by Karina Halle
There was that glimmer of hope on Monday, though. I started fantasizing. I know I said I didn’t want to stay in advertising, but it would be better than nothing. And who knows, I might actually be able to do something really cool with myself. Plus, my paycheck would be bigger and I would finally feel proud to answer the question “what do you do for a living?” without having to justify being a receptionist.
Still, the uncertainty was nerve-wracking, and I was in a bit of a downer mood when I arrived home after work. The reality was coming in cold and hard. I tried to keep an optimistic outlook but the jaded part of me kept telling me to expect the worst.
I walked into the house and heard my mom call me from the living room. I came in and saw her lying on the floor doing Pilates to a DVD. My mother was forever after the best at-home DVD workouts.
“Some man called for you,” she said without looking up. I absently watched her leg rise up and down in time with the instructor.
“OK...” That was a bit strange. I couldn’t remember the last time a man called for me, especially at the house.
“I gave him your cell number though. I thought he might have called you.”
I fished my phone out. No missed calls.
“Nope. Did he say what he wanted?”
“He said his name was Declan...something. And he was interesting in speaking with you about your blog,” she continued her scissor kicks. “I didn’t know you had a blog now, too.”
“I don’t,” I said slowly. Declan? Who the hell was that?
My heart started to beat a bit faster. Maybe it was someone like a book agent who saw my blog and wanted me to write a book. I know that’s pretty far-fetched but it happened a lot to bloggers and my hopes were suddenly, naively, sky-high.
“His number’s on the kitchen table,” she continued. “He said for you to call him as soon as you could.”
Well, it was at least intriguing. I went into the kitchen and picked up the pad of paper.
My mom had scrawled a number with a Seattle area code on it and the name Declan Foray.
Dex Foray?
I reached into my wallet and pulled out the business card he had given me. Sure enough it was the same number, though I had no idea his full first name was Declan. The way the name is usually pronounced (DEE-Clan) it didn’t even make sense.
I got strangely nervous when I had to call people I didn’t know. You would think that being a receptionist would have helped me get over that hump but it hadn’t. I tried to mentally trick myself into thinking I was making just another business call.
With my heart beating a tad faster than normal, I dialed his number from the house phone. It rang so many times that I was about to hang up when the other line clicked.
“Dex here.”
Ah, his voice; low, deep and rich, like a polished instrument.
“Hello?” he said more impatiently.
“Uhh,” I stammered. “Hi. Um, this is Perry. Perry Palomino. You…called me?”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. Well… just…calling you back!”
“I got that much,” he replied matter-of-factly.
This was off to a horribly awkward start. I rubbed my forehead and thought of what to say next.
“So, yeah, I—” I started.
“Listen, Perry. Can I call you back? I’ll be two seconds.”
“Uh—”
“Perfect. Talk soon.”
Click. The line went dead. I looked at the phone in disbelief. How long was two seconds? I stared at the phone for what seemed to be forever before I decided to head back over to talk my mom. Just as I was out of the kitchen the phone rang.
I raced back to it, composing myself before I picked it up. I needed to be more demanding.
“Hello, Perry speaking.”
“Perry! It’s Dex.” He sounded a lot more enthusiastic now.
“Hi...Dex? Listen—”
“So, Perry. It is Perry, right? I couldn’t remember what you told me in the lighthouse but that’s who your little blog posts were attributed to.”
Uh-oh. The blog. Dex was in my blog. I hope that it wasn’t about that…
“You found the blog?”
He laughed, albeit rather sarcastically. “Kiddo, who hasn’t found your blog?”
I started feeling ill. “Look, I’m sorry, I was just filling in for my sister and I had nothing interesting to write about.”
“You mean to tell me you’re not a narcissistic fashion blogger? I’m liking you better already. I might almost forgive you for publishing that footage of me on fucking YouTube.”
He nearly yelled that last word. I cringed. I was in shit.
“Look, I didn’t say who you were, and you can barely even tell who is in the shot most of the time. I mean, you told me to turn my camera on, so I did, and there’s no law against that.” I was rambling.
“Did it occur to you that there was a reason I gave you my business card?” He sighed.
“Not really. You just ended up leaving me in there at the end anyway,” I replied, now feeling anger rising in my throat. Come to think of it, how dare he call me and give me shit. It gave me clarity. “And let me remind you again, as you seem to have forgotten, but you were trespassing on my family’s property, so actually, you should be glad I’m not turning your stupid shoddy business card over to the police.”
Silence on the line. It gave my heart enough time to slow down by a few beats.
“Fair enough,” he finally said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well… so, is that what you wanted? To call me and get mad that you were somewhat featured in the video I posted? Or was it that I shot some footage that you would have loved to have had yourself for your little…ghost club…or whatever the hell it is you do again.”
I could have sworn I heard him stroke his facial hair over the line.
“That was pretty much the gist of it,” he replied.
So much for my high expectations. He was just some guy that was annoyed that I made him look stupid in front of the entire world (or whatever miniscule portion of the world that had watched the video and read the blog), and annoyed that I cockblocked his chances of using the footage for financial gain.
