Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

Gilles held up a hand and grabbed Adriana’s wrist. They both froze in midstep.

“Rolling!” another male voice called. A chorus of replies followed from all around the room.

“Rolling!”

“Rolling!”

“We are rolling!”

“And…action!” Adriana turned to see that these last words came from a man who sat a bit off to the side. He wore a pair of massive headphones and leaned intently forward in his chair, examining the center screen with complete concentration. Next to him, a young girl diligently took notes on a clipboard. Adriana surmised that this was the director, the god himself, and she was pleased to confirm her suspicions when she stepped a few inches to the left and was able to read the back of the man’s chair. TOBIAS BARON was stitched in all caps on the black fabric. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d be so young: His résumé read like that of someone in his fifties or sixties, but this man didn’t look a day over forty.

Gilles and Adriana watched for a twenty-second clip while the actress, wearing an open button-down and a pair of white cotton panties that managed to be ten times sexier than most thongs, read a novel on the bed. She was just casually stroking her stomach and flipping the pages when Adriana realized the girl was Angelina’s body double.

“Cut!” Tobias yelled. Within a half-second, Gilles beelined to the actress and began finger-tousling her hair. He didn’t appear to notice that she was propped on her elbows with her head thrown back as if in ecstasy.

A few minutes later, with the scene set exactly the same as before, there was another round of “rolling” shouts and a call of “action!” Only this time, just as the chiseled male actor lowered himself on top of the girl, a cell phone chirped. Adriana’s cell phone. Forty heads turned to stare at her as she, completely unflustered, rooted around in her bag, pulled the cell phone out, and switched it off- after checking the caller ID.

“And cut!” Tobias screamed. “What is this, people? Amateur hour? Lose the cell phones. Now, let’s take it from Fernando’s entrance. Pick it up right away and…action!”

This time the actors completed the scene to the director’s satisfaction and Tobias grudgingly called for a break. Gilles gripped Adriana’s hand so hard that his fingernails dug into her palms. She knew he was about to go berserk-he always was a screamer-but before he could drag her outside for a tongue-lashing, Tobias intercepted them. His headphones were looped around his neck; he frowned and shook his head in anger as the rest of the crew moved far enough away to avoid direct contact while remaining close enough to hear whatever went down.

“Who are you?” Tobias demanded, looking directly at Adriana.

Gilles began blathering. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Baron, you have assurance that such an incident will never-”

Tobias interrupted Gilles with an exasperated wave but didn’t divert his attention from Adriana. “Who are you ?”

He stared at her and Adriana stared back, the two of them locked in a power struggle for nearly thirty seconds without saying a word. Adriana admired his steadfastness; most men got flustered when she remained silent and defiant. She also rather liked his solidness. He was above average height for a man, probably close to six feet, but his fitted T-shirt showed off an upper body that gave him a much bigger look. As far as she could ascertain, both his tan and his thick, dark hair were real. She was close enough to smell him, and she liked that, too: a good mixture of fabric softener and a subtle, masculine cologne.

Doing her best to appear unapologetic, she looked directly into his eyes and said, “My name is Adriana de Souza.”

“Ah, well, that certainly explains it.”

“Pardon me?” And then it occurred to her-maybe this man somehow knew her mother and, as a result, wasn’t surprised by Adriana’s diva-like behavior. It wouldn’t be the first time someone in the entertainment industry had put together Adriana’s famous name and gorgeous looks.

“It explains why a young girl like you would have a João Gilberto song as her ring tone. From Rio?”

“São Paulo, actually,” Adriana purred. “You do not strike me as Brazilian.”

“No? Is it the name or the nose?” He finally smiled. “You don’t have to be Brazilian to know bossa nova when you hear it.”

“I’m sorry, I must have missed your name. You are?” Adriana asked, wide-eyed. She knew from many years of experience that if you treated the overconfident ones like dirt, they were yours forever.

His smile faded for a moment before expanding to an all-out grin, one that said, Hey, an adversary. I like that. And although he didn’t ask for her number then and there, Adriana was one hundred percent certain that she’d be hearing from Tobias Baron.

“Why so quiet?” Russell asked as he navigated through the parking lot-like conditions on the Merritt, made even worse than usual by his steadfast refusal to work around the Trifecta of Traffic Horrors: They had left the city not only during rush hour, but during rush hour on a Friday-of a summer weekend.

Leigh sighed. Only three more days until her coveted No Human Contact Monday. “Just the usual dread.”

“They’re really not so bad, honey. I have to say, I don’t totally understand why they get to you so much.”

“Well, that’s probably because you’ve met them all of five times in your entire life and, if anything, they know how to make good first impressions. They don’t get to their real heavy-duty undermining until you’ve really started to know and trust them. Then…watch out.” Annoyed that he was defending her parents, she scrolled through the iPod and turned the volume all the way up. John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change” blasted from the speakers.

They were in Russell’s new Range Rover, which she loathed. When he’d elicited her opinion a few months earlier on what cars she liked, she’d merely shrugged.

“The beauty of living in New York is that you don’t need a car. Why bother?”

“Because, darling, I want to take romantic weekend trips with you. The freedom it offers would be wonderful for us. And besides, ESPN will pay for me to garage it in the city. So, any preferences?”

“Not really.”

“Leigh, come on. We’ll be using it a lot together. You really have no opinion?”

“I don’t know…the blue ones, I guess.” She knew she was being impossible, but she really, honestly didn’t care. Russell was going to obsess over cars regardless of what she liked or didn’t, so she really didn’t want to get involved.

“The ‘blue ones’? You’re being a bitch.”

Relieved that he’d finally pushed back-an all-too-rare event-she’d relented a little. “Henry drives a blue Prius and loves it-says it gets amazing gas mileage. Someone said that the hybrid Escape is good, too-an SUV that doesn’t look like a tank.”

“A hybrid ?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be. I also like that curvy Nissan… What’s it called? A Mural?”

“A Murano. Are you serious?”

“Actually, I already told you I couldn’t care less, but you’ve forced the conversation. Get whatever one you like.”

A long soliloquy ensued wherein Russell extolled the many virtues of the Range Rover. He covered its interior, exterior, horsepower, exclusivity, stylishness, and practicality in bad weather (notably leaving out any mention of gas mileage or the difficulty of getting one serviced, but Leigh refrained from pointing that out). He instinctively fell into his on-air personality and droned on and on: baritone voice animated but controlled, gaze steady, posture perfect. It was precisely what made him so charismatic and engaging on-air that could make him so grating when they were alone. She wondered what all those girls who wrote to his Web site and sent seductive pictures of themselves would think if they got to see this Russell: still gorgeous, admittedly, but also smug and not a little boring.