Sapphire Rose was what Paige referred to as a “piece of work.” The tabloid press had dubbed her a “work of pieces” in honor of her myriad plastic surgeries. Whatever you called her, she made working on Generations feel like a Chinese torture chamber, complete with the subtle terror of never knowing what specific kind of pain lay in store each day. Some days, Sapphire would even be well prepared and pleasant, which really threw everybody off. Most days, though, she was raging, from either a fight with one of her young boyfriends, an unflattering photo in a magazine, or—even worse—no photo in a magazine.
At one point, she had been the “next big thing,” with her face gracing the covers of magazines and movie offers coming in faster than she could read the scripts. Then one movie bombed, and then another, and very soon the movie offers dried up. Her agent had been able to turn the fumes of her movie stardom into a television deal, which eventually became Generations. The show, which followed the story of three generations of a wealthy Los Angeles family, was an instant hit, filling the nighttime soap opera void left by Dallas and Melrose Place. For many actresses, being the star of a hit show would be a victory to be celebrated, but for Sapphire it was merely a daily reminder of her failed film career. Even her yearly invite to the Golden Globes awards show was a source of pain rather than pleasure, due to the fact that the seating arrangement—movie stars in the center, television stars seated around them—served only to remind her of her former glory. In her mind, a TV show, even a hit, was a failure, and she seemed intent on making everyone around her pay for her disappointment.
“Good morning, Katie. Ready for another glorious day in New Bedford?” Kate turned to see Sam, the show’s production assistant, heading toward her car, his ubiquitous headset on and clipboard in hand. At twenty-two, he was the youngest member of the crew, and the most ambitious. He was 140 pounds of pure intelligence and drive. Although his job as production assistant made him the low man on the totem pole—the getter of coffee and runner of errands—Kate knew that someday very soon they would all be working for him. He opened her door with a comical flourish and a gallant “Is there anything I can carry for you, my lady?”
“With all of your free time?” Kate answered with a wink. Sam was by far the busiest person on the set—first to arrive, last to leave, and not a moment’s rest in between. Everyone loved him and counted on him as the one person who could be trusted to get things done. Someday he would be running a studio, but today he was carrying her set bag to her trailer and schlepping coffee for spoiled thespians.
“I’m just on my way to make a Starbucks run for you-know-who. Do you want anything?”
“Oh yes, I would love a double cappucci—” Lingerie scene, lingerie scene…Hamilton’s voice ran through her mind. “Black coffee. Black.”
“Black coffee, black? As opposed to what? Black coffee, green?” teased Sam, putting her bag down on the couch in her trailer.
“As opposed to anything yummy, tasty, creamy, or in any way fattening or bloating, in honor of today’s tiny costume,” answered Kate, pointing to the minuscule lavender lace bra and panty set that taunted her from its seat of power, clinging to a hanger in her open closet. “How can anything so small make a grown woman feel so large?”
“You? Large?” asked Sam with disbelief. “No, you’re crazy. In fact, you could use a few pounds—more than a few. At least four. I am going to get you the biggest, frothiest, most calorie-laden drink they sell.”
“You know I won’t drink it, Sam.”
“Perhaps you won’t, but I am going to get it for you anyway. Production is paying, and spending Jerry’s money will bring me joy. It’s not always about you, you know,” he said with a smile and a wink. “When did you become such an actress?”
“Me? An actress?” Kate said, striking a dramatic pose, one hand on her thrust-out hip and the other stretched up toward the sky. “Darling, I am a star.”
“Be careful, star—you’re going to pull a muscle standing like that if you’re not careful,” Sam said, laughing as he backed out of her trailer. “Now get thee into thy tiny costume and get thy ass into makeup, your star-ness. You don’t want them to shoot your scene without you, do you?”
“Oh, Sam, you know I’d love nothing more, but I will pretend that I am a grown-up and go anyway. Apparently, they don’t pay you if you don’t do the work.”
