“Roxy? What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t Damon tell you?”
Sepp shook his head. His brain was scrambling to process what was going on. “No.”
Roxy grinned her wicked grin, the grin that had made her famous for breaking hearts and betraying friends, her mouth twitching up in a snidely asymmetrical smile, making one of her canine teeth protrude just enough to be vaguely threatening and sexy. It was a look that was uniquely Roxy’s, part pout, part sneer; it was designed to make you feel unworthy and vile, small and annoying, like a wet clingy turd, and yet at the same time it made you want to fuck her like you never fucked anyone before. Roxy licked her lips and her smile grew even more sneerific.
“They said you needed an antagonist.”
…
The Ninja zoomed in on Roxy’s sneer. He wanted to capture it in all its magnificence. He backed up a little, intuitively avoiding a large cardboard display of the latest teenage-vampire-meets-pubescent-virgin bestseller, and let the camera do a slow pan down, revealing Roxy’s hot-pink bikini top and the sarong that was casually tied around her waist. That was the power of Roxy Sandoval. She looked more attractive, more wood-poundingly humpable, in a bikini than she did buck naked. He’d seen her naked, everyone had, in that Playboy “Reality Girls” special edition. It had been somewhat anticlimactic.
The Ninja panned over for a reaction shot and, sure enough, Sepp was reacting. He looked like he’d been poleaxed, his eyes spinning, his jaw hanging open like a broken gate on a pickup truck. “What?”
“Check your voice mail. I’m sure he called.”
The Ninja zoomed out for a wide shot. He hoped this would cut together, but he wasn’t sure. He’d need to get some inserts of Sepp signing or something.
“I don’t have my phone with me.”
Roxy shook her head. “I guess you’re surprised then. That would explain the dumbass look on your face.”
Sepp swallowed, thought about it for a second, then looked up at Roxy. “Would you like me to personalize your book?”
…
The line wasn’t as big as it had been an hour ago, but there were still fifty or sixty fans waiting to get Sepp’s autograph, and now they were captivated. A reality show had just come to life right in front of them. Minds were being blown in the bookstore.
“Haven’t you hurt him enough?”
Roxy turned her head and glared at a middle-aged woman in a bright yellow dress with bricks of turquoise jewelry dangling off her neck. “Do you know who I am?”
The woman nodded. She wasn’t impressed by Roxy. “We all know who you are, honey.”
There was something in the way the woman said “honey” that made it seem like a threat. Roxy swiveled on her heels to face the woman.
With the camera rolling Sepp knew that Roxy would turn this into an opportunity for a catfight. Those screechy, hair-flipping, head-snapping, finger-pointing, chest-thumping, out-of-control arguments were a mainstay of reality TV, but Sepp didn’t want one here, not now. This was about his fans and the book.
“Roxy, please. Not now.”
Roxy raised an eyebrow and snapped her head back toward Sepp.
“You don’t want to go there, baby, not with me.”
Sepp held up his hands. “Dude. She’s been waiting. Let me sign her book.”
Roxy turned back to Sepp, her lips leaping into her trademark snark. “Did you just call me ‘dude’?”
Sepp knew she hated being called a dude, but he wanted to stop her from going off on one of his fans.
“Do I look like a dude?”
Sepp tried a little joke. “You have been working out.”
Some of the women in line appreciated his sense of humor and giggled. That only annoyed Roxy more.
“You used to be all about this.” She waved her hands up and down her body. “You couldn’t get enough of this.”
Roxy squeezed her breasts together and pointed them accusingly at Sepp. “If I’m a ‘dude,’ what’s that make you?”
Sepp knew what was coming. It was like he was watching a replay of one of the thousands of squabbles they’d had during their torturous affair on Sex Crib. He knew what she was going to say as if he’d written the script himself. Roxy put her hands on her hips and cranked her eyes wide open. “If I’m a ‘dude,’ that must make you my bitch.”
And there it was.
