by Amanda Heger
Evan shook his head.
“Now, I’m a little confused, Evan.” James leaned forward with his chin in his hands. “I thought Marisol was supposed to help you catch the ladies.”
Evan pretended this was no different than the rehearsal they’d run through an hour before. “That was the plan.”
“But?”
“But things changed.”
The monitors flashed to one of the pictures of them kissing on Sammy’s podium. The one Penny had posted to one social media outlet or another before it took off like wildfire.
“Yeah. We need to talk about this, kid.” Samuelson crossed his arms tight across his chest. From his perch a few feet away, Evan could tell the game show host’s blond hair was thinner in person than it appeared on television. The creases around his eyes deeper. The slack along his jaw looser. Apparently, the magic of television made this man look ten years younger.
“We do?” Evan asked. But he knew what was coming.
“Something about this photo looks familiar.”
The crowd chortled.
“It does?” Evan cleared his throat. “I mean, it does.”
“How did you get in to that super secure set, Evan?” James widened his eyes, sharing the secret mockery with everyone in the studio and onscreen.
“I bribed a guy.”
“You bribed someone?” James’s contorted his face into mock anger. “This girl must really have you by the ’nads, man.”
“You better not have put your ’nads on my set,” Samuelson added.
“No, no. Nothing like that.” Evan wedged himself into the opening. “Marisol’s a really big fan of your show. I don’t know if you know this, Sammy, but I actually met her for the first time in line for Whose Got the Coconut.”
“Ooooh.” James tented his fingers. “The plot thickens.”
“She really wanted to go on.” Evan took a deep breath and forced out the words James had all but put in his mouth. “It was her birthday. But she didn’t make the cut. So I decided to take her on a tour.”
“Well, it looks like she got something on the show, if you know what I mean,” Samuelson said.
“Well, why don’t we given her a call then, eh?” James asked. “I want to hear from her what went down outside the studio the other day.”
He pointed to the monitors, which had been split in half. On one side of the screen Marisol looked at Evan like he knew the answers to life. On the other, she held hands with Clint as they jogged across the street.
Evan hated looking at that picture. Not because she held hands with Clint—not that he loved that, necessarily—but because he could see the fear in her face. The slight look of panic that set in around her mouth, turning her usual brilliant smile into a scowl.
Penny wheeled an old pay phone onto the set—one of the few props they used on a regular basis. What people couldn’t see, from home or from the audience, was the tech crew had patched Evan’s phone into the studio’s soundboard.
James handed him a quarter, and Evan stood to dial. Please answer. Please answer. He’d already left her two voice mails. The first one simply said he wanted to talk and James wanted her to appear by phone on the show. The second was a longer, rambling message telling her when he would call and why, what he would say, and how it wasn’t true. He’d all but begged her to pick up the phone.
But she’d never called him back.
One ring came over the speakers.
The audience quieted.
Two.
The tension in that tiny phone booth pinned Evan’s arms to his sides.
By the third ring, he knew she wouldn’t answer. The voice mail clicked over, an automated message from a robotic voice—as far from Marisol’s musical tone as he could imagine.
Just say it and hang up. Say it and hang up. “Hi, Marisol. This is, uh, Evan. Your, uh, protégé. I think I might be in love with you.” He hung up as fast as humanly possible. Maybe faster.
James leaned back and crossed his ankles. “Well if that won’t ruin a good relationship, I don’t know what will, Sammy.”
Brrrrring. Brrrrring.
Evan jolted.
“Is it her? Is it her? If it’s her, I have a few things to say,” James said. “As do a lot of people in this audience.”
Evan had no idea if it was her. The old prop payphone might have been patched to his cellphone, but it didn’t have caller ID.
Please be her.
Please don’t be her.
He lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Evan? It’s your dad. Grandpa’s in the hospital.”
Day Ten
As long as Marisol didn’t look closely, her reflection appeared confident and competent. But when she leaned in to the mirror, she saw the circles under her eyes and the days of stress worn into her skin. And it had all been for nothing. No game show tickets. No help with her presentation. Nothing.
“A little more lipstick, and no one will notice. It will be fine.” She reached for her makeup bag and in the process dropped a tray of eye shadow on her laptop. The laptop she needed to take downstairs for her presentation. The same laptop that was now covered in pink and purple powder. “It will be fine. It will be fine.” She grabbed a hand towel and swiped across the keyboard, rubbing as much of the sparkle as she could off of the keys.
With the motion, her PowerPoint presentation disappeared from the screen, hidden beneath a new window opening up. One that held all the things she’d been avoiding for the last week.
Her email.
“No. No. No.”
For the last ten days, the Hilltop’s basic Internet had trudged along at sloth speed, and the upgraded access cost an additional fee. A nonstarter with the constant drumbeat of “financial trouble” in the back of her mind. Plus, stomping all the way down to the lobby with her laptop had been too much trouble—especially now that the hotel clerks knew about So Late It’s Early. Of course, now that Marisol was systematically avoiding everything—other than this presentation and interview—the Internet started to move. And move. And move.
