by Ariella Papa
I also wish Beth could be as okay about our breakup as Tommy and I pretend to be. I know she is protective of her brother, but I care about him, too, and she would never understand that.
Ugh. I hate insomnia. It forces you to think about all the things you try to avoid during the day. I don’t want to put work into my relationships; I just want them to be normal.
I can’t do this. It’s almost 4:00 a.m. I need sleep. I will count sheep backward until it comes.
The radio is on. My favorite way to get up—listening to 1010 WINS. I can rely on them for weather and news and a slight (very slight) cynicism. No matter how loud I turn it up I always sleep right through it. It’s 9:35. Not too bad. Most people in the business roll in way after ten. But, I am trying to go in early and set an example for my team. I don’t want them to think that we can slack off now that the ratings are high. But at this rate, there is no way I am going to make it in early, much less take a shower.
I brush my teeth really quick, put my hair in a clip and pull on a comfy pair of jeans and a thin black sweater. There are dark circles under my eyes as usual, but I don’t have time to do anything about it.
On the way to the subway, I stop at a quilted truck (the stainless steel panels are quilted). I always make time for coffee. The guy in the cart has my coffee and change ready when I get up to him. I come here every day for a cup of coffee with lots of milk and sugar, which will usually sustain me for a good two hours (depending on whether or not I went out the night before).
People always complain about how expensive things are in this city, but coffee off the street proves it all wrong. Does any other city have coffee this good for a mere fifty cents? And, if it’s a really bad morning, I can throw in a buttered roll for fifty more cents. A steal.
I don’t get a seat on the subway. There is a bit of humidity in the air. The city is about to cross the line from the crisp coolness of spring to the smelly oppression of summer. In a matter of weeks everyone on this train can count on being stinky and disgusting and we’ll all just have to hold our noses and accept that it is summertime.
I stare up at an ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows. That’s the program where they pay for your master’s in education if you become a teacher in a tough inner-city school. The campaign is tight. Someone is obviously getting paid well to come up with these great inspiring slogans. This ad says, “You remember your first-grade teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?”
Mrs. Gordon was my first-grade teacher. I think she was the first person to appreciate the essays I wrote on small pieces of yellow lined paper. I remember how she smelled like Fig Newtons and perfume when she leaned over my desk and said, “Rebecca, you’re very creative.”
I should give Esme more scenes at school. I’m always trying to think of ways of making her more real to kids. Maybe she can figure out who stole the class hamster. No, I’ve got to come up with something better.
Luckily, I don’t have a long trip. The subway brings me a block from the Explore! offices in Midtown East. I hate this neighborhood. ARCADE, my last job—the first one I had out of college—was over on the far west side. I felt more comfortable around the truckers and transsexuals there than I do around the finance suits, who are ubiquitous in this neighborhood.
I go through a lengthy but halfhearted security check from one of the guards in the lobby. Once he’s assured that I’m not carrying any explosives in my knockoff purse, I head up to our floor. I pass the giant poster of a spacecraft in the lobby. As I pass the kitchen, I realize I forgot to bring lunch, leftovers from two nights ago. Damn! Coffee may be cheap in this city, but lunch in Midtown is another story.
As I expected, Jen was in early. She is Hackett’s niece and also the production coordinator for my team, the group that works on Esme. Jen is going places in this business and I’m not sure I’m the right person to be managing her.
“Good morning, Rebecca.”
“What’s up, Jen?” I expected (hoped) to hear “nothing,” but Jen is a woman on top of things.
“Well, we have to go over the title test for episode seven with my un-Hackett at eleven. We’ve got a script meeting at twelve. There’s a programming waste of time at one. Before you get any ideas we are required to be there. We really have to figure out the second segment of episode nine this afternoon. Oh yeah, a budget thing at four-thirty. And Janice has a dentist appointment she forgot about and John is running late because his electricity is out.”
