The heavy, brass-handled doors of Musso & Frank Grill closed behind them, cutting off the low, powerful hum of Hollywood’s elite. Out on the pavement, the late afternoon sun was beginning to dip, casting long, golden shadows across the Walk of Fame.
Paul Rudd stood on the star of some forgotten 1930s vaudeville actor, staring at Elias as if the sixteen-year-old boy had just grown a second head.
"I cannot believe we are not in handcuffs right now," Paul muttered, his hands buried deep in his flannel pockets, his eyes darting up and down the boulevard looking for police cruisers. "You just walked up to a senior partner at CAA—a guy who could end an actor’s career with a single phone call—and practically blackmailed him into paying for our shrimp. You are a psychopath, Elias. A very well-dressed, terrifying psychopath."
Elias van Kempen didn’t spare Paul a glance. He was busy adjusting the cuffs of his faded thrift-store jacket, checking the internal pocket to ensure his $510 and the Mervyn’s contract were secure.
"He was a tax evader, Paul," Elias corrected mildly, his dark eyes scanning the street for the correct bus stop. "I provided him with a highly subsidized stress-testing of his offshore security protocols. He should be thanking me. Now, stop hyperventilating. The caloric energy you gained from that free lunch is currently being wasted on anxiety."
"Where are we even going now?" Paul asked, jogging slightly to keep up with Elias’s long, unhurried strides. "Are we going back to the Pelican? Because I need to lie down and process the fact that I am now an accessory to extortion."
"We are not going back to the motel. We have an administrative hurdle to clear before tomorrow morning," Elias stated, his tone shifting into the cold, clinical cadence of a corporate auditor. "Mervyn’s California is a union-sanctioned commercial shoot. I extorted the production manager for my per diem, but to actually step onto that set tomorrow without triggering a full-scale labor strike, I need a union card. We are going to the Screen Actors Guild."
Paul stopped dead in his tracks. "SAG? Elias, you can’t just walk into SAG and ask for a card! Do you know how hard it is to get into the union? People spend years doing non-union theater just to get a single voucher! It’s the ultimate Catch-22 of Hollywood. You can’t get a union job without a SAG card, and you can’t get a SAG card without working a union job!"
Elias turned, looking down at the older, panicked actor with a slow, predatory smile.
"A ’Catch-22’, Paul, is a paradox designed to keep the poor compliant," Elias said smoothly. "Birocracy is just a locked door. And every locked door has a rusty hinge if you know where to kick it. Come along."
Forty minutes later, after another excruciatingly hot public bus ride—which Elias once again shamelessly forced Paul to pay for by citing "lack of exact change"—they arrived at the SAG regional office building.
Unlike the glamorous studios or the opulent restaurants, the SAG office was a monument to soul-crushing administration. It smelled of stale carpet, ozone from overheating copy machines, and the desperate sweat of thousands of actors who had stood in these very lines, begging for validation.
Elias grabbed a numbered ticket from a red plastic dispenser and sat down in the waiting area. He crossed his legs, perfectly composed, while Paul bounced his knee nervously beside him.
They waited for nearly an hour. As the clock on the wall crept toward 4:45 PM, the staff behind the thick plexiglass windows began to visibly slow down, their body language screaming a desperate desire to go home.
"Ticket number 84," a monotonous voice droned from the speaker above window number three.
Elias stood up, taking his folder of documents, and approached the glass.
Sitting behind the counter was a heavily built man in a wrinkled short-sleeve button-down shirt. His tie was loosened, and he was aggressively chewing a piece of gum. A cheap plastic nameplate on the counter read: Gary - Membership Services. Gary looked at Elias, taking in the kid’s striking, exotic face and his faded, grunge-style clothing. Gary had seen a thousand pretty faces walk through these doors, and his default expression was one of profound boredom and cynical disdain.
"Name and Taft-Hartley paperwork," Gary grunted, holding out a plump hand without making eye contact.
"Elias van Kempen," Elias said, his voice dropping into a smooth, commanding baritone. He slid his passport and the Mervyn’s commercial contract under the slot. "I need to process my initiation and receive a provisional membership card for a union shoot tomorrow morning in Malibu."
