Fishing With RayAnne

by Ava Finch

  Staffers made curious harrumphings; a few chuckled. RayAnne looked up from scrolling through her résumé to apologize. “Sorry, I was a little punchy by then. She was like number eight or something.”

  They watched a few more, then the whole series of a dozen demos was run again from the beginning. Glances were exchanged over RayAnne’s head. Halfway through the second run-through, the executive producer hit “Pause” and cleared her throat. “Roxanne?”

  Cassi stage-whispered, “RayAnne.”

  “Right.” The producer smiled tightly. “Of course. RayAnne?”

  “Here.” She looked around to see all eyes on her.

  “Didn’t you guest-host for a season on Cat Fishing?”

  “Yesss.” RayAnne sat up, immediately wary. “But only for three episodes, when Cat went to Argentina to get a new liver. Why?”

  “Well, until we can find a suitable replacement . . .”

  “Well, a replacement I might be able to get . . .” RayAnne’s voice trailed off as she’d looked from face to face, understanding slowly dawning.

  “What? No. Me? No-no-no. No way.”

  And now the first season is over and, twelve episodes later, she is still the sub. The race to find a replacement has slowed to a stroll as positive viewer responses and ratings pile up. Something has been working, but no sooner than the show’s begun wriggling nicely into shape, producers are keen to ratchet up the numbers by devoting the top third of the hour to celebrity guests—ingenues plugging films, chick-lit writers with hit books, singers and musicians flogging CDs and concert tours. B-list, but celebs nonetheless. The rest of the hour they will grudgingly leave to RayAnne and her kooks.

  She prefers to think of herself as a moderator. The word “host” only cues up biology-fraught images of tapeworms or roadkill doilied with maggots. RayAnne merely facilitates the interviews that begin as chats and polite palavers that often evolve—some might say devolve—into something more. Aboard the Penelope, guests tend to be either exhilarated or unnerved by the speed at which RayAnne pilots her boat (there have been memos). But even when just afloat, guests can feel more or less out of their element because they are—there is something about being on the water that distracts and disarms. Water lapping at the bow seems to wash away trifling thoughts so that guests sometimes nearly forget what they’d intended to say on camera. Like a clapping kindergarten teacher, it is RayAnne’s job to keep them focused, though she will as often follow their tangents off topic when they are being funny or revealing. Many are won over by RayAnne’s frankness with such questions as “Are you happy?” She is truly curious about her guests and about how the circumstances that have landed them on television have affected their real lives. They tend to answer honestly when asked how, for instance, they felt at the beach when their dog brought them the tennis shoe with the foot still in it. How they felt during the escape from the bunker, or after discovering their husband had three other wives. How indeed.

  Guests can end up spilling, sometimes a little, sometimes buckets. Cassi, now the show’s production coordinator, rates these disclosures on a scale from sniffle-to-hurl in nasal Red Owl–clerk imitations only RayAnne can hear via the audio feed curling into her ear: Spill in aisle two. Leaker in dairy. Thaw in frozen fish case. Sometimes RayAnne must tune Cassi out, switch off the feed while pretending to scratch behind her ear as if at some bug bite. With Cassi cut off, the danger of RayAnne inexplicably snorting on camera lessens, but no Cassi also means no directives such as “Zip it!” when she chews her lip, or “Camera left,” should her gaze wander, or “Posture!” to snap her upright from her habitual slouching—all delivered in a tone one might reserve for obedience class. “Down,” in fact, is a frequent imperative—RayAnne is a toucher, a pawer, always has been and cannot help it. Guests from the Midwest often find it too intimate when RayAnne grasps their forearm like an oar or kneads a shoulder in sympathy; though most from coastal regions lean in as if they need the physical contact as much as they need to talk. Some, by the end of twenty minutes of revelations, are on RayAnne like burrs.

  And while most have compelling stories, or are sincere or amusing, the occasional objectionable guests will let loose words RayAnne wants to mop up and cram back in their mouths. She’s been tempted more than once to tip a woman overboard—the previous week it had been the mediocre writer who’d sold her chick-lit novel to Hollywood for an outrageous sum, then had the nerve to enviously complain about her struggling writer friends, precisely because they were struggling—cutting coupons, shopping thrift stores, and buying lentils in bulk. “Because,” Chick-Lit had pouted, “that is the trend now, right? It’s hot to be poor.” She’d been a typical producer’s choice, someone in the throes of their fifteen minutes but not necessarily deserving of them.

