The phalanx of sign-posting teachers had gone derelict in their duties and had turned into a gawking line of the Hollywood bedazzled. Lena's crewpeople were rounding them up and herding them out towards the exits. Giles looked longingly after his departing colleagues, but allowed the grip to hustle him and Cordelia up the hall and into the teacher's lounge.
The lounge had mutated into a wardrobe and makeup room. Debi Marble sat perched on top of one of the back tables, drinking a diet soda and chatting with a skinny woman with a short mane of iridescent mauve-and-green hair. Small boxes were piled up on the table at the school secretary's elbow and the box of 'No Smoking' signs sat on her other side.
"Ah the sacrificial lambs arrive," the hairdresser gloated at Cordelia's and Giles' entrance. She was smoking a long cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder and was a dead ringer for a punk day-glo Cruella Deville. "Well, I've had less to work with." She picked up a steel-toothed comb and a frightening-looking device resembling a small raygun. "Which one of you wants to go under first?"
"I need to make a telephone call," Giles demurred.
"Guess it's you then, you luscious little thing." Mae Belle leered at Cordelia and pulled out a chair for her.
Cordelia was staring at the 'dresser's hair with terror. "Giles?!" she whimpered. The grip picked her up and placed her into the chair.
"I'll be over there," Giles said, as he edged out of the hairdresser's reach.
"Wow," Debi Marble said as he moved to her corner to pick up the faculty telephone. "I didn't know that you knew any movie people." She kicked out one exceedingly well-curved leg. "Kind of always thought that you'd hang out with the pocket protector crowd."
"Aren't you supposed to be running interference for Principal Snyder?" Giles growled as he dialed Buffy's home number.
"I'm off shift. Snyder has you heading the roster for the sign coordinating committee, so you're in charge of the building for tonight." Debi pulled a pack of cigarettes from her box of 'No Smoking' signs.
"What? Nobody told me anything about heading up the sign coordinating committee!"
Debi frowned. "I swear there was a memo. Oh, yeah." She reached into her box, pulled out a paperback romance novel, and jerked out the piece of paper that had marking her place. "Sorry." She handed it to him, then lit a cigarette.
He watched the skirling cigarette smoke, mesmerized.
"Hello?" Mrs. Summers had answered the telephone on the other end.
Giles was startled out of his reverie. He'd somehow conveniently forgotten that he might have to talk with Buffy's mother. For a moment he was stymied.
"Don't tell me Herr Snyder has a studmuffin like you all intimidated," Debi said.
"What?!" Joyce said on the other end of the line.
"Oh, uhm. Mrs. Summers," Giles managed. "It's Mr. Giles. Is Buffy there?"
"I saw you last night," Debi continued with a conspiratorial wink. "You were a sore sight for this girl's eyes, yep. 'Cept for that Gidget wannabe you were ball and chained to. Ya know it kind of defeated the bad boy look, like wearing Birkenstocks with a black leather jumpsuit, you know what I'm saying? Now if you'd given me a call --"
"Mr. Giles?!" Joyce was saying in the background.
"Excuse me," Giles said to her and wrapped his hand around the mouthpiece. "Look, last night was an anomaly. I have no intention of repeating the experience -- not with you and certainly not with Mrs. Summers. And if you don't mind --" He took a second look at the boxes piled up on the table beside her. "Is that Band Candy?"
Debi grinned at him.
"Debi girlfriend, toss a box over here?" Mae Belle said as she fretted about a cringing Cordelia's hair. Debi threw one underhanded to the hairdresser. The woman flipped a hair-clipped fiver back.
"Wasn't Principal Snyder going to destroy the remaining boxes?" Giles demanded.
"Yeah, he did tell me to get Joe to haul 'em out back," Debi said, tucking the five dollar bill into her bra, leaning towards Giles so he could more easily see the color of the undergarment -- peach. "But it's not like they're spoiled or stale or anything. And these Hollywood types are always ingesting weird stuff anyways."
"How many boxes have you sold?"
"Oh, I've gotten rid of about half of 'em already," she said airily.
Giles stared at the still sizeable pile of candy boxes. "Oh Lord." He thrust the telephone receiver at Debi. "I've got to get back to the library."
She shrugged and took the receiver. "Hello? Oh, Mrs. Summers! How are ya?"
"Giles!" Cordelia yelled as he made for the door. "You're not going to leave me here?"
"I have to get back to the library," he said. At her panicked and pleading look, he faltered. "There are fire extinguishers in my library. Not to mention the companion incendiary devices."
"S'okay," Mae Belle said as she chowed down on a candy bar. "All the special effects guys are licensed and experienced professionals."
