by Amanda Heger
Marisol froze. This was more frightening than anything else she’d considered. Where was the fire-breathing dragon? Where was the one person who would set James back in line when he got too…James-like?
“Julia?”
“Oh, God. Good. There you are.”
Marisol’s fear level skyrocketed to standing-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff levels. “Are you okay?”
“No. Well, I wasn’t. Then I saw you sitting in the audience, and I figured it out.”
Marisol glanced over her shoulder at Penny, who shrugged.
“Figured what out?”
“Who to put on as our celebrity guest.”
And now Marisol was plummeting from the cliff to the jagged rocks below. “No.”
“Please. Let us do one last Marivan segment. Everything’s a mess. Tonight’s our last show and we don’t have any guests. If I don’t figure something out, James is going to murder stray kittens or something onstage.”
“Kittens?”
“Well, it’s either that or try his new standup routine. I think the kittens would be less painful, personally.”
Marisol dragged in a deep breath and tried to let all of this information sink in. “The show got cancelled?”
She nodded.
“Does Evan know?”
“I don’t think so. He had to go home. His grandpa got sick. He emailed about your documentary thing this morning, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.” Sniff. “God, do you know how hard it is for a woman to get even a writing job in late-night? Much less a head writer job? Then producer? And I blew it. I blew it so fucking hard.”
“Evan is here,” Penny said. “And I don’t think we’re supposed to mention that thing.”
Julia ran her hands through her hair, making it stand straight up. “Oh shit, right. Never mind. Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Except I really need you to go on the show. I don’t want to be known as the producer that let James tell jokes for an entire hour.”
“What is the documentary thing?” Marisol asked.
Julia barked a few more orders into her headset and turned back to Marisol. “The documentary thing is nothing. Can you please go on the show? Please?”
No way. Absolutely not. No more television shows. No more seeing her private moments splayed all over magazines. “Tell me what the documentary thing is.”
“Marisol—”
“Do you want me to go on your show or no?”
“Evan is making a documentary. About you.”
“About Ahora,” Penny said. “For some film contest or something. Said you could win a lot of money to help people. Or whatever,” she added. “I think that’s what he’s doing right now, actually. He brought in this guy to translate a bunch of stuff to English or something.”
Felipe.
“He’s way hot. If you’re not going to make up with Evan, you should check that guy out.” Penny raised her eyebrows.
“He is my brother.”
“Oops.”
Marisol turned to Julia, praying it was too late to go onstage. Because she wanted to march to whatever part of the studio Evan and Felipe were in and demand some real answers. Demand blood. Maybe she’d be the one killing kittens instead of James by the time this was all over.
“Okay. She’s a go,” Julia said into the headset as she wiped the mascara from her cheeks. “But I’ve got another idea. Stall a few minutes. Do not, I repeat, do not let James tell the joke about the size of the President’s penis again. Marisol, just wait here. We’ll send someone back to slap some lipstick on you.”
And then she was gone, dragon lady persona firmly back in place.
“He is really making a documentary? How?” Marisol asked.
Penny fidgeted with her phone. Then her headset. Her phone again. “I should go.”
“Penny, please.”
“Fine.” She slunk down onto the couch. “Not like they can fire me now, can they?” She swiped her fingers across the phone. “So after James and Julia made him proclaim his love for you on national television—”
“What?”
“The show with the phone booth thing?”
“My hotel plays a show about cousins, not this one.”
“Oh. Right. Okay, well James and Julia told him to say he loved you on the show. They thought it would increase the buzz or whatever. Evan got really pissed about it, but he did it anyway. He said he would only do it if James made sure you got to be a contestant on Who’s Got the Coconut, but…”
“But what?”
“I think he does love you. It’s like one of those things, where you just know. Maybe you don’t actually love them yet, but you know you’re going to.”
She didn’t.
Or maybe she did, now that Penny had said it aloud.
• • •
The editing room had been off-limits his entire time at the show. The sign on the door read NO INTERNS ALLOWED, and at orientation someone had threatened to chop off the fingers of anyone who touched the editing equipment. But today he’d dragged a perfect stranger into the room, expecting a battle.
Didn’t matter. At this point, he had nothing to lose.
“Hey,” Evan poked in his head. “James said—”
“Yeah, okay.” The guy in front of the monitor barely looked up. “Just stay in the back and stay out of my hair. Don’t make a bunch of noise.”
“That was easy.” Too easy. He hadn’t even had to tell the guy that James had given him permission—which was technically true. His email did say he’d help in “any way he could.” But there wasn’t time to worry about it. They had an hour. Maybe an hour and a half, depending on how things were going onstage. “Come on.”
A half dozen or so clicks later, he jammed the flash drive into a computer and pulled up his creation. On the wall, a row of monitors played the show taping less than a hundred feet away. Evan muted them and pointed back to the computer screen. “This is just a rough cut. It needs some smoothing out, but you’ll be able to get the basic idea. And once I have your parts, it will be a lot smoother.”
