The Balance Thing

by Margaret Dumas

  And that’s what I was in Vladima’s world. My role in the process was to show up when the script was written and record Vladima’s dialogue. Other people, most of them actual professional actors, came in at different times to record the rest of the characters.

  Josh wrote the scripts and created the storyboards for the animation. He’d started out with Vladima by drawing her in comic book format, and that’s what the storyboards still looked like. After the voices—audio assets—were recorded, he farmed out the production of the animated films to the minions. Some did backgrounds, some did characters’ illustrations, some did the actual programming of the animation and coding of the Web site.

  When the whole thing was put together, it was usually necessary to come in and rerecord some of the dialogue. That’s where we were with our latest offering, Daemons of the Night.

  In the break room, a large wall-mounted plasma screen was running the most recent version of the feature. I entered in hopes of making a nice cup of tea and was confronted with my animated alter-ego sinking her pointy teeth into a very nasty-looking creature in a red velvet cape. Then she looked up, and I heard myself say “Mmmm. There’s nothing I like more than French food.”

  Uh-huh. So the creature must have been the murderous Richelieu, who was a sort of right-wing time-traveling political assassin. Lovely. I watched as the battle between good (me—um, Vladima) and evil (Richelieu) drew to its predictable conclusion.

  “What do you think?” Josh stood in the doorway behind me, his attention on the screen. He was dressed unsurprisingly in black jeans and a black dress shirt with the tails out. He was just over six feet tall and needed to put on a few pounds. If the shadows under his dark eyes were any indication, he also needed to get more sleep. Onscreen there was a sort of slurpy sound. He winced and ran a hand distractedly through his mess of dark hair. “I’m still not happy with the sucking.” He shifted his gaze to me. “How are you?”

  I resisted the urge to say “sucking” and opted for “peachy.”

  He gave me a critical look. “Things that bad?”

  “You don’t even want to know.”

  His eyes met mine for a minute, then he looked down at the floor and nodded as if he was deep in thought. “Cup of tea before we get started?”

  “You read my mind.”

  We caught up for a while before heading for the sound booth. Josh had been working too hard (not unusual) and trying to recover from some staffing changes. He’d lost the woman who specialized in sound effects a few weeks ago and wasn’t happy with her replacement.

  “It’s not just the bloodsucking,” he told me, stirring a cup of Darjeeling. “It’s everything. The footsteps on gravel sound too hollow now, and the thwannng of the crossbow is just lame.”

  “There’s nothing lamer than a lame thwannng,” I commiserated.

  “And I still don’t get why Amy left like that,” Josh went on. “No notice or anything. Just that e-mail.”

  “Amy got a call from George Lucas,” I reminded him. What I didn’t say was that it was stunningly obvious to everyone else in the studio that Amy had been in love with Josh for at least two years. Two years is a long time to go unnoticed by a dark brooding poet of the undead. “Shall we get started?”

  “Might as well.” He led me down the hall, away from the cubicle farm, past a horrifically cluttered conference room to the small sound booth at the back of the building. I stepped into the booth and thanked heaven once more that I wasn’t claustrophobic.

  The room was about the size of a small walk-in closet, with walls covered in (surprise) gray foam that looked as if it had once had giant eggs packed in it. There was a thirteen-inch monitor where I could watch the movie play. Aside from that, we’re talking a stool, a microphone, and a set of headphones.

  The actual recording wasn’t hard work. It was even kind of fun, now that the animations were complete and I could see them on the monitor as I spoke the lines. For the most part, Vladima’s speech was synced to what I’d already done. But script rewrites and other minor changes always made it necessary for me to redo some bits.

  Josh was stationed at a mixing board in a slightly larger walk-in closet next door, separated from the sound booth by a window. He could flip a switch and talk into my headphones to give me direction. It always surprised me how intimate it felt to have his voice in my head.

  “Okay, let’s go.” He waited until I’d gotten as comfortable as a person can get on a wooden stool. “Take it from ‘Hello, Cardinal,’ okay?”

