Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  Gina finished pinning Javier’s curl into place. I put my hand on her arm. “I need your help, too.”

  “What were you thinking, dear?”

  “Have my mother take you out to lunch for your birthday. You’ve got to keep her off the set all afternoon. I can’t trust her not to squeal if she figures out something’s up.”

  “But it’s not my birthday on Friday,” Gina protested.

  I rolled my eyes. “How long have you known my mother?”

  “About three decades. Give or take.”

  “And has she ever remembered your birthday?”

  Gina put down the eye shadow she was preparing for Francesca’s face. “No, she never has.”

  “Then why would she start now? I’ll even suggest it tonight. That way you don’t have to bring it up.”

  Gina sighed her giving-in sigh. I’d heard it a million times before.

  “I suppose. But I’m not going to tell anything other than white lies. No black ones.”

  I thanked her profusely. By now Javier was positively giddy with the excitement of the caper. “What can I do?” he asked eagerly.

  “You, my friend, can help Greg break into the security office.”

  “What?” Greg nearly spilled his Vitaminwater when Javier and I found him in the commissary and told him what I needed him to do.

  “I’ve been hanging around this studio since I was knee-high to a Munchkin,” I explained. “So I know a few things. One is that Richie in security loves Chinese chicken salad. The other is that Groovy Gil the editor has been spending a whole lot of his work time using the network’s equipment to edit his own hard-core horror movie.”

  “I don’t see what Chinese chicken salad and Gil’s horror movie have to do with anything,” said Greg, straightening his skinny tie.

  “This studio is totally Big Brother. There are security cameras everywhere.”

  Greg looked around for cameras, flop sweat beading on his forehead.

  “If the bigwigs knew that Gil was spending so much of his time doing his own movie in the editing room, he might lose his job. I know that he pays off Richie. If you lure Richie out of the security office with the promise of CC salad, Javier can sneak in and abscond with the security tapes of Gil’s extra-curriculars. Then we can blackmail Gil into helping us cut the new scenes into the pilot without the network knowing.”

  “You’re crazy,” Greg said.

  “Like a fox!” Javier whispered, clapping with glee.

  “Will you do it?” I asked hopefully. “Please.”

  Greg looked me straight in the eye and said with all seriousness, “Just where are we going to get this Chinese chicken salad?”

  “Chin Chin, silly,” scolded Javier. “Best in LA.”

  My next stop on the super-secret express was Tamika. I was going to need her to use her film school skills to supervise Groovy Gil during his impromptu late-night editing session. Not surprisingly, she agreed right away to the covert operation and even vowed to wear all black that day just for fun. She was the only one who was sure this farce would work.

  What I didn’t expect was her cross-examination after she read the script I was planning to shoot. We were sitting outside on a memorial bench dedicated to some long-gone silent starlet who’d once walked these soundstage alleys.

  Tamika cleared her throat. “Ahem, uh, this an interesting line you gave Dallas—‘There’s only one way out—through my bedroom.’”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with that? I actually thought it was pretty good,” I responded.

  “This storyline is totally your fantasy fulfillment of Dallas whisking you away from Keith.”

  “It is not!” I protested.

  Tamika just stared at me as if no response were necessary.

  “Stop reading into it,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s called fiction.”

  “Oh, come on. You think you’re Alexis’s character, huh? Sarah the innocent? Please! You are so totally Jacqueline, the misunderstood bad girl,” Tamika said.

  “Nuh-uh! I’m not a bad girl!” I exclaimed.

  “I know you’re not a ‘bad girl.’ That’s why you’re misunderstood. But try some reality—you writing about Ryan and Jacqueline in love is just an excuse to work out your Dallas issues. I mean, the way it is now, you want Ryan to end up with Jacqueline, not Sarah. That’s quite a change.”

  “I don’t have Dallas issues!”

  “And I don’t have weight issues,” she said, not believing me. “Would you put your career on the line if it was anyone else on this set? Alexis? Never. Even for Javier or Francesca, you wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” I said, but the fight was knocked out of me. “If I thought it was for the good of the show …,” I went on, just trying to round out the rationalization. “Tamika. Be honest with me. Even if I do have feelings for Dallas—something I am not willing to admit at this time—are these pages any good? Am I kidding myself—or is this love triangle really the way to go? My gut is telling me it is, but I don’t know if I can trust myself anymore.”

  Tamika stood up and looked into the hills behind the studio. She flicked her scarf and said matter-of-factly, “Darlin’, these are the best damn scenes you’ve written yet. The story’s a sizzler, and I’m not talkin’ buffet.”

  Now we just had to make it all work.

  Like a good girl, I decided to ignore my feelings for Dallas and focus on fixing my relationship with Keith. I was hoping Keith would see that I couldn’t just fire Dallas as some token of devotion. These were people’s lives I was dealing with, and I didn’t want to make professional decisions personal. I was pretty sure Keith would agree with me. He wasn’t the kind of guy to hold a grudge. Or at least I didn’t think he was. I’d never tested him like this.