They listened through the headphones as the music played and the images came up on the screen. Ahora headquarters. Their clinic in Managua. A group of people going out on a brigade. A video of a little girl. Charts. Graphs. Another video of children playing outside, with Marisol at the center of their game.
By now, Evan had spent so much time on the movie, he could see the entire twenty-five minutes on the backs of his eyelids—not that he’d actually seen the backs of his eyelids recently.
When it was over, Felipe pulled off his headphones but stayed silent.
“The first thing I think we should do is subtitle those videos in English,” Evan said.
More silence.
Evan swallowed hard. Why wasn’t Felipe saying anything? “I know it doesn’t fit the typical documentary style—it’s more like an infomercial for Ahora, I guess. But it still tells a story.”
Felipe nodded. “It does. Very well.”
Evan exhaled. “So the subtitles…”
A few minutes in, they were lost in the process of subtitling and recording Felipe’s voiceovers. So much so that Evan didn’t hear the door open twenty minutes later.
“The rumors are true.” Julia crossed her arms. “You are here.”
“I, uh, just got back.” He hobbled upright. “Broke my leg and everything. See?” He’d walked into the editing room ready to punch his way to the equipment if need be. But now that Julia was here, it was like his balls had crawled up inside of him and resolved to die a quick, painful death. “We were—”
“Using the equipment without authorization? In a room where you aren’t allowed? With a member of the public? Does that about sum it up?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Are you done with that?” She nodded toward his computer screen.
“Almost.”
“Then hit save and hand it over.”
“What? Come on Julia. You know how important th
is is. Give me ten more minutes, then I’ll get out of here. Please.”
“Three. Final offer.”
“I need at least five.”
“If you want to waste your three minutes trying to negotiate—”
“Okay, fine.” He flipped around and scrambled to put on the finishing touches. It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. Even amateur critics would see the flaws from a dozen miles away. But it was something where before there had been nothing. And it had heart.
“There.” He uploaded a backup to his email, just in case, and ejected the flash drive. “We’re done.”
Julia held out her hand.
“Come on, Julia. You know how important this is.”
She didn’t budge.
“You’re basically stealing vaccines from babies right now, you know that right?”
“Evan, if you don’t give that flash drive to me right now, I swear I will make you regret it.”
Absolutely not. No way. No how. At this point he’d cram it between his ass cheeks if he had to—or maybe that was the zero-sleep, throbbing-ankle, too-much-stress talking.
“Is that Marisol?” Felipe pointed at one of the televisions on the far wall.
It was. She sat primly on the edge of the armchair, looking as beautiful as ever. No one at home would know she’d had anything but the most pleasant of days.
“Got it.” Julia plucked the drive from his half limp hand and strutted toward the door. “He goes back to the audience. You”—she pointed at Evan—“come with me.”
If there had been no arguing with her before, there definitely wasn’t now. Not when she had the video in her pocket. She gave Felipe instructions on how to find his way out, and then Evan followed her, his crutches clacking behind in the empty halls.
Too empty.
The notice.
It must have come before the taping. And the news couldn’t have been good, not if the halls were this barren. No wonder Julia was acting like some bear-porcupine hybrid. Because they’d failed.
He’d failed.
“Julia—”
“Shhh. Can’t you keep those things quiet?”
“Sorry, next time I’ll try to break a less noisy bone.”
“Stay here for a minute, okay?” she whispered. “Don’t talk to anyone. Or touch anything. Or break any more bones. Okay? Just stand here until I get back.”
“Where are you going with the video?”
“Just. Stay. Here.” Her expression softened at the edges. “Please, Evan.”
“Fine.”
She left him in the shadows of the studio seats, tucked far enough away that no one—not the audience, not James or Marisol—could see him. But he could see them both perfectly.
“Well, now. That’s quite a story,” James said. “Is this one of those schemes where you get people to go to parties and con them into buying sex toys from you?”
The audience laughed.
Marisol did too. “You can do that?”
“In America, anything is possible. If you want to be a sex toys salesperson anyway.”
“No one at Ahora is selling sex toys. I promise.”
“Well, I hear we have some video proof to the contrary.” James winked, then stage-whispered, “Don’t worry it’s not really sex toys.” He raised his voice again. “Or is it? Let’s take a look.” Every head in the studio—including Evan’s—focused on the giant, double-sided television hanging overhead.
A few familiar notes played over the sound system.
His video.
His unfinished, imperfect video was being played on national television. And he hadn’t had a chance to explain it to Marisol. He’d wanted it to be a surprise, but maybe not this big of a surprise.
Someone had started it in the middle, cherry-picking a few precious minutes where Marisol weighed an infant, then took its temperature. But Evan didn’t watch it. He watched Marisol watch the film. Took in every tilt of her chin. Every furrowed brow. Every tiny smile. And when the lights came up and the screen went black, he knew that even if everyone else in the world hated it, the one person who mattered didn’t.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” James said. “But I’d buy vibrators from those people any day of the week.”
The audience laughed, and the sound filled all the space around Evan’s tiny nook.
