The crowd twittered in delight at the site of a full-grown man shaking hands with a monkey, but then roared in laughter when the monkey pulled off David’s wrist watch. Bono got startled by the crowd and jumped lightly from Eileen’s shoulder to David’s. For his part, David looked totally stunned and suddenly very uncomfortable. He didn’t scream like I probably would have, but he did freeze. The monkey began running its hands through David’s hair and beard with great interest.
“I swear I didn’t know about this,” I told him through the earpiece, “but please just keep it together for five more minutes with her. It’s already half over.”
David’s eyes raked up to the control booth in disbelief. I could hardly blame him. Producers were supposed to know everything. The idea that we booked a monkey and I didn’t know was as ridiculous as it was true. This was already a disaster.
“Oh, he likes you, too,” Eileen was saying apologetically. “I let him watch all your cooking channel shows, you see. So, he thinks he knows you. Capuchins are very intelligent primates. They have incredible facial recognition skills. They even use tools,” she continued as she handed over David’s watch. “As you can see, their hands are very dexterous.”
She scooped the monkey back from David’s shoulder and set him on her lap. David looked totally dumbfounded.
“Calm down, Bono,” Eileen told the monkey in a sing-song voice that set me on edge. “You don’t want him to think we’re crazy fans.”
The crowd twittered in amusement again, but they were beginning to pick up on David’s discomfort.
“S-so I hear that you and Bono are going to be in a movie soon, is that right?” David asked suddenly, trying to recover from the obvious shock of having a monkey jump onto him.
“Yes, that’s right,” Eileen said smoothly. She flashed her veneers at him again and then pivoted toward the audience. “Bono and I are going to be in a remake of the 1951 classic Ronald Regan movie ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ with a chimpanzee named Corey. In a twist, we’ve adapted it as a silent film that we’ll be performing in mime.”
“That’s very interesting,” David said, shaking his head, smiling, and visibly trying to refocus himself, “I remember seeing that movie in a PoliSci class in high school. What led you to be interested in that project? Are you a big fan of President Regan? Or is it more of an interest in primate science that caught your fancy?”
Eileen giggled like a schoolgirl. The monkey in her lap also laughed. Or perhaps it was screaming. It was hard to tell. I wanted to pull the plug on this segment so badly I could barely breathe.
“Oh, my interest wasn’t politically motivated,” Pritchard replied. “I just look for opportunities to show the world my uniqueness. My life is my art. I am the living embodiment of avant-garde. Right now, I love primates and want everyone to understand what incredible, smart, and sensitive animals they are. That’s why I brought Bono and Corey to meet you today.” She said all this insane bullshit with total seriousness.
“I’m sorry,” David stuttered. “Did you say Corey the chimpanzee was here too?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Eileen said happily. David’s face was blank.
I pushed the button again to talk to David’s earpiece. “God, I’m so sorry. Please request that she bring out the chimp.”
“When did you first realize that you had a passion for working with animals?” David asked Eileen. She looked confused at the question. She gaped at David who now looked absolutely livid. He was no longer following my instructions. At my side, Ravi tensed.
“I’ve always loved animals,” Eileen said simply, “I love them as much as I used to love belly dancing. Or before that, motocross. Shall I bring out Corey now?”
David wasn’t able to answer, because the audience had begun applauding again. I’d ordered the backstage crew to bring the chimp when David didn’t comply. I immediately regretted it. Corey the chimp was wearing an ‘I love David’ t-shirt with David’s face on it. He walked out awkwardly on two legs and joined Eileen on the couch. David’s jaw had dropped open in shock.
“Do you want to see some of Corey’s tricks?” Eileen asked David in a leading tone. She was beginning to get uncomfortable at David’s total lack of reaction to Corey. “Corey can juggle,” Eileen said awkwardly. “He can also do some sign language. I’ve been showing him your shows lately. He’s watched you so many times that every time I come home, Corey asks me ‘where’s David?’ in sign.”
David blinked at Eileen and said nothing. I too was speechless. This was not the interview we planned for at all. This lady was creepy. Even this far away, I could see a slim ring of white all the way around her pupils.
“Where’s David?” Eileen asked the chimp, signing something with her hands. The chimp reached out its hairy little hand and pointed at David.
The crowd twittered awkwardly.
David stood up at his desk and walked around to the other side of it. He leaned against it and stared at his audience in silence. After about ten seconds of dead air during which I screamed into his earpiece to go sit down, David shook his head and pulled it out.
“Lady, please take your monkeys and get out of here,” David said to Eileen in a cold voice. “I sincerely apologize—and this is not about you—but this isn’t going to work. You should really go.”
I stabbed at the soundboard. “Cut the live feed,” I screamed into the intercom. “Cut it now. Right now! Right fucking now!”
“I need at least a minute!” came the response.
“You have thirty seconds, or you’re fucking fired,” I barked. “Go to commercial. Get. It. Done.” I turned to Ravi. “Get ready with the goddamn bleep button or pull his mic or whatever you have to do if he blows. I have a bad feeling.” Ravi nodded seriously and started pressing buttons on the board at light speed.