She should close the window. Click the little X in the corner as fast as possible. Nothing good could come of sitting here, feeling homesick and helpless as she read messages from home. But still.
One email from her mother. Subject: Everything Okay?
Three from Felipe: What is Going On?
Followed by Call Me, Please.
Followed by Call Me NOW!
All too conveniently, Marisol had no way to call him, so she scrolled past all three of his messages without opening any of them. But he’d pulled a page from Marisol’s own playbook, and enlisted his girlfriend’s assistance. The same girlfriend who happened to be one of Marisol’s oldest friends. Annie.
No. Close the inbox. Close it. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, sparkling with spilled eye shadow. It didn’t matter how much she missed Annie. It didn’t matter that her friend gave great pep talks and could organize anything—including a wayward presentation—within an inch of its life; Marisol needed to focus. Today, the cost of explaining anything was too high.
She double-clicked the first message from Annie.
Mari! I just saw your face on Extra! Are you really in LA? What’s going on? I spent an hour falling down the rabbit hole of celebrity gossip about you and this guy. (He’s cute!) Call me!
Sent two hours later:
Hey Mari, Felipe is getting worried. I guess he talked to your mom about why you’re in LA. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Can you call, please?
And five hours after that:
Mari, I’m getting worried now too. Some of these websites are saying things. Well, I’m sure you know what they’re saying. I love you. I’m here if you need anything. Let me know you’re okay.
“Saying things?” Marisol minimized her email and took a deep breath. She was absolutely, 110 percent not going to put her own name in the little search engine box on the screen. With less than an hour before her presentation, she needed to g
et her head in the game. Except…
Marivan Derailed by Love? Or by Sex Tape Scandal?
Ten clicks later she’d read a half dozen theories about her disappearance from the show. She’d been looking for a green card, and when Evan wouldn’t propose she’d moved on. She’d wormed her way onto the show by sleeping with James January and extorting him with a sex tape—which was apparently extra-extortion-y because James was widely known in the US as the first openly gay late-night host. She had a coke habit that cost more than what the show paid her.
“Everything costs more than what they paid me,” she muttered.
She’d given the show hours of her time. Her ideas. And, up there on that podium with Evan, a little snaggle-toothed piece of her heart. James January and crew hadn’t given her anything in return—except a few posters. Marisol tried to suppress her anger, but with each stray thought it inched higher inside her.
She pulled up a blank email and inserted the names. Her mother. Felipe. Annie.
Everyone,
Everything is fine. Those things online are not true, I promise. I will explain when I am home in a few days, but for now I have to go win Ahora some money. If they give it to me on one of those giant checks, I will send you a photo.
Mari
P.S. My phone isn’t working. If you have an emergency, call the hotel. I am in room 1708.
She read it over again. Once, twice, three times. She needed it to be firm but lighthearted, and she needed to hide any trace of how horrible everything felt.
P.P.S. If they give me a giant check, I will need to buy a second plane ticket, because I am bringing it home to hang on my wall.
“Good enough.” She hit send, closed her inbox before her fingers could do any more damage, and packed her belongings. She’d head down now, make sure she had time to hook up her computer, and check her teeth for leftover signs of lunch one last time. She would be early for once, and there would be no stopping her. Maybe stuffy interviews weren’t her thing, but she could rock the hell out of a presentation. She’d been doing it for years back home—both on the brigades and off—and no one at the conference knew more about training community advisors than she did, especially when it came to diabetes training.
At least, that was what she told herself as she marched toward the elevator.
By the time she made it to the lobby, Marisol felt almost like herself. A little nervous? Sure. But also a little excited. When her presentation ended, she’d have fifty more people excited about training their own community health workers. And hopefully twenty thousand more dollars in her pocket.
“Marisol? Hey, I was hoping to find you.” Clint caught up to her in a few lanky strides. He looked different than usual. His tie hung crooked, and his shirt had a certain rumple to it, like he’d picked it up off the floor an hour ago.
She looked past him toward the registration desk. No sign of the clerk who’d tricked her yesterday. “I have to set up for my presentation.” She didn’t want to be rude, but there was no more room at her crazy train inn. Any more questions Clint had about the show would have to wait.
His face flatlined.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, about the presentation—”
“Marisol. Marisol! Just a few questions for you. Chuck Taylor, Sizzling Celebrity Scandals. How long are you planning to give Evan the silent treatment? Did you hear his message last night?” The man shoved his cell phone in her face, and it took her too long to realize he was snapping photos.
A woman with frizzy blonde hair poking out from under a baseball cap edged the man out of the way. “How long ago did you make the sex tape? Do you have any insider thoughts on James January’s sexuality?”
A third cell phone appeared. “Do you think So Late It’s Early deserves a renewal?”
The click of the electronic shutter was all it took. “Leave me alone.” She tried to shove by, but they surrounded her like hounds at a hunt. Where were the hotel staff? Why weren’t they rushing to free her from this mess? How did these paparazzi know where she’d been staying?
