Chapter 325: I Don’t Like This Movie
Chapter 325: I Don’t Like This Movie
After confirming the female lead, Eric held a small meeting with the core creative team of Basic Instinct to finalize various scattered matters. By the time everything was settled, it was already past seven in the evening. Just as Eric was about to leave, he suddenly remembered that there was still a woman waiting in his office.
Eric pushed open the office door and walked in. The petite woman, who had been absentmindedly flipping through a magazine on the sofa, jumped in fright. Only after seeing that it was Eric did she relax.
At this moment, every light in the office was turned on. The wall lamps, ceiling lights, and even the desk lamp on Eric’s desk were all glowing brightly.
“Why are there so many lights on?” Eric casually asked as he walked toward the desk.
“N-Nothing,” Joanna Pacuła hurried over and turned off the desk lamp, then quickly shut off the wall lamps as well. The office instantly became much dimmer.
Watching Joanna Pacuła turn off the lights, Eric quickly realized that the reason she had turned on so many lights stemmed from insecurity, or perhaps fear of loneliness. Feeling somewhat sympathetic, his tone softened. “Sorry, Miss Pacuła, for making you wait this long. But there really was a lot to deal with.”
Joanna Pacuła shook her head. “It’s alright. Anyway… I didn’t have anything else to do.”
“How about I don’t go over to your place tonight after all? It’s getting pretty late,” Eric said. The woman’s earlier display of insecurity made him feel a slight sense of guilt, as though he were taking advantage of her vulnerable state.
“N-No, it’s not late. It’s only a little past seven,” Joanna Pacuła said somewhat anxiously. Although she vaguely understood certain implications in her heart, instinctively, she did not want to let this opportunity slip away.
She had long grown tired of this uncertain life that felt like floating in midair. And the young man before her could clearly help bring all of that to an end. She did not ask for much. She simply wanted stability, no longer living like before, when there had once been a stretch of three entire years without receiving a single role, forcing her to survive by taking odd jobs everywhere.
“In that case, let’s go,” Eric said, no longer refusing.
After arriving at the parking lot, Eric did not drive his own car. Instead, he directly sat in the passenger seat of Joanna Pacuła’s vehicle.
The woman glanced at Eric as he fastened his seatbelt, took a deep breath, and started the car.
“I didn’t expect you to live in North Hollywood. My old place used to be around here too, probably farther north,” Eric said after arriving at Joanna Pacuła’s small apartment and entering the room.
Speaking of which, the apartment in North Hollywood had already been sold, though the mansion in Beverly Hills had not. He kept it as another residence. While it generated yearly property taxes, in North America property taxes could offset part of personal income tax, so the expense was not particularly excessive.
Joanna Pacuła said, “Actually, I only moved here not long ago. I used to live downtown. After earning some money from that movie last year, I moved here.”
Eric shrugged slightly and said nothing further. Clearly, the woman’s circumstances in the past had not been very good. Downtown Los Angeles was not prosperous like city centers in his previous world’s country. Instead, it was an extremely chaotic district. The safest area in Los Angeles was naturally Beverly Hills, while the most dangerous was probably the downtown urban area.
“Mr. Williams, please rest for a while first. I’ll make dinner right away. It’ll be quick,” Joanna Pacuła pointed toward the small sofa in the living room and said.
“Mm. Just call me Eric,” Eric said casually as he removed his coat and hung it on the rack by the entrance.
“Alright, Eric. My friends all call me Joan,” Joanna Pacuła said before heading toward the kitchen.
Eric casually looked around the small apartment. It was a one-bedroom, one-living-room layout. Both the decoration and furniture were fairly simple. A sofa sat in the center of the living room, with a small TV cabinet in front of it and a small dining table against the wall behind it. Several photographs hung on the wall. Eric walked closer and examined them. Some appeared to be stage performance photos, likely from Shakespeare plays.
The Joanna Pacuła in the photographs looked very young. Recalling that she had once worked at the Polish National Theatre, these photos were probably from that period. Counting it out, they should already be more than ten years old. Yet compared to now, Joanna Pacuła had barely changed at all over the past decade. For Westerners, who generally aged easily, the woman’s appearance truly seemed blessed by God.
After walking around once, Eric came to the television and noticed a VCR beneath the TV cabinet, with several videotapes beside it. He casually flipped through them and found a movie called Kiss. According to the description, it was a horror film. Half of the woman’s face on the poster had been made to resemble a skull, with thick red lipstick painted on her lips. She looked nothing like the woman currently bustling about in the kitchen.
Eric inserted the videotape into the VCR, turned on the television, and sat back down on the sofa.
The film opened with a divorced family splitting apart. The mother boarded a departing train with her daughter, but on the train the evil spirit inside her erupted. After transmitting the entity into the daughter, the mother died, while the little girl secretly got off the train and disappeared.
More than ten years later, the younger sister who had been raised by their father was already married, and her daughter had grown up. But because she had removed the protective cross from herself and given it to her daughter, the younger sister died in a sudden car accident. The older sister, who had never appeared before, arrived at the younger sister’s funeral and met the younger sister’s husband and daughter…
After watching only half an hour, Eric had practically already predicted the outcome.
A faint sound came from behind him. At some point, Joanna Pacuła had quietly appeared in the living room and was standing silently behind him, staring blankly at the television screen.
“I don’t like this movie,” Eric said as he stepped forward, turned off the VCR, and switched to another TV channel.
The woman did not reply, but the gloom in her eyes was impossible to hide. If she had a choice, she certainly would not have accepted a movie like this either.
“Eric, dinner’s ready,” the woman finally said after a moment of silence.
“Mm. I’ll help,” Eric stood up and followed Joanna Pacuła into the kitchen, helping her carry the simple dinner to the dining table.
“I don’t really have many ingredients here, so this is all I could make,” Joanna Pacuła explained.
Eric served himself a small bowl of corn chowder, tasted it, and nodded in praise. “This is really good. I like it.”
Looking at the somewhat shabby dishes on the table, Joanna Pacuła already regretted things a little. If she had known earlier, she would have taken Eric out to eat instead. It would not have cost too much money anyway. Although the man continuously praised the food, she still lacked confidence, and her smile remained rather forced.