by Julia London
“Why do you want to do it?” Jack demanded the day they had discussed it over a plate of nachos and a pitcher of beer. “It’s not like you a need a shot at twenty or so women to hook up with one. You have them hanging all over you as it is.”
“Yeah, right,” Michael said with a snort. “That’s why I’ve been available for so much of the extreme sports work lately. They’re not hanging off me. And besides, I just really like women. Don’t you?”
“I like women a lot, only one-on-one,” Cooper interjected. “Women in a pack? Forget it—they’re awful. They gang up on you, and you don’t have a chance.”
“Okay, forget it then,” Michael said with a shrug. “I just thought it would be fun to hang out with twenty good-looking women for a few weeks.”
No one said anything for a long moment. For a bunch of guys who didn’t have the sort of job that afforded them the opportunity to hang out with women that often, it proved to be an argument none of them could resist—they signed up for the film.
Michael’s only regret was that he had earned the lead on the Costa Rica trip and had missed the first week of boot camp. That was one week of being surrounded by women he’d never get back, and if there was one thing Michael Raney loved, it was to be surrounded by women.
There was no time like the present, and as soon as he got through this studio budget meeting Jack had asked him to attend, Michael was ready to go play.
He started across the parking lot, making eye contact with as many women as he could, who in turn gave him a smile, a smile, a smile . . . oh, ouch. No smile there. That was a definite glare from ah . . . Linda. Yeah, Linda, that was her name. Linda . . . the production assistant, right, right. Or was it Lindsey? He couldn’t really recall much about her, other than that he’d been involved with her for a very short time once. She didn’t have the looks most guys wanted, but Michael had liked her a lot in the beginning—she had a wry wit. Unfortunately, it turned out that she was funnier in a weird way than a ha-ha way, and he hadn’t pursued it.
And as she was still staring daggers at him, Michael looked in the opposite direction.
Well, shit.
He knew that one, too. Jill, perky Jill with the brand-new, perky breasts. Nice perky breasts. Nice perky breasts attached to someone with stalker-like tendencies.
Okay, so there might be a couple of rough spots in this dream gig, but nothing to worry about. There were still more than a dozen women he hadn’t been involved with, and one with golden hair was walking toward him that minute. Michael smiled, slowed his step. “Excuse me, can you point me toward the office?”
The golden-haired woman smiled brightly and offered to take him there herself.
Was America a great country, or what?
THE women gathered on the basketball court to play dodge ball, or as one of the stunt coordinators put it, “practice teamwork.”
“I don’t know how in the hell we are going to learn teamwork playing dodgeball, but whatever,” Trudy said on an impatient sigh as she studied her hand through giant black sunglasses she had yet to remove. Trudy was a single mom with a useless boyfriend and an unusual fetish for showy sunglasses. She had more pairs than Leah could count.
At that moment, she was wiggling her fingers at Leah. “So what do you think of this color? I got it from my daughter Aralia.”
Leah looked at the fingernails Trudy was wiggling at her. The color was a little too bubblegum pink for her tastes, but looked like something a fifth-grader like Aralia would like. “Fabulous,” she lied.
“Don’t look now, but here comes the Stud Strut,” Jamie said. Jamie and Michele had migrated toward Trudy and Leah early on, and now the four of them were inseparable. Jamie nodded her dark red head in the direction of the door to the basketball court. “Hey, you know what T.A. stands for, don’t you?” she asked as they watched two of the three stunt trainer-slash-coordinator hunks, Cooper and Eli, stroll in.
“What?” Leah asked.
“Tits and Ass,” Jamie said, and then guffawed. “Get it? They have a thing for tits and ass!” She laughed. Leah, Trudy, and Michele rolled their eyes.
“Ladies, if we could have your attention!” Eli, the one with the sandy blond hair was speaking. He was a quiet guy who Leah thought looked pretty damn good in faded jeans. Hell, they all looked good for that matter, from Cooper’s dark locks, to Jack and his thick brown hair, and then of course they were all tall and built like a brick shit house.
