by Amanda Heger
“On my computer!”
“Okay, Gramps.” This was going nowhere. Fast. He’d have to google it when he got home, see what the website guy was promising for next week. Evan tried to pry himself out of the conversation with a solemn promise to call tomorrow with more details, an oath to tell the whole truth about the show, and a pledge to not let the “Hollywood weirdos” talk him into getting calf implants.
“I’ve got to go now. Can I call you tomorrow?”
“I know you’ve always had them chicken legs, but the risk ain’t worth it.”
“I promise. Talk to you later.”
Evan hung up before his grandpa could slide in another offhand remark. Once the old man had hit seventy-five, he’d decided everything was on the table for discussion—no matter how random or offensive.
“Sorry, I was supposed to call him this morning. He gets really weird if I don’t call.”
Marisol cocked her head to one side. “Does he live close to here?”
“No. He lives back home. Illinois. That’s in the middle—”
“I know where it is. I lived in St. Louis for a little while.”
“Oh, well. That’s where he lives. Near my dad.” He ignored the pang in his chest. The one that still came every time he said “my dad” without “my mom.”
“And he collects parrots?”
“No. He’s just a little crazy. Can’t quite do it on his own anymore.”
“And you talk to him every day?”
“When I can. He saw me through some hard stuff when I was younger. I try to pay back the favor.”
The waitress pushed her way through the crowd, holding a tray of food overhead. “Look out. Look out. We’ve got a couple of lovebirds over here, and they need their fuel.” She slid the plates onto the table, leaving behind a burst of steam and a chocolate shake. Tons of whipped cream. Two straws.
“That one’s on the house,” she said with a wink.
Marisol fumbled with something under the table, twisting and turning in all sorts of odd directions.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I have to check something.” She flopped a small pink and gray box on the table. It was the size of a small cell phone, and a tube ran from one end and disappeared somewhere under the table. She pulled an orange case from her bag and began unzipping.
“You’re diabetic. I mean, I recognize the supplies. My grandpa has the same meter.” Your grandpa? Had he really just shoved his foot so far down his throat that he’d compared her to his grandpa? “But you’re a lot prettier than he is. I mean, here.” He shoved the shake across the table. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
Evan pulled a fry through the ketchup and tried one final time to focus on the dozens of red flags flying in his face. Coworker. Potential Internet celebrity. Leaving the country in two weeks.
“I can share.” She handed him a spoon, and all those flags faded into the distance. “But only because you are cute when you talk to your grandpa.”
Day Six
Even if porno music hadn't been blaring throughout the studio, Marisol would have known something was wrong. Everyone stood in a tight circle, looking at their feet while Julia’s nostrils flared.
“How many times did I tell you to leave that shit alone, Jerry?” She spoke between gritted teeth, and her voice hovered a centimeter below a scream—still barely able to be heard over the constant bow chicka wow wow coming over the speakers.
A bearded man in a So Late It’s Early T-shirt flinched at her words. “It’s Sunday. I thought we could all use a little fun.”
“I'm going outside and coming back in ten minutes. This better be fixed by then.” Julia stormed off the set, and everyone followed. Everyone except the bearded man, who scrambled in the other direction.
Marisol tiptoed into the hall, holding her coffee in one hand and her notes in the other. After dinner last night, she’d gone back to the hotel with every intention of practicing her presentation. Instead, she’d found herself scribbling idea after idea for sketches. It started with an idea that spun off of something Evan said over dinner. Then it moved to a few new ideas. And the next thing she knew, three hours had gone by and she had over a dozen ideas. Ideas of other “Lady Killer” skits.
But now, in the light of day, it seemed stupid and silly. These were professional writers. Showing them her handwritten, scrawled ideas would be akin to asking a lawyer to let her question a witness. Nope, she’d simply stuff this notebook into her bag and be done with it.
“There you are.” Evan rounded the corner and stopped a foot ahead of her.
“What is going on in there?”
“Jerry put the CD on again, but this time he got it stuck in the player. Can’t get it to turn off. Julia’s pissed—as usual—and the camera guy keeps saying he needs a raise if he’s going to have to shoot anyone in assless chaps. I tried to tell him all chaps are assless, but…”
Marisol pushed back a laugh. “Wow.”
“Just a regular day here on the set of So Late It’s Early.” Something different glinted in his smile today. Something like mischief. “Let’s go.” He nodded toward the side door.
Ten minutes. The memory of Julia’s words inched their way into the space between notes of the cheesy music. Marisol knew she definitely should not follow this funny, cute guy into the dim hallway. She definitely should go back and wait with the others, finish this last taping, and then return to hotel and work on her presentation.
But when he kept looking at her like that—like the two of them shared all the inside jokes the world had to offer—all the shoulds and should nots faded into the background. “Go where?” she asked.
“I was thinking we could take that Coconut backstage tour?”
“Now?”
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her down a maze of nondescript hallways, straight to a Plexiglass booth tucked away in one corner of the building. Rows of Who’s Got the Coconut memorabilia hung along the walls—glittery shirts and mugs and giant buttons shaped like dollar signs filled every space. A cash register stood in the corner, darkened and dead. A sign on top stared back at them. CLOSED.