"Licensed and experienced teenage boys, if any of them have eaten that candy," Giles snapped. "Cordelia, when Debi's done with the phone, try to call Faith at her hotel room. And stop selling them the Band Candy!" he yelled at Debi over his shoulder as he ran out the door."
"Hey!" Mae Belle yelled after him. "I need you back here in fifteen minutes."
Giles had an uneasy feeling that he should be paying more attention to why she needed him back in fifteen minutes, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. He ran back down the hall, only to run into a fresh influx of Hollywood types. These were a peculiarly black-leathered punkish lot compared to Lena's glitter-and-grunge crowd. He halted by the library doors, filled with a horrible if yet unspecified feeling of déjà vu.
"Oh, there you are, Rupert dear." Lena stepped through the doors and latched onto his arm. "The second production team has arrived. Could you be a good boy and open the back doors for us so that we can run some lights outside, there's a sweet thing?"
"Second production team!?"
"Just a few people, love, to help out on the chase sequence. They'll set up out back, you won't know that they're around." She turned and let loose a megawatt smile at one of the new arrivals. "Darling precious, where have you been?"
A swarthy, heavy-set man strode down the center of the hallway, swept Lena into his arms, tipped the cigarette jutting from his mouth to one side, and kissed her hard. "Damn but the fucking traffic in this town's worse than L.A.," he griped, then pulled her up to her feet again. He peered into the library. "This's it? Fuck, couldn't that sow of a location scout of yours come up with something better?" He turned and grabbed Giles for a lip-smashing hug. "Hey, Ripper how goes it? We had a fuckin' time trying to dig you out of your hiding hole here."
Giles wiped his mouth. "I didn't know you were looking for me. Otherwise I would have put some effort into hiding -- What did you call me?"
"Rory didn't have to look that hard," Lena scoffed as she accepted a cigarette from her co-director. "That poor little sod of a secretary of his did all the leg-work."
"Crap yes," Rory said and tossed the cigarette pack to Giles. "Couldn't do without him. Lena sweetcakes, Jeff's here with his crew and the two stunt doubles, but I want you to make damn sure we stay with the main players until we cut to the hallway."
"Oh, all right," Lena sighed. She wound one arm around Giles' waist and the other around Rory and drew them into the library with her. "But get the gaffer in here right away, okay mon petit? This lighting is completely too green for my smoochies shot." She let loose of Rory to grab a passing gopher by the arm. "Eddy dearest love, will you please find Mr. Vitali's stunt coordinator and tell him to come talk to me?"
"Okay, Ms. Wertheimer," the gopher said. "Oh. they've got candy out back." He handed her a box of Band Candy.
"Oh gawds," Lena said. "I am in Diet Hell. Eddy love, you are the Devil incarnate."
Giles tried to intercept the box, but Lena slapped his hands away and tucked the box under one elbow. "Greedy boy. Rory, chocolate?"
"Nah, the crew and I ate already," Rory said. "Got to take care of that early in the night or we never get anything in the can."
Giles fixed him with his best Ripper glare. "You still make it a policy for your crew not to eat on the premises?"
"Cross my heart," Rory said solemnly. "If I fuckin' could that is." He guffawed and jostled Giles in the ribs.
"You are so idiosyncratic, Rory dear," Lena sighed.
"How many of your crew are here?" Giles demanded.
"Six or seven." Rory waved flurry billows of cigarette smoke about his head. "And Jeff and the fucking stunt team. And two or three special effects guys. And the pyrotechnician, of course."
Giles felt a hand groping at his ass, and he whirled.
"You've been keeping yourself in good shape, darling." Lena smiled at him as she palmed the keys she'd fished from his pants pocket.
Rory eyed Giles up and down as he chomped thoughtfully on his cigarette. "You think we can go for some clothes ripping?"
"It's just a thirty second shot, Rory," Lena said. "Oh Raoul, take these and open the back doors there's a love." She tossed the keys over Giles' head to one of her crew.
"Plenty of ripping and shredding can go down in thirty seconds," Rory insisted.
Lena sighed dramatically. "Rory, if you want to shoot the scene yourself, then do it." She draped an arm over Giles' shoulder. "If I can find a way of getting this lovely man to shed some of his clothes in my thirty second hot smoochie scene, I'll do it."
"Wait," Giles said in alarm. "Nobody said anything about --"
"But Rory you said you wanted a tender scene underlaid with tremendous sexual tension. How tense and tender are they going to be if they're ripping the clothes off each other?"
"Crap," Rory said. "I'm going to need exposed flesh for my knife-wielding psycho scene."
"I'm not an actor," Giles insisted. "And I'm not about to start."
Rory smirked.
"Technically you already have." Lena patted his chest fondly. "You even drew critical accolades. Now granted it was a small non-speaking part, but still the judges noticed."
