by Sarina Bowen
“That’s three questions,” I point out.
“So? What do you care if he once feathered Chandra’s nest?”
“Because…” It’s hard to say this aloud to my ninety-nine pound successful friend. “She’s skinny and blond and super successful.” Just like you.
“Still not seeing the problem,” Ash says as she opens the wine. “Ooh, a cork! Fancy.”
“I splurged. No box wine for your newly employed friend.”
Ash grabs me into a hug. “Congrats! And don’t be intimidated by some bitch named Chandra. She’s not in the picture anymore, otherwise he wouldn’t be fake-engaged to you. Can we dip stuff into melted cheese now?”
We do, and it’s pretty great.
But I just can’t let it go. So after dinner we watch more of Mr. Fixit Quick. The season finale was shot live for some reason. They make a big deal about the live shoot, and I’m uncomfortable. My skin prickles with the knowledge that something big is coming. And I’m not wrong. Just as Tom and Chandra lay the final tile in the kitchen of my dreams, he drops down onto one knee. To propose to her.
“Will you make me the happiest man in a tool belt?” he asks. He pulls an engagement ring out of his shirt pocket.
My heart is in my throat. I try to see if it’s the same ring I’m wearing, but I can’t. I can’t see it because by that point I can’t see anything at all. Maybe it’s all the wine that Ash is pouring. She’s like the Niagara Falls of the wine. Or maybe it’s because my eyes are full of tears.
Even though I know intellectually that this was recorded months ago, I am horribly, irrationally jealous. This doesn’t make much sense, of course, because I know Tom and this chick aren’t currently engaged. But even though it happened on television, that proposal was very real. You just can’t fake the hope and excitement on Tom’s face. Nobody is that good of an actor.
Chandra may have fake boobs, but she got the real goods from Tom. I want to slap her with my frosting spatula and then force feed her something caloric. Like chocolate-covered bacon. Eat that, bitch!
I can’t stop watching. I want to, but I can’t look away.
On the screen, Chandra is grinning at Tom. She’s all teeth. Really white, perfect teeth. “Get up, silly!” she squawks. “Don’t be such a big kidder.”
Oh. Oh no. Oh poor Tom.
My emotional roller coaster banks into a turn as Tom’s face falls faster than my aunt Betty’s soufflé. “Not kidding here, hon. I bought this house for you. For us.”
She taps her high-heeled shoe on the tile and bites her lip. “Please stand up, Tom. This isn’t funny. We’ll talk about it later.”
Oh, honey. My heart breaks into tiny slivers, like a piece of peanut brittle right out of the freezer.
“Damn!” Ash squeals. “That ice-cold bitch!”
“I know!”
There’s a horrible, awkward pause, and Tom slowly rises to his feet. The producer must have cut to a commercial break a moment later. And season nine just…ends. We’re sitting on my couch watching the credits roll.
“Note to self,” Ash says, swigging her wine. “Never ask a woman to marry you on live TV.”
“She didn’t have to embarrass him!” I squeal.
Ash gives me a cautious glance. “I suppose she could have improvised better. But, honey, he cornered her. They weren’t on the same page at all. How could he not know that?”
“She must not have been honest with him earlier on,” I say, basing this opinion on zero facts. Seriously, if we were having this discussion about anyone else in TV-land, I would probably be agreeing with Ash right now. But instead I feel nothing but protective of Tom. Who could date him and not fall for him? Chandra must be one of those people who hates puppies. No—she’s a cyborg! That would explain a lot.
“You know…” Ash looks thoughtful. “He should have told you this story before. It’s not just about the sex tape for him. You’re helping to paper over this train wreck, and you didn’t even know it.”
“It’s fine,” I insist. “Tom’s a great guy. I’m happy to love him. For pretend,” I add quickly.
Ash’s eyebrows do that crazy thing where they angle toward you in a sinister way. “Pretend, huh?”
“Totally,” I lie.
That night, I rub my fondue-filled belly as I toss and turn in bed. I have more than mixed emotions. I have churning emotions. A vortex of emotions, swimming with a school of hungry piranha. Whatever. You know what I mean.
