Luca Says No

The meeting room at the production company had a view of a car park and a table too big for the six chairs around it, which struck Luca, walking in, as the kind of room built to make people feel smaller than the decision they were about to make in it.

Dana sat at the head of it with a single sheet of paper in front of her, face down, the way a chef plates a dish nobody’s meant to see until the pass calls it, and beside her a man Luca hadn’t met before, introduced only as Marcus from the network, who shook his hand with the over-firm grip of someone who’d been told to make a good first impression and had overcorrected.

Kemi sat on Luca’s side of the table, which he noticed and filed away before anyone had said a word.

“I’ll say it the way I…