  I gave him the thumbs-up and waited for the video playback. Then I sneered “Hello, Cardinal. It’s been a long time. Nice to see you haven’t lost your fashion sense.”

  And for this I get paid. Kind of a lot.

  I LOST TRACK of the time after a while and was a little surprised when Josh said, “That’s it, Becks. Let’s call it a day.” He was rubbing his eyes.

  “Josh,” I said into the mike, “excuse me for saying so, but you look like hell.”

  He gave me a tired grin and shrugged. “Then you should buy me a drink.”

  Emerging from the booth, I was surprised to find that all the minions were gone; then I realized it was after ten on a Friday night. Josh locked the place up and we walked down Folsom to Wilde Oscar’s, a sort of hip-SOMA-club-meets-cool-Irish-pub kind of place where they know how to pour a proper Guinness.

  We took a corner booth, and the minute I sat down I regretted taking Josh up on his drink suggestion. Every woman in the place had checked him out as we’d made our way through the crowd. I was still stinging from the hostility I’d caught from Rita the other day. The last thing I needed was to feel brutally assessed by a collection of bar Bettys who all figured they’d look better sitting across from Josh than I did.

  I knew that on a good day I can hold my own in the looks department. I wear my darkish hair in a low-maintenance but reasonably fashionable cut, and I work out often enough to be able to pull off most styles that didn’t insist on bare hip bones. So on a good day I had no complaints.

  This was not a good day. I’d been wallowing in self-pity since the disaster at PlanetCom, and to be honest I wasn’t even sure I’d brushed my hair that morning. Let alone suited up in the combat gear necessary for Friday night drinks at a South of Market bar. I decided I’d have a quick pint and get out of there.

  But Guinness isn’t really a quick sort of drink. So eventually I just sat back in the booth, warmed by the stout and the sound of Josh’s voice. If I didn’t really pay attention to what he was saying, it was all rather pleasant.

  Of course he was discussing Vladima. Vladima’s latest adventure and what remained to be done to finalize it. Vladima’s next storyline, where she’d meet an archenemy who was finally worthy of her skills. The whole Vladima world that he’d constructed and apparently lived in.

  In case I haven’t made it clear, I should mention that Vladima is a good guy. Sure, she’s a bloodsucker, but she kills only really bad types. In effect, she’s a vampire with a social conscience. She may not suck for truth, justice, and the American way, but she does suck with a strict moral code.

  From a marketing standpoint, it was brilliant. Josh had tapped into the whole Goth, disaffected youth demographic with a heroine who is very much an outcast (what with being undead and all) but who still cares enough about society’s ills to rise above her own pain and save humanity’s sorry ass in each and every Webisode. Sometimes twice. The fact that she wears a black leather body suit and is stacked as only a cartoon character can be stacked doesn’t hurt her download statistics either.

  I caught the tail end of what Josh was saying. “…I’m boring you to death, aren’t I?”

  I made a face. “I may be just the tiniest bit over Vladima for the night.”

  He scrunched his hair with both hands. “God, I need to get a life.”

  Now, that caught my interest. “What did you say?”

  He shrugged. “I’m sick of spending all day sitting around in the dark gett
ing deeper and deeper into a mythology that has no real point.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He gave me a lame grin. “Becks, I hope you don’t think I’m so deluded that I don’t realize Vladima’s chief appeal is to fifteen-year-old boys who have a very small chance of ever getting laid.”

  Wow. “Actually,” I told him, “I did think you were that delusional.”

  He laughed. “There!” he said. “Just there, did you hear that? Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I laughed?”

  “I guess there’s not a lot to laugh about when you’re hanging out in graveyards all the time. Even cartoon graveyards.”

  He nodded and took a drink.

  “Josh, what exactly do you mean when you say you need to get a life? Because when I say it I usually mean I need to get a job—not that Vladima isn’t fun and everything but…”

  “You have a degree from Stanford,” he finished for me. He’d heard it before.