“Yes, they are snotty that way.” He grinned. “Now stop stalling and get dressed. The sooner you start, the sooner you will be done and drinking your triple-cream vanilla caramel frappuccino.” The door banged shut behind him with a tinny sound, and then there was just the hum of the generator and the internal buzz of Kate’s insecurity. Sam was right about one thing: somewhere along the line she had become way too actressy. What happened to the strong, independent young woman who had come down to Los Angeles on her own at eighteen, full of dreams and feminist ideals? Her plan had been to be a real body doing real work representing real women. Of course, it is easier to embrace the reality of an eighteen-year-old body than that of a thirty-year-old. Maybe she could be a powerful feminist with a perfect body. After all, she told herself, it takes a lot of strength to starve day after day. Of course, it was not the sort of strength that adds anything to the world, except, of course, one more tiny body for other women to compare themselves to and come up lacking. Well, today she was five extra pounds of relatable. Granted, it was less “I am woman, hear me roar” and more “I am woman, watch me sneak food in shame,” but if she was going to have a big belly with her lingerie, she may as well wear it with pride. It works for Jack Nicholson. Why shouldn’t it work for her?
Yeah, right.
Kate sighed and dragged herself off the couch, trying not to think about how devastated she had felt when the press had turned on her before. She knew it didn’t matter in any real way. This was her constant struggle: the part of her that knew it didn’t really matter what anyone else thought, and the part of her that really wanted the affirmation anyway. She wanted to be strong, independent…and loved. She’d been dubbed too fat in the press while other actresses were criticized for being too thin. Was there a magic number, a secret “weight of universal love”? Maybe she had stumbled upon it by mistake and today would be the day that she hit body nirvana. Smiling at her own neuroses, she reached for the scrap of fabric that was pretending to be her costume, stepped into it, and turned toward the narrow full-length mirror on the back of the tiny bathroom door.
Big mistake.
Suddenly, her charming neuroses had morphed back into a big, fat belly. But come on, what was the problem with a slightly bigger body?
It made you a much bigger target. And Kate just didn’t feel strong enough to field the blows.
Strong enough or not, however, it was time to head into the ring. Maybe—hopefully—it was all in her head. Yeah, Kate thought, if her head had migrated down to her stomach. Well, as Sam had said, one good thing about starting this scene is that it meant that it was almost over. Then, aside from being tortured by her bloated celluloid image in reruns for all eternity, she would never need to do it again. Different, more and/or less humiliating scenes, sure, but not this exact one ever again. She took a deep breath, reached into the closet for the terry-cloth robe that would be her cover-up and security blanket for the next few hours, and headed out into the early morning Los Angeles chill.
2
In her much larger trailer, exactly one hundred yards closer to the soundstage, Sapphire Rose was having her own wardrobe trauma. Sapphire’s problem, however, was not her belly, but the stupid waistband on the stupid skirt that the impossibly stupid wardrobe girl had hung in her closet.
“Goddamn it!” Sapphire screamed, kicking the door of her closet, the base of her couch, and finally the front door until it swung open with a booming crash. “Where the fuck is the fucking wardrobe girl?” she yelled to the world at large, secure in the knowledge that someone would bring her the wardrobe girl (whose name was Karen, but Sapphire had stopped bothering
to learn names long ago, preferring to use her memory for new diets and emergency contact numbers for her facialist and plastic surgeon).
“Is there a problem?” asked Sam, appearing at the foot of her trailer steps, Starbucks tray in hand, calm as always in the face of one of Sapphire’s many storms.
“Yes, there is a fucking problem. It is the same fucking problem I have every fucking day. The fucking wardrobe idiot put the wrong fucking skirt in my fucking room and it doesn’t fucking fit!”
“Wow,” said Sam, “that is fucked.”
“Yeah,” said Sapphire, missing Sam’s sarcasm completely, “and the day will be fucked if I don’t get a costume that fits in the next thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds. Wow. I better get right on that,” said Sam, unflappable as ever as he handed her a triple-shot skinny caramel cappuccino and turned back toward the wardrobe trailer, wondering where they would find yet another set costumer to replace the one that Sapphire was about to get fired.
