Little White Lies

by Brianna Baker

  Okaaaay.… Creepy.

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up. The shock of being awakened by the smiling faces of my new employers—appearing like two overeager morning newscasters—overcame my total lack of recollection of going, or being put, to bed. (Not to mention undressing). These sensations contributed to my confusion as to whether I was awake or asleep, conscious or dreaming, alive or dead, in heaven or hell. Or purgatory …

  Looking back, it feels like all of the above.

  “Hey, Skools!” I surprised myself at how chipper I sounded. “Top of the morning to you. Where are you, anyway? Your resolution is phenomenal. And by the way, where am I?”

  “You are in your new home, Karl,” Karin assured me, smiling.

  Thankfully she and Anders had changed out of their white suits. They were now wearing coordinated ensembles more closely resembling casual business attire, or morning newscaster attire, the Morning Joe variety. Karin wore a crisp white blouse with the collar popped. The top buttons were undone to show a large purple stone vaguely shaped like Africa, set in gold, hanging just below her neck by a chunky yet elegant flat gold chain. Anders wore his crisp white shirt with a shimmering purple necktie, contained in a well-fitting navy blazer.

  Of course, I could only see them from the chest up.

  “Williamsburg, Karl,” Anders added. “A very hip neighborhood, as you well know. And you are twenty-six floors above it all, with sweeping views of the East River and Manhattan.”

  “And where are you guys?” I asked casually, trying to hide my discomfort.

  “We are at work, Karl, of course.” Karin conjured a clumsy smile, perhaps to cover up her bitchy of course, adding, “In the video conference room.”

  Anders jumped in. “But we do not expect you to be at work today. It is a Sunday, Karl. Enjoy it! Besides, we had a very productive night last night—in addition to the celebrating!”

  I rifled through fuzzy memory files, searching for some shred of recollection that might pertain to productivity. All I could come up with was a disturbing dream fragment that had me signing with my own blood what I vaguely recalled was a contract of eternal servitude. I remembered thinking during the dream how difficult it was to sign my name with my bloody left pinky.

  “So are there more cameras installed in this condo, or just this one I’m looking at now?”

  Both twins laughed. “These cameras will be an excellent source of potential content for the show, Karl,” Anders said. “This was your idea, of course.”

  “My idea?!” I gasped, pulling the covers over my face.

  “Perhaps we have called a bit too early, Anders,” Karin interjected with a wink in her voice. “I think Karl could benefit from a bit more rest, and perhaps some time to explore his new home … and to consider this exciting new opportunity that lies ahead.”

  The screen faded to black.

  I fell back against the soft pillows and desperately tried to repossess some small scrap of memory from the preceding night.

  And then it occurred to me: in spite of a lifelong personal pact vowing never to do such a thing, I’d just had my first video chat.

  I spent the rest of the day exploring my new home and exploiting its many amenities. The view of Manhattan across the East River was indeed spectacular. I felt like I could reach out and touch the tip of the Empire State Building. I couldn’t wait for it to get dark so I could see what color they would light it tonight—something very New York that I had never cared about before.

  I selected a pod of French roast from the prodigious supply and made myself an espresso with the fancy Italian machine. The fridge was stocked. So was the bar. I added some Baileys to my latte and ran a bath in the raised Jacuzzi tub.

  All the while I was on the hunt for hidden surveillance cameras, finding them throughout the spacious one-bedroom spread. I determined that these tiny, unobtrusive lenses covered every basic angle in each room, including the bathroom. Nothing would transpire in this apartment without being recorded.

  So be it.

  Later, as I took a bubble bath, I began to make a mental list of priorities:

  1. Live it up

  2. Take no prisoners

  3. Party my ass off

  4. Make television history

  Number four was tricky. I knew what the show shouldn’t be. There was no point in satirizing blowhards like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, because Stephen Colbert had already taken care of that perfectly. Besides, I wanted to dig deeper. I wanted to open up myself to the world. (Given all the cameras, I had no choice.) And I wanted to open up the world to what was really going on in the world.