“We finished up our first phase of intensive gym work,” Eli said. “You did good, ladies. Real good.”
Several of them cooed like a flock of doves.
“This week, we’re gonna focus on team-building exercises. And then next week, we’re going to work hard to block those two big battle scenes with the team skills you’ve learned. We won’t lie to you—this is going to be a lot of hard, physical work. But if you do like we ask, and we get those battle scenes down, we’ve got a little surprise for you.”
“I hope the surprise has the name Gucci in it somewhere,” Leah muttered.
“The studio has okayed us to go on location a couple of days early and do a final weekend of team building on some of the best white water in the country. In other words, we’re going rafting.”
That was met with a lot of ooohs and aahs, and of course, one of the Serious Actresses (as they had begun to think of a few of them, as opposed to the young, eager, will-sleep-with-anyone Starlets) began applauding, because she applauded e-ver-y-thing. And naturally, once she started, everyone started applauding because no one wanted to be the lone non-applauder. Personally, Leah thought the constant applauding was way out of hand and only gave it a halfhearted effort.
“Okay, all right,” Eli said, signaling with his hands for everyone to quiet down. “Before we get to the gravy, we need you to focus,” he said, pointing at his head. “When we start shooting in a few weeks, you all need to be fit and ready to go. To get fit, you have to focus, and that means leaving your cell phones in the locker room.’
And that was, of course, the precise moment Leah’s cell phone started to ring. She frantically dug in her bag for it as the ringing got louder. She looked at the display—Frances! Unfortunately, the whole room had quieted—everyone was looking at her. Eli was looking at her so intently that she flinched a little. “Ah . . . I’ve really got to, ah . . . take this,” she muttered, and flipped it open, whirled around, and whispered, “Hey.”
“Bad news, sweetie.” Frances had never been one to beat around a bush. “You got passed over for the spot on Desperate Housewives.”
Leah’s heart sank. “Why? They said I was perfect for the part of the preacher’s wife.”
“I’ll put it to you straight. You’re too fat. If you lost ten pounds, maybe. But don’t worry—we’ve still got a couple of auditions outstanding.”
“But what if I lose the—”
“Ooooh, I really need to take this call,” Frances said, and clicked off.
Leah sighed, shut her phone, and turned around. The meeting had resumed. Eli was explaining what the next couple of weeks looked like.
“Ohmigod, he’s so cute,” Michele whispered to Leah as she stuffed the phone back into her bag.
“Question!” Tamara Contreras’s hand shot up, as if Eli and Cooper didn’t know who’d be asking a question after the two bazillion she’d asked every day. Tamara was an ex-soap-opera diva (killed off by her murderous twin disguised as her ex-husband on a remote island with an invisible and impenetrable barrier, which naturally meant she could not seek medical treatment) who had begun annoying Leah and Trudy on the second day, when she announced she had a problem with perfume. Not any particular perfume, but the amount of perfume that was being worn. It gave her a headache.
The entire cast spent an hour arguing about it. The stunt guys had been so agitated that they’d had to caucus. After fifteen minutes of shuffling feet and a lot of head scratching, they had come back with, “Use your best judgment.”
Trudy, Leah,
Michele, and Jamie had howled about that over drinks after work. Men could be so stupid sometimes. But they decided that Tamara had so many things wrong with her—perfume sensitivity being the tip of the proverbial iceberg—that she wouldn’t last.
“I give her two weeks on set,” Jamie had said. Jamie was short and had red hair that in concert with her boob job, preceded the rest of her when she walked into a room. She was a great person, but all Leah could think was, character roles.
“I give her two weeks before someone kills her,” Michele had responded before wrapping her collagen-enhanced lips around a straw. Michele was really a beauty with long golden hair and big green eyes, plus the requisite fake boobs and lips.
At the moment, Tamara’s arm was about to come out of its socket as she tried to get Cooper or Eli to look at her.
“Yes, Tamara?” Cooper finally asked, exchanging a weary look with Eli.
“If the studio okayed the white-water rafting, are they going to okay the wet gear? The water can be pretty cold this time of year.”
