Merritt looked up, and her expression finished Avery’s sentence for her.
“Just give me this summer,” Avery said.
She ought to feel tired. She had to be on set tomorrow bruises or not. But she felt full of energy, as though she could stay awake forever. Maybe if she could coax Merritt into saying yes, this night would last forever. Maybe if Merritt said yes, the summer would never end.
“I can prove that I didn’t know about the Elysium.”
“I believe you.”
Avery waited.
Merritt brushed a strand of wet hair off Avery’s forehead. “You know, I liked you in high school,” Merritt said.
Avery beamed. Merritt was going to say yes.
“A whole lot has happened since then,” Merritt said. “It shouldn’t matter, but it does. And, Avery Crown, you were always trouble for me.”
“I want to be trouble. I haven’t been trouble since we were at Vale.”
“You’re a sweet person.”
“That’s the problem.”
“It’s not a problem. It’s lovely. I’m not sweet enough for you, Avery, even for a month. When I came to your set, I took a lot out on you. It wasn’t fair. I yelled at you. I don’t do that to women. I don’t do that to anyone. Even people who do deserve it. And you didn’t.”
Now Avery wasn’t sure if she was winning or crashing toward loss. Maybe if she’d dated more, she would know how much sexually charged declining was expected of old lovers getting back together for the summer. Maybe it was a thing…or maybe this was the struggle of a kind, attractive woman trying to find a better way to say You’re not exceptional.
“You were angry,” Avery said. “I don’t care. What’s the harm in five weeks?”
“You won’t want me by the end of five weeks. Ask my exes.”
“Your exes must be terrible women.”
Merritt touched Avery’s face, drawing her fingers along Avery’s cheek, examining her the way Avery examined landmarks she left. Her last glimpse of Navy Pier. Central Park receding from view as her limo headed to the airport.
“They’re not.” Merritt looked sad. “Just reasonable, I guess. Come on. Let’s be friends. Let’s be real friends who stay in touch this time. Let’s get those mimosas at Mother’s and go shopping for shoes or whatever girls do.”
Disappointment washed over Avery.
“Call me when you get a day off,” Merritt said. “We’ll go down to the river, walk around our old places.”
Even though Merritt said mimosas, shoes, and the river, it all sounded like goodbye, and then Merritt was gone.
The minutes after her departure seemed to last forever. Avery heard the air conditioner clicking and whirring like a bad clock. If this were another kind of reality show, she could call DX for emergency advice. She could call DX for emergency advice, but it would probably involve a stolen plane. Or maybe she’d used up her SOS calls. The camera would zoom into her nostrils and the show’s psychologist (whose voice would later get cut) would ask, How does it make you feel to think you had a chance and then realize it was a no-go? She was sick of being the bumbling, bouncy housewife-without-a-home. Maybe if she’d never gone on King & Crown, her face would have rearranged itself into extraordinary beauty and she’d be clever about women. She was going to read from a different script this time!
A moment later Avery burst out of the hotel, clothes hurriedly thrown on her wet body. It was a good thing the Extended Stay Deluxe parking lot went on and on, suggesting an optimism about occupancy that the hotel accommodations did not warrant. Merritt was just visible at the far end of the lot, swinging into the cab of her truck with the grace of a cowboy mounting his steed. Avery’s Bellito Bellatoni flip-flops slapped across the pavement…so not awe-inspiringly gorgeous. So not gloriously tragic.
Merritt had the decency not to drive away. “What is it?” she asked, looking down on Avery from the vantage of her enormous truck.
She looked like she was talking to a crazy woman. Avery couldn’t blame her. Avery clutched her side as the pain of her bike accident reasserted itself. “Wait,” she gasped, trying not to double over.
Her mother always said she could never be an agent or a producer. She wasn’t aggressive. She wasn’t strategic. She didn’t know how to read what people meant under what they said, and she didn’t know how to say what she didn’t mean in order to get what she wanted. But she had been on reality TV for fifteen years. As scripted as unscripted was, you still had to improvise.
“I have an idea,” Avery said breathlessly.
Merritt looked guarded.
“Venner loves you.”