  I met him in the CPK parking lot, by his precious Ford Mustang. He’d restored it by hand, and I remembered how I’d wondered when we were first going out whether he’d ever love me as much as he loved his car. It was a beautiful car, much more beautiful than me, but I hoped that I gave more back. A few of our first dates had been in this car, just driving through the Hollywood Hills, laughing and talking and blasting the radio so all the neighborhoods could hear it. We bought Star Maps to see old celebrities’ homes, and then made our own maps, these strange personal histories, and drove from crush’s house to crush’s house, ex’s house to ex’s house. It was the first time we drove past Erika’s house that I found out she wasn’t quite an ex, and that I was more than just a crush. It was a confusing time, but the way we rode together made me want to stay in the car and go forward.

  He looked so tired, coming out the back door, leaving the kitchen behind. But then he saw me and he looked a shade more awake. It made me happy—relieved, really—that I could still do that to him.

  We kissed hello.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “What are you doing Friday afternoon?” I asked demurely.

  “You tell me,” he said with a smirk.

  “I need you to ditch school.”

  “Done and done. What for?”

  I paused. Did I really want to involve him in this? No, not really. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it without him. I wanted him to be my partner (in crime). I jumped right in and told him my plan to hijack production on Friday and film new scenes for the pilot. He nodded seriously, asked a few questions about logistics, but was generally supportive.

  “You’re taking this really well,” I said, mildly surprised.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.

  “Because … I don’t know if you’ve realized this … but if I manage to pull this off, it means that Dallas won’t be leaving the show. At least not for the foreseeable future.”

  Keith nodded his Zen Buddhist nod again. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “So …?” I prompted.

  “This is important to you, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Then it’s important to me, too.”
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br />   I loved him so much right then.

  “Thank you, Keith,” I said, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for understanding. I was afraid you might go totally berserk on me for not firing Dallas. I thought you’d be jealous or … worse.”

  He stroked my hair and intertwined his leg with mine. “I’ve kinda been thinking about things, you know? Sure, I’m jealous of Dallas. He’s a good-looking guy who spends all day with my girlfriend. But, like, we’re gonna have to deal with stuff like that if we’re gonna last, am I right?”

  “How did I get so lucky?” I asked.

  “My mom also said breaking up with you would be the stupidest thing I’d done since I broke my arm skateboarding down the up escalator at the Westside Pavilion in the seventh grade. There’s one thing I don’t understand, though, Mallory,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t have any film skills like Tamika and I’m not on your show. What do you need me to do Friday afternoon?”

  “How do you feel about being the world’s worst chauffeur?”

  Richard and I were scheduled to attend a press junket on Friday morning. Basically, we’d talk to various local news outlets and cable networks, selling the show like we were QVC hosts. New and Improved! Tastes Better! Less Fat!

  It took place at the Beverly Hilton, former home of Trader Vic’s and perpetual home of Hollywood’s dumbest awards, the Golden Globes. Tons of reporters from Access Hollywood to KIIS-FM were there. We’d had to arrive at 6 a.m. and were immediately busy answering the same questions for sixty-five different reporters.

  My mind was hardly on the interviews. All I could think about was whether my scheme was going to work. I tried to smile and let Richard do the talking, but naturally, my very teen-ness was half the story, so the interviewers lobbed a lot of questions my way. Yes, it was fun growing up the daughter of a soap star. No, I think I’m just as normal as everyone else. Yes, it is hard balancing work and school, but I’m managing. These were all lies, of course, but you don’t want John Q. Public to know the truth. And even if he does know, he doesn’t want to hear you talk about it.

  After we were done, Richard and I walked down to the hotel lobby to wait for our car. It was also the second step of my plan. The first had been to stuff a few sleeping pills into his last Diet Coke with lemon.

  “Shall we stop somewhere and grab a power lunch? I think we deserve it after the press gauntlet,” Richard said. “Then we can go enjoy watching Dallas get murdered.”

  Not on your life, I thought, but I said, “Oh, gee, thanks. I can’t, though. I have to stop by my school to drop off some work.”

  This wasn’t entirely untrue, since I was supposed to drop off my paper on Anna Karenina. The slight problem there was that I hadn’t actually written the paper, so there was little point in going to school. I was sure the school would understand if it was late—just like every other time. The main thing was that I had to separate from Richard.

  “I’ll just meet you back at the studio,” I finished.

  “We took the same limo here, Mallory.”

  I was ready for this. “That’s okay—you take the limo. My friend is picking me up. She’ll drop me off.”

  The truth of the matter was, I would, in fact, be taking the limo back to the studio. But Richard would be taking the other limo I’d rented (and that Keith was driving) on a six-hour joyride around Los Angeles County’s outer ring. And there it was, Richard’s special limo, pulling off Santa Monica Boulevard and into the parking lot.

  “That’s you,” I said.

  Keith pulled up and parked. He got out of the car and went around to open the door. I was gambling that Richard was too self-absorbed to notice that Keith was not the original driver and that this was not the original limo. My gamble paid off. Richard got in without so much as acknowledging Keith.

  Once he shut the door, Keith turned to me, winked, and said, “Let’s go to Big Bear this weekend, Sundance.”

  He’d finally invited me to Big Bear. That meant a camping weekend—a big step. This relationship was going places.

