Chapter Three

Charlie settles into my house that week, and the two of us end up spending a lot of time cooking together and commiserating over our prospects in Hollywood. He even manages to help me pick out a first-day outfit and accompanies me to my stylist to shorten my sides again. The class I'm teaching meets at 2:00 p.m., but I've been asked to meet Maeve Arko and our TA at one thirty. Even given all my preparation, I'm incredibly nervous, and I find myself cursing my ridiculous taste (and Charlie) as I adjust the lay of the blazer on my pinstripe suit. It should be fine—I look amazing in this, and we found a blouse that doesn't show off my tits—but I swear I can feel the Tom Ford label digging into my back.

Not that I'm the only bitch at this school clacking from Parking Lot D to the cinema school in 85mm Louboutin pumps. In fact, I find myself hyperfixated on the brands I see as I pass. Jimmy Choo, Valentino, Tom Ford, Gucci, all slid onto lithe bodies that have yet another label slapped onto their backpacks, Greek letters on their shirts.

Then I step into the courtyard of the School of Cinematic Arts. It's the most beautiful spot at USC, illuminated in the last-week-of-August LA sun. The set of buildings are all modeled off a classic Paramount-type studio lot, soft cream stone layered upon rust-colored paint and pueblo-chic red-tile roofs. I force myself not to stop at a rather impressive fountain, perfect red and yellow flowers planted around the edges and a shining statue of some kind of cinema man in the middle. And suddenly the sorority girls I was vibing with so much are gone.

The students here are all scraggly beards and beanies. Industry people who don't have the money to clean up yet. These people also stare at me. I tug at the collar of my shirt as I locate an elevator. Everyone is gazing at me in an unnervingly specific way. Not like people on the street, who squint at me like I may or may not be someone they knew in high school. These kids scrutinize me, as if trying to remember if they enjoyed my filmography enough to approach me.

I enter the main building and press the elevator button for the fourth floor, forcing a deep breath as the inside stays empty. Then footsteps sound, and a guy darts into the closing doors. He's glistening with sweat and brushes his jet-black hair off his dark brown skin. He's probably in his thirties but has a baby face and, maybe it's the heels, but I can't help but notice how awkward it feels to look down at him when we make eye contact.

"Oh my god, you're Valeria Sullivan," he says. His voice is gravely.

We hit the second floor, no stops. I can't even get my lips to stop trembling as I smile. "Yeah."

Third floor. We stop, doors open, but there's no one there. I press the Close button. The guy is still staring. My first instinct is to look down at my chest; given the way he's looking at me, I'm starting to worry I've had a nip slip.

But my shirt is still perfect. I make eye contact again when I look up. He flusters right along with me, but my blush is now visible.

"I'm so sorry," he says. "Shit. Oh my god, I'm your—I'm your TA."

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

He holds out a hand. "I'm Ty Dhillon. Should've opened with that."

We shake hands. Now if I could just get my heart to stop racing. His palm is sweaty. Or maybe it's mine. Either way, we pull out of the handshake quickly.

"I can take you to Dr. Arko's office."

A twinge hits my chest. When I was a TA, even in England, I called the professors I worked with by their first names. How hard-core is Maeve Arko that she's making her TA use her title and her last name?

"That'd be great."

We step off the elevator. I can still hear the clack of my shoes, despite the carpeting. Ty's brown eyes slide down to them, then swiftly, perhaps automatically, slide up my outfit. It's not sexual necessarily, but there's a feeling I always get with these things. You can tell which fans spend their nights adoring gifsets on social media during convention meet and greets.

"You look great," he says. Bingo. He frowns, pauses. "Like, chic."

I swallow a snort of laughter, but a smile still creeps across my face. "Thank you."

My gaze falls on his outfit. It's a surfer-brand T-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. Like the worst straight-California-boy outfit in existence. "You too." My lukewarm comment still seems to fluster him.

Finally, we reach an office door with Maeve Arko, Assistant Professor written in clean letters. Ty knocks before stepping inside.

