by Jeff Zentner
“That didn’t happen that much.”
“I’ve seen two episodes, and it happened on both.”
Lawson looks over the set. “You got everything? We good in here?”
“I think so.”
We start walking toward the door. Arliss would probably love it if we were gone when he returned.
We’re halfway to the door when I realize I don’t have my phone. There are no pockets on my gown, so I’m always misplacing it on set. “Gah.”
“What?”
“My phone.”
“Lost it?”
“Yeah. You have my number in your phone?”
“Yep.”
“Call it for me.”
I walk back into the studio as Lawson dials. There’s a buzzing on the floor behind some of the chairs used for studio audiences. I guess I set it on one of those chairs and it fell behind. I pick it up and answer. “Pizza Trough. What kind of pizza do you want?”
Lawson doesn’t miss a beat. “Wow, I don’t know, what kind of pizza do you have?”
“We’re featuring our new Poultry Lover’s pizza.”
“Oh, tell me about that.”
“It’s a pizza piled high with succulent chicken, duck, turkey, goose…What’s another kind of bird?”
“Pheasant.”
“And pheasant. With a scrambled egg–stuffed crust and a zesty egg yolk dipping sauce.”
“Huh. I like all those things, and yet that pizza sounds weird and gross.”
“Did I mention that the crust is made out of pancake?” I start to walk back toward the door.
“Wait,” Lawson says. “Stop walking but don’t hang up. I wanna ask you something.”
I stop. “Depends on if we’re still pretending I’m a representative of Pizza Trough.”
He laughs, a jitter in it. “No. I was gonna ask you over the phone because I’m nervous and I hadn’t planned on doing this. I have a fight next Saturday night, and I was wondering if you wanted to come?”
“I can actually hear you speaking right now even if I hold the phone away from my ear.”
“I know.”
“Next time you want to ask me something like this, we should put a blindfold on you. Same thing,” I say.
“I swear it’s easier for me this way.”
“You had no trouble asking me to dinner last week.”
“This is different.”
“You seem less scared about actually engaging in hand-to-hand combat than me watching.”
“Yeah.”
“Normally Delia and I use Saturday nights to get ready for next week’s show.” I get ready to really lean on this as an excuse, but then…I don’t feel like it.
“It’s cool if you can’t make it.” His voice contains equal parts disappointment and relief.
“But we could do show prep another night.”
“Awesome. I’ll text you where it’s at.” He sounds like he’s speaking through a smile.
And just to be a butthead: “I like your new clothes. They look sharp.”
“What? No. I’ve had them for a while.”
“No, you have not.”
“Have!”
“You just got them.”
“No.”
“You sound really busted right now. Why would you be weird about clothes being new if they weren’t new?”
“Okay, fine. They’re new.”
“So let’s try this again.” Now I’m speaking through a smile. “I like your new clothes.”
“Thanks. I maybe hoped you would.”
“I know.”
I wedge the bin into the back seat of Josie’s car. I figure Josie and Lawson will be along shortly, so I pull out my phone and call my mom to see if she wants me to stop and pick up something for dinner.
“Hello?” Her voice is thick and woolly with sleep. That ain’t good.
“Mom? Are you at work? Why do you sound like you just woke up?”
“What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty. At night.”
“Oh damnit. Oh lord.”
“Mom.”
“I fell asleep.”
“Oh, no kidding?”
“I have no energy.”
“Please get up and go into work or call them or something.”
“Okay.”
“I am really going to need you to get back on your meds. I am so serious right now.”
“I will.”
“Don’t tell me that just to get me off your back.”
Mom’s voice is somehow both petulant and plaintive. “I was fine until you started digging things up with your dad.”
My blood rises. “Oh. Whatever. Blame this on me.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, stop saying. This is happening because you started feeling better and you thought, ‘Welp, time to quit taking the things that made me feel better.’ ” Intellectually, I know it can’t help to get pissed at her. But…
Mom starts in about something, but I can’t deal.
“You know what? I gotta go. I gotta help Josie with our stuff. Later.” I hang up. It’s such a scary, lonely feeling when Mom gets this way. What I wouldn’t give for a few consecutive years where my life didn’t feel so precarious. Where my mom could always be my mom.
The studio door opens and Josie and Lawson exit, laughing. Lawson says something to Josie that I can’t quite make out before he splits off to go to where he’s parked, his new clothes bundled under his arm. He steals a last furtive glance at Josie before getting in his truck.
It triggers a strange mix of jealousy and urgency. The world—in whatever form it decides to take—is so hungry for some people, it can’t help but try constantly to lure them away from wherever they are by promising even more. I wonder if people like that—people like Josie—are harder to leave behind. They must be. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Josie and this show are the two good things I have that I can count on. The world has taken more from me before. It won’t hesitate to do it again.
