I smile tightly and hand her the mic. “Come on, let’s go.”
I really wish she hadn’t thanked me. She’s not exactly going to get the next starring role in the newest CW line up out of this. Grant always tells me you’re not lying, you’re just doing your job. But it’s starting to really get to me. Don’t get me wrong, I usually like what I do, but this is definitely an aspect I could do without.
“Hello, I’m home,” I call out as I open the front door to our Spanish duplex. I can hear the sound of the TV in the background.
Zoë and her boyfriend Jeff are in prime viewing position, cuddled up on the right side of the couch, miles away from the dreaded hot lamp. Built in the thirties, our West Hollywood home lacks any kind of overhead lighting. Zoë was thrilled when she found a faux Tiffany lamp at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. It’s gorgeous, but melts the head of anyone unfortunate enough to sit under it.
“What a night,” I groan.
They both look up at me, and Jeff puts his finger to his lips. I’ve just broken the cardinal rule: No Talking Until Commercial. Even though we have a DVR, Jeff refuses to stop a show until the commercial break. Rolling my eyes, I walk into the kitchen to get some ice cream.
“Commercial break!” yells Jeff from the living room. “You have approximately three and a half minutes. Let’s hear it.”
I plop down under the Tiffany cooker, throw my feet on the coffee table and sigh. “Where do I start? You want to hear about fake naked boobs, or the make-out session in the hot tub?”
“Make-out session!” Zoë barks.
“Naked boobs,” chimes in Jeff.
“Make-out session it is.” I smile at Jeff. “Well, for starters, this couple hated each other. The girl almost walked off. Next thing you know, after two dirty martinis, a shot of tequila and two shots of Jägermeister, her tongue was halfway down his throat.”
“Was she a stripper?” asks Zoë.
“I don’t think this one was. I think she just likes to drink.”
“Did they go to the Hot Tub Hut?” Jeff, an avid viewer of Matchmaker, knows all of the show’s regular hot spots.
“Oh yeah. The Jungle Room.”
“Is that the one with the safari theme?” Zoë asks.
“No, it’s the one with the waterfall and leopard-print towels,” Jeff answers.
“Do you think they hooked up afterwards?”
“All I know is that when we finished our post-date interviews, he went back to her apartment.”
Zoë leans over and taps me on the leg. “Was he cute?”
“No, he was a total asshole.”
“Just like you, honey.” Zoë kisses Jeff on the cheek.
“I’m perfect. I’m the perfect man,” he says as he blows a raspberry on her shoulder. Zoë screams and tickles his sides.
Jeff really is the perfect man. His hair is blond, but not the streaky blond as if he’d been sitting in a hairdresser’s chair for two hours like most of the men in L.A. It’s the color of cornflakes; simple and wholesome. The first time I met Jeff, in true best-friend fashion, I wanted to hate him. This was Zoë’s first serious boyfriend in the seven years I’d known her. I was afraid our weekly ritual of pancakes at The Griddle, shopping and an early movie would either disappear altogether, or even worse, I’d be relegated to the third-wheel status on our outings. Turns out, when the day came, I heard myself inviting Jeff and meaning it. They’re the only couple I know who make me feel like I’m in on their secret.
They met at a premiere party for a movie Zoë had worked on. She was the stunt double for the lead actress and he was gate-crashing. Before I met Zoë, the words stunt woman always conjured up images of a muscled female with an Adam’s apple who jumps out of moving cars and takes fake bullets. However, Zoë’s a tiny little thing; she can’t be taller than 5’2” or weigh more than one hundred pounds. Most of her stunts involve minor fight scenes, and simple falls that most actresses (who aren’t insured to the hilt) could easily take. Zoë’s dad is major stunt coordinator in the business, and would never let his baby get hurt. That’s why Zoë spends most shoot days as a stand-in, while the actual star is napping or getting her makeup done. I’m not sure about her salary, but she buys real Prada bags, while I settle for the knockoffs from downtown.
At the next commercial, Jeff bounces off the couch to take a bathroom break.
