by C. J. Anaya
Midge.
He smiled at the sight of her.
After that one glorious confirmation, Brody felt content to shamelessly eavesdrop upon the strained conversation.
Upon entering the small office space, Midge’s panic descended like an old, persistent nemesis. She gritted her teeth and told herself that she had pushed beyond her loathsome insecurities. This place, though it held her father’s sole interest, attention, and affection was no longer something she felt inclined to compete against.
Her father’s first love had been and always would be his production company. Films, directing, the interchange between celebrities, Hollywood gossip, and the endless network of parties all amounted to one thing and one thing only: his theatrical works of art. A child had been an afterthought, and in her parents’ case, one mighty screw-up in regards to her mother’s inability to remember to take her birth control pills on a consistent basis.
She wondered if her father had any idea of the psychological effect his offices had on her. Probably. His ability to read people and nail down their weaknesses had aided him in a business as cutthroat as entertainment.
Midge took a few steadying breaths and reminded herself that these walls and her father’s consistently indifferent attitude toward her in the last few years were no longer sources of anguish or misery. She had lived on her own merits for some time and made something of herself without her father’s connections, money, or interference.
Big girls like her didn’t need to feel intimidated by unresolved daddy issues.
Her internal pep talk managed to stiffen her backbone and sharpen her courage. Just in time too. Within a few seconds her father’s solid frame stood hovering in the side entrance.
“Hello, Dad,” she said with as much happiness as she could muster. She even managed a tepid smile which she gave herself a mental pat on the back for.
Corbin Knightly entered the room and shifted to the side, tilting his head and critically studying the whole of her. He hadn’t really seen her in six years. She hoped for some kind of loving response, but knew better than to expect it.
After a few more punishing moments of silence, Midge spoke up.
“Have I passed inspection or is there some suggestion you’re aching to make in regards to my appearance?”
Her father’s eyebrows drew up in surprise and a slight smile teased the corners of his mouth, though she noticed some strain around his thin lips and the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t a big man in the sense that he was burly. His six-foot-two frame was what gave him the ability to look down upon others if he felt so inclined. His sandy blond hair always managed to look perfectly windblown, creating the impression that he’d just been surfing and didn’t give a damn about how he appeared to others. He was striking. No doubt about that, and many women had tried to snare him into one illicit affair after another. Yet despite all of her mother’s mental health issues, Corbin had remained surprisingly faithful to Celeste Knightly.
She remembered a conversation they’d had when she was fourteen years old and beginning to understand that calculating look in the eyes of actresses and co-workers alike when conversing with her father.
“Daddy, I think these women are totally into you, and I don’t like it.”
Her father gathered her in for a massive bear hug. “Don’t you know you’re the only woman I can handle taking care of? These ladies are too high maintenance for me.”
“What about Mom?” she asked.
She almost wished she hadn’t. The quick stab of pain that flickered across her father’s face may have gone unnoticed by anyone else, but Midge was highly attuned to her father’s cantankerous moods. He swallowed hard and then moved to pick up a spreadsheet on top of his desk.
“I’ll always love your mother, Midge girl.”
“Then why don’t you ever spend time with her?” The answer to her question was important. She wanted to know exactly where her parents stood. How did she, as Madelyn Knightly, fit into this familial picture if she couldn’t pinpoint some kind of stability in the chaotic dealings between her parents.
“Your mother is searching for her own brand of happiness and most of the time I can’t travel along the same paths with her. She’ll get there someday. We just need to be patient.”
Midge wanted to point out that someone as ill as her mother wasn’t capable of finding her own happiness. Nothing short of an intervention would do, but she knew her father didn’t necessarily know how to handle intense situations like that. Confrontations in his industry were never a problem for him, but saying no to his wife and meting out a little tough love in the process seemed to be beyond him. He tended to shy away from emotionally charged conversations. So everyone in the household tiptoed around her mother, pretending that this phase of over a decade would eventually play itself out, and she would go back to being ambitious, successful, and happy.
Midge snapped out of her sad reverie as Corbin Knightly moved in front of her and took her shoulders in his large hands.
“I’ve missed your spunk, Midge girl. Too many people around here tend to kow-tow and agree with everything I say.”
“How boring.”
Her father threw his head back and laughed for a moment. Midge let the surprising tone and texture of it slide across her skin like a loving embrace. The one thing she had always been capable of doing well was coaxing a laugh from her father.
“Have you gone to visit Mom lately?” She hated to bring it up, but she felt like someone needed to remind him of her existence.
Her father’s eyes darkened in pain before he cleared his throat and spoke.
“I sent her some flowers on her birthday. The nurse knows that it’s best to tell her it’s from a secret admirer.”
