Outside In

by Courtney Thorne-Smith

  34

  Paige and Kate rode home in silence, Kate staring out of the passenger-side window, her head resting on the cold glass. She felt as though all of the life had been drained out of her body, leaving a rag doll without the stuffing. When they pulled up in front of Paige’s apartment, the short walk from the car to the front door looked insurmountable, like a trek up Everest. Paige placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “Come on, honey. Let’s go in and get you settled on the couch. There is no reason you can’t be depressed and comfortable.”

  “You go ahead,” said Kate, cuddling up to her new best friend, the car door. “I’m good here.”

  Paige got out of the car and walked around to open the passenger door. Kate spilled out. “Fuck.”

  “Well, said,” said Paige, dragging her friend to her feet and starting the slow walk to the front door. “I can see this is going to be a day of scintillating conversation.”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Kate looked and sounded like an old drunk, shuffling slowly up the path.

  “Scintillating,” repeated Paige, as they stepped up onto the porch. “Can you stand here on your own while I open the door?”

  “Of course,” Kate answered, but when Paige stepped away, she immediately sat on the ground. “What?” she snapped when Paige turned around a moment later. “You were gone forever.”

  “I turned around for roughly two-thirds of a second—” Paige started to argue but stopped herself. It was no fun to kick a wounded kitten. Instead, she opened the door and offered Kate a hand up. Kate reluctantly accepted her help and continued her Thorazine shuffle into the living room, where she promptly fell onto the couch, wrapping herself in a throw blanket. Paige perched on the edge of the cushion at Kate’s feet. “Can I get you a cup of cocoa? Maybe a sandwich?”

  Kate stared at her. “A sandwich? I’m not devastated enough for you? Now you want to fatten me up?”

  “Oh dear,” sighed Paige, standing up and walking to the kitchen. “Now I know what it’s like to have a brokenhearted teenager with PMS and body dysmorphic disorder.”

  “You forgot unemployed!” yelled Kate.

  “I also left out annoying!” Paige yelled back. “I was being kind!”

  “Kind of mean, maybe!” called Kate, turning her body around until she was lying on her stomach facing the kitchen, the top of her head and eyes visible over the arm of the couch. She looked unbearably young and vulnerable.

  “Oh, sweetie, you look like you are about five years old.”

  “I wish I were. Then none of this would have happened.”

  “That’s true,” said Paige, turning on the heat under the kettle and walking back into the living room, where she squeezed onto the couch next to Kate. “Of course, if you were five, I would be your real mother.”

  “Yeah, and if you were my real mother, you would be out shopping or golfing, so I would finally get some peace.”

  “Do you want some time alone?” asked Paige sincerely.

  “Why?” asked Kate, resigned. “Do you have somewhere you need to go?”

  “No,” said Paige, settling deeper into her tiny corner of the couch. “I am exactly where I want to be.” Kate smiled gratefully, relaxing back into the cushions. As if on cue, the kettle began to scream its earsplitting whistle. “Will you be okay while I go throw that horrible thing out the window?” asked Paige.

  “I can’t hear you over the hideous whistling,” Kate said, laughing. “Go throw it out the window and then come back and talk to me.”

  Paige went to the kitchen and poured two cups of strawberry vanilla tea, thinking that the closer she could get to the taste of Kool-Aid, the more comforting it would be. She also filled a plate with crackers, cheese, and grapes on the off chance that Kate would be willing to eat something. Feeling her own stomach growl at the sight of sliced cheddar, she knew it wouldn’t go to waste.

  She put the plate down on the coffee table in front of Kate and was surprised to see her pick up a slice of cheese and pop it into her mouth. Her shock must have shown on her face, because Kate said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” Paige lied, and then amended it with “I don’t think I have ever seen you eat cheese.”

  “Well, get used to it,” said Kate, grabbing another slice and following it up with a handful of grapes. “I am done dieting. Dieting doesn’t fucking work.”