  “Sounds great, Butch,” I said.

  “Did you slip him the pills?” he asked.

  “Enough to put him to sleep, but not enough for you to have to take him to the ER. He should be fast asleep in about fifteen minutes.”

  “See you at the rendezvous,” Keith said.

  He tipped his hat and was on his way.

  It was time to get to work.

  Gina and my mother were out to lunch at The Grill as planned. I knew it would be impossible for my mother to resist a spin through Neiman Marcus once she was that close, so I was confident they wouldn’t be back on set until at least sundown. That gave me about five hours to film the six scenes I had written, set to air in two days.

  I had decided the only way to deal with the crew was to be a bulldog. I figured that if I barked loud enough, everyone else would just whimper.

  I walked onto Stage 4 and found the director, Kadir. We had a brief tête-à-tête about how we would now be filming new pages that were “hot off the presses.” I handed him my “revised” script and he stared at it in disbelief.

  “These aren’t even the same setups,” he complained.

  “Sets and camera angles can’t dictate creative inspiration,” I said wearily, as if his problems were the last thing I needed to hear. Of course, he was rightly upset that he’d planned for one thing and now I was changing it to another, but I just tried to act like Richard in response. He would expect people to change course, at any given moment, according to his whims.

  “Well, what does Richard say?” Kadir asked.

  “He’s taken the rest of the day off. He was really tired after the press junket this morning. He left everything in my hands.”

  Kadir took this pretty casually. Senior execs taking Fridays off was hardly a shocker. He scanned the pages again and said sullenly, “Yeah, we should be able to get most of this done. And you know what? I like this much better. I’m glad you’re not killing off Ryan.”

  I told him that he had to get it all done, no matter what. If we didn’t get this done today, I’d never have another chance and Likely Story would go on the air in its bastardized version, and that was not going to happen on my watch. I didn’t tell him this. I just told him these scenes had better be in the can by the end of the day or we were all in trouble.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and read Greg’s text message:

  GOT THE TAPE. C U AT EDIT BAY.

  Nice. Javier and Greg had pulled off Operation Chinese Chicken Salad. It was possible that the editor would go along just like Kadir had gone along—but if he didn’t, we now had a little blackmail. There was only one more hurdle: a little princess named Alexis. Dallas was supposed to have buttered her up (not literally), but I had held off giving her the script lest she go crying to Richard and ruin my plan.

  When Alexis walked on the set in tears, I knew Dallas had finally given her the new scenes.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” I said, as if I was just at wits’ end trying to please her.

  “You’re changing the whole story! With Ryan dead, I was going to be the star! And if Ryan’s not dead, I want him to be in love with Sarah!” she heaved.

  “It’s just a minor change,” I lied. “It’s just to add a bit of drama.”

  “Don’t you think I’m a good actress?” she went on, inconsolable.

  “Of course I do. Everyone does. But since you’re so upset, we should shoot the scene where you find out that he’s leaving you. We should do it right now so you can use this.”

  Alexis nodded. “I can definitely use this. Let’s go.”

  From that moment on, we didn’t let up. As a result, the shoot went pretty quickly. It was amazing how good the crew was at churning this stuff out. They even applauded after a couple of particularly juicy takes. We weren’t going to have much time to edit these together, so I was taking copious notes about which shots I wanted to use.


  Dallas was striking in most every scene, especially when he delivered the line “There’s only one way out—through my bedroom.” Francesca fell into his arms and I knew from the second they locked lips that this was a romance I wanted to watch. The chemistry had never really popped between Dallas and Alexis, and now even though Sarah was going to try to get Ryan back, it wasn’t going to be a fair fight.

  Meanwhile, Javier and Alexis were dynamite, like Posh and Becks, only American. When she crumpled into tears, spurned by her boyfriend, it was both pitiable and electric. And then the final scene in the forest, when Marco confronted Ryan about stealing Jacqueline, was positively explosive. Dallas and Javier were both experts at stage fighting and pulled off several impressive moves.

  I told the PA in charge of the tapes to drop them at the edit bay right away. Then I raced upstairs to find Greg.

  Only there was someone standing in my way.

  Frieda Weiner.

  “I know what you’re up to,” she said sweetly. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it. I saw you on the monitors!”

  My first impulse was to push her into a closet and lock it. But here’s where the real world differs from the soap opera world: In the real world, there’s no such thing as a closet that locks from the outside.

  I tried to figure out what Richard would do in this situation, but I came up with a total blank. Then I realized I had a deeper source of power.

  What would my mother do? I thought.

  And that gave me my answer.

  I smiled back just as sweetly and fakely at Frieda Weiner as she was smiling at me.

  “I don’t care what you think, you small, pathetic consultant, “I purred condescendingly. “This is not your show. It has never been your show, and it never will be your show. If the network wanted you to run a show, they would have hired you to run a show, not to consult. While I appreciate your opinion, the time for indulging it is long past. I’m tired of you, Frieda Weiner. Now get out of my way, so I can do my job.”

  Frieda Weiner’s smile slipped, like I’d knocked it right from her face.

  “Why, I’ll tell Trip Carver!” she gasped.