The Slow Rise Of Clara Daniels

2. Los Angeles, 2019-2

Bob Willoughby, the head of Barnett Studios, sat at the end of a long mahogany table, smoking a cigar. He hastily put the cigar out and rose to his feet when Clara entered the room. His assistant, Phil, was at her side immediately, taking her handbag and offering her a glass of orange juice.

Clara took the glass and surrendered her bag without comment, her eyes fixed on Willoughby’s face. Willoughby’s new Vice President of Marketing drew out a chair for her and Clara sat, the slit in her skirt revealing her long leg, up to her thigh. The marketing VP’s gaze rested on her legs for a moment, before he took his seat next to Willoughby.

Clara tried to look into the VP’s mind to see whether or not his calm was a façade but found that she couldn’t. His mind was closed to her. She frowned. That had never happened to her before, except with the other women of her family.

The Vice President of Marketing smiled at her as if he knew what she was thinking. Her frown deepened. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-four. He had a lot of power for someone so young, to be sitting in a meeting with her and Bob. She wondered briefly if she had seen him somewhere before.

Clara let her frown fade and allowed herself. She wondered why Willoughby had brought him in, perhaps in a vain attempt to cajole her. Bob must be under the false impression that she was slipping.

She turned the strength of her gaze on Willoughby and he blinked, caught off guard. He swallowed hard and focused on the papers in front of him.

“Well, Clara, I appreciate you coming in today.”

She smiled then. “I know you do, Bob.”

“Yes, well—”

The studio head coughed convulsively, and his assistant silently handed him a glass of water. Willoughby drank it in three swallows and handed the empty glass back to Phil. For a moment, Clara thought he might mop his brow like one of the characters in the stupid films she made, but he didn’t do anything so obvious. He forced himself to meet her eyes, and she caught a glimpse of the man who had taken a chance on hiring her four years before.

“Clara, the people on the board are concerned about your next project.”

“Really?”

She kept her voice deceptively even and pleasant, sipping her juice. It was slightly sour.

“Yes. They’re afraid the market is too tight for a costume drama. They want to put you in a space thriller instead.”

Clara was silent for the span of a minute. She waited to see if anyone else in the room would speak again. When they didn’t, she extended her hand and Phil was there immediately, placing a lit cigarette between her fingers. She took a slow draw of tobacco, her gaze fixed firmly on Willoughby.

“And what do you think, Bob?”

Willoughby looked surprised at the even tone of her voice, he and took a deep breath. She could feel his fear from where she sat. She wasn’t used to seeing Bob Willoughby afraid. She felt her temper rising.

“You know I’m not paid to think, Clara. Not creatively, anyway. These men know the markets. They feel that a costume drama will flop and lose more studio money than we can afford.”

Willoughby shifted in his chair. He looked down at his papers and shuffled them. Clara got a flash into his mind. They were blank pages.

She kept her voice low, ignoring the marketing VP, who cleared his throat, almost as if he intended to speak. She stared hard at Willoughby until he met her eyes.

“Are they shelving my project, Bob?”

He nodded. Clara stayed silent for a long moment, the glass of sour orange juice in her hand. The marketing VP turned to her. She saw Bob reach for his arm to silence him, but the VP ignored him, focusing his indigo blue eyes on her. For some inexplicable reason, try as she might, Clara still couldn’t read what he was thinking.

“Miss Daniels, the marketing department wants you to know that we consider the shelving of this project only temporary. We’ve had quite a few setbacks in foreign markets, and we need to shore-up our position. We feel that if you consider the space thriller, Blast Away, we’ll be in a better position to return to—”

Clara stood in the middle of his speech, and in one smooth motion, threw her orange juice against the wall behind his head. The crystal shattered against the wood paneling and the sour juice ran down the wall in rivulets.

She didn’t look at the VP again but turned to Bob. Phil was at her side with her bag. She delicately took a last draw off her cigarette and stubbed it out in the crystal ashtray on the table. Bob’s eyes were wide, and she could feel him holding his breath.

“I think you know my position on this, Bob. I’ll wait for your call.”

Clara turned, and Phil opened the door for her smoothly. She was out of the building and back in her car before she remembered that when she’d thrown her glass the VP hadn’t even flinched.