We smirk at each other. We strongly believe that our two animators, Janice and John, are an item. In a group of four it creates an interesting dynamic.
“Well, with any luck their morning will put them in an agreeable mood.” Jen and I keep tabs on their relationship by observing how well they are able to work together. There were times it got downright ugly. “Did they say how late they would be?”
“They were both curiously evasive.”
“Well, I’d like to have them around for the title test. Shit!” Already my day was sounding crappy.
“I’ll call Meg and try and push it back.” Meg is Hackett’s assistant and I swear she runs the company.
“Thanks, Jen. I mean, I could do that if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. I think you should take a look at the scripts.”
“Okay.” I go to my office and shut the door.
I’m not really comfortable being in charge of a team. I have a hard enough time being responsible for myself, and now I control the livelihood of three people under me. I always feel strange when Jen does stuff for me. She keeps offering to fax things for me and do my expense reports, but I just can’t handle that. It makes me feel helpless and worse, it makes me feel like a boss, which I guess I am.
I take a deep breath and stretch. I can do that because of my door. I always worked in a cube—and it was fine with me—but now I have an office, which means I have a door. A door is a very big deal. If I close it, I have my own little space. I can surf the Net for porn, listen to loud music, sniff my armpits or scratch my ass. I can do anything—if I can just find the time.
I also have a window. Granted, it’s small and it looks right out at a brick wall, but it is a window. It’s silly, but I’m proud of it. My mom cut hair in Pennsylvania and my dad worked in a factory. All their lives, they worked at the same place. They never seemed to believe that I made a living at what they thought was drawing. It seemed like no matter what I did, they didn’t get it. And they still don’t, even with Esme on TV. But, I bet if they saw my office, they would be proud.
Jen’s number comes up on the display of my phone. “Hey.”
“I pushed it back,” she says. “Everything else is moved, too.”
“So, I’ll be a half hour behind all day.”
“Right. Janice just walked in.”
“So we can expect John in a respectable five minutes?”
“I’m sure he’s circling the block as we speak,” Jen comments. “Oh yeah, and you’re going to the affiliate party tonight, right?”
“Shit, I forgot about it.”
“I keep telling you to get a PalmPilot, but you insist on Luddite living.”
“I’m not even sure what that means. Where’s it at?”
“Party space at the Seaport. A trek and a half. I’ll e-mail you.”
“Seriously. I guess I have to go and schmooze with bald fatties from the Midwest.” Pause. “Sorry.” Jen was from Minnesota. “And I’m never going to have a chance to get home. I have nothing to wear.”
“This is why we have H&M. I’ve got to go, Meg’s on the other line. I’ll see you in about twenty.”
She has a point, but when would I find time to get to H&M? My phone rings again. Outside line. Should I pick up? Caller ID makes me scared of the phone. It could be someone I didn’t want to talk to or it could be a solicitor. I take a chance.
“Rebecca Cole.”
“Re, it’s Beth.”
“And Kathy.” They are conference-calling me. They want detail
s.
“Guys, I’m going to have a crazy day. I just found out I have a meeting in like fifteen minutes.”
“We just need the broad strokes,” Beth says a bit testily.
“Yeah, don’t be such a corporate whore. Everything with Rebecca is urgent these days, have you noticed, Beth?”
“Yeah,” Beth says. I can understand their interest, I just feel like I am playing beat the clock and won’t have time to hash it out.
“Okay, the basics, and I got to be quick for real. Divorce is final.” I start to hear them cut in with their opinions, but I have no time to analyze. “And the whammy, she is moving out of the city and up to Martha’s Vineyard.”
I can’t resist pausing for effect. It is too unbelievable.
“Has she lost her mind?” Kathy asks.
“She’s on antidepressants, I’m certain now,” Beth says. Beth prefers dabbling in nonprescription drugs, but enjoys knowing that other people have similar needs.
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
I allow myself one more moment with them and then I have to be a productive bee and get off the phone. They want to know what I am going to do about the apartment, but I haven’t decided yet.