“Guess what?” Zoë beams once Jeff is out of earshot. “I found the perfect guy for you.”
I sigh deeply. “Thanks, that’s sweet. But I’m really not interested.” Definitely not interested. The last blind date I went on was eight years ago right before I moved away from Kansas. I ended up paying; he ended up vomiting in my hydrangeas.
“Come on. We can double date,” Zoë whines.
I spoon the last dregs of ice cream from my bowl and consider getting more. “Still not interested. I go on enough blind dates as it is.”
Zoë eyes me suspiciously. “Please tell me you’re not still hung up on Matt. That was like three years ago.”
I pretend to give this some thoughtful consideration before standing up. “It’s not that. I’m over Matt. I’m just too busy. You know I have no life when I’m working on a show,” I reply, creeping ever closer to the safety zone of the kitchen. “Maybe when I’m done with this job.”
“Okay, well I’m holding you to that,” she says, pointing her finger at me.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you will. Tell Jeff I said good-night and to put the seat down,” I say as I walk into the kitchen, put my dirty ice-cream bowl in the sink and head to my room.
I really am well and truly over Matt. But the thought of letting my guard down with another guy is as painful as the root canal I had last month. Yes, he was the first and only boyfriend I’ve ever had that I could honestly say I was unabashedly in love with. Yes, we dated for a year and two months (my personal Guinness world record). Yes, we talked about what we’d name our kids and the type of house we’d one day buy together. And yes, he broke my heart when he told me that he needed space because 1) he wanted to focus on writing his screenplays and 2) he wasn’t ready to settle down with just one woman. I guess then, it’s safe to say, I’m still a little gun shy when it comes to dating.
It probably doesn’t help that I’m coming into contact with some pretty base characters thanks to Matchmaker. It’s not that I don’t want to meet anybody…really, but I don’t want to open my heart to just anyone again. And I’m pretty damn sure Zoë ended up with the only normal, loyal, down-to-earth guy in L.A.
People always say that the best birth control is an afternoon spent with your friends’ kids. Well, I think I’ve definitely found the best antidote to dating: working in reality TV. It’s enough to make you celibate.
Chapter Two
I hate cardboard. Always have. I won’t even touch the stuff. I can’t explain it really, it’s just one of those things, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. When I was a kid, my toy chest was a set of cheap drawers made out of cardboard. Every time I wanted to play with a Barbie, or get a reassuring whiff of some Play-Doh, I’d jerk the drawer open and make a hissing noise through my teeth to mask that torturous gritty sound of cardboard against cardboard. God only knows why I had such a crappy piece of furniture in my room. Maybe it was some mastermind ploy devised by my parents to steer me away from toys and bring me closer to my books, which were placed on a lovely wooden bookshelf. You can’t imagine how hard moving is for me…all those boxes…even thinking about it now makes me shudder.
Which leads me to my current condition: I’m staring at a large piece of cardboard, flapping over an air-conditioning vent, dangling precariously three feet above my head. It was taped up there by my editor in a feeble attempt to block out the icy gusts of air which keep this 10 x 10 windowless box of a room at temperatures below zero.
Edit bays are supposed to be cold to protect the equipment, but this is Antarctica cold. Somehow, the mutant editors always seem immune, and my editor, Mark, is no exception.
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br /> “It’s freaking cold in here,” I say as I pick up my coffee cup and let it warm my hands.
“What, this cardboard isn’t doing it for you?” Mark waves his hand above my head. “What more do you need, woman?”
I laugh and swat his hand away. “I’ll say it again, if that cardboard hits me in the head, you’re going down.”
“You and your cardboard fetish can just settle down. Aha!” Mark views the scene from last night when Jenny flashed Brian. “Now that’s one for the boob reel.”
“Oh yeah, nothing but time here, Mark,” I reply as I watch him make a copy of the shot. On most shows I’ve worked on, the editors compile all of their favorite scenes from the show (most of which are too racy to air), and we have a little viewing party. You have your vomit reels, the bitch slaps (my personal favorite), drunken orgies, drunken falls, drunken fights, you get the picture. Apparently, Mark is a boob man.
