Today's Reading

I can't feel too poorly about leaving him, because the moment I step into the crowd, several guests with beady, vulture-like eyes swoop in, and Mr. Henry, barely having time to pop another sausage in his mouth, greets them boisterously through a mouthful and begins again.

Now to find Paula.

I maneuver through one room and into another. Then an adjoining one. Then another.

Each as packed as the others.

The house is a melting pot of two distinct types of Hollywood corporates.

Both parties in their sequined dresses. Both clutching neon-colored liquids in martini glasses and clouding the room with perfume. But from a mile away I could pluck them apart. Drop each into his or her designated category.

The glitter or the glue.

Paula and I are Hollywood's glue, those who belong to the behind-the-scenes work: the financing, the developing, the writing. Anyone from the elite creators of some of the biggest hits on the telly to the prop designer on a B-lister who managed to secure a ticket. Yes, we have on the suits and dresses. Yes, Paula looks rather nice tonight with a nest of curls arranged by Chloe in makeup. But no amount of hair, makeup, suits, or ties can conceal us enough that we could be mistaken for the other. There's always some clue—the streak of a tan line, the slight hunch in the shoulders, general level of confidence.

And then, of course, there is the glitter. The stars who speak through blinding white veneers the words we feed them onstage or set. The ones who don't wither when a crowd looks at them. The ones who can walk in wearing a costume designed to look exactly like a sheet of computer paper with an egg on it like this is just a typical Saturday.

Two very different worlds.

Four flights of stairs up and down, twenty minutes, and one ominous text from Paula's husband with the words STOP HER, and I find her at the other end of the house. We're in a room that looks like an aircraft hangar, one entire wall raised to reveal the side yard. The sound of barking echoes off the concrete floors, matching the noise level of an aquamarine waterfall outside flowing into a glowing pool on a clifftop overlooking the city. The view of the skyline is majestic, but surprisingly enough, fewer people stand on the green turf admiring it than beside the rectangular booth where Paula stands now. Barking is coming from a least a dozen large bins. Employees race around as men and women lean over the booth, pointing with their glossy nails.

There's a general frenzy pulsing through the air. The atmosphere falls somewhere between the Glastonbury Festival and the discovery of the Princess Diana Beanie Baby at a car boot sale in the 1990s.

A banner above the booth reads Paws with a Cause.

Leaflets are scattered on the floor all around, scribbled with words about a therapy-dog charity and where to donate. I don't look long enough to read it through though, because taking up half the sheet is her face, beneath the bold words "Rare Appearance by..."

Her.

A hundred Lavender Rhodeses on leaflets all around me.

I step around them, careful not to touch.

Frankly, I'd leave the room entirely were it not for the need to grab Paula. Or more specifically, save her husband. Because I see now what Mike was referring to in that text.

"Back away from the puppies, Paula," I say, halting behind her.

Paula freezes.

She turns slowly, revealing two cream-colored snowballs in her hands, which, upon further inspection, are living animals. Tiny brown eyes peek out behind the masses of fur. Petite teddy bears, if you will.

A woman beside us reaches towards one. Paula sticks out her elbow protectively, then swivels around to block her.

I may be too late.

"Oh good, Finn. I couldn't hold them off much longer. Here."

"Wha—" I say over the clamor.

And before I know it, I'm being handed off a puppy as if it's a martini.

"What is this?" I say, looking at the thing in my hands.

"That one's for you."

"What? You're joking. Are you mad?"

"Shhh!" Paula hisses, slapping the hand of a man trying to take hold of the dog.

A man I'm almost certain is Rowan Atkinson.

"Do you realize what this is?" she says in a rush. "These dogs are the goodie bags!" She begins shaking me. "The goodie bags!"

Okay, we've officially entered Princess Diana Beanie Baby-era level.
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