  From the beginning, RayAnne had set only two conditions: that the show take place on Penelope and that she get input regarding guests. Still, she’s had to wheedle to get her own discoveries greenlighted, like the soft-porn puppeteer, the former lumberjack now lumberjill, or the nun who raises money for Haitian orphans by bungee-jumping into gorges—as Sister pointed out herself, who wouldn’t pay to see a nun in a habit go off a bridge?

  RayAnne’s notebook is full of lists of maybe-probables and sort-of hopefuls she’s discovered via blogs, Twitter, Boing Boing, Reddit, obscure cable programs, and numerous news-of-the-weird print sources. At the moment she’s optimistic about booking a racehorse masseuse, an ark-building climatologist, and a relationship coach whose seminars on harmonious partnerings are based on methods used by dolphin trainers. These are the sorts of women who provoke RayAnne’s curiosity, and she thinks—hopes—those watching might be provoked as well.

  She looks around the conference room and stirs real sugar into her cup, stashing another packet to add later when no one is looking. The producer ahems and utilizes the majestic plural. “We are ready to talk about the guest lineup for season two.”

  Cassi, never one to waste time, clears her throat and stands to present her PowerPoint, going a little too quickly over the list she and RayAnne have painstakingly compiled. After giving everyone a moment for the information to sink in, Cassi repeats the status of each. “We’ve got Marla from Tweakables, and—”

  “Tweakables, that’s . . . what, again?” The producer is squinting.

  Cassi inhales through pierced nostrils. “Links to this PowerPoint are in your inboxes and printed in the materials in your folders. Tweakables is a tattoo parlor that inks photo-realistic nipples onto the reconstructed breasts of cancer patients. Oprah has called Marla’s nipples ‘works of art.’” She back-browses until an image crops up on-screen, which prompts muttering and nodding and a debate over whether or not a tattoo of a nipple is allowable on camera since an actual woman’s nipple would not be. One staffer mildly objects, “I mean, this is Minnesota, not Denmark.”

  Cassi manages to not roll her eyes. “It’s a tat.”

  RayAnne lets them duke it out while pretending to pay attention, scribbling tat for tit on her notepad, double-dotting the i. Having actually read all the notes and Cassi’s thorough research on National Public Television policies, she knows how the argument will end. Once she stops listening to the individual words, such discussions are easy to tune out, just honks in the background like the adults on Peanuts.

  The two new staffers have been staring unabashedly at Cassi. RayAnne is used to her appearance and barely registers the clanging bits of chain, the riveted strapping, and the boots that look like they might require tools to take off. Today she’s wearing a torn suede tube skirt over laddered tights as if to evoke a recent assault. The fishnet wrist-warmers seem a rather oxymoronic accessory in RayAnne’s view, though she can hardly claim to be any judge of fashion, as evidenced by her own ensemble of cargo skirt, T-shirt, and her wardrobe staple for such work meetings, the dress-hoodie. Fashion is a realm other people inhabit—she has enough to worry over without ad
ding her own lack of flair, agreeing with her grandmother Dot’s assessment—that she doesn’t so much dress in the morning as get clad (“I need pockets!”). Just as well that Rinata, the sweet wardrobe lady from Barcelona, dresses her head to toe for each taping in a fusion of Filson and Michael Kors. Sounding always as though she’s holding pins in her mouth, Rinata assures RayAnne, “I can thave you from yourthelf.”

  Cassi’s own mien has ratcheted up a notch since last season—a new constellation inked on her neck, one eyebrow stippled, and her naturally white-blond hair cut into a shag with its ends dyed in shades of charcoal and pewter, recalling a dog breed that is on the tip of RayAnne’s tongue.