  Paige looked at her friend’s ultrathin figure and raised her eyebrows. “I would say it worked a little too well for you.”

  “No, you don’t get it,” said Kate, the energy of her epiphany pulling her into a sitting position. “I am thin, as thin as I ever wanted to be. I am also unemployed, heartbroken, and smack-dab in the middle of a nasty, humiliating divorce.”

  “Come on, Kate, don’t beat yourself up.”

  “I don’t want to anymore, that’s my point. It doesn’t do any good to beat myself up—or rather, starve myself down. It doesn’t fucking work!” she shouted.

  “Why are you yelling?” Paige shouted back.

  Kate stood up from the couch. “Because I am done being quiet and small and…and…inoffensive!”

  Paige jumped up to face her and screamed at the top of her lungs, “I think that is just great!”

  “Great!” screamed Kate.

  “Really great!” screamed Paige.

  “Can we stop yelling now?” yelled Kate.

  “Oh, please,” said Paige, falling back onto the couch. “I am exhausted.”

  “You’re exhausted? I just had a life-altering revelation.”

  “Really? How did I miss that?”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Kate, plopping down next to Paige. “You never miss anything.”

  “So true,” said Paige sagely. “But just so I can be sure that you understand…what did you learn?”

  “I learned that I can be the thinnest, nicest, most obedient girl in the world and I can still lose everything.”

  “So?”

  “So…I may as well just go ahead and live my own fucking life.”

  “Exactly,” said Paige, smiling. “But I have to ask—is the swearing going to be a big part of your new personality?”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “Charming.”

  “Fucking charming.”

  Paige leaned over and moved the cheese tray closer to Kate. “If I offer you cheese, will you stop swearing for a minute?”

  “Maybe while I am fucking chewing,” said Kate, popping a slice of cheddar into her mouth. “Mmmmm, cheese is good.”

  “Isn’t it? I remember the day I decided to stop dieting and how shocking it was when the world didn’t stop spinning and I didn’t balloon to three thousand pounds.”

  “Oh god,” said Kate, halting her next chunk of cheese halfway between the plate and her mouth. “Did you have to say ‘three thousand pounds’?”

  “I said I didn’t balloon to thousands of pounds, you loony. You need to hear complete sentences.”

  Kate reluctantly took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “What I need is a job.”

  “Honey, maybe what you need is a rest,” said Paige kindly. “I’m sure you have enough money saved to buy yourself a little bit of time to process everything that has happened.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know,” said Paige definitively. “You need time.”

  “I’m not arguing that,” said Kate. “But I don’t know if I have any money.”

  “How could you not know if you have any money? Of course you have money. You’ve been a star on a hit TV series for almost three years.”

  Kate shrugged. “Hamilton handled all the money. I haven’t signed a check since the show started.”

  Paige sat back, stunned. “What about the house? You must own half of the house.”

  “I think it’s leased.”

  “You think it’s leased? You don’t know?” asked Paige, aghast.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” Kate said in a small voice. “I already feel like an idiot.”

/>   “I’m sorry.” Paige reached out and put her hand on Kate’s knee. “I’ve been on my own and on a budget for so long; it’s just hard to imagine not knowing where every penny goes.”

  “I know. It’s embarrassing. It’s like I was Hamilton’s toy instead of his wife. Like he controlled my money, food, and career, and in exchange I sat on his shelf waiting for him to play with me.” Kate covered her face with her hands and her head fell back against the pillows. “Ugh,” she groaned. “That makes me sick. I went straight from being my mom’s doll to being Hamilton’s doll. That’s pathetic.” She dropped her hands and looked at Paige. “I almost went right into being Michael’s doll.”

  “Give yourself a break, Kate. You don’t know that that’s what would have happened with Michael. He seemed really different.”

  Tears filled Kate’s eyes. “Yeah, he did. Until he turned out to be a total lying bastard.”