"You actually went ahead and released that film. With that footage in it," Giles said numbly. "With my name in the credits.
"Your name sucks," said Rory. "So we changed it for the credits. 'Ripper Gill and Charisma Chase'. Now there's a billing you can get your teeth into."
Rory threw an arm around Giles' other shoulder. "You fucking wouldn't believe the reaction we got up at Sundance. Applauded until they were wetting their pants. Of course what they were lauding was my brilliant direction, but all they fucking wanted to know was who the hot couple behind the wheel of the Testarossa in the final car chase was. We're talking Tracy and Hepburn vibage here. I say sure we got those kids under contract. So Lena'll give 'em the hot smoochie scene they were whining for, then we do the fuckin' great mad psycho blood-and-guts-in-the-high-school thing and then I can get on with my study of modern everyday Angst."
"Thirty seconds, Rupert," Lena coaxed. "Then you and I can get back to our lives. You know how Rory gets when he has his heart set on something."
Rory tightening his grip on Giles' shoulder, morphed into vampire face to flash him a fang, then slipped straight back into his working face again. Giles shuddered. The vampire face actually gave him less of a wig.
"All right!" he relented. "But you're going to have to follow my rules."
"Oh fuck," Rory said.
Giles glared at him and peeled his arm off his shoulder. "Do you want my cooperation or not?"
"Fucking prima donna act-ors," Rory said.
"It's their prerogative, Rory darling," Lena said. "We wouldn't have them any other way."
"Number one," Giles said, still glaring at the vampire. "No snacking on school grounds."
Lena laughed. "Now see how really easy he'll be to work with?"
"Hey!" Rory said to Giles, glaring back. "We're all professionals here. Of course there's no snacking on the set. What kind of fucking moron do you think I am?"
Giles pulled the box of Band Candy out from under Lena's arm. "I mean no snacking."
"Prick," Lena muttered, and drew a long breath off her cigarette.
"Number two," Giles said. "No smoking." He grabbed Lena's cigarette.
Lena sighed. "Rupert dear, have a cigarette and lighten up a bit, will you? You don't want to start mutating into a sign Nazi."
"Number three," Giles said. "No close-ups and no shredding of clothes."
Rory morphed and reached for Giles. Lena pulled the Watcher out of the vampire's way. "Rory schatzie, let me handle this. It's my scene, after all."
The director growled, but stalked off to one side. Lena watched him sternly, made a shooing sign when he didn't move off far enough. "Listen dearest," Lena drew Giles close to her side. "You really must leave the directing to the directors. You don't want to get a Reputation."
"That's precisely what I'm trying to avoid," Giles insisted. "I'm trying to live an unobtrusive life here, which I can't do if I'm showing up in bit parts in the films of a -- notorious film director."
"Notorious?" Lena chuckled. "Oh, dearest. Rory's reputation is quite impeccable among the film cognoscenti, I assure you.
Giles blinked. Did she know or didn't she? "You just saw the man --"
"I know, I know. He has a vile temper." She pulled out a fresh cigarette pack. "But really it adds to his legend as an artistic genius." She reached up to run a hand through Giles' hair. "Your own reputation won't tarnish with the association. And if you insist, we'll make sure nobody outside the immediate crew gets an inkling of who the real Ripper Gill is."
"The only reason I'm agreeing to this is --" Giles blinked as a repressed realization hit him. "Hot smoochies scene?"
Lena smiled at him, then grabbed his tie and pulled him from the hubbub in the library out into the hall. "Minimal dialogue, dearest. But lots of lip lockage." She looked up and down the bustling hallway, then hauled him down to the nearest door and nudged it open for a peek inside. "Perfect!"
Giles dug in his heels. "I'm not going into the utility closet with you."
Lena put the heel of her hand on his chest and shoved. He stumbled backwards into a cluster of brooms, which came clattering down all around him. Still smiling, she stepped inside and reached up to pull on the string to the overhead light bulb.
"Memory Lane, darling." She reached back to pull the door shut behind her. "Brings me back to my school girl years in Corona. I was such a tender young thing. The boy's name was Alberto. . . Dark, brooding and poetic, shimmering smile on the rare occasion when he came out of his melancholy." She sighed dreamily. "Too bad he was a repressed homosexual. Gawds what a crappy time of life. For months I thought it was something I'd done wrong."
"Ms. Wertheimer --" Giles tried to ward her off with a broom.
"Don't hand me that line, bambino." She knocked the broom to one side and seized his jacket. "I'm immeasurably better at determining these things these days. Some things do get better with age. In my case most things have gotten better." She dropped her cigarette on the floor and pulled herself up by his lapels to kiss him passionately.
