They weren’t quite friends at that time, more like wary colleagues. As two of the few women in their film program, they’d been inevitably thrown together, even if Anna’s ripped tights and Goodwill T-shirts didn’t quite fit with Jenny’s flowered dresses and brightly colored cardigans. Running her hands through her hair and worrying she was about to be kicked out, Anna had dropped the pages in front of Jenny on the small café table where she had sat, drinking an iced coffee and working on her own project. Fortunately, Jenny had been intrigued by the basic premise, and the two had collaborated on the film The Castro, which had brought them to Hollywood.

“It was our movie,” Anna insisted. “We all have to play to our strengths. I’m good at telling people what to do. You’re good at making words go.”

“One of us—and I’m not going to say who, because I’m too big of a person—won an Independent Spirit Award for that movie,” Jenny said in a conspiratorial tone.

Jenny had crafted a poignant film out of Anna’s rambling dialogue and jumbled scenes. She deserved the many accolades the screenplay had earned.

“You should’ve won.”

“You’re going to have to let that go at some point.”

“Never.”

Jenny took a deep breath. “I know I owe you for Paris—”

“You don’t owe me for anything.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jenny said, “but the next time I text you on your birthday, text me back, okay? All the kids are doing it these days.”

“Being divorced and turning thirty-five was traumatic enough. I couldn’t combine that with emojis.”

Jenny laughed. “I can’t drink with you today. I’m on a deadline.”

“What are you working on?”

“Vampires.”

“Seriously?” Anna couldn’t believe it. No one made movies about vampires these days. It would cycle back. Everything did. But... “Are you doing rewrites on that production in Rome?”

Even the entertainment press in London had picked up the story of a vampire movie that needed course correction in the middle of shooting.

“Yup, Remington Pictures hired me. They need to cut costs, so I’m removing the big outdoor battle scenes and replacing them with interior dialogue-heavy scenes.”

“Are they really going to fire the director?”

Removing the director in the middle of a shoot was so unusual Anna could only think of two instances where it had happened. She didn’t envy the incoming director. The cast and crew would either be loyal to the outgoing regime or have lost so much faith in the production that they would half-ass working with the new team.

“They have too much money invested at this point to shut it down. They might send me to the set.”

A writer on set meant the production was in worse shape than the studio had admitted publicly. “How quickly do you need to turn a draft?”