“I’m sorry, I haven’t found out what’s new with you. What did you get up to today?” I asked.
“Uh … school … then work … then home … then homework. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom!” He mimed shooting him self in the head.
“Fascinating. A real page-turner,” I said.
“I save the drama for you.”
“Here’s another question….”
“Goody. I hope it involves math,” Keith said.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Are you suggesting that we finally follow through on our blood oath to bring anarchy and revolution to the streets of America?” he asked dryly.
“I was hoping to save that ’til the weekend,” I responded.
“Oh, well. In that case I have to work.”
“Really?” I wasn’t sure if he was still joking.
“Yep—five ’til closing. It’s AWESOME!”
It sucked that Keith had to work so much. Most of the kids we went to school with didn’t need after-school jobs just to guarantee a couple of twenties in their wallet come the weekend, but with an absentee father, Keith was not as fortunate. It’s not like his mom didn’t make a respectable living, because she did, but with three kids and a Southern California mortgage, she couldn’t really treat Keith to all the fast food and gas a teenage boy needs.
“I don’t suppose you could get someone to cover….”
“You have something planned?”
I proceeded to explain the dilemma with Dallas and how Francesca thought dinner would be a good idea and that when she’d suggested a double date, I just for some reason said sure.
Keith sighed and walked to the window, which was caked with the remnants of a thousand sprinkler cycles.
“Yeah, I guess I could get Jimmy to take my shift. It’s just that I kind of need all the shifts I can get if I want to afford that snowboard trip up to Mammoth later this month.”
“Well, if it’s money you’re worried about,” I said, “I can totally pay you for your time. Dinner will be on me.”
Suddenly all the air seemed to get sucked out of the room as Keith turned red. “I am not a charity case, Mallory,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I mumbled.
He took a deep breath. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” He paused. “So let’s just drop this subject right now. You never need to pay me to go out with you.”
“Keith, I know that,” I tried to explain. “You are not Julia Roberts to my Richard Gere. I just thought that since this was, like, totally a favor, the least I could do was buy you a burrito. Consider yourself my freelance consultant.”
“A what?” he asked.
“Oh, one of those titles like ‘associate producer’ that are just vague enough to cover anything,” I said.
He sat down next to me on the bed. His cheeks were still flushed, but I could see he wasn’t as upset.
“Well, as fun as it sounds to be your freelance consultant, I’m more than happy to settle for the title of ‘boyfriend.’ And, as said boyfriend, I will do things like rearrange my whole frickin’ life just to go to a business dinner with said girlfriend.”
I was nervous, but he eased it with a smile.
“And just for the record, the Bank of Keith doesn’t accept your personal checks. It only accepts really good, hot, serious, make-your-mother-blush-style kisses.”
For good measure, I made a big deposit.
On the way to work the next morning, my mother hit me up for a bigger part.
“Now that there are going to be more consenting adults on the show, don’t you think Vienna deserves some romance of her own?” she asked/told me.
“Mom, you’re the guidance counselor.”
“Yes, but even guidance counselors have provocative sexual desires!”
They couldn’t have sent a limo that stretched long enough for me to get away from this conversation. It was bad enough that her character was named Vienna—an homage to her Good As Gold character, Geneva. It had been Mom’s idea (she did not use the word homage) and the network had loved it. Actually, she wanted her character to be named Paris. I counter-offered Leningrad. We compromised on Vienna.
“Mom,” I said now, “nobody wants to know about the guidance counselor’s needs and desires. All they want is for the guidance counselor to get them into a good school.”
“But what about the School of Life, Mallory? What about the School of Life?”
I just looked out the window at the Yum Yum Donuts, knowing if I fell into silence, she would feel she’d made her point.
When I got to the writers’ room, Tamika looked like she wanted to use her head to jackhammer the ceiling.
“I think the network’s notes are longer than the script!” she groaned.
“Hand ’em over,” I said.
Sure enough, the network had gone through every word with a fine-toothed bludgeon. They wanted more sex. They wanted more murder. They wanted more shirts to come off the guys and more bathing suits to go on the girls.
Each change was initialed FW.
I looked up at Tamika.
“Who in God’s creation is this Frieda Weiner witch, and where does she get off saying what people our age want to watch?” I said, indignant. “I’ll bet the last time she went on a date was when soaps were in black-and-white and sponsored by actual detergent companies! I’ll give her a little consultation, if you know what I mean….”
Tamika had gone pale white. Which was pretty impressive, since she’s black.
The look in her eyes was unmistakable.
“Frieda Weiner is standing right behind me, isn’t she?” I asked.
Tamika nodded.
“Within earshot?”
“Yes,” Frieda Weiner’s voice said. “Within earshot.”
I turned around and faced her. She was shorter than me but had plenty of jewelry to compensate.