Gary glanced at the contract, then at the passport. He let out a loud, condescending snort. "A Dutch passport? Listen, Euro-trash, this is a principal contract for Mervyn’s. You can’t just waltz in here off a plane and sign a principal union contract. Do you have your three background vouchers?"
"I don’t do background work," Elias replied smoothly.
Gary rolled his eyes, pushing the papers back through the slot. "Then you don’t get a card, kid. Welcome to America. It’s called a Catch-22. Go do some non-union extra work, find a director willing to Taft-Hartley you, and come back in a year. Next!"
Paul Rudd, hovering a few feet behind Elias, groaned softly, whispering, "I told you, Elias. Let’s just go."
Elias didn’t move. He didn’t take the papers back. His fifty-year-old capitalist brain had dealt with bureaucratic gatekeepers in ten different countries. Gary wasn’t an immovable object; he was just a lazy employee who wanted to clock out at five.
"Gary," Elias said, leaning slightly closer to the glass. "I believe you are misinterpreting the international reciprocity guidelines under the current labor agreements."
Gary stopped chewing his gum. He looked up, glaring at the teenager. "Excuse me? Did you just try to quote labor guidelines to me, kid?"
"I am merely clarifying your administrative oversight," Elias continued, his voice dripping with aristocratic confidence. In reality, Elias was pulling out a massive, highly technical bluff using his Photographic Memory of labor law histories. "Under the European Guild Equity Treaty—specifically the clause regarding cross-continental principal casting—an actor possessing a European union equivalent who is directly booked by an American guild signatory is eligible for immediate Taft-Hartley exemption, bypassing the three-voucher background requirement."
Gary frowned deeply. His thick eyebrows knitted together. "The European Guild Equity Treaty? I’ve been working this desk for eight years, I’ve never heard of that."
"That is because it is a highly specific loophole utilized primarily by British theatrical transfers and French cinema imports," Elias lied flawlessly, maintaining an absolutely deadpan, superior expression. "My legal team in Amsterdam processed my preliminary equity equivalency before I boarded my KLM flight. Mervyn’s California is a SAG signatory. They have already submitted the Schedule G clearance for my principal role."
"They haven’t submitted anything to my desk!" Gary argued, though his voice lacked its previous certainty. The sheer density of Elias’s legal jargon was making his head spin.
"If the paperwork is delayed, that is a failure on the part of the production company’s accounting department, not a failure of my eligibility," Elias countered, his tone turning dangerously sharp. "If you deny my provisional card today, Gary, I cannot legally step onto that set tomorrow. That means Mervyn’s California will have to halt a fifty-thousand-dollar production day. When their lawyers call this office to ask why their principal talent was barred by a desk clerk misinterpreting international equity clauses, do you think they will blame the slow mail system, or will they blame you?"
Gary stared at Elias. The kid was sixteen, but he spoke like a senior partner at a Beverly Hills law firm. The clock on the wall clicked to 4:52 PM. Gary just wanted to go to a sports bar and drink a cheap beer. He did not want to deal with a potential international labor dispute that would require him to write a twenty-page incident report.
"Look, kid, even if this... European treaty thing is real," Gary stammered, desperately looking for an out, "I need authorization from a senior guild supervisor to push a manual override on a foreign principal waiver."
Elias knew he had him on the ropes. The man was looking for an excuse to yield. It was time for the kill shot.
Elias mentally accessed his HUD.
[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: CHARISMATIC ANTI-CRINGE LAUGH (DURATION: 30 SECONDS)][COST: -5 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 0 CP]
[CHA-CHING!]
Elias leaned back, crossing his arms, and let out a laugh.
It was a magnificent sound. It wasn’t the awkward, overly-loud chuckle of a teenager trying to sound confident. It was a rich, booming, deeply charismatic laugh—the exact kind of laugh a billionaire CEO would let out when a junior employee made a harmless, naive mistake. It radiated absolute, untouchable power. It completely neutralized any awkwardness in the room and instantly framed Gary as the foolish subordinate.
