HDU #2: Dirt

by India Lee

  Amanda frowned. “Cheating on a girl back home? Isn’t that what people are already expecting to see from Milo anyway?” she asked. “He’s a baseball star and getting a taste of fame and the women. No one’s going to be shocked by the fact that he might turn out a philanderer.”

  A good half of the guys around the table nodded in agreement. Amanda tried not to beam like a dork.

  “What would you suggest then? Might I remind you, we only have the freedom to change one episode,” Fish snapped, leaning forward on his elbows. “And in case you don’t understand, that means we already have five episodes written and shot where Milo is a good, clean kid whom the audience is worried about because he’s so innocent. So, naturally, we’re going to make him not innocent. Get it? Unless you somehow have a better idea that’ll make everything suddenly so magical and interesting,” he challenged mockingly.

  Amanda’s gaze dipped to study the way his lip quivered as it curled. She wanted to laugh. She was relishing the moment, relishing Fish’s red, piqued expression.

  “Knew it. She’s got nothing,” Skip sneered after a few seconds of Amanda’s silence. As Fish and a couple other guys joined him in laughing, Amanda gave a delayed but calm answer to the challenge.

  “Make it all a lie,” she said. “He’s a rookie when it comes to baseball but not to the lifestyle. The drugs and benders and partying started back home. He makes a huge mistake one day and is forced to leave behind the town and his past but the bad habits followed.” Amanda chewed her lip, feeling her heartbeat race with excitement and nervousness and an odd, guilty feeling she couldn’t quite identify thanks to the rush of sensing another victory against Fish and the writers room.

  “Go on,” Tom urged, sounding suddenly awake.

  “It’ll look to viewers like Milo only just discovered all these vices but in reality, they’ve been a problem for him for years. And now that he’s unexpectedly made it as a baseball star in New York, they’re an even bigger problem. And no one realizes it. Because he appears strong and healthy with all this talent on the rise. But he’s actually been flirting with death every episode, on a daily basis.”

  Amanda swallowed, catching her breath.

  “That’s… fucking good,” Bird said, drawing glares from Fish and Skip. “Dude, don’t even try to pretend that’s not good,” he said, incredulous. “So, what was the bad shit he did back home that made him have to leave? Is he a murderer or something?” Bird laughed.

  “Could be,” Tom shrugged.

  “It’d be a good twist but I mean can we get away with that? Without it seeming extreme?” Bird asked curiously.

  Stop. Amanda tried to scold herself as Bird’s question sparked the idea in her head. Do not, she told herself sternly. Unfortunately, her lips betrayed her.

  “It was an accident,” she blurted. “He was under the influence of something or another. And he was out somewhere, with someone — the one person who stuck by his side throughout the addiction. Someone younger, who idolized him and didn’t realize how messed up he was.”

  “Younger brother.”

  Amanda looked up, surprised to hear the suggestion coming from Fish. His face was sour when he looked at her but then he shrugged.

  “Yes.” Tom pointed his pen at Fish before nodding and returning his attention to Amanda. “I’m guessing Milo was responsible for the death of his kid sibling because he was drunk, high, whatever?”

  Amanda swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Fucking yes. I love it, it’s perfect. We’re done.” Tom brought a celebratory fist down onto the table before pointing his pen once again, first at Amanda and then at Fish. “You two. Play rocks, paper, scissor to see who gets to write the episode.” When they both sputtered, he laughed. “You guys have been acting like fucking children lately so your punishment is to make your decision like children. Or however you want to do it, I honestly give no shits. Just have the decision by Friday.” Rising to his feet, Tom stretched. “I’m done for today. You assholes do whatever you want, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  ~

  By the time Amanda had reached the sidewalk to hail her cab home, she’d reconciled her decision to pitch Casey real-life childhood as Leadoff’s season finale.

  By the time the episode’s written, it’ll be so different that even Casey won’t notice. No one will know who it’s based on anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. And entertainment is always based on reality. That’s what makes good TV.

