by Shane Bolks
Watanabe gets out of the van behind us and hurries to our door. He says something in Japanese and points to the house. He obviously wants us to get out, but I’m not moving. I stare at Miranda, waiting for her to tell Watanabe we’re not doing it. Instead, she slips out of the van. I grab her arm. “What are you doing? I’m not going in there!”
“It’s perfectly safe.”
I shoot another glance at the gangsters next door. “Are you blind?”
“Allison, no one’s going to commit any crimes with the cameras around. Come on. We’re making a lot of money on this deal.” She starts up the walk.
When I don’t follow, Watanabe yells at me again. What is this? Fear Factor? I take a deep breath. I don’t care what they offer me in there—I’m not eating maggots. I pat Josh on the shoulder.
“Let’s go, Josh.”
“You go,” he mumbles, head still between his knees. “I’ll cover you.”
I finally manage to get Josh out, and we hurry through the Englewood war zone, diving into the shelter of the bunker (aka the house).
The family is still home, and I smile at them as I enter, my eyes flitting about. There’s an elderly black lady with a cane and white hair, dressed in her best: a white blouse, demure black skirt, and sensible shoes. I feel like a tramp next to her, though I’m wearing khaki capris and a white T-shirt, nothing remotely objectionable.
Beside the grandma is a little girl with two braids, secured at the ends with red barrettes in the shape of bows. She’s adorable in black Mary Janes, a pink skirt, and a white shirt that says “Princess.” Her dark eyes are wide as she takes Josh and me in. She’s holding the hand of an even younger little boy. He’s wearing blue overalls. Their clothes are old and worn, but clean and pressed.
The camera guys are setting up to tape footage to use for before-and-after reactions. I’m already miced, but I wait for the crew to finish hooking the family up before I go over. While I wait, I can’t take my eyes off the little girl. Who would have thought a child in this war zone would dream of being a princess? Who would have believed I’d have something in common with her?
“Hi.” I reach for the grandmother’s hand, and we shake. She’s so little, and her hand feels like it’s made of bird bones. “I’m Allison Holloway. Nice to meet you.”
She nods. “I’m Eulalia Jackson, and this is Lena and Duke.”
I smile. “Like Lena Horne and Duke Ellington?”
The tiny woman’s eyes light up. “That’s right. They’re my daughter’s kids, and she named them some Zulu names, but I can’t remember them. She’s in prison, so I call them Lena and Duke. Much better, don’t you think?”
“Much.” I look at the little girl. “How old are you?”
She holds up five fingers, then, reluctantly raises her other hand and lifts one more.
“Six?”
She nods.
“What about Duke?”
She holds up four fingers.
“Four? Wow. You guys are pretty grown-up.”
“Excuse me, Miss Holloway. We need to get some footage of them alone,” one of the production assistants says, and I scoot out of the way. An hour later, Mrs. Jackson has shown us around the small, neat house, and then the family’s taken off to God knows where for the eight hours we’ve been given to do the kamikaze makeover. A carpenter and painter have arrived, and we’re ready to start. Josh and Miranda are making notes and pulling out tape measures and yardsticks when Mr. Watanabe, the director, gives us our decorating staple.
A dozen vibrators. In various colors. Batteries included.
“What the fudge is this?” I ask when Yamamoto hands me the box.
“Sweetie, if you don’t know—”
“Shut up, Josh. I know what it is. Why is he giving it to me?”
I look to Yamamoto, our little translator, and he turns to Watanabe, who says something in Japanese, smiles, and walks away.
“Uh-oh,” Josh moans.
“Where’s he going? What did he say?”
“He say that the Japanese group have same challenge. You must use sex toy in every room. He say, be creative.”
I look at Josh and then Miranda, who’s come to examine the box o’vibrators. I hold them out to her. “Did you know about this?”
“About what?” She smiles innocently. Aha! Miranda never smiles.
“Miranda, I’m not doing this. This is not decorating. Did you meet that woman and her grandkids? They don’t want vibrators in their house.”
