Amen, L.A.

by Cherie Bennett

“Oh, so you moved, and that’s why you’re church shopping—”

  “It’s complicated.” She folded her arms, body language that said, “Don’t ask any more questions.”

  I told her about the interfaith soup kitchen thing. “There’ll be a lot of kids from a lot of different churches. You could look at it as one-stop shopping.”

  She smiled. “Where are you from?”

  “Minnesota.”

  She shrugged. “Never been.”

  “It’s great,” I said, and heard the wistful sigh in my voice.

  “I’m sure you have tons of black friends there.”

  I could feel the color rush to my face.

  “Minnesota is pretty … white.”

  “Well, you’re in Los Angeles now,” Mia pointed out. “Lots of people of color here. Every color and then some.”

  I nodded. “That’s one of the things I like. But … it’s all still so new to me. I mean … to tell you the truth? I don’t feel like I really belong here.”

  Her eyes moved to my fab new and improved hair. “Well, your extensions sure do.”

  I touched my hair self-consciously. “You mean you can tell?”

  “My mom used to do them for her friends,” Mia explained. “I know all about weaves.”

  “Does your mom have a salon?”

  Something in Mia’s face closed down as the lights flickered, signaling that intermission was coming to an end. “You’d better get back to the concert.”

  “Sure you don’t want to come with?” I offered.

  “Hey, Natalie?” she said, dodging my question.

  “Yeah?”

  “For what it’s worth … I don’t feel like I belong here, either,” she said softly, then pivoted out the door.

  It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized I didn’t even know her last name.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Sound … and … action!”

  My sister and I watched quietly from one side of the set of Working Stiff, my father and brother observing from the other side, as the assistant director—not the director, the way it always goes in the movies—called for the cameras to roll and the scene to begin.

  The set was a mock-up of a basement massage studio far more Spartan than the one I had recently experienced with Alex at the Mondrian. The Mondrian massage room was upscale. This was definitely downscale, with only a massage table; an array of rough wooden shelves that held the tools of the trade, like oils and powders; and a folding chair, on which had been placed a small stack of Holiday Inn–grade white towels and white sheets. Except for a boom box and a single Zen-themed poster taped to the far wall, that was it.

  It was the day after the concert. My family, with the exception of my mother, who was working at the church, had accepted Kent Stevens’s invitation to visit the Studio City production facility of his hit hour-long drama, Working Stiff.

  Working Stiff had been on the air for two years, though I’d never watched it. It was about a middle-class Los Angeles woman named Shauna, who had a legitimate home massage-therapy office but moonlighted as a private investigator with an uncanny knack for cracking cases the police had deemed hopeless. I had watched a few YouTube clips to prep for this visit. To be honest, it wasn’t my kind of show. I’m more old Gilmore Girls, Secret Life, and—sue me—classic 7th Heaven.

  Everything associated with the writing, shooting, and production of Working Stiff took place in a single nondescript five-story building on busy Riverside Drive in Studio City, in the 818 (Mia would be proud!), not far from the Fashion Mall. The show had taken over the building for the duration of its run. The aboveground part of the building held the show’s interior sets, including the massage room, the messy home PI office, the apartment that belonged to the heroine and her teenage son, police headquarters, et cetera. Down in the basement, you could find the production offices, editing bays, and even the room where the writers would gather to map out new episodes.

  Kent himself gave us a quick tour before he took us to watch the filming. I thought the writers’ room was one of the most depressing places I’d ever seen. No windows, walls covered with whiteboards, and two conference tables that held the fallout of pizzas long forgotten. The room smelled of old perspiration, stale coffee and dead yeast, too little sleep, and too much anxiety. It was enough to make me decide never to pursue a career as a television writer. Who in their right mind would do that?

  The shooting sets, though, were incredibly cool. Kent showed us how a particular room could be transformed by the crew in a couple of hours from one use to another, and there were other areas filled with props, false walls, and the like. The dressing rooms, makeup area, and hair stations were crowded with people who obviously loved their jobs. We even met the show’s publicist, whose job it was to keep Working Stiff in the public eye.

