I’d canceled my staff meeting that day because Bette wanted to see Bonnie and me in her trailer at two o’clock. Uh-oh, this can’t be good.

When Bette called a meeting, it meant she didn’t think we were working as hard as she was. Which was true. Nobody worked harder than Bette. Still, I wanted to revisit a project she’d turned down last week. Paul Rudnick, an A-list writer Bette was dying to work with, had brought me a hilarious story about a lounge singer who witnesses a murder and has to hide out in a convent. As a nun. This was Sister Act.

I wanted to keep this project. I had known plenty of nuns, and plenty of funny stories about nuns. In my job, I often heard ideas that were pretty good, but needed some work to make them great. But this was already there. The concept worked. The story worked. The studio already wanted it, and that almost never happened. This was a home run.

But she said no. “Pass. I am not wearing a nun’s habit.”

I delivered the bad news to Rudnick, who suggested I go back and tell her she could wear a cute nun’s habit. It could be short and sexy. I didn’t like questioning Bette, but this time I felt sure it was worth it.

On the way over to Stage Four, Bonnie and I commiserated about the meeting we’d had that morning. I was giving notes to a director, asking him to insert a scene he’d cut from an earlier draft. He didn’t like my suggestion. He screamed at me.

“No earlier drafts! No earlier drafts!”

He lunged across the conference table. Geez. All I said was I wanted to put back a scene.

When he reached for my throat, Bonnie shrieked. I shrank and rolled my chair out of reach. The line producer pulled the guy away from me and threw him back into his seat. After a shocked silence, the executive-in-charge demanded that he apologize. He didn’t. The meeting went on as if nothing had happened.

Outside Bette’s trailer now, Bonnie shook her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t cry.”

“Me neither.”

When I first started out in this business, I couldn’t understand why people acted this way. I asked my own attorney if it wasn’t enough to be good at your job.

He laughed at me. “No.”

“But what if you’re smart? What if you can do the job? Can’t you advance by the merits?”

“You’re not listening.” Referring to a super-famous director known world-wide for being a good person, my attorney shook his head. “You think he got to the top by being a Nice Guy? You think he goes home to have dinner with his kids every night?”

I had a newborn baby. I had a nice husband. I had a life.

What are you doing? You have a nice life. Go home.

Still, I met fascinating people every day. I had long thoughtful meetings with intelligent writers. Challenging conversations with powerful studio executives. Glamorous lunches with witty movie stars. As long as I could keep developing projects I liked, maybe the aggravation was worth it.

I would make up for the unpleasant morning meeting by convincing Bette to sign on for Sister Act. I took a deep breath and rehearsed my speech. This is a guaranteed blockbuster. The studio wants it. You can wear whatever you want.

Bonnie knocked on the trailer door. “Hello!” She opened the door and sprung up the steps. I climbed in after her, hoping not to trip the way I did the last time.

Bette turned toward us in the makeup chair. She frowned. “Oh, it’s you.”

Bonnie ignored the sour note and gave Bette a big smile. Bonnie knows how to brighten up a room. “How’s it going today?”

As the hair and make-up people scurried out, Bette rolled her eyes and groaned as she loosened the ties on her corset. “What do you think?”

They were filming a musical comedy number that day. Bette wore oversized, cartoony false eyelashes and bright red circles on her cheeks. Her wig was divided into two bouncy pigtails, one on each side of her heavily made-up face, giving her the appearance of a kewpie doll.

Bette homed in as Bonnie took her seat and I gathered my papers. “What have you got for me?”

Here goes. “I spoke with Paul Rudnick.”

She stomped her tiny high-heeled foot. “Margaret! Read my lips. I am not going to play that part.”

“He said you could wear a cute habit, not the same as the other nuns.”

“I said no!”

“The studio wants it for you.”

“So what? Bette stood there with arms crossed. “And shame on you.”

Shame?

She tsked. “Aren’t you supposed to be a good Catholic girl?”

Me?

She shook her finger at me. “Blasphemy!”

But I didn’t give up. “Maybe we could produce it.” I could develop it, Bonnie could take it into production, and Bette could make a fortune with zero effort.

“No! Move on! What else!”

“Okay,” I stammered, shuffling papers.

A smart producer told me once, you can’t argue with a movie star. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I could not have predicted how often that advice would come in handy.

And still, there was the television business. The new girl had put together another project, complete with an A-list writer. “So, Linda has another idea for a series.”

Bette had turned around to look at herself in the mirror again. She pursed her bright pink lips and fussed with a strand of hair with her back to me. “Let’s unload Linda.”

Unload Linda? I just hired the girl. Only this morning I told her she was doing a great job. And now I had to go back to the office and fire her for no reason? “Okay…” I looked over at Bonnie, who was staring at her notebook. What was going on here? “So then, what about our television projects?”

“I hired you to read scripts,” Bette said. “And you escalated everything.”

To be fair, Bette did hire me to read scripts. She agreed to All Girl Productions, but she didn’t know we’d be so successful. No one did. And now, Bonnie and I had projects set up all over the place.

Bette didn’t want to be a producer. She wanted movies to star in and truth be told, she didn’t need All Girl Productions for that. If I brought her a great project, only to have her say no because she didn’t want to wear the outfit, what was the point? I could see the writing on the wall. It wouldn’t be long, I thought, before I would be going the way of the new smart girl Linda. I didn’t belong here.

Go home. You have a new baby. You have a life.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll be leaving too.”

Bette gasped. She turned back toward me and blinked her big eyelashes. She looked over at Bonnie, who raised her hands in surprise. “I had no idea.”

Bette sank into her chair. “We didn’t want to unload you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. If you need me for anything, just call.”

Bette sighed. “Oh, Margaret.” Now she looked at me with genuine concern. “Whatever will become of you?”

Good question.