Chapter 7: Offers

The first leg ended eleven days later at a gravel lot with a trailer, a coffee urn and a signal.

Tegan had four bars for the first time in a week.

Her phone vibrated itself across the trailer's folding table.

Forty-seven missed calls.

Brand managers, talk-show bookers, two shoe companies, a cereal company and a woman who wanted to put her face on a line of thermal underwear.

She sat down and read them all.

Cal leaned in the doorway with a paper cup, and he watched her pick up the phone.

"The big agency," he said.

"Third on the list."

The woman who answered had a smooth, practiced voice.

"Tegan, we adore you. We can have a contract to you tonight. Full representation, exclusive, fifteen percent. Everything runs through us."

"Does everything include my footage?" Tegan asked.

"Of course. We handle all rights."

"Then no."

"Tegan, I don't think you understand how many people want to..."

"I understand exactly," Tegan said. "That's why I'm saying no. I'll sign for individual jobs, and I'll keep my rights to everything I film."

The line was quiet for a moment.

"We don't work that way."

"Then we won't."

She hung up and wrote the next name on a notepad.

By the fourth call, she had a sentence she could say without thinking.

By the seventh, she had a second one: "You'll hear my terms from my studio."

Cal had stopped pretending to drink his coffee.

"You have a studio?"

"A garage in Glassell Park, a ring light and a pawn-shop camera."

"What's it called?"

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