I have to teach my first classes tomorrow afternoon, and my metaphors are clearly out of control, and I can’t seem to care. I’m focused exclusively on Tom.
I’m mad at Tom for not telling me about Chandra, but I also empathize with him. How awful to redo a house for the love of your life (ouch) and then have her not love you back? Publicly. Ugh, the humiliation. On TV. Live. She was about as warm as a metal pole outside in February.
It killed me to see the hope on his face.
That’s the part that makes me feel so ill—all that love emanating from him. He was like a little boy looking up at her expectantly, like she could make his wishes come true. She could be his safe place, when it was so clear that’s what he needed.
When he proposed to me, he didn’t get down on his knee. He looked at me and smiled. It felt so real. It felt more real than his real proposal on TV, where he asked Chandra to be part of his tool belt. I mean, what was that? That felt scripted. And odd. And now I’m confused all over again.
Piranha emotions. That’s a thing. That’s me right now. I’m confused and I have a belly full of wine and melted cheese and I want to get rid of all of these jumbled thoughts. I have a job, though, so that’s something. That’s something I should focus on.
I will focus on that. Tomorrow. Probably.
Which is why it makes no sense that I reach my hand out to grab my phone and send a quick text to Tom.
ME: Sooo…I got that job. Great, right?
ME: And good luck with the shoot tomorrow.
(Pause)
ME: I made fondue but I’m sure Canada does it better.
ME: Canada does everything better.
(Longer pause, and then I think, fuck it and type the next text.)
ME: I miss you.
ME: For real.
Then I turn off my phone and fall into a deep, deep sleep.
37 Once More With Feeling
Tom
“Once more,” the director says. “Really sell it to me. And…action!” The little whippersnapper snaps the clapper again.
I hate this guy for making me say the same shit four times already. But the only way out is through, so I do it anyway. “It won’t be easy,” I say, looking right at camera four. “How special do you think we can make this place in forty-eight hours? Special enough for six couples who are Betrothed?”
“And…cut! Let’s have one more take, where you angle those abs toward the viewer.”
I always wondered what it would feel like to really lose my mind, and now I know. It feels exactly like this.
There’s a certain kind of energy on a film set—people scurrying around with lights and equipment. The chaos of combining filming with actual construction. I should be loving every minute of this. I used to love every minute of this, and then something changed, and I can’t quite figure out when that happened.
In the early episodes it was just me, talking to the camera and then shooting whatever we worked on. But now the setup is fancier. I don’t even have any input on what we’re going to renovate. Mr. Fixit Quick has become Mr. Quick Stand On This Mark And Hold That Layout Square Like It’s Useful.
It is useful, but they never show me using it.
Today my job is pretty much to look at the camera, flex my pecs, and smile. It’s a plastic smile, and I have a perpetual two days’ worth of beard, because that’s what the audience voted worked best for me. We’re shooting the introduction footage while everyone else preps the site.
I’m not allowed to get in there and get dirty anymore. And I liked
getting dirty.
Now it’s Shiny Shoes and his punk of a director who orchestrates everything. The director is new at this. He looks like he’s about twenty years old, and the only tool he’s ever held is his own.
Director Kid isn’t even pretending to ask for my input in the various rooms of the lodge. I used to be the expert, but now he tells me to “just stand over there and look masculine.” So that’s what I’ve become. Mr. Fixit Quick is a mannequin.
I can’t even text Brynn because I left my phone at the hotel in my rush to get here. When I arrived this morning, I went in to makeup, and since then I’ve done this talking-head routine for eight hours. While everyone else works around me.
It’s the pits.
The only thing keeping me in check is the knowledge that we’re almost done with the promo spots, and then the real work will begin. Finally. The special will be shot in a continuous roll for forty-eight hours straight. No breaks in the action. Then they’ll edit it down to a two-hour special.
