Joel eyed me, smirking a little from behind his dark beard. “You okay?”
I smiled and leaned on the wall around his booth. “Peachy keen, jelly bean. I’m here for my interview with Annika.”
His eyes sparked at the mention of her name. “She’s upstairs in the control room getting everything ready.”
“You excited to start filming again?”
He shrugged. “You know how I feel about all that. But I’m glad Annika has something to do. Without an objective, she comes unglued. I think she reorganized every book I own, color-coded my closet, and rearranged my sock drawer twice. And that was just in the first week.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m glad she has a sweater to knit now, something to keep her busy.”
“Me too.”
“Hey, I wanted to run something by you. I was going to do some work on a friend of mine tomorrow, if it’s okay. You don’t need my booth, right?”
He shook his head. “You’re good. Who’s the friend?”
I couldn’t even play it cool; I found myself grinning. “Bodie.”
One of his brows rose. “The guy who was supposed to send you flowers but didn’t?”
I waved a hand, dismissing him. “No, I didn’t want him to send flowers, but if I get flowers, yes, I’d like them to be from him.”
He narrowed his eyes in concentration. “It’s like you’re trying to tell me something.”
I laughed. “Yes, that’s the guy.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, watching me.
“What?”
He shrugged and rearranged things on his desk. “Nothing. It’s just you’ve never brought a flowers-not-flowers guy around.”
“It’s no big deal. He was supposed to have work done in LA and moved here before he could. I’m not even drawing it.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I mean, that makes it completely impersonal.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, Joel. You’re such a drama queen.”
He laughed extra loud at that.
I pushed off the counter and winked at him. “I’ll tell Annika you said hi.”
“You do that.”
The bell dinged as I left and turned into the door right next to the shop, climbing two flights to get to the control room. Joel and Annika’s apartment was on the second floor, and the third was rented out by the network to set up as an on-site base of operations. The door was unlocked, and I walked through the monitor room, which was usually bustling with PAs and producers, but it was relatively empty since we hadn’t really started rolling yet.
Annika was back in the green screen room, waiting for me with a cameraman. She slipped off her director’s chair and glided over to me, smiling.
I swear to God, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. If Joel were a dark, grumbly bear, Annika was like a porcelain doll — all icy-blue eyes and ruby-red lips and long legs, her hair blonde and skin like milk.
“Penny,” she said, cheerily — at least for her. She wasn’t overly emotive.
“Hey, Annika,” I answered. “Look at you, working that skirt.”
I gestured to her black and white business clothes, which sounded nerdier than it was. Her clothes were immaculately cut, the lines clean and simple and modern and flattering. She looked straight off a runway.
She laughed. “I learned this summer that casual wear and free time don’t suit me.”
“I swear, I almost passed out when you came into the shop in leggings a couple of weeks ago.”
“If a pipe hadn’t burst, you’d never have seen it.”
I chuckled and took my seat across from hers as a PA entered the room and miked me.
Annika sat and flipped through the sheets on her clipboard. “So, we’re pretty basic today, just a little bit of catch-up. What have you been working on, how’s the shop, how’s life — that sort of stuff.”
“Cool,” I said, settling back into my seat as the camera started rolling.
Annika smiled. “All right, let’s start easy. What’s the weirdest tattoo you’ve done since we saw you last?”
“Well, weird’s relative, right? Like, you’d think it was super crazy to get a tattoo of a gun, but I have two on my stomach, pointing down to my I-can’t-say-that-on-network-television.”
She laughed. “That’s true. That’s the whole point of a tattoo, right? That it means something to you. Lessons I learned from your boss.”
“He’s a smart dude. But to answer your question, I did a Care Bear tattoo on the back of a girl’s calf that made me salute her bravery. Everybody has their thing,” I said with a shrug.
“Okay, favorite piece you did?”
I thought about it and crossed my legs. “Damn, that’s a hard one. But I did one on Veronica’s arm that’s two skeletons embracing, like one is clutching the other to its chest. I love being able to work with nothing but black ink, no color, just that ink and the negative space of skin to tell a story.”
Annika was still smiling, her lips wide and red and perfect. “I love to hear you guys talk about your work. Sometimes I just listen to Joel geek out about art and tattoos with my head propped on my hand and my heart all fluttery.” She sighed and glanced down at her clipboard. “So, what have you been up to this summer?”