  The night before, Kent had messengered to our house the script for the day’s shooting, with scenes marked with Post-it notes. He’d scrawled a message in longhand on the cover. “This’ll help you understand better, Sheltons. Can’t wait!”

  He was right. Without that script, I would have been lost. The gist of the episode in progress was that Shauna’s teen son—a guy named Zack—comes home to the apartment one day after playing basketball to make a shocking discovery: a good friend of his mother’s is dead in their shared bathroom. The police suspect Shauna, but then suspicion falls on Zack himself. Shauna has to find the real killer so that Zack doesn’t go to prison for life.

  We were about to watch the scene in which Zack rushes into the massage room and announces to his mom that her friend Jodi is dead. This was the last scene in the “teaser,” the part of the script that comes before the first commercial and makes people want to stay tuned instead of changing the channel to, say, CSI.

  “Action!”

  The assistant director repeated his call and we watched attentively as the lights turned hot and the scene got going. Shauna, who looked like Scarlett Johansson’s older sister, except thinner, was kneading knots out of a client discreetly draped by a white sheet. They exchanged a little small talk about the kind of massage the client wanted: a happy ending. Shauna shut him right down. He’d have to find that at the Porn Palace downtown. Then there was a bang on the door to the massage room, and Zack burst in.

  “Mom! It’s Jodi! She’s just lying there on the floor in a big pool of blood.… I think she’s dead!”

  As Zack delivered his lines with appropriate fear and upset, I almost fell on the floor. I knew the actor—not from seeing him on TV or reading about him in the tabloids, either. You may think this is bulldooky, but it’s true: I’d had absolutely no idea who played Zack on Working Stiff until that very moment.

  Brett Goldstein. Alex’s friend. Skye’s boyfriend. My … my nothing, except in occasional dreams.

  “And … cut!” The assistant director ended the shooting and told his crew that they’d move on to the next scene after lunch. With that, a small army descended on the massage room to pack things up and tell the actors where they needed to go for the first sequence of the afternoon.

  I was about to share with Gemma that I knew the actor playing Zack when Brett spotted me, his jaw going slightly slack in surprise. Then a broad smile spread over his sunny face. I was grateful that I’d been uncharacteristically vain that morning, giving my new extensions a thorough blow-out and applying my makeup as best as I remembered from Agua Spa. When I left the house, I thought I was looking fairly cute. I had on my favorite pair of jeans, blue flip-flops, and a sort of retro light blue blouse with yellow embroidery around the scooped neckline.

  He waved. I waved back.

  He waved more enthusiastically. I waved again.

  “Oh my gawd,” Gemma observed. “That actor? The cute one playing Zack? He’s flirting with you!”

  “I know him,” I said softly.

  “Oh shut the front door,” Gemma scoffed. “You know him?”

  I would have explained, except Brett threaded his way across the set to
ward us, a fact that was underscored by my sister’s “Oh my gawd, he’s coming over here!” and double hair flip with locks that never needed any extensions. Also by my skyrocketing pulse and blood pressure.

  “Natalie? It’s great to see you! What are you doing here?”

  He put his arms out to me. What could I do? I hugged him. Okay. It’s true. I liked the idea of hugging him in public. Especially in front of my sister, with her hair flips.

  “I had no idea you were on this show,” I told him when we let go of each other. Then I turned to my sister, who was looking at me with something new in her eyes. Something I’d never seen in them before. Something that would violate the tenth commandment. She was coveting the hug I’d just gotten from Brett Goldstein. “Gemma, this is Brett Goldstein. Brett, this is my sister, Gemma.”

  He put his hand out; she shook it, taking in his dark hair and deep brown eyes. Still in his just-came-from-basketball costume for the scene—baggy gold gym shorts, beat-up Michael Jordan basketball shoes, and a Lakers jersey over a white T-shirt, he looked—and there were no two ways about it—hot. Hot hot.

  “Hey, nice to meet you,” he said easily.

