Reality Check

by Leslie Carroll

  “Okay,” I began after they had installed themselves on my white leather couch. “You said the client wants to position the product just about everywhere. We’ve got a poster for gyms and fitness centers.” I motioned to Demetrius to show them the mock-up, wherein a terrifically fit young woman in workout clothes is delicately aiming one of the crunchies toward her mouth; the poster reads “Counting calories has never been easier with Numbers Crunchers.”

  My poster for ball parks and sports arenas where a teen at a baseball game was keeping a box score by using the crunchies, read “Know the score with Numbers Crunchers.” The ad targeted to kids showed a couple of happy first-graders in a school lunchroom, wearing the crunchies on their fingertips. The copy said “You don’t have to count on your fingers with Numbers Crunchers . . . but it’s fun to, anyway!” The tag line on each ad read “Numbers Crunchers: There’s no accounting for taste.”

  “I like it!” Jason exclaimed. “Nice work, Liz. Demetrius, I love the art. Great stuff.”

  “It shows what you can do when you apply yourself,” F.X. added. “This is the old Liz we know and love. We don’t know what you did with the Snatch Liz, but please don’t bring her back.”

  Jason and F.X. were pleased enough to take the campaign to the client without sending me back to the yellow legal pad and Demetrius back to the drawing board. “Thanks, pal, I owe you one,” I told Demetrius.

  “Dat’s okay, Liz. You can fix me up with dat Travis guy on your show.”

  “I think he’s too dumb for you. Besides, given the anecdote he related on the show last night, he’s straight. Bi at the most.”

  “I’ll settle for dat restaurant guy den. What’s his name again?”

  “Jack Rafferty, and he definitely doesn’t play on your team, trust me. Are you sure you don’t want me to put in a good word for you with Milo?”

  “Oh, no. Too pooffy.”

  “Just thought I’d give it another shot.” I fired up an Alanis Morrissette CD, kicked my shoes off, and lay down on my leather couch, shoving a throw pillow behind my head. I checked my watch. “Okay, a twenty-minute, much-needed, self-congratulatory meditation period, then it’s back to work.”

  Demetrius went around to my desk and sat in my chair like a CEO. “I hope you don’t mind, mahn,” he said, lighting up his ganja spliff right there in my office. He offered it to me, after taking an enormous toke.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll take my illegal thrills vicariously.” I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply of his secondhand smoke. The weed had a funny effect on me. I kept visualizing my own music video version of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana,” with Candy Fortunato as Lola and a pencil-mustachioed Jack Rafferty as the greasy Rico-who-wore-a-diamond, with jars of Tito’s Famous South Beach Salsa floating, gravity-free, through the air.

  When my private line rang, I jumped, startled out of my semistoned daydream. “You want me to answer it, mahn?” Demetrius asked lazily. He took another drag off his massive reefer.

  “Sure, why not.”

  He indolently picked up the phone and answered it, trying not to let the potent smoke drift out of his mouth. “Liz Pemberley’s line. I hope you know her if you have dis number.” He listened intently for a few moments. I was not in the mood to get up off the couch. The whole world would be a better place—at least America would be—if we all still had nap times after lunch, followed of course by milk and cookies, preferably Double-Stuff Oreos. “You looked very good last night, mahn,” I heard Demetrius say into the phone. “Was dat Armani a custom job or you buy off de rack?” He was quiet for a few more seconds, but he nodded his head as though whoever was on the other end of the line could see him. “Oh yeah, Liz is a very special person, mahn. Yes, very talented. Dey don’t make dem better.” I love listening to Demetrius’s island lilt, but I was dead curious by now to find out who the heck he was talking to. I motioned to him to ask who was on the phone. My art director waved his hand at me to indicate that he would share such intelligence in a minute . . . or when he got around to it, whichever came later, knowing Demetrius.

  “Okay, I put her on de phone, now. Yeah, it was great talking to you, mahn. You take care, now.” Demetrius held the receiver in the air, still very much at home in my desk chair. This necessitated my rising from the couch and walking over to the desk to take the phone from his hand.

  “Hello,” I said, pleasantly mellow.

  “Hey, Liz? This is Rick Byron here.”

  “Yeah, right.” It didn’t really sink in.

  “I’m not kidding. Why wouldn’t you think it was me?”

  “Because major movie stars don’t often call me on my private line at work. Okay, who’s this? Is this Jack? If you’re playing a practical joke on me, you caught me in an uncharacteristically good mood for a Monday afternoon.”

  “Who’s Jack? Liz, it really is Rick. How can I convince you?”

  I thought for a moment. “What was the name of your private acting coach for What’s Your Sign?” There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “Gotcha! Whoever you are.”

  “I didn’t have an acting coach.”

  “Then you’re not Rick Byron,” I replied smoothly.

  “Wait—how do you know about that?”

  “Your acting coach is a friend of a friend. What’s the person’s name, Rick? I’ll give you a hint. You won’t find it on the movie credits.”

  There was another silence. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Rick, I’m one of the God-knows-how-many-people-in-New-York who know that you took some private lessons to get you through that movie. It’s an open secret.”

  “Okay. Her name is Kathryn Lamb. But she calls herself Kitty. My manager read in the Times a few weeks ago that she got engaged to the guy who was running that matchmaking service. That’s how we—I mean they—met.”

  “Okay, you’re Rick Byron,” I said, realizing that I had a smug smile on my face. “And now that your identity has been properly verified, why on earth are you calling me?”

  His voice grew muffled. “I’m calling from a pay phone,” he said. “So it’s harder to trace.”

  “Are you currently doing research for your next movie, Rick? An unnecessary remake of The Good-bye Girl, or an espionage thriller, perhaps?”

