Play Me

by Laura Ruby

  “From his new girlfriend,” says Joe. “Wait, she is a girlfriend, right? She’s not just one of your little…diversions?” His voice is all casual, but his eyes are flinty in my rearview. This is the new Joe. The Iceman cometh.

  I grit my teeth. I really needed for Gina to know that I had a new girlfriend right before we meet the MTV people. As soon as we get into the meeting, she’s going to clock me with a coffeepot.

  But all Gina says is, “Oh, okay. I guess we have to listen to it, then,” and puts the iPod back where she found it. She sees me glancing at her. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You thought I was going to freak out?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Yes, you did,” she says. “But I’m over that.”

  “Really?”

  “Did you expect me to pine away for the rest of my life? Do you really think you’re that great?”

  There’s no good answer to these questions, so I don’t say anything. For about five minutes, no one does. And then Gina pipes up:

  “I just hope you don’t give her a disease.”

  “That’s my girl,” says Rory.

  “Don’t you want to know who it is?” says Joe. I want to jam on the brakes so that his big stupid face slams into the back of my seat.

  “Not really,” says Gina, “but I think you want to tell me.”

  He does. “Lucinda Dulko.”

  “Well, well, well,” Gina says. “Eddy’s decided to hunt outside his species. Never seen her wearing anything but white. Does she put out?”

  “This is going to be a long day,” I say.

  Gina laughs. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Light one of those and I’ll throw you out, star or no star,” I say. “Nobody smokes in my car.”

  She stops laughing. I keep driving. Every once in a while, my eyes flick to the rearview mirror. Joe has stopped glaring at me and is now glaring at all the other cars on the highway. I’m not even sure why he’s coming with us. I told him that. He said, “This is my production company as much as it is yours.” Which was true. Was. Until he started blowing us off to do history projects. I might be distracted by Lucinda, but she’s not a fantasy. She’s real. And she wants me. Tough if he doesn’t like it.

  Nobody’s saying much. Too nervous, maybe. My mind wanders. I think about the first day I met Joe. Just like with Rory, it’s because of my mom that I met him. She dragged me to a local production of Shakespeare in the Park, something directed by one of her friends. Romeo and Juliet. I wasn’t into it. Shakespeare wasn’t my thing. Movies were my thing. But Mom said that a director has to understand acting, and Shakespeare was one of the hardest for actors to pull off. She said even if it was bad, I’d learn something. So, we went. We got there early. Mom introduced me to her friend the director, a distracted guy with frizzy hair, thick glasses, and a round butt just like a woman. There was a boy about my age lurking around him. I’d seen him at school. Total drama geek. “This is my son, Joe. He’d be my Romeo, but he’s too young. Even though he’s exactly the right age. Go figure.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the geek said to my mom. He shook her hand, holding it for just a couple of seconds longer than normal.

  I thought he was the weirdest-looking guy I’d ever seen. When we walked away, I said, “He looks like a skull.”

  “I think he’s got one of the most interesting faces I’ve seen in a long time,” my mom said. “I bet he’s a good actor.”

  And he was. Turns out that he was too young for Romeo, but his dad had given him some bit part with a few lines. As weird as he was to look at, he was also hard to look away from. You believed every word he said. Riveting, my mom said later. After the show, I asked him if he wanted to be in a film.

  “What kind of film?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s going to be awesome.” We called it The Strange Sad Life of Aquaman. It was about a superhero who could swim underwater without oxygen. Only problem was, he lived in Kansas. When we uploaded it on YouTube, we got more than ten thousand views.

  Now the only view is the one in my mirror, the one where Joe is staring sullenly out the window. People think we’re best friends. Which makes sense—we do the show, we’re always around each other. But there’s always been something there, something weird. Like we’re speaking the same language but slightly different dialects, and there’s always something lost in the translation.

  It takes about an hour to get into the city with all the traffic and a few wrong turns in Midtown, but we finally arrive. We park the SUV in a lot that cost 1500000000 dollars for a half hour. When we get on the elevator, my stomach is screwed up so tight that I think it’s trying to bend me in half.