  Smiling, Amanda kicked her guilt to the curb just as a taxi pulled up to it. “Where you going?” the driver asked through the window at which Amanda bent over to peer into.

  “Hi. Tenth Street between Avenue B and Avenue — hey!” Amanda yelped as someone sped past her, opening the passenger door of her cab and getting in to steal it. Tugging the door back open, Amanda stuck her head inside. “Connor, what the hell?”

  “Doyers Street, please,” Connor nodded at the cabbie through the rearview mirror.

  “What? No.” Amanda slid into the backseat, slamming the door shut. “Tenth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C,” she said sternly, speaking over Connor as he tried to repeat his address.

  “Maybe two stop?” the cabbie asked.

  “Fine. But Tenth Street first,” Amanda insisted before turning to Connor incredulously. “What now?” she couldn’t help but snap.

  “Good job today.”

  “You stole my cab to congratulate me?” Amanda asked skeptically.

  “Your pitch sounded a little familiar.”

  Having been ready to retort, Amanda snapped her mouth shut. Connor nodded with a hint of satisfaction as he read her expression.

  “Yeah. Don’t know if you remember but Liam and I used to be friends with a guy named Ben, who I went to USC with. He’s actually engaged now to Casey Mulreed’s best friend, Jamie. You met them both in January at the June Magazine party.”

  Amanda felt Connor studying her face, waiting for it to react in a way that he could use against her.

  “Anyway. Since Jamie obviously knows everything about Casey and Ben knows almost everything about Jamie, I happen to know the story of Casey’s little incident at the lake in Missouri. The one that got her kicked out of the house for almost paralyzing her little brother.” He cringed, probably for show. “Traumatic stuff. And now it’s going to be immortalized on TV because you,” he shrugged, “don’t care about hurting people. You never do. Not if it benefits you in any way.”

  “Casey is the one who hurts people, Connor. She hurt me. And Liam. And Ian.”

  “What about Jake?” Connor challenged. “What did he do to you to deserve this? You using the most painful memory in his life to get your first writing credit and a little bit of validation at work?”

  Amanda swallowed hard, without an answer.

  “You do realize what’s going to happen when Casey sees the season finale, right?”

  Still, no words had made themselves available to Amanda’s lips. His stare steely on her, Connor continued.

  “She’s going to pull out all the stops. Whatever you’ve got now, Amanda, be prepared to lose it all in five weeks because Casey’s going to take it and destroy it. She’s fucked with entire lives for reasons much smaller than getting her family’s dirty laundry aired out on national television.”

  Amanda fought the knot in her throat. “What do you want me to do, then? Not write the episode?”

  Connor rolled his eyes at her lack of comprehension. “The episode’s going to be written with your idea, whether you or Fish does it. I’m not suggesting a solution for you here, Amanda. I’m just telling you for the las time to go away, disappear or at the very least, leave Liam. Leave him the hell alone. Break up. Because something tells me that whatever shit you’ve gotten yourself into with Casey, he’s going to get dragged into it somehow. And with Soldier premiering in two weeks, now’s kind of really not the time.” Reaching into his back pocket, Connor retrieved his wallet, opening it to pull out a twenty. “You can actually stop he
re,” he told the cabbie, handing the bill over before getting out.

  Chapter 20

  LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW LEGACY SUCKS ALL OF A SUDDEN

  The Durt

  September 21st

  Oh my goodness, guys. Either I dropped a ton of acid or Legacy turned into a completely different show within two weeks. It is an actual shit show. To the point where ratings are dropping dramatically. This past episode notched just under 1.5 million viewers, which is about half of that of their season premiere.

  So, what’s going on? How does something start sucking so abruptly? Usually, shows will dip in quality by Season Two or Three but we’re talking episodes two and three here. You didn’t even give us a chance to get obsessed, Case! And we wanted to considering how fantastic the pilot was. Audiences were treated to snappy, witty dialogue, shocking but natural plot developments and a fresh, effortlessly edgy vibe that had us quickly starved for more.

