“Serena,” she replied glumly. Suddenly every other name in the world sounded stronger, sexier, and more independent. “But not to worry, he knows where to find me.”
Turning ever so slowly, Serena made her way down the steep, creaky stairs for the last time. Once she got to the bottom she spied a rubbish container on the other side of the road, crossed it like a chicken and dumped the Venus sculpture where it belonged.
So now you can see why Serena was in no condition to contact Markie.
The sight of him, her ex-love, would have instantly reduced her to tears. Just like the sight of most young men (husbands, fathers and fiancées in particular) did nowadays.
Speaking to Markie on the phone -that much Serena could manage. He didn’t need to know or even see the fact she was dressed in a despicable pair of men’s pajama bottoms (Jasper’s) and a white singlet with a hole in the shoulder. Okay, make that two holes, with a tub of chocolate ice cream located by her feet.
Serena waited exactly half an hour after her latest crying bout before calling Markie that night. And the effect? It was amazing. Remind her to do the same before a Jasper call. For the first time ever her voice sounded sultry ala Beyonce, rather than high and whiny like Paris Hilton. It was so deceptive - reeking of self-assurance and poise- it was fabulous.
“Gosh for a second there I didn’t think it was really you,” Markie said, when she answered the phone, acknowledging the change.
Serena didn’t have the heart to tell him it was not the only thing which had changed.
“So tell me about this business offer,” Serena prompted instead, eager to get the conversation over and done with so she could jump straight back into bed.
So Markie did. He told her all about Harry B. Sangster and Ad Palace in L.A and the millions of dollars at stake. He put it so simply and straightforwardly that his narrative took was over before Serena could even register the sort of money we were talking about.
“And you needed to share this with me because?”
Markie paused, probably wondering when Serena had become such a thickhead. He had already gone through the deadline factor (in two weeks time) and assured management co-operation (that was Rick and his eagerness to see lots of silicone in bikinis). But Serena still wasn’t sure where she came in at all.
“Serena,” Markie finally said, “in case I’m really badly mistaken, you and I are still in a relationship, despite the break. And when it comes to making decisions on where we live and things that affect our financial future, I’d like to think your thoughts and feelings come into this equation. That is why I called you. In two weeks I need to put forth an answer and that answer sees us either plus four million dollars and moving to LA or staying put, offer from Ad Palace withdrawn.”
“But…” Serena stuttered. This was totally not what she expected from the conversation. She expected maybe a wedding invitation which Markie did not know whether to accept or decline, or alternatively a family or school reunion with the same kind of scenario. Nothing like this; nothing exciting or unpredictable with the potential to change their whole lives.
“But haven’t you already made up your mind? It sounds like you have,” she said.
It hadn’t quite sunk in that if she said no, that she hated LA with a passion, Markie would put a stop to all discussions right there and then.
“Serena,” Markie strained, “maybe you didn’t understand me. I’m not making any decision without you. Nor do you need to make one now. I’m merely asking you to think about how you’d feel about moving to LA. That’s it.”
“But I already know how I feel!” Serena exclaimed, thinking about her current situation.
Anything had to be better than San Francisco, right here, right now. The further away she got from the heartbreaker Jasper the better.
“Really?” Markie sounded surprised. “How do you feel then?”
“I feel….” All the sudden Serena was stuck for words. Nothing seemed to fit right…not excited, not willing, not even desperate for a change. “I feel…like I need to think about it.”
And that was how they ended the call.
Work was a savior when one was feeling depressed, lonely or suicidal.
This Serena realized with an utmost of gratitude every morning when she awoke. Pre-breakdown (a.k.a. the golden days), the sound of her alarm buzzing used to be enough to make her send the clock flying across the room; anything for five more minutes, five more minutes of sleep. But nowadays the craving for more sleep seemed like a distant dream. Like clockwork, Serena now set the alarm for some ludicrous hour (four o’clock, five o’clock weren’t uncommon) and half an hour beforehand her eyes would snap open like a whiplash, akin to the good ole’ high school days prior to an exam or big dance.
