Blind Ambitions

by Lolita Files

  “Tell me what?” she asked with concern.

  Randall leaned back against the burnished leather couch, his hands on his head. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened them, then leaned forward, looking her straight in the face.

  “I lied to you, Desi,” he announced. “I made you think we already had networks on the hook about Ambitions. Today was the first day we ever talked to anybody. I can sit here and tell you a million reasons about why I lied, but it doesn’t matter. If you don’t want to sign, I’ll understand.”

  When he finished, his shoulders slumped, as if a huge burden had been lifted.

  Desi was frowning.

  “Would you have told me if I hadn’t asked?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I had a couple of moments when I almost told you, but I think it was because I was afraid that Sharon would tell you first, not because my conscience was bothering me.”

  Desi laughed angrily, shaking her head.

  “This town is all about the get-over, isn’t it?” she said. “Just once, once, I would like to meet somebody who wasn’t all about pulling a fast one on me.”

  Randall stared at the floor, then the contracts, then her.

  “I wasn’t trying to get over on you,” he whispered.

  “I’ll never really know that now, will I?” she replied.

  Randall wrestled with his conscience a little more.

  As long as I’m in the confessing mode, he thought, I may as well come clean with it all.

  “There’s something else …,” he said.

  “What?” Desi replied, her voice thick with sarcasm. “You mean there’s even more to this little deception of yours?”

  Randall sighed heavily.

  “Yeah, and it’s something that I know is really going to piss you off. Just know that my heart was in the right place, and my intentions were good.”

  “Cut the bull, Randall,” she said, waving her hand, “and just spit it out.”

  He bit his bottom lip.

  “I knew about the job at Neiman Marcus. A friend told me they were about to hire you. I called you the same day because I knew you’d be more open to taking my offer, rather than submitting to theirs.”

  Desi’s eyes instantly welled up as embarrassment washed over her.

  “Desi,” he said haltingly, “look … it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all gotta do what we gotta do to survive.”

  She stared down at the floor, afraid to bring her hands up to her face, for fear they would ignite a free-flow of tears.

  “Desi,” he pleaded. “Desi, I … I never would have done it if I didn’t believe …”

  Desi sat in the leather chair, burning a blurry hole into the floor. Randall sat across from her on the sofa, unsure of what to do.

  “Hand me the contracts,” she finally said.

  He looked up at her.

  “Give them to me,” she repeated. “I’m still going to sign them. I want to be a part of this.”

  “Thank you, Desi,” he said with relief.

  “Save it, Randall.”

  He handed her the contracts and a pen.

  She took them, flipped to the back page, and put down her signature. She did it two more times. She slid the contracts and pen back in his direction.

  “You know, I thought you were one of the good ones,” she said.

  He looked down, ashamed.

  “I always thought so, too,” he said in a small voice. “I guess I would have never noticed if it hadn’t been for you. I suddenly feel like an enormous ass.”

  “Well, you should!” she shouted, surprising herself. “Go, Randall.”

  He gathered up the contracts and put them into his briefcase. He slid the pen into his inside coat pocket. He stood up from the couch.

  “I’m really sorry I disappointed you, Desi. I think I’ve disappointed myself even more.”

  She said nothing, not even making eye contact with him.

  Randall walked towards the door.

  “In time, I will show you that I’m not as shallow as you, or I, believe I am.” He ran his fingers over the doorknob, his words barely audible. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make this up to you. I am. I always believed in you. That’s the truth. I’ve got you on a pedestal so high …”

  His words trailed off. Desi allowed herself to look at him. Randall cleared his throat.

  “I’ll call you after the meeting tomorrow,” he said, opening the door.

  Desi didn’t respond.

  As he closed the door behind him, he could see tears streaking down her cheeks.

  JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT

  IT WAS SAFE

  Meredith stood in line at the counter for Northwest. Her ticket was first class, one-way, straight to Seattle.

  The bogus résumés had already been printed. The new ID was all set to go.

  She glanced down at the ID in her hand on top of her ticket. Elise McRierdon. It had a really nice ring.

  She was all set to go. The software industry was booming, and needed good executives. She was a whiz at it already, having personally been in charge of Massey-Weldon’s invasion of the Internet.

  She ran her left hand across her closely cropped chestnut hair, then checked her watch.

  It was 7:28 P.M.

  As the line moved forward, Meredith wondered how easy it would be to adjust to all that rain.

  She was in the middle of an extensive article in Mac-world about next-generation servers. She had been underlining text and scribbling furiously in the margins, girding herself up for interview questions to come.

  “Hi, Mom,” a voice above her said.

  Meredith looked up, annoyed.

  There stood a tall, dark-haired girl, dressed in baggy overalls and an oversized jean jacket with FUBU emblazoned on the front. Her right eyebrow was pierced, and her hair was a series of short, bedraggled, unraveling twisties peeking from beneath a knitted cap.

  She stared down at Meredith with deep, penetrating, hypnotic eyes. Familiar eyes. Where had she seen eyes like that before?