“Come on.” Clint grabbed her around the shoulders and threw his body weight into the crowd. More cameras went off as the buzz grew louder. Formerly disinterested guests stood to see what all the fuss was about, and—at last—a man dressed in head-to-toe H gear began telling the paparazzi to leave.
When she and Clint had thrown enough elbows to scuttle past the chaos, Marisol ducked into the first open door she could find. So much for feeling like her old self.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Paparazzi.”
“I know that. But why are they here?”
Clint ran a hand over his once perfect beard. “Maybe we should—” He nodded toward the door.
“No. I am not going back out there.” She crossed her arms. “Not until they are gone.”
At that moment, a man with a potbelly and a straw hat stepped into the room. His footsteps echoed off the tile, and his eyes widened when they landed on Marisol.
Great. Here we go. “No photos, please,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Am I… Is this?” He glanced over his shoulder.
“It is. Minor emergency,” Clint said. “This one’s out of service. There’s another men’s room on the other side of the lobby. Go past the big television and hang a left.” He escorted the man the three steps out to the hallway.
Marisol finally found the wherewithal to take in her surroundings. Sinks. Stalls. The smell of bleach. Urinals. In front of all those paparazzi, she’d grabbed her supposed lover and ducked into the men’s room.
“I think someone from the hotel staff tipped them off,” Clint said. “I caught one of the clerks giving me the side-eye while she was talking on the phone. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but now…”
“Now everything is a mess.” She reached for her phone before she remembered last night’s debacle. “What time is it? I have to set up for my presentation. Do you think—”
“So you haven’t been in there yet?” Clint’s frown deepened.
“No. Why?”
He sighed. “Something happened to the circuit breaker or something. No electricity in Hall C. It went out right at the end of my presentation.”
“No electricity?”
“None.”
“Well, they will get it fixed, yes? Or move it to a new room? This hotel is full of empty spaces.”
Clint shrugged. “They said everything is booked. Some new conference started today. A science fair. It’s called Lab Rats or something like that.”
“Science fair?” She needed to come up with a plan. Her presentation was the only thing that mattered right now. “I need to go. Can you look out there and see if it is safe?” she asked.
Clint pulled open the men’s room door and poked his head out. “Looks like the security guards finally got them out. I’ll go first. If no one notices, you follow.” He pointed to her laptop bag. “Is that all you have? I thought—”
“Mierda.” Her posters. She must have dropped them in the chaos. “Brown folder. This big.” She held her hands an arm’s length apart. It was so bulky—how did she miss it flopping to the ground?
He stuck his head into the hall again. “I don’t see them. Let’s get you to Hall C and then I’ll go back and look. Someone from the front desk probably grabbed them and put them in the lost and found.”
He was a terrible liar. “Clint?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Clint slipped out of the bathroom. Marisol watched from her perch around the corner, holding her breath as she waited for another ambush. When none came, she followed.
Hall C was a tomb. Dim, cold, quiet. Filled with ancient old men. The only light crept through from the shaded floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the room, and a hundred empty chairs lined up in perfect rows in front of the stage.
; Her stage.
“Shut the door!” A voice boomed out from the front of the room, and Marisol jerked the door closed behind her.
“Hi.” She approached with caution. “I am supposed to do the two o’clock presentation.”
“Not anymore.” The man hiked up his worn blue jeans and jerked his head toward the stage, where two other men huddled together near the podium. A patch on the front of his shirt said ROY, MAINTENANCE HEAD.
“Oh, I am sure you will fix the problem, no?” She did her best impression of a dazzling smile. Wide eyes.
It all felt flat.
“Not unless you know a good exterminator,” Roy said.
Exterminator? She looked at Clint, who shrugged. Maybe somewhere in the constant surges of adrenaline her English had gotten waterlogged. “Did you say electrician?” she asked.
“Nope. See, you got one right there.” He shined a flashlight across the room. Marisol only caught a flash of movement before whatever it was it disappeared. “And last I saw you had a whole mess of them under the stage. Probably making babies under there right now.”
“Babies?”
“Look, I like God’s creatures as much as anybody, but somebody’s got to do something about this, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. And there certainly isn’t gonna be any presentation in here.”
“Creatures?” Marisol asked. “I thought the electricity was out.”
“It is. Because one of the damn rats chewed through every wire on stage. Son of a bitch fried himself three times before he finally gave up the ghost. They said the damn things are on steroids, but I think it’s more like Hulk juice.”
Hulk juice? Fried rats?
The man jumped onto the nearest chair. “There. There’s another. Suckers are huge. They’ve gotta be multiplying.”
Rats were no big deal. Marisol spent four months out of every year on a glorified camping trip. She could deal with rats. No problem. She followed the beam of his flashlight to a twitching nose and took a small step forward. But then the light illuminated the rest of the beast, and Marisol couldn’t scramble away fast enough. Hulk juice be damned. That rat had apparently eaten the Hulk and all of his brothers.