When this automatic eye opening started to happen increasingly earlier, Serena figured out she had a problem and it was called insomnia. At first this was her biggest nightmare come true– after all nighttime was typically her savior, her escape for eight hours straight. But after coming to work seven days straight looking like hell warmed up, Champagne passed her over some purple pills to help her sleep.
“They will do you the world of good. And from the way you look, they’re not a luxury but a necessity.”
Serena had always underestimated prescription drugs before. But if they helped her sleep and sleep helped her function like a normal human being, why the hell not go there? In essence, her life had fallen into a hum-drum routine. Wake-up, work and pass time on the movie set, come home, pop some pills and collapse on the couch, then start all over again. Maybe it was because of this lack of time or maybe due to the depression, Serena socialized with no-one outside her work colleagues.
That in itself was funny because Serena used to consider herself the proud beneficiary of many friends. She had friends everywhere she turned: people calling to invite her and Markie to this launch or that, another dinner party, wedding or engagement party. Where had all those friends gone? It was as if the moment their break up had filtered down the grapevine (and obviously it had), Serena was rendered too small to matter.
Oh well it was better like this. It gave Serena time to think. Like about Markie’s incredible job offer for instance. This was a two part dilemma for her, part 1) being: did she want to move to LA? And part 2): with Markie that is? There was no point in deciding to pack her bags if she couldn’t envisage living with Markie or even loving him.
The sad truth was with all that was going on, Serena didn’t really care anymore. LA, Calcutta, El Salvador, they all sounded wonderful now that her life had hit rock bottom. After “Never, Ever Again” wrapped up she had no definite projects lined up, just a lethal load of promises. So moving to LA would probably make for a really good career move. She knew loads of directors and producers out there, who knew to call on her when in San Francisco. But by in large they were based in Hollywood, many miles away. The lucrative jobs especially in Frisco were sparse at best while in LA they came by the movie-truckload. And wasn’t there a saying: if the cat won’t come to the mouse the mouse should pay the cat a visit?
Yes but they probably meant the mouse should love the person they were taking the trip with. Serena was still severely confused about this.
Yes, she did love Markie, she knew this without a doubt, but how did she know if that love was enough? How did she know if she loved Jasper more or less than Markie or that another Jasper-type wouldn’t also enter her life somewhere down the track and complicate her life further?
Serena needed to talk to someone who knew both parties but unfortunately only one person sprung to mind: Tabitha, her ex-best friend who had evidently gotten over her obsessive stalker phase. Serena hadn’t seen or heard from Tabitha in a way, way long time. Weeks it must be… since she slept with feckwit Enrique, who by the way had NEVER called her back.
“Maybe you should call her?” Violet suggested. From the way Violet bed-hopped with men who treated her like crap, Serena took it she wasn’t a big fan of holdin
g grudges.
“But I can’t! Tabitha was the bitch to me so she should call first to apologize.”
“Mmm.” Violet narrowed her eyes. “How long has it been now?”
“Too long,” Serena sighed. “After a week of almost torturous hassling, she’s given up I think.”
“Hang on,” Violet raised her eyebrows. “You mean to say she did actually call you? But you were just too stubborn-assed to respond?”
“Sort-of.”
“And because Tabitha probably has some degree of self-respect she hasn’t tried since?”
“Plausible once again,” Serena agreed reluctantly. Damn. She was hoping Violet or at the very least Champagne would advise her to hold out a bit longer.
“So I guess you’re saying I should swallow my pride and do it myself, huh?”
“Whatever you think is right,” Violet responded, going back to organizing the scissors in size order.
Right, well…
Serena tried to come up with every excuse in the book why she shouldn’t call Tabitha. They included:
She came home too late at night.
What Tabitha did to her was unforgivable.
