Reality TV Bites

by Shane Bolks

  Looking around the Chippenhall living room, it’s hard to imagine thirty soup cans in here.

  “This is never going to work,” Josh mumbles, smiling for the cameras. “If there was some clutter, that’d be one thing, but this room—”

  I know what he means. Everything already has a place, and the feng shui is perfect. Why would we mess with perfection? Of course, the Jackson house didn’t need a pile of vibrators scattered throughout, either. A little paint, some curtains, and it would have been cozy as could be. I don’t get this show. Most makeover shows take someone or something that needs fixing and make a transformation. This show takes places that are just fine and tries to mess them up. How did I get to be a part of this?

  “Okay!” Miranda says, clapping her hands and securing the attention of the cameras. “Here’s what we’ll do. Josh, you and I will work on a new layout for the furniture. I want to open that space up”—she points to a corner that could be better utilized—“and distribute the furniture better. I’m also thinking brighter colors. Josh, mix me up a few different shades of blue.” The room is pale yellow now, but blue would liven it up a bit.

  I watch Mrs. Chippenhall’s reaction to this, and though her lips thin, she seems amenable.

  “Later we’ll change out some of the fabrics,” Miranda continues. “Allison, you can work on that, but first I want you to do something with those.” She points to the soup cans. “Make them look”—she twists her mouth—“elegant.”

  She and Josh tramp back out to the van, one of the cameras following, while I stare at the pile of soup cans and Mrs. Chippenhall stares at me.

  “You’re not seriously thinking of putting those”—Mrs. Chippenhall points accusingly at the soup cans—“in my sitting room.”

  “Um…” I look at Watanabe, but he’s smiling and nodding, lapping this up. “I’m going to make them into a work of art,” I say.

  Mrs. Chippenhall’s thin lips narrow to razor-sharp. “Are you an artist? I thought you were a decorator.” The way she says decorator makes me feel like one of her domestics.

  Because I am the kind of person who takes the high road—and because were I to open my mouth I would probably get myself fired—I don’t say anything. Miranda said to make these soup cans elegant. Elegant? Even Monet wouldn’t make these soup cans elegant.

  But that gives me an idea. I grab my sketchbook and make a quick design.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Chippenhall asks, peering over my shoulder. Feeling like I’m back in sixth grade taking a spelling exam, I cover my sketch with my arm. Lifting my wrist a bit, I scribble some notes for Miranda and Josh to look at later. Then I put the sketchbook facedown and get to work stripping the labels off the cans. I intercept Miranda and Josh on their way back in with the light blue they’ve chosen for the room. I explain my idea, and it’s a hit.

  But that means I’m going to need to cut about twenty-five of the soup cans in half. No one said we had to use the whole soup can. So I grab the carpenter, and he gets out the power saw and starts slicing. We’ve got about four cans cut in half when the clouds that have loomed all morning open up and big fat drops of rain pelt us. Obviously we can’t use a power saw out in the rain, so we decide to wait it out. It’s no major hardship—gotta love hanging out with a man who can handle powerful machinery—but after an hour of pouring rain, I can’t afford to wait any longer.

  “We’re going to have to bring the saw inside and cut the cans there,” I tell the carpenter.

  He shrugs. “It’s your ass, not mine.”

  We don’t even have the saw halfway in the door when Mrs. Chippenhall swoops down on us. “What are you people doing?”

  I motion the carpenter to continue. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Chippenhall, but it’s raining outside and we can’t work with electric saws in the rain.”

  “Well, you can’t bring that machine in here!” She motions to her objets d’art and her expensive rugs.

  “We’ll be careful,” I say, dropping a dirty tarp over her rug, but she’s not convinced. She hovers over us, wringing her hands and ordering her maid to stand by with a broom and dustpan.

  Finally the carpenter finishes cutting my cans. It’s taken way longer than I’d planned, but I gotta give the hottie a break. Every time he turned on the saw Mrs. Chippenhall covered her eyes and looked ready to swoon.

  By the time all my cans are painted, Miranda and Josh have the room cleared and taped, and I give them a hand with the painting. We all take turns stumbling over Mrs. Chippenhall, who is constantly in the way, and when she starts pointing out spots we missed, I have the urge to spatter that pink suit with blue polka dots.