“They agreed to the contract or we wouldn’t be here,” Miranda says.
“I don’t give a fudge. I’m not going to make that nice woman’s house look trashy. My parents are going to watch this show. My grandma. I am not decorating with vibrators.”
Miranda lowers her voice. “Then don’t make it look trashy. Look at it as a challenge.”
I glance at Josh. He appears undecided, but I’m firmly unconvinced.
“Fine,” Miranda says, “then go back to the office. But you might as well clean your desk out while you’re there because Dai Hoshi is going to sue us for breach of contract, and when I’m done paying the legal bills, I won’t have enough for your salary.”
Fudge it! Why did I sign that goddamn contract without reading it? I feel like I’ve made a deal with the devil. Josh gives me a wobbly smile. “I think we’re screwed.”
I hold up a safari-print vibrator. “Well, we’ve got the right equipment.”
Despite my reservations, I get to work. No one can say that I’m not a team player, and to my surprise, things go really well for the first hour or so. Josh and I are used to working together, and even Miranda can be tolerable when she wants to be.
First, Miranda outlines what she’d like to do to the house. The walls are white, so she wants to paint them and add touches of color to the living room with different fabrics and materials. We’ve brought a varied supply with us, so this shouldn’t be a problem. A pillow here, a slipcover there, a throw rug over there.
Then Josh suggests we build some shelves. The Jacksons have a lot of books, but they’re all in piles on the floor. I suggest we stagger the length of the shelves and offset them with artwork, and Miranda orders me to find some family pictures and frame them, using materials in the van.
There are only two photos in the living room, so I head to the bedrooms to find more. One of the cameras follows me, of course.
In the main bedroom, I find a photo album on the dresser and flip through it, looking for pictures to frame. I start at the back with pictures of Lena and Duke at Christmas and work my way to the front, where there are lots of black-and-white photos of women in forties-style dresses and men in hats leaning on shiny cars. Bingo.
But I don’t jump up and get started. Instead, I look at the pictures for a long time. The buildings behind the men and women could best be described as ramshackle. The roads are dusty, the people’s clothing threadbare and patched, and still the faces are smiling and full of happiness.
How could these people be so happy when they had so little? I think about my shopping excursion last weekend. I spent more than a thousand dollars, easy. Why does it take so much to make me happy?
Carefully, I take out the pictures, then head to the van to get supplies for frames. The carpenter is already out there, working on the bookshelf, so I use some of his materials. I decide to keep the frames simple, so I choose black wood and basic matting.
As I work, I can feel the eyes of the gang members on me, but the camera is on me, too, so I don’t worry too much. About half an hour later, I look up to wipe sweat from my forehead and see the painter walking by.
Oh, my God.
His overalls are splattered with paint. Pink paint.
With a sense of impending doom, I look at the house and see it’s half gray, half Frolicking Fuchsia. “Miranda!” I call. “You might want to come out here.”
When she does, her reaction is about what I expected. “What is this?” she screeches, pointing to the house.
>
Josh follows and is immediately attacked.
“Josh, I thought you were bringing Tranquil Fern. Why is the painter wearing Frolicking Fuchsia?”
Josh looks at the house, runs to the van, and pulls out paint can after paint can. He moans. Miranda and I huddle around, and I get a sinking feeling in my gut. In all the hurrying and mayhem of preparations yesterday, Josh must have accidentally pulled fuchsia from the storage closet at work.
“Do we have time to go back and get the green?” I ask.
Miranda shakes her head, then turns to the painter. “This is all wrong. We’ll have to mute the colors. Find me some white, and I’ll mix it to a pale pink.” She stays at the van with him while Josh and I head inside the house to work on the shelf area.
The paint episode is put behind us, but by the time Miranda has it sorted out, time is getting short. We’re all split up, working faster now, and I’m in the back hanging curtains in one of the bedrooms. I’ve just about got the draping right when a face appears on the other side of the window. I’m so wrapped up in what I’m doing that the face startles me, and I jump back and squeal. The entire crew comes running.
The kid on the other side smiles, raises his spray can, and keeps working.