  “I wonder if we’re going to see anyone cool while we’re here,” Gina says.

  “Joey Ramone is dead,” I say. “But maybe we’ll run into Justin Timberlake.”

  “Maybe we’ll run into Paris Hilton,” Rory says.

  “And we can watch her blow you off,” says Joe.

  “Key word is blow,” says Rory.

  Gina snorts. “You have quite the imagination.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Rory says.

  “No, we’re here because of Riot Grrl 16. I happen to be Riot Grrl 16 in case you forgot.”

  “Soon you’re going to want your own dressing room with a big star on it.”

  “And low-fat vegan meals.”

  “And your own Pilates instructor.”

  “And spring water imported from France,” Joe says.

  “The least they could do,” Gina says.

  The elevator opens and we step out. We tell the receptionist that we’re there to meet Erin Loder. She doesn’t burst into laughter and throw us out, which I take as a good sign.

  “Have a seat,” she says. “I’ll call Erin for you.”

  She calls, we wait. We wait for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour.

  “Taking her time, isn’t she?” Gina mutters.

  “Shut up,” I say.

  Finally a woman with a spiky cap of bleached hair comes out into the reception area. She’s wearing what looks like a lacy pink slip with short brown boots. I have never seen these articles worn together before. I would never have thought they’d look so hot.

  “Hi! I’m Erin. And you must be Gina. Loving the outfit.”

  “Thanks,” says Gina. “Eddy thought it was a bit much.”

  “Really?” Erin says. “I think you’re perfect. A riot girl if I ever saw one.” She turns to the rest of us. “And you must be Ed, Rory, and Joe, right?” She shakes all of our hands. “Why don’t you follow me back to the conference room. I’ve got some people who really want to talk to you guys.”

  As Erin walks, she casually swings the long rope of beads she’s wearing around her neck. Rory gapes at her ass wiggling under the slip. If I were filming this scene, I would draw the camera in tight to the wiggling ass and cut sharply to focus on Rory’s slack lips and darting tongue, then back to the wiggling ass. Joe sees where Rory is looking and elbows him hard.

  “Ow,” Rory says.

  “Dog,” Gina says.

  Erin glances back over her shoulder. “Sorry?”

  “Nothing,” Gina tells her. “Rory was staring at your butt is all.”

  Erin raises a brow and playfully swings the rope of beads at Rory. Maybe she has high school kids drooling over her all the time, I don’t know, but she doesn’t seem too upset.

  She leads us to a conference room and has us sit around a big table. “There’s coffee and soda over there if you want it. We’ll order lunch in a bit. Have a seat.” She grabs a phone and punches in some numbers. “They’re here. The Riot Grrl kids. Yeah. We’re in the conference room.” She hangs up. “Just to get this out of the way. You’re all eighteen, right? Otherwise we have to get your parents in.” We assure her that we’re legal—exactly what I told her on the phone but not exactly true. Gina’s still seventeen, but since she�
��s not officially a member of the production company, I figure it’s not a big deal. Besides, she would have killed me if (a) I told her she couldn’t come or (b) that her über-rich environmentalist parents had to come with us riding their Segways and demanding to know MTV’s policy on recycling.

  We’re still sort of shuffling around, trying to figure out if it’s really okay to take a Coke, or if that’s something that you’re supposed to offer to people just to be polite and those people are supposed to refuse politely and if they don’t they will make asses of themselves and no one will want to produce their TV shows. But then Gina grabs a Coke, so we all do. We sit down and try to open the Cokes without getting fizz all over the table, which we all do, except for Rory, who has to get up and scrounge around for napkins. When he’s sitting again, Erin starts talking.

  “Like I said to you on the phone, Eddy, we’re really impressed with your show here. Especially Manny and Paul, who you’ll meet in a minute. We think you guys have shown a lot of creativity and imagination. You’ve taken a rather clichéd idea, the video diary, and made it interesting again. That is not easy to do.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Thanks,” says Joe.