Roxy punctuated this exclamation with some kind of gang-related finger flapping that she’d obviously copied off a rap video.
There was a gasp from some of the women in line. Sepp shook his head and the Ninja smiled as he moved in for a close-up. Sepp knew that Roxy was just warming up, that this outburst was just the opening act to the freak-show emotional volcano that was about to take the stage. Honestly, it bummed him out. Things were going so well. Why did Roxy have to come? What was Damon thinking?
Sepp looked at the line of women waiting to get their books signed. “I’m really sorry about all this.”
Roxy reared back, about to attack again, when Harriet showed up. She looked at Sepp, then at Roxy, then at the camera.
“What’s going on?”
Roxy smirked. “Girlfriend, you aren’t near as smart as you think you are. You’re never supposed to look at the camera.”
Harriet turned to Sepp. “What’s she doing here?”
Sepp shrugged. “She’s the antagonist.”
Roxy squared up to Harriet. She poked her chest out and flipped her hands around in the air like she was trying to dry her nails and had a nervous condition.
“I’m gonna keep it real. You know what I’m sayin’? I’m here to see if he really loves you, or if he still loves me. It’s a true-love throwdown.”
40
Arizona
They left right after the event. The Ninja had brought along a couple of black beauties, enough to keep him alert—on the road and rolling camera—until they got to Denver. He was annoyed that Damon hadn’t sprung for an assistant cameraman or an associate producer to help with the driving, but then he knew from experience that the fewer people involved, the more intense and intimate the material. As the amphetamines massaged his brain, he began to think that maybe it was time to move up to producer role, earn a little profit-participation. If this sizzle reel turned out as good as he thought it would, it could be just the thing to lift him to the next level—profit-participation—and he could start earning some real money.
…
Harriet sat on the couch and looked out the window as the RV headed north, up Interstate 17, toward Flagstaff. From there they’d turn east on the I-40 until they hooked up with the I-25 in Albuquerque and then head up to Denver, where Sepp had an event at a bookstore called the Tattered Cover. She’d never driven through the Southwest before and was struck by the expanse of the land: miles and miles of gorgeous, moonlit, and ultimately tedious landscape.
Harriet turned from the window to catch Roxy glaring at her. She tried hard not to blink; she didn’t want to give Roxy an inch, didn’t want to capitulate in any way. Although she was unsure what they were actually fighting over and seriously didn’t want to stoop to Roxy’s level of discourse, Harriet was prepared to knock that smirk off Roxy’s face if she had to. She wasn’t going to let a blood-red set of press-on nails intimidate her.
Roxy turned to Sepp and flipped her hair in disgust. It was a move designed to disrespect, to get all up in Harriet’s grill, but all it really did was make Roxy look like a spastic. Roxy pointed at Harriet’s chest.
“They’re not even C cups.”
Sepp opened his mouth to say something but Harriet beat him to it. “You said that before. Is that all you got?”
“Your tits are an insult.”
Harriet smirked at that. “Really? How big were yours, you know, before the accident?”
Roxy slapped her hands over her breasts.
“Ain’t nothin’ accidental about these. I told ’em to make ’em as big as they could without causing an explosion.”
Roxy shot a sideways glance at Sepp. “He never complained about ’em.”
“I’ve got no complaints about hers.”
Roxy leaned forward. “Oh yeah?”
“I think Harriet’s breasts are beautiful.”
Harriet smiled. No one had ever said that before. Roxy flashed a totally insincere smile, as if she’d heard it all now. “Oh wow. Really?”
She turned toward Harriet. “Can I see them?”
Harriet didn’t want to squirm—she knew that was the reaction Roxy wanted—but she couldn’t help it. She squirmed.
“I’ll keep them to myself, thanks.”
Roxy laughed. “You didn’t have a problem sharing them at the Mansion the other night.”