  “Right. So when I say it, I mean I need to get my life back on track.”

  He was regarding me with curiosity. I plunged ahead.

  “But you have a job, one that seems to be your life, so when you say you need to get a life…I wonder what you mean?”

  He kept looking at me and seemed to be thinking carefully about what he wanted to say. I started to get a little uncomfortable with the suddenly intense mood. I’d given up hope that he’d actually answer by the time he finally spoke.

  “I mean I’d like a reason to come out of the graveyard.”

  Right. I nodded as if I understood what was going on behind those dark eyes.

  Six

  It was a week later, and Vida and I had been drinking. About the time we ordered our third round of mojitos, I wondered aloud if perhaps we’d been drinking rather a lot lately.

  “It’s the damn wedding!” Vida wailed.

  “The damn wedding!” I agreed.

  We’d had our final fittings for the bridesmaid dresses that afternoon. The dresses themselves were supremely tasteful creations in a sort of café latte–colored silk. Almost Edwardian looking, they were strapless with a little drape across the breasts. The skirts were straight in front, with another little drape across the hips pulled back into something that I don’t know if we’re calling a bustle anymore. They were elegant. They were sumptuous. They were not comfortable.

  Connie came to supervise the fitting, and she brought her hairdresser with her. She didn’t trust anyone in England to do her hair, so she was flying Roger over to take care of her. It was his job to make Connie look fabulous for the onslaught of cocktail parties, afternoon tea parties, formal dinner parties, the “hen” party (which I’d found out was the British equivalent of a bachelorette party) and, um, the wedding. His curling iron wouldn’t have a chance to cool off for the entire two weeks.

  In the dressing room, Roger cast his professional eye over Vida and me as we were tugged and tucked by a collection of women holding pins in their mouths.

  “What do you think?” Connie looked at us as if she was afraid our friendship had blinded her to the reality of just how awful our hair was.

  Roger moved closer to Vida’s sun-bleached head and made a clicking sound with his tongue. “It’s very straight, isn’t it?”

  Vida sent me a “help me” look in the mirror.

  “But the color is exquisite,” Roger relented. “And the length gives us a lot of flexibility.”

  Connie briefly looked relieved. Then she eyed me apprehensively. “What about…”

  Roger approached with eyebrows raised. He blinked quickly a few times, then said one word: “Extensions.”

  “Excuse me?”

  His smile was an attempt to reassure me. “Nothing permanent, don’t worry. I’ll just bring some extra bits of hair in that…brown color…and we’ll be able to make it look like…it will be fine.” He turned to Connie and gave her his professional word. “It will be fine.”

  Connie beamed at us. We’d passed. We’d be able to advance to the next level in the tournament of bridesmaids. I studied my reflection and began to rethink my stand on highlights.

  “Becks,” Vida whispered out of the side of her mouth, “we are so going for drinks the minute we’re unpinned.”

  I nodded my…brown…head. It seemed like the only sensible thing to do.

  NOW, AT THE BAR, Vida was swaying slightly. Or maybe it was me. “Do you know what’s really not fair?” she demanded.

  “What’s not fair?”

  She brought her palm down on the table. “Max!”

  “Max!” I agreed. “What’s not fair about Max?”

  “Where the hell is he?”

  I checked my watch. “It’s nine on a Wednesday. He’s probably watching a TiVo of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

  “Exactly!” she trumpeted.

  “Exactly what?” As far as I knew, it was still legal to watch excessively fabulous makeover shows.

  “We’re off getting criticized and jabbed with pins while he’s snug on his couch in perfect comfort. And why? I ask you—why us and not him?”

  “I’m just guessing here, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that he’s a guy.”

  “Exactly!” She hit the table again. “One damn Y chromosome and he gets out of being a bridesmaid for his entire life!”

  I saw her point. “Let’s get a cab.”

  MAX WAS LESS THAN THRILLED to see us on his doorstep. It was subtle, but I picked up on it when he said, “Good God, what are you two trollops doing in my respectable neighborhood at this hour of the night?”

