with.â He hung up.
âWell,â I said. âThat was certainly instructive.â
âFuck you,â Tea said, and stared off out a side window. Miranda came in, dropped a file on my desk, and left.
âWhat is that?â Tea asked.
âThis is your clipping file,â I said. âOur clipping service scours the trades and the magazines and the blogs for a reference to any of our clients and sends them on to us. So we always know what people are thinking about the people we represent.â
I separated the clips into two piles. One was very small. The other was not. I pointed to the smaller pile. âDo you know what this is?â I asked.
Tea looked over, shrugged. âNo.â
âThese are your positive notices,â I said. âTheyâre mostly about the fact that youâre built like Barbie, although thereâs one here that says you were the best thing about that Vince Vaughn flick you were in, with the further admission that that is a textbook example of damning with faint praise.â
I thumped the other, much larger pile with an open palm. âThis,â I said, âis your pile of negative notices. We have an office pool here, you know. Weâve got bets on how thick this pile is going to get by the end of the year. Right now, itâs a modest three inches. But itâs early yet, and TMZ loves you.â
Tea looked bored. âIs this going somewhere?â
I gave up. âTea, Iâve been trying to find some way to put this delicately. Let me make it simple: Nobody in town likes you. No one. Youâre monstrously difficult. People donât like working with you. People donât like being seen with you. People donât even like being in the same room with you. Even the thirteen-year-old boys who fantasize about you know enough not to like you as a person. In the grand pantheon of legendary bitches of Hollywood, itâs you, Shannon Doherty, and Sean Young.â
âIâm not anything like them,â Tea said. â I still have a career.â
âYou sure do,â I said. âAnd you have me to thank for it. Any other agent would have written you off long ago. Youâre good looking, but thatâs not exactly a rare thing around these parts. I have to fight to get you work. And every time I do get you work, I hear back about how everybody on that crew would rather chew glass than work with you again. Everyone.
They have craft service workers who wonât cater a set youâre on. My best estimate is that you have about another eighteen months before we run out of people whoâll work with you. After that youâll have to find some nice, eighty-year-old oil tycoon you can marry and screw into a coma.â
Tea was dumbstruck. It couldnât last. It didnât. âGee, Tom. Thanks for the vote of confidence.â
âThe vote of confidence isnât for you, Tea. Iâm giving you two choices here. The first choice is to sit here, shut up, and do what I tell you. We may have an outside chance of saving your career if you do. The other is not to sit here, shut up, and do what I tell you. In which case, Iâm dropping you and you can get the hell out of my office. It really doesnât matter to me which you do. Actually, Iâm lying. Iâd prefer it if you left. But itâs up to you. Whatâs it going to be?â
Tea sat there with a gaze of pure, unadulterated hate. It was unnervingly arousing. I ignored it and went on.
âAll right, then. The first thing youâre going to do is apologize to Amanda.â
âFuck, no,â Tea said.
âFuck, yes,â I said, âor we have no deal. I realize you didnât notice this while you were dismantling her, but Amanda may have been the only person in the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area who actually genuinely liked you. There are seventeen million people in the LA basin, Tea. You need her.â
âThe hell