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“Lentils.”
I narrow my eyes a little. “Well, I’ll make sure not to get you a lentil sandwich then.”
“Thanks.”
My phone pings and I know it’s Brittany wanting more pictures. I sigh as I follow Chad down the hall. “Say, Chad, I need a few pictures to send to my publicist of me with the team. Would you be up for a selfie?”
“Certainly,” Chad answers. “Let’s wait until we get outside. We can take one by the sign.”
“You don’t happen to have any of those satellite dishes here, do you?”
He barks out a laugh. “You mean radio telescopes.”
Okay, dude, you don’t have to laugh at me. “Right. That.”
“No, the closest ones are up at Black Creek, which is over a five-hour drive from here.”
“Really? That far?”
“Yeah, you can’t set them up in highly populated areas or you get too much interference. We actually use data from telescopes around the globe. But we should arrange for you to take a trip up to Black Creek. It’s a part of the job you should know about if you’re going to convince anyone you know anything about SETI research.”
“So I don’t accidentally use the word satellite or something.”
“Exactly.”
All right, Hudson, new goal: get through lunch as fast as possible so I can get back here and fix things with Allie.
So much for my goal. When we got back from lunch, Chad walked me back to my office (which made it feel like the most awkward dude date ever), and as soon as Allie saw us, she asked Chad if I could spend the rest of the day in the server room with him under the guise of ‘it being the most important thing for me to train on and him being the foremost expert on it.’ Chad was thrilled. Me? Not so much.
I set her turkey, brie, and cranberry sauce sandwich on her desk and said, “I really hope we get a chance to talk later. I need to explain something.”
“Of course, we’ll have weeks and weeks to talk,” she answered without looking away from her screen. “Just … not right now. I’m so close to a breakthrough here.”
“Okay, in that case, I don’t want to disturb you.”
“Thanks. Talk to you later,” she answered.
But it turns out she’s the liar, or perhaps I should say she’s also a liar, because by the time Chad was finished confusing the hell out of me, it was after five o’clock and she (as well as her laptop) were already gone. She did leave a little note on my desk:
Hudson,
I’ve gone home for the evening. I’ll see you when you come in tomorrow morning. No rush in getting here if you want to sleep in or hit the gym or something.
Cheers,
Allie
If that’s not a polite way to tell me to fuck off, I don’t know what is. So now I’m back at my condo, eating supper alone, hating my life.
Instagram Reel: Hollywood Dish with Ferris Biltmore
The video starts up showing Ferris sitting at his desk wearing a fedora and a sweater vest with an orange shirt under it. “Hello bitches. Quit your bitching about the fact that I’ve left you hanging about the huge celeb who’s sporting the garish rock because after the devastating news about Hudson Finch last week, I spent four days completely horizontal. But then, I got a DM from my dry cleaner who told me her neighbor’s roommate’s sister works for Entertainment Nightly and she spilled the tea that the big man himself is off to Mountain View to prepare for the role of his life. It’s going to air this evening, and you can bet your biscuits I’ll be watching it with my eyelids taped open so I won’t miss a second.
“Apparently, his team is rebranding him as smart, like Benny Cumberbatch if he were hot. And this brings us to a new segment here on Dish called: Why Didn’t You Do This Ages Ago, Morons?”
The graphic appears behind him and Ferris leans forward, scowling at the camera. “Why didn’t you do this ages ago, you morons? You no-IQs? You … you human losers? Obviously Hudson should have been playing the smart and sexy guy all along because … wait for it … he is both smart. And sexy. You should’ve put him in these sorts of roles to start with. Although, if you had, we wouldn’t have Beach Cops or Beach Cops II which would be a tragedy for all humankind, so I suppose I can forgive you for starting him out as just the hot guy. But seriously, it took you way too long to get here. And in the interim, you made him make Beach Cops III, and do a movie that got shelved, so, you’re not forgiven for leaving him as just the hot guy until the ripe age of thirty-nine.”
The graphic disappears and a picture of Hudson in his glasses and suit jacket takes its place. “And this, my little friends, is a photo taken only this morning of the big man himself, arriving at some awful science place, where apparently he’s going to sequester himself for six weeks. I don’t know what they do but supposedly it’s something about aliens, which might actually be fun if it turns out the aliens do show up and they’re well-dressed, hot, and all about the probing. But back to what I was saying: six weeks! Those lucky, lucky bitches! Spending six entire weeks with Hudson Finch. If I got to do that, I would literally die happy. Even if I knew someone was going to chop me into little pieces as soon as the six weeks was up.”