“Did Arliss say anything before you left?” I hand Josie her keys.
“He said, ‘I gotta take a dump,’ and as far as I know, he’s still in there.”
I grimace. “He has the charm of a wet bus seat. Thanks for that mental image, by the way.”
“Said the girl who’s memorized every Wikipedia page on every serial killer.”
“We both know that Arliss pooping is a way grosser thought than any torture murder.”
“Hey, not to change this terrific subject, but next Saturday, you wanna go with me to see Lawson kick people in the face?” Josie gets in and starts the ignition.
“What time?”
“I don’t know. Nighttime. Fightin’ time. Nighttime is the right time for fight time.”
“What about show prep?”
“Can you do it earlier in the day?”
“I’m working.”
“What about another night?” Josie looks over her shoulder and backs out of her parking space.
“We always do it Saturday nights.”
“Don’t you think it sounds kinda fun to go see a cage fight?”
I shrug and try to appear noncommittal.
“You love the bizarre, and I know you will sit through literally anything,” Josie says. “This’ll be like the show Spartacus but with fewer dongs.” She pauses. “Probably.”
“Do you say ‘fewer dongs’ or ‘less dongs’?”
“I think ‘fewer’ is correct.”
“I can never keep it straight,” I say.
“Are we still talking about dongs or—”
“Whether it’s ‘less’ or ‘fewer’ that’s correct.”
“Ah. Anyway, I bet you’ll love the cage fight.�
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“I don’t love anything as much as Lawson loves you.”
“Trying to change the subject,” Josie says in a singsong voice.
“Whatever. We were just talking about whether it’s more correct to say ‘fewer dongs’ or ‘less dongs.’ That’s not a subject that’s off-limits to change. Besides, I’m not wrong about Lawson.”
“You are in fact not wrong.”
“It’s pretty adorable how he looks at you.”
“It kind of is. Now enough changing the subject.”
I sigh loudly. “I’ll go. Fine.”
“I mean, he’s so sweet and goofy, I want to see if he’s a kind and gentle kickboxer.”
I check my phone. “Can I bring my mom to the fight and sign us up for a round?”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, uh-oh. I called a little while ago to see if she wants me to bring home dinner and she’s in bed, which is sort of a problem because she’s not really supposed to be in bed so much as she’s supposed to be at work.”
“I’m no expert in what constitutes good performance at your mom’s job, and yet I feel comfortable saying that that’s probably not considered good performance.”
“Sure, sure, yeah, no. Nope.”
“It’s probably actually considered bad performance.”
“I think that is a fair characterization of being in bed when one is supposed to be at work.”
“Your mom is a trip. I mean…”
“I have been begging her to get back on her meds because she’s a manageable level of flaky when she’s on them. She can function.” The air in Josie’s car is stagnant, so I roll down my window. The breeze that blows in is humid but cool and green-smelling, in that hopeful way of spring. It almost feels like it’s mocking me with its cheery, verdant optimism.
“Do you need me to help you hold her down and force-feed her? I legit will.”
“How about if she loses her job and we become homeless, you let me come live under your bed in your dorm at UT Martin?”
“What about her?”
“She can do whatever. I don’t care,” I mutter.
“You don’t mean that.”
“It gets exhausting mothering my mother.”
“I hear you,” Josie says. “But let me just say that having a mother who is always a mother is overrated.”
“Trade you.”
“I totally would. Remember how after you found out Devin had hooked up with Kylie Miller, she let you stay home from school, forged a doctor’s note, made you fried cheesecake bites, and rented The Room to cheer you up?”
The memory makes me smile in spite of myself. “Remember how she accidentally put windshield washer fluid where the oil is supposed to go in our car and made the engine melt so we had to eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner for a month and a half?”
“Remember when Principal Ward brought your mom in for a parent meeting after you got caught ditching too many times and she called him Principal Wardhog to his face?”
“Remember when she tried to pet a possum that had gotten under our porch?”
“Your mom isn’t perfect, but she’s pretty great.”
“It’s different when you have to live it,” I say.
“She’s always in your corner.”
“Let’s change the subject.” Josie’s right, and it’s making me sad coming up with arguments against my mom’s awesomeness. Venting about her to Josie allows me to let it go and also enables me to see my mom’s good side again.
“Fair enough,” Josie says. “Wanna stop at Books-A-Million on the way home?”
“I wish, but I gotta get home and ride my mom’s ass.”
We drive in silence for a while.
“You rocked tonight, by the way,” Josie says.
“I practiced my lines at work and did some vocal warm-ups before you picked me up.”
My heart revs with a quick surge of excitement. It feels like the kind where you’re sitting there and out of nowhere, this rogue wave of contentment and joy washes over you. Maybe it’s connected to something you’re looking forward to that day. A package. A three-day weekend. A movie. A reassurance. It’s always something small. And the wave is gone as soon as it comes, but in that moment, it’s glorious. Like maybe everything will be okay. For a second it washes away every care and your heart is clean before the worries come flooding back.
