It Keeps Getting Worse.

Natalia

"They're suing me."

I say it to the window. To the glass and the grey morning sky behind it and the quiet street below where nothing is happening and nobody's life is collapsing.

"Lia." Danny's voice through the phone is tight. Controlled. The voice he uses when the news is bad and he's trying to deliver it without dropping it on me all at once. "Just listen to me for a second..."

"Voss & Klein is suing me, Danny. The company I shot that campaign for six months ago. The one I flew to Milan for. The one I was on a billboard in Times Square for." I press my fingers to the glass. "They're suing me."

"The campaign tanked when the videos came out. They're saying the association with you cost them..."

"How much."

A pause.

"Danny. How much."

"Four million." He says it quietly, like lowering the volume will soften the number. "They're claiming damages of four million on the grounds that you misrepresented your public image at the time of signing the contract."

I laugh.

It comes out strange. Not funny-strange. The other kind.

"I misrepresented my public image," I repeat. "I had a clean public image when I signed that contract. I had four Oscars and a Vogue cover and an entirely intact reputation when I signed that..."

"I know..."

"They did this. Tristan and Cecily and whoever is behind all of this, they destroyed my image and now I'm being sued because of it and nobody is talking about that part, nobody is saying hey wait a minute this woman was set up, everyone is just..." I stop. Press the back of my hand to my mouth. "What are we going to do."

"Marcus is looking into contesting it. There are grounds, I think, because the timeline of..."

"What are we going to do about the money, Danny." My voice comes out very small. I hate it. "Because I have three properties. I have staff. I have a legal team that charges by the hour and a publicist who charges by the crisis and I have had a lot of crises recently and I haven't worked in three weeks and every project is on hold and I..."

I stop.

"How bad is it," he says.

I close my eyes.

"My account manager called yesterday," I say. "He was very calm about it. Very professional." I exhale slowly. "He used the word concerning."

"Okay..."

"He also used the phrase we should discuss your runway which means how long before I run out and the answer apparently is not as long as I'd like."

"Lia..."

"I got three death threats this week, Danny." I open my eyes. "Three. One of them knew my home address." I laugh again, same strange sound. "The Hollywood address. Not this one. So that's the good news. The good news is that the people who want to kill me don't know where I am."

"Don't say that..."

"I'm broke and unemployed and being sued and I can't leave this town because if I go back out there I'll be eaten alive and I can't stay here because I will lose my mind and I genuinely don't know..." my voice does something I don't give it permission to do, cracks right down the middle, "...I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what the move is. I always know what the move is and I don't know."

Silence on the line.

"I'm going to figure it out," Danny says quietly. "I promise you. We're going to..."

"Don't." I shake my head even though he can't see it. "Don't promise me things right now. I can't ... just don't."

Another silence.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay," I say.

We stay on the line for a moment, not saying anything, just existing in the same disaster from different cities. Then I tell him I'll call him later and I hang up and I stand at the window for a long time watching nothing happen on the street below.

I don't hear Dad come in.

One moment I'm alone and the next he's in the doorway of the sitting room, two mugs in hand, and he looks at my face and something in his goes very still.

"Sit down," he says.

"I'm fine."

"Natalia."

"I said I'm..." My voice breaks clean in half.

I press my lips together.

Dad sets the mugs down. He doesn't say anything. He just crosses the room and sits on the sofa and waits, the way he has always waited, patient and solid and entirely unmovable, and I stand there for ten seconds telling myself I am not going to do this, I am not a person who does this, I have been keeping it together for three weeks and I am not going to stop now...

I sit down beside him.

And then I put my face in my hands and I fall apart.

Not prettily. Not quietly. The ugly kind ... the kind that has been building for three weeks of headlines and cancelled contracts and Tristan's smiling eyes on national television and my mother's empty chair and four million dollars and death threats and a ruined dress and mismatched eyes in a hotel room and all of it, every single piece of it, coming apart at once.

He puts his hand on my back.

He doesn't speak. He just sits there while I completely unravel and when I finally come up for air, face a mess, dignity entirely destroyed, he hands me a mug without comment and I take it with both hands and breathe.

"I'm going broke," I say.

"I know."

"I'm being sued."

"I know that too."

"I have nowhere to go. I can't go back to LA, I can't work, I can't..." I stare into the mug. "I had everything. Three weeks ago I had everything and now I have..." I gesture around at the sitting room, at myself, at all of it. "This."

Dad is quiet for a moment. Then he says, carefully, "This isn't nothing."

"Dad..."

"I mean it." He wraps both hands around his mug. "You're here. You're safe. You're..."

"Broke and unemployed and probably about to be sued into the ground..."

"Employed, actually."

I look at him.

His face is doing the thing. The very still, very deliberate thing he does when he has already made a decision and is now informing me of it.

"What," I say.

"You have a job."

"I have a..." I blink. "What are you talking about? Who would hire me right now? I am a walking PR disaster, no company in their right mind would..."

"Roman needs an assistant."

The mug stops halfway to my mouth.

"I spoke to him this morning," Dad continues, in the same tone he used to use to tell me I was grounded, calm and final and not particularly interested in a debate. "The position has been open for two months. He needs someone organised, someone who understands public image, someone who can..."

"No."

"Natalia..."

"Absolutely not." I set the mug down. "You want me to work for Roman Volkov. Roman Volkov, who I met approximately..." I think about the bar. The hotel room. The foam slippers. The vomiting. "Who I have a complicated history with. Who I have known for less than forty eight hours. You want me to be his assistant."

"You have a degree in accounting..."

"That is not the point..."

"You need income..."

"There are other ways to get income..."

"Name one." He looks at me steadily. "Right now, given your current situation, name one realistic option."

I open my mouth.

I close it.

The room is very quiet.

"He agreed?" I ask, after a moment. "Roman agreed to this?"

“Actually,” Dad picks up his mug.

"He suggested it."