  “Odd-looking little thing,” RayAnne’s mother, Bernadette, had observed upon meeting Cassi, less in regard to her style as to the girl’s pallor, like that of a Nilla wafer dipped in milk, with veins nearly the same hue as her light blue eyes pulsing at her temple. Combined, it can all be disconcerting enough, but what gets RayAnne is how still Cassi is, so that she’s often startled when the postlike form next to her comes to life like a street statue or a surveillance camera, or edges out from behind something like an eclipse.

  A staffer to her right barks a cough, and RayAnne shakes herself back into the meeting. Marla’s nipples have been given the all-clear, and Cassi moves on to the next potential guest.

  “Miranda Anderson of Nashville, Tennessee, has had twelve plastic surgeries to make her look just like her corgi, Dibble.”

  After some discussion and faces made at the screen, Miranda is deemed a no. As the mumbling dies down, Cassi brings up the next screen. “Here we have Babs Develara, Hollywood body-double whose booty has stood in for dozens of A-list celebs, appearing in numerous Oscar-nominated films and, yes, Golden Globe winners.”

  The producer smiles and looks around the table with a full stop at RayAnne. “Approved.”

  RayAnne frowns. “But how about my second pick?”

  “Morticia of Brentwood?”

  Cassi deftly clicks around in her PowerPoint. “Cosmetologist who does glam makeovers on average-looking corpses.”

  “I’ve seen her homepage.” The director shudders. “Macabre.”

  The producer leans in. “Those before and after shots?”

  “We’re a no,” says the director.

  RayAnne slumps. “But she’s so . . . Morticia!”

  “Sorry, Ray,” Cassi says, chipping black polish from her thumbnail. “Even I have to agree on this one.”

  RayAnne doesn’t claim all her choices are brilliant. She looks around the room knowing she must choose her battles and lets it go, which is easier than arguing with them—they are the sorts of women who have been thin all their lives.

  One of the new staffers looks uncertainly from RayAnne to the producer. “Is it necessary guests know how to fish?”

  “No,” RayAnne sighs. “I’d only end up in an empty boat for lack of guests who can kill a minnow.” She immediately regrets her choice of words, hoping they don’t trigger another PETA discussion, quickly adding, “I teach the basics before we tape, you know, casting, reeling . . .”

  Thankfully, the producers seem eager to move on. They’re so optimistic about the second season that they’ve come up with their own line-up of “bigger” guests. The producer takes Cassi’s place at the AV podium to bring up a series of headshots. RayAnne cocks her head this way and that, unconsciously mirroring the various poses of Elizabeth Warren, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Weiner, Reese Witherspoon—women she would love to interview. But. Good luck with those, she thinks as those around the conference table coo and honk. Aim high, as Gran says.

  It’s their second meeting to discuss issues that were not issues last season. She scans the new notes passed to her, and upon reaching the second line, presses the nub of her pen right through to dent the table.

  “Fisherpersons?” She taps the pen hard. “You want me to say fisherpersons?”

  The producer leans in. “Well . . . you can see why fishermen or fisherman might pose an issue.”

  Issue. She doesn’t refer to the guests as fisher-anything, so it should be a nonissue. She’s been learning lots of corporate-speak from management and marketing—terms like “solutioning” and “incentivize.” “Way-making.” She was thrilled to learn that there are no such things as “problems” anymore, only “way-blockings.”

  Fisherman. She recalls Gran Dot’s argument that we are all man: hu-man, wo-man. Dot, in her odd brand of reasoning, had offered, “Woman comes from womb, you see, so given that, isn’t it obvious? When it came time to name the penis-wielding version of the species, the Greeks just weren’t that inspired, I mean, given what they had to work with.”

  Fingering the dent, RayAnne quickly covers it. “How about fisherhumans?”

  Cassi clears nothing from her throat until RayAnne looks up to see the producer is actually thinking about it, smoothing her imaginary goatee.

  The PR person so fond of Post-it notes holds one up with the word FISHERS written on it. RayAnne raises her hand and pulls it down in one motion. “Um, a fisher is a mammal, but I don’t think they actually fish.”

  Cassi adds, “Right, but they do hunt porcupines.”

  RayAnne turns. “They do?”

  “Uh-huh.” Cassi taps her pencil. “Also, Fisher is the name of a band.”

  The producer looks concerned. “What sort of band? The sort you would listen to?”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, well. You’re not in our demographic.”