My stomach growls. What I really want right now is one of Brynn’s Breakfast At Any Time specials. Her baked bacon dusted with brown sugar. Fresh crepes. Her sitting on my counter, her legs wrapped around me while she feeds me.
That hasn’t actually happened, but what else have I got to think about while I stand here? It could happen. When I get home, I’ll ask her. If she’s still around. Things seem to be looking up for both her and me, so she’ll probably want to drop this whole fake-engagement thing. Right when it was getting good too. She’ll hand me back my heirloom ring and I’ll…
My throat feels all tight. Must be time for a break.
I really need to shake off my shitty mood. I wanted to do this job. It’s my show, my baby. I made this. And here it is. I glance around the set, trying to remember how I got here.
Refurbishing homes was something I took up because I wanted to make a difference. Maybe that sounds ridiculous. I’m not good with words or feelings, but I am good with my hands.
And a home is important. I should know. I never really had one. It’s supposed to be the place you can come to and feel safe and loved. It’s a place where things work because you tend to them, and when you walk in the door, you can just slough off your worries from your shoulders the same way you take off a heavy winter coat.
This place, this chateau or whatever, isn’t going to be anyone’s home. This is nothing more than a four-page spread in a magazine, an eight-week show on network TV and, somehow, the symbol that I’ve completely sold out.
But now I’m stuck. I signed the contract. I’m already here. So I’ll deal. And right now that means, apparently, moving my shoulder a little more to the left so that the light hits my biceps at a better angle.
“Okay, man,” Director Kid says. “We’ve got the intro.”
Thank fuck.
“Let’s move on to the real deal!” The production staff gathers around, along with my crew. “We’ve got cameras in place?” Shiny Shoes asks. He gives Director Kid a pointed look.
“Oh! Let’s have a status check. Camera one?”
“Camera one is ready,” a techie confirms.
“Camera two is a go!” someone else calls. And so we know that Director Kid is capable of counting to twelve, as a dozen cameras in various locations are accounted for.
Then the director picks up his clapper. Seriously, he looks gleeful. Like the clapper is a symbol of power, and he wields it fervently. “Once the cameras start rolling, they don’t go off until the wrap. We work with whatever you guys get, okay?” Heads nod everywhere.
Forty-eight hours. Just forty-eight hours to go. I’ve got this.
I almost had this. Almost.
At first, things are humming along. My crew and I unload three trucks full of building supplies. The show’s editor will undoubtedly use that footage as a montage in fast forward. We’ll look like busy ants on a hill. Busy ants who are very well paid.
After that the demolition starts. I get out my crowbar, which is always a good moment. “Let’s go, boys!” I call, and both Burt and Larry grin. We do love to rip shit apart. Pulling down a few poorly placed walls is the most fun I’d had since leaving Michigan. It’s therapeutic.
Demo takes us a couple of hours. At midnight I sneak away for a few hours of shut-eye, while a fresh crew comes in to sand the floors and put up some new wall board. When I wake up, it’s time to put in the kitchen cabinetry and supervise the boat-sized hot tub installation. I stop worrying about the tacky nature of the reality show and just go with it. We put drink holders on a pedestal in the center of the tub, and window boxes along the edges of the new deck.
Even better—I bring in a stone mason to save the cool old chimneys which are deteriorating. Shiny Shoes and his man-child director probably don’t care about restoration, but I’m not asking their opinion.
“Killer view,” I say, setting my nail gun on the deck and gazing out at the mountaintops. I experience a moment of peace. This deck could be a happy place for someone. After Betrothed is finished ruining sixteen lives, someone else will take over this space, right? Someone who will appreciate what we’d done here.
“Hey, Tom?” Burt calls me from the doorway. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, smiling into camera four. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it.” I’m picturing a few rotted ceiling joists or some corroded pipes in the kitchen. “What kind of emergency is this? Plumbing? Electrical?”
Burt looks a little green, so I have a fleeting thought that the septic tank may be involved. “It’s, uh, a personnel issue.”
“Really?” I push past him into the lodge. “What kind of— Oh.”
Oh.