“We’ll worry about wet gear later,” Cooper said.
“Okay, well, I just want to go on record as saying I’ll need full-body wet gear,” Tamara said, oblivious to the sighs and eye-rolling around her. “I have a low tolerance for cold.”
Cooper and Eli looked at one another. “I’ll tell you what, Tamara. Let’s just make sure we get to white-water rafting first,” Cooper said. “So all right, ladies, let’s start by breaking up into our armies. West team on that end, East team on this end. We start in five minutes.”
“You know what?” Trudy asked casually as the guys began to try, enthusiastically and in vain, to corral them into their respective armies, “I think I am going to have to change my vote for who is the hottest stunt trainer.”
It was a question they’d been debating for a few days.
“Don’t change your vote until we get a load of the fourth one,” Michele advised Trudy as they strolled to the team on the left.
“A fourth?” Jamie exclaimed. “A fourth what?”
“A fourth stunt trainer guy. He’s coming in later.”
Trudy, Leah, and Jamie all came to a stop midstride and looked at Michele. “How do you know? And why isn’t he already here?” Trudy demanded. “We deserve to have all of them present and accounted for so we can make a fair comparison of who is the hottest.”
“I don’t know why he isn’t here,” Michele said, and glanced over her shoulder, as if anyone could possibly hear her in the din two dozen female voices created in the gym. “But apparently, he’s a real player. I heard it from one of the Serious Actresses—seems like a bunch of them know him. Some of them have dated him, too. And get a load of this—they call him the Extreme Bachelor. Isn’t that hilarious?”
“Why?” Trudy asked.
“Because he’s a serial dater. A luuuv-ah,” she added dramatically, making full use of her lips.
“When’s he coming?” Trudy asked. “I want to see this luuuv-ah.”
“Later is all I heard,” Michele shrugged. “But I’ll get some intel this afternoon,” she added with a wink. “I promised Katherine Hepburn over there that I would run lines with her.”
The four of them glanced at the Serious Actress who they had dubbed Katherine Hepburn, based on her intensity (extreme) and the fact that she studied her script all the time.
“Ladies, please split up into your armies,” Eli was begging. “East on the left, West on the right.”
“Dodgeball, yes!” Leah said with a fist pump. “I love dodgeball.”
“How can you love dodgeball? The last time I played it was the fifth grade,” Trudy said, staring at Leah through her humongous black sunglasses.
“Will you please take those off?” Leah demanded, pointing at Trudy’s shades.
Trudy pushed them up on the top of her head and smiled. “Let’s decide who we are going to take out first. A Serious Actress or a Starlet?”
“Tamara,” Leah said instantly. “If she’s even playing. She’s probably got an allergy to rubber.”
“Oooh, you’re so snarky. I love that about you,” Trudy said, and linking arms with Leah, Yin and Yang, and Michele and Jamie went off to the left to play dodgeball.
They lined up to wait for some instruction, and when the guys finally got them to all stop chattering like a group of mutant magpies, the song “Like a Virgin” began ringing on someone’s cell phone.
“Now come on, you guys,” Cooper cried. He looked close to losing it completely. “We just had a chat about this. No cell phones.”
“Sorry,” a brunette called out, but she took the call anyway.
“Okay, attention, everyone,” Cooper went on, with a glare for the brunette who held both hands up around her mouth and the cell phone, “I think we all know the game of dodgeball.” Eli walked over to a cage and began to toss red rubber balls to Cooper, which he placed on either side of the center line. “Why are we playing dodgeball?” he asked as he laid out the red balls. “Because we’re filming it, and we’re going to use your movements to craft some of the animation we’ll add to the battle scenes.”
Everyone instantly looked around for cameras, and spotted one above them, the other at the far end of the gym.
“We play six on a side,” Cooper continued. “When I blow the whistle, each team retrieves three balls. If you’re hit, you cycle out, and the next person on your team cycles in. You can eliminate a player in two ways—either hit her with the ball, or catch her ball before it hits the ground. Aim for the body, not the head. Anyone aiming for the head will be eliminated from the game and may even lose a job, okay? Everyone get that? Safety first, ladies. Remember that—safety first.”