“The guy who keeps calling me? I doubt it. I might have told him to stick a wrench up his ass.” Merritt looked embarrassed, as though this were not the kind of instructions she offered often.
“Venner wants you on the show. He thinks you’re the hot new thing. You are. And he’s proud of being someone who discovers new talent and fixes old shows. Negotiate. Tell him you want him to sell you the Elysium. We sell the buildings at the end of the season anyway. He’ll want a bigger profit margin, but you can talk him down. Ask for the price you were going to pay. He’s been bossing Greg all over the set, telling us about how sexy Cop Brides is and how he discovered the star of Nail. You’re sexier than Cop Brides, and the girl on Nail looks like a gopher with breasts.”
“I’m glad I beat out the gopher with breasts.”
Avery thought a smile might be pulling at Merritt’s lips. She took a deep breath. She could do this.
“My mother says I’m shit at business, but I’ve been in television for fifteen years. I know men like Venner. You can play him. I can tell you how.”
* * *
It wasn’t the same as winning Merritt over. It wasn’t the same as Merritt’s fingers in her hair (or elsewhere) or her lips on Avery’s or Merritt whispering, I can’t resist you, darling.
But Merritt did say, “Let me drive you back to your room. You shouldn’t have run. Sweetie, you have to be careful.”
Merritt did get out of the truck so she could help Avery up and again to help her down.
Back in her hotel room, Avery poured two plastic cups of King Cobra.
“Takes me back to someone else’s misspent youth,” Merritt said as she took a sip.
“Alistair’s.” Avery nodded. She set the Pop Beads between them on the table. “So here’s what you’ll have to do with Venner…”
It wasn’t making love on a waterbed full of jellyfish, but she liked the admiring look on Merritt’s face as she explained the pressures and personalities of television production. Merritt looked impressed. And she actually made a Pop Bead necklace, integrating all the colors in precise repetition. Avery liked that. She liked that Merritt stayed even after Avery said, “That’s all I know about Venner.” Merritt stayed and told her about the antique-fair zealots and a forger who had spent his career making fake faucets. And when the evening was clearly over, Merritt looped her Pop Bead necklace over Avery’s head and said, “Avery Crown, you are trouble, but I always knew you’d be a star.”
Chapter 15
Merritt pulled into the parking lot of the King & Crown headquarters. It took her a minute to confirm that her GPS was right. The “command center” looked like an abandoned 1970s diner on a stretch of McLoughlin Boulevard that was what all the rest of Portland tried not to be. Even Eighty-Second Avenue had a kind of cool, apocalyptic sleaziness about it (and you could get good dumplings at the Golden Lucky Fortune), but McLoughlin Boulevard was all off-brand tanning salons and vape parlors. Awful but not interesting.
The kind uncle who had stopped her on the King & Crown set poked his head out, looked both ways, and beckoned to her to enter.
“Reporters,” he said apologetically as he ushered her through what had once been the restaurant’s lobby. “We could use publicity, but it’s just Dan Ponza looking for some scandal. I’m Greg Davis, field producer. Sorry about the other day.” He pushed open the interi
or door. “Mr. Venner is very excited about you.” He looked worried, as though Venner was excited but he wasn’t. Still, he tried to hide it. “So, Avery has told you a bit about our little ship of fools?”
Inside, the place was everything Merritt hated about modern architecture. Bad linoleum. Faux-wood beams that clearly held up nothing except the vague notion that this place was supposed to look like a Swiss chalet. But the energy in the room was good. It was like the once-a-year cleaning at Hellenic Hardware. She would close the shop, and the staff and the interns would dust, polish, and rearrange, voices ringing out in collaboration, the smell of American Dream Pizza wafting around the warehouse.
“So this is show business?” Merritt asked.
“It’s modest show business,” Greg said. “We have to save budget for the travel. The best seasons are in the most expensive cities.”
