Retail Therapy

by Roz Bailey

  While I knew my budget wasn’t ready for Alana’s whim, there was no denying the therapeutic charms of an inspired purchase. Although Alana and I had been roommates for a year at that time, the moment had forged a bond like no other. We’d decided that an aspiring star needed to dress like a real star. Before our lattes could cool, we’d hopped a cab up to Bloomingdale’s, where I’d found a fabulous Marc Jacobs skirt with a flounced ruffle at the bottom and matching sleeveless top. After that it was Saks Fifth Avenue for new jeans, which is where Alana decided that denim was to be my trademark.

  “You wear jeans so well, and with your blond hair, it just speaks of fields of daisies and cornflowers,” Alana said from her throne in the dressing room. She leaned over her brown legs to wipe a speck of soot from her Prada mules, then smiled in inspiration. “You’re the leggy, midwestern girl-next-door, the girl every mama wants her son to date, the girl every boy wants to marry.”

  “Do ya think?” A ball of insecurity, I modeled the jeans in the mirror.

  “Absolutely. Jeans will be your trademark.”

  From that day on, I worked to fulfill the image of myself as the young actress spotted around Manhattan in her casual jeans and designer tops. Alana’s decree had reassured me, but it was the shopping process that provided the real breakthrough. Shopping eased the pain. Shopping washed away my insecurities. Shopping was something I could do pretty darned well.

  And now, shopping was something I could do to advance my career.

  That revelation had brought on a flurry of retail excursions with Alana, a girl with a fashion sensibility so powerful it should be bottled and sold in the boutique section at Henri Bendel’s. Nurturing, generous, stylish Alana ... thank God for her! A store crawl with Alana made up for all the thrills I never had as a kid, the child of two latent hippies who fled their Wall Street investment careers to put up jams on a farm in Wisconsin. While girls in my class were stocking up on the latest “it” jeans and boots and sweater sets from Neiman Marcus, I was stuck wearing caftans made from weird fabrics hand-woven by alpaca ranchers in the Peruvian mountains. Rule to live by: never wear clothes designed by alpaca ranchers.

  Anyway, it was Alana who had insisted that I spring for these amazing pink-and-black polka-dotted shoes, which I now admired. I sat in a director’s chair on the set of All Our Tomorrows, flexing my ankles, worrying over a smudge of gray near the pinkie toe of my left foot. Had I stepped in chewing gum on the subway, or was it just one of those indeterminate spooge stains that plagued shoes that walked the streets of New York? Let me tell you, contrary to the mythology of Sex and the City, it is quite difficult to maintain the pristine condition of your favorite shoes in New York City; one misstep in the park and your favorite mules are history. Pigeons, pollution, and urinating men be damned!

  As I admired my retro Nine West shoes, the set began to perk up, with assistant directors summoning staff, the props guy wheeling out his cart, the cameramen taking their places and chatting with each other on their headsets. It was early in the morning and none of the actors were in makeup yet, since we would do a quick run-through to figure out blocking and camera angles. My friend Rory Kendricks stumbled over, coffee cup in hand, mimicking a zombie.

  “Rough night?” I asked.

  He checked his watch. “I closed the Rum Room about, oh, three hours ago.” In real life, Rory was a snappy piano player—a blast at parties—and at the moment, he was filling in for Karen, the regular late-night performer in the bar of the Hotel Edison. My closest friend on the cast of All Our Tomorrows, Rory played Stone, an aspiring songwriter who earned a living banging out tunes at the local inn. If you’re filling in family trees, Stone was also the bastard son of Preston Scott, but that old story had run out of steam a few years ago.

  He yawned. “Really, why do I let myself get into these situations? I need my beauty sleep.”

  “You can sleep when you get old.” I crossed my legs so he’d spy the shoes.

  “Hellooo? This may be the face of an angel, but the party days are over for me.” In truth, Rory does have a gorgeous face. He was just a teenager when he got his start as a print model for Northland, a shopping center outside Detroit. With stunning blue eyes and cheekbones Michelangelo would have liked to sculpt, he would have had a long future in modeling if he’d continued growing. But since it was not to be, Rory had moved to New York and worked as a lounge lizard between acting gigs.