  “I’m not saying he was perfect,” said Paige, happy to see a tiny smile emerge on her friend’s sad face. “Just that you guys seemed to have a sweet connection.”

  “Yeah, we did. I was really falling for Michael the unemployed writer,” said Kate wistfully. “It’s Michael the backstabbing agent of the horrible woman who stole my husband and got me fired whom I have issues with.”

  “Your problem is that your standards are too high.”

  “So true,” said Kate. “Unless he is a philanderer or a liar, I don’t even give a guy the time of day.”

  Paige laughed. “Maybe it is time to rethink your dating criteria.”

  “You think?”

  “I do,” said Paige earnestly. “First we are going to find out if you have any money, then we are going to spend all of it on intense, cultlike therapy for you.”

  “Or clothes?”

  “You’re right. Clothes are a better investment.” Paige thought for a moment, her right index finger held against her pursed lips. Then she nodded somberly and added, “Clothes and infomercial skin-care products.”

  “We are going to be rich in no time,” said Kate, laughing.

  “Just follow my lead, little lady,” said Paige, waving her arm around her funky little apartment. “And all of this could be yours.”

  Kate wondered if Paige had any idea how desperately she wanted exactly that.

  35

  Michael sat in his car in the parking lot next to the Generations soundstage, too exhausted to start the engine. He stared at the set of keys dangling from the ignition but couldn’t gather the strength necessary to raise his arm and turn the key the quarter turn it required to properly do its job. Its job…

  His job.

  He was just doing his job. It was his job to work for his client, to make sure that she was taken care of, coddled, honored in a way that made it possible for her to bestow the gift of her great talent on the world.

  Michael opened his car door and leaned out, feeling as though he was going to throw up one of the fourteen cups of coffee that had been his sole sustenance on this glorious day. He dropped his head onto the shelf made by his arm braced against the open car door and stared at the dirty concrete of the parking lot. The nausea passed and he found that he missed it—at least it had been a feeling. Now he just felt numb. Numb with a touch of sadness and a smidgen of self-loathing.

  36

  “Your purse is vibrating,” said Paige, pointing to Kate’s loudly buzzing brown suede handbag.

  “I know,” said Kate, ignoring her insistent cell phone and picking up a typical lobby magazine. After their talk the day before, Paige had offered to accompany Kate to her lawyer’s office so that she could find out if she had enough money to relax for a while or if she would have to start doing street theater. Or porn. Her purse buzzed again.

  “It’s making me batty.”

  Kate put down her magazine and looked at Paige earnestly. “First of all, no one—or no thing—can make you batty unless you let it.” Paige rolled her eyes and snorted with disgust at her friend’s cheesy psychoanalysis. “Second,” continued Kate, ignoring the miniature tantrum, “I am not going to answer the phone, because it is either my mother, who actually does have the ability to make me batty, or Jerry, who is no doubt calling so that I can make him feel better about firing me. Either way, the buzzing is much less annoying than answering.”

  “Maybe it’s Michael,” offered Paige hopefully.

  “How could it be Michael? He doesn’t even have my cell phone number.”

  “He could have gotten it from Hamilton.”

  Kate stared at Paige, stunned. “There is so much wrong with that statement.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paige said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought up Hamilton.”

  “Or Michael.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, why would I want to talk to him, anyway?” asked Kate, getting wound up. “Why would he even be calling? So that I can comfort him through his realization that he is a lying scum?”

  “Maybe he has a good explanation for what happened.”

  “A good explanation? Are you high?”

  “Nope. Eight years clean and sober.”

  “Cute,” said Kate dryly.

  “Aren’t I?” asked Paige, batting her eyelashes.

  “No!” snapped Kate. “You are so not cute. And you are so not helping. Here I am, trying to be tough and cool, and you are telling me to talk to the guy whom I am trying to be tough at!”