I know I should find this reprehensible (I do have some feminist inclinations after all), but watching these videos at the wrap party makes every painful second in the field worthwhile. Plus, I’ve definitely become desensitized. There’s something about working in reality television that makes you one of the guys.
“Eh, too fake,” he says as if he’s the expert on all things boob-related. He puts the footage of the club scene from last night back on the monitor and shakes his head. “We can’t take the audio from this scene, there’s too much background noise.”
Today, at 11:00 a.m., our supervising producer decided that this couple needed to be a love match, not just a near-sex-in-a-hot-tub match. So we are now faced with the Herculean task of “frankenbiting” these two geniuses. We need one of them to say something in the neighborhood of I really like you, but it doesn’t exist, so we are going to have to craft the phrase out of totally random words.
I pull out my notebook and check the time codes I wrote down in the field during the shoot last night. “So at about 1:45:22 Brian says, ‘I’m falling off this fucking stool’ and at 06:10:13 he says, ‘Do you mind if I take the liberty of ordering for you?’ We could take ‘I’m falling’ from the first piece, ‘for you’ from the second, and then all we need is a ‘really,’ and then frankenbite that all together.”
Usually the footage and interview bites are logged and transcribed by the time we’re in edit, but for some reason our bosses need the cut ASAP. So, the only way to find the word “really” at this point is for us to scroll through hours of tape. And unfortunately (or fortunately for me) Zoë begged me to meet her for lunch today, so I have to leave that unpleasant task to Mark. I stand up and duck my head to avoid any contact with the cardboard.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have to meet a friend for lunch. You’ve got this right? It’ll just be an hour.” I smile my sweetest smile. He’s not buying it.
“No way, you aren’t sticking me with this,” Mark says, trying to look stern.
“This is what you do. It’s your talent. You don’t need me bringing you down.”
“There’s an expression my grandmother used to say in situations like these. What was it? Oh right. Go fuck yourself.”
I laugh and scurry out the door.
I’m meeting Zoë at Café Rouge, one of those cool restaurants on Robertson that will disappear after a year, only to be replaced by another so-so restaurant on life support. It’s really not the best day to be taking an extended lunch, but Zoë said she had something important to discuss, so I’ll have to keep it to under an hour. Okay, an hour and thirty minutes. Hopefully this place will have valet. Yes, yes, I hate throwing away five bucks on a parking spot, but I don’t have time to cruise around looking for a meter. Back in Wichita, only the snootiest of restaurants even dare to have valet, so after eight years of living here, it still pisses me off to pay.
Fortunately, I manage to find a space right across the street (thank you, parking gods) and make the death sprint across four lanes of traffic. The valet dudes at Café Rouge nod at me with respect, acknowledging my rare feat.
As I slip inside the restaurant, I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass doors. Great. I look like shit. I forgot that I’m wearing my long black sweater, bought circa 1995. Zoë hates this sweater and I’m seriously not in the mood to hear this particular variation on her standard, What Not to Wear, speech.
“Hey, Chicken,” Zoë calls out to me from a table in the back.
I slide into the booth and pick up the menu. “Hey, I’m kind of in a hurry today. Do you know what you want?” I don’t know why I ask her, since she always orders the same thing.
She looks at me and smiles. “I’ll decide when the waitress gets here.” Within seconds she gives me the once-over. “Oh my God, I hate that sweater. It looks like you’re wearing a trash bag. And it’s like 85 degrees outside!”
Great, here we go.
“You have such a beautiful face and…”
“Not today, Mom,” I say as I open up my menu. “I work in Siberia, remember?”
“Then you wear a cute pashmina or a little coat, and when you walk out, you take it off. I just don’t get it. I think you’re crazy for hiding your figure.” Zoë shakes her head at me. “What I wouldn’t give for those extra four inches.”
