The Wig, the Bitch & the Meltdown

by Jay Manuel

  Pablo flung open the door.

  “Yaaaassssss. Come on new apartment,” De La Renta shouted and handed his buddy a bottle of pink Veuve Clicquot Champagne.

  “Get in here, fool.” Pablo hugged the man.

  Always the nosey queen, De La Renta peeked into the half bath as he walked through the foyer. “You got a half bath? S-hi-t,” he made it a three-syllable word, “I’m lucky I got one sink to spit in when I brush my two back teeth.”

  Pablo laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Vacation has done you good.” De La Renta walked in, kicked his boots off as Pablo placed the bottle of Champagne on the nearby kitchen counter. “Lord, you look ten years younger.”

  “You mean, I look my age?” Pablo chuckled.

  “Egg-zackly.” He looked around the space. “It’s on and poppin’ now with this new pad.”

  “Check this out. Hey Siri, make it sexy.” Blackout blinds descended over the windows as soft accent lights illuminated the base of the sofa, the under lip on the baseboards and decorative notches cut into the walls. “I went for the futuristic vibe, LED tape hidden everywhere, and the whole place is controlled by Apple Home. Surround sound, lights, entertainment.”

  “Only you, Pablo,” De La Renta laughed. “All you need is someone to seduce.”

  “I’ll work on that after we wrap next season.” Pablo rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t tell Mother you gonna take another vacay. She’ll flip her wig.”

  “Okaaaay. But she’s not the only one who needs booty calls.”

  “True dat,” De La Renta chuffed. “So, what’s Malaki doin’ with your old place?”

  “He popped the question to his girlfriend and Mrs. Malaki to be moved in.” Pablo tapped his iPhone to open the blinds.

  De La Renta stood in awe, looking out the enormous corner window that wrapped the far side of the living room. Pablo’s view used to be a tenement block and overweight hookers hanging out on fire escapes. Now he had Seventh Avenue and the reflective grace of the Freedom Tower at One World Trade. Pablo was in the kitchen, enjoying De La Renta enjoying the view. Pressing the cork on the champagne bottle, he said, “Get the glasses.”

  De La Renta made his way over to the kitchen and looked at the walls. “Where?”

  Pablo tapped a flush inset button next to the cabinet above his kitchen sink. The door slowly opened up to reveal a collection of crystal glasses.

  “Oooooo, fancy you.”

  “Where else would one keep champagne flutes?”

  “Bitch, in a normal cabinet. That is if you’re lucky enough to have a kitchen in this city.”

  The cork popped, and foam erupted.

  “Whoo,” De La Renta squealed. Pablo hadn’t heard anyone squeal in weeks and thought how nice it had been.

  He poured the bubbly into the Moya handmade and mouth-blown, tapered waist flutes and handed one of the special glasses to De La Renta.

  “Girl, do you have anything that’s normal now?”

  “Not even my friends.”

  “Touché.” They clinked their glasses and moved back into the living room where De La Renta took a seat on the kitten grey Minotti sofa. Running his hands over the textured fabric, he cooed. “She’s lovely. So chic.”

  “And expensive. A whole episode’s salary for me.” Pablo looked down at his friend’s holey dark blue jeans. “Those aren’t indigo dyed, are they?”

  “You think I’m gonna stain your precious sectional? Don’t get your panties in a wad. They’ve been washed more than your hair and your hands in one lifetime.”

  Pablo sipped the champagne and relaxed. “You’re my first guest.”

  “Don’t let Mother know. She’ll have my head if she thinks I beat her to the unveiling.” There was a framed photo of Keisha and Pablo sitting on a set of floating shelves. “It all started with her.” He raised his glass.

  Pablo did too. “To Keisha. Long may she reign.”

  “At least, until you can pay off your mortgage.”

  “I hear that.” They clinked their glasses again.

  “I’ve so enjoyed having the last three weeks alone to finish decorating,” Pablo sighed. “Being Keisha-free was my real vacation. I really don’t know how I got away with it.”

