Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  Once the waiter left, Richard started talking about budgets and schedules and casting and keeping the network happy and making an “advertiser-friendly” show without “losing our edge.” And I felt … well, I felt like he’d just called me an idiot and was now trying to prove it.

  At one point, he asked, “Are you with me, Mallory?” And I thought, Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

  Was I with him?

  Everyone—the network, Donald, Gina—was excited about him being the show runner. He seemed to know what he was doing.

  But me. What about me?

  “Yeah, I’m with you so far,” I answered.

  We were on much safer ground when we started talking about the story. Richard loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. Said I was a genius. Said he couldn’t wait to read more and see where I was going with everything. He loved the friendship battles. He loved the romantic triangles and squares and hexagons. He loved how real it was. Despite myself, I grew happier. Because what writer can remain mad when an attractive, sure-of-himself guy makes a string of compliments that seem, even if they aren’t heartfelt, at least mindfelt?

  Next, we talked about casting.

  “Isn’t Dallas great?” Richard asked.

  Cool as the inside of a refrigerator, I simply nodded.

  “Apparently, we’re not making much headway with his agent—she sees bigger and better things for him. Wants his launchpad to be some Minghella movie that might be made after he finishes his next three. But I think we’re going to be able to cajole her into letting us fly him out here. Then, my dear, you’re going to have to pitch like you’ve never pitched before. We need to hit the creativity angle to get him to sign.”

  This time I nodded with some difficulty. It was going to be up to me to pitch Likely Story to Dallas?

  “About Sarah—” Richard resumed.

  “I think I already found someone for Sarah,” I interrupted. “This great actress. From my school. A real discovery.”

  I knew I had to downplay my connection to Amelia, so it wouldn’t seem like I was just trying to do a friend a favor. Richard looked a little skeptical.

  “Have her send a head shot to the casting director,” he told me.

  “Okeydokey,” I replied. He had no idea what to do with that phrase. People in his world could barely spell OK.

  For the rest of the lunch, we were unlike any other pair at the Ivy. We didn’t gossip. We didn’t flirt. We didn’t look to the street for paparazzi. We just talked about work. A lot of work. I was exhausted by the end of it. Richard, if anything, seemed energized.

  The reality of it all was setting in on me … and I felt the weight of it. All of the people whose jobs would be on the line. All of the money that was going to be spent. All of the sets that would be built. All of the ink that would be used to print out scripts. And the less tangible things, like the weight of expectations. The weight of chance. The weight of potential success. The weight of probable failure.

  “This is going to be huge,” Richard said as our lunch ended and he charged the check to the network. When he got up to leave, I realized that he and I were the same exact height—not what I expected.

  “Huge,” I echoed.

  “Look,” he said, pulling his valet check from his jacket, “I’m not going to hold your hand. But I am going to watch your back. You have to trust me.”

  I hoped that I could.

  I hoped he was strong enough to prevent the weight from crushing us both.

  “What’re you doing right now?”

  Dates with Keith would usually start with this question.

  “Nothing much.”

  Whatever I was doing, that would be my answer: “Nothing much.” I could be saving a dozen little kittens from a burning orphanage, and if I saw Keith’s number on my phone, I’d drop them in the flames to take the call.

  As Amelia fretted about getting new head shots to send to the casting director, and as Mom seethed whenever she caught sight of me, and as I worked on completing the pilot script for Likely Story, Keith was the oasis. I’d sneak to the back door of California Pizza Kitchen, and he would smuggle me toppings. I’d hang out with him after school on Wednesdays, since that was the day he had off and Erika had therapy. We were free and clear, even if nothing felt free and nothing felt clear.

  “What’re you doing?” This time he was calling from outside a movie theater in Century City. If I jumped in my car, we could make a six o’clock show.

  I looked at the scene I was writing on my laptop.

  SARAH

  Every time I think I’m ready

  for the truth, I’m not.

  RYAN

  I never would have started

  things with Jacqueline

  if I’d known …

  SARAH

  Don’t tell me, okay? Because

  there’s no way out of this.

  You made a choice. Maybe

  it wasn’t the right choice,

  but it’s a choice we

  both have to live with.

  RYAN

  But what if I didn’t know

  there was a choice?

  What if I didn’t know you

  were an option?

  SARAH

  It’s too late now. I wish you

  hadn’t told me. Any of it.

  RYAN

  But you’re the one—

  SARAH

  I’m the one you can’t have.

  And you’re the one I can’t

  have. That’s just the way

  it is.

  This wasn’t a transcription of any conversation I’d actually had with Keith. These kinds of conversations only happened in my head. I was just lucky that now I was going to be paid to let them out. If they couldn’t be of any use to me, at least Sarah and Ryan would get something out of them.

  “What do you say, Starbucks?” Keith asked on the other end of the phone.

  “I’ll be right there, Peet’s,” I replied.

  I was such a sucker for all the classic things a girl isn’t supposed to be a sucker for:

  The dimples. The broad shoulders.

  The unavailable boy.