“Hey!” I yell. I can’t believe the audacity of this kid. “Hey!” I storm through the house, out the front door, and come face-to-face with the gang member. Besides my usual accompaniment of cameras, I have an audience of other gangsters, watching from the porch next door.
They’re still drinking. One of them stands and says, “How do you like our decorating?”
I follow his outstretched hand and see the gang initials on the side of the neon-pink house. The kid holding the spray paint can laughs, howling until I grab the collar of his T-shirt. I don’t usually manhandle adolescents, but I’m tired, dirty, and running out of time on this project.
“Look, kid, what do you think you’re doing? We’re trying to make this house look nice. You’re vandalizing it. Maybe I need to call the cops.”
He shakes my hand off and brushes his shirt back into place. “You go ahead, bitch. I’m only doing what those guys paid me for.” He points to the front of the house, where Yamamoto and Watanabe are watching us.
I should have known. What is reality TV without conflict? I glare at the kid. “Fine. You earned your money. Now get out of here. You can wreck your neighborhood when we leave.”
He snorts. “Right. Like you care. You act like you’re doing this for us, but all you want is the money.”
I find the painter and beg him to go back there and fix the damage, and in the meantime, I go back inside and join Josh in a heap on the floor.
Miranda is collapsed delicately in one of the reupholstered chairs. The six hours we’ve been here feel like a hundred and six, and we’re sweaty, smelly, and covered with paint, caulk, sealant, and adhesive.
The house doesn’t look as unfinished as I’d feared. It’s been mostly painted, wallpapered, rearranged, recovered, uncovered, and, yes, accessorized with nine vibrators. We’ve made them into lamp stands, door handles, artwork, and book stands. I stare at them and hope Mrs. Jackson can forgive me. We still need to add some finishing touches—lighting, new materials, new sheets and comforters—but I think we’ll finish in time.
On the floor beside me, Josh turns his head toward mine. “We’d better win.”
“No million dollars is worth this.” I put an arm over my forehead. “My parents are going to disown me.”
“Better them than me,” Miranda says. “Now that we’ve made it through one show, the others should be a piece of cake.”
Josh and I groan in tandem. “Ugly-ass houses, fine. Sex toys, fine,” Josh says. “But I draw the line at anything truly tasteless.”
I look around the bedecked and be-vibrated neon-pink house. “Josh, we crossed that line a long, long time ago.”
7
I Won’t Dance
Friday morning Miranda, Josh, and I assemble for Kamikaze Makeover!’s second taping. With only one day between shows, we’re all pretty frazzled, caught between trying to keep up with work at the office and preshow prep work.
But we three had a little powwow last night, while we were packing supplies for today’s show—no Frolicking Fuchsia faux pas this time—and we’re ready for whatever the producers throw at us.
First of all, in preparation for another trek into the ghetto, we’ve all worn our grungiest clothes. TV cameras or not, this time we’re not going to enter gangland dressed like moving targets. In our stained jeans, faded eighties concert T-shirts, and unwashed hair—except Josh, who’s bald—we look like we’ve been living in the Kamikaze Makeover! van rather than just traveling in it.
But as soon as we’ve been on the road for about ten minutes, our sunny, take-no-prisoners mood grows overcast. We’re not heading for Englewood. We’re not heading for south Chicago at all. We’re driving north on Lakeshore Drive, toward the North Shore and the heart of Chicago high society.
When we finally pull to a stop in front of a cottage that looks like it’s straight from the pages of Chicago Home & Garden, I think we’re all feeling even more anxious to turn around than we did in Englewood. The camera teams and production managers clamber out, and finally Miranda bestirs herself and says, “Well, at least we know we won’t be using sex toys to decorate here.”
“Yeah, but what will we be using? Do either of you know who lives here?” I ask.
The cottage is huge and looks to be a product of the early 1900s. From the attention to the setting and the landscaping, I’m betting it was designed by Jens Jensen, famous architect and conservationist.
Miranda shakes her head, but Josh nods slowly. “It’s one of the Chippenhall residences. I did some work on it before I joined Interiors by M.”