  “T-Rex problems,” De La Renta spouted.

  “Really?”

  “Yup. That’s why I have the day off. She canceled her InStyle cover shoot because she was up all night arguing with him.” The glam guru sounded annoyed now. “Of course, I only found out when her doorman told me this morning–at 6:30 a.m. The bitch couldn’t text me beforehand?”

  “Well, that was bound to end soon.”

  “I told her last week, if you want another New York City douche, I can go to CVS on West 23rd Street and get you one.”

  Pablo nearly spit out his champagne. “Where the fuck do you come up with all these one-liners? You need your own show.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not goin’ down like that? No, ma’am.” De La Renta wagged his finger. “Okay, time to snoop more.” He stood up and strode over to the bedroom. He peered into the large white en-suite bathroom. “You have an egg tub? Oh! Please, pretty please, can I come over and take a bath some night?”

  “Sure. Just bring your own bubbles.”

  “OOH. I can’t wait. I’ve always wanted to bathe in an egg!”

  Pablo looked at their reflections in the mirror. It was encased with soft-focus LED ring light, the best light to do makeup in.

  De La Renta approved. “You should do your makeup here instead of those shitty trailers at work.” They walked back through the bedroom to settle on either side of the kitchen island that divided the open-concept space. “Everything here is the exact opposite of Keisha’s place.”

  “Yeah, I’m not really into the whole mix-and-match mansion thing,” Pablo sniped.

  “Ohmigod, every time I go over there, I feel like I’m in Starbucks.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh puh-lease.” De La Renta loved to dish on bad taste, especially celebrity’s bad taste. “That ceiling in the living room painted with those muted earth tone circles and gold leaf accents?” De La Renta closed his eyes and tilted his head like a confused dog. “And that odd-looking furniture with those geometric shaped pillows? Starbucks.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Got it. I told her to pick a theme and stick to it,” Pablo scoffed. “It’s like she tries to throw in every motif she’s ever seen or liked.”

  “Sort of like what she does on the show,” De La Renta pointed out. “Last season she was a popstar. This season she’s a novelist.”

  “What?” It was Pablo’s turn to snort.

  “You didn’t know?” De La Renta had clearly been waiting for the right moment to drop this tidbit. “You should’ve seen her the other day. While I was relaxing her hair and braiding it all up, she was two-finger pounding the whole time. Mavis Beacon, she is not.” De La Renta leaned in as if someone could hear them speaking. “She says you were there when she got the inspiration and now that she’s on hiatus and you begged off for Springfield—or so she thinks—she’s clacking away at her computer, becoming an author.”

  “Oh, that,” Pablo chuckled then took a sip of champagne. “She got some idea when we were flying down to Florida for her dirty weekend with Mr. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, something about alien models.”

  “Child, I can’t!”

  Pablo searched his memory. “I think they come to Earth under the guise of being Supermodels and basically save the planet.”

  De La Renta spewed his champagne across Pablo’s spotless kitchen.

  Thank God they weren’t sitting on the sofa. Pablo stood up to wipe the floor. “Now that I think about it, it does sound a lot like that bestseller Star Planet.”

  “Ohmigod. She had that book next to her while she was typing!”

&nb
sp; “Well, I guess plagiarism isn’t an issue when you’re a Supermodel.”

  “Or a Super Alien.” They roared with laughter again and gave each other a high five.

  * * *

  Season Three started with an eight major city tour, including London, Sydney, Tokyo and Paris. Each of the judges had taken on an international city, but everyone showed up in Miami, LA, NYC and Chicago. As Keisha had predicted, her show had truly blown up. If Pablo had worried about his mortgage, his latest residual check from sales to countries all over the world eased his anxiety. At least, in terms of money. He had other things to worry about, though. For one thing, Keisha’s burgeoning writing career. De La Renta had been ‘write’ (Pablo was thinking in puns). Keisha had been absent during the international model selection—showing up for the cameras and press and then skiving off to her hotel room, where she was evidently “working” on her book. Back in America, she spent most of the first episode’s filming in her dressing room, while the twenty-five semi-finalists sat in their cramped closet sweating and forbidden to speak to each other.