This. When he was back home in Illinois, working at whatever buzzkill job he’d get, this is how he’d remember So Late It’s Early. This cocoon of weirdness and laughter no one could escape, no matter how hard they tried.
“And this video is going to have its world premiere at a big film festival tomorrow, is that right?” James asked.
“I am not sure,” Marisol said. “This is the first time I have seen it.” She put on a stage whisper of her own. “I was worried it would be about vibrators.”
The cocoon grew thicker.
“Well, let’s find someone who can give us some answers then. Where is he?” James shaded his eyes from the spotlights.
In the back, someone began chanting—someone who sounded suspiciously like Ted the Man Baby. “Mar-i-van. Mar-i-van.” Before long, it sounded like most of the audience had joined him.
Julia appeared at his side. “Are you going to go or do you need me to carry you out there?”
He went.
Because Marisol was there, and—even if only for a few minutes—he’d be there too.
After a crutch-assisted journey entirely too long for late-night television, he made it to the stage. Behind him, the fake Los Angeles skyline glowed, and hundreds of crumbled papers still covered James’s desk—papers the interns had to clean up every night and replace every morning. How had he grown to actually like this weird little show? If they’d only had more time. A few more weeks to work out the kinks and bumps. To get James to quit cussing all the time.
“Well, are you going to sit your ass down or not? You want me to bring Betty out here so you can borrow her walker?” James asked.
“No, that’s okay.” Why couldn’t he be as collected as Marisol in front of the camera? “I’ll just…” He tried to find a way to lean his crutches on the couch, not hit anyone, and not fall on his face.
Marisol stood. “Here.”
With a long look, he tried to telegraph all the things he wanted to say—those things he wouldn’t be able to say on television—in her direction. He balanced on his good leg and held out a crutch.
Except she didn’t take it.
“Um, can you…” His balance faltered, and for a half second he pictured himself lying face down on the stage, blood gushing from his nose.
But then he steadied.
Because Marisol’s arm slipped around his waist.
“Thank you,” she murmured, one heartbeat before she pressed her lips to his.
The audience roared behind them.
Day Twelve
In the span of two hours, her hotel room went from tropical storm to the after effects of a category five hurricane. Makeup littered the bathroom counter. The smell of hairspray and soap hung thick in the air, and her suitcase lay open on the floor, completely devoid of its contents.
Because they’d been strewn across her bed.
“Are you sure this will be okay?” She looked again at her reflection. The blue dress was dry now, and just as pretty as it had been that night at the dim sum restaurant. But the thought of wearing it downstairs, of mixing a piece of the show with the conference, made her chest tight.
“You look great, Mari. I promise. Just a couple more touches.” Annie pinned a piece of Marisol’s hair behind her ear, giving her an old-Hollywood style. “Perfect.”
“Thank you. For this. For coming.”
Annie pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. “Of course. But next time you become a television star, clue me in so I can ride on your coattails, okay?”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Don’t move,” Annie ordered. “I need to spray you one more time.”
Maris
ol sat perfectly still while her friend answered the door. Inside, her heart pounded at the speed of sound. But for once it wasn’t accompanied by earth-shattering nerves or ten metric tons of pressure to succeed. It was simply anticipation.
“Wow.” Evan stepped around the entryway. “You look amazing.”
“You too.” Tuxedo, bow tie, perfectly pruned five o’clock shadow. It took every bit of her waning willpower not to jump up and pull his face to hers again. There had been no more kissing after that moment on camera, but she’d thought about it. A lot.
“Do. Not. Move,” Annie said. “Evan, hobble on back. Mari, cover your eyes.”
A cloud of hairspray descended, and when it was safe to open her eyes, Marisol found Annie standing back to admire her work. “You’re perfect,” she finally said. “Meet you guys in front of the elevators? Twenty minutes? Hopefully your brother is packing our suitcases.”
Marisol wrapped her arms around Annie’s shoulders one more time. “Thank you again. I wish you could stay longer.”
“Me too. Call me after you guys win big, okay?”
Marisol nodded and squeezed her friend a little tighter, trying to absorb everything about this moment.
“If I leave you two alone, you better not mess up that hair,” Annie whispered.
“No promises,” she whispered back. “Look at him.”
“Mari—”
“Okay, okay. I promise.”
Then it was just Marisol and Evan. No cameras. No sets. No one stealthily snapping photos while pretending to search for cell service. And suddenly she felt shy and awkward. Like she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Like she might have a glob of spinach in her teeth—even though she’d brushed her teeth twice since lunch.
“I brought you something.” Evan took a few steps closer, wincing every time the crutches hit the ground. “It’s in this bag.”
“Here.” Marisol slipped her arm under his shoulder and helped him sit on the bed. The movement was instinctual at this point—years of brigades and nursing had seen to that. But the way his closeness made her feel was something brand new.
“It’s all the footage from the show. The finished versions and the outtakes. Plus, a few copies of the film. Your mom asked for them.” He handed over a bag full of DVDs. “I shared it with her on the cloud, but she said this was better.”