  Here in the big bathtub, I couldn’t help but think big. My smile no longer masked a hangover; it became genuine. I didn’t want to be like Rachel Maddow or those other know-it-alls from MSNBC. Anyway, ever since I’d witnessed Russell Brand eviscerate the entire cast of Morning Joe in 2013 (ending the segment by calling Mika a “shaft grasper”; seriously, YouTube it!), I couldn’t even watch them for my morning shits and giggles anymore.

  Now that I thought about it, Russell Brand wasn’t a bad role model. But I was never going to be that thin, handsome, or British—despite my Erroll Flynn affectations. Most important, I didn’t have a legion of fans.

  Strange. And ironic. In a lot of ways, I was just like Coretta. But without the youth, beauty, or powerful parents.

  I wasn’t smiling anymore.

  It didn’t matter. I was having an epiphany. Yes, it was during this dreamy bubble bath that I begrudgingly admitted to myself, I already have the perfect role model. And that was Coretta herself. Or rather, the Coretta White I’d deluded myself into believing I knew. The best way to honor Coretta was to make my initial image of her (however false) a reality.

  But the so-called “lies” of her parents were very pale indeed (pun intended) when compared to the BIG FAT LIES that have been passed off by the RICH WHITE MALE ruling class of this great nation since its inception.

  Those were the lies I wanted to explore: REAL WHITE LIES.

  So my first order of business would be to change the name of the show.

  My next pressing question—perhaps easier to address than the previous ones—was whether or not I should use the show as a platform (finally!) to promote my rap career.

  I knew what Alex would say. But that was her problem.

  Monday morning I felt like a badass striding through the Pulse TV offices (had I been here before?) in my all-black ensemble fresh from Barneys in Brooklyn—care of a black titanium Amex card that had mysteriously appeared on my pillow during my bubble bath. I noted the deferential silence I created with my black ensemble, walking amongst the blond interns in their white Oxford shirts and the twenty-somethings in their hoodies.

  When I reached the glass-enclosed conference room, the Skools welcomed me with cheery bemusement.

  Strange—they looked both thinner and taller in real life.

  “Ahhh, the man in black!” Anders exclaimed. I wondered if he realized he was making a Johnny Cash* reference.

  Karin eyed me up and down and up again. “Very chic, Karl. And so confident! I like this new look for you. You already appear successful. And those pants are such a great fit. Black denims, very, very nice.”

  “I should hope so! These jeans were eight hundred bucks!” I half expected at least one raised eyebrow at a pair of pants that cost twenty times more than any I had purchased before in my life.

  They were unruffled.

  I didn’t see the point in adding that my simple black button-down shirt cost $575 and that my John Varvatos* boots were over $1400, or that I had bought two pairs, and five identical jeans-and-shirt combos.

  I had never shopped this way before, but I felt compelled to blow as much money as possible as quickly as possible. I had considered inviting my three best subcontract-tweeters—Bodhi, Sarah, and Kris—to dinner, with the intention of offering them jobs on the show, but decided against it for now. Baby steps.

  Sitting with
the Skools at the conference table were three white-shirt interns. Oh, and Ethan, their teeny assistant.

  I wasn’t nervous per se, but I was definitely on edge. I was navigating the unknown, and I had no clue about what was real and what wasn’t. I’d gone from weeks of being cooped up in my basement hovel, living off YouTube and takeout, to waking up in a luxury high-rise apartment with unlimited credit and my own TV show. Needless to say, this didn’t feel real. The problem was that I couldn’t recall anything else in my life that felt “real,” either.

  “So glad to have you here,” Anders said, his tone now formal. “Coffee? So nice to have you back after your contract signing.”

  “Yes, please.” Contract signing?

  “Milk, two sugars?” Anders asked. “No Baileys, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, how did …?” Then I remembered. Cameras.

