Page 12 of Scripted for Love and Poison (Sol and Luke Mystery #2)
S ol was inside one of the suites of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, waiting for her interview with Victor Lago to start. Describing her as irritated would be putting it mildly.
For one, she was supposed to interview the director for a movie she had yet to watch.
The commission from Julie had been so last minute that she hadn’t had time to see Haughty Horizons before her chat with Lago.
And everyone in her profession knew there was nothing that upsets filmmakers and creatives more than lack of knowledge when it comes to their work.
Granted, the movie had been released a few weeks before, and she should have technically already watched it. In theory she should watch everything , but there were way too many films and TV shows and not enough time. Not even for a professional critic.
The reality was that she’d read a few of the online reactions generated after Simon Smith’s initial review and decided she didn’t want to watch a bad movie—especially one that dealt with existential dread, a haunted ranch, and the machinations of a local political boss.
She’d read the plot of Haughty Horizons and thought, Bleak drama that takes itself too seriously.
No, thank you . Of course, she now realized that had probably been a prejudiced mistake.
Reviewing was such an subjective business that Simon’s initial criticism could have negatively influenced consecutive reviews of Haughty Horizons .
And maybe the movie deserved better. It probably did, since the studio was giving it a new promotional push.
That could only be seen as their belief in the film’s potential. Yet she still hadn’t watched it.
But Sol wasn’t only unhappy because she felt ill prepared for an interview.
She was also extremely sleepy, tired, and still quite frustrated.
If the heat level of the makeout session with Luke in the hallway of the Fairmont Hotel the previous evening was any indication, she should have probably been still dazed from all the good-mood hormones and fantastic sex. But she wasn’t.
After both their key cards had failed to open their door at the Fairmont, Luke and Sol had gone to the hotel’s reception.
There they’d been informed not only that they would not be able to extend their stay as initially planned, they were, in fact, no longer guests.
Sol had made an inexplicable mistake while booking their hotel.
In her defense, it had been while listening to her mother enumerate all the reasons why she didn’t think Luke was a good match for her—and she’d selected the wrong end date.
After spending a cramped Christmas at the Novos’ and then the Contadinos’, and after a busy start to the new year, what Sol and Luke needed was some quality time and the comfort of a solid bed.
Instead they were told that the hotel was completely full, and they would sadly have to leave.
Not only that, Los Angeles was buzzing with several awards ceremonies and events.
So much so that they hadn’t been able to find another suitable hotel room.
The few available were either expensive suites going for several thousand dollars a night or out-of-the-way motel rooms that didn’t inspire much confidence.
After hours of hotel perusing from the lobby of the Fairmont, Sol had called Lola.
The silver lining had been that her friend had finally met Luke in person.
The not-so-ideal situation was that she and Luke had slept on an inflatable mattress in Lola’s living room in her family’s Craftsman Bungalow in Los Feliz.
“Sorry I’m late.” A low-pitched voice took Sol out from her inner musings as Victor Lago entered the room. “I needed to make a phone call.”
“No problem,” she said, her professional smile and demeanor fully at play, even if she did feel more tired than usual. “I don’t know if you remember me from the ceremony this Sunday?”
“Yes, of course. Unlike your professional colleague, I’m extremely good with faces.” Victor Lago sat in front of Sol. But even though his words were polite and kind, there was something about his cheeky demeanor that didn’t make him very trustworthy.
“It was a night difficult to forget by any measure,” Sol said, and she wasn’t exactly sure what had made her do it.
She was normally all business in those kinds of settings, but Julie only wanted one quote or two from the director, and Sol had been promised fifteen minutes, so she inferred she could do some small talk before asking Lago about Haughty Horizons .
“I’m glad that there were medical professionals close by. Was it a heart attack?” Lago asked, still sounding a tad fickle. He produced a hip flask from the interior pocket of his tweed jacket and took a swig .
“What happened to Travis, you mean? It wasn’t a heart attack. They believe he was poisoned,” Sol explained, unfazed by the mid-morning drink. It wasn’t exactly the first time she’d encountered that during an interview.