“For your information,” she said, “I speak on behalf of Webster Strong and all of the network VPs. And, also for your information, my husband and I have been very happily married for the past thirty years. So I don’t need to go on dates.”
She shoved a few more pages in my general direction.
“More notes,” she said.
“We’ll take them under consideration,” I replied icily.
“You’d better,” she replied, then stormed off.
When she was gone, I turned back to Tamika.
“She would never talk like that to me if I were her age, would she?” I asked.
“Probably worse, Lucy Ricardo,” Tamika said. “Now let’s see the damage she’s done this time….”
After a couple of hours of undoing Frieda Weiner’s witchwork in the writers’ room and a couple of hours of worthless tutoring from Miss Julie, I made my way across the network lot to Trip Carver’s office.
Greg looked happy to see me.
“Hey!” he said, getting up from his perch outside Trip’s sanctum. “How’s it going?”
“Good. Sort of. How are you?”
“Invisibly chained to this desk. But otherwise okay.”
“Is Trip back from his—” I stopped myself.
Greg smiled. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“No, it’s silly.”
“Everybody does it.”
“Fine. Is Trip back from his trip?”
Greg shook his head. “On the morrow. But he’s been talking to Richard about your show.”
I raised an eyebrow. I found myself doing this more and more lately.
“Really?”
“Looks like you’re going to reshoot the opening credits this weekend. Prepare for a late-night flight on Friday.”
This was music to my ears. I leaned over with an invisible scissors and pretended to cut Greg’s invisible chain. “Maybe we can get you to come, too,” I said.
Greg grinned this boyish, dopey grin that definitely didn’t go with the generic-brand suit he was wearing.
“That would be cool,
” he said.
“We’ll see what we can do.”
I might have stayed there longer, just to chat, but the phone started ringing again and Greg’s chain pulled him back in.
“See you later,” he mouthed to me.
“See you in Washington State,” I mouthed back.
I headed to the set and found my mother shooting a scene with Alexis. Since they only had one scene together so far, I knew which one it was. Sarah, still heartbroken from having to leave Ryan, is trying to hide her pain from everyone, including Vienna … but Vienna sees right through her.
VIENNA
What’s wrong, Sarah?
SARAH
It’s nothing.
VIENNA
No, as much as you try to
disguise it as nothing, I can
tell it’s something …
something very wrong. You
might not believe it, Sarah,
but I know what wrong feels
like. It doesn’t let go.
Only, this was how my mother said it now.
VIENNA
No, you cannot tell me it’s
nothing! It’s something,
Sarah! It’s something! You
have no idea what pain lies
in my past, what kind of
wrongs have been infected. No
matter how hard I try, they
won’t let go!
I knew Richard was in the control booth, and that I should not be saying a word while I was on the set. But I couldn’t help it. At the very least, we had to get her to say inflicted instead of infected. I was about to yell “STOP!” when my mother surprised me by doing it herself.
“STOP!” she cried. “We must have the lighting fixed this instant.”
“What is it, my dear?” Richard’s voice asked over the loudspeaker. “Your lighting is perfect. Completely set according to your contractual specifications for interiors.”
“I know! But look at the lighting on this poor girl. She looks older than me! I insist that you make it gentler.”
Alexis looked at my mother in wonder.
“I had no idea,” she said.
My mother patted her on the knee. “Now, don’t you worry. I will make sure they give you the best lighting possible. When you’ve been in The Biz as long as I have, you learn all the tricks.”
“Thank you,” Alexis said.
“Oh, it’s my pleasure,” Mom replied.
It was one heck of a performance. I was actually starting to believe that Mom cared about someone besides herself.
They replayed the scene on the monitors, and I saw my mother was absolutely right—the lighting on Alexis needed to be changed. Nobody else had caught it. And Mom knew it without even seeing the footage.
I walked over as Gina fixed Mom’s makeup.
“Any chance I could get you to stick to the script?” I asked my mother.
“Oh, I did!” she said breezily. She gestured for Gina to hand over the pages. “I just made a few tweaks.”
In other words, she’d scribbled all over the script and made her own dialogue.
“Frieda approved them,” Mom added.
I was about to tear out all my hair, and then some of hers.
“I liked the new dialogue,” Alexis chimed in. “But you probably meant to say inflicted instead of infected.”
“Thank you!” Mom cried, as if she’d just been given gold. “I’m glad someone has an eye on my dialogue besides me. You’re such a sweetheart … and such a good actress.”
Alexis actually blushed.
“All right!” the director called. “If you’re not one of the actresses, off the set!”
Gina and I stepped to the side … and watched as Mom and Alexis completely nailed the take. Alexis’s gradual revealing of her pain even moved me … and I’d written it. There’s nothing quite so silly as crying at your own writing—but if even I could fall for it, I guess it couldn’t be that bad.