"I'm sure you don't have to knock," Ty says as he opens the door.

Just like that, there's Dr. Maeve Arko, in a navy pantsuit with a floral patterned blouse underneath. One of her hands is wrapped around a pair of Beats as the other closes a laptop with a single finger. Her nails are red.

And here's the problem. I didn't look her up before. In fact, the only thing I knew about her going into this was her name and that she got her PhD in Queer New Wave cinema from Berkeley. But I didn't, you know, look up what year she graduated. Because I can't imagine it was more than three years ago. Considering she's already a tenure-track professor, she must be a providential combination of hypercompetent and lucky.

Oh, and Maeve Arko is fucking hot. Big, expressive brown eyes, an elegant narrow nose, sharp cheekbones and jawline. Shaped brows that look almost natural. A pink swath across Cupid's bow lips, dark brown chin-length hair that falls in waves, like she runs her hands through it all day.

Let me formally apologize to every person I've judged for staring at me like a clown.

Maeve gets up from her desk and shakes my hand. "So nice to meet you, Valeria."

Her voice has a slight timbre, like it'd dip deeper with certain inflections. I'm fucked.

I'm…also fucked because she doesn't actually sound happy to meet me. I cannot look to check my blouse again. My jaw's clenching. I need to unclench it. "I go by Val."

She offers me a brief, curt smile. The office is pretty minimalist, set up almost like a therapist's office—her desk, bookshelves filled to the brim, a brown couch, and one chair by the window. She lingers near her desk, and Ty darts for the additional chair. I go for the couch.

"Thank you for agreeing to help me out," I say. Is my voice cracking, or do I always sound this high-pitched?

She straightens some papers, gazes away from me. "Of course. I've never had a co-professor before, so it'll be new for both of us. You can call me Maeve."

My eyes fall on the papers. I catch the word syllabus on one. Should I have brought my own copy?

"Oh, I've taught before," I say. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

She still doesn't look up. "Still, it's been a while. It'll be good to keep the pressure off you for the first couple of sessions. Like we talked about."

My insides melt. Not in a good way. "What do you mean? Aren't you just helping with the administrative portion? Feel free to sit in…"

Finally, she locks eyes with me. Yes, her eyes are expressive. And she's not happy right now. "I emailed you the updated syllabus this week. We talked about co-teaching. We're each handling a part of the lecture."

I find myself glancing at Ty, whose own gaze rests heavily on a piece of art on the wall. The email account Maeve has been corresponding with is usually filtered through Trish's assistant. Trish says my teaching is part of my professional business, so it should go to a professional email. Trish said she and her assistant would send them to me. My mind's been so occupied by the TV directing and the Winston interview that the idea of these emails didn't even cross my mind. I haven't checked it in weeks.

And they were apparently important emails. Shit.

"That email must be having problems," I blurt out. "Let's use my personal one for class."

She raises her brows. "On the syllabus too?"

Probably going to regret it, but…"I'll tell the class."

"Okay. What email?" She clicks a pen, writes down my email on two packets, and hands one to me.

Maeve's handwriting is beautiful. I shouldn't be feeling this hot just from seeing my name in those slanted lines of hers.

The heat only continues to rise as I look over the syllabus. My original syllabus was focused on cult classics and analyzing both successes and failures in the musical genre: Les Misérables,Chicago,Little Shop of Horrors,The Phantom of the Opera,The Rocky Horror Picture Show,Mamma Mia!,Rocketman, and the like. But this syllabus has dared to remove Cats and put in Carousel and West Side Story (1961).

"I see there are…other changes," I say. My legs are starting to cramp up.

"Again, we talked about this. We agreed there should be some cornerstone pieces for deeper analysis along with the more pulpy, modern pieces that have less complex styles."

I mean, at least she kept Little Shop,Chicago, and Rocketman, but—?

"Okay," I say. "We can…see what happens after the first class."

I cross my legs.

Her gaze slips right off my face, down to my shoes.

Down to that flash of a red sole. Her eyes shine in recognition.

She doesn't look pleased.