  “Thanks,” Rory says.

  We feel extremely stupid repeating each other until the door opens and two guys walk in. “Hey!” says one.

  “Hey!” says the other.

  “Hey!” says Erin.

  “That’s Paul,” Erin says, pointing at a guy with dark hair gelled to stick up in all directions. “And that’s Manny.” This is a prematurely bald guy with a baby face. “Paul and Manny are some of our very top development people. Paul, Manny, this is Rory, Joe, and Eddy.”

  “We love your show,” Manny says.

  “We think it’s amazing,” says Paul.

  “Totally awesome,” says Manny. “Hey, are we getting lunch? You guys like Japanese? We know this place that has great bento boxes. You want to get bento boxes?”

  “I’d love bento boxes.”

  I have no idea what bento boxes are and I’m not sure that Rory or Joe or Gina does either, but we all say yes because nobody is going to say no to Erin, who is still swinging her beads and smiling. There are calls to Japanese restaurants and orders for bento boxes. There are more comments about how awesome we are, how awesome Riot Grrl 16 is, how awesome Gina is. How everyone at MTV wants to work with us. Then the bento boxes arrive. They turn out to be actual boxes with California rolls and rice and little clots of seaweed in them. I’d like to photograph them; they don’t look like food as much as art. Everyone eats except me, because my stomach has screwed itself into a tiny fist. I poke at the California rolls with my chopsticks and say, “Thanks!” and, “Great!” and, “Wow!” when appropriate.

  “We don’t want to mess with a good thing,” Erin is saying. “We like the show as it is. What Manny and Paul are interested in is having you expand it. Enrich it. More settings. More expansive scenes. We’d like our star here”—she grins at Gina—“to really dig into the character. To have more people to work with. More emotional territory to explore. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” we say.

  Paul chimes in. “Like, for example, and I’m just throwing this out here, so don’t think I think you have to do exactly what I’m saying, but what if Riot Grrl here was a victim of a terrorist attack?”

  “Yeah,” says Manny. “Like she’s on the subway and someone releases a poisonous gas. Or maybe she gets a letter with anthrax in it. I mean, I wouldn’t do anthrax exactly; it’s been done.”

  “Yeah,” says Joe. “By real terrorists.”

  “Right,” says Manny. “So you don’t want to do anthrax. But maybe something else. Like, not terrorism, but some other mass-scale kind of crime.”

  “Another angle might be to have her contacted by a government agency. Like, they want her to spy on people. Or infiltrate some group. Punks, maybe. Or bikers,” says Paul.

  “Bikers!” says Manny. “Love that. We could get into the whole tattoo thing.” He turns to Gina. “What do you think about getting a tattoo on-screen? We could have her visit that celebrity tattoo show.”

  Erin shakes her head. “Another network.”

  “So? I’m sure we could work something out.” Manny’s still looking expectantly at Gina.

  “Uh…” says Gina.

  “Another idea that I’d like you to think about,” says Paul. “Does Riot Grrl have superpowers?”

  “That would be so cool,” says Manny.

  “I mean, not real superpowers per se, but subtle superpowers.”

  “Is there such a thing as a subtle superpower?” Rory wants to know. Erin frowns at him as if he’s being snarky, but he’s not. He just doesn’t understand what’s going on. Not sure that I do either. Gina’s looking a little dazed. Joe just looks mad.

  “Maybe she can read minds. Or move objects with her thoughts.”

  “Only little objects, though. Like pens,” says Manny.

  “What’s the point of having her move a pen with her mind?” says Paul.

  “Well, we don’t want her to be throwing cars around, do we?”

  “What if she’s bionic?”

  “We did have her explore being a witch,” I say. “Maybe we could do more with that. Voodoo or something.”

  “Great!” Erin says. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page.”

  “What page?” Joe says, but either they don’t hear him or they don’t know what he means.