  “Excuse me?” Meredith said.

  “You heard me, Mom,” the girl repeated, the left corner of her mouth raised in a half smirk. When she spoke, Meredith noticed the tongue stud.

  She closed her magazine.

  “I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else,” she replied, glancing nervously about the gate area. Perhaps this was some trick of Anna’s. Or that wench Bettina. She’d pulled her share of stunts already.

  Meredith shrugged and raised her upturned palms in a gesture of helplessness.

  “I’m sorry … I can’t help you.”

  To Meredith’s alarm, the girl sat in the empty seat beside her.

  “Okay … I guess it’s too soon for the mom thing to work,” the girl replied with a sigh, her dark eyes dancing and twinkling. “Maybe we should start on a first-name basis.”

  The girl held out her hand.

  “Hi, Hazel. My name is Alicia. What a pleasure it is to finally meet you … again! You’re a hard person to follow, you know. Especially in this crazy LA traffic. Whooooo!”

  Meredith’s throat was thick with a chunk of something that felt as big as a brick. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Now, I know you’re not just gonna leave my hand hanging like that!” Alicia said in a loud voice.

  Heads turned in their direction.

  Resistant, almost afraid, Meredith shook Alicia’s hand.

  She looked into the eyes.

  Tommy Dennis’s eyes.

  As the Northwest employee began to call for early boarding, all Meredith could hear was the deafening roar of her own blood percolating wildly beneath the surface of her skin.

  Bettina dialed Steve’s cell phone.

  “Hello?” he answered. He sounded as if he were in moving traffic.

  “Hi.”

  “Well, hey there!” he replied, pleased to hear her voice.

  Bettina, caught off guard by his enthusiasm,
began to smile.

  “Look …,” she began, “I just want to apologize for not making it in today. I don’t want you guys to get the idea that I’m not going to take my job at Vast Horizons seriously.”

  “Apology accepted. Nobody thought that anyway.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Guess what, though?” Steve piped. “We had a banner day today. Things went really well, and we’ve got a meeting tomorrow that might mean big things, Miss Hayes, big things! You’d better be ready to write!”

  “Oh, I’m ready,” she replied. “I’ve been waiting for this for what seems like my whole life.”

  “Good! Then that means you should have a lifetime worth of ideas bottled up and ready to go!”

  Bettina chuckled. Steve’s effervescence was too contagious for her to resist.

  There was a pregnant moment.

  She could hear Steve breathing.

  “About the other night…,” they both began.

  Bettina laughed. So did Steve.

  “You first,” he said.

  “No, you,” she insisted.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  She ran her hand across her curls, waiting for his words.

  He took a breath first.

  “Look … I’m sorry I was so aggressive. I had no business prying into your personal life the way I did.”

  “No, no …,” she countered, “I’m just as much to blame. I way overreacted to what you said. I assumed you were being possessive, and I treated you coldly as a result. That was wrong. I had no right to assume you were acting that way.” She paused. “You weren’t, were you?”

  “No,” he answered softly. “I merely wanted to know if that guy was serious competition. There I was, enjoying getting to know you, and, all of a sudden, there’s another guy in the picture. I needed to know if I should even get my hopes up.”

  Bettina blushed.

  “There’s no guy in the picture.”

  “Good,” he replied. “Wait! I’m a guy.”

  “You’re not in the picture yet,” she answered, her voice filled with mischief.

  “Well …,” he coaxed, “is there at least a possibility that I can somehow burst through the frame and work myself in?”

  Bettina laughed out loud.

  “I think we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Why don’t we do this a minute at a time.”

  Steve chuckled.

  “That slow, huh?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, Steve Karst, your exact words to me were that you wanted to take it slow. You said you’d been hurt a lot in your life, and you weren’t having it anymore.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I,” he muttered.

  “Yes, you did.” She laughed.

  There was a pause. Bettina could hear the roaring of cars in Steve’s background as they whizzed by.

  “How do you feel about waffles?” Steve asked.

  “Love ’em,” Bettina replied.

  “Well …,” he began, “I haven’t had dinner yet, but I was thinking maybe we could hop over to—”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” She laughed, realizing where he was headed. “You want Roscoe’s again?! Steve, this is ridiculous!”

  “Look,” he said, “I told you Saturday was my day of rest. It’s Monday now, and I want my bird!”

  They were both laughing. The sound was a liberating tune that made them both feel free.

  “You game?” he asked.

  Bettina snickered.

  “Yeah … I guess I could go for a waffle, some wings, and some greens.”

  “Great. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. I’m not that far away.”

  Bettina smiled.

  “Alright. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

  She was about to click off the phone when she heard his voice calling out.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe one of these days, together, we’ll figure it out.”

  EPILOGUE

  Desi was at home, in her living room, pacing, listening, as the nominations for the Primetime Emmy Awards were being announced on the E! Entertainment channel, live, from the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood.