I close my eyes. “Not Lucinda Chippenhall.”
Josh nods.
“Oh, man. I can’t do this. Lucinda Chippenhall is on every charitable board and committee my mother’s on. They’re rivals. You know, who can get the most donations or the best bigwig to chair an event, even whose kids get into the best schools or marry the richest.”
“Guess you lost that one,” Miranda sneers. There are times when I really wish Miranda weren’t my boss. Then I’d tell her where to stick her snide comments.
“The point is, Miranda, this woman searches for ways to make my family look bad. With me on the team, we can’t win this one.”
“Wrong,” Miranda says, pointing a long red nail at me. “The homeowner doesn’t vote. The team of professional judges does.”
“I thought it was a call-in thing,” Josh says. “Like American Idol.”
“No,” she answers. “There are three world-renowned designers, and they judge.”
There’s a loud knock on the window, and we all jump. Yamamoto is outside, looking anxious and ticked-off. “Let’s go,” he mouths.
I take a deep breath and climb out. After I’m miced, we’re shown into the gorgeous house by a woman in a maid uniform. We walk on Persian rugs worth thousands of dollars and catch glimpses of art worth even more, and then when we reach the living room, we stand in various locations for lighting tests and good camera angles.
“Josh,” I whisper while one of the grips shines a portable light in my face. “What the hell are we doing here?”
He looks around the exquisite room with its simple, elegant decor: crystal Mikasa vases, antique lamps, lots of space and pale colors. Light spills into the room from the French doors at the back, and it glints off the crystal and makes the polished baby grand piano gleam.
“Penance,” he answers finally. “I think this is hell.”
I hear a tap-tap ping and look up to see a woman in a pink Chanel suit and tiny pink heels bearing down on us.
“No, that’s hell,” I say, then paste on a beauty queen smile.
“Oh, my,” Lucinda Chippenhall of the pink Chanel says, looking around the crowded living room of her home. There are wires and cables
piled high and thick as pythons snaking everywhere. About a dozen grips, production assistants, and technicians are standing around, some working, most chatting on cell phones, and then, in the center, are Josh, Miranda, and me: the three hobos.
“Allison Holloway?” Mrs. Chippenhall says, narrowing her eyes at me. “Is that you?”
The noise and talking around us quiet, and the cameras swing around to capture the moment.
“Hi, Mrs. Chippenhall. Isn’t this crazy?” I give an innocent shrug.
“Hmm. You look…different. I thought you were prettier last time I saw you. How is your mother? She really should stop with the Botox.”
I bite my tongue. As if Lucinda Chippenhall hasn’t had her own share of work. God, if this section makes the show, my mother will kill me.
“Are you sure you’re capable of this kind of work?” Lucinda Chippenhall asks.
Translation: I don’t want some amateur like you touching my million-dollar house.
“Oh, absolutely,” I answer. “You’re in good hands. This is Miranda, the M in Interiors by M.”
“I see. Still, I’ll feel better if I’m here to supervise.” She plants her feet and crosses her skinny arms over her tiny chest.
“Is that allowed?” I whisper to Josh, pulling at my faded, torn Smiths T-shirt from 1988.
“Are you going to tell her to leave?”
Hell, no. And the Japanese aren’t going to tell her to leave, either. She might do something interesting they can capture with the cameras. Watanabe comes over and hands us a box. It’s surprisingly light today.
Yamamoto then begins to explain our task. “The lady only give us permission to work in the living room. You have eight hours to transform it, and you must use all of these.”
He tips the box and about thirty empty Campbell’s soup cans pour out.
“Soup cans?” Josh says, keeping his voice low so that Mrs. Chippenhall—peering over a camera at us—doesn’t hear. “We’re not decorating with soup cans in Lucinda Chippenhall’s home.”
Yamamoto shrugs. “Then you lose.”
“But why soup cans?” Miranda asks.
“American art. Andy Warhol used them. You will, too.” He touches his watch, indicating that the clock is ticking.