The Next Best Thing

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Our pilot is directed by the Emmy Award–winning Chad Garson!” Chad, in the process of unwrapping another piece of gum, took the time to briefly lift his head. Never mind him, I thought, and intoned the phrase that had kicked off every show on every network since time untold: “And now, without further ado, the table read of The Next Best Thing, Episode 101: Pilot!” More applause. I sat down. The actors flipped their scripts open—Penny, I saw, had reprinted her lines in twenty-four-point typeface, while Cady’s pages were scribbled over with hot-pink and lime-green highlighter and dotted with Post-it notes. Pete’s script was, as I’d suspected, dismayingly pristine, and Taryn had done the actor’s trick of drawing a line through everyone’s words but her own. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, me, was how Big Dave described that move. “Everyone ready?” I asked quietly. They nodded. We began.

  The first scene, a toned-down version of Nana’s getting kicked out of her ailing beau’s house, went smoothly. People laughed at Nana’s barbed insults to her boyfriend’s three sons, and while I hadn’t been able to get rid of every awful sex addict/Viagra joke, I’d rewritten enough to make it clear that Nana got the best of the middle-aged boys. In the crowd, I could see my own grandmother laughing as Penny read her lines, which meant that I’d fixed it enough that she’d be able to watch it on TV and brag about it to her friends without disowning me.

  Then it was time for Pete’s scene, back at the apartment, the moment when he’d be meeting Daphne. I whispered his first line, which was “Hey, babe.” Pete looked at me, frowning. “What?”

  I jerked my chin toward the page, then up at him, and whispered more urgently, “Hey, babe.”

  “Oh, oh, right!” he said, and patted my arm. “Jeez. For a minute there I thought you were coming on to me!” He widened his eyes, giving the executives a who, me? smile. They ate it up, laughing and clapping. Then Pete said, “Hey, babe,” in the sleaziest, most construction-worker-with-his-hand-down-his-pants tone I could have conjured. Cady sat up straight. “Excuse me?” she said, in a high, quavering voice. “Are you speaking to me?”

  “Nobody else here,” I whispered. “Nobody else here,” Pete said. “You new in town?” I whispered. “You new?” said Pete. “Because I haven’t seen you around.”

  That wasn’t what I’d written, but it was close enough, and Cady slid right into her next line. “My grandmother and I just moved here. We’re in 6A.”

  “And I’m in the basement,” I whispered to Pete. “I’m the handyman. Anything you need fixed, any lightbulbs burnt out, anything you need, you know, loosened, tightened . . .”

  Pete read the line back flawlessly. Cady gave a prim shudder. “I think we’re okay on the loosening and tightening front,” she said. Without waiting for me to feed him his next line, Pete gave a dazzling smile.

  “If anything changes . . .” he said, and lifted his hand to his ear in the universal gesture for “call me.” Laughter rippled through the room, and I scribbled a note to change the line from what I’d written—“give me a call”—to what Pete had just done.

  “I have to go now,” Cady blurted, and Pete hollered, “I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.” It wasn’t on the page, but got a big laugh. I wrote it down and turned the page, and we were back in the apartment, where Nana was primping for a date and waiting to find out how Daphne’s first day at work had gone. As soon as Penny started reading her lines, Pete sagged back in his seat. Beneath his shock of shiny hair, his face was pale, and when I put my hand on his shoulder, I could feel him tremble. “Pete? Are you okay? Do you need some water?” I whispered.

  He managed a smile. “Nah, I’m good. Just a little stage fright.”

  That was puzzling. We weren’t even onstage, insofar as our sets were still in the process of being built. Performing in front of executives had to be nerve-racking, but these were the people who’d already liked Pete well enough to give him the role, which should have calmed him down. What if Pete fell apart in front of an audience? Hollywood was full of actors like that, people who could perform flawlessly when it was just the crew and the camera, but who’d experience professional vapor lock when the audience filed into its seats.

  At the other end of the table, Penny Weaver was winding up the speech I’d written imagining that Annie Tait would be the one to read it. “You’re going to let some plumber whose tattoos probably have their own Facebook page talk to you like that?” she demanded. “Honey, no. I didn’t raise a dishrag. You get back out there and you stake your claim! You plant your flag! You set up that StairMaster!”