  “Seething with resentment,” I told him.

  He stepped back so we could come in. “What have I done now?”

  “You were born with a Y chromosome,” Vida said as she paused to rest on his shoulder.

  Max looked at me over the top of her head. “I’m making coffee, aren’t I?”

  “You are.”

  Max lived in a newish condo in Dolores Heights, with a view of the park as well as the old Mission Dolores that had given the neighborhood its name. The front door opened into a big living/dining room with an open kitchen, so it was no trouble to pull Vida away from our host and plunk her down on a couch. “I don’t want coffee,” she said. “I want gender equality!”

  Max gave me raised eyebrows.

  “She wants you in a bridesmaid dress,” I explained.

  “Sorry, sweetness. I haven’t done drag since college,” he grinned. “Not that it wouldn’t be fun to see the look on Ian’s face as I came traipsing down the aisle in pink organdy.”

  “Café au lait silk,” Vida corrected him.

  “Is it café au lait?” I asked her. “I thought it was café latte.”

  “This is a color?” Max asked.

  “You just make the coffee,” I told him.

  “Café au—”

  “Shut up!” we yelled.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, Max had little sympathy for our bridal complaints.

  “Oh, come on,” he scoffed when we told him about the fitting. “Big deal. So you have to wear a dress and be fawned over by seamstresses and hairdressers. Boo hoo.”

  I turned to Vida. “Remind me again why we came here?”

  “At least you get to be in the wedding,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Connie wanted Ian to ask me to be a groomsman.”

  “You’re kidding!” Vida said. “That’s so cool! When”—then she saw the look on his face—“oh, I mean…um.”

  “Right.” Max nodded. “It seems Ian isn’t really a member of my core fan base.”

  “Connie told you he said no?” I asked. I hadn’t heard anything about this.

  He shook his head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have known a thing if Ian hadn’t gotten all British with me at the engagement party. He said he was sure I would understand that ‘it just wasn’t on,’ whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

  “He’s a jerk,”
Vida said.

  We stared at her.

  “Oh, come on. Don’t pretend you like him. I mean, it’s one thing to support Connie, but we don’t need to lie about the guy when it’s just us here.”

  Max cleared his throat. “Ian’s not a jerk,” he said firmly. He paused. “Being a jerk requires having a personality.”

  “I so don’t get it,” Vida said. “She could do so much better than him.”

  I was hugely relieved to find I wasn’t the only one who harbored doubts about Ian, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on the source of the doubts. “I can’t even say what it is about him…”

  “I know,” Max agreed. “I mean he’s perfectly pleasant on the surface.”

  “There’s just nothing much below the surface, as far as I can tell.” I sipped my coffee and thought about it. “I mean, has he ever expressed an opinion?”

  “Only about me being in his wedding,” Max said.

  Vida patted him on the arm. “You really wouldn’t want to hang out with him anyway, Maxie. Think about what his friends must be like. I mean, the only reason to be a bridesmaid is because you can usually count on getting lucky with a groomsman. But in this case”—she made a face—“I’m not optimistic.”

  “Maybe Connie likes bland,” I suggested. “Or maybe it was the English accent. I mean, she went after Ian, didn’t she? It wasn’t a case of her being date lazy.”

  “Date what?” Max asked.

  “Something I’ve recently been accused of.” I ignored his baffled look and went on. “She must have seen something in him to pursue him, right?”

  “Maybe,” Max said delicately, “she saw a wedding.”

  Vida groaned. “Not Connie. She’s not just in it for the dress.”

  “Maybe some women,” I protested, “but not Connie. I mean, how many weddings does she handle for her clients every year? She’s more likely to be sick of them than to be lusting after her own.”

  “And yet…” Max said.

  “And yet.” Vida sounded as if she was considering it. “There is the whole Princess for a Day syndrome to consider…or, in this case, Princess for Two Weeks.”