  There was still that nervousness at the movie theater, with both of us a little afraid that we’d bump into somebody Keith or Erika knew. To be on the safe side, we always played the role of “just friends” until the lights went down, and even then we kept it below the chair line. At first, it was thrilling—but like most thrills, that only lasted a short while. I knew Keith was tired of it, too; he wasn’t afraid to tell me so, to wish out loud that things could be different. If only Erika wasn’t so unstable. If only Erika didn’t need him so much. In the darker moments, I wondered if maybe I was too stable, if maybe I should start to act more desperate. But why would Keith want two girls like that? Didn’t I want to be the better one?

  It used to be that I couldn’t see a movie with him without mapping our story onto the plot. The killer could be delivering the head of the hero’s girlfriend in a box and I’d think, I wonder how Keith would react if someone beheaded me. Stupid, stupid thoughts. This time I found another way to distract myself; as I watched the movie, I suddenly became the casting director of Likely Story, looking at each actor, no matter how small the part, and wondering if he’d be right for Ryan’s dad or if she’d be right for Jacqueline. The answer was pretty much no across the board, but it was fun to speculate.

  When the movie was over, the countdown to good-bye began. Most couples would go to dinner after a six o’clock movie, but Keith always had homework to do and a family (two little sisters) to get back to. He started asking me about how my writing was going—and then his phone rang. I could tell from the tune it was Erika.

  This happened often enough. Sometimes he picked it up. Sometimes he didn’t. At first, I treated all of these calls like they were tests. But every time Keith failed, I felt I was failing, too. So I stopped testing.

  “Do you mind?” he asked. He always asked.


  I shook my head.

  “It’ll just be a second.” He answered. “Hey, Erika…. Yeah, just at the movies with Rob…. Rob from skiing, yeah. How are you? … Oh man … okay … okay … yeah, sure … no problem whatsoever. I’ll be over in a few.”

  After he hung up, he turned to me. “Her dad freaked out again, and she and her mom are both a mess. It sounds like he totaled their car.”

  I told him to go. I thanked him for the movie. I said it was okay for him to leave. He was doing the right thing. I knew he was doing the right thing. It just happened that it wasn’t the right thing for me.

  I went to In-N-Out for a milkshake and some onion rings before heading home. Mom was waiting, claws out, as soon as I got in the door.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been worried restless!” she cried.

  It was phrases like this that made me think the Good As Gold writers hated my mother as much as they pretended to love her. They would give her these awkward catchphrases that no human being would ever say, and then have her repeat them from episode to episode. “I’ve been worried restless!” was one of the milder ones, used whenever Diamond got into trouble on the show (which was often enough). Some of my other favorites?

  “You make me want to baste my own heart in the juices of love!”

  “I will not stand here and be treated like an arachnid!”

  “The secrets I know could fill two Vaticans!”

  “Money is everything … and everything is money.”

  I swore (“on the grave of everything that’s good!”) that the people in Likely Story would never speak like this. It was bad enough that my own mother did.

  “You were out with that Kevin boy, weren’t you?”

  A few months ago, Mom demanded that her personal assistant read my diary and give her the highlights. I never heard the end of it.

  “Keith, Mom. And, yes, we just saw a movie.”

  “I knew it! You’re not being careful, are you? Why can’t you listen? Now more than ever, you must not get pregnant!”

  When I was six, Mom forced me to take riding lessons. They stopped soon after everyone realized that I enjoyed feeding the ponies carrots more than anything else. The only lasting thing I learned, which I used now, was my ability to cry out:

  “WHOA!”

  “They only want one thing,” my mother continued. “They want power. And if they can’t get that, they’ll settle for sex.”

  “WHOA!”

  I was not about to take relationship advice from a woman whose relationship to reality was remarkably questionable.

  “If you screw up now,” she went on, “I won’t be the only one you’re hurting. You have your own future now to think of, too.”

  “Is that what this whole thing is to you?” I shot back. “An insurance policy against me embarrassing you? Did I not have a future before? Do I only get one if I’m signed up to do a soap opera?”

  This elicited a big diva sigh from Mom.

  “You’re impossible,” she moaned. “Simply impossible.”

  “Somebody draw this woman a bubble bath!” I cried out. “Alert the masseuse! Having a daughter is just too much work for her.”

  Oh, how I hated her then, for making me act so hatefully. This wasn’t the way I talked to people. Only to her. Because it was the way she talked to me.

  Her jaw was set, her eyes all cold fire.

  “You forget … I’m all you have,” she told me.

  “And I’m all you have,” I told her back.

  I wanted someone—the maid, the gardener, a cat burglar—to walk in, to interrupt. But the house was empty except for us. We were, indeed, all we had.

  “I have an early call tomorrow morning,” Mom announced. Then she lifted her head and strode to her bedroom, leaving me standing two steps inside the front door, imagining the conversation we hadn’t had.

  Welcome home, dear. How was your day? How is your writing?

  If you need any help, let me know.

  For us, dialogue like that just wasn’t believable. Because we were forced to write it ourselves, and we always got it wrong.