“But that wasn’t all…” he added.
“Well?” I asked, still vexed but also curious. Maybe he was asking me out on a date? My heart started to pump faster again. I was such a girl.
“I’m a producer for Shownet.com. You heard of us?”
“Only from your business card,” I said truthfully.
“We produce webisodes. Webcasts. You know, on the internet.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of this internet before,” I said. The sarcasm just slipped out.
“Perfect. That will make things easier,” Dex replied, sliding over my snark. “Shownet at the moment is airing Wine Babes on Thursday nights, which you should watch tonight, by the way, as well as Gamer Room, Dude Zone, Cooking with Colleen, and Amanda Panda’s Animal Friends. You heard of any of them?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Probably not. Anyway, see…I’ve been dabbling in this and that, here and there, and I decided I should maybe jump in on this ghost bandwagon. The main thing I wanted to do though was have it run a little differently. There are tons of those shiteous shows on TV, run by tards who are running around with these cameras and having these geeked-out experiences that in the end amount to nothing more than their own ineptitude and inflated sense of self. You following?”
“Not really.”
“And so that’s what I was doing at your uncle’s place. No one had done any shows there yet.”
“That’s because he wouldn’t allow anyone,” I pointed out.
“Which is why I had to be sort of sneaky about it. Thank you, by the way, for not blowing my cover. I had thanked you already, hadn’t I?”
“No,” I said.
“Ah, well anyway, I thought I would get a leg up on these other shows, shoot some shit and show it to my boss, hoping he’d see
some potential in all of it.”
Pause.
“And?” I prompted him. “Did he?”
“No,” he sighed. “He didn’t. However, he did like what you did.”
“What I did?”
“OK, he liked the idea of the two of us doing that. Together.”
A naughty idea flashed through my head. “And what is that, exactly?”
“You’re not secretly blonde are you?”
Now it was my turn to sigh. This phone call was confusing as hell and I could tell my mom had been listening to it for the last five minutes because the workout DVD had been turned off. I had an idea what Dex was hinting at, but his aggravating way of getting around to it was throwing my mind into a tizzy.
“Mr. Foray,” I said as professionally as possible, “you called me wanting to talk me about something. Get to the point.”
I have to point out that I am neither A) this ballsy on the phone with people I didn’t really know or B) this rude, but there was something about Dex, perhaps it was the way we met, that made me feel like I didn’t really care how I was coming across.
“Based on the footage I shot, based on the footage you shot—which, by the way, you wouldn’t have shot had I not told you to—and based on the way your writing so eloquently told the story when the images could not, I think we could actually have a real show here.”
“You think or your boss thinks?”
“Either or; it doesn’t matter.”
It did matter, but I didn’t want to question it anymore, lest I screw up my chances of whatever this was. I didn’t want to think too deeply into it, though with my mind that was more or less impossible. I could feel my subconscious jumping to a million fantastic conclusions. It was really hard to keep the voices at bay and concentrate on the cold, hard facts.
“What do you do again? Are you a host on this Shownet?” I asked.
“Fuck no. Excuse my language, but fuck no. I’m just the producer and cameraman. And composer. I’m entirely behind the scenes, which is why I need a person like you to be in front.”
“Me?”
“Yes. As I was saying, you’re real and you’re very personable. Charming, some might say. I wouldn’t because I don’t even know you, but we’ll find out. Your on-camera presence is bold; at least the stuff I have on my end is. And your writing doesn’t suck. Have you ever done acting before?”
Technically I hadn’t. Stuntwoman training didn’t involve any acting and I’m sure my homemade movies from my youth didn’t count either.
“No.”
“Good. That’s better. That means you aren’t a bullshitter. I hate bullshitters; you can never bullshit them. So you’re a natural, which is perfect because people want to see natural fear. They don’t want the Hollywood treatment. And your writing is the perfect companion. It shines some sort of clarity on a subject that most people don’t understand.”
“To be honest, I don’t understand it myself.”
“That’s OK. Honesty is good. Understanding is overrated. But this show won’t be overrated because it’s coming out of the dark and sneaking up on people until—”
Click.
Did the phone just go dead?
“Hello?” I asked. Silence. Did he just hang up on me?
I looked over and saw my mom hanging around the doorway to the kitchen with a quizzical look on her face. No denying now that she was totally listening.
“Hello, Dex?”
Click.
“Yeah, hi, sorry, someone on the other line,” his voice coming in low and husky. “Jimmy Kwan, you heard of him? Doesn’t matter, you haven’t. But he’s the one who started up Shownet back in 2004 and the first person to really take a chance on me. My boss. But now he’s on the other line and wants to know what Perry Palomino thinks of all this. What say you?”
I took a deep breath.
“I have to admit, I don’t really know what’s going on here,” I told him carefully. “I mean, you haven’t really come out and said anything. I just got a message to call you and, so, here I am.”
“Ohhhh,” he said slowly, “You want it in layman’s terms. Oh, come on, Perry, I thought you were smarter than that. Don’t you know how to jump to wild conclusions? That’s what your whole ghost thing is about. Let’s ignore the reality of the situation that we were in a shitstormed old lighthouse and jump to the conclusion that some beastly ghost was after us.”