  Ethan rose from his seat and vaulted to the coffee maker in the corner of the room. He gently set my coffee in front of me with a subservient nod. Karin gestured toward the three white-shirts. “Also joining us this morning is Emma, who will be your—how did you put it?—daysistant; as well as Sander, your nightsistant, and Wannes, who will be your scrivener.”

  I gave each new member of my staff a friendly nod as I took a sip of my coffee. I now realized my mug was the only one on the table. I frantically tried to recall any shred of a contract signing. I couldn’t.

  Deliberately or not, Anders addressed my confusion. “Contract negotiations was more like it, ha, ha. You are a pretty tough dealmaker, Mr. Ristoff. And we were a bit surprised to have you insist on ‘absolute creative control’—especially as you have no experience producing a television program. But when you said it was a deal breaker, well, we had to say yes.”

  I forced a smile. “How did you get the credit card issued so quickly? I mean, you didn’t even offer me the job until Saturday night …”

  “One of the advantages of owning several banks, Karl.”

  I was still blanking out on this purported contract session, but I had to admit that demanding “absolute creative control” did sound like something I would demand after double-digit beers. And for as long as I could remember, I had wanted my own “scrivener”—basically a personal scribe to jot down all the brilliant shit I say all day to record it for posterity. I imagined that daysistant and nightsistant sounded like my own slurred pronunciations of “day assistant” and “night assistant.” So maybe things weren’t going so terribly after all …

  “Well, I do appreciate you meeting my demands. And I’d love to help you put these clearly capable interns to good use.” I made a point of talking equally to Anders and Karin, which relieved me of holding eye contact with either one of them for too long. “But I had the intention to hire some people from my circle to fill out my writing staff and to work in production.”

  The Skools’ smiles simultaneously disappeared.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Karin replied.

  “But … didn’t you just say I have absolute creative control?”

  “I’m afraid the hiring of staff is a personnel decision, not a creative decision,” Anders offered by way of explanation. “Karl, we went over this on Saturday. We are already taking quite a large risk by putting you at the helm of this television program. We can’t take chances with outsiders on your staff.”

  “Understood,” I replied.

  Across the table, all smiles returned. “Now, Karl,” Karin said, “you had so many great ideas on Saturday. I loved your ‘White Men Can Rap’ concept. It is so—what is the word?—dope!”

  Horror returned. I slurped some coffee and set the mug down quickly. “Well, that is certainly something to consider.” I slouched in an effort to portray effortless confidence. “But my first order of creative business is this: I want to change the name of the show.”

  I hesitated. I expected disapproval. Instead, everyone at the table leaned toward me with eyes full of interest.

  “How about this?” I raised my eyebrows and pointed friendly finger-guns at Karin and Anders. “Real. White. Lies.”

  Nobody responded. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

  I took another hasty sip of coffee. “I’m talking about the lies that the military-industrial complex shoves down the throats of poor people. But funny.”

  Karin shot a smile at her twin. “I like what I am hearing, Karl,” she said, “You are brimming with so many great ideas and concepts. So radical, so passionate. And the new title is brilliant. Anders and I have decided to delay your debut for one more week, so that you and your staff will have adequate time to develop the best show possible.”

  Anders nodded. “Keep thinking, Karl,” he said. He glanced at his phone, signaling our meeting was over. “We will meet again tomorrow morning to discuss our progress. And by all means, have some fun tonight!”

  I did have fun that night. I also had fun during the next two weeks: a fuzzy blur that involved zero preparation leading up to the premier of Real White Lies.

  I also googled myself more than ever:

  Karl Ristoff

  Old white ghost-tweeter replaces young black tv host …

  Karl Ristoff becomes the white in little white lies …

  Coretta White loses tv job to ghost-blogger …

  Karl Ristoff: man of mystery — soon to be history?…

  Now I saw the benefits of never having set up a proper Facebook page. There were no old embarrassing photos of me for public consumption—that is, unless you consider my driver’s license photo and my high school yearbook photos to be embarrassing, which they kind of were.