  “Don’t try the hermit act on me,” I said. “Every time we go out, you’re the one who stays to close the bar.”

  “That’s because I’m looking for love, darling.” He began singing, “Looking for love in all the wrong places ...”

  I winced. “Please! It’s too early for country and western, and I think your voice is a little strained from all that rum-running.”

  He smacked my knee lightly, then stood back. “And what have we here? A new purchase, I take it?”

  “You like?”

  “I love.” He lifted one foot for inspection, then gasped. “Tell me these aren’t the ones in this month’s Vogue!”

  I nodded like a bobblehead. “With the matching top.”

  “Oh, you bad, bad girl. I thought you were on a new budget crunch?”

  “Well, I am, but I figure Gabrielle is bound to give me another contract here, don’t you think?”

  His gaze darted back and forth across the set. “Ixnay on the op-shay alk-tay.”

  “What? I never did get that code.”

  He lowered his voice. “Our esteemed EP might be on the set this morning.”

  I scanned the dark shadows at the edge of the set in search of the EP—the executive producer, Gabrielle Kazanjian—who is the show runner for All Our Tomorrows. She’s the big boss, the figurehead at the top of the pecking order, though sometimes network people and stars like Deanna Childs try to elbow her to the side.

  There is a very well-defined pecking order on the set of any soap opera, something I learned with chagrin the first day I showed up with my short scene in my sweaty little hands. One of the cameramen had slid his camera beside me, with an enthusiastic “Hey, how’s it going?”

  I spun around full of warm, fuzzy feeling. I was making a friend my first day on the set! “I’m fine!” I chirped.

  But he had already gone on to something else, talking into his headset. “Yeah, he’s on vacation this week. Taking time off to renovate the house.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, not getting the fact that he was not talking to me. Since then I’d learned that his name was Les, but he’s never spoken to me since the day I mistook his greeting and he responded with an awkward look. I had breached the cultural barrier, trying to engage someone from another social class, another union—Camera Operators Local 385. Unbelievable. A few more friendly words and the snob police would storm the set and rip up my Screen Actors Guild card.

  Two years later, I had learned a few valuable lessons. Never mess with the props or the furniture on the set, as most of it is flimsy junk. Knock on a door too hard and it will pop off its hinges. Bang on a wall and the whole flat might fall to the ground.

  Another rule of our show: Diva Deanna reigns supreme.

  “Are we ready to rehearse?” one of the assistant directors, Sean Ryder, shouted, holding up his clipboard. Sean Ryder’s booming voice usually quieted things down, and today was no exception.

  I slid out of my chair, ready to work, but the crowd seemed to turn inward, parting for a tiny figure dwarfed by cascading red curls. Deanna Childs.

  Rory lowered his head to my ear and muttered, “All hail, the queen.”

  “I’m still waiting on a rewrite,” Deanna said sweetly, her lips gleaming with supergloss. “I’ll be across the street at Chez Jacques.”

  As she marched off in a dignified exit, Rory sighed. “The bitch has left the building.”

  Sean waved him off and tuned into headsets—panic mode. Deanna was refusing to do the scene as written. Nothing new, as she’d pulled this stunt a few times befo
re.

  “Can someone contact the writers?” Sean Ryder spoke urgently into the mouthpiece of his headset. “Do the writers even know that Deanna wants a rewrite?”

  I crossed my arms and took a deep breath, wishing that one of the overhead lights would fall on her bobbing head and send her into a soap-opera coma that lasted until February 2006 sweeps. From the bored faces of the cameramen to the nervous flurry of the AD’s clipboard, I knew I was not alone. Despite her impenetrably strong fan base—a bevy of viewers who assumed Deanna was as sweet, good-natured, and hardworking as her character Meredith Van Allen—Deanna was difficult to work with. She’d gotten a handful of people fired for minor gaffs, had once jabbed a befuddled wardrobe assistant with a straight pin, and was once written up in the tabloids for throwing a tantrum while waiting in line at a local banking institution.