  By episode two, the story plateaued as writer/director Casey seemed to favor pointless scenes of hardcore drug use rather than moving the actual plot along. Also, the dialogue was suddenly comprised of 60% F bombs and 40% of try-hard banter.

  By episode three, strange new characters we had no interest in were being introduced and Mulreed seemed to have no idea what to do with the plot lines from the premiere that were actually interesting, taking them into flat directions that always ended in party scenes with cliched shock factors, like doing coke off of someone’s wang. Sewww edgy.

  It’s fine, I’m not that disappointed. Why, you ask? Well, I may have been playing double agent and keeping track of Leadoff simultaneously and whattayaknow, the “old person” show is actually really damned good and not just because breakout star Kyle Laurie is gorgeous or because Zoe Mercury’s body is out of this world. It’s just a heck of a solid show. And thank God.

  Because Legacy, girl, you’re about to get canceled.

  For the very first time since starting at Leadoff, the writers room was beginning to feel something like Amanda’s haven. Like the rest of the guys lately, she hardly left it. She ate two to three meals a day within its walls, drank up to four intern-delivered coffees and rolled her eyes at Skip’s bad jokes or Fish bad bets on a pitching match-ups. She wasn’t quite one of them yet but at least she was getting there.

  And at least Connor had stopped showing up to work as much — Tom had said something or another about how he’d only been around to consult and offer ideas here and there. So it was perfect. Amanda didn’t have to face him, she didn’t have to run into Jake at Starbucks and Casey probably couldn’t watch her if she was within the safety of the Waltman Global building.

  Also she had an excuse to avoid Liam. Not that she actually wanted to.

  She just couldn’t quite bear to speak to him let alone see him. With the beats of the script coming together for Leadoff’s season finale, Amanda was beginning to see how truly identical the story was to that one incident from Casey and Jake’s actual childhoods, down to the hiking trip gone wrong and the fact that leaving home hadn’t quite been voluntary. In a few weeks, a reenactment of Casey’s past would be airing on television, and to an audience probably larger than that of the season premiere considering the show’s climbing ratings over the past few weeks.

  So basically, Amanda was screwed.

  And if she was screwed, so apparently was Liam. Which was precisely why she had to stay away from him — which wasn’t extremely hard considering how much time he’d spent in L.A in the last week to promote the film.

  But when he returned, Amanda knew she’d have to prepare an excuse to avoid him. She couldn’t quite explain her logic to herself or figure out how long her plan would have to last, but in the back of her head, she figured that if Casey truly had eyes everywhere, seeing a sudden lack of regard for Liam might save him from being targeted after the premiere of Leadoff’s season finale in two weeks.

  I should just pretend to love Fish or Skip or Connor. Then Casey will go after them and I won’t care one bit, Amanda had thought to herself with amusement one day before deciding to actually have Wendy spin a story about her possible new romance with Fish or Bird, which was ultimately picked up by Celeb-o-Matic. They were the youngest Leadoff writers and there existed enough pictures of them for the story to be believable to people — and hopefully Casey.

  “Alright, guys. Let’s go pretend to be normal human beings for a little,” Tom said as always to announce their break.

  As had become custom for her lately, Amanda headed for the elevator so she could take it down to the thirty-fourth floor. The cafeteria was on the third floor of the building and she was definitely in need of an actual sandwich but Amanda didn’t quite dare to venture there. There were too many people and she was fairly certain she’d run into Jake, whose text messages she had been ignoring since their long conversation in Chinatown.

  And so it was the thirty-fourth floor Amanda ventured — a mostly vacant floor with a moving tenant and a single, amazing vending machine. It was perfect.

  Amanda bounced on her toes as she waited for the elevator, anticipating her usual post-dinner snack of flavored almonds and M&Ms that she usually shared with Bird, since he was the only one of the writers who was openly nice to her, attempting to include her on plans or their Thursday night happy hours.