  Fortunately, Miranda—seeing murder in my eyes—releases me from painting to go back to my cans for the detail work. Martha Stewart, look out.

  After about six hours, with only two to go, the industrialsize fans we brought in from the van have done their work, and the walls are dry enough for me to start mine. Normally I wouldn’t touch the walls for at least twenty-four hours, but I don’t have much choice today. So while Miranda and Josh move furniture and sew throw pillows, I get out the yellow carpenter’s glue. I apply it to the edges of a can and hold it up to the wall, ready to position it.

  Just as I’m about to press the glue to the wall, Mrs. Chippenhall yells, “No!”

  She startles me, and I drop the can, gluing it to the floor instead. Josh runs over with turpentine and cleans up the mess while I glare at Mrs. Chippenhall. But when Josh hands me the can again, I don’t even have a chance to apply glue before Mrs. Chippenhall tries to snatch it from me.

  “Stop it!” I tell her. “We’re running out of time.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want soup cans on my walls!”

  I look at Miranda, then Watanabe. Watanabe is smiling. The little prick is loving this. Miranda gives me a long look, then turns her back.

  What was that city in Vietnam where the soldiers killed all those innocent civilians and the military head honchos tried to bury the story? My Lai? Miranda’s turning a blind eye now, but when the footage comes out, we’re going to get an interior-designing court-martial.

  Josh and I exchange looks, and then I nod at Mrs. Chippenhall, and Josh sweeps her up and off her feet. I think he would have carried her à la Rhett carrying Scarlett O’Hara, but she starts squirming and he ends up throwing her over his shoulder.

  “I got her!” he calls. “Get to work, Allison!”

  I do. In a frenzy of activity, I attach my half soup cans to the walls in random places. The soup cans are blue to match the wall and then painted with little pink, yellow, and red flowers for accent. With the angry cries of the imprisoned Mrs. Chippenhall echoing from the next room, I paint more flowers and stems, seemingly rising out of the cans on the wall above each soup can.

  I take the last five cans and fill them with dirt and flowers from Mrs. Chippenhall’s garden. I try my soup can vases in half a doze places, Miranda offering lots of suggestions, and just before Yamamoto’s watch beeps, indicating that time has run out, I place the last one.

  Josh frees Mrs. Chippenhall and she tap-taps back into the room behind him just as time runs out. She doesn’t even look at the room, but she points at me. “I’m going to get you for this, Allison Holloway. And your mother, too!”

  While the camera crew films the room for the after footage, I look around. I wouldn’t say we’ve improved the room. Soup cans don’t look elegant, no matter what I do, but we’ve taken the room from elegant metropolitan to French country. Again, I’m not so sure that’s an improvement.

  I want to feel a sense of accomplishment after all this work, but like the first show, it just isn’t there. We came in, we subdued the natives, we made the room over using the required materials, but I don’t feel like we made the room better.

  I think Miranda and Josh have some of the same feelings because they’re silent on the drive back to the office. Fed up with work, I skip the office and go straight home and plop on the couch. I don’t
feel like getting ready to go out, even if it is a Ciara St. Loren fashion show with Nicolo.

  Instead, I flip on the TV and While You Were Out is on. For the first time in recent memory, I switch the channel. Fear Factor is on the next station, and I turn that, too. E! has the True Hollywood Story of reality TV stars, but I can’t stomach that, either.

  I mean, what are these people looking for? Fame? Money? Why are they messing with lives that are perfectly good already? Why am I?

  When Nicolo calls a while later, I tell him I’ll meet him at the fashion show. He doesn’t like it, but I’m trying to keep our relationship casual and friendly. I learned a long time ago not to get involved with guys I work with. There was a professor at Columbia College in Chicago who taught History of Architecture I. Now I don’t know about you, but I think history, architecture, and ew! But when I walked into Professor Montford’s room—Stéphane’s room—I remember thinking, ooh.

  Stéphane Montford was an Olivier Martinez clone, but sexier. Longish brown hair, dark, brooding eyes, straight nose, soft sensuous lips. God, the man knew what to do with those lips.

