Caitlin plowed into our office in the building adjacent to the gallery with a tray of Starbucks. “Here, this should keep you solid for the next few hours, one caramel Frappuccino for your fat ass and one triple espresso macchiato for your veins.” I looked up from the white leather desk chair, where I’d sat for the past two hours, having left the theater as soon as the screening began. I hoped to pull together as much of Murray’s panel demands as possible before turning to my own screenplay work, both of which were due at noon the next day—a marathon night lay ahead of me. My glass desk was piled with markers and festival plans. I had to get my work done and shut out the real possibility that my boss, my husband, and a parking lot mogul were trying to manipulate the stock market together. Everything Jackie said made more and more sense—Max and Murray secretly buy stocks in some foreign name, they have Wade Crawford the media maestro pass out rumors like hot hors d’oeuvres to unsuspecting journalist friends that something is possibly happening with a company that would make its stock go up, and then stock they already own does indeed go up.