Tabitha probably wouldn’t be home anyway.
They were all good excuses, so Serena allowed herself to suffer a little while longer. Every day Champagne and Violet asked: have you called her yet? Have you called her yet? And every day the answer she returned was the same: No! So can you please lay off my back for Christ’s sakes?
Serena wasn’t sure exactly when she started caving in to the pressure – it came as such a surprise given the strength of her original pig-headedness. At first it featured simply as an item on her to-do list: drop-in dry cleaning, pick up milk, call Tabitha. Of course it featured for some time before she got the guts to do it. But she got to it nonetheless.
Sneaking back into the trailer at the first valid opportunity, Serena picked up the phone and quickly tapped in the numbers before she lost her nerve. Champagne and Violet said they could buy her at least a good fifteen minutes by telling the director she was having period problems, changing a tampon or something.
“Hell, we could even get you off work that way for the day.”
Luckily Tabitha’s phone didn’t click straight to message-bank, which was what had been Serena’s biggest fear. It simply dialed in that innocent yet rather threatening way, in two toots. Toot, toot. Toot, toot. She knew Tabitha was probably right now shuffling through that horribly big rucksack of hers and trying to pull the phone out from between some tofu salad sandwich and her beatnik beanie.
“Hello?” Yep Serena was right, Tabitha sounded like she’d just finished an energetic session of sex. And we both knew how unlikely that was.
“Tabitha it’s me.”
“Me who?” Tabitha enquired, sounding genuinely stumped.
Please it hadn’t been that long! “It’s Serena,” she repeated, doing her best to suppress the ‘stupid’, “Your old best friend, remember me?”
“Oh, Serena!” Tabitha’s voice came suddenly alive. “Oh hi, how are you? What are you doing? How have you been?”
The questions came shooting at Serena like a machine gun. Any fear Serena had that this might be awkward or uncomfortable was instantly erased. It was as if Tabitha had a bad case of amnesia, she was off jabbering about the rather delicate situation Serena had just caught her in.
“I’m in bed, if you must know,” Tabitha whispered. “He’s just gone to the bathroom to take a leak.”
“You’re in bed, with whom?” Serena exclaimed.
“Shh, I can’t say right now because if he hears, he’ll know I’m talking about him again. I’ll tell you over coffee. When are you free?”
“I’m free whenever…”Serena stuttered, realizing how terribly true it was. “Whenever you’re free…”
“Okay,” Tabitha giggled, sounding excited. It was nice to know the girl hadn’t fallen apart without her best friend. “How about tomorrow for lunch, I’ve got an hour off for lunch and I can come over to the set.”
The same way she presumably made time for a bit of jiggy-jiggy in bed.
“Um…We’re not really supposed to have people visit but the director has been killing us with overtime so I’m sure he’ll make an exception just once. Does one o’clock sound fine?”
“Perfect!” Tabitha insisted. “Look I have to go; I just heard the toilet flush. See you tomorrow then.”
Yes darling, I’ll see you tomorrow…
Chapter 29
If Serena didn’t know Tabitha better she could’ve sworn her old friend was waltzing onto the movie set with a new massive “big star” attitude.
Prima Donna behavior: that was something she and Tabitha were dead set against. It came partly from having experienced more than their fair share of trauma from cinematic princesses who thought money equaled power, which in turn equaled bitchiness. And being lethally bitched at left its scars.
Once when Tabitha had scored a fluke editing job on the same movie as Serena (making unnatural lines sound totally natural was her job description), the two leading actresses – we won’t mention their names out of fear of litigation – took it upon themselves to make Tabitha’s life a living hell. They spread rumors about her nose (fixed), body type (part anorexic/part bulimic), breasts (fake though the same size as Sienna Miller’s), even her Chanel 5 perfume (sprayed to cover up her terrible flatulence problem apparently).