  He and I had a little fling the first semester of my junior year. It was really hot, then really cold. Unfortunately, Stéphane also taught History of Architecture II. For a whole semester, we glared at each other three days a week. And the bastard gave me a D!

  Well, architecture isn’t my forte, so maybe I deserved the D, but it taught me a lesson. Nicolo and I still have to work together for a few weeks, so if things don’t pan out, I could be in for a shitload of misery.

  Since this is a fashion show, I dress to kill. I put on a short, short, short black skirt by MaxMara, high, high, high heels by Jimmy Choo, and a white and silver top by Armani.

  It’s no fun being around a bunch of models all night, but I put in the extra effort anyway. The show’s at an upscale club downtown. I’ve been there before, but I arrive a few minutes late, toss the car-struck valet the keys to the Z4, and walk in.

  The club is dark, and a runway has been set up in the center of the dance floor. Funky techno music plays, and people are starting to find seats on both sides of the runway and standing at the second-floor railings. I don’t see Nicolo, so I go to the bar and order a mojito with a stalk of sugarcane for garnish. I take a sip and scan the club. Still no Nicolo. But there are lots of Chicago bigwigs, and I wave at a couple from my parents’ country club.

  Someone comes up behind me, and I smile, anticipating Nicolo’s low murmur in my ear. Snap! The strap of my bra slaps against my back.

  “Ouch!” I spin around and there’s Grayson, grinning like he used to when I first started wearing bras and he, four years older at sixteen, snapped them at every opportunity.

  “I hate to tell you this, but someone stole the bottom of your skirt.”

  I roll my eyes. Big brothers. “Ha-ha. Snap my bra again, and the next time you’re not paying attention, I’ll snap your underwear.”

  “I don’t wear underwear.”

  “Yeck. TMI.”

  “Aw, you know you love me.” He hugs me, then says, “Since we’re giving out info, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m the guest of a VIP,” I say and toss my hair like I used to at thirteen. It still irritates him. “What are you doing here?”

  He leans one elbow against the bar. “I’m in the fashion show.”

  “Oh.” I probably should have figured that out, since Gray is a model. Gray is the most gorgeous man on the planet. Yes, I know he’s my brother, and my opinion is slanted, but I’m being totally objective here. Gray is the best-looking man I know. He’s also my favorite brother. He’s my only brother, but that doesn’t make him any less great. Especially considering he’s the only person that keeps me sane around my parents.

  Looking at him now, it’s hard to believe he’s the same scrawny kid who sported two rows of braces, had stringy brown hair, and wore the same jeans and T-shirt until my mother pried them away from his dirty body to wash. Now the braces are gone, and he’s got straight whiter-than-white teeth. Of course, you’d never know it because he never smiles. I guess smiling isn’t cool in modeldom. His stringy brown hair is still kind of long and stringy, but it’s the look now, and these days it’s blond.

  He’s wearing tight jeans and a loose shirt, open to reveal his six-pack abs. He’s very proud of those. We work out together sometimes, and I’ve learned that Gray and I have different ideas about how long a workout should last. The first time we went to the gym together, I left after an hour to get a smoothie. He told me he was going to finish with his abs and then he’d be done. I bought the smoothie, drank the smoothie, and then went looking for him, and he was still crunching.

  Grayson is fab, but there is one annoying thing about him—wherever we go, girls fall all over him. It has to be the abs. I’d like to be magnanimous and say that all the fawning twentysomethings don’t faze him, but Gray is pretty much a player. He needs a girl like Natalie to settle him down.

  Now he’s giving me that intense model look, which always seems sort of out of place on his baby face. He’s thirty-six, but he looks twenty-four. Disgusting, isn’t it? You’d think by thirty-six his modeling career and womanizing days would be over. Nope. Gotta love those Holloway genes.

  “You look good,” he says after a minute. “I like your hair that way, but you should push it forward more.” He reaches out, presumably to perfect my hairstyle, and tousles it violently instead. Brothers never change.

  I grab his hand and reach for his head, but he says, “Whoa! Not the hair, baby.”