“Look at you. Upping the game for Jack Divine!” Josie says.
“Pretty much. And for us. Upping the game in general.”
We stop at a red light, and Josie looks deep in thought.
“What?” I ask.
“What what?”
“You have your obviously-thinking-about-something look.”
She waves it off. “I’ve been formulating a theory.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m not sure it’s ready for sharing.”
“You do realize we were literally just exposing a bunch of people to Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory, right? Like, the ship of only sharing things that are ready for sharing has sailed.”
“So my theory is that all men have either a fox face or a tiger face.”
“A fox face or…”
“For example, Benedict Cumberbatch—fox face. Ryan Gosling—fox face. Channing Tatum—tiger face. Idris Elba—tiger face.”
I nod slowly, testing the theory in my head. “So it’s not just good-looking guys get tiger and ugly guys get fox.”
“No. Foxes are cute. But they have different faces from tigers.”
“This theory is both amazing and completely useless.”
“There’s some very important work going on in this car. We are advancing science here,” Josie says.
“Okay, Lawson?” It might be my imagination, but Josie’s face turns rosy.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Oh, really?”
“Haven’t thought about it.”
“Not even a little? As you were formulating the theory?”
Josie sort of shrugs and gives a why should I have been thinking about the guy who clearly adores me frown. “I guess I’d say…tiger,” she murmurs. “Yeah. Tiger.”
“Yeah. Tiger,” I say in a gauzy, dreamy voice.
“That is not how I talk.”
“It so is. Lawson and Josie, sittin’ in a tree—”
“Oh yeah? Well, Delia and the Idiot Twins, sittin’ in a tree—”
“K-i-s-s-i-n-g,” I sing.
“S-u-c-k-i-n-g,” Josie sings over me.
We both crumble into laughter and we’re barely able to catch our breath before we get to my dark and empty house.
* * *
•••
Jack Divine’s website looks super homemade. I don’t love that, but hey, our website is a free homemade WordPress site, so we can’t talk. Plus, there are all sorts of stories about people in showbiz who hate technology. I read somewhere that Jack White doesn’t have a cell phone. It’s fine. It probably would have intimidated me if Jack Divine’s website was too good. I like that he’s okay with unpolished things. I poke around until I find a contact email address.
Dear Mr. Divine:
I have to breathe through a jolt of adrenaline that feels like leaning up against a hot car. I start typing again after it subsides.
My name is Delia Wilkes. My friend Josie Howard and I host a show called Midnite Matinee on TV Six, the public access station in Jackson, Tennessee. We show old horror and sci-fi movies like you did when you were doing Jack-O-Lantern’s Fright-Day Night Revue. We’re already syndicated in seven other markets, and we haven’t even been on the air for two years.
We’re huge fans of yours. I grew up watching your show with my dad. Josie and I are going to be at ShiverCon next month, and we were hoping we could meet you.
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br /> This is stupid. You’re nobodies, says the cartoon devil Delia that appears on my shoulder. This is how you make the show good enough that Josie won’t leave, says the cartoon angel Delia that appears on my other shoulder. This is how you keep the best thing in your life going and make it better. This is how you don’t get left behind.
We’d maybe like to talk to you about possibly working together.
I delete the line. I try again.
We’d like to talk to you about working together.
It feels so presumptuous. But I don’t want to sound too tentative either. I start to delete it but change my mind, mainly because I have nothing better to replace it with. This sucks.
Here are a couple of links to YouTube videos showing clips of our show. We know we have room to improve, but we feel that we need someone with the experience to help take the show to the next level and reach more markets.
The clips aren’t my favorite and each only has about 350 views, but I don’t know how to capture better clips from the show. At least these are convenient.
If you’re interested in seeing more, please send me an address and I can send you a DVD with a couple of episodes of the show.
Sincerely,
Delia Wilkes (aka Delilah Darkwood)
I hold my breath for a beat or two before letting it out in a rush and hitting send. Don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself. Nobody with a website that janky checks email very often. It feels very strange to be sending a message to someone I used to watch on TV with Dad. Sorry, I mean Derek Armstrong.
Me, to Josie: Ok, I emailed Jack Divine. Fingers crossed.
Josie: Cool. What did you say?
Me: We were big fans and wanted to meet him at ShiverCon. Sent him a couple of YouTube clips. Asked if we could send him a DVD with episodes.
Josie: Nice. Sounds like you weren’t too weird.
Me: Nope. Now you gotta ask your parents about ShiverCon.
Josie: I will. What if Divine says no?
Well, Josie, if he says no, I still need to go and track down one Derek Armstrong, so…