Meanwhile, Eileen rose stiffly, took Corey’s hand, and swiftly walked off the stage in silence. Corey looked back over his shoulder at David and waved. The audience didn’t know whether to clap, laugh, boo, or cheer. They ended up doing a bit of all four. The little wave of noise and activity ended abruptly when David cleared his throat loudly.
“Sorry guys. I’m not sure exactly what I expected when I agreed to do a fucking talk show, but it definitely wasn’t this,” David began. “Clearly, I’ve made an enormous fucking mistake by giving up any creative control to the assholes that produced this fucking piece of shit. But let’s just have a chat really quick about this shit show, shall we?”
2
David
“This is the moment where it all goes south,” Kyle Anders said the next morning in his office, pressing pause and pointing at the screen.
This Anders guy was a total corporate prick, but I’d decided to indulge him simply by taking this meeting, so I felt obliged to play along.
“Oh?” I asked innocently. He glowered at me over the high bridge of his clearly rhinoplastied nose.
“Yes. That’s right. See this is when you start saying four letter words. Do you know why that’s so bad?” He squinted at me from behind his bifocals and I noticed his hairline didn’t move at all. Although probably a hard thirty-five, he must be wearing a toupee. I filed the fact away for future teasing before I answered his question.
“Because mommy doesn’t like it when I use daddy’s grownup words?”
“No Mr. Breyer. Please don’t try to be cute. It’s because not only have you just violated the conduct section of your contract, you’ve just cost the company money. A great deal of money. The FCC charges the stations that can’t bleep out the words fast enough on the seven second delay. Then, the stations charge that back at us, which hurts our reputation and lowers our overall value to advertisers, which hurts our stock price, which hurts me, personally. Do you see why I wouldn’t like that?”
“I decided to terminate my relationship with you before I started dropping f-bombs like they were going out of style, so I’m not sure why you’re tell me all this.”
“Don’t worry, it’
ll all be in the lawsuit. Let’s just continue watching,” he replied. His face was drawn into such a pinched, grumpy expression that he resembled a shrunken raisin. The too-orange spray tan accentuated his facial folds unflatteringly. He must be overdue for his Botox appointment. He pressed play.
In the recording, I was still staring directly at the camera. Recorded me sighed again and pulled at yesterday’s shirtsleeves before continuing,
“See, I really thought this would be a good idea. When I signed the paperwork to develop this show, I wanted to create something different from what I’d done before. The concept was somewhere between Politically Incorrect, the Daily Show, and a standard talk show format a la Oprah or Ellen. I wanted to use food and humor as a bridge to connect with concepts, events, and people that are hard to understand. It would have been fucking cool and you would have loved it. But Kyle Anders, douche nozzle in chief of the production company, he didn’t think so. He wanted, and I quote, ‘a hot, harmless male Rachel Ray for the obese, under-sexed housewives in flyover states.’”
Anders pressed pause again. “Ok, let’s dissect this section. I see defamation, continued violation of your contract, and classless attacking on me personally.”
I rolled my eyes and said nothing. My statements were one hundred percent true and I didn’t remotely regret them.
“Shall we continue?” Anders asked, and I yawned at him rudely.
“Sure.” This was getting old, but I had nowhere else to be this morning. He pressed play again.
In the recording, the audience could be heard booing Anders. I smirked. Recorded me raised his hands up to quiet them before continuing.
“It’s fucking gross isn’t it? He thinks he’s so much smarter than my audience. The hard-working people that give a shit enough to watch me. He thinks that everyone, including me, will just dance along to his little exploitative tune. Well sorry Kyle, I’m not going to fund your next condo by selling out. Certainly not to someone with no respect for this audience. They’re good people. Fuck you. Fuck this. My fans deserve better.”
I turned and walked off stage to confused but thunderous applause. The feed cut off a moment later.
“So, here’s where—" Anders began.
“I get up and leave,” I interrupted. “Look, I’m not at all interested in your threats. You want to sue me? Sue me. I’ve got pockets just as deep as yours and this will probably last the rest of both our lives. Even if you win, you’ll probably never see a penny. But come at me bro. If that’s what you want.” I shrugged and got up. “By the way, your toupee is crooked.”
Walking out of Anders office felt positively transcendental, especially because I saw him touch at his head nervously as the door closed. Douche. Walking out on Anders was almost as good as walking out of the studio yesterday and driving home to sit in the hot tub on my hotel balcony and finishing an entire bottle of champagne. I was walking on sunshine until I got in the elevator and saw a familiar face. Casey’s face.
As soon as I got in and we saw each other she hit the button for the next floor down to escape me. Impulsively, I slammed the stop button before she could. The elevator ground to a halt, trapping us together until I released it. She slunk against the opposite corner to glare.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she swore, and I noticed the smeared mascara around her eyes and a red nose that suggested she’d been crying. “Why are you here?”
I’d been planning on saying some very snide things to Casey, but they evaporated when she sniffled. Her full lower lip trembled, and my breath caught in my throat. Instead of some smart-ass comment, the only thing I really wanted to ask came out of my mouth.
“Did you really not know about the monkeys?”
Her cherry colored lips parted in surprise.