I was supposed to go to the classroom early to prep and get in the teaching mindset. At least, that's what I tell myself when I bid Maeve and Ty goodbye and head over to a screening room across the courtyard at my assigned building, SCI. My stomachache is back, but my head's swimming so much that I can't even feel it. I can't focus on one train of thought, when teaching theory, my memories of guest appearances and QA's I've done at this school, and embarrassment over the way Maeve looked at me are all swirling in my head. Especially the Maeve thing, which I can still see in vivid Technicolor: the break in eye contact, the pulsing tightness of her jaw, locked in annoyance.

No one's looked at me that way since my dissertation got rejected.

As I step into my classroom, I identify all the basic classroom shit. Thank god. I've been having stress nightmares that none of it would be here. But the room has a projector and forty empty chairs facing a table, and a couple of chairs in the front for me and—and Maeve, I guess. Does she really plan to co-teach with me? Who made these fucking arrangements without telling me? I mean, she seemed very poised about this. It's not like I would've been opposed per se, it's just that I prepared this entire class under the assumption that I'd be giving all the lectures. It's like being on a set with a writer-director who keeps changing the lines I spent weeks considering and memorizing. Like, I get it, I'm part of a team and shit changes, but I'm not trained in improv. If I have any chance of making this class a success, I sure as hell can't start by looking like a huge fucking clown.

One hand stays on my racing heart as I open my laptop and scan my email. Hundreds of unopened emails, including, fuck, the correspondence between Maeve and "me." Including an updated syllabus, and I'll intro you and go over class logistics, you take the first basic term lecture, and I'll pick up the slack. No one wants to work hard first class, so don't stress.

I'm filled with a new bout of self-loathing. This has escalated to a huge, months-long problem that will mess up at least the first class but possibly the next month, but it's also something I could've caught up on in one night. I wouldn't have looked like such an asshat in front of Maeve if I had even considered prepping for class today instead of picking out a good outfit. It's downright embarrassing. What professor, guest or not, doesn't check their emails before class starts?

I massage my temple as my head starts to ache. If Maeve can be this nice to Trish's assistant posing as me, maybe there's hope. If not, Trish's assistant can just teach this class and I'll go walk into the sea. I shake the frustration out of my body and look at my phone, about to call Trish. But no. I can do this. My antiperspirant is working; I'm a literal expert in music pop culture studies. I'm just teaching eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds basic film theory and making them watch bad musicals. I have at least twenty-five minutes to catch up as best I can. I scan the syllabus.

So we're doing West Side Story for our first film. I don't know why my argument for The Sound of Music was rejected, but okay. I know that one. Natalie Wood played a Puerto Rican woman, it won a record number of Oscars, and was a product of its time? Was that the point we were making? It definitely aged worse than The Sound of Music.

I flip over to my PowerPoint. Yeah, okay, it'd be easy enough to insert examples from West Side Story into the vocab.

The first student rolls in right as I click into my presentation. I can't help but check my phone; twenty minutes early, here even before Maeve and Ty.

Nice to know students are eager, but I don't need to be cramming with an audience. While I panic over the PowerPoint, I find myself trying to avoid staring at her. She's got an Aang sticker from Avatar: The Last Airbender on her laptop over the Apple logo. It's a cool fuck corporations vibe. Groups of other students filter into the classroom soon after, grabbing seats and chatting with one another. One particular clump of blond, tan young men actually talk about taking a class with me as I stand at the front of the classroom. Others throw their gazes toward me and let them cook. Something I'm pretty used to at press events, premieres, those sorts of things. But I remember teaching back at King's College, how students would hardly lay an eye on me. Where my words meant more to them than the body I said those words in. I shiver, searching for Maeve and her very particular academic scrutiny. Even that feels better than being exposed under the students' gaze. It's intense enough that I can't cram anymore.