He kept talking, pointing out equipment and staff, but Merritt lost the train of conversation when she caught sight of Alistair and Avery sitting in a booth by the window. Avery wore a blue sundress. Her chestnut curls were pulled to one side in a loose ponytail. Avery caught her gaze and held it, a look of excitement in her golden-brown eyes. And Merritt wondered how she would survive five weeks of self-imposed emotional intelligence. Iliana would be proud. It had taken everything she had to walk away from Avery’s hotel room, not once but twice! Avery’s naked body had aroused her. Only Avery’s bruises had kept her from slipping her hand into the bathwater and running her hand up Avery’s inner thigh, mixing Avery’s wetness with the warm water. She’d known Avery would be wet. That had turned her on too. But just as Avery awoke Merritt’s desire, she stirred her loneliness. The trouble with being lonely was that it was too easy to get attached. That had been her downfall at Vale, and it would be again.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Venner bursting through the swinging doors that had once led to the kitchen.
“Merritt Lessing.” He clasped a hand over his heart. “Where have you been all my life? That stunt with Bunter was priceless. When Avery told me she could get you here, I said, ‘Now we’re talking.’”
Avery had coached her. Venner wanted excitement. Even home shows were getting sexier. The woman on Nail drilled fence posts in a bikini top. City Scions took bombed-out warehouses and turned them into lofts. Every show ended with a guest band playing a set in the flat. In surveys, viewers liked King & Crown’s wholesome image. In practice, they liked to see the cohost’s nipples through her wet T-shirt.
“We’ll see.” Merritt slid into an unoccupied booth.
Avery also said Venner liked a challenge. Everyone simpered around him. If he didn’t make your career, he destroyed it. I think he’s bored with being the boss, Avery had said. He probably hires dominatrixes to call him a bad boy and throw grapefruits at him. Merritt had laughed. It was so easy to laugh with Avery. That was why she had to stay away from her. After Avery left, nothing would come of that easy laughter except too much Sadfire whiskey and Decemberists songs on repeat.
Venner sat down across from her. “So, how do you know Avery?”
“We went to the same high school.” And I loved her. I pined for her. And I can’t close my eyes without thinking about her. “We took biology together.”
A young woman approached their table with a pink box. “They’re Voodoo Doughnuts,” she said.
Venner waved the girl away, saying, “Get out of here. Can’t you see we’re talking business? Are you stupid?”
The girl stammered and hurried away.
“You’re an asshole,” Merritt said, keeping her voice mild.
Venner bristled.
“You know it,” Merritt continued. “It must work for you sometimes, but it doesn’t work in Portland. We’re nice in Portland.”
“We hire these locals to run errands and push doughnuts, and they don’t have anything going for them. But you—” Venner folded his hands on the table and leaned in. “You have something special. I fix shows that need a little push. You know, I worked on Cop Brides. It was all right, but I came in and I said, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this. When I say—”
“I’m not here to chat. If I want to talk to assholes, I can find my own.” Merritt glanced at Avery and she nodded. “You screwed me out of the Elysium, and I want it back. I had an accepted offer on it. You and your SkyBank deal killed it. I want you to sell it back to me at cost. No more than I was going to pay for it. I don’t pay for whatever hideous upgrades you do. You don’t mess with the exterior or any of the built-in features. And don’t do anything I can’t repair because it’s all shit.” Merritt lowered her voice. She didn’t want Avery to hear. After the reunion, she’d watched a few episodes surreptitiously at the Mirage. King & Crown was really kind of sweet, and their decor was lovably over the top.
Venner closed his fists on the table and leaned in. Everything about him hulked. “You—” he said through gritted teeth.
Merritt saw a few members of the crew wince.
“You can’t hurt me,” she said. “I know you ruined Mabel Bartholomeus’s chance at Star Edition.” Avery had fed her the names. “You got Brian Benson thrown out of GBH. But I don’t want anything you have except my building. You’re the big man in a world that I don’t think exists.”
Venner put his elbows on the table, leaning even farther into Merritt’s space. She could smell coffee on his breath. She resisted the urge to move back.
“I can’t sell you the building for that price. We are going to clean house on that building. With our upgrades and it being on King and Crown, we’ll sell for twice market value. What we’re offering you is a two-hundred-dollar-a-week stipend and the best publicity your business has ever seen.”
“I don’t need publicity.”
“Everyone needs publicity. And I’m offering you a career too. Portland is the new Hollywood. There’s a production company popping up every day. You don’t have to sell your hardware store; you can stay here and work in film. I’m opening a door for you.”