  “Anyone have a twenty on Keisha?” had become the season’s refrain. More than once, Pablo thought to himself, Isn’t this where I came in?

  At least she wasn’t hiding behind a catering cart. She was always in her dressing room. Typing. De La Renta had been right about her technique. This was not the elegant Mavis Beacon—all five fingers on the QWERTY keyboard, never look down at your hands—method. This was the two-finger hustle, clippity-clop. Stooped over the keyboard of her portable MacBook Air, she pounded the poor little keys with the emphatic beat of a rock-n-roll drummer. She typed while De La Renta did her hair. Typed while he did her makeup, except the eyes. Typed while they changed camera positions. Typed when they called for places on the set.

  “I’m busy,” she’d yell at the PAs who’d come to gather her. Pablo had seen them pulling straws to avoid having to bring her to the set, which was bound to bring a verbal lashing and possible job loss.

  “Do Not Disturb. Artist At Work” was always hung under the star on her dressing room door. It was hard to follow those instructions when you were on a shooting schedule and the entire cast and crew were waiting for the host to make an appearance.

  Strolling down the upstairs hallway of Silvercup Studios, Pablo watched a young production assistant dodging TV equipment like a soldier going into battle; his life probably did depend on it. The anxious-looking kid was safeguarding a USB thumb drive close to his chest. Pablo held open the big metal door leading to the control room and without even a thank you, the kid shoved past the creative director to Rachel Simpleton. Like Pablo, Rachel had looked refreshed and happy when she came back to work. Now she was slumped over her computer, coffee cup in hand and a bottle of Xanax lying in front of her. If anyone needed a makeover, it was Rachel. She’d aged beyond her years in just two weeks of filming season three.

  “Already on the Benzos?” Pablo asked lightheartedly.

  Rachel didn’t even register. She was hopelessly muttering into her IFB.

  “What do you mean she’s not in the building!?” she screamed, slamming her fist on the table.

  The production assistant slipped his cargo onto her desk and backed away. Rachel snatched it up and popped the USB drive into another computer, downloaded the file and opened it up on the main screen in front of her, and hit the space bar for Play.

  An animated flash of light sounded off with a faux hip-hop theme song. Then, Keisha’s nasal television voice joined in, sing-song like, over a montage of model contestants and seductive footage of Keisha, herself posing in a heavily jeweled corset creation by designers, The Blonds.

  “I wanna show everyone what I learned in becoming a fashion boss. I’m gonna make a new breed of Supermodel. And I’m gonna take someone from utter obscurity to fame. I’m Keisha Kash, and this is Model Muse.”

  Pablo had not seen the new edited show open before. It was somewhat better than the main titles they’d used for the first two seasons–but still not nearly as chic as he would’ve wanted. That wasn’t his department though and he didn’t need any more work. Halfway through the final montage of model contestants, Rachel froze the screen on an unflattering close-up of Keisha. She had the eyes of a hawk. She grabbed the studio phone and dialed an extension.

  “Brad? You missed the circles under Keisha’s eyes in the ECU! People expect her to look like the model superstar–she is the face of Veronika’s Privates for fucks sake.” Rachel listened for a brief moment. “I don’t care if her eyes were puffy on the day we shot. It’s your job to fix them in post. Hurry up. I have bigger fires to put out right now.”

  She slammed the phone down so hard her clipboard fell off the table.

  “Girl. What’s wrong?” Pablo said with a soothing voice.

  “Wrong? HR is on my case. Keisha’s gone rogue. We’re over budget. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just a regular Monday around here.” She sounded a little bit hysterical.

  “I’m tired too.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck tired is, Pablo.”

  “You know, Rachel, being a celebrity is exhausting,” he shouted, with a little giggle.