  Was I obsessing again? Sounding like an ingrate when I was lucky to have a recurring role? The truth was that Deanna’s smug attitude only emphasized that I was one of the little people—the short-contract players who waited for that call week to week. OK, I was jealous, had just a little professional envy. Given half her success—or just give me a contract!—I would pop out of my limo with a smile and perform the scene as written. I’m a very accommodating person, maybe too accommodating. That’s my problem.

  “Well, at least this time she came into the building,” one of the cameramen muttered. In the past, on days when she didn’t like the script, Deanna had refused to leave her limo outside the studio, but phoned the executive producer from her cell that she was stalled on Fifty-seventh Street. “I’m waiting for the rewrite,” she’d call to the assistant director through the sliver of open window. When the AD, who had been sent to get her told her that the writers were not revising, she would simply shake her head, say, “Oh, yes, they are,” and ease the window shut.

  The cameraman’s gaffer moved a fat cable and straightened with a grin. “Yeah, so it can’t be that bad. Maybe she just wants to buy a little time, have some breakfast.” He tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. “Let’s get to the craft services table before all the muffins are gone.”

  Rory yawned. “I’ll be napping in my dressing room. Wake me up when hell unfreezes over.”

  I tinkled my fingers good-bye and flopped back into one of the director’s chairs. Should I go over my lines again, or would that make my performance too stale? Memorizing was not a problem for me, but sometimes the lines were so pat that I felt as if I were reciting a nonsensical children’s poem.

  Wiggling my toes in my beautiful shoes, I hoped that wardrobe would give me something halfway decent to wear today. Since my character had been discovered swimming in Indigo Falls, I’d been stuck in weird turquoise bodysuits and spangly green gowns that made me look like a carp doing the Charleston. Much as I begged for something different, our wardrobe designer simply shook her head. “This is what Gabrielle wants,” Jodi kept telling me, with that uncomfortable glint in her eye indicating it was all beyond her control. Translation: Gabrielle had put the kibosh on wardrobe changes in deference to Diva Deanna, whose exclusive size-two wardrobe needed to far outclass any other attire on the show. Deanna shimmered in Chanel. She dined in Dior. She cruised in Calvin and waxed opulent in Oscar. Yes, our wardrobe designer, Jodi Chen, has a fine eye for costuming, and she’s been rewarded with two daytime Emmys. But it’s always Deanna who wears New York’s most spectacular designs soon after they strut down the runways of Seventh Avenue. As for the rest of us, Jodi has to dress us on the down low so that Deanna can reign supreme in fashion splendor.

  Did I mention there was a pecking order?

  In theory, the executive producer is at the top of the pyramid, and in fact, when Gabrielle is on the set, everyone gives a little nervous smile, knowing that this is the woman who calls to let you know you’re off the show. She’s very pert and polite, sort of the antithesis of most casual production people with her shiny pantyhose, cashmere sweater sets, and home-blown hair. While the crew usually resembles the leftovers from a collegiate beer blast, Gabrielle comes off like a schoolteacher from an old Disney movie.

  So at the top of the pyramid are the executive producer—our very own Mary Poppins—as well as a bevy of network executives who dabble with casting, fuss with the writers on story issues, and attend all the parties.

  Then there’s the team of writers, whom the actors either love or hate, depending on whether they pass down scripts with lots of dramatic close-ups or meaningless drivel to be recited over cold mugs of coffee. As the writers work in another building, we almost never see them, though when we do have a chance to engage, I notice them eyeing the actors with the wariness of an allergy patient at a petting zoo. Are they confusing us with the characters we play? The indigent, lying, conniving, serial-killing, merry folk of Indigo Hills? I do wonder.

  The director has a certain amount of clout: the director is king or queen for the day, with limited power, since various pros trade off in directing each episode. Our directors are fairly easy to work with, as long as they get along with you-know-who.

  Today’s director, Stella Feinberg, was one of my personal favorites, a no-nonsense woman whose oversize sweaters and nurturing concern made you want to initiate a group hug.

  “Ok, ladies and gents,” Stella called some thirty minutes after Deanna’s dramatic exit. “We have a revised script to work from. Sean and Iris are giving out copies. Read over your lines quickly and we’ll do a run-through.”