It annoyed Harriet that she was so easily riled by Roxy’s remarks. After all, the squirming, the self-conscious hesitation, the defensiveness and lapses of self-esteem were exactly what Roxy was trying to provoke. Why is it so natural for smart, grown-up people to fall back into juvenile fears? Is that our natural, human default setting? Do we socialize and educate ourselves out of that behavior until someone makes fun of our breast size and then it’s all we can do to keep from yanking their weave out of their head? Harriet didn’t know what bothered her more—that she let Roxy antagonize her or that she took the bait and sniped right back. Either way, she wasn’t going to take her shirt off.
“Sepp, honey, we need to have a talk.”
Harriet couldn’t believe she called him “honey.” She only used that word to describe a sticky substance made by bees, something that she’d liked to put in tea before she discovered agave nectar, but she’d never used it to refer to a human being before.
Harriet got up and went toward the back, to where the water bed sloshed behind the curtain.
…
Sepp looked at Roxy.
“Why do you always have to start stuff?”
She snapped her head at him and flipped her hair.
“Because if I didn’t, we’d just be sitting here doing nothing.”
Sepp got up and stooped as he moved to the back of the RV. He pulled the curtain open and found Harriet sitting on the water bed with the laptop.
Harriet looked up at him. “Close the curtain. I want you to see something.”
Sepp pulled the curtain closed and then sat down next to her on the water bed. The water rippled and sloshed, causing them both to bob up and down gently. He couldn’t help himself, he gave her a kiss on the cheek, then turned and looked at the screen.
“What is it?”
“It’s your ghostwriter’s obituary.”
Sepp leaned forward and read the article. “Wow.”
Harriet nodded. “They bought the whole slipping-in-the-shower thing.”
Sepp looked at her. “So you, like, got away with murder.”
“I didn’t murder him.”
“So you got away with accidentally pushing him off your balcony so he fell to his death.”
Harriet grabbed his face with her hands. She was gentle, but Sepp could tell that she didn’t want him to look away, so he focused on her eyes. They looked so smart behind her glasses.
“I need you to pay attention. Okay?”
Sepp nodded. She spoke slowly and clearly, like you might speak to a Labrador retriever. “We can never mention this again. Not to anyone. Not to each other. Curtis is dead. He slipped in a shower. The end.”
Sepp didn’t quite catch her drift. “But we’re doing a show.”
“What show?”
“Well, technically it’s a proposal for a show, we call it a sizzle reel. We’re doing it right now.”
Sepp saw Harriet’s face change. She looked at him, all concerned like, as if he was really out of it, like that time he was swimming and got run over by some surfer and saw stars and mermaids and stuff. But he wasn’t out of it. No way. If he knew one thing, it was how to keep it real on reality TV.
“What do you mean?”
“This is the show. We’re doing the show right now.”
Harriet smiled at him. “Look, sweetie, I know you’re trying to help me get a book deal and everything. But I don’t think this is the right way to do it. It’s too risky and I don’t want to go to jail. I really don’t.”
Before Sepp could say anything, the curtain was ripped open and Roxy entered holding a giant purple penis made out of some kind of semitranslucent plastic. “Dildo.” Where did that word come from?
Harriet couldn’t help herself, her brow furrowed and she narrowed her eyes at Roxy. She glowered. “Glower.” That’s another good word. Allegedly Scandinavian in origin but most likely from glowan, meaning to glow.
“We’re trying to have a private conversation.”
Roxy tossed the giant purple dildo onto Harriet’s lap.
“Tag. You’re it.”
Harriet looked at the giant purple dildo.
“What are you talking about?”
Roxy shook her head. “That’s the time totem. When I give you that, it means I get one hour of private time with Sepp.”
“What?”
“That’s the rule.”
Harriet looked at Sepp. “Since when do we have rules?”
Sepp shrugged. “There’s always rules on a show.”
“We’re not doing a show. I just told you that.”
Roxy laughed at Harriet. “I don’t know where you think you are, but this is the show. This is for real.”
