Dying Tigers: A Strange Love Story

Meetings - Part 4

I spent the next day in my office, buried among incident reports for Jareka and Tareiji's previous agents. I was looking for any clues to help in scheduling project for them, hoping I might see some broader pattern that the individual agents might have missed. The summary reports I'd already reviewed hadn't been much help, so I'd decided to check for specific incidence reports they might have filed on Tareiji and Jareka for bad behavior or other misconduct. I was shocked by the sheer number that had been filed. Between all the agents there were over sixty reports filed, ranging from sexual misconduct to failure to report for work, to hostility towards coworkers and everything in between. There was even one report of physical abuse. The majority were for sexual misconduct in the workplace. Two of those were filed only on Tareiji for inappropriate sexual advance on a female manager. Considering how flirtatious he seemed to be, those weren't that surprising. Most of the other sexual misconduct reports were filed on both Jareka and Tareiji for a wide variety of indecent public sexual exploits between the two of them. I'd yet to see any evidence of such behavior myself, but it hadn't even been a week yet since they signed the contract.

Five reports from a single agent were filed for failure to report for work, three against Jareka and two against Tareiji. I pondered these a few minutes, recalling Jareka's assurance they always finished projects and it made me wonder if they'd agreed to these or if the contracts had been made without their consent. I flipped to the attached project outlines scanning through the details to see if anything unusual stood out. Nothing caught my eye. Two of Jareka's were for spots as an extra in dramas. The other was an advertising project for a photo shoot for a teen magazine. Tareiji's were for an extra in an indie movie and a project for a local interior design company. The only consistency I noted was that they were all contracts for a single person, and I'd already been warned they wouldn't work alone. I took that as conformation that they hadn't agreed to them, but that it was an attempt on the agent's part to force them into doing projects they'd already refused. The attempt had obviously failed, making me realize my threat yesterday about forcing them into a project was an empty one. It wouldn't work.

I rubbed at my temples, trying to figure out how to get around this obvious impasse. I shuffled the papers to look at the hostility reports. Most were such minor offenses it made me wonder why the managers had even bothered to report them. The majority were about arguments with the other models on the project, usually in response to persistent, pestering questioning, according to Tareiji and Jareka's statements on the matter. A few were reports of arguments between them and the project coordinators. But arguments and disagreements were common in this business and nothing to be reported this diligently unless threats were made or it turned physical. Perhaps the agents had just been covering for themselves so they had documented reasons when they chose to quit. That kind of mentality in an agent or a manager annoyed me. It fostered distrust and ill-will not just between the agent and the client, but within the company and industry as well.

The last report was perhaps the oddest. It was the only one not filed against Tareiji or Jareka. Instead it was a report of physical abuse against Tareiji by an unknown assailant. Photos were attached showing a pissed-off-looking Tareiji with deep bruises blooming across his abdomen and back. What looked like patterns of scratch marks crisscrossed the back of his thighs and his shoulders. The skin around his wrists and ankles was rubbed raw and bruised, like he'd been tied up, and his lower lip was split open. He looked like someone had beaten him to a pulp. What was even stranger was that Tareiji refused to cooperate with any attempt to investigate the matter. He'd insisted he was fine and refused to explain what had happened and who had done it. The agent had insisted on filing an incident report, but couldn't convince Tareiji to report the matter to the police. The last photo was obviously taken after the documentation of Tareiji's injuries had finished. It was taken from more of a distance, and showed Tareiji slouched on an office couch, sharing a look with Jareka that said more than the rest of the report. There was exasperation in Tareiji's body language and anger and irritation in his eyes. Jareka was leaning against the wall next to the couch, sharing Tareiji's irritation, body stiff, arms folded, but the look on his face was almost apologetic. It was obvious they knew something about what had happened and they weren't sharing. Without their cooperation, the report contained only a few weak speculations about what might have happened, and was unusually short for such a severe incident.