  “I don’t know,” Cady whimpered. Her hesitation, her obvious fear, should have made the audience want to give Daphne a firm shake and a pep talk. Given Cady’s emaciation, it probably made the audience want to give her a sandwich. I scribbled myself a note in the script—fix this—as Penny’s tone shifted from strident to sweet. At the table, she reached over to touch Cady’s chin. “Everyone’s scared,” she said gently, “but not everyone’s brave enough to say so.”

  At the other end of the table, Taryn was getting ready for her big moment, squinting at her script, Botoxed brow attempting and failing to furrow. I smiled to myself. It was petty, and maybe pointless, but I’d taken care to use every SAT word I knew in describing Taryn’s speech and actions. When she met Daphne, she was supposed to glance at her combatively, and deliver her first line stonily, after which she’d lope out of the bathroom . . . and I was ninety-nine percent sure that she had absolutely no idea what any of those words meant, unless Rob had bought her a dictionary as a push prize.

  Even though she might not have known the adverbs, Taryn had at least learned her lines, and the back-and-forth with Cady went smoothly. You got a sense of Daphne’s strength and generosity, the kindness she extended to strangers, the way she beat up on herself. If I just listened, it was fine, but when I watched sunny, skinny Cady acting awkward and insecure, it didn’t work at all. More rewrites, I thought, and began scribbling notes on my script.

  We swung into Act Three. Nana went on her date. Daphne charmed the pastry chef, flirted with a customer, and impressed her new friend Veronica with her humor, determination, and ability to fold napkins into swans. Back at the apartment building, she knocked briskly on Brad Dermansky’s door. “My pipes need cleaning,” she announced. “And there’s a piece of exercise equipment that I need your help with.” Pete gave her a lazy grin . . . and I got so caught up in the moment that I forgot to feed him his line.

  “Baby, I will clean those pipes right now,” Pete improvised. It got a big laugh. Unfortunately, it was in no way related to what he was supposed to say, which was “I’ve got company.”

  “But I’ve got company,” I whispered.

  “But I’ve got some people over,” Pete said, waggling his eyebrows. “You, uh, want to join us? Come on in, maybe look at my etchings?”

  In the front row, Lisa was laughing. Beside her, Joan smiled sweetly, and Tariq wore the expression of a man who’d just learned that his stage-four cancer had gone into miraculous remission.

  “No, thanks,” Cady said, back on script, in a frosty tone. “I have plans with my grandmother.”

  “Of course you do,” I whispered.

  “Bring her, too,” said Pete.

  Cady shot me a desperate look. I nodded at the script. “I’ll expect to see you first thing tomorrow morning,” she said, reading the line as I’d written it.

  “I’ll be there,” said Pete, which was close enough. Then there was the final scene, the tag, the thirty seconds of show that would run alongside the credits. It ended with Cady saying, “This has been an interesting day,” and Nana lifting her glass in a toast to “many interesting tomorrows,” and Daphne’s final “We’re all right for now.”

  There was a beat of silence. Then, as if we’d choreographed the move, all of us, the actors and the directors and me, raised our heads as the executives started clapping. Pete squeezed my hand. Grandma blew me a kiss. I let my eyes roam past the audience, t
oward a seated figure by the door. It was Dave, in his wheelchair. My heart lifted. He’s here for me. As I watched, he lifted one hand, doffed an invisible hat, and mouthed two words: nice job. He must have sneaked in during the read, I thought as I tentatively waved back. I was out of my chair and halfway around the table, wanting to go to him, to ask him how it had been, if the show could still be saved in spite of everything, and if he’d been thinking about me the way I’d been thinking about him, whether I’d made a total fool of myself, and if, maybe, he could have feelings for me after all, before remembering that I needed to thank everyone for coming and tell them that I’d see them all soon . . . and after that there were a million things that needed doing.