  She looked at him and burst out laughing. “I love you, Pablo.” It was the kind of hilarity that overexertion and exhaustion creates. “And your BFF? She’s driving me crazy.”

  “She’s driving everyone crazy.”

  “It’s like she isn’t even here when she is here.”

  “She isn’t here,” Pablo stated the obvious. “She’s on Planet Fierce.”

  “Great, here comes America’s next top author.”

  Pablo had no idea Rachel could be so funny.

  “It’s a real problem, Pablo. We haven’t wrapped a single shoot on time and the overtime is killing the budget, which means the bobbleheads upstairs are on Joe’s case, which means he’s on my case. We’re up for renewal for God’s sake.”

  “They’re not really in charge.”

  “No one’s in charge.”

  “Keisha is.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “You sure about that?”

  “Oh, she’s in charge of the show. She’s just not in charge of herself.”

  “You have to talk to her. Broyce and I both agree that you’re the magic bullet to take our monster down.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re sending me in to tame a hot ego run wild, without back up?”

  “Try barbecue,” she giggled. “We’re talking job security, Pablo. If the network decides she’s too unreliable, they’ll find another model who isn’t and re-launch a copycat without either of you.”

  He felt ill. He didn’t even hashtag the air when he said, “I’m on it.”

  Sitting in the VIP back corner of her favorite eatery, the checkered tablecloth was already spattered with barbecue sauce, Keisha’s lips were telltale orange. She didn’t even pause to stop chewing as she told Pablo how happy she was he’d invited her to lunch.

  “Being an author is so hard,” she confided over a platter of ribs at Virgil’s. “I had no idea. And De La Renta is such a pain in my ass. He insists on doing my hair while I’m creating.”

  Pablo didn’t dare respond for fear of laughing. “Do you have a publisher, yet?”

  “Andy’s sure he can get one but says I’ll be lucky to get more than a six-figure advance.” She shook her head disgustedly. “If I’d known how hard it was to write a novel and how little they’d pay me, I never would’ve started.”

  “Well, your name alone will sell books.”

  “My name is not what this is about. You, of all people, should know that. I’m trying to inspire young girls. I’m trying to do something here that’s important, Pablo.”

  “On another planet,” he said softly.

  “My aliens save earth.”

  “Do th
ey recycle?” he smirked.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Keisha, you used to have a sense of humor. You’re so wrapped up in this book that you’re stressing yourself out too much. Look at yourself. You’re starting to look like an author.”

  “I can’t stop the muse, Mr. Pablo. She won’t just turn off like a faucet.”

  “Thank God for De La Renta is all I can say. Someone has to save that hair of yours.”

  “This is my number one priority.”

  “Shouldn’t the show be our number one priority? We don’t want to piss the executives off.” He used the royal we.

  “They don’t want to piss me off.”

  “Well, that’s the truth. But we’re up for renewal. That means new contracts. They might try to take more control if you keep holding up the shoot.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, Keisha!”

  She stopped chewing and spit out a piece of gristle. “They sent you?”

  “They begged me to talk to you.”

  “I don’t like that.” Her nostrils flared. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Yours! The show’s.”

  She tore the flesh off a bone and sucked it hard. “Mr. Pablo, remember you’re a nobody without me. You work for me. I made you.”

  He nodded obediently.

  She shook the bone at him. “What happened to Judy and Mickey?”

  “A TV network.”

  “Uh huh.” She waggled the bone back and forth. “No one can come between us, Pablo, or it all goes to shit.”

  “It’s a small ask from the execs. They just want you to come to the set when the camera is ready. That’s all.”

  She pursed her lips and licked her fingers.

  “And not fire every PA that comes to bring you to the set.” He felt like Alex Honnold free soloing up El Capitan, except Pablo had vertigo. “How about we create a code? Instead of yelling ‘Camera’s ready,’ they tap softly on the door and wait. Then tap again. Wait. And whisper, ‘Miss Kash, are you ready to come to the set now?’”

  She nodded. Sighed. “Please.”

  Pablo nodded. “Please.”