  RayAnne and Cassi blink at each other as if in code. “Fishers,” Cassi says, turning back to the producer. “We can live with that.” To RayAnne she whispers, “Nothing says you actually have to say it.”

  “Trust me,” RayAnne mumbles, “I won’t.”

  The producer ahems again. “Do you have something to add?” Both look up like deer and shake their heads, Cassi saying, “No.” RayAnne adding, “Ma’am.”

  After more way-blockings are tabled, solutioned, and swept off like crumbs, the meeting abruptly ends with everyone clamming closed their laptops. RayAnne tentatively rises—there’s been no mention of a replacement host, or about the search for one, yet in just a few weeks they are to embark on a new taping season. No one has asked, “Oh, by the way, you up for another season?” Is she to assume it’s assumed? When the producer stands, everyone else rises in her wake. Usually RayAnne is amused by this and would give anything for the woman to plunk back down just to see if the others might follow, stadium-style—but she’s teetering on the precipice of the question about hosting. It’s about to tumble from her mouth when Cassi pulls her sleeve and motions for her to hurry. Just as they approach the door, a rap sounds on the table.

  “One more thing,” says the assistant producer with oddly set eyes, whose real name is Amy but who Cassi calls the Grouper.

  Here we go.

  “Ah, a small item . . .”

  “RayAnne. Wardrobe wants to know if you’ll be able to wear a size six by the next taping.”

  All eyes race to RayAnne’s hips like those joke-eyeballs on springs. She blinks and opens her mouth but no answer forms. Cassi saves the moment by nodding for her. “Sure thing, boss, size six she will be.”

  Amy’s boss, who defines bossy, pretends to hate being called boss, though her little eyes glint more greenly when Cassi does.

  Well then, there’s her answer. RayAnne will indeed be the sub, again—one that will no longer be a size eight, however they expect that will happen. As far as she knows, there is no diet for big bones and is about to say so when Cassi pulls her out the door.

  It would be nice just once to leave a meeting without feeling less-than, or in this case, more-than with her extra five pounds—the extra-stubborn extra five pounds that look like fifteen on camera. In a previous meeting, the concern had been her general lack of experience in front of the camera, discuss
ed as if she hadn’t been in the room: “Should we hire a coach for a few sessions with RayAnne?” The time before that—the only meeting she’d ever walked out on—had been a discussion of the gap in her front teeth: “Should she be fitted for a cosmetic cap?” Cassi reported that it had taken ten minutes before anyone even noticed RayAnne had left.

  In the eyes of her employers, these are just a few of her shortcomings.

  She’d rather not attract too much attention to herself, because while none of her inadequacies are serious enough on their own to be a threat, they do stack up, and by now someone has probably discovered the fib on her résumé—that she wasn’t officially employed on the Alabama cable show Big Fish, was instead only a frequent presence in their demonstration videos. Her time on Big Fish had been short-lived, in any case, thanks to Sweaty Eddie. Eddie was handsome, like the Baldwin brother she could never name, and sweaty. Married as well, though Eddie seemingly had forgotten that small detail in his bid to engineer some thing with RayAnne. He would rush in at each wrap to pat her down, ostensibly to help undo the wireless microphone, fixated on RayAnne’s fishing vest and its multitude of pockets as if it were an Advent calendar in which he might discover a gift—perhaps a breast. She always beat him to the mic, unclipping and dropping it into his glistening palm while smiling, blinking, and thinking, In hell, mister.

  Sometimes she wonders if she was offered the consulting job with WYOY because Sweaty Eddie felt guilty, maybe pulling some strings in hopes she wouldn’t make a fuss, or sue, which she had every right to do and probably should have. She’s just not interested in revisiting their one incident of physical slapstick, which ensued after he pulled her into the boathouse and tried sticking his tongue into her mouth as if the goal was to have it exit her ear. She’d never actually felt threatened or harassed by him; he was too puppy-doggish. Besides, after Eddie had grabbed her, it was only a matter of seconds before she evicted his tongue and shoved him, arms windmilling comically, into the water. She was out the boathouse door and wiping her mouth, so embarrassed for both of them that the moment hadn’t properly registered.