Free Feast of Saints by Zoe Wildau Page A

she’d pinch his brow in concern.
    A week before the preproduction meeting deadline, production Allegrezza had become a hulking barbarian force in her studio. Lilly had developed an uneasy truce with him. Unlike her work on Gustav for Fox Hollow , she simply didn’t identify with the character. But she knew it was good: scary, strong and bruising. He would be virtually unstoppable in real life, if he existed.
    Lilly knew when she was good at something and when she wasn’t. Looking at Allegrezza, she reluctantly acknowledged that she was extraordinarily good at making monsters.

Chapter 6
    The Sunday before Thursday’s preproduction meeting, almost a month into her work on Feast of Saints , Lilly punched the speed dial for Greg’s cell number to ask a favor. Greg picked up on the second ring, which she knew to be a Talking Heads Psycho Killer ringtone.
    “
Qu’est-ce que c’est
, Peanut?”
    “Hey, can I bum a ride off you Thursday afternoon?” she asked.
    Her only motorized transportation was the Vespa, whereas Greg conveniently drove a customized mid-90s Chevy Astro van. Lilly heard Greg groan over the phone.
    “No food, I promise,” she said quickly.
    Greg’s “Peanut” nickname for her didn’t come so much from her size as from the fact that she’d had the ill manners once, after a night of bar hopping, to eat a bag of peanuts in the van. The peanut dust drove Greg, a bit of a neat freak, into a frenzy of midnight vacuuming.
    “I swear. Just me and my portfolio.”
    If she could hitch a ride with Greg, she could make some foam core boards of her designs and take them with her to her first official preproduction meeting with Jake and the director, Monty Davidson.
    “Alright, but only if you keep your promise. No food in the van,” Greg said sternly.
    “I promise. How about you and Becky come over the night before and I’ll cook for you. And, if you don’t mind, I can run through my presentation for you guys. I need to practice in front of an audience, or I’m going to be too nervous.”
    “Sure, sure,” Greg agreed. Then, foreseeing a promotional opportunity for his business, asked, “Do you think you could slip some of my cards to your new friends?”
    Greg, like most of her LA friends, also worked in the film industry as the owner of “Get-A-Grip”, a rental outlet that catered to LA’s abundant new and struggling independent filmmakers. His shop rented everything from cameras and lighting to wardrobes and props. If he didn’t have it, he could get it. He was a secret treasure and an extremely useful person to know in this industry, although Lilly would have hung out with him regardless of his resources because he was one of the kindest people she’d ever met.
    “Um… I don’t know about the cards. I’m not sure I can fit a plug into my presentation.” Inspiration striking, she said, “Instead, how about I wear one of your ball caps with the embroidered logo and accidently leave it at the meeting?”
    “Seriously? You’d do that? That would be schweet.”
    “It’s the least I can do,” she said, meaning it. She was putting Greg out. It was not the first time, nor was it likely to be the last.
    On Wednesday night, Becky was forced to cancel, having been called in to work at her catering job. Greg still came by to listen to Lilly’s presentation. Becky had already seen her production Allegrezza a week earlier and had pronounced him “sexy creepy.”
    When Lilly unveiled for Greg what she had been working on holed up in her bungalow for the last month, he seemed surprised.
    “I’m blown away,” he said. “This is tight. Really tight.” Those were words of high praise in Greg’s lexicon. Lilly could tell she’d gone up a notch in his estimation and it pleased her enormously.
    “I am pretty proud of it,” she said demurely. “Although I wish I had more time to flesh out my ideas.”
    She still didn’t feel completely satisfied with the final design for Allegrezza. She had