“Poisoned? By who?” Lago said, surprised. Even his accent sounded different. It had been a perfectly modulated and somehow artificial Mid-Atlantic English until that point, but it turned to a broad and expressive New Yorker after hearing Travis had been poisoned.
“No idea about that,” Sol said, realizing she should probably not have shared that piece of information. She made a mental note not to tell Luke about her babbling too much. “Did you know Travis? Before Sunday, I mean.”
“I’m sure we’ve seen each other at press functions over the years, you know how it goes.
The same faces keep popping up, but I can’t say I knew him personally.
” Lago’s Mid-Atlantic English was back at play.
And was it weird that he’d just described himself as someone who was extremely good with faces and now seemed to have only a vague recollection of Travis’s features?
“Yes, every time I come to Los Angeles I keep seeing the same journalists everywhere,” Sol said.
She suddenly realized she wasn’t sure how she’d introduce the questions Julie wanted her to ask.
“My editor at Red Carpet was very excited when the opportunity of talking to you arose. She feels that perhaps we didn’t cover Haughty Horizons properly before. ”
“If so, I’m afraid that you weren’t the only ones,” Lago said. Again, his words and manners were polite, but they still didn’t ring as sincere to Sol.
“Do you feel the movie hasn’t been treated fairly?” she pressed.
“I don’t think I’m the most objective person to make such a statement, but yes, I don’t think the movie was judged in a fair manner.” Lago sipped again and then offered the flask to Sol.
“Why?” Sol shook her head to the offer of booze, and then she tried to soften her words. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Of course I don’t,” Lago said, yet it sounded like he did mind.
“Despite my requests for a wide promotion, the studio insisted on showing the movie initially only to an extremely small number of select critics. I wanted to reach as many movie reviewers as possible and do word-of-mouth screenings, but I was told that would be a mistake. So we took the studio’s approach, and the initial reviews were middling.
Of course, only a very small batch of critics had seen the movie, a very homogeneous group. ”
“You mean that the critics that had access to the movie were mainly middle-aged, white, straight, cisgender men,” Sol deciphered Lago’s code.
“Without getting into specifics, the studio felt a certain demographic would respond better to the movie,” Lago continued. Sol thought about her own response to Haughty Horizons and the lack of appeal the movie had to her.
“Did you read those reviews?”
“I never read reviews,” Lago said, and Sol didn’t know how she knew it, but he was lying.
“So you don’t know if there was anyone in particular who hadn’t understood what you tried with Haughty Horizons ?” she surprised herself by asking. Was she baiting Lago to get him to talk about Simon Smith?
“You’d have to ask our publicity team. I know they keep clippings of everything that gets published.
” Once again Lago was all professionalism.
And Sol couldn’t avoid thinking that if they were having this conversation in a bar, instead of the setting of an interview, and without her phone recording the director’s every word, those words would be a bit different and more revealing.
Especially considering Lago was probably already tipsy.
“So they didn’t tell you anything about critic Simon Smith’s views on the movie?” She would normally never risk antagonizing an interviewee in such a way, but Julie probably wouldn’t mind. After all, Sol was inquiring after her editor’s friend.
“I’m afraid I have no clue who you’re talking about,” said Lago in an icy tone that Sol recognized only too well as a warning. The director’s patience was wearing off.
“How has the studio persuaded you to do this again?” she asked. “I know doing press is tiresome and draining.”
“No, no. I love doing press.”
Sol almost chuckled. No one loved talking to journalists for hours on end and repeating the same answers over and over again. “But how are things different this time for Haughty Horizons ?”
“Well, for starters I’m talking to you,” Lago said with his best smile. “I love talking to women about my films.”
“To women?” Sol frowned, unsure what exactly Lago was implying.
“You’re much more gentle and understanding,” the director said, with the confidence of someone who thought he’d just paid a compliment. “By the way, where has your editor at Red Carpet been hiding you? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before, and it’s most definitely a pity.”
There was nothing Sol liked less than a man pretending to be something he wasn’t. And Victor Lago, regardless of what he may think about himself, clearly wasn’t aligned with feminist values.