  “How do you know my sister?” Gemma managed to respond.

  Brett smiled slyly. “Come on. She’s been in town for what, a week now? Ten days? The whole city knows her. In fact, who doesn’t know her?”

  I grinned, Gemma looked at me askance, and then our attention was taken by a thin male voice from behind us.

  “Gemma Shelton?”

  A small guy as thin as his voice, with a bulging clipboard in his hands, had approached us. He had short sandy hair and was dressed more formally than anyone else on the set, in a sport coat, a white shirt, and black trousers. His ID badge identified him as Howie Lawrence, chief production assistant. It took all of thirty seconds to understand that Howie took his job very seriously.

  “I’m Gemma Shelton,” my sister told him.

  Howie was nervous. “Gemma, Mr. Stevens wants to know if you have a moment to talk. He said to tell you he has something for you and his daughter, Lisa. In his office.”

  Gemma brightened. To be summoned by the show’s executive producer was no small thing.

  “Go,” Brett instructed her. “Howie, can you make sure Gemma gets to Craft Service afterward?”

  “Sure thing, Brett. Follow me, Gemma.” Howie headed off, with my sister a few feet behind.

  “Craft Service?” I asked. I had no idea what Brett was talking about.

  He rolled his eyes in fake disbelief. “You really are FOB.”

  “FOB?” Baffled again.

  “Fresh off the boat. FOB. Craft Service? It’s what we call the people who serve us lunch. Even though it’s still just”—he checked his watch—“ten-thirty. But the crew’s been at it since five. Union rules, we take a break. Hungry? It’s usually really good.”

  I was hungry, since hair washing, drying, and blowing had taken up a lot more time than I had planned. Time that I normally would have used to eat breakfast. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Excellent. Then it’s a date.”

  Holy sugar on a shingle.

  Brett Goldstein had just asked me out and accepted on my behalf. Sure, it was just lunch. Lunch at his place of work. Lunch that he hadn’t been planning to ask me to join him for even fifteen minutes earlier. But—wait a sec. Skye. His girlfriend. Still. He’d asked me to lunch and I’d said yes. And here he was, holding his arm out for me to take.

  What could I do, reader? With all due respect to Jane Austen: That arm, reader? I took it.

  Of course, because that’s the way my life works, that was the moment Sean chose to text me.

  I stopped to check my cell, thinking that it might be Alex, who I hadn’t seen in a couple of days, but who’d left a message the night before saying that she wanted to take a drive with me down to Redondo Beach for the sunset.

  Nope. Not Alex. Just this:

  Nat! Great news!

  Got refundable ticket!

  Emailed tentative itinerary. See you soon! Love xxx, SEAN

  Chapter Twelve

  Why did he have to do it that instant? Why couldn’t he have just sent his email? Why did he have to ruin what Brett Goldstein had already called a date, even though I knew he had a girlfriend and he didn’t know that I had a boyfriend?

  “Everything okay?” Brett was watching me stare at my cell.

  “Umm … ” I looked up at him. “Crisis back in Minnesota with some friends,” I invented.

  Well, that wasn’t a lie, exactly. Nor was it the truth, exactly. It was somewhere in between. Which made it immediately suspect.

  “Something you need to handle right away? Can it wait till after lunch?”

  I made a quick decision. “It can wait …, ” I heard the hesitation in my voice.

  “But you don’t want it to,” Brett said, as if he had read my mind. “Look, if there’s someone you need to call, or you need to check your email in private or something, the script supervisor’s office is on the way. He’s probably at lunch already. Feel free.”

  “You sure it’s okay?”

  He laughed. “I’m an actor. I’m at the top of the food chain until they kill me off in a mysterious murder-by-massage-oil. Come on.” He put his arm out again. “As long as no one is dying, it’ll be okay.”

  Easy for him to say.

  He was right about the script supervisor’s office, though. It wasn’t far and it had an actual door that closed, too. Brett ushered me inside. “I’ll be out here.”

  “This shouldn’t take long,” I promised.

