Chapter 14: Trading Down

“So,” Doyle said. He had his hands folded over his belt, and he was talking to the mirror.

The chair he’d set down behind the stool faced it the same way the stool did. The two of them met in it and nowhere else, and Halliday had let him keep it that way.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding between us,” Doyle said. “I went through yesterday again on the drive in. Some of it came out badly.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “You’re a kid with ideas. I don’t mind that. I’m not interested in making your life difficult.”

“Okay,” Halliday said.

“You don’t know how fast this business eats people yet.” Doyle settled back an inch, comfortable in the chair he’d dragged across the room to say this in. “You think what I’m offering you is a big deal. It isn’t. Everybody at your level has had this conversation. Most of them are smarter about it than you’re being.”

His eyes went over Halliday once, unhurried, the way a man looks over a car he’s thinking about buying.

“This video, and then what I’d put you in after it. Add those up and there’s no version of this where you don’t come out famous. Do you have any idea how many people would kill to be sitting where you’re sitting?”

“Mr. Doyle.” Halliday kept his voice flat. “I’ve told you twice. I’m not interested.”

“You said it yourself — it’s a rare opportunity. There’s a line of people behind me who’d take it. You’ll find somebody who suits you better.”

The pleasant look dropped off him.

“I’ve been decent with you,” he said. “I’ve been patient. And you keep—“

He stopped, and started again, quieter, which was worse.

“Understand what I’m saying. I can make this easy. Or I can make it so this video is the last thing anybody ever puts you in.” He raised one finger off his belt and put it back down. “Not the last good one. The last one. You want to try me on that?”

Halliday took out his phone, woke the screen, and set it down on the counter in front of him, face up, harder than it needed to go. In the mirror it sat just under his own reflection, small and bright.

The timer was running.

“You’re recording me.”

“If you don’t come looking for me again, nobody ever hears it.”

Doyle laughed. It was a real one, and it came up out of him easy.

“Go ahead. Take it to somebody.” He crossed his arms. “Who’s going to run it for you? Find me the editor who takes that kind of heat over a name nobody can place.”

He looked at Halliday a second longer, and something else came up behind his face. “And I know you’ve been talking to Calloway. Let’s put that on the table too. A face like yours doesn’t get you anywhere with him — he doesn’t buy what you’re selling. So when this goes sideways on you, who’s he going to believe? You?”

There was a smart way through this, and Halliday knew it. Let the man have his exit. One phone call after lunch, somebody whose job it was, none of it done in this room. He’d done it that way before. He’d been polite through all of it. Twice now.

There wasn’t any polite left.

Doyle glanced at the door. Quick, involuntary. Yesterday was still in the room with him, a shoot that had stopped for reasons nobody had given him, and he spat on the tile beside the chair.

“Fine. I’ll leave you alone for now.” He said it like a favor. “Out there, though, you’ll see for yourself. Nobody stands up for a nobody. I’ll find a way to make an example of you.”

“You’ve got something wrong,” Halliday said.

He turned on the stool and stood, and Doyle was looking up at him.

“Go on, then.” Doyle’s chin came up. “Tell me what I’ve got wrong. A face who gets paid is going to teach me my business?”

Fuck you, Halliday thought.

Men like Doyle had heard every insult there was. That wasn’t where he’d feel it.

“You had one thing right.” Halliday said it easily, the way he agreed with people about the weather. “I do get paid for my face.”

Doyle blinked at him.

“There’s never been a shortage of offers. If I wanted one, it would take one phone call.” Halliday stopped there, and Doyle leaned in after it. “So if I ever did decide to be kept—“

He let the pause stretch.

“—I wouldn’t be trading down.”

Doyle’s mouth came open. “What did you say to me?”

“You heard it.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” He came up out of the chair and swung, open-handed, for Halliday’s face.

Halliday caught his wrist out of the air. The catch was quick; the closing of his hand around it wasn’t. He held on and tightened until the small bones in the wrist ground against each other under his fingers.

Doyle hauled backward. He put his shoulder into it and then his whole weight. His shoes skidded on the tile and his heel came back into the chair behind him, and the chair knocked.

“Let go.” His voice went high and thin. “Let go of me — I’ll fucking kill you — let go!”

Halliday laughed.

It wasn’t loud. Doyle stopped pulling and stared at him, and for one second he forgot about his arm altogether.

The door was still a couple of inches off the frame where Owen had left it.

Calloway came down the corridor late, past the grip cart and the stands, with one short thing to say to the director. He got as far as the door with a hand up to knock. Then he heard the two of them inside — Doyle’s voice pitched to carry, and Halliday’s flat and short on top of it — and he stood there instead.

Something knocked behind the door. A chair, by the sound of it, or a body against a chair. Doyle’s voice came apart in the middle of a word, went low, stopped, and started again.

Calloway put his palm flat on the door.

He didn’t push.