  “That was fast,” someone commented as I flipped through the revised script in search of my only scene of the day. There it was—a scene with Deanna, not cut, thank God, but significantly changed. In the previous version, my character, Ariel, who was trying to figure out her past (like whether or not she was a mermaid) had approached Meredith (Deanna’s character) and accused her of locking Ariel in the pickle barrel and pushing her over Indigo Falls.

  No more.

  Now Ariel was threatening suicide, confessing that she’d locked herself in the pickle barrel, telling Meredith that she had nothing to live for. The scene ends with Meredith demanding that Ariel pull herself together. When Ariel curses her for caring, Meredith slaps my character across the face.

  Smack! Wham!

  “How’s that for ending with a punch?” I said aloud. The abrupt violence surprised me, but then again, what did I expect when the writers had squeezed this one out in a matter of minutes?

  “Hailey?” Stella glanced at me over her reading glasses. “A word?”

  “Sure!” I followed her over to one of the darkened sets, a graveyard scene with a stained statue of a fierce angel in the foreground. Creepy. “What’s up?” I asked cheerfully, ever hopeful that she had something to say about my recent performance or Q ratings or a new contract. Directors didn’t usually deal with personnel issues, but hey, I could hope.

  “It’s about the rewrite.” Stella threw an arm around my bare shoulders and pulled me into her cable-knit sweater. For a second, I got a mouthful of fuzz and soapy smell.

  “My new scene with Meredith?” I lifted my head and wiped a bit of fluff from my lips. “You’re not cutting it, are you?”

  “No, of course not. But tread carefully, sweetie. The rewrite? The suicide intentions? The slap?” Her brown eyes held a doleful expression. “They were all Deanna’s ideas.”

  “Oh.” I tried to absorb the meaning of it as Stella nodded knowingly. “But what does it mean? I mean ... is Deanna trying to get rid of me? Doesn’t she like me?”

  Every once in a blue moon, the writers and network took it upon themselves to explore an “issue”—sort of a public service announcement. For the actors, it meant weeks of anorexia, infertility, alcoholism, or Alzheimer’s. Recently, there had been some buzz about exploring youth suicide, which could be compelling, yes, but I didn’t want my poor Ariel to be the victim of the issue of the month!

  “Please, tell me the truth, Stella,” I said. “Is Ariel going to kill herself on the show?”

 
; “Honey, for all I know, Ariel could turn into the Easter Bunny and hop off to China. Actually, that would be more interesting than some of the stuff that’s come from the writers lately.”

  “Oh, no.” My heart began to pound in my chest, the beginning of a minor panic attack. This couldn’t be happening to me, and on the heels of a minor heartbreak. My boyfriend, Walker, had just ended our relationship in a totally rotten way, not calling me back for three weeks. Three weeks of torture ended when I showed up at his office at lunchtime to confront him and he acted like he didn’t even owe me an explanation. “Sometimes, things just don’t work out,” he’d said with an awkward shrug.

  A shrug! After three months of intimacy, I had to stalk the guy to get a shrug. I have to admit, it weakened my spirit. I went on a bender with Diet Cokes, fat-free chips, and an armful of magazines, which didn’t really help because no one really reports on nonrelation-ships with irresponsible men who don’t even care enough to break up with you. I tell you this not to gain your sympathy; I only want to explain why I was feeling a few chinks in my armor when Stella hit me with the weird advice.

  “Don’t take it personally, Hailey.” Stella squeezed my hand, rubbing my wrist vigorously with that motherly vibe. “It doesn’t mean anything. Consider the source—Deanna. It’s a quick script fix to whomp up the drama for her, not necessarily a turn in the story line.”

  But I couldn’t let it go. “How can they cut me from the show? Did you see the guest spot I did on Soap Central two weeks ago?”

  “Not a worry,” Stella insisted. “It’s a quicky rewrite done to get today’s script past Deanna. Chances are, you’ll never hear the word ‘suicide’ again.”

  The pounding in my chest slowed. “Right.” I swallowed hard. “Unless they don’t renew my contract.”

  “Oh, you!” Stella patted my shoulder as she escorted me back toward the living-room set. “Just wanted to give you the heads-up, so you don’t step on any toes.”