  “Make it snappy.” Then he laughed. “Seriously, take all the time you need.” He closed the door behind him.

  I checked my mail on the desktop. Sure enough, Sean’s itinerary was the first item in new mail. I scanned it, heart pounding, and then breathed a little easier when I saw that he wouldn’t be arriving for two whole weeks. Fourteen days, if it was okay with my folks. I’d been thinking that maybe he’d show up two days later or something.

  I knew I had to write back. But what?

  Here’s what I wrote: “Great! In hurry so will keep it short. Will check dates with parents but I’m sure it’ll be fine. Can’t wait. Me.”

  Okay. That was a classic stall for time. Maybe if he was willing to talk about his feelings more, I’d be more excited about his coming to visit. I told myself that I had to give it one more try with him on the phone or Skype, at least. Maybe he could open up or read my emotions in my voice, the way Brett had when he suggested I come into this very room to deal with the mystery text.

  “Everything okay?” Brett asked when I stepped back into the hallway.

  “Crisis averted, no massage-oil murders,” I assured him in my peppiest voice.

  He laughed. “Great. We live to eat another day.”

  I expected that we’d end up in some sort of subbasement cafeteria, but Craft Services for Working Stiff was nothing of the sort. Brett led us outside, past an active loading dock, and then to a large multicolored tent behind the building with room for 150 people. Beyond the far end of the tent were three large catering trucks. People were lined up in front of each truck. Inside the tent, a long table held salads, another held cold drinks, another held sandwich-making gear, and yet another was reserved for desserts.

  “Let’s see what they’re serving today,” Brett said, my arm still looped through his. On an old-fashioned blackboard near the catering trucks, I read the offerings. Roasted shrimp with garlic. Skirt steak smothered in onions. Pasta with pesto sauce. And a non-peanut vegetarian alternative, a hearty potato and leek soup.

  Okay. These people, on this show, ate really well.

  As Brett and I joined the line at one of the catering trucks, he explained that great food for the cast and crew was a Hollywood tradition. Even if a star agreed to be in a low-budget movie for much less than their regular salary, they knew that when it came to meals and snacks, they’d be well taken care of. Same thing went fo
r TV shows. It was also a tradition for everyone working on a production to eat together, even really big stars like Angelina Jolie or Katherine Heigl.

  Katherine Heigl again. My twin, if you were, say, legally blind. I would like to say that I turned around just in time to see the Katherine Heigl step inside the Working Stiff Craft Services tent, but that would not be something between the truth and a lie. That would be an outright lie.

  I ordered the shrimp, made myself a small spinach salad, got a bottle of mango juice, and sat down across from Brett at the end of one table. He’d ordered the steak and fries. He didn’t have another scene to shoot until late in the afternoon. We had plenty of time to talk.

  Yay.

  Like Alex, Brett came from a Hollywood family, but one that was surprisingly stable compared to the cliché I had in my mind. His parents had met in film school at the University of Southern California and, after fifteen years, were still married to each other. Yes, this meant that Brett had been born two years before his parents got married. Don’t be picky. This was Los Angeles.

  His mother was better known than his father, since she ran one of the most famous showbiz blogs in the city, itsawraptinseltown.com. I’d never heard of it, but Brett assured me that along with Nikki Finke’s deadlinehollywood.com, his mother’s blog was a must-read for insider information. Who was hired, who was fired, what was being made, who had power, and who lost it—the blog covered it all. As for his father, he had left his prestigious Century City law firm ten years earlier to work for a tiny Internet start-up that delivered movie DVDs by mail and had expanded in the last few years into online streaming.

  Netflix.

  “That kinda worked out,” Brett observed wryly. He cut a chunk of medium-done steak and popped it into his mouth.

  “Good for the banking business?”

  Brett gently bit his lower lip—a gesture I later came to learn meant that he felt uncomfortable with whatever he was talking about. “You have no idea.”

  “Do they give a lot away?” My parents always said that people who made a lot of money had a responsibility to give back to society.