Midge nodded. Over the past year, her mother’s condition had begun to deteriorate much more rapidly than before. She became agitated when Midge introduced herself as her daughter. Yes. It was probably for the best.
He let go of her shoulders and motioned for her to take a seat as he slid behind the desk.
No hug then. Midge didn’t know why she had hoped for it.
“You’re too skinny, young lady. Doesn’t that scholarship provide enough money for groceries?”
She rolled her eyes at this, getting ready for the next critical volley to follow.
“My scholarship covers tuition and housing. My freelance work as an editor and writer is what feeds me.”
She waited for him to comment on business being slow or how much more lucrative an internship and subsequent partnership with him might have been. Subjects they had argued in circles over. Instead, he demonstrated great restraint by changing the subject.
“How is your writing going?” He appeared a bit uncomfortable asking, but she answered despite her certainty that he couldn’t have cared less.
“At the moment, I am in the middle of a contemporary romance, a rags to riches story much like Cinderella.”
“Will the love interests live happily ever after?”
“This isn’t a tragedy, Dad. You know I hate a gloomy ending.”
Her father steeped his hands together and rested his chin atop his fingers.
“When do you graduate with your Masters Degree?”
Midge narrowed her eyes at him. They’d been over this last time they spoke.
“I have two more months left of this semester and then one more semester starting in the fall. After that I graduate.”
“But you have nothing going on this summer?”
His question seemed overly casual. She sensed a trap and smelled a rat. Just where was her father going with this line of questioning?
“I wouldn’t say I have nothing. I have my freelance work and my own writing, not to mention marketing for my website and my book once it is finished.”
“Yes, of course,” her father’s hand whisked in the air as if he were swatting down something annoying and inconsequential. “What I mean is you have no set schedule or routine for the summer. No classes yo
u are locked into?”
Midge eyed him suspiciously and decided to avoid his question altogether.
“Dad, let’s cut the chit-chat and get to the heart of what exactly it is you want from me.”
Her father feigned shock at her accusation.
“What could I possibly want from you other than spending some quality time together inquiring after the details of your life?”
“You haven’t been interested in my life for a while now.”
“That’s completely untrue. I’ve followed you on Facebook and Twitter, haven’t I?”
Midge shook her head, wondering if there were parenting classes specifically catered to those individuals with self-centeredness disorders and narcissistic tendencies.
“Not the same as actually having a conversation.”
“We speak on the phone.”
“Twice a year, Dad, and only because your secretary schedules it for you in order to remind you that you have a daughter who lives fifty minutes from you.”
She noted that, for once, he actually had the decency to look guilty, though that lasted for one—maybe two—seconds.
Midge blew out an exasperated sigh and sank a little lower in her chair, hoping it would release some of the tension accumulating in her shoulders.
“Why am I here? You’ve never once asked me to come to your office and speak with you. Not once in six years. So instead of pretending you’re actually interested in my life, how about you tell me what you want from me so we can end this forced family fun and you can get back to creating mind numbing drama.”
Her father’s smile looked more like a grimace, but his shoulders seemed to relax a little. “Here’s the deal, Midge girl, you know how I’ve been working on about three different reality TV series following the lives of celebrities and their budding romances?”
Reality TV again. She’d heard enough about it for one day.
“I don’t want the details, but yes, I’ve seen advertisements for them.”
“Well, we are starting a new dating series, hoping to create a safe environment for wealthy men to find women who are more interested in them individually rather than their money or assets.”
“Novel idea,” she muttered.
“Isn’t it? I certainly could have used something like this when I was dating your mother.”
“In all fairness to her, you were using her career as an in for directing your first major motion picture.”
Her father snapped his fingers and nodded in agreement. “You see? There are unscrupulous people with ulterior motives running rampant around the dating scene. What is a wealthy bachelor to do if he wants to find true love in a sea of gold-diggers and fame seekers?”
“A truly compelling dilemma. I’m assuming your question was rhetorical?” She yawned in order to emphasize her boredom, but her father had just stepped upon his soap box and wouldn’t be descending any time soon.
“This new reality TV series will follow the dating life of a wealthy bachelor as he gets to know several different women, all hand-picked and vetted to be the perfect wife for any wealthy man. Each week he will decide which relationships are not progressing until he narrows it down to the girl he wishes to propose to.”
“Propose to? Hand-picked and vetted? Tell me the truth, here. How many of these women are actually aspiring actresses? How many will be prepped and coached for creating wildly emotional scenes where the man in question is either getting his face slapped one minute or being desperately kissed the next minute by these women as a last ditch effort to save their crumbling, non-existent relationships?”
Her father grinned at her. “Oh, that’s good, Midge girl. I’ll have to add something like that to a few of the episodes. This is why you should have come to work for me instead of pursuing something as ridiculous as a Masters in English.”
