Unfortunately there were people out on the loading dock. A good number of people, in fact. And several big vans with decals reading 'Mr. Wrigley Productions'. Joe Riley, day custodian to Sunnydale High, stood talking to one of the people: a tall auburn-haired fifty-ish woman dressed in horn- rim glasses and a designer silk dress. Two big black and white dogs sat on either side of her, leaning heavily on her legs.
"Rupert darling!" the woman cried the moment she saw Giles. "Where on Heaven's Green Earth have you been hiding? We've had our asses in a twist trying to track you down." She swept towards him, grabbed him by the arms and kissed him full and fast on the lips. "Joey sends his love dear by the way. He was devastated when you left his retrospective before you had a chance to comment on his film." She took a drag on the cigarette she was smoking and blew a puff of smoke from the side of her mouth.
"Ms. Wertheimer --" Giles said, more than a little breathless and shaken by the taste of nicotine on her tongue.
"Lena, darling, Lena. Must go firsties when you've gone a wild drunken tear down the highway with two gorgeous brunettes and the cops on your ass," she remonstrated.
Joe Riley lifted an eyebrow at him and smiled. Giles noticed that he was smoking too, and wondered vaguely how the custodian was going to get through the day without his ever- present cigarettes from now on.
"You were the only one who was drunk at the time," Giles said, mostly for Mr. Riley's benefit. "Pardon me for asking this, but why do you have several production vans parked at the high school loading dock?"
Lena looped her arm through his. "Well darling, I'll tell you, but let's go inside. I'm catching my death out here."
"60 degrees Fahrenheit at least," Giles retorted.
She was immune to sarcasm however. "Such a atmospheric little city, by the way. We must do a shoot in that wonderful graveyard down the road. Add a few wisps of fog about this place, you can almost see the nosferatu creeping out of their graves." She drew him into the building, trailed closely by the dogs, then Joe Riley, then various members of her film crew carrying assorted pieces of heavy equipment.
Joe grasped Giles' arm as they passed by the custodian's office. "Looks like you know what's going on then, Mr. Giles," he said. "I'm off-shift now, so if you need anything ask the night custodian. I'll be back around ten to finish locking up."
"What?" said Giles. "I don't --"
"Just make sure everybody follows the usage policy." Joe thrust a clipboard into his hands and ducked into his office to grab a guitar off his desk.
Lena pulled him around to face her. "You remember dear Boris and darling Natasha?" she said, turning to urge the big Russian Wolfhounds forward.
"I thought that they'd belonged to Ms. Primadonna," Giles said distractedly. He tried to wave the custodian down, but Riley was already out the back exit. Getting out quickly while the opportunity was good. Giles briefly considered following suit, but as always Duty got in the way. With a sigh he turned back to Lena.
"The poor dears were unhappy," she was saying, fluffing the hounds' ears. "So I sued for custody." Lena seemed oblivious to the number of people in the school's hallway or to the attention she was drawing. "Look dearest, I must admit, we aren't here by accident. I need a teeny tiny favor from you and from your lovely girlfriend, then we must be on our way. We still have two more scenes to shoot tonight."
"Girlfriend?!" The ever-sharp ears of Ms. Marble caught the last bit of dialogue and she came tripping down the hall from parts unknown, still toting her cardboard box. She peered at Lena with hostility. "There's no smoking inside the building." She held up a 'No Smoking' sign and looked pointedly at the cigarette in Lena's hand.
"That's all right, darling," Lena reassured her, and dropped her almost smoked-out cigarette on the floor. "Who does your hair by the way? I love it, we're always looking for a 'dresser who can get the 'trailer trash' look just right."
"This's straight out of 'Cosmo'!" the secretary snapped, glaring at the woman.
"And don't change it one bit. It suits you marvelously," Lena reassured her. She reached into her purse, pulled out another cigarette, and lit it with a tiny gold-plated lighter. "Now, where were we? Ah, favors! Now I wouldn't blame you in the least dear Rupert for telling me to fuck off, but really this won't take but an hour." She pulled Giles further up the hall, away from the secretary, and halted in front of the library doors to peer inside. "Absolutely perfect! Couldn't do better than this by set design. Of course, we'll have to move a few of the bookcases, and create a bit of a faux wall by the office there."
Willow and Xander stared at the incoming procession with mouths agape. They'd managed to get two of the signs up, and were apparently trying to puzzle out the next position with the help of Willow's laptop computer.
"There she is!" Lena cooed as she spied Cordelia seated on top of the reading table. "Fablisima, darling, you look so yummy!" Hefty men carrying cameras, booms, and various bits of sound equipment poured in behind her. "Set up the camera over there, will you Miguel? There's a pretty boy."
"You're not planning to film in here?" Giles said, aghast.
"No, chou-chou," Lena said, drifting by to give him a swift pinch on the rump. "We're only bringing the expensive equipment and Union technicians in so we can throw a stag party. Do be careful with that lens. Our insurance premiums are quite high enough," she snapped out to a staggering grip.