There stands Chandra in the kitchen, her trusty book of paint swatches in her hand. She’s holding a strip with four different shades of lavender up to the wall, and flipping her hair toward camera six.
I blink slowly and then refocus my eyes just to be sure I’m not hallucinating.
Fuck. She’s still there. Furthermore, there are three cameras focusing on me right now. Several things become apparent to me in rapid succession. In the first place, I’m sweaty and covered in sawdust, while the woman who stomped on my heart with her pointy stiletto looks like she just stepped off a fashion runway. This isn’t how I wanted to come face to face with my ex. I don’t want to face her at all.
Secondly, there’s no chance this little reunion is a coincidence, or that the network’s failure to tell me they’d brought in Chandra is an oversight. No. Fucking. Way. It’s a hundred percent intentional, and I’m seeing redder than ever before. As red as Pratt & Lambert’s Velvet Red.
“Cut!” I holler. This shall not stand.
But it’s like I didn’t yell at all. The cameras don’t wink off. Instead, Chandra turns in my direction, her smile plastic. “Well, hello there, Tom. Long time no see.” She takes a couple of long strides toward me, her heels clicking importantly on the floorboards.
Who wears high heels on a construction site? Chandra, that’s who. Reaching me, she leans in for one of her let’s-pretend-I’m-French, double-cheeked kisses.
I sidestep her. Even as I’m doing it, I know I shouldn’t. I’m creating more drama instead of less. But I can’t help myself. Backing away, I wave my arms in the direction of the boyish director. “Cut,” I say again. “This is bullshit.”
Shiny Shoes and the director rush over. “You can’t cut,” they both say at once. “This is a continuous roll.”
“It’s in your contract,” the smarmy producer insists, and that’s when I know I’ve been had.
“Embarrassing me was not in my contract.”
He grins, and I’m this close to punching him. “You work in reality TV, Tom. You always have.”
Then I quit! The words are rising in my chest.
But before I can say them, the producer holds up a hand. “Your penalty for walking off the set is also in your contract. And it’s a steep one.”
“I fucking hate you,” I say,
my voice low. It’s childish, and I’m not even sure who I’m talking to. The producer, partly. Chandra, for embarrassing me and then agreeing to show up here and do it all over again.
And myself, a little bit. For walking my stupid ass into this nightmare just because I wanted the network to tell me I was important enough to save.
When will I ever learn?
Shiny Shoes doesn’t even look offended. He must be really good at his job, because drama rolls off this chump like rain from a standing-seam roof. “Doesn’t matter how you feel about me,” he says with a shrug. “But I’ll make a deal with you. Get back to work. I’ll edit out your little tantrum if you man up and finish this project with Chandra. Just turn around and walk out that door—” He points toward the deck. “—and walk back in here and greet her. Do it now.”
The way he adds that last bit is just meant to demean me. Like I’m his teenage son who needs to ask daddy for the car keys.
There is a deep silence on the set. Every camera operator, every crew member is watching. Even the day laborers we’ve hired to haul away the extra scraps of wallboard. They’re all waiting to see if I’ll unman myself by tucking my tail between my legs and doing what the producer wants. Or whether I’ll go all diva and make a big stink or throw construction materials around like an angry monkey.
That second thing sounds pretty appealing.
I glance up at Chandra. She’s standing there with her skinny arms folded across her chest, pushing her inflated boobs up to her chin and looking smug. This woman never loved me. How could she? She’s made of glass. I can see that now. She just wanted to hitch her wagon to a successful TV show and get everything she could from me. Now she’s back for more.
Everyone wants something from me. And right now they want me to make a scene. If I kick over the grouting tray in frustration or start yelling, they’ll use that in their promo spots. Watch Tom Spanner lose it after this message from our sponsor!
I take a deep breath and find my resolve. I won’t give them the satisfaction. I won’t feed the beast.
Standing up as straight as I possibly can, I turn around and walk out the door. On the deck outside, I count to ten, taking more deep breaths. Dawn is creeping towards us. There’s a warm light tinting the horizon.