The thing is, I don’t necessarily want to hide my looks. I know I’m not unattractive. I just can’t be bothered with the typical L.A. Woman Beauty Regime. First off, a weekly manicure is required. I, on the other hand, have never touched an emery board in my life. Oh sure, I give myself weekly manicures, but my nails and cuticles are cut the old-fashioned way…with my teeth. And on top of the manicures, there are the monthly facials, all sorts of bizarre massages, sessions with personal trainers, oh, and let’s not forget the haircuts that would throw any working girl into debtor’s prison. What’s the point really? I’ve just never been particularly tailored or put together. I guess you could say I’m rough around the edges, but I’m okay with that.
“I love you. Can we change the subject?” I say as I scan the breakfast section on the back of the menu. Today is a pancake day, damn it.
The waitress walks up to take our order. “Hi, ladies. What can I get for you?”
“You go first, I’m still trying to decide,” Zoë says as she studies the menu.
“I’ll just get the macadamia nut pancakes please, and a cup of coffee with cream.”
Zoë lifts her head from out of the menu. “Oooh, that sounds so good. Okay, I think I know what I’m going to order. I’ll have the egg-white-and-spinach scramble please.” Zoë looks at me as I let out a long exhale. “Don’t even start,” she laughs. “And I’d also like an order of bacon. But I want it really black. Like black black. Like, the-thing-hasn’t-lived-in-a-decade black.”
Zoë and her post-apocalyptic bacon. It cracks me up every time. Zoë’s dad grew up in an orthodox home and while he doesn’t keep kosher, for some reason the anti-pork mandate still sticks in their household. So although Zoë professes to not eat pork, that girl really loves her bacon. And the only way she can justify eating it is to turn it into a piece of charcoal.
“Hey, so how’s work?” Zoë gnaws on the straw floating around in her glass of ice water.
“Ugh, don’t ask. How’s your day?”
“Crazy busy. I’m doubling for Rachel McAdams and she has the most toned arms so I spent four hours at the gym this morning. I’m starving.”
I love that the most stressful part of Zoë’s day is trying to look even more like Rachel McAdams.
“So what’s up? Your message on my cell sounded like you wanted to talk to me about something.” I look at Zoë as she bites her lower lip.
“I’m giving Jeff an ultimatum.”
Ruh roh.
“Either marry me or it’s over. We’ve been dating for two years. I’m tired of this shit.”
Need to tread carefully here. When Zoë wants something, she channels Veruca Salt.
“Well, I definitely see why you’re frustrated, but don’t you
think forcing the issue will only push him away? When is the last time you guys talked about this?”
“Shrimp taco night. Four months ago.”
Hmm. I remember shrimp taco night. I don’t think drunkenly screaming, “I have to have two kids by the time I’m thirty-eight you fuckhole,” in the parking lot of El Compadre is talking. But I won’t share that with Zoë.
“Well, maybe you should talk to him again. No one likes to be backed into a corner,” I say as Zoë crosses her arms and sits up straight.
It definitely sucks that Jeff has been dragging his feet, but a big part of Zoë’s problem is that she’s been handed everything in life. So I know this situation is excruciating for her, but I think it’s a mistake to force a confrontation. You shouldn’t guilt someone into marrying you, not that I’m going to say any of that to her.
“I’m thirty-five years old. If it’s not him, I need to move on. I told him from the start that I wanted kids. I can’t dick around anymore.”
Oh Jesus, I feel a Golden Egg moment coming up. I’m nodding and smiling on the outside, but in my head, all I can hear is that song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
I want a party with room fulls of laughter…
“I’ve been dreaming of my wedding day since I was like, ten.”
Ten thousand tons of ice cream…
“Vera Wang has the perfect dress and…”
And if I don’t get the things I am after…
“I refuse to waste any more time waiting for Jeff to stop playing World of Warcraft and marry me.”
I’m going to scream!
“I really need you to back me on this.”
Okay, I need to switch into supportive mode here. But it’s hard because I don’t have that rabid fear of being alone that Zoë has. I just don’t. Maybe it’s because I’m three years younger than her. Or maybe it’s because all of her friends from high school are already married and have kids. Either way, I know I better fake it. “Of course I support you, I just want to make sure you aren’t going to accidentally throw something great away.”
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