  “Tough at?”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “I do,” said Paige gently, reaching a hand out to touch Kate’s arm. “I didn’t mean to mess with your head. It’s just that he seemed so sweet and you were so excited about him.”

  “Well, judging from my track record with men, maybe the fact that I was excited about him was a bad sign.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Paige. Under her breath, she said, “But I don’t think so.”

  “What?” asked Kate, but before Paige could fumble through an answer, the receptionist called them into Frank Gilman’s office.

  “Hello, Kate,” Frank said, holding open the door to his office. He shook her hand warmly, avoiding the standard Hollywood air kiss and half hug, then turned to Paige. “I’m Frank Gilman.”

  “Paige Carter. Good to meet you.”

  “Okay,” he said, gesturing to a small couch and settling into the chair across from it. “First of all, I’d like to say that it’s nice to see you, Kate. It’s been a long time since you’ve been here in the office.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that. Hamilton sort of took over a lot of stuff.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. I’m just saying it’s good to see you, although from our phone conversation I gather this is not just a social call.”

  “Well, I guess you could say that.” Kate paused to collect herself. “My husband left me and I lost my job.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Frank said, admirably calm. “Now, what questions do you have for me?”

  “She wants to know if she will be living on my couch for the rest of her life,” said Paige.

  “I see,” said Frank, reaching for a file folder on his desk. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  “What do I need to worry about?” asked Kate, her fear making it difficult to breathe.

  “Well, first of all, you need to worry about how you are going to spend the money that NBC owes you.”

  “For the last episode?”

  “No, for the next—how many episodes do you have left for the season?”

  “I don’t have any episodes left to do. They fired me for annoying Sapphire Rose.”

  Frank started to laugh, but when Kate and Paige did not, he asked, “Are you serious?”

  “She is,” said Paige. “It is as true as it is stupid. And they have eight episodes left to do this season.” She answered his unspoken question with “I do her makeup on Generations. Well, I did do her makeup, but I quit in a show of respect. And because I forgot that I am not independently weal
thy.” She turned to Kate. “Can I sleep on your couch?”

  Kate smiled. “If I can afford a couch, you can sleep on it.”

  “Unless there are gambling debts I don’t know about, you can afford a couch for each of you,” interjected Frank. “Your contract is pay or play, meaning that you get paid whether they use you or not.”

  “Really?” asked Paige. When Frank nodded, she added, “That rocks.”

  “It super rocks,” said Kate, breathing in air and relief.

  “So, you are making, I believe, fifty thousand dollars per episode this season?”

  “Yes,” said Kate.

  “Holy shit,” said Paige. “I’m going to have to be a lot nicer to you.”

  “So,” continued Frank, “eight episodes times fifty thousand is four hundred thousand dollars.”

  Paige turned to Kate. “I am so charging you couch rental.”

  “Now, obviously, that’s pretax, precommissions, but your net should be about two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Wow,” said Kate. “That is…that’s just great.”

  “What about her divorce?” asked Paige. “Will she get anything from that?”

  “Not immediately,” said Frank, rifling through the open file folder. “After you called, I had Richard send over all of your financials and—”

  “Who’s Richard?” asked Paige.

  “My business manager,” answered Kate.

  “I thought Hamilton managed all of your money.”

  “Him and Richard,” Kate said.

  Paige fell back into her corner of the couch, overwhelmed. “Jeez, you have a lot of people.”

  “Anyway,” Frank said, getting the meeting back on track, “the simple truth is that you and Hamilton do not have much in the way of savings. Your house is leased, so there is no equity there, and most of your salary went right into his business. Also, as your manager at the time of the contract, he is entitled to receive ten percent of your payout from NBC.”

  “Well, that sucks,” said Paige.

  “Perhaps, but that is the law,” said Frank.

  “Then the law sucks.”

  “Well, I can see why you would think that, but let me explain the other side of the coin: just as Hamilton ‘owns’ a part of Kate’s contract, Kate has a real case for part ownership of Hamilton’s business.”