Well, she’d been waiting for it and there it was. At least he’d gotten it off his chest and they could move on.
“You do realize that creating stories for your episodes involves creative writing, yes?”
“I’m just saying, you could have done an internship with me and learned everything you needed to know in the process. What’s so great about being an author when you could work with your own father? I thought you loved this company,” he said in an aggravated tone.
Midge stared at him in shock. Oh sure, he had said all of this the very night she’d left her home and never looked back, but he was notorious for evading these kinds of conversations.
He worked hard to get his breathing under control and then in a softer voice he said, “I wish you had stuck to the plan we mapped out for you.”
“Why are you telling me all of this? We’ve been through this before and we don’t agree with one another’s take on where my future is headed. So let’s just agree to disagree while you tell me why I’m here.”
Her father remained silent for a few moments and then nodded, quickly bouncing back to his previously jaunty behavior.
“I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, I want to know what you think about it.”
“You…you want my opinion?” Her disbelief couldn’t have been more obvious.
“Of course. What do you think about a guy dating several specially picked women in order to find the perfect wife?”
“Coming from a woman’s point of view, I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than throwing myself at a man who is dating several other females at the same time. Seriously, do these women have no self-respect? Do they really want their pathetic attempts at snaring a man and then subsequently being rejected by him splashed across national television?”
“Wonderful, isn’t it? The things people will do to get themselves on TV. I can’t imagine this show tanking when the subject matter is so controversial in nature.”
“You’re sick, you know that?”
Her father’s mischievous grin gave her the willies. “So I’ve been told. Now then, we have twenty women who have already received vigorous background checks, screen tests and other necessary vetting in order to come up with the best possible fit for the bachelor who will be starring in the first season.”
“The sorry sucker.” Then a worrisome thought struck Midge. “You haven’t signed on Brody Prescott for this series, have you?”
Her father looked at her in surprise.
“Not that I would be able to leak that kind of information to anyone who isn’t working on the project,” he eyed her askance, “but no. I can honestly say that up to this point Brody Prescott has not agreed to work on this series. Now how about you tell me why his name popped into your head. Do you know the guy?”
Her father’s question was delivered with far too much interest. She had to tread carefully here.
“The scandal surrounding him and your tendency to cast controversial people in your shows made his involvement a natural conclusion to come to.”
He considered this for a moment while she held her breath. Then he smiled and nodded in agreement.
“You know me well, Midge girl.”
“Far too well,” she muttered.
“Anyway, back to why you’re here. We start shooting two months from now, but I’ve hit a snag and am in need of your assistance.”
“I’m not helping you shoot this series. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
“I’m not asking you to shoot it with me. I’m asking you to be one of the contestants. A cast member.”
Midge’s jaw dropped well below the level of her father’s desk. The suggestion was absolutely ludicrous. She finally broke the silence with a quiet chuckle which quickly turned into one of the best laughs she’d had in a very long time.
Her father didn’t appear the slightest bit perturbed by her hysterical laughter, merely waiting patiently as if he had more to spring on her.
“I can’t…I can’t imagine what in the world might possess you to believe that…that I would ever willingly end up on one of your shows…it’s just…it’s so…” Her laughter retur
ned again, rendering her speechless once more. When she finally calmed down a bit she gave her father a condescending pat on the hand, and then leaned back in her chair.
“Thanks for that. You have no idea how badly I needed a good laugh. Now how about you tell me the real reason you brought me here.”
Her father’s intense look remained linked with hers as he explained his situation. “We’ve had a cancellation. One of the contestants on the show had to drop out due to a botched nose job and several other reconstructive surgeries scheduled for the summer. She won’t be face time ready, and we have to have twenty contestants. It’s the number this production has been planned around. I need you to fill in for this girl for the first night. I promise you, at the end of the night the bachelor will be instructed to include you as one of three girls eliminated during the diamond ceremony.”
Midge’s horror increased with every word uttered by her father.
“Absolutely not,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Absolutely not.” Midge gave it a little more backbone the second time around.
“Consider it for just a few minutes.”
“I won’t consider it for even a few moments. You are not dragging me back into this lifestyle, this fake, unfeeling world that you reside in where everyone is competing for the best hair, the biggest boob jobs, the most expensive mansions, or the most impressive vehicles. I walked away from it for several good reasons, Dad, and I will not get sucked back into this endless black hole of immoral decay. Plus, what does it matter if you have twenty contestants exactly if you’re planning on doing the first round of eliminations that very evening.”
“I already explained the necessity of having twenty contestants.”
“Get someone else.”
“I know you, and I trust you to conduct yourself appropriately on camera. I don’t have the time or the patience to do more auditions and screen testing to find someone new.”