  The only break I got from writing the first script was when Dallas Grant was flown into town. Richard, Donald, and Trip were ironing out all the budgets and details that needed to be agreed upon before we shot the first episode. And Annie Prue, the casting director, was gathering head shots from all corners of the Hollywood universe, after sending out a description of each character (amusingly called a “breakdown”). Agents would send Annie all the photos, and then she and her staff would choose the hundred or so most promising actors and put them “on camera.” They’d cull the best ones from those, and Richard and I would then take a look and choose some finalists to come in and read for us.

  With Dallas, though, we were bypassing the usual process. Everyone felt he was the one for Ryan, assuming he knew how to act in front of a camera. We kept saying the show would make him big. But what we really meant was that he would make the show big.

  I thought we’d just meet in the network offices, but that morning Richard called me with a change of plans.

  “He’s not the office type,” he told me. “Even a studio office. I’ll give him the tour, give him the dog and pony show, and maybe even throw a goldfish in if he likes goldfish. Trip’ll dangle the moneybags, and I’ll dazzle him with anecdotes from the Catfight set. But with you, it’s got to seem real. We asked him where in LA he wanted to go, and he said the Getty. So you’re going to the Getty. I’m sending a car to pick you up at noon. Be ready—I don’t want him waiting.”

  I tried to sense nervousness in Richard’s voice, but it’s like he had all anxiety manicured out every morning.

  The nervousness, I feared, was all mine.

  “What will I wear? What will I wear? What will I wear?” I kept saying.

  Amelia, who always cared more about clothes than I did, took this as a kind of victory.

  “It’s not like it’s a date,” she teased.

  I was not going to dignify that insinuation with a response. Instead I said, “Look, everyone thinks he’s the best. And he’s the one you’re going to be acting opposite when you’re Sarah. So I’m doing this for you as much as for me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Amelia replied. “You’re not serious about those shoes, are you?”

  It was 11:56 and I’d already tried on 1,156 outfits. It felt like my closet had made a suicide pact with my mental health.

  “Just tell me what shoes to wear,” I pleaded. “I won’t argue. I won’t resist. I’ll do whatever you say. Just please end this hellish spectacle.”

  An hour. We’d been doing this for an hour. And it was hellish because I knew I had to look:

  a) creative

  b) smart

  c) like I knew what I was doing

  while at the same time I wanted to look

  d) attractive

  I had to pray that Amelia, who woke up every morning looking all of these things (especially the fourth), knew what she was doing.

  I drew the line at makeup. Or at least I tried to draw the line at makeup. But Amelia wore me down. Finally, I agreed to makeup as long as it didn’t look like I was wearing makeup.

  “Whatever you say, glamour girl,” Amelia teased. Then when I told her to stop, she changed it to Mrs. Dallas Grant.

  “What is this, second grade?” I asked.

  “Honey, I’ll bet you never looked this good in second grade,” Amelia countered.

  Then she shoved me in my car before I could check out a mirror.

  Immediately, I started biting my nails.

  The Getty Center is the kind of place that Angelenos always say they mean to go but never do. As I took the tram up to the art museum, I was surrounded by foreign tourists talking in a full spectrum of languages. I tried hard not to study my reflection in the windows. Either he’s going to do it or he isn’t, I told myself. You’re not enough to influence it either way.

  When the tram got to the top of the Getty’
s hill, I let the rest of the passengers leave before me. As I stepped out, I watched them disperse—going off in their own guidebook clusters, some to the left, some to the right, some swinging around to the gardens. The great thing about foreign tourists—even trendy ones—is that they rarely wear black. So I could watch their colors scatter—red in one direction, a pair of blues in another. Then I focused again and saw one figure moving against the tide, moving toward me. Coming closer. Recognizing me.

  I had to blink. Once. Twice.

  It was too unreal.

  You know how in cartoons there’s always a character who has a cloud following him? The rest of the sky can be blue, but this one character is always being rained on. Well, Dallas was the opposite of that. Wherever he was, no matter what the weather, it was like there was this patch of sunbeams that lit everything immediately around him.

  This boy, I thought, is a thing of beauty.

  And, even better, he was a slightly shy, slightly hesitant thing of beauty.

  “Mallory?” he asked. A little—I swear to God—bashful.

  “Dallas,” I squeaked out.

  With this confirmation, he smiled. His shoulders eased a little.

  My chest tightened.

  “Thanks for meeting me here,” he said. “I know it’s a hike.”

  “No,” I said, trying to walk the fine line between babble and silence. “I love it here. It makes you think there might be a point to having rich people, if they all donate their art collections to the public like this.”

  “It boggles your mind, doesn’t it?” Dallas said. “I mean, however many million years ago, a dinosaur dies. Eventually its body becomes oil. Some company comes along and pulls it from the earth. The owner of that company makes twelve million dollars and buys a Van Gogh. He builds a museum for it … and here we are.”

  “Yup,” I said. “Here we are.”

  Cue: awkward silence.