Page 3 of The Dirty Version

Instead, just as pictured in the industry profiles she’d dug up, a rectangularly stout, prematurely gray-haired, early-fifties corporate-entertainment bully in an expensive navy polo stood to greet her from his well-located table in the middle of the piano bar’s main dining room.

Ram Braverman pulled Tash’s chair out, his welcome easy.

His cologne carried hints of vetiver and saddle leather and the je ne sais quoi of corporate jet.

“I’m glad you could come, Natasha.” Obviously, he knew she didn’t have a choice.

Insincerely and with great strength, Tash discharged an answering, high-wattage grin. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She endured the handshake. “Please, just call me Tash.”

Tash’s father, Vikram Grover, was the only older man who used her full name—and usually only in disappointment, like when Tash had quit her master’s program, or realized too late the ballroom deposit for her canceled wedding could not be refunded.

“My stepdaughter made me promise to tell you she’s a big fan.” Ram lowered back into his seat. “She’s the one who insisted I direct this series.”

Tash was pretty sure she’d read that Ram Braverman had many stepdaughters—and many stepsons and many ex-wives. But Tash did not inquire further. She was behaving, like her agent had instructed. Smile and nod.

Tash crossed her legs neatly, sage-green upholstery copping a feel of the exposed skin along her back.

Across an expanse of thick cloth and mercury-glassed candle, Ram inspected a bottle offered to him by a sommelier, the deference of pour and patience informing Tash she sat with a Goliath.

Informing her no measure of bared spine or dramatic eyeliner could level their mismatch.

“You know, it’s funny.” Nose in his wine, a deep quaff, a nod to the sommelier. “Typically, if we have an author who’s too committed to their rights, I want to blow my brains out.” Ram divulged this fantastic tidbit as if it were not an incredibly ballsy and audacious fuck-you.

As if the contract clause he referenced—the one that had forced this dinner, Tash’s right of first refusal—were a nuisance instead of an author’s only shield.

Tash had ceded creative control over the series adaptation, as was common in literary-to-film agreements, in exchange for a small set of legal privileges.

Which, even after Braverman took possession of The Colony ’s existing episode scripts, specified that no one else could write changes to them, except Tash, unless the work was offered to her and she explicitly declined.

This provision had, this past month, been the loophole within which Tash had hidden away; Braverman’s team harassed her to write filth, and Tash was careful never to actually decline it.

Instead, she’d simply stuck her head in the sand.

Where she also buried her dreams of meaningful feminist direction, and Gayle and Oprah hosting an all-girlfriends premiere.

The Colony might be the only book Tash ever authored—she’d rather watch its screen release stall in a writers’ purgatory forever than let it be tarted up and abused.

Mr. Braverman’s expression reflected none of this contentious history as he swirled an ounce of Shiraz beneath the crystal swags of a candelabra.

“Natasha, this case is different. Your project is important. Even though it’s women’s television, it reminds me of the classics—for example, when you were writing, did you ever think of Noab’s mother as Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ? ”

Tash gagged. Or gasped. Or both. No one had ever asked that. It was shockingly perceptive.

Ram chuckled, not noticing her fluster. “Does that sound crazy? Don’t worry—we’re done with casting. I’m not calling Mel.”

“It doesn’t sound crazy.” It sounded like Braverman had cameras trained on the inside of her head.

A color printout of Tina Turner in Mad Max had lived on Tash’s mood board for four months as she visualized Noab’s family tree for that first draft, trying to capture the postapocalyptic majesty of Noab’s heritage.

That widow’s peak mohawk and the enormous spring-hoop earrings were Tash’s shortcuts into mentally conjuring the character—even though the narrative plots had nothing in common, and the women of The Colony didn’t wear junkyard jewelry or spray their hair.

“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.” Ram’s fist closed around the stem of his paper-thin goblet balloon. “I’ve never done a series like this before, you know.”

Oh, Tash knew. Ram Braverman credits rolled at the end of disaster movies, films with an excess of explosions, vehicles for former pro wrestlers; and typically featured a combination of grumpy and wunderkind US law enforcement, drag racing, maybe a touch of martial arts.

A twenty-two-year-old actress would play somebody’s mother; she might also appear topless, perhaps for no reason.

Ram kept talking, sketching out his vision for Hewett, the sea captain Noab rescues from a shipwreck: “Part seaweed-bedraggled pirate—and part frightened, unmoored knave. Yes?”

