“I’m one of the producers,” Rita said. “
With that said, we were done.
“How do you get yourself into these situations?” Halle asked.
“I like to think it’s my wit and charm, but in this case, it might have been my big mouth,” I said with a ‘what can you do?’ shrug.
Rita had a different take on it.
“He was a genius! David plugged two projects to a worldwide audience. At some point, I’ll have to admit that he knows what he’s doing.”
◊◊◊
Frank, Lexi, and Scarlet appeared. They must have been on standby in case I won. Frank guided me to numerous interviews. All the major entertainment TV shows had people there and wanted to talk to the winners. That was an hour of my life I would never get back, but Frank was all smiles once we finished. What I’d done to make him happy mystified me.
“Don’t have too much fun tonight,” he said as his parting advice.
The hotel adjacent to the theater where the Oscars took place had a large ballroom set up for the Governors Ball, the official Oscars after-party. Many of the nominees and their entourages had gathered there to get a drink before leaving for the unofficial after-parties. I walked in with my group and froze when everyone stopped talking for a moment as I entered the room.
If I’d learned anything from my dad, it was how to work a room, and those techniques applied to such gatherings as after-parties. Never stay up front; the good stuff is always in the back. And always make a full sweep of the room before you stop to chat. Tonight, those lessons flew out the window. Instead of working the room, the room came to me.
Lexi again proved herself the best PA in the world. She planted Halle James at my side and coordinated the people as they approached me. It was like I was in a receiving line. Lexi put Scarlet in charge of capturing everyone’s information with the nifty phone app that would scan their business card if they had one. Otherwise, she would enter their contact info by hand.
My parents and Rita James stood back and watched as the elite of the entertainment industry congratulated me. Many made reference to wanting to work with me someday.
My fifteen minutes of fame came to a screeching halt when Grace Moreau entered the room. She’d just won Best Actress, so I was no longer the new and shiny thing in the room.
My parents and Rita joined us.
“You do realize that your desire for a ‘normal’ senior year just took a major hit,” Dad said.
I looked at Rita, and she nodded her agreement.
I sighed. It was the whole notion of ‘unintended consequences.’ To this point, I’d been lucky that I lived in a small Midwestern town. While everyone knew me, they respected my privacy.
In contrast, when I’d been in either New York or LA with people like Rita James or Adrienne, people would just walk up and ask for an autograph. Or want to have a picture taken with me. They considered that behavior okay. I had a sneaking suspicion that winning the Oscar would change my life in that regard, maybe even in my hometown.
If I had any doubt of that, I only needed to remember the craziness after the video of Dad and me ‘stealing’ the Millennium Falcon came out. The Star Wars fans had come out in force. We’d ended up having to play our baseball games at State because of the crowds that stunt generated.
What was that little prayer? ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ No matter how much I wished for ‘normal,’ I would have to accept that wasn’t going to be my lot from this point forward. Not if this crowd’s reaction was any indication.
That prayer helped me realize I wasn’t going to change how people reacted to me, so I might as well relax and enjoy the moment. I gave my dad a lopsided grin and shrugged.
“Which parties should we go to?” I asked.
I should have known that Lexi would have a complete list. She and Rita debated the pros and cons of each venue while I just sat back and watched. The two of them decided that we must go to the party thrown by Gabe Francis’s studio. It would have been wrong on too many levels not to attend the party of the studio head who’d worked behind the scenes to get me the win. Rita wanted to go to the party that the studio responsible for
Lexi said that her dad, Paul Andon, had been put in charge of organizing it. She admitted that he’d ordered her to bring us. Rita, Halle, and I all agreed that we needed to at least make an appearance. We owed them that much because of what they’d done for us in helping move
