Not Dead Yet

fire. In hindsight, she realized, it was because she hadn’t chosen well and the scripts were – frankly – weak. This movie now could give her the critical acclaim she craved. She’d fought hard for this role. And she’d succeeded.
    Hell, you had to fight in life. Fortune favoured the brave. Some people were born with silver spoons so far up their assholes they stuck in their gullets, and some, like herself, were born on the wrong side of the tracks. It had been a long journey to here, through her early days of waiting tables, and two husbands, to the place she was now at, and where she felt comfortable. Just herself, Roan and Todd, the fitness instructor who gave her great sex when she needed it and kept out of her face when she didn’t, and her trusted entourage, Team Gaia.
    She picked up the script and showed him the white and the blue pages. ‘Mama has to learn all this before she flies to England.’
    ‘You promised.’
    ‘Didn’t Steffie read to you tonight?’ Steffie was the nanny.
    He looked forlorn. ‘You read better. I like it when you read.’
    She looked at her watch. ‘It’s after ten o’clock. Way past your bedtime!’
    ‘I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep unless you read to me, Mama.’
    She tossed the script on to the glass coffee table, lifted him down and stood up. ‘Okay, one quick story. Okay?’
    His face brightened. He nodded vigorously.
    ‘Marla!’ she shouted. ‘Marla!’
    Her assistant came into the room, cellphone pressed to her ear, arguing furiously with someone about what sounded like the seating arrangements on a plane. The one extravagance Gaia refused to have was a private jet, because of her concerns over her carbon footprint.
    Marla was shouting. Didn’t the fuckwit airline know who Gaiawas? That she could fucking make or break them? She was wearing glittery Versace jeans tucked into black alligator boots, a thin black roll-neck and a gold neck chain carrying the flat gold globe engraved Planet Gaia . It was exactly the same way her boss was dressed tonight. Her hair mirrored her boss’s, too: blonde, shoulder length, layered in a sharp razor cut with a carefully spaced and waxed fringe.
    Gaia Lafayette insisted that all her staff had to dress the same way – following the daily emailed instructions of what she would be wearing, how her hair would be. They had, at all times, to be an inferior copy of herself.
    Marla ended the call. ‘Sorted!’ she said. ‘They’ve agreed to bump some people off the flight.’ She gave Gaia an angelic smile. ‘Because it’s you !’
    ‘I need cigarettes,’ Gaia said. ‘Wanna be an angel and go get me some?’
    Marla shot a surreptitious glance at her watch. She had a date tonight and was already two hours late for him, thanks to Gaia’s demands – nothing unusual. No previous personal assistant had lasted more than eighteen months before being fired, yet, amazingly, she was entering her third year. It was hard work and long hours, and the pay wasn’t great, but the work experience was to die for, and although her boss was tough, she was kind. One day she’d be free of the chains, but not yet. ‘Sure, no problem,’ she said.
    ‘Take the Merc.’
    It was a balmy hot night. Gaia was smart enough to understand the small perks that went a long way.
    ‘Cool! I’ll be right back. Anything else?’
    Gaia shook her head. ‘You can keep the car for the night.’
    ‘I can?’
    ‘Sure, I’m not going anywhere.’
    Marla coveted the silver SL55 AMG. She looked forward to driving the fast bends along Sunset to the convenience store. Then to picking up Jay in it afterwards. Who knew how the night might turn out? Every day working for Gaia was an adventure. Just as every night recently, since she had met Jay, was too! He was a buddingactor, and she was determined to find a way, through her connection with Gaia, to help him get a break.
    She did not know it, but as she walked out to the Mercedes, she was making a grave mistake.

3
    Thirty minutes earlier, the valium had started kicking in as he set off from Santa Monica, calming him. The coke he had snorted in a brief pit stop in the grounds of UCLA in Westwood, fifteen minutes ago, was giving him energy, and the swig of tequila he took now, from the bottle on the passenger seat beside him, gave him an extra boost of courage.
    The ’97 Chevy was a rust bucket, and he drove slowly because the muffler, which he couldn’t afford to fix, was shot, and he didn’t want to draw