  There’d be notes from the executives, then a preproduction meeting about all of the details that went into each show. My costume designer would need to know what Daphne and Veronica should wear to work at the restaurant; the set decorator would ask how many cookbooks should be in Nana’s kitchen, and whether they should look worn or new or somewhere in between. I’d have to tell the assistant director how many extras to hire as restaurant diners, and what ages and races and genders they should be. Props would need to know what color teapot Nana should have, and whether we’d see a glimpse of Brad’s apartment when he opened the door, and what I’d imagined the audience seeing in the basement storage lockers. There would be all of these questions, and dozens more, and I would have to answer every one of them . . . but for now, all I wanted to do was bask. I’d pulled it off; I’d actually made it happen. Something I’d dreamed up was actually going to be on TV. And if it wasn’t exactly the way I’d dreamed it, if one actor looked nothing like the character I’d imagined, another couldn’t read, and the third was my worst enemy, well, compromise was part of the deal. I’d wanted this, I told myself . . . and now I had what I wanted, and I would do my best to enjoy it.

  By the time I could take a breath and another look around, an hour had sped by. The actors were back in their dressing rooms; the writers were back in the bungalow, working on the script. The executives had moved on to their next table read, a few buildings down . . . and the back of the soundstage was empty, as if Dave had never been there at all.

  NINETEEN

  Two weeks later, I stood next to Big Dave backstage at a different Burbank soundstage for the network’s West Coast up-fronts, the night they’d unveil their new fall shows to ad buyers and foreign broadcasters and the press. I was all dressed up in a silk top, pants, and ballet flats. Dave, in a three-piece suit, a French-cuffed shirt, and a wide silk tie in alternating stripes of raspberry and plum, had a clipboard in his hand and a frown on his face. As actresses paraded past us, waiting to be introduced and go onstage and take their bows, he shook his head, murmured things like “That won’t work,” and scribbled on the page.

  “Cut it out,” I said as the actress closest to his whisper stared at him and then tugged at the hem of her dress. “You’re going to give someone an eating disorder.”

  “That’s the point,” he said as the actresses, hearing the name of their show, paraded through the curtains, and another group of hunks and beauties took their place. Dave eyed them each, up and down, and then shook his head and started scribbling again. “No,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the blare of the pop music and the applause of the assembled ad buyers and television reporters. “No, no, I’m afraid that just won’t do.”

  “Dave,” I hissed as one actress licked her lips and another fiddled with her bra strap. I nodded at the ladies. “Ignore him,” I said. “He’s doing a bit.” The actresses smiled anxiously, but I knew they weren’t ignoring Dave. Maybe they knew who he was—powerful showrunner, potential employer, creator of Bunk Eight. More likely, they were trained to preen for any men whose eyes chanced upon them, to believe that their job in life was to arouse them, and to worry when the evidence suggested that they’d failed.

  “Oh, my,” Dave murmured as the actresses, show ponies in short dresses and stilettos, trotted by. “That’s unfortunate.”

  I slapped his arm with the silver clutch I’d borrowed from my grandmother. I thought I’d looked nice when I’d left the house, with my hair blown out and my arms and legs smoothed with a sugar scrub, but here, among the actresses, I felt like an elephant surrounded by gorgeous girl acrobats, enormous and ungainly and altogether different. “Cut it out.” To change the subject, I said, “Oh, thank God, there’s Cady.”

  Dave’s eyes lit up. I stifled a groan. Among the up-and-coming starlets of L.A., competitive underdressing—showing as much skin as possible without courting arrest for public indecency—was a well-established practice. Taryn had arrived in a handkerchiefsize skirt that barely covered her panties—assuming, of course, that she was wearing panties—and a cropped top that skimmed her belly button. “Hi-i-i!” she’d said, air-kissing me before vanishing into the hair and makeup suite the network had set up on the stage next door. I’d poked my head in to take a look at the dozens of makeup artists and hairstylists, waiting behind chairs set in front of lightbulb-ringed mirrors, next to palettes of cosmetics, rows of bottles of hair-care products, and all manner of brushes and sponges, foam rollers, and flatirons. An hour later Taryn had emerged with her hair curled and piled high, sparkly pink lips and gold-toned eyelids. She was so beautiful, stunning even in this crowd of stunners . . . . and I knew, from a “Body After Baby” feature in one of the gossip magazines, that the bits concealed by her outfit looked just as good as everything on display.