“Don’t forget we have to look at bridesmaids dresses this weekend,” Kathy says. “Try not to plan a meeting.”
I hang up as they laugh. I am certain they will stay on the phone and talk about it. Kathy is an accountant and this is her slow time, and Beth works at a music studio, hence the trendy crowd. I long for the days when I spoke to my friends three times a day and tried not to laugh too loud in my cube.
I am too young to be nostalgic, but it seems to me that I was much happier when my day was filled with hushed gossip with my friends rather than bullshit meetings on the half hour.
My first meeting of the day doesn’t go as well as I planned. Hackett claims to love what we did with the titles, yet he doesn’t like the font size. This is something he could have told us three meetings ago. But, because he’s the boss, he’s allowed to interject opinions whenever it suits him. And we have to deal. Now we are going to have to re-render everything. Janice’s smile fades, but I’m glad she is here to hear Hackett’s comments. I don’t want her to think these changes had been my oversight.
Janice and John go to work on fixing the problem. I hope their morning interlude was good so they don’t mind working very hard—but not so good that they get distracted with details. Jen and I start on the scripts. I thought we were meeting with Hackett again, but he decided he had another, more important, meeting. That can only mean he is going to decide he doesn’t like the scripts a few weeks from now when it will almost be too late to rewrite.
If only I could do everything, I could insure this shit didn’t happen. It is hard to have a tiny bit of control, which in the end amounts to nothing.
“Rebecca Cole.” I answer the phone while Jen is still in my office.
“Hey. It’s Tommy.” He must have talked to Jordan about Lauryn and wanted to see if I was okay about losing a roommate at my overpriced apartment.
“I’m fine.” I don’t want to stay on the phone long. Plus, I hate talking to him in front of people—it only leads to questions. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it yet.”
“Right,” he says. He doesn’t really seem that concerned, after all. “I was wondering if you had my Matrix DVD.”
I moved out almost a year ago, yet he constantly finds reasons to call me. At times, I am happily convinced he is still into me. At other times, I’m annoyed by it and want him to just leave me alone. Right now, I’m getting pissed that he’s calling about his stuff and not my feelings.
“No. I don’t. I would have found it by now. Check the hall closet. I bet it’s in there.” Jen looks up at me and then turns a page as if she’s really intently reading the script copy. I lower my voice. “Did Jordan tell you about the divorce?”
“Yep.”
“Well, did he tell you about Lauryn moving up to the Vineyard?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Were you a little bit curious as to what I was going to do with the giant rent?”
“Well, I guess so.” Herein lay the problem in our relationship. Sometimes we clicked and other times we needed a translator to communicate. I hear an electronic sound in the background. Tommy tries to cover it up by speaking really loud and fast. “So what are you going to do?”
“Are you playing Grand Theft Auto III right now?” I yell so loud Jen jumps. I can’t believe him. You’d think he could focus for a five-minute phone call.
“Uh, yeah.” I hang up on him. When we were dating, we promised never to hang up on each other, but now that we’ve broken up there are no rules. I smile at Jen. Her eyebrows rise over the pages she is reading.
“So, getting back to the scripts…” I say.
We are in a meeting actually called the War Room. I don’t know who thought of that name, but it pretty much sets the tone for bloodshed. It happens every Thursday and it almost always lasts too long and accomplishes very little. Production and Programming duke it out about their priorities and resents one another and wastes the time that everyone needs.
Even the seating in the meeting is combative. The round table has too many chairs around it, so everyone bumps armrests and apologizes constantly. Programming stakes their claim early. I am always running late, but once I managed to show up fifteen minutes early and they were already there, plotting their means of attack.