“That’s all you have to say? You just got sixty people fired and you want to know about the motherfucking monkeys? God, you’re a dick.” She shook her head furiously and when I continued to stare at her added, “No! I didn’t know anything about the monkeys. That was an Anders decision made well above my pay grade. All I knew was that Vic had an update.”
I believed her. Anders was more than enough of a prick to screw us both, and she had tried to get me to speak with Victor. I nodded and then paused. “Everyone got fired?”
She blinked at me and cocked her head to the side like she was trying to figure me out. “What did you think would happen when you had a meltdown like that on live air? The production is dead. That means everyone is instantly laid off.”
“But they’re all union members…” I hadn’t really thought through the collateral damage of destroying my show, but I knew that the industry had some protections for people.
Casey looked dumbfounded that I would assume everyone would be fine.
“Yeah and? Those benefits don’t last forever. This is a competitive city. It can be hard to find another job.” She was staring at the ground now with a frown on her symmetrical, pretty face.
“You got fired?” I asked. My voice had lost any edge. In fact, I sounded guilty. I felt that way too.
Casey laughed bitterly. “Fired? I didn’t just get fired. I got fucking ruined. No one will ever hire me as a producer again. I lost control of talent on live tv. It was my job to make sure the show ran smoothly. It didn’t even run period for fifteen minutes and the two of which were a deranged, vulgar meltdown. I’ll be lucky if I ever get hired on a reputable production again.”
My righteousness and indignation were fading fast. Had I seriously just ruined this girl’s career? The prospect made me feel ill. She wasn’t really to blame for any of this—Anders was—and he was obviously still gainfully employed.
“I didn’t mean to get you or anyone else fired,” I admitted. She looked at me in apparent shock that I might care. Or maybe she just thought I was a dolt.
“This is Hollywood, Mr. Breyer. I knew a brand-new production was risky. I’ve got no one to blame but myself that it didn’t work out. Everyone in this industry knows there are risks. Don’t let it keep you up at night.”
Casey’s formality was probably meant to reestablish some type of professional dynamic between us, but I no longer wanted that. I’d become… curious. Something like electricity buzzed between us in the elevator, and I wasn’t sure if it was real or something I just wanted to be real.
I looked at her long legs in her extremely tight pants, then my watch, and then back at her perfect, sculpted legs. My appointment with my lawyer was at three. Plenty of time. I put on my most charming smile.
“Call me David. Do you maybe want to get a drink?” I asked.
3
Casey
The bar at the W hotel was not busy at ten-thirty a.m. on a Tuesday. In fact, it had only just opened, and the bartender looked down her pierced nose at me judgmentally when I ordered a double straight tequila and a cheeseburger. Don’t judge my order and I won’t judge that big-ass septum piercing that makes you look like an ox, I thought at her through my anxiety. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to agree to this drink with David Breyer, but it was making me batty.
“You’re paying for all this, right?” I asked David as I slid into a booth. “Cause that’s the only reason I said yes. I’m officially unemployed effective today. I literally just got my proverbial pink slip.”
He smirked. “Get all the cheeseburgers and tequila you want. I owe you that much.”
“Is that a challenge? I can eat my weight in junk food.”
He looked skeptical. Whatever. Everyone knew his family was loaded.
“What would that be? Three or four? I think I can afford that.”
He thought I was skinny? Jeez, David clearly hadn’t been in LA very long. Although objectively slim and healthy, I was still positively Rubenesque by the bone-thin nigh-anorexic standards of Hollywood in front of the camera. I loved a good hamburger far too much to subject myself to that sort of misery, even on a day like today. I’m not sure what crazed impulse convinced me that this was a good idea, but I w
as already here and wanted to at least get a free lunch out of it.
“Your mistake,” I said bravely, followed by, “well here I am. What did you want anyway?”
The moment lengthened as David and I stared at one another over the little table. Some unknown emotion in his blue-green eyes flashed and then vanished. He sighed.
“I really screwed up yesterday, huh?”
I blinked in shock. He was seriously asking me? His general reputation was not one of collaboration or, well, listening. One of the production assistants at Out to Lunch had described him as ‘selectively deaf and completely conceited’, and this was the first evidence I’d seen so far that it wasn’t true. I gave his question some honest thought.
“Well, if you wanted to have a live talk show, then yes, you probably have made it so that won’t ever happen again. But as rants go it was pretty entertaining and the internet loved it, so it probably won’t tank your long-term media prospects…” I trailed off into silence and shrugged. I wasn’t an agent or a publicist. He should probably be consulting a professional.
“I’m really sorry I got you fired.” Unbelievably, he seemed genuine, and I felt an irrational desire to make him feel better. It must have been his wide, guileless eyes that did it. He looked so lost and sad all of a sudden.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him. It felt silly to reassure him, but maybe I also needed to convince myself. “I may not work as a producer again, but I’ve already been offered my old job back as a production assistant on another reality program.”
He brightened. “That’s good, right?”
I grimaced. “It’s a steady paycheck.”
“You don’t look very happy. What show is it?”
Lost and Found (Scions of Sin Book 4) Page 2