  As I watched, Taryn sauntered over to the open bar, ordered a vodka tonic with lime, ignored the trays of appetizers that waiters carried through the crowds, and began working the room with a professional’s poised nonchalance, laying her hand on a male executive’s forearm, air-kissing a female producer’s cheek. I’d kept an eye on her, watching her work, and then looked at the time and gone backstage to wait for Cady, who was waving at me as she hurried over. I exhaled, checking out her short, sheer minidress and towering sandals made of spiked black leather that wrapped around her calves almost to her knees. Okay, that’s not so bad, I thought. In contrast to the skintight ensembles the other young actresses were sporting, Cady’s dress had a flowing cut and a high, almost chaste neckline. If you were willing to ignore her nipples, poking at the silk like a pair of pencil erasers, and how the dress stopped halfway down her thighs, it was perfectly appropriate, even conservative. Then she’d turned around. “Oh, my,” Dave breathed as we saw that the back of the billowy dress dipped so low that it exposed the small of her back, the top of her buttocks, and a solid inch of ass-crack.

  Big Dave, beaming like Christmas had come early, snapped a picture with his cell phone. “God, I love Hollywood,” he’d said.

  “Don’t you dare tweet that,” I told him, slapping his forearm again. Pete Paxton greeted his costar with a wolfish grin. Penny was scowling—she looked lovely in a dusty-rose dress of ruched and pleated silk, but in this crowd she had to be feeling her age. I gave Cady a weak smile. “Wow,” I said to my star. “It’s pretty easy to tell which women are the writers and which ones are the actresses.” Thinking: The writers are the ones who remembered their underpants. Cady raised her eyebrows, indicating that she had no idea what I was talking about and didn’t care to learn. Then she pulled out her phone, snapped the day’s sixth self-portrait, and posted it on Twitter. Oh, well, I thought. At least it’s a shot of her front side.

  I pulled out my own phone and glanced at the time. In ten minutes we’d do our little appearance. After that, I’d decided I would mingle for an hour, not a minute less and not a minute longer. At nine o’clock there was an L.A. Law marathon on Lifetime, and I intended to be at home, on the couch, when it started.

  The cast of Bunk Eight trotted into the backstage corral: Whitney Marx, the beautiful lead, and Carolee Rogers, recently cast as her rival, and Willa London, the new bad girl in town. Whitney and Carolee greeted Dave with squeals and hugs, embracing him as if he were a long-lost uncle welcoming them o
ff the boat and into America. Willa gave him a heavy-lidded glare.

  “Here we go,” said Dave, as the announcer, sounding like a man on the verge of an orgasm, or possibly a stroke, shouted, “And now, the cast and creator of the returning hit series Bunk Eight!”

  “Let’s move,” said Dave.

  “Yes, massa,” Willa drawled. When Dave returned, I stood on my tiptoes to speak into his ear.

  “What’s up with Willa?”

  He grimaced. “She hates white people.”

  “Good times.”

  “You know it, sister.” Dave sighed, watching Willa, her flawless body displayed in billowing harem pants and a jeweled cropped top, stomp out of the holding area. “I thought we were hiring Halle Berry. Turns out she’s Malcolm X. The very first day, she shows up in my office. Wants to know who all the white people at the table read are.”

  “The executives?” I guessed, remembering all the table reads I’d attended.

  “Right-o-rama. Not much I can do about that. Then she tells me she’s counted up how many people of color there are—how many cameramen, how many extras—and how many of them are Jewish.”

  “How would she even know?” I wondered.

  “Last names,” said Dave. “Of course, the irony is, we’re probably more diverse than most of the shows out there.” I nodded. Bunk Eight’s house director, the man who shot the majority of the shows, was Lannie Dawson, a black man as experienced and respected as Chad. There were two black writers, a black set designer, and a Hispanic assistant director. “So I explain to her that of course we care, and of course we’ve noticed, and we’re doing the best we can to hire people of color, but there just aren’t that many of them, and the good ones have their choice of any job they want, and she’s giving it right back, talking about my unexamined privilege and how I’m not trying hard enough, and finally, I say, ‘Okay, Rosa Parks,’ and she looks at me”—Dave leaned close, lowering his voice—“and says, ‘Was Rosa Parks one of the girls in the Charlie’s Angels remake?’”