Tash was baffled. “Sure.” Ram had the latitude to portray characters any way he liked, and yet, unexpectedly, he seemed to be seeking her opinion, which threw her more off-balance.

Candle flicker danced across the cube of Ram’s silver-fox hairline. “That’s why Hewett’s perfect to save the baby!”

And there—there dropped the other shoe.

Mid-gulp, Shiraz threatened to erupt from Tash’s eyeballs.

“Hewett signals a new era for the island!” Ram leaned forward, animated, elbows on the table, climaxing to his own idea.

Tash couldn’t weigh her words before they rioted and grabbed their pitchforks.

Her syllables lit torches, rushing to burn his village to the ground.

“What? No! Absolutely not. The baby dies.” The Colony ’s finale wasn’t a casual plot twist; it was Tash’s sticking point.

She’d bled for that last chapter, its pain a point of fan pride.

“Hewett isn’t even on the island when Noab has the baby.

The colony is the new era.” And in case he missed this detail the first time: “The baby dies—that’s the whole point. ”

One of Ram’s eyes twitched, perhaps because Tash had interrupted his monologue. The rest of his boxy visage remained unaltered. “That might be the whole point of the book , but we’re making a television series. And ideally, a series has more than one season.”

The statement seesawed between them. Tash’s circuit board began to fry. Beneath her pulled-together shell, an adjunct professor at a backwater college cowered, wearing half a dress and feeling helpless in a cheesy piano bar.

But Ram broke away from their conversation before Tash could respond.

“Speaking of knaves!” He cast a salute to someone over Tash’s head. Rising from the table, Ram thumped a canvas-jacketed man on the back. “We could have waited, but we didn’t.”

In slow motion, Tash fought a dry heave as the sommelier filled a third glass. The scalloped arm of the brass-legged dining chair beside her scraped back, then shuffled forward. Sitting in it now was a man with blue eyes, tortoiseshell glasses, and a collarbone tattoo.

“Natasha, this is Caleb Rafferty.” Ram ping-ponged a second introduction.

“Caleb, our scripts are adapted from Natasha’s book.

” To Tash, matter-of-factly: “Caleb will be arranging our coitus. He’s a sex designer—the best working today.

You’ll be collaborating with him on the new scenes you’ll be writing. ”

In order of the things Tash was too sickened to acknowledge: coitus and sex designer, collaborating with him, and Ram’s additional scenes.

Caleb pivoted to smile obnoxiously at her, milking the outrageous coincidence of their collision. “New scenes, huh? Sounds like a great excuse to look at boobs.”

Tash couldn’t muster the appropriate, answering churl. She reeled, defenseless, very much alone. Denise had never showed. Janelle had gone home.

She stared at Caleb blankly. “You said you worked in translation.”

Ram glanced briefly between them. “Caleb and his partner conceive and choreograph nudity and copulation. Anything sensual our production might need.” He put his post-#MeToo palms up.

“My set is a safe set.” Spoken like a man with an extensive team of lawyers.

“But Caleb’s fornication is very, very hot.

We’re excited to have him in the trenches with us—consider him your guide. ”

Despite the bizarre compliment, and in the midst of his gloating, Caleb seemed to need to clarify.

To Tash, in an aside he might have offered if they were standing at the bar, if she’d never verbally attacked him: “It’s called intimacy coordination.

I do the physical translation and design of any on-camera intimate moments.

I think your friend heard ‘translation’ and jumped to subtitles. ”

Janelle’s drunken misinterpretation anchored the moment, and Tash held it like a breadcrumb, like a coordinate, like she could use it to retrace her steps.

“Now I don’t want to rush this.” Ram’s eyes had diverted to his phone.

He swiped and began typing. “But I have another dinner, upstairs in a few. Natasha, we’re very lucky.

” As his thumbs moved. “We want everything to run smoothly during shooting. It’s rare we get a sex designer in this early to help us shape the scripts.

In addition to being the best, Caleb is attached to the actress playing Noab.

It’s the only reason we were able to nab him during rewrites, on such short notice.

” Ram folded his napkin. He drained the rest of his wine.

He pushed back from the table, and Tash looked on, bewildered.

“Caleb’s résumé even includes Transtempora .” Ram proffered it to her as a shorthand. “I have the utmost confidence in his abilities to spice up the action between our leads.”