Shooting continued on the episode with Chloe, and I tried to disappear.

Up until now, I hadn’t usually worn any makeup to work. After all, my day consisted mostly of sitting in my office alone, and I didn’t have to impress anyone. But now, I found myself spending some extra time in front of the mirror, carefully lining and concealing myself.

Troy hadn’t called, and I didn’t really want to hear from him, even if he did have an apology or an explanation for his behavior in the Range Rover. I sat behind closed doors in my office, polishing the pages for Assistant Number Two, a.k.a. Doheny Hale—grrrrr—and working on story lines for the following episode. I avoided going to set. But when I got up on Thursday, I knew what I had to do. I was going to have to confront this for myself. I couldn’t go on like this.

I was bent over my laptop when Azita knocked and then opened the door. “Hey, Steve just called and he was wondering if you could come down to set? There’s something going on with the pages . . . I think there’s a problem.”

This was my chance. With more bravado than I felt, I walked onto set, but hung in the back. They had built the crime scene set entirely onstage. Midcentury furniture, gray suede couches with throws—it epitomized what a rock star’s home might look like. The only thing different here was the bloodstain on the rug, from where “Norma Jean’s” body had been found. The scene was supposed to match what we shot the first time around, but now with Chloe playing the role instead of Love. We’d feature this flashback while Chloe explained her side of the story to the investigators.

OFFICER

So can you tell us exactly how the body was when you found it?

DOHENY

She was on her side, her head was up here (she ges tures off camera) and her knees were a little bent.

OFFICER

Then those aren’t your bloody footprints around the body? You said earlier that you saw she was dead from a distance. If that’s so, where did all the bloody footprints come from?

For her big moment Chloe bit her lip nervously, employing an Angelina Jolie bit of business in her acting.

DOHENY

Well, maybe I did go in close when I was checking on her. I was really in shock so I’m not really sure what I did.

Our director, Mick Gage, was a veteran of these kinds of shows. He knew how to move along quickly on these heavy shoot days. Most days we shot ten pages of script, whereas a movie shoots two or three. Mick watched a monitor intently as the steadicam operator swung around and was now tight on Chloe’s face. I moved up to see the monitor more closely myself.