won't hold it against you if it's no."

I looked through the glass wall at the open office.

Shawna was at her desk with her headphones on, pretending to read a seating chart and watching me over the top of it.

A copywriter was eating a sandwich and showing his phone around, with a photograph of a very small hat.

"Yes," I said, and hated it.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure he wants me there. I just don't know why."

"Then find out," said my boss. "Before the deposit clears."

I stayed late.

By nine the office was empty, except for Shawna sitting cross-legged on the carpet with the run-of-show spread around her in a fan.

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