Marisol tried to focus on the wall-to-wall glitter in the booth instead of the way her hand fit inside Evan’s. Or how disappointed she felt when he let go.
“Hold on.” He glanced over his shoulder before jamming a key into the brass lock. Two clicks later, he tugged Marisol into the booth behind him. “Okay, what size? Small? Medium?”
She jerked her head back. Was he really going to steal from this souvenir stand? Not even she wanted an I Lost My Coconuts in California button that much. “Evan, I—”
“Try this one.” He handed her a red polo shirt before grabbing a second one from a cabinet beneath the cash register.
“I am not going to steal anything.” Had she misjudged him? She was all in favor of harmless mischief, but petty crime was something else altogether.
Footsteps echoed from the other end of the hall, and they dove behind the cash register. Evan put one finger to his lips, eyes wide. Marisol tried to hold still, but her legs kept shaking. All she could imagine was the booth flinging open to reveal a muscular security guard with a mustache and a stun gun.
Maybe if she stood slowly and put her hands up—
“Why the hell are you on the ground, Evan?”
She looked up into the face of a burly man with a mustache. But he didn’t look like any security guard she’d ever seen. He wore one of the glitter coated T-shirts from the wall, and with every breath more gold flecks showered the ground around them. He stepped past them and flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
Evan stood and pulled her up beside him. “Hey man. Sorry, I thought you were Julia. Marisol this is Bourbon. Bourbon, Marisol.”
“Hi.” She lifted a hand then turned to Evan. “What is going on?”
“Put on the shirt and find out,” he said.
She plucked the red polo from the ground and held it up at eye level. A m
iniature version of the game show’s logo clung to the left breast, and just above it the word STAFF had been embroidered with black thread. “This is okay?” she asked Bourbon.
“As long as you bring it back and don’t get anything too disgusting on it.” He powered up the cash register.
Evan rolled his eyes and gave her a nudge with his elbow. “Trust me.”
She tugged the shirt over her dress, not caring that she looked like a lumpy, mismatched version of herself. For the last month, her sense of adventure had been shut away from the light. Left to die a slow death. But something about this place and these people had started to unlock it. Something about Evan—and the way he always laughed a little too loudly at her jokes—had started to unlock it. And if that meant she had to wear a polo that smelled vaguely like a fish tank to feel alive, so be it.
Bourbon pulled a bottle of bourbon out from the bottom drawer of the cash register. “To young love.” He tipped it in their direction before taking a big swallow. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”
Marisol glanced at the floor, wondering if she should correct his young love comment or ask what was due to happen in twenty minutes.
Evan didn’t give her the chance to do either. “Let’s go. You’re going to want all twenty.”
A handful of steps later, they stood in the middle of a gray hallway, in front of a slightly darker gray door. Spray-painted block letters ran across the surface, announcing STAFF ONLY. But a tiny sign beside the door matched the logo on her borrowed polo shirt.
Evan undid the lock and held open the door. “This way.”
She barely had both feet in the door when the lights flickered on. Followed by the sound of a thousand angels filling the space with their praise—or maybe that part was in her imagination. It didn’t matter. At that moment she was standing on the stage of Who’s Got the Coconut.
In one corner, Sammy Samuelson’s pulpit loomed, giving him a bird’s eye view of the contestants. It also kept him from being splattered with paint or water or goo or whatever other messy substance the contestants would be forced to endure. On the other end of the stage, the champion’s throne glistened with the same shade of glitter that covered the knickknacks in the souvenir stand.
What she wouldn’t give to sit in that throne with the winner’s crown pressing down on her head. Maybe a smattering of prizes at her feet. A giant check with her name scrawled across the front. For now, she’d have to settle for just the throne.
“I see you’re practicing for your big day.” Evan walked closer, his hands jammed into his pockets, as she settled into the seat.
She couldn’t stop smiling. Or running her hands along the arms of the chair, even if it meant glitter flakes clinging to her palms. “That man, Bourbon? He’s in charge of the tours?”
“Yeah, not exactly. I guess James is in some kind of feud with Samuelson. I don’t really know. This is more of a workaround.”
“Thank you.”
She wanted to say something else. Something about how this strange American game show had helped distract her as a young girl, when she sat in the doctor’s office or the emergency room. Even in her own living room, watching people in costumes makes fools of themselves for random prizes let her forget—for an hour at a time—that she would have to deal with her diabetes forever.
Marisol had years to adjust to pricking her fingers, tracking every morsel she ate, and being hooked to a small machine nearly twenty-four seven. She was no longer that scared girl watching television, but sitting on this stage, in this throne, she remembered her all too well.
“You okay?” Evan asked.
“Better than okay.”
“Want to see backstage?”
She stood and followed him to the edge of the stage. “Do they keep the tank full of fish back there?”
“I don’t think they do the fish thing anymore. PETA did a whole protest.” Evan held open the velvet curtain and flipped on the backstage lights, revealing a tomb of game show props.