  Maybe I’ll get us some Skittles tonight too.

  The thought of her vending machine food actually made her stomach kind of flutter with excitement lately, which she noted was pretty sad. But simple things were what she had to take pleasure in now that she was forcing herself away from Liam, forcing herself to give short excuses in her text messages for missing his calls. The premiere of A Soldier was in just days so she couldn’t take a chance. She couldn’t go to the event anyway so she figured she might as well not risk some rendezvous that could be caught by Casey or perhaps Terrence, considering he’d essentially been holding Liam hostage for pre-premiere press junkets and publicity.

  More sad than the vending machine giddiness was the fact that Amanda now got her fix of Liam through the TV. Thanks to Terrence’s Oscar-hungry publicity campaign, he was on pretty much every entertainment news program and even some nightly news programs. It was torturous to watch his smile through a screen but it was better than nothing. For the most part. Sleeping alone had become suddenly that much harder lately after a night of watching Liam on Access Hollywood. But Amanda could never bring herself to change the channel.

  Ding.

  Stirring her from her thoughts was the arrival of the elevator. Snapping her completely out of them was the blue-shirted kid who stood inside when the doors open.

  “Amanda?”

  Shit. “Hey. Jake.” The fact that she tried to fake delight only made Amanda’s tone sound stranger as she greeted him. Her eyes darted around to check for witnesses, any unfamiliar faces who might’ve gained access to Waltman Global in order to spy for Casey. Fortunately, there were only Vogel’s writers around at the late hour. Her hesitance the slightest bit relieved, Amanda stepped stiffly into the elevator. Watching her, Jake’s face immediately crumpled with apology and embarrassment.

  “Sorry you’re so weirded out by me,” he said.

  “Oh geez, dude.” Amanda’s shoulders immediately slumped and she heaved a guilty sigh, pressing the button to the thirty-fourth floor. “Jake, I am not weirded out by you,” she insisted, looking at him genuinely. “Really.”

  “It’s okay, I think I weird people out a lot.”

  “I doubt it. You’re probably imagining it. I do that too sometimes.”

  “Well. I don’t think you’ve chased as many people away as I have.”

  Amanda made a strange face as the doors closed. “Maybe you just… text a little too much,” she offered lightly with a strained smile. Jake grimaced at himself.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to text like crazy… I just really wanted to know why you decided to tell Casey I was here. And I kind of wanted to talk to you before I went back to Missouri.”r />
  Amanda blinked at him as she pressed the button to the thirty-fourth floor. “You’re going back to Columbia?”

  Jake shrugged. “Casey’s making me leave. She talked to my mom and they’re booking me a flight back.” He tried to hide the hurt in both his expression and tone. “She said now’s not the time for me to be here ‘cause she has a lot going on and I’m going to distract her if I’m here. Which is legit, actually, and I should’ve known. My fault.” He shook his head at himself. “I’m too eager. It’s probably for the better that I run people away. Once I start talking I just talk too much.”

  “Psh. No,” was all Amanda could think of to offer. Pausing in the silence, she eyed the sheepish, downcast look on Jake’s face that always made an appearance when he mentioned his lack of friends. “So,” she cleared her throat, her mind once again racing to think of a change of subject. “Ever been to the thirty-forth floor?”

  Jake looked up, appearing grateful for a new topic of conversation. He managed a small smile. “What’s on the thirty-fourth floor?” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, nothing.” Amanda laughed, mostly at herself. “Just a secret vending machine that might be the best one in this building. Maybe in all of Midtown.” She looked up to see Jake’s tension melting at the mention of food.

  “Really? I should check it out one day,” he said with real enthusiasm. Amanda gave him an odd look.

  “Well, what are you doing now?”

  “Going back to my apartment to pack. I’m leaving in two days.”

  “Then you have time to check it out now, can’t you?”

  Jake looked up at her with a hint of confusion. “Oh. I was just… gonna give you your space ‘cause… you’re trying to avoid me. I thought.”