Sapphire slammed the door and struggled out of the too-tight skirt. Why did they do this to her? Why did they mess with her head like this? There was no way that this was the same skirt she had tried on last week. She had been on a raw-food diet for almost the whole weekend, so she clearly should have lost weight by now. They’re just jealous, she thought, reaching for a raw seed and carrot muffin from the basket on her counter. Jealous and incapable of the compassion and empathy needed to see how grueling it is to live with the constant pressure of my extraordinary talent. Picking up her phone, she dialed her agent’s number with one hand, using her other hand to open the door of her mini fridge and take out the raw butter and cheese that she had ordered her assistant to deliver before her 5:30 a.m. call time. Her assistant had also been ordered to clear out the remains of last week’s Meaty Mediterranean Blood Type Diet. After five days of ground, broiled, and deep-fried lamb, Sapphire was more than ready to give raw food a try. After all, it had worked for Demi.
“Get me Michael,” she barked at the nameless (to Sapphire, at least) assistant who answered the phone, reaching into the basket for another muffin and a handful of raw seed crackers. While she waited the interminable amount of time that it took for her agent to come to the phone (1.2 minutes), she broke off pieces of muffin and layered them with crackers and slices of raw cheese. Dieting sucks, she thought, realizing how much better a chocolate-chip muffin with peanut butter would taste. But she understood that dieting was simply the nature of the beast for a television star. She thought of the line from the Julia Roberts movie Notting Hill in which her character said she had been on a diet since she was fourteen. Fourteen, my ass, thought Sapphire. My mother had me on my first diet at ten and I am still looking for the diet that will shrink that ass. She was also looking for some raw honey, bending over her mini fridge and cussing out her assistant in absentia for not considering her sweet tooth. How was she supposed to lose weight without raw honey? Or a raw Snickers bar.
That was one thing she did miss about the Zone Diet: those Zone Bars had been the saving grace of the depressing home-delivered miniature meals. She’d had her assistant buy those bars by the case. But in spite of her discipline in limiting her snacking to the bars (the honey peanut really did taste like a Snickers) and the occasional chunk of cheese (or two), that diet hadn’t worked for her either. She was coming to the realization that she had one of those elephant metabolisms: in the event of a famine, she would be one of the last ones standing, but until then she would just look fat.
Leaning into the fridge in search of more raw cheese, she caught sight of what looked like candy bars. She grabbed a handful and read the label: Raw Bars. Thank God. She ripped open a package and bit off a chunk. Not bad. It tasted a little like the sesame candies she used to eat as a kid, the only remotely candy-like thing she could find at the health-food store where her mother did all of the family shopping. Sapphire had thought all grocery stores smelled like brewer’s yeast until the glorious day that she went to the local supermarket with her neighbor’s mom. While nice Mrs. Yeager piled her cart with boxes of Ho Hos, Twinkies, and brightly colored fruit-flavored juice drinks, Sapphire munched happily on the chocolate MoonPie she had been given to “tide her over.” She felt as if she had stumbled upon a magical world of color, taste, and whole-body sensations. There were no bins of loose grains or baskets full of small, misshapen organic fruits. Instead, there were row upon row of boxes printed with rainbows and cartoon characters, beautifully arranged shiny apples, and perfect bunches of grapes. Chewing contentedly on her marshmallow patty, Sapphire looked longingly at the racks of candy at the checkout counter, knowing that soon she would be home, where the only after-school treat she was ever allowed was a piece of organic celery filled with oily natural peanut butter. Now, looking at the jar of raw almond butter her assistant had left on the counter next to the muffin basket, Sapphire was suddenly gripped by an overpowering craving for a MoonPie. Or two. After a day and a half of bean-sprout burger patties, she deserved it. She was about to dial her assistant’s number when she heard her agent on the line.
“Sapphire Rose, my queen—how great to hear your voice! How’s it hangin’?” How’s it hangin’? thought Sapphire. I have got to get an older agent.
“Well, Michael, it is hanging like shit. That’s why I am calling you at fucking early o’clock in the fucking morning.”
“Okay, Sapphire, I can hear that you’re upset. Did they move your trailer again? I made them swear it would be as close to the front door as humanly possible.”
“No, it is not the fucking trailer. The fucking trailer is fine. It is the fucking wardrobe again. Why can’t they just get clothes that fit me? I can’t go through this every day, Michael. I just can’t.” Sapphire felt tears come to her eyes, threatening her newly applied eye makeup. Luckily, she was able to stem the tide of her emotions by stuffing her face with another muffin.
“Look, Sapphire, I am sure we can work this out. We always do,” said Michael, trying to ignore the chewing and sniffling. “What exactly is wrong with your clothes?”