“I run an architectural salvage business,” Merritt said. “I have a lot of doors. I want my building.”
“People would pay for what I’m offering.” Venner pointed to the doughnut girl. “She’d do it. Don’t make this harder for me than it needs to be. We’ve got work to do. King and Crown’s got thirty-four days. That’s one month. They’ve got to roll you into the shots they’ve already taken. Backstory. Establishing shots. Maybe a girl fight. Nothing trashy though, more like, ‘We drank too much chardonnay, and now I’m going to tell you what I really think of that engagement ring.’”
Merritt draped her arms over the back of the booth. “Are we talking business or are we just talking?”
“That’s my offer,” Venner said. “You. The show. Publicity. A new career.”
“You know why people watch reality TV?” Merritt said. “They love story, and story is conflict.”
Avery had told her Venner had been stomping around the set demanding, Where is the conflict! Merritt hazarded another quick glance at Avery. Damn it, she loved that feeling that they were in it together. She remembered watching Avery from across the auditorium at Vale. Avery had caught her eye and nodded and then they’d met in the hallway. Let’s go, Avery had said. Young ladies, a teacher had called out to them. Avery and Merritt hadn’t had to say Run. They’d been in Avery’s Miata before they’d had a chance to look at each other, but when they had, they couldn’t stop laughing. Avery’d had to pull over because tears streamed down her face. I love you, she’d said…the way straight girls said things like that, casually, without realizing what those words could mean. Except Avery hadn’t been straight. Maybe if Merritt had paid more attention…
“You know the thing about King and Crown?” Merritt said. “There’s no story. No drama. No passion. Yeah, Avery and Alistair are adorable. Puppy videos are adorable. Is that what you’re selling? Cute?”
Avery was so much more than cute. Merritt wondered if producers saw her silver-screen bea
uty.
“We could increase your stipend.”
Merritt shook her head.
Venner seemed to be thinking.
“We’re done.” He slapped the table. “Someone get her out of here.”
Success had seemed inevitable as Merritt and Avery had popped beads together in Avery’s room. They’d called it her coup. She’d stayed until late in the evening. She shouldn’t have, but she did. Now it was over. She wasn’t sure if she was more disappointed about the Elysium or the fact that the one good excuse she had for seeing Avery was gone. Emotional intelligence said she should be relieved. Iliana would say emotional intelligence was not her strength.
She was touched to see the disappointment on Avery’s face. It’s okay, Merritt mouthed. She started to rise, but Avery stood first.
“Sit down,” Avery said.
Merritt had never heard that stern confidence in Avery’s voice. It was sexy. Everything about her was sexy.
“You’re just jerking her around.” Avery walked over. “Our ratings aren’t dropping, but they aren’t going up. And you’re the fixer, right? Here to fix us? And you think she’s the answer, but all of a sudden you can’t afford her?”
“I’m trying to put her on the show,” Venner said.
“No, you are trying to screw her out of the Elysium. I’ll call Sam Grayson at TKO right now. If you don’t put Merritt Lessing on the show, I’ll fly down there tomorrow and tell Sam Grayson, Mark Conner, and Steven Blick that you know what to do for King and Crown but you won’t do it.”
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” Venner demanded. “You don’t know those guys. I know those guys.”
After her initial charge, Avery looked scared, like someone who had wrestled a large animal to the ground and now was wondering how many seconds before it reared up. Still, Avery looked Venner straight in the eye. For an instant Merritt couldn’t picture the Elysium. It was Avery’s fierceness she wanted, someone to fight for her.
“You said she was the next hot thing,” Avery said calmly. “You’re right. She is.” She squeezed Merritt’s shoulder. “I thought you took risks. Alistair and I have been on set every single day your network needed us. We have filmed more seasons in a year than anyone. They’re not even seasons; they’re months. You paid us less. You’ve given Greg a budget for a local-access talk show. We’ve eaten a hundred Global Body Biscuits because TKO wants the product placement. And we have never complained because we love it. I love it too much to see you miss this chance.”
Worth the Wait Page 10