During the scene, Alexis moved from denial to complete misery. And the minute the director called cut, she popped right into exhilaration—the exhilaration, I knew, of getting the job done right.
“How was it?” she came over and asked me.
“Do I have to say it? You were fantastic.”
“Yay!” she said, and she—I swear—jumped up and down. “Your mother is the greatest. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. We practiced—I mean, rehearsed—before. And the lighting!”
There was no way to tell her that my mother’s kindness was no doubt self-interested. I mean, if Alexis was good in the scene, it would make the scene (and therefore my mother) look good.
Alexis must have sensed that my mind had fallen from yay-ness.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. And then she whispered low, “Is it Dallas?”
That made me stop and pay attention. Did she think I was auditioning to be his Juliet, too?
“What about Dallas?” I asked cautiously.
“Have you seen what we shot this morning?”
I shook my head.
“Well, Dallas wasn’t really into it, if you know what I mean. Richard kept yelling at him, and that would only make it worse. Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“It was kind of like acting with a statue. It’s like he’s lost his spark. We have to help him get his spark back!”
“Maybe he was just having a bad day,” I offered lamely.
“Maybe,” Alexis said, but I could tell she didn’t believe it. She looked like she was going to cry.
I looked at the corner of the set … and saw my mother and Frieda Weiner.
Heading to lunch.
Together.
Now it was me who wanted to cry.
Richard was in his office, eating sushi again.
“Do you get the same thing for lunch every day?” I asked.
He looked at me like my IQ was the same as my age.
“Of course,” he said. “Do you know how much time people waste figuring out what to eat? If you add up all the minutes, it’s something like three months out of their total lives, assuming they live to sixty. It’s insane. Does it really matter what you eat? Is it really worth that much time deciding? If you get it wrong, you can change it next meal. Just don’t spend all your life deciding which sandwich you want. There are way more important things to do.”
“I just thought you liked sushi,” I said.
“No more or less than anything else.”
“About Frieda Weiner …,” I began.
Richard held up his hand.
“I know, I know. She’s interfering. She’s got all the drama sense of a mad cow. You want her gone. I know. But Trip and Webster have sent her, so we have to hear her out, then pick our battles. You’ve got to play their game, Mallory. Because they own the field.”
“I think my mother’s up to something.”
“This is news? Your mother is always up to something. That’s why I love her. We could all take lessons from your mom on playing the game.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. Sensing this, Richard added, “Which isn’t to say it’s her show. Or Frieda Weiner’s show. It’s our show. And we’ll do what we can to keep it that way.”
I didn’t like the our … but it was better than a their.
Later that day, a new batch of “notes” came from the network.
Included was this new line:
VIENNA
Jacqueline, I don’t want you
to think of me as just a
guidance counselor. I’m not only here to get you into a
good school. I’m here to help
you in the School of Life.
This, I decided, was a declaration of war.
Keith was right on time to pick me up for our “double date” with Francesca and Dallas. He was nervous—a fact that was clear because he was overcompensating to look like he wasn’t nervous. As I walked over, Keith got out of the car and opened my door for me. It wasn’
t even something he thought about, some ploy to impress. It just came naturally.
“How are you, Marilyn?” he said, pulling me into a kiss.
“Out of the park, DiMaggio,” I said once we’d stopped. I could feel the nervousness in his kiss. “This’ll be fun, I promise. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Who said I had anything to worry about?”
Somewhere on Franklin, around the Bourgeois Pig coffeehouse, I broke the bad news.
“So, um, I have to tell you something.”
“Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound like an intro to ‘I just won the lottery. Let’s ditch this one-horse town and move to Rio.’”
I looked out the window to see the Scientology Celebrity Centre. I tried to draw strength from the imagined presence of an E-Metering Tom Cruise beyond the wall.
“You know how much of a disaster the opening credits are?”
He nodded.
“Well, we’re going to do some additional filming this weekend to fix the opening credits. And we’re filming on location in Washington State. And I have to be there.”
Keith looked away from the road and repeated, “This weekend? Valentine’s Day?”
“Unfortunately. But I insisted that I get to stay in town for the dance. The cast is flying up Friday evening, but I said I had to go to the dance first.”
“So you’re going up Saturday?” he asked.
“Well …,” I hemmed, then hawed, “actually, I’m taking the red-eye out of LAX late Friday night.”
“So after the dance I get to drive you to the airport? I thought we were going to, well, make some mischief afterward.”
“I’ll give you a rain check on the mischief.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Keith seemed genuinely confused. “I mean, if I tell you I’m not disappointed, it sounds like I don’t really care about being with you. And if I say I am disappointed, I sound like a jerk.”
“You can say you understand,” I said quietly, touching his leg. “You know how crazy things are for me. It’ll all calm down after the first episode is completely done. I promise.”
Keith sighed and downshifted as we approached the restaurant. Miraculously, he found a parking space.
Likely Story! Page 21