This week the programming department has decided to be sour at me for not having all the scripts I was supposed to have. As punishment, they decide they need to preempt episodes of Esme for sporting events they seem to be making up on the spot. How can they know that the candlepin bowling championship is going to happen on the day the episode airs where Esme figures out who vandalized the library? Jen tries to argue with them, but I shake my head. They are Programming, they can do anything. They confidently sip their coffees knowing they have people at TV Guide on speed dial.
Eventually, the programmers grow tired of toying with us and decide to attack Don Beckford, the producer of another new show, Gus and the Gopher.
“Yeah, we’re completely on schedule,” Don says. “There’s no way we won’t have thirteen eps ready to roll out in September. There was an article on the type of animation we’ll be using in Tyke TV magazine. Did anyone see it?”
Don is handsome in a way that is not completely trustworthy. He is in a constant frenetic state. He practically bounces when he talks and he always has a way of selling his show. (I kind of admire him.) He also refers to the trade rags a lot. Who has time to read the latest issue of whatever stupid magazine the industry puts out to pat itself on the back? Not me.
But the programmers did and they loved to brag about it—but today they aren’t taking it. Cheryl, who has some position of imagined power and a haircut to go with it, clears her throat.
“You may have the animated aspects intact, but you don’t have a live action host yet. The show is called Gus and the Gopher. Without Gus, it’s just a gopher.”
“Right,” Don says. He is preparing to use a lot of words to say nothing. “Well, we are in the process of casting at this point. The animation is going to be a lot harder to deal with than the host.”
“Can we see who you’ve narrowed it down to?” Cheryl asks. She definitely has an attitude.
“I really don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you yet, but I can assure you we’ve narrowed it down to three terrific personalities. They are going to be like nothing kids have ever seen.” They are doing a complicated dance. Don was hired away from the Cranium Network to create a kids’ show that looked like all the ones he had already produced for Cranium. No one seemed to notice or want to admit that Gus and the Gopher sounded a lot like Bob in the Barn and Amy’s Animal Adventures.
“Well, get us a tape as soon as you can,” Cheryl says. Programming always wants a tape.
“Well, I have a three o’clock,” Sar
ah says. She is another programming henchman. “I think that’s all for today.”
We file out of the conference room. I race to the bathroom on my floor. All the programmers will be in theirs. The problem with seeing them in the bathroom is that they try to talk about work and get you to agree to do things for them when you just want to pee in peace.
It’s almost three o’clock and I still haven’t had lunch. I have a four-thirty meeting and I was supposed to complete segment two of episode ten so Janice and John could work on it. We have a process of getting episodes in and approved, so we can start doing the voice-over. I don’t want to be the one to get us off schedule. I also have to get something to wear tonight.
I grab some free coffee in the kitchen and add a ton of sugar. I open one of my drawers looking for a snack or a fabulous outfit I forgot about. I find some microwave popcorn and the spare pair of underwear I keep in my desk, just in case. (There haven’t really been any “cases” lately.)
I bring the popcorn into the kitchen and start making notes on the script while it heats up. Jen wrote this script and I’m impressed. I like getting a fresh perspective on Esme. It was hard for me to accept that other people were giving her a voice, or a look, like Janice and John have been doing with their animations of her.
“Hey, you.” I look up to see Claire Wylini, Director of Production Budgets, smiling at me. She is so flaky; Miss Nice-Nice—until you go a dollar over budget. Then she stops smiling.
“Hi.” She points to the clock.
“It’s almost time for our meeting.” She speaks in the singsong voice you might use to talk to a preschooler. She has a four-year-old and a two-year-old and each of them has their own nanny. Her children give her a certain amount of credibility.
People who work for kids’ TV are always trying to figure out ways into the minds of children. It’s kind of sick. Of course the further up the ladder you move the less in touch you are with kids. People tout that childlike creativity, but basically we’re adults trying to sell a product. Anyone in children’s television who has kids likes to reference them constantly. It’s some sort of badge of honor. They feel that their opinion is always correct and defend it with things like, “Well, my five-year-old would love that.” I suspect that some people have kids as a type of business insurance.