Giles started to push her away and instead found himself running his hands down her silk skirted waist to her slender hips. Bloody Band Candy effect kicking in again, he thought irritably, and slipped his tongue inside her mouth. Lena pressed forward, trying to wrap a leg up around his, and suddenly the two of them fell back against the back wall and slid down into a still clinched heap on the floor.
"Madre di cielo," Lena said. "Ciò è più come esso, tesoro." She climbed into his lap like a cat and wound her arms around his back.
"This isn't -- the time or the place," Giles gasped, trying once again to fend her off.
"Hey!" Lena shoved his hands down. "It is a time-honored tradition: The director always gets dibs on smoochies with her leads."
"I'm hardly the lead for this movie -- thank heavens."
"You are for my segment, which is the only segment that matters. Besides we need to rehearse you." Lena moved to plant a delicate kiss on the tip of his lips. "I need to know how you're going to approach the scene." She licked lightly at his cheek, then moved to blow in his ear, raising hairs on the back of his neck. "I like the 'shy-boy overcome by his raging hormones' thing quite a bit. But since we only have thirty seconds to work with, we need to get those hormones raging a little bit faster, dear boy." She nipped at the skin below his ear.
"Uhm," said Giles, feeling that nip all the way down to his groin. "You -- you were actually a shy teenager at one time?"
"Tesoro," she purred, kissing her way down to his throat. "I was hideously timid."
"Would you like some Band Candy?" Giles pulled the confiscated box from his jacket pocket.
Lena looked at him with a small smile. "Really?" Her glasses had slipped down on her nose, and he was struck with how violet her unshielded eyes were.
He pitched the box to one side and gathered her in his arms.
The door to the utility closet creaked open and a sharp exclamation cut off the Band Candied reverie. Giles looked up at a staring Debi Marble and attempted to salvage some of his adult dignity -- not easy while sitting on a damp mop with an armful of Italian film director in his lap. "Has the concept of knocking become totally foreign to you Americans?"
"On a utility closet door?" Debi said, with a disdainful look at Lena. "It's got a inside lock for a reason, Mr. Giles." She crossed her arms over her bosom and tapped her foot. "Ya know Snyder would have a goat if he knew the faculty was having smoochies on school grounds."
"Um. Right." He struggled to his feet, bent to grasp Lena by the waist to pull her up, then set her carefully to one side. "You don't make a habit of ratting on them usually. True?"
"Depends on what the faculty in question bribes me with."
Giles patted his pockets, but only managed to come up with two half-packs of cigarettes. He bent to pick up the box of Band Candy. "What's the going rate?" he sighed.
"I'll let you know," Debi said expressionlessly. "Mae Belle needs you in the Teachers' lounge like now."
"Since when did you start running messages for these people?"
Lena was tucking wisps of grey-streaked auburn hair back up into her chignon. "Best do as requested, Rupert love. The hairdressers and makeup people are the real tyrants of the production team. Don't want to get on their bad side or they can make you look ghastly on screen."
Debi brightened. "Ooh! How can I get a job as one of those?"
"Training, sweet." Lena patted the other woman's rump as she passed by her out the door. "Lots and lots of training."
"I had two semesters of cosmetology in high school," Debi persisted as she followed Giles out of the closet.
Cordelia was coming down the hall towards them. She halted in her tracks and gawked at them. "Giles? What were you doing in the utility closet? With these people?"
"Huh," Debi said, and slammed the door shut behind her. "You and your loser boyfriend don't have a monopoly on it." She rolled her eyes at Giles. "Jeez, we're gonna have to start selling time shares in the closet pretty soon."
Cordelia pulled her mouth shut and strode forward. "Whose loser boyfriend are you calling a loser, and Hey! who told you we were using the utility closet to make out in? Assuming we were, which we're not."
Debi rolled her eyes again and popped her gum.
Giles stared at Cordelia. "Your hair. It's . . ."
She paled, and hesitantly reached up to her head. "Omygod what did that woman do to it? She wouldn't give me a mirror."
"You look quite sophisticated," he said, somewhat stunned.
Lena smirked. "Didn't I say my 'dresser could work wonders? Now come, Rupert, give her a crack at your locks. We don't want to be here through the midnight hour."
"Sophisticated?" Cordelia said.
"Don't worry your poor little heart about the utility closet, lovely," Lena said, and linked her arm through Cordelia's to pull her along with them. "We were rehearsing. It's all for your benefit, after all."
"Can I have a word with you about that?" Giles said.
"Later. Makeup and hair first, the suit is okay I think." The director collared a passing crewman. "Have somebody get this girl something decent from wardrobe please. Rory wants the 'call-girl' look, but we don't want to be too street-corner about it."
"I need to see a mirror," Cordelia said. She darted away towards the Girls Restroom.