“To be fair, I never thought there was a ghost.”
I heard a sigh of disgust on the other line and immediately feared I lost all chances with him.
“Honesty is good, but good is overrated,” Dex lectured. “I appreciate a straight shooter—fuck knows I don’t have enough of them around me— but don’t admit the thing is fake.”
“It’s not fake!’ I exclaimed. “You were there!”
“Anyway,” he said, ignoring me, “I, Declan Foray, and my boss, Jimmy Kwan, want to ask you if you would be interested in joining me in filming a demo for the website about our ghost-slash-weird encounter. Kind of like a TV show pilot. If it’s good and you look good, then I look good and Jimmy will want to pick it up as an actual show for our network…netsite. Web thing. But it’s all riding on you. I’m pushing for this show because to be honest here—and I mean let’s keep this between you and me—I can’t stand another day of shooting Wine Babes. I need something different and I just think this could be really, really cool. Now it’s your turn to say something.”
I was taken aback, to say the least.
Amazing. Awesome. Cool. Fantastic. Stupendous. Crazy. Too good to be true. I wanted to say all of those things. But I could only manage to squeak out:
“OK?”
“That’s the spirit! Now we are cooking with gas!”
“You’re not drunk right now, are you?”
“Not really, why?”
“I just hope this isn’t something that you’ll forget about in the morning.”
“I don’t think I will,” he mused.
“It’s just this might be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me and I really don’t want to get excited about it until I know for sure.”
“In that case, don’t get excited. Sorry, but you…I…we must remember that this is just a demo. For all I know it will totally suck balls.”
“You have a way with words. Are you sure you aren’t a writer?”
“You’re the writer. And the star. Now here’s the plan. I’m going to drive down from Seattle on Saturday morning, pick you up and together we will go to the lighthouse. We’re going to need your uncle’s permission, of course. And we’ll go on Saturday night and shoot the shit out of it. I drop you back at home on Sunday and then I go and edit it until its worthy of a Kubrick film. Hopefully, by mid-next week, Jimmy will be pleasantly surprised with our piece de resistance, or else I’m back at Wine Babes and you’re back to whatever the hell you do.”
“I’m a receptionist,” I muttered.
“Fun!”
There was something so terribly abrupt and hazy about this whole ordeal.
“Now, wait a minute,” I started, “how do I know that this is legitimate? I mean, you could still be a bald-headed meth addict hobo I stumbled upon in the lighthouse.”
“I’m not bald yet,” he said.
“And,” I continued, “there could be no show. I’m not going to go off with some stranger to a lighthouse. I mean, where are we going to sleep anyway? I’m not sleeping with you.”
He chuckled, “Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. I’ll be staying in a motel in Tillamook. We don’t really have a budget, though, so I would appreciate it if you could stay at your uncle’s place. If he needs to talk to me about all this, by all means, get him to call me.”
I still wasn’t convinced. I told him that.
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “I guess I could see how this might all seem a bit random and sketchy. Especially with how we met. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t win you over but I guess the lighting wasn’t v
ery flattering in that lighthouse anyway. Do yourself a favor and don’t commit to anything tonight. Go on the internet. Check out Shownet.com. We’ve got MySpace pages too. Twitter. Add me to your Facebook. Dex Foray. F-O-R-A-Y. In the morning, call me, email me, whatever, and let me know what you’ve decided. Got it?”
“Well, OK.”
“I’ll be hearing from you.”
Click. And just like that, he was gone.
“What on earth was that about?” my mother asked coming over to me.
I slowly hung up the phone. I had no idea.
“Perry?”
I looked at my mom. She would get extremely excited about it if I told her, but I didn’t want to say anything until I knew exactly what was what.
“Yeah, well…” I started for the stairs. “Listen, Mom, I’m not sure what it was about. I’ve got to do some research and I’ll let you know soon.”
I ran up the stairs to my room. I heard my mom call after me, “Is yours a fashion blog too? Because I wouldn’t trust anyone interested in your fashion tips.”
I rolled my eyes, heading down the hall. The door to Ada’s room swung open—she was obviously waiting for me—and she poked her head out.
“Perry, I need to talk to you!” she hissed.
I kept going, calling over my shoulder, “Busy. I’ll come see you in a bit.”
I slammed the door to my room and scampered over to my computer. Time to find out the truth.
The first website I typed in was Shownet.
It was a nice looking site, simple with a slightly cheesy tone to it. The shows were all listed in a sidebar.
I clicked on Amanda Panda’s Animal Friends—it sounded the most interesting, OK?—and it took me to a page with a sleek video in the middle. I clicked play and was blasted with the craziest children’s music I had ever heard. Fast-paced, lots of trumpets and kids singing in falsetto. It was catchy though.
The show wasn’t. It was like Lamb Chop’s Play-Along on acid but without the endearing weirdness of acid. Just a terrible low-budget children’s show with badly dubbed animals that seemed to have been shot in a petting zoo. I didn’t know if Dex was the cameraman on this show but I hoped not.