  After lunch Erin takes us around the office. We’re introduced to producers, directors, assistants, sound engineers, and a lot of other people whose names we wouldn’t be able to remember even with the use of thumbscrews. All of these people say we’re awesome. I’m still feeling sick, but it’s a strange sick, a sick that afflicts those waiting to hear if they’ve won an Academy Award kind of sick. I can barely believe this is happening, that we’re walking around the offices of M-freaking-TV, that we are in talks with MTV. Even Gina has a huge grin on her face that she can’t seem to shake (luckily for all of us it makes her look even more riotous; nobody wants to watch Wholesome Happy Grinning Girl 16).

  We’re in the offices for exactly two hours when Erin decides to wrap it up. “So, what we’d like to see from you is some more expanded video, more characters in future shows. And Gina, we’d like to continue to see you being bold, larger than life, and real. We want you all to think about the possibilities and the risks you’re willing to take with this character and with this show. And we’ll see how you do in the contest. After that, maybe we can talk about a pilot.”

  “The contest?” I say. I didn’t think the contest mattered anymore. Does the contest matter?

  “Just so that I’m being up-front with you, we are talking to a number of contestants.” She must see something on my face because she says, “That’s the way the game is played, you know?” She pats me on the back. “But I’m rooting for you guys.”

  I can’t help it. My tiny fisted stomach punches me from the inside. I mumble, “We won’t let you down.”

  Erin shakes all of our hands, leads us to the elevators. She presses the button marked Down. “Guys,” she says, nodding at us, “we really think you’re going to be big. We really do. I’m being serious here. We can’t wait to see what you come up with next.”

  The door opens and we step into the elevator. “Thanks for having us,” we say as the doors frame and then obliterate her. It’s quiet for about three seconds, because Rory can’t hold it in any longer.

  “Oh, man, that chick was HOT. Definitely a 9. Maybe even a 9.5.”

  “Can’t you wait until we get out of the building before you go all horndog on us?” says Gina.

  “She can’t hear me. Did you see the ass on her?”

  “We all saw the ass on her, Rory,” I say. “We were worried you were going to bite it.”

  “She looks exactly like Scarlett Johansson. When we get the pilot, I’m asking her out.”

  “First of all,”
Joe says, “we’re probably not getting any pilots, and second of all, you have a better chance of getting abducted by aliens than getting a date with that woman.”

  “What do you mean, aliens?” Rory says.

  But I don’t care about that. “What do you mean, we’re not getting any pilots?”

  He looks at me as if I’m crazy. Maybe I am crazy. I don’t want him to say what he’s going to say.

  The doors to the elevator open and we walk through the building and then to the parking garage. Joe makes us wait until we’re in the car before he decides to explain. “Did you hear those guys? They kept telling us how great we were—”

  “Yeah? So?” says Rory. “We are great. The show’s great.”

  “Let me finish. They kept telling us how great we were, but they never said anything specific. And were talking about making Riot Grrl bionic! What kind of crap is that?”

  “They were just throwing out ideas,” I say.

  “Stupid ideas. The reason that Riot Grrl is good is because we push the envelope, but we never push it too far. Everything that’s happened to Riot Grrl could actually happen.”

  “The government could be working on bionics right now,” Rory says. “For all you know.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Think about it: What kind of ‘risks’ do Erin and her cronies want us to take with the show? What kind of risks does she want Gina to take? Like, if they want her to get a tattoo on camera, what else do they want her to do? Get wasted?”

  “I’d get wasted,” she says.

  “Have sex?”

  “Screw you,” she says.

  “Well, that’s what I’m saying. They weren’t really specific, and they didn’t promise us anything. Why should we mess with the show if it’s great? And why should we mess with it at all if they haven’t promised us anything? They said they’re talking to all the contestants.”

  “They mentioned a pilot,” Rory says.

  “What did they say, exactly?”

  “About what?”

  “About the pilot? About a contract? About money?”

  Rory shakes his head. “That’s your problem, dude. You’re all about the money. You have to think about the big picture.”