  “Jerk,” I say, pushing my once carefully coiffed hair out of my eyes, and he laughs and gives me a hug. He’s like six-three, so even in my FM Jimmy Choos, I feel like a little kid again.

  “I see you have found another companion,” an accented voice behind me says. Gray releases me, and I turn to Nicolo. His face is hard and his mouth a thin line.

  “Nicolo, I was looking for you.”

  “In his chest?”

  I raise a brow and glance at Gray to see if he thinks this is as funny as I do. He’s not smiling. I turn back to Nicolo. “Are you jealous?”

  He snorts. “Not at all. If you want to go home with this pretty boy, go ahead.”

  See how young Gray looks? “Well, considering the pretty boy is my brother, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Grayson, Nicolo. Nicolo, Grayson Holloway.”

  “Hey,” Grayson says, inclining his head coolly. I frown. You’d think the guy could at least shake Nicolo’s hand.

  Nicolo doesn’t attempt to shake Grayson’s hand, either. “I am sorry. I misunderstood.”

  The lights flicker up and down, and Grayson releases me. I didn’t even notice that he still had his arm around my shoulder.

  “I gotta go change. See ya tomorrow, Allie.” He kisses my cheek and looks at Nicolo like he might say something but turns and walks away instead.

  I shake my head. “Sorry, he was raised by wolves. He hasn’t quite got the hang of human interaction yet.”

  Nicolo waves a hand and offers his arm. “I am the same way with my younger sisters. He is older, yes?”

  I nod, distracted as Nicolo leads me to two reserved seats on the side of the catwalk. I’ve never been a front-row girl at a fashion show before, and when the lights go down and the music starts up, I can hardly contain my excitement.

  The first model struts out in a gorgeous flowy chocolate dress, and I lean forward to memorize every stitch. Nicolo says in my ear, “Your brother was really adopted?”

  “No.” I glance at him. “Just a joke.” I turn away, watching the next model, dressed in gray wool slacks and a checked wool peacoat, unbuttoned enough that we can see she’s not wearing a top underneath.

  “He does not look like you.”

  I glance at Nicolo, reluctant to take my eyes from the runway. “It’s dark in here. If you saw us in the light, you’d be able to tell.”

  “Hmm.” Nicolo seems satisfied for the moment, so I focus
back on the stage in time to see a model in a black chiffon dress turn off the runway. Damn.

  A few minutes later, the first male model comes out, and I sit forward to watch for Gray. I’ve seen him model a hundred times. He’s really good—a natural—but watching someone you know so well put on a show can be pretty hilarious. He looks so mean, his eyes ferocious and his mouth pouty. It cracks me up every time.

  A minute later he strides out in a charcoal suit—jacket, slacks, and tie—no shirt. I stifle a giggle. He has to show off those abs.

  “Why do you laugh?”

  I shake my head. “He cracks me up when he models. His face—” I start laughing again.

  The next time Gray comes out—this time wearing a shirt, but also wearing fifties-style glasses—I start laughing again.

  “You will upset him,” Nicolo says.

  “No, with the lights, they can’t see anything up there,” I say.

  “Really?” I feel his hand on my thigh, and look down to see his white fingers caress the expansive area of leg between my knee and the skirt’s hem.

  I glance at him, and he’s watching the models intently, as though the last thing on his mind is the way his fingers are now sliding up my inner thigh.

  “Nicolo. I said the models can’t see, not the rest of the audience.”

  “They are watching the models.” His hand slides higher, and I gasp. His mouth curves into a smile as the tips of his fingers graze the lace of my panties. He gives me a sideways look, then one finger slides the scrap of lace aside and touches flesh.

  Oh, my God. If he moves another fraction of an inch, I’m going to come off my chair. Somehow I manage a strangled, “Stop.”

  “You know you want this.”

  What? His hand moves again, but I don’t feel any pleasure. “No, I don’t. Not here.”

  He looks at me, his expression curious. “Stop your teasing. You are no virgin.” He smirks. “Far from it, from what I hear.”

  My mouth drops open, and I wiggle away from his hand, which he pulls back very reluctantly. “Are you calling me a slut?”