He paused, put his hands on his hips, and looked at each team. “If you are taken out of the game, walk over there,” he said, pointing to the bleachers. “And sit down. Don’t talk. Don’t get out your cell phone. Don’t get out your nail polish. No stopping to redo your hair like the incident we had yesterday,” he said, looking pointedly at a Starlet who batted eyes at him. “These games go pretty fast, and we’re going to play a bunch of them until we have each side working together as a team and get enough film to give the animators. But the whole point of this exercise is to work as a unit.”
His speech was getting a little long, Leah noticed. Several whispered conversations had begun.
Cooper seemed to know it, too, because he clenched his jaw, then pointed at a Starlet on Leah’s team who rarely spoke. “You,” he said sternly. “You are the leader for this team.” He turned to the other team and pointed to Beth, a Serious Actress who’d been mad at Leah since they ran lines and Leah had snickered at Beth’s overwrought, over-the-top performance of a mom out of valium. Well hell, she’d thought Beth had been kidding.
“You’re the leader for this team, all right?” Cooper said.
Beth nodded and glared at Leah, who glared right back.
“Okay,” Cooper said. “Talk about who you want to target. Talk to each other on the line. Listen to your team leader and just try and communicate.”
He and Eli made sure that the teams were lined up properly, then stepped out of the way. Cooper raised his arm. “Ready? Game on.”
There was a mad scramble for the balls lying on the center line. One of the Serious Actresses on the other side immediately hurled a dodge ball that hit a Starlet on the leg. “Out!” she screeched.
“Hey!” the Starlet cried, rubbing her thigh. “That’s not fair!”
But apparently it was fair, because the team across from Leah was suddenly and gleefully hurling their balls, accompanied with triumphant shrieks that were lost only in the shrieks of those who were hit.
The quiet Starlet appointed to head Leah’s team turned out to be a Commando Starlet, screeching at everyone to pick up their feet and move. Leah was vaguely aware of Trudy getting hit behind her when she cried, “Shit! I just had these nails done!” But Leah was moving. She really did love dodgeball, and it was all coming back
to her—how to leap to avoid being hit, how to throw on the run, how to stoop to catch a ball.
She nailed Katherine Hepburn on her first throw—that one gasped and looked confused and hurt before slinking off. Leah aimed for Beth with her second throw, just missing her. As she scrambled to pick up more balls, the Commando Starlet shouted at her to shift left, shift left, then rushed the line, hurling her ball like a missile at Tamara.
Tamara dodged it, which floored Leah, but then she sang out an uncharacteristic nanner-nanner at the Starlet, and therefore missed the red rocket coming at her from the other end of the line. A huge cheer went up from both sides when Tamara took one in the ass.
Within fifteen minutes, there were only three left on each side, and Leah was one of them. She could hear Trudy, Jamie, and Michele shouting at her from the bleachers to stay low. Leah, the Commando Starlet, and a Serious Actress huddled together, ready to leap in opposite directions.
At least that was what the Commando was telling them to do, but Leah wasn’t listening—she wanted to take Beth down. Beth had been aiming at Leah since the start of the game, firing off heated missiles like she wanted to see her dead. Leah had to keep racing up and down and diving behind her teammates to avoid being hit.
When Beth picked up two balls and threw them in rapid succession at their little group, Leah seized the opportunity to run down the line, trying to catch a ball as she went. But as she neared the entrance to the basketball court, she caught a glimpse of Jack and another guy standing just inside the door, watching the game. It was only a fraction of a second, but in that teeny tiny moment, Leah thought she’d seen a ghost.
It was enough to take her mind off the game and long enough for Beth to hurl a ball at her. And the ball did indeed find purchase—more like a two-fer sale, actually, because the ball glanced off her shoulder and then hit her in the temple. It didn’t hurt at all, but it surprised her, and her feet got tangled, and down Leah went, somehow ending up on her back.