  Her entire body was trembling. They had just begun announcing the category of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

  “Lorraine Bracco as Dr. Jennifer Melfi in The Sopranos, Desi Sheridan as Raquel Easmon in Ambitions …”

  Desi screamed, drowning out the other names that followed.

  Her phone immediately began to ring. She snatched it up.

  “I heard it, I heard it!” she squealed into whoever’s ear it was on the other end of the receiver.

  “You heard it?!” Sharon shouted. “Girl! Can you believe this shit! This is some un-freaking-believable shit!”

  Desi froze in place.

  “Are you saying you didn’t believe in me? That I shouldn’t have gotten the nomination?”

  “No, fool!” Sharon exclaimed, clutching her tremendous belly. “You know that’s not what I’m saying!”

  Desi laughed, cutting her eyes at Randall, who was sitting on the couch, catatonic. He’d been that way since somewhere around Ambitions’ third nomination. The one for Desi made it nomination number six.

  The show had already been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (for the “Foolish Hearts” episode, which had been conceived and mostly written by Bettina), Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, Outstanding Art Direction for a Series (for the “Two-Ton Turkey” Thanksgiving episode), and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series (the “Stranded” episode, where Desi’s character was stuck in the desert for two days).

  “I know that’s not what you’re saying,” Desi squealed with giddy delight. “I’m just teasing. But, Sharon, isn’t this incredible?”

  “This needs to stop,” Sharon said, “before I mess around and deliver this baby. The Oscars were bad enough!”

  “Yeah,” Desi said, brimming with nervous energy. “I thought I was gonna pop that night. And look at all the scripts and offers that have been coming my way since then. Imagine if I’d won? Imagine how it’s going to be with this thrown into the mix? I never knew a nomination could be such a powerful thing!”

  “You’re sitting pretty, Desi Sheridan,” Sharon replied. “You’re hot property these days.”

  “God is good,” Desi returned. “But don’t act like He’s not taking good care of you.”

  Sharon smiled, thinking of her work on Jackson Bennett’s film. Everyone wanted to work with her now. The film had experienced critical and commercial success, finally netting Jackson his elusive Oscars: two—one for Directing and one for Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published—much to Sharon’s combined glee and despair. Now that he’d been made official by the recognition of Hollywood gentry, his mouth shot off at ten times its normal rate.

  “Being hot property’s a serious thing,” Sharon said to Desi. “People expect you to be a role model all of a sudden. It’s bad enough I can’t smoke weed the way I used to anymore.”

  “You’re crazy,” Desi replied, “you know that? And you are a role model, whether you like it or not. If not for the rest of the world, at least for that baby you got baking in the oven.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sharon submitted. “Role model, schmole model. I’m too old to be having a baby anyway. My baby’s gonna come out covered with dust.”

  Desi broke into laughter.

  “Sharon! Stop it! You know darn well that you’re not old. There are tons of women having their first babies in their thirties and forties. Don’t act like this is news. Didn’t your friend Rhonda just have a baby? She’s thirty-nine.”

  “Yeah, well …,” Sharon muttered. “Her baby came out fine. But Rhonda looks like she’s twelve to begin with. I’m forty.”

  “And you look like you
’re all of fourteen!” Desi chided. “Stop acting like you’re not as happy as everybody knows you are. You’re not fooling anybody.”

  Sharon grinned.

  “Yeah … I’m happy. But this role model business is going a bit too far. My man’s working triple time, trying to be a role model.”

  “Your man is chief counsel for Vast Horizons,” Desi replied. “He can’t help but work triple time. And you ought to be happy he’s acting like a role model. Isn’t that what you want from a husband-to-be?”

  Desi glanced over at Randall, who was still catatonic.

  “At least your man can form words,” she added. “Mine has been in a stupor for the last half hour.”

  Sharon smiled, rubbing her belly. The almost-vulgar large ring on her left hand glinted with the shift of her fingers.

  “Randall did good, Desi. You gotta give him that. Just think, two years ago, we were just getting started with all this. Scared to death about how things were gonna turn out.”

  Desi was still pacing. Her adrenaline was far too high for her to keep still.

  “Actually,” she nervously corrected, “two years ago, we weren’t even talking about it. All that stuff happened in September. Now here it is, July, less than two years, and we’ve got Emmy nominations up the wazoo. Can you believe it?”

  “Yes,” Sharon said confidently. “I definitely can.”

  Desi chuckled.

  “Looks like somebody picked themselves up an extra dose of faith since that fateful September.”

  “Looks like somebody preached it to me long enough that it damn near osmosed itself from her body to mine.”

  They both laughed.

  Desi’s phone beeped.

  “Hold on, Sharon. This is probably for Randall.”

  She clicked over.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey there! Congratulations!”

  Desi beamed.

  “Congratulations to you, too! How does it feel to finally have your writing acknowledged, and at such a high level, no less?”

  Bettina grinned.

  “That episode got nominated because you guys acted your butts off,” she said.

  “Can’t have good acting without good writing. I’m glad Randall and Steve have you as a part of the writing team.”