Now you’re probably thinking what did Tabitha do to deserve this? Maybe she said something offensive in a smartass sort-of way…about the casting couch conduct which apparently got the lead actresses their jobs. Or maybe they thought Tabitha was simply jealous…about their money, their good looks, the way everyone tripped over their tongues to make their life one long Disney ride. One could guess a million things and never be right because Tabitha didn’t do one bad thing -unless one counted simply being herself.
She would come into work, do her measly job, which involved proofreading, observing takes and getting paid next to nothing, then leave for the day, after narrating to Serena her new humiliating experiences. One time it was bubble gum in her hair, another time it was Vaseline or glad wrap covering toilet seat and then salt rather than sugar in her tea. And Tabitha thought high school was bad.
When Serena suggested, Bitch 1 and Bitch 2 were probably just jealous of HER, Tabitha had looked appalled.
“What in the world do they have to be jealous about? They get all the attention, they have all the money. I’m just a down-to-earth nobody who lets people trod all over her.”
Serena disagreed, well not about the doormat thing, because Tabitha did act docile and tolerant of crap whilst on the set. Bitches 1 & 2 had to be jealous, why else would they pick her out from the rest? There wasn’t anything alien about Tabitha, if anything she was taller and skinnier than them, with naturally clear translucent skin (Serena knew for a fact that underneath the inches of makeup the Bitches were really as pimply as overly hormonal teenage boys – she after all instigated their transformations and was secretly worried about acne scars showing through the layers of foundation.)
The bad behavior continued until the end of Tab’s three-month stint and at the wrap up party (to which both girls were invited) Tabitha reluctantly confided the wisdom she had gathered from the debacle.
“It’s true what they say: what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” she had sighed. “If anything I now know that while you can’t control other people’s behavior, you can control your own. And nothing is more aggravating than in-your-face niceness.”
Serena had nodded her head. Yep, the bitches definitely hated it when Tabitha played the part of the perfect sweet girl. The boys had soon laughed less loudly at their cruel antics and had even begun to defend innocent Tabitha.
“So your advice is to just let it roll like water off a duck’s back?”
“Why not?” Tabitha had shrugged, “I’ve can’t compete with movie stars, I won’t even try to. That w
ould be like banging my head against a brick wall. Like the song goes you simply gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them and know when to walk away.”
“And avoid acting like a bitch.”
Now usually, despite the estrogen rushing through their bodies, Serena and Tabitha did pretty well on the last feat. They acted like basically nice human beings, with a little flexibility on PMS days while making enemies was eventually the Bitches downfall. None of this however explained Tabitha’s current behavior on the set, the nose up in the air, the pungent scent of arrogance.
“What in the world is going on with you Tabitha?” Serena said, grabbing her out of way before Champagne or Violet saw this behavior and blacklisted Tabitha forever.
She had expected a bit of discomfort due to their rift, maybe some quietness, but this?
“It’s nothing,” Tabitha giggled, flicking her long black fringe away from her face.
Serena noticed the way her eyes were furtively skirting all over the set. “I thought I might just…see some girls we used to know…”
“Like who?” Serena asked suspiciously.
Where in the world did Tabitha think she was: at a high school reunion? The chances of her knowing someone off the set of “Never, Ever Again” were as remote as her bumping into a friend in Somalia.
“You know who…” Tabitha replied vaguely, now not even trying to hide the staring. “Those two female clods we worked with on “Shameless.”
“Shameless?” Serena repeated the name of the film Tabitha had done the stint on, scaring her off movie work for life. “I still have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Neither Champagne nor Violet had lived in San Francisco back then, so she couldn’t be talking about them. The girls in the hair and makeup trailer on the Shameless set were Julie and Renee and neither of them were clods. Who else could it be then? Mmm…come to think of it wasn’t the rest of crew, albeit Tabitha, back then all male. Wasn’t that was the big thing back then…the girls threatening to sue for discrimination. Unless…maybe Tabitha wasn’t speaking about a member of the crew…
The Numbers Game Page 29
