Though Mindy was his costar, so far, they had done no scenes together. At this stage of production, their characters had not even met yet. He had been told, in fact, that Mindy was not even in Chicago since she herself would not be filming anything until early the following week at best. Apparently, that information was wrong.
Mindy spoke with the maître d for a moment or two and then pointed over in Greg’s direction. The maître d nodded subserviently to her and Mindy headed into the room, walking directly toward the bar where Greg was sitting. The maître d kept his eyes glued to her backside as she made the trip, obviously enjoying the presentation.
Greg stood to greet her when she arrived, a polite smile on his face.
“Hey, Greg,” she greeted happily. “Good to see you.” She held out her arms to him for a hug.
Greg felt a bit awkward by her invitation. He was not a physically demonstrative person by nature unless it was someone he knew very well. In his opinion, he and Mindy were not on hugging terms. Still, he stepped forward and put his arms around her, patting her twice on the back, offering about as chaste a hug as he could provide. “It’s good to see you too,” he told her as they embraced.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked, smiling once the hug was complete.
“Of course,” he said with a polite chuckle. He held out the bar stool for her.
She sat down and Keith the bartender quickly appeared to take her order. She asked for a double martini made with Danzka, shaken not stirred, with a lime twist instead of an olive.
“Right away, Ms. Snow,” Keith said and went to work.
“What are you doing here?” Greg asked her. “I heard you weren’t coming in until next week.”
“Fletch did some rearranging of the scene schedule,” she said. “They’re going to start filming my indoor scenes on Friday instead of next week, so I flew in this afternoon. I just got up from my post-flight nap.”
“It’s only Tuesday,” Greg pointed out. “You could have stayed home an extra two days.”
She shrugged, somehow making the gesture look sexy. “I like to get acclimated to the location for a few days. Besides, I need to work on the readings for my scenes.”
Greg nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. And it did. The more prep time an actor had for a particular scene, the better that scene usually ended up being when it was actually filmed. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that whatever else Mindy was, she was a professional when it came to her craft. Greg approved of this.
“Fletch also told me that we’ll likely be filming our first scene together around the middle of next week, weather and lighting conditions permitting,” she told him.
“The pull-over scene?” Greg asked. That was the scene where Haverty and Lyndsay would first meet in person. Haverty and Boot, working a day shift, would pull the notorious cop-hating journalist over for speeding, not realizing at first who she was. In truth, the partners only stopped her because she was a classy looking white woman driving a nice car in a bad neighborhood and they thought she was probably up to something. Haverty, the primary on the traffic stop, would quickly let her off with just a warning once he realized who she was because he didn’t want her writing one of her anti-cop articles about the encounter. This would end up backfiring on him as she would pen an article anyway, accusing him of not doing his job because she had clearly been speeding and he had not cited her. Would this have happened if she had been a black mother with three kids on her way to the welfare office? the article would ask. The fallout from the article would be what would eventually lead to Lyndsay being invited to ride-along with Haverty and Boot for a few weeks to see what being a cop was really like.
“That’s the one,” Mindy confirmed. “I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait to be all bitchy to you.”
“It should be a good scene,” he said. “The stage setter.”
Keith set her martini down on the bar before her and made his retreat. Mindy picked it up and took a demure little sip. “How has filming been going so far?” she asked. “Fletch is moaning and groaning about the schedule, of course, acting like we’re going to have to abandon the whole project for the delays, but that’s just the way he is.”
“Except for his micromanagement, things are going pretty well,” Greg said. “We’ve been working on both the early patrol scenes and the home scenes with me and Marlene.”
“Isn’t she great to work with?” Mindy asked. “She was one of my supports in Down and Out. Very professional. A great actress.”
“She’s really good,” Greg agreed, taking a sip from his own rapidly dwindling drink. He held up his glass and signaled Keith for another. “We got all of the first home scene shot tonight. She plays a great nagging housewife.”
“Well, she has to be a nag, doesn’t she?” asked Mindy with a smile. “You’re a terrible husband.”
“Because I’m psychologically damaged by my job,” he qualified. “That’s the point of the story, remember?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m sure you would have been a great husband and father otherwise.”
“That would have made for a much less interesting tale though.”
“True enough,” she said, having another sip.
“Did you bring your boyfriend with you?” Greg asked her. It was public information that Mindy had been seeing her personal trainer, an exquisitely fit and attractive young man who was eight years younger than her, for the past three months.
“He stayed home,” Mindy said. “And, as you’ll read in the next episode of the Watcher or on the next installment of Entertainment Weekly, he’s not my boyfriend anymore. I broke up with him a few days ago.”
“Really?” Greg asked.
She nodded and then gave another shrug. “It was time,” she said. “He looked like something carved by Michelangelo, but he didn’t have a brain cell in his head.”
“Not much of a conversationalist, huh?”
“No,” she said. “And, in truth, he wasn’t really that good in bed either. He had no imagination.”
“That’s uh ... too bad,” he said, feeling she was starting to edge into the land of oversharing. After all, they did not really know each other that well.
“Life is too short for crappy sex,” she said, as if proclaiming a sacred commandment. “How about you? Is Celia here?”
“She’s still in LA,” he said. “She’s working on her next album.”
“Oh yeah?” Mindy said brightly. “That’s cool. I love her music so much. She has such a pretty voice. I wish I could sing half as good as she does.”
“I’ll give her your compliments,” Greg said.
“Thanks. I really am a fan. Will she be able to pop in for a visit at least?”
“We don’t know,” he said. “She and Jake are hoping to hit the recording studio by mid-June and get their next albums out before the end of the year. They’ll be working pretty steadily.”
Her expression turned a little melancholy at the mention of Jake. “She works pretty closely with Jake?” she asked.
“They’re partners,” Greg said simply. “They make a great musical team. They play instruments for each other, engineer the music together—along with Bill and Sharon, of course. They’ve built KVA Records into quite an entity.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Jake’s a good guy and a wonderful musician. You’re pretty close with him too, aren’t you?”