"I thought you were doing a talking animals picture?" Giles pleaded.
"Yes yes, well strangest thing about that is that I am," she sighed, lighting up a third cigarette. Giles grabbed it from her hands and stubbed it out in Cordelia's Diet Coke can. Lena looked at him in annoyance. "So last week I tell my Production Assistant: "Go darling and grab all the lemurs you can lay your hands on, we're ready for that scene. Can't move on without it. But some son-of-a-bitch got there before us can you imagine? Every lemur handler on the West Coast has been booked. Well I mean how many lemurs does anybody need for one picture? I am pissed in no small way, so I go to have a word with the dear gentleman who contracted the beasts. Turns out the bastard only did it to get at me. I mean really. All he needed to do was to come to me and say 'Lena darling, there's nobody who can film a tender passionate scene with hot smoochies like you can, will you please be the director for this one sequence of mine?' Would I have said no?" She sighed in exasperation and sat down on the table next to Cordelia, who scooted gingerly away. "The man has dropped the word 'please' altogether from his vocabulary, so there you are. It's perfectly all right of course, we all still love him. But really!"
"You can't film in here," Giles insisted. "It's against all school policy --"
Lena dropped a piece of paper into his hands and kissed him on the ear. "We'll need to move this table. It's much too overwhelming for the shot." She hopped off the table. "Miguel my love monkey, this table out of the way. We'll need a prop table for the big explosion sequence."
Giles read the paper with a feeling of numbed horror: 'Official Licence and Permission to Film in Various Public Areas and Properties of the City and County of Sunnydale'. Sunnydale High School was prominently at the top of the list. He couldn't believe that Principal Snyder had been notified about this: the little troll would have been a picture of Outrage.
He felt a bump at his shoulder and looked up to discover Cordelia hovering there reading the paper over his shoulder with an equally horrified but fascinated look on her face. "Wow," she said. "They can film in here I guess. Wonder who she had to bribe?"
He sighed in exasperation. "This is out of my hands." He dearly wanted to duck out and go in search of Debi Marble and several cold margaritas, but the invading grips were suddenly seizing on bookshelves and dragging them every which way. "Would you please be careful with those? Some of those volumes are irreplaceable."
"Oh com'on, Rupert," Lena scoffed. "This is a high school library. But never mind that, everybody here is a professional. Your books are safe as babies in the bassinet." She'd lit up again.
"You may have obtained the City's permission to use this room for the night," he growled irritably, "but I'm still in charge and responsible for it. I'll thank you to read the signs -- that is assuming any of these people can read -- and follow the directives."
"Hmmm?" Lena pushed her glasses up on her nose and peered at the nearest sign. "'No Smoking'," she read out loud. "See dear? I have to be literate, any reasonably competent director must be. Can't go about relying on the help to read your scripts to you. By the way, those signs must come down. They won't mesh with my shoot at all." She took a long drag on her cigarette. "Miguel my impetuous love bud, please take all those horrible red signs down there's a good boy."
"NO!" Willow yelped. "We spent an hour putting those up!"
"Don't worry baby," Miguel said as he yanked the first of the signs from the wall. He was puffing on a fat cigar. "We'll make sure they all go back up after we're done. First rule of location shooting: Leave everything the way you found it."
"That includes, I take it, sucking all traces of cigarette smoke from the area?" Giles retorted.
"Don't worry yourself sick. We're in and out, the smoke won't have time to settle." She patted him on the arm. "Calm down and go see Mae Belle. We've got her set up in the teacher's lounge. She'll give you something for your nerves." She grabbed Cordelia by the arm and steered them both to the door, where she handed them over to a hulking grip. "By the time you two get back, we'll be ready to roll."
"Hey!" said Xander. "What are you doing with Cordy?"
"I can't have my lead actress going in front of the camera without a spot of makeup," Lena said.
"What do you mean without a spot of makeup!?" Cordy wailed. "I spent an hour on makeup!"
"I'm sure you meant well, sweet thing," the director said placatingly. "Don't worry, Mae Belle can fix anything."
Giles started to shake off the grip's grip on his arm, then took a second look at the disaster building in his library and decided to go quietly. He wasn't going to be able to pry this lot out of here without some help. "Willow, Xander, stay put and make sure the books are respected," he shouted over the din.
Xander and Willow had escaped to the upper stacks, but the invasion was already beginning to move up the stairs towards them. "What'll we do if they aren't?!" Xander yelled back.
Giles was spared having to come up with an answer to that by a cluster of incoming cameramen with still more equipment. They were trailed by a crewman carrying several fire extinguishers.
"Now wait just --" he said. "What are those for?!" he demanded of their escort.
"Union rules," the grip said. "Gotta have one fire extinguisher for every incendiary device on the premises." He dragged Giles and Cordelia out the door and down the hall. "Don't worry. The excitement can't start until we get back."