  It seemed that the blogosphere was on a massive hunt to locate recent photos of Pulse TV’s newest star.

  But I had a show to create. And partying to do. I also charged two of my top subcontract-tweeters—Kris and Sarah—with conducting opposition research on my new bosses, the Skool twins.

  Alex would tell me nothing. In fact, she’d stopped returning my phone calls and texts. Maybe she was pissed I’d entered into an agreement with the Skool twins without consulting her first. Or maybe once again, like at those Peter O’Toole Society shows decades ago, she was just embarrassed to be associated with me.

  I couldn’t blame her. The public record was rife with evidence of my misbehavior. Every morning there was an item on Page Six of the New York Post about my misconduct from the night before. TMZ had a fresh Karl Ristoff video nearly every day. In turn, my appearances there generated invitations to outrageous parties and exclusive nightclubs I had never imagined, even during my days of celebrity ghost-tweeting. The cycle of nighttime naughtiness was the perfect promotional storm for the debut of Real White Lies.

  The show itself, however, did not look so promising.

  Despite my guarantee of “creative control” over my own TV show, nothing quite came together. Prospective guests were rejected because of “booking issues” that I was assured had “nothing whatsoever to do with the direction.” A few were deemed “antithetical to the interests of our sponsors.” Somehow “creative control” meant I had the power to think up any idea I wanted for the show, but with no actual mechanism to help me bring these ideas to fruition.

  And then, all of a sudden it seemed, came the big night.

  I did have one big pre-show success; I secured the rights for my choice of theme song. It was “Lies,” performed by the cartoon character Baby Cakes from animator Brad Neely’s China, IL series on Adult Swim. But even in the countdown to showtime, it didn’t bring me much pleasure. (Granted, I was hungover. Again.) When the cheap Casio drum beat came to a halting stop and the soundstage went dark, I wondered for the hundred-thousandth time: What the hell am I doing? Who am I? What am I?

  For once, the questions were pertinent. Masses of people were wondering the same things. Too bad I still had no answer. I stationed myself atop the same wack-ass concave video soundstage on which Coretta had met her televised demise just two weeks prior.

  Déjà fucking vu. />
  I was wearing my new rock star uniform—black button-down shirt, black denim jeans, outrageously expensive boots that looked like they might have been pulled from a sleeping hobo’s feet. Think Trent Reznor* wannabe. Not what I was going for; it’s just where my “look” ended up. Maybe that’s who and what I was, someone who just “ended up” with things—a look, a show, whatever, all wrong.

  When the music ended, the stage glowed a yellowish-white. Now I was backlit and bottom-lit so that I initially appeared like a silhouette.

  I’d prepared for this part, of course; I wasn’t winging it completely. We’d gone through a full dress rehearsal yesterday. But still, winging it was what it felt like.

  “Good evening,” I said to the cameras and bright lights. My voice boomed from the invisible mic clipped to my shirt. “I’m Karl. Welcome to Real White Lies.”

  That’s when the scripted portion of the evening ended. At least according to the script that we had followed yesterday. The house went black again. All at once I was hit with six consecutive blasts from a powerful spotlight. I cringed, momentarily blinded. Again the house went dark as eerie guttural bass tones hummed from the sound system, vibrating inside my abdomen.

  “A little something different for you folks at home,” I lamely quipped, trying to recover. My voice was inaudible. Of course it was. My mic had been shut off.

  The stage glowed once more, below and behind me, and I heard a collective gasp from the small studio audience. I turned to see a giant projection of buck-naked Karl Ristoff (thankfully with pixilated privates) holding a bottle of tequila and singing—poorly—an ancient megahit by Nelly: “It’s Getting Hot in Herrrre.”

  The camera angle changed to reveal two uniformed NYPD officers, one male and one female, both unimpressed.

  You can imagine what followed.