1
Evelyn Bloom knows she isn’t famous, but it still stings when press photographers lower their cameras the moment she and her sister step onto the red carpet outside the Dolby Theatre. She’d paid for an Uber Black from Pasadena to Hollywood and those thirty-three minutes in a BMW X7 cost as much as the monthly payment on Phoebe. So the least she could get is a photo of her stepping out of the black SUV with the Getty Images watermark stamped across her face. Phoebe is a ten-year-old Mazda CX-3 that she loves with her whole heart, but Imogen called it too embarrassing for the occasion.
Now inside the theater, Evie’s phone vibrates with the Uber receipt.
She winces.
Imogen.
Evie follows her to the line for the bathroom, grateful to Imogen for escorting her without even asking. Living with a chronic illness that fucks with your GI tract, for Evie, means a mandatory bathroom stop before any major event. Sometimes two. Just in case. Jules, her therapist, would ask Evie to interrogate if it’s Crohn’s or the anxiety of a Crohn’s flare that triggers this. Does it matter? Evie doesn’t think so.
“How are you feeling?” Imogen asks, examining her lipstick in a compact as the line moves at a glacial pace.
A bit nauseous, if she’s being honest. “Fine.”
“I, for one, am kind of obsessed with being the plus-one tonight.”
From Uber Black requests to being on a first-name basis with the theater’s security team, Imogen Bloom knows how to navigate a premiere. She works in casting for an unscripted series and networks her ass off, attending premieres and galas and wherever her boss sends her to recruit C-list celebrities and influencers. But Imogen is off duty tonight. She’s here with Evie.
For Evie.
“Gen?”
Imogen spins 180 degrees and squeals. “Portia? Oh my God, you look incredible.”
Portia Devereaux, a supporting cast member in Ginger—the film premiering here tonight—is one of the few reality television contestants who successfully pivoted to a film career. Imogen discovered them when she was a wide-eyed baby intern in the casting department for Big Brother, and Portia’s success on the show directly led to a full-time job offer for Imogen upon graduating from UCLA.
“Working?” Portia assumes.
Imogen shakes her head, blond curls bouncing around her shoulders as she loops her arm through Evie’s. “Nope! Evie is one of the Foley artists who worked on Ginger.”
Portia’s eyes meet hers. “Amazing.”
Evie’s natural instinct is to downplay what a major deal this is. “I interned for the studio during post. Right place, right time.”
Imogen rolls her eyes. “Annaliese had a scheduling conflict, so Evie stepped in and did the Foley for Ginger. She learned the dances in an afternoon and—”
A stall door swings open, and Evie’s next in line, so she bolts, desperate to remove herself from the conversation before the obvious next question: What are you working on now? Because this night is a total fluke. Evie Bloom is not a working Foley artist. Yet. She spends her days working for a media conglomerate, editing podcasts for former reality dating show contestants turned influencers.
It’s not a dream job, but the benefits are good.
Done in the bathroom, she exits the stall and washes her hands next to Zendaya, who says, “Excuse me,” as she reaches across her for a paper towel and it takes every ounce of restraint for Evie not to blurt out I love you. Well. Even if tonight isn’t a turning point that marks the beginning of a long and successful career, at least Zendaya spoke to her.
“Ev. Zendaya spoke to you,” Imogen says as they take their seats in the mezzanine.
Evie knew that a biopic about Ginger Rogers was going to be a big deal—big-budget movies about Old Hollywood are certified Oscar porn. But it’s one thing to know it and another to see the caliber of celebrities that showed up to the premiere.
“I just. I cannot believe that the Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman is going to hear my talented sister dance,” Imogen says.
“And she won’t even know it.”
It’s the truth. She’s not the star of the movie. No. Evie Bloom is not the face. She’s every step on concrete, on linoleum, on carpet. She’s the cadence of Ginger’s movements—the buoyant beat that accompanies running into the arms of any one of her five husbands, the jump of joy when she lands her first film, the crisp, clean shuffles that define her as a tap legend. All the sounds that make a movie magic.
In Ginger, Evie is a part of that magic.
Not the face, but the feet.
She loves that magic.
Evie inherited her fascination with sound from Grandma Pep, the beloved host and executive producer of Some Pep in Your Step, a local radio show that featured anyone with an interesting “happy-making” story. Peppy Bloom was on the air for over thirty-five years. Some of Evie’s most formative childhood memories are summer days in the studio with her grandmother, where she asked the audio engineers endless questions and absorbed so many lessons on how to tell a story not just with words but with sounds.
It was one of Grandma Pep’s stories that directly led to her becoming a storyteller with sounds herself. One blistering summer day, she went with her grandmother to interview a team of Foley artists who worked on the Paramount lot. Evie was nine and watched with wide-eyed wonder as these people explained to Grandma Pep that their jobs were to create the sound effects that make a movie—and they used the most unexpected objects. She learned that a celery stick can mimic the sound of a broken bone, that gloves with paper clips on the fingertips are adequate dog paws, that a hand in a jar of mayonnaise is a kiss.
They create the sounds that breathe life into a film, Grandma Pep explained as her audio engineer recorded a Foley demo for the segment. Evie’s mind near exploded watching them use a bathtub to create the sounds of a boat cutting through water. She remembers that day so vividly—the smell of mayonnaise, the snap of celery, the awe of it all. Afterward, her ears started paying extra close attention at the movies, trying to guess the truth behind the sounds she heard.
Eighteen years later, Evie is seated among the stars at a premiere for a film that she breathed life into.
Well.
In the mezzanine above the stars.
Imogen’s elbow nudges her. “It’s still pretty early. You should be out there mingling!”
“I hate mingling.”
“Evie.”
Imogen has always made it look so easy—mingling, networking, any word that can be defined as speaking to strangers. Evie loves everything about the work that is being a Foley artist, but she really hates the people-ing of it all, the reality that opportunities depend on it. An incredible portfolio is useless if no one will take the time to listen to it. Objectively, Imogen is right. She should be mingling.
Of course, she doesn’t tell her sister this.
Or admit that she doesn’t know why small talk is so easy for Imogen yet so impossible for her.
Instead, she sticks out her tongue.
Copyright © 2025 by Marisa Kanter