Harriet nudged the giant purple dildo with her foot. “Right. It’s real. So fuck off. I’m not playing.”
That set Roxy off. She leaned over, putting her face inches from Harriet’s face, and started screaming.
“Who do you think you are? Huh? Miss Intelligentsia? Yeah? You so much better than everybody else? Is that what you think? You’re the only one who knows anything. Is that it?”
Harriet noticed a string of spittle dangling from Roxy’s over-glossed lips, as if threads of her cerebellum had flown out of her mouth and the more she screeched the stupider she became.
Sepp tried to be reasonable. “Harriet. C’mon. Just go sit out there. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
Roxy jumped on that. “You afraid I’ll take your man? Is that it?”
More spittle.
“You don’t think you’re all that, do you now?”
Some hair flipping and head snapping.
“You can’t handle the truth? Is that it? You afraid I’ll steal his ass away from you?”
Finger jabbing. Hair flip. Head snap. Spittle.
“If you love him, you gotta trust him. That’s what I’m talking about. You want to keep it real? Do you? Well, that’s the real motherfucking reality.”
Harriet felt some of Roxy’s saliva hit her cheek. She snapped the laptop shut and stood up. “Whatever.”
Roxy handed her the giant purple dildo.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
Roxy smiled as if she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life. “I suggest you go fuck yourself.”
…
Harriet sat in the front passenger seat and stared out at the scenery. What the fuck was happening? Sepp had told her that the networks wanted some background footage of his book tour for a reunion show, which was fine, that sounded normal, but now he and Roxy were babbling about being on a show. And what’s with the rules? Was she witnessing some group delusion? Like those people who all dressed in black and kept their tennis shoes under their beds for when the aliens on the asteroids were going to come get them? Is that was this was?
Harriet chewed her thumbnail as a couple of fast-food restaurants flashed by on the side of the freeway, their parking lots glowing, sodium-vapor ghosts in the night. The Ninja looked over from behind the steering wheel.
“Nice dildo.”
Harriet looked at the giant purple dildo resting in her lap. “Dildo.” Perhaps from the Italian deletto, meaning “delight”?
“She called it the time totem.”
The Ninja nodded. “She
can’t spell.”
Harriet was confused. “What?”
The Ninja laughed. “She thought it was a clock.”
Harriet didn’t laugh. She wasn’t sure she got the joke.
“You know. Instead of cock. She added the l.”
Harriet nodded. “Good one.”
Hanging out with denizens of the reality TV world made her feel a strange sense of dislocation. The natural order of things was backwards, the cosmos turned on its head. Normally she was the intelligent one. But even though these people had barely finished high school, among them she felt like the stupid one, the dork, the dweeb. They were all in on a joke that she didn’t get. It was as if they were tuned to a whole different wavelength.
They drove in silence for a while. Harriet put the giant purple dildo on the dashboard. She didn’t know what else to do with it.
She turned to the Ninja. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How come there’s no one filming them, but they keep saying that we’re on the show?”
The Ninja smiled. “Because we’re on the show, babe. I mean, I’ll be edited out, but this is the show.”
Again it was like that thing that she couldn’t comprehend.
“How can we be on the show?”
The Ninja tried to explain. “Did you ever see Six Teens in a Van?”
Harriet shook her head. “No.”
“Love Express?”
“No.”
“No Gas, No Ass, No Free Ride?”
“Never heard of it.”
“The Amazing Race?”
“I’ve heard of that one.” She felt apologetic. “But I don’t really watch much TV.”
The Ninja turned and looked at her, then turned his attention back to the highway.
“You seem like a smart person, but somehow you’ve missed the biggest cultural event in the history of our civilization.”
Harriet looked at him. “You’re joking.”
The Ninja laughed. “Numbers don’t lie. Millions and millions of people watch reality TV. More than go to movies or read books or do just about anything. It’s the new, I dunno, the New Testament.”
Raw: A Love Story Page 19