I don't know what game Maeve is playing, but she slides in a few minutes before class starts, leaves Ty among the students, and approaches me. No laptop, just her irritatingly good looks and presumably years of film theory studies. Kids smile and call out to her as she passes. They share snippets about their projects, ask her opinions on films, which she responds to with a clipped Didn't see or Worth a watch. Still, the students lap up her sparse thoughts like gospel. I find myself taking my own seat as she reaches the front of the room. I know how to work a photo shoot, interview, or red carpet, but there's something magical about how Maeve approaches a classroom.

"Congrats to everyone for surviving the Hunger Games of registering for this class," Maeve says during her welcome speech. "Now, if you're not going to put in the work, feel free to walk out now in front of Professor Sullivan here."

The class chuckles a bit. I just squirm; I know I know the answer to this somewhere in the back of my mind, but I can't remember if most professors are called professor even if they're doctors, or whether she should've called me Dr. Sullivan.

And suddenly Maeve's lecture stops. Maeve's lecture stops, and her gaze falls on me. I spring out of my seat and move to the front of the room. My hands are shaking. Fuck, it's like the Oscars but I think I have like thirty times more minutes to fill. Is this why I never did theater?

"I have to guess at least some of you fought for entry into this class because you fucking love musicals, so for you, I'm—"

I glance at Maeve. She looks unhappy. Was I not supposed to swear?

"Professor Sullivan. I got my history BA from Oxford University and went on to almost get my PhD from King's College before manic-depressively falling into an acting career."

The students laugh. Mental health jokes work. Good. I get Gen Z.

"I now juggle my time between acting, producing, directing, and being my sister's unpaid nanny."

I get another few chuckles, despite how not funny that was. I switch slides. Please tell me we're just going into it. If they want more useless snippets of my bio, they can ask me after class. I guess. Should I have put in precautionary measures in case of stalkers?

"So yeah, sorry, we're gonna start diving into material now," I say. I glance at my computer screen. I've never wanted a laser pointer so badly in my life. "Movie musicals have pretty much been married to the film genre since film incorporated sound, with The Jazz Singer in 1927. Like all Hollywood trends, there were attempts to mimic the success of that film, all mediocre and forgotten by historians except for suckers like Professor Arko." The class laughs. Really laughs, there.

I glance at Maeve. Her arms are crossed now. My face burns, but hopefully I'm wearing enough foundation to hide my blush.

"By the second half of the twentieth century, what had become a Hollywood cookie-cutter genre had to adapt to a rapidly changing audience and society. Influences from audience taste to the whims of Hollywood businessmen created starkly different products, to the point where we could see an adaptation of the same show from the eighties and today and the experiences will inevitably be miles apart. The process of adapting a musical is often more complex and difficult than making a normal movie. In this class we're going to focus on major movie musicals of the past sixty years, both successes and failures, and discuss what techniques were used."

I flip to the vocabulary slide. My body clenches, but I resist the urge to look to Maeve for approval. This isn't some ego-driven Hollywood shit. I can do this all on my own. I'm not being funny enough, but the lecture is completely passable.

"And the biggest question we'll wrestle with for every film we discuss revolves around diegesis."

A cacophony of keyboard clicks sounds through the room. The noise brings back a familiar feeling somewhere deep in my bones. It takes me back to when I was a wholly different person, freezing my ass off in England, losing sleep over disappointing my parents by getting a humanities PhD, returning home to a fiancée who sometimes wouldn't kiss me if I was too tired to go to the archives with her.

"In a musical, songs are either diegetic or non-diegetic." Said that in the wrong order. "But the effect of diegesis can be seen in any movie, really. Take a montage where some hack director decides to play ‘We Are the Champions' over his generic sports drama. That song is non-diegetic. The fabled basketball team isn't actually hearing hours upon hours of the same Queen song."

The class chuckles again.

"It's there on a meta level to form the movie itself. But then take the ‘Can't Hurry Love' scene in Bad Times at the El Royale. Cynthia Erivo plays an actual singer who sings actual songs that the other characters in the movie can hear. Music in that film is diegetic."