“THEY…DON’T…FUCKING…FIT!”
“I see,” said Michael, lowering his voice to a near whisper and speaking in the very slow, measured rhythm he had learned from one of his mother’s many therapists, a strategy that often came in handy when dealing with hysterical actresses. His entire childhood, peopled as it was with alcoholic, narcissistic parents, aunts, uncles, and assorted relatives, was like a preemptive graduate degree in dealing with highly emotional clients. “Is it possible someone has simply made an honest mistake?”
“An honest mistake? An honest mistake? What does that even mean, Michael? Is that a euphemism for fucking incompetent—for fucking with the head of the woman who has to go on camera and shine in five fucking minutes? I can’t shine in clothes that don’t fit, Michael! And if I don’t shine, this show doesn’t shine.” Sapphire paused here for some well-placed sighs and sobs, which gave her time to reach into the back of the kitchenette cabinet for her emergency bag of miniature Snickers bars, hidden behind the super green phyto-juice packets and stay-slim protein powder. By balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear, she was able to perform the labor-intensive job of unwrapping enough bite-size candy bars to make an actual mouthful, all the while releasing one final, heart-wrenching sob and the plaintive sigh of wealthy, beautiful, spoiled women everywhere. “Why does no one understand how hard my life is?”
“I understand, Sapphire,” said Michael so slowly that it sounded like he was on Thorazine, “and so do the people on your show. Everyone is working to make your life easier. Just last night I was talking to Bob Steinman about you and—”
“You were talking to Bob about me?” Sapphire broke in, her voice brightening and the chomping and chewing sounds stopping for one glorious moment at the mention of the president of Cutting Edge Pictures.
“Yes, I was,” said Michael, altering his voice slightly to take on the affectedly cheery attitude of a parent helpfully (and
hopefully) luring his three-year-old out of a tantrum. “I was going to tell you all about it just as soon as we got this wardrobe issue all figured out.”
“What wardrobe issue?” Sapphire giggled, sensing that a much-desired treat was within reach. “I’m sure that the nice people here will find something for me to wear. I mean, we can’t have me running around naked, can we?”
Dear God, no, thought Michael. “I don’t think anyone wants that, Sapphire,”—as evidenced by the complete lack of argument over her no-nudity clause—“so why don’t I make a couple of calls and get back to you when we have this whole thing worked out?”
“Call me back? You silly-willy, you know I won’t be able to wait to hear about what you and that nice Bob Steinman were saying about me.”
“And I can’t wait to tell you all about it, just as soon as we get you all dressed and on set to start your day.”
“I am on my way out right now. I’ll just stop by the wardrobe trailer and ask those sweet wardrobe girls for some little thing to wear, and I’ll call you just as soon as I finish this scene,” she said, rooting around in her bag for a celebratory Snickers bar. Or three.
“I’ll look forward to your call,” said Michael, feeling anything but happy anticipation.
He knew he had to be crafty. The imagined conversation had to be promising enough to spark Sapphire’s interest but vague enough to prevent her from checking up on it and catching him in a lie. The truth was that Sapphire Rose’s attitude was finally catching up to her, and, in spite of the damage her unpopularity would cause his own wallet, Michael was finding some satisfaction in the fact that she was now persona non grata in project development meetings all over town. As much as he would miss the fat checks that her failing career generated, he wouldn’t miss the endless, embarrassing phone calls he was forced to make on her behalf, complaining about everything from her wardrobe to the absence of lamb-based snacks on the craft services table. It was getting more and more difficult to generate the expected passion and vitriol when presenting his clients’ ever more petty demands. Did it really matter whose trailer was a few yards closer to the soundstage? And yet, whenever he called a producer, he had to voice his clients’ concerns as if he were reporting the need for an immediate heart-lung transplant for the leader of the free world. He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t completely the fault of actors that they felt so ridiculously important. After all, the entire world treated them as if they were precious jewels, endlessly fascinating and worthy of being photographed and discussed, every tiny detail analyzed and appraised. Why did Sapphire think that the whole world cared what she wore and what she ate? Because enough of the world actually did care enough to buy the magazines and watch the innumerable celeb-reality television shows that seemed to be replacing real news.
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