A barrel marked PURPLE SLUDGE sat next to another barrel marked BLUE SLUDGE, which sat next to another, marked CHARTREUSE SLUDGE. Marisol pressed her fingers to the glass of a dunk tank, imagining icy water sloshing against the sides. Across the room, Evan climbed a step stool and peered down a double set of giant orange tubes—a piece from the classic Gopher Dash game.
“I never really understood the logic of this show,” he said. “Sludge? Thrones? Guessing the prices of toasters?”
She balked. “It makes perfect sense.”
“Explain it then.” He crossed his arms.
Marisol opened her mouth to explain, then snapped it shut. “Either you understand or you do not.”
“Fair enough. This one has been around since the nineties, right?” Evan’s voice echoed through the tube, and when he pulled his head out something in his expression had changed.
“I think yes,” she said. “I used to watch the show and plan how I would attack the gopher tube.”
“You have to dive through—” Evan started.
“On your stomach,” they both finished.
“My mom was obsessed with this show.” He shook his head. “She hated television. Was always threatening to throw it out if I didn’t go ‘experience the greatness of nature.’ But she never got rid of it, probably because she wanted to watch Who’s Got the Coconut.”
“And now you work on a television show.” Marisol grinned as she wandered to the next game, a balance beam of sorts. Every six inches or so, a bucket popped up on the beam and clear spikes rimmed each hole. This one must be new. “What does she think of that? Or maybe she does not mind because you are working next-door to her favorite show?”
“She died. When I was sixteen.”
She started to tell Evan she was sorry, then bit the words back. Those words had never brought her much comfort, and half the time she’d end up comforting the person who uttered them. “You know what we must do, yes?”
His brow furrowed. “No?”
She stepped toward the orange tubes and forced her way next to him on the step stool. There was barely enough room for one person, but they wouldn’t be on their feet for long. “We must dive through the gopher tubes in her honor.”
His eyes narrowed. “We must?”
“Ready, steady, Freddy!” She called out the show’s catchphrase and leapt in headfirst. The red polo shirt kept at least some of her dress plastered to her body, but the too big sleeves made wiggling her way through more difficult than she’d imagined. Heat made the inside of the tube sticky, and everything glowed orange. The twin tube beside her stayed silent, and there was no shadow to suggest a twenty-something guy crawling beside her.
Maybe I should have just said I was sorry.
She kept scooting on her stomach. Ahead, light and fresh air beckoned from the first hole in the pipe. For a half second, Marisol considered ignoring it. She could climb straight through, end this embarrassment, and apologize. Then they could make their way back to the set, face Julia’s wrath, and finish out this very weird situation.
“When you’re a contestant, you have to go faster than this.” Evan’s voice rolled through the tubes, and soon his shadow passed her—clearly the hare to her tortoise.
“What? How?” She tore forward until she could poke her head through the first hole.
Evan was already there, his head bobbing back and forth as he yawned. “Geez. Are you sure you want to be on this show? I don’t want you to make a fool out of yourself on national television.”
“Says the man who is taping whole sketches that make him look like a fool on television.”
“Well played.”
Marisol laughed. How strange this would look if anyone walked through the doors. Two heads protruding from orange tubes on an empty game show set, taunting each other. Smiling.
Flirting.
“I do not have to take this kind of abuse.” She ducked low and took off, moving through the tunnel at lightning speed—if lightning wore a dress and tr
ied to squeeze its way through a tight space while thinking about what it would be like to kiss the guy beside her.
She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she’d moved from not-my-type to let’s-lock-lips, but now it seemed there was no going back.
She pushed through faster and faster, until she emerged from the tunnel. “I win!” She threw her hands in the air before collapsing to the ground
Two seconds later, Evan squirmed out beside her, panting and ruffled. “You cheated.”
“I did not.”
He ran one hand over the top of his head then looked her straight in the eye. “Thank you.”
“For kicking your butt?”
“For that too.”
She pushed her hair back from her face. “My mother died too, when I was small. It is…” There was no single word to describe it. Suffocating? Lonely? Aching? “Hard.”
“I thought your mom was back in Nicaragua?” He blinked a few times. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right.”
“She is. I was adopted.”
“Do we need to do another round of the Gopher Dash in her honor?”
“No, I think one round was enough for today.” Her mental clock kept ticking. Julia’s ten minutes had to be up by now, but Marisol couldn’t bring herself to move from this spot.
“My mom was the one who got me into television. Even if she didn’t realize it.” Evan stood and dusted off his pants. “Gave me an old video camera when I was six. By twelve I’d made a half dozen short documentaries.”
“What were they about?” She peeled herself from the floor.
“Let’s see. There was one about the neighbor’s dog. Hard hitting. Another about the best way to care for baseball cards. That one started quite the controversy. But my seventh-grade masterpiece was all about the girls’ locker room. What goes on there? Were there communal showers? Pillow fights?”
“Are you serious?” Marisol found herself climbing the windy stairs to Sammy Samuelson’s podium, with Evan’s footfalls—and warmth—on her heels.
“Mostly it was me interviewing my friends about what we’d heard. I think there was one girl who agreed to be interviewed, but she kept talking about the tampon machine, so her part got cut.”