I flip to my diegesis-music slide. "When it comes to musicals, it's mostly established that songs are non-diegetic. They serve as something more symbolic. Audiences are forced to suspend their disbelief. Exceptions being, of course, actual music performances in shows. The operas in Phantom of the Opera or cabaret numbers in Cabaret. In a theater setting, where drama is larger than life anyway, it's had a history of success. But with movies, which, over the past several decades, have trended toward realism, it becomes harder and harder to just buy that people are singing about their feelings. Thus, every movie musical filmmaker has to decide how they're going to address music diegesis. Will songs really be sung in their movie universe; will they not exist for the characters, only for the audience; or will it be a mixture of the two? Which brings us to our first case study…"

I click my tongue. Switch the slide.

Aaaand it still says The Sound of Music. My hand migrates to my neck.

I finally glance over at Maeve. She's got a heavy frown on her face. Like I did this to personally humiliate her.

"That's a clip we'll look at if we have time," I say, flipping back to the diegesis slide. A quick scan around the room establishes that no one noticed. I pull my hand from my neck. "We're actually focusing on the 1961 classic West Side Story to start."

It's fine, we'll just not have a slide for that. I wonder why Maeve and Trish's assistant established the syllabus but didn't change my slide, but go figure. I do the rest of the lecture as planned. By the time I get to the end, about half an hour later, my blood's buzzing. I'm still on edge, but something about this almost feels good. Familiar. The good parts of England, the parts that filled my well when Emily stole from it.

Maeve returns to the front of the classroom when I finish speaking.

"Does anyone have any final questions before the screening?" Maeve asks.

One of the blond guys raises his hand. She calls him Trevor.

"Yeah," he says, leaning his elbow on the desk. "Can we talk to Valeria—Professor Sullivan, like, one-on-one?"

I know this Trevor dude is my student, but my insides quiver a little when that's the first question he asks. It just feels very straight-man-in-a-club from my own undergrad days.

Maeve still has that frown on her face as she glances at me. "She can be met with by appointment only, and given what I'm sure is her busy schedule, don't expect for her to become your mentor. I'll be holding regular office hours for any class-related questions."

"But what if we have industry-specific questions?" Trevor asks. "I mean, aren't we paying for the industry access as much as the theory?"

My stomach gets hot. By appointment only? What's she going on about? I literally cleared my schedule so I'd have two whole days dedicated to this, and my life every other day of the week is pretty much going to be me hanging out with Charlie and reading potential scripts. I made time for stuff like office hours. In fact, I'd happily set this guy straight about the outsize expectations in the industry.

"I can—" I say.

Maeve puts a hand on my shoulder. The move is unexpected, her grip strangely firm, and I swear the impact of her bare hand on my clothed shoulder is akin to being pushed off a cliff. Stomach free fall and everything. "Any industry insight you need can be found through appointments." She drops her hand. "We're grateful that Professor Sullivan is doing this. There's no need to be demanding."

The class goes dead silent. I look to Ty, who nods along.

Is Maeve seriously going on this power trip right now? I can hold office hours and handle whatever stupid entitled questions these kids have for me. It's what I do every day in my normal life anyway. These kids already feel miles away from me and we're in the same room. What's the point of doing this if I don't get to actually interact with my students in a meaningful way?

Then Maeve starts the screening. She nods to Ty and motions for me to follow her. I do, heading out of the classroom and back into the echoes of the stone-floor hallway on the first floor. It's quiet with just the three of us out here. She stares at me for a long moment, posture tight.

"Look, Valeria—"

I hate how my heart jolts hearing her say my name.

"I appreciate what you're doing with the office hours thing, but stick to what we outlined. We've dealt with celebrity guest professors before, and this is the best way to handle it. How to get the best results possible."

I raise my chin. "You do realize you've been corresponding with my manager this whole time, right? She told me that you approved my syllabus and you'd be helping with logistics. I'm sorry if something got lost in translation. Can we at least—?"

Maeve's jaw clenches, a little spark in her own eyes. She smooths out her wrinkleless blazer, says, "Then talk to your manager," before returning to the classroom.

Yeah, this is not the self-esteem bump I had envisioned.