"Oh, Gary," Elias chuckled warmly, shaking his head with a look of pitying amusement. "A manual override? Do you really want to call your senior supervisor out of his office at 4:54 PM on a Tuesday to explain that you don’t know how to process a standard Schedule G international waiver? Do you want to be the reason he misses his drive home? Just stamp the provisional approval, Gary. I will take the liability. When the Mervyn’s paperwork arrives tomorrow, you just file it retroactively. Nobody gets sued, and you get to clock out in exactly five minutes."
Gary looked at the clock. 4:55 PM. He looked at Elias’s confident, aristocratic smile. He looked at the paperwork.
The bureaucracy broke.
"Fine. Whatever," Gary muttered, pulling a heavy rubber stamp from his drawer. He slammed it down on Elias’s application with a loud THWACK. "Approved. Provisional status for thirty days. But you better hope that production company sends the actual paperwork, or I’m revoking this."
"You are a credit to the union, Gary," Elias said smoothly.
"Yeah, save it," Gary grunted, typing rapidly on his retro IBM computer. "The initiation fee for new principal members is one hundred and fifty dollars. Cash or cashier’s check only."
Elias’s smile vanished instantly.
The air in the room suddenly turned freezing cold. The charismatic aura died a sudden, violent death.
"One hundred and fifty dollars," Elias repeated, his voice completely flat.
"Yeah. The initiation fee," Gary said, holding his hand out through the slot. "You want the card or not?"
Behind Elias, Paul Rudd watched a fascinating, horrifying psychological transformation take place.
Elias van Kempen, the man who had just verbally eviscerated a senior CAA agent and legally bullied a union representative without breaking a single drop of sweat, was now visibly trembling. His jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched. He looked like he had just been asked to sacrifice his firstborn child to a volcano god.
In Elias’s mind, giving $150 of his hard-extorted cash to a union that had done absolutely nothing to earn it was a crime against the very concept of capitalism. It was dead capital. It was a bureaucratic tax. It was physical agony.
"Elias?" Paul whispered, genuinely concerned. "Are you okay? You look like you’re having a stroke."
Elias slowly, agonizingly, reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out his wad of cash. His long fingers gripped the bills with a terrifying, white-knuckled intensity. He slowly peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, and then a fifty.
He stared at the money. This is an investment, he told himself, fighting the overwhelming urge to snatch the money back and run. I need the card to get on set. It’s leverage. Just pay the toll.
With a look of profound, Shakespearean tragedy, Elias slid the $150 under the plexiglass slot. He didn’t let go of the bills immediately. Gary had to physically yank them out of Elias’s grip.
"There you go," Gary said, oblivious to the fact that he had just extracted a piece of Elias’s soul. He slid a temporary, laminated yellow card back through the slot. "Welcome to the Screen Actors Guild, Mr. van Kempen. Don’t lose that, it costs thirty bucks to replace."
Elias snatched the card, his eyes dark and brooding. He turned around and walked toward the exit without another word.
Paul hurried after him as they burst out of the glass doors and into the warm California evening.
"Elias, that was incredible!" Paul cheered, completely oblivious to Elias’s dark mood. "You just completely made up an international treaty and he bought it! You’re in the union! Do you know how many guys at the Pelican have been trying to get that card for five years?"
Elias stopped on the sidewalk, holding the cheap yellow card up to the fading sunlight. He stared at it, the pain of the lost $150 still burning a hole in his chest.
"They robbed me, Paul," Elias whispered darkly, his voice vibrating with a vow of sociopathic vengeance. "They sat in an air-conditioned room, provided zero tangible value, and extracted one hundred and fifty dollars from my liquid capital simply for existing as a gatekeeper."
"I mean, it’s a union fee, Elias. Everyone pays it—"
"I am going to own them," Elias interrupted, his eyes locking onto the SAG building with the intensity of a warlord surveying a city he intended to burn. "I am going to build a monopoly so massive that this entire union will have to beg for my signature on their collective bargaining agreements. I will make them refund my one hundred and fifty dollars, with interest."
Paul stared at him, a massive sweatdrop forming on his forehead. "You... you want to conquer the Screen Actors Guild because you’re mad about an administrative fee?"
"Capitalism is about principle, Paul," Elias said, slipping the card into his pocket and resuming his walk down the boulevard. "And my principle is that nobody touches my wallet and lives to tell the tale. Come on. I need to sleep. Tomorrow, we bleed Mervyn’s California dry."