  “See, this is what I like about you,” he said. I could hear the coin drop in the machine in response to the recording requesting an additional deposit. “You’re fast, fast on the draw. I need you to do me a very big favor. I’ll pay you whatever you want; my ass is in a sling over this.”

  I was certainly intrigued. Why a movie star would call me from a pay phone was a puzzlement.

  “Look, I’m right near your office. If you look outside your window, you’ll see a Starbucks on the . . . where am I? . . . northeast corner of—”

  “I know where you are, Rick.” I went to the window.

  “Can you see me? Shit!”

  “I see a handsome young man with blond highlights dressed all in black, standing at a pay phone looking agitated. Is that you?”

  “You can see my highlights from up there? Shit. They were supposed to look natural.”

  “I’m teasing you, Rick. I know you have highlights. We were on set together last night, remember? I was two feet from your face.”

  “They were still supposed to be subtle.” I heard the pout in his voice. “Look, can you get away for a half hour or so? I need to talk to you about something really important.”

  The recorded voice of the operator cut in, demanding more money. I heard the clink of another coin. I covered the receiver with my hand and looked at my watch. “Do you think I’ll be missed if I pop outside for a bit?” I asked Demetrius.

  The art director’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be meditating. “I’ll cover for you, mahn,” he said hazily, not opening his eyes.

  I removed my hand from the receiver. My heart was thumping. I had no idea what Rick had in mind, but I wasn’t going to miss my chance to find out. “Ri
ck? I’ll be downstairs within ten minutes.”

  “There’s a table way in the back, as the coffee shop curves. Not the side near the restrooms. The other end of the store. I’ll be there with a copy of USA Today.”

  “I’ll be the one in the trenchcoat and fedora, wearing a red carnation in my lapel.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll meet you there, Rick. Be down in a few.” I hung up the phone.

  “So, is he gonna make you a big star?” Demetrius asked.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea what he’s up to, but he’s making it sound highly dramatic.”

  “He’s an actor, mahn. Dat’s what dey do.”

  “Hold the fort, Demetrius. He said this would only take a half hour or so.” For some reason, I felt like a kid at six A.M. on Christmas morning, knowing there’s a really big present under the tree with my name on it, but that I have to wait until my parents are awake before I can open it. I grabbed my purse and tried to look discreet and nonchalant as I left the office, masking my intense curiosity about what Hollywood’s Reigning Hunk wanted so desperately from me.

  15/

  Rick’s Pitch

  Rick Byron was as incognito as any movie star gets, slouched in the curve of the wooden banquette, wearing aviator Ray•Bans and a Cape Fear Crocs baseball cap. He motioned to me to join him. “Want one?” he asked solicitously, pointing to his cup.

  “I don’t know yet. What is it?”

  “Chai tea latte.”

  I shrugged. Rick took a couple of crumpled up bills from the front pocket of his black jeans and handed them to me. “Go get whatever you want. Ordinarily, I’d be a gentleman and go to the counter for you, but I don’t want to run the risk of being noticed.”

  “I don’t think it poses too much of a threat in that get-up.” The visor of the minor league cap obscured his face well enough and the Ray•Bans took care of the rest. I complimented Rick on the coolness of his hat.

  “Yeah, Harleys are my high-priced hobby, but I also like to collect minor league caps.” He started counting on his fingers. “I’ve got the Asheville Tourists, the Lansing Lugnuts, the Mudville Nine, the New Britain Rock Cats, the Piedmont Boll Weevils, the Queens Kings—I guess that’s a better name than the Kings Queens—and probably the most famous because of the movie, a Durham Bulls cap.”

  I laughed. “Pretty impressive. Well, no matter what cap you were wearing, if you keep those Ray•Bans on, the counter girl would probably only know it was you if you went up there bare-assed.” I was referring to a tattoo of Goofy on his butt that all of America and any nation in the studio’s distribution package saw on glorious display in Rick’s campy pseudo-horror flick I Know What You Did with the Baby-sitter Last Summer .

  Rick grinned. If Con Edison were to harness the wattage in his smile, there would never be another blackout in Washington Heights. “I don’t have a tattoo in real life. That was makeup. It looked pretty good though, didn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “If you don’t believe me, Liz, you could ask your friend’s friend. Kitty, the acting coach. She would know.”

  I knew that Kitty knew that too, but was shocked that he was letting that information slip. I took Rick’s money and came back to our table a few minutes later with a mocha frappuccino. “So, Rick,” I said, seating myself across the table from him, the better to shield his hard muscular superstar’s body from the teeming female masses who might want a piece of it. “What’s with all the hush-hush stuff?”

  He took another sip of tea and lowered his Ray•Bans. His eyes were a bit bloodshot.

  “Party hard after the show last night?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m allergic to my new cat.” Rick leaned forward on his elbows. Our heads nearly met; our bodies formed a triangle over the tabletop. “What did you think of me last night? Be honest.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood the question or where he was going with it. “Think of you?”

  “Yeah. Was I funny? Did you think I was sexy?”

  “Why are you asking me this, Rick?”

  “Okay, then. One question at a time. Did you think I was sexy?”

  “Any female over the age of ten and probably more than half the men in the world think that.”

  “But did you think I was sexy last night?” he insisted. “Be straight with me.”

  I took a deep breath and went out on a limb. “Yes, I think you’re sexy, in general. Last night? I guess with the banter they wrote for you, you . . . well . . . you didn’t come off particularly sexy, no.”

  I thought he’d be devastated, but he smiled ever so slightly. “Then how did you think I came off?”

  “Brutal honesty?”

  He nodded his head emphatically.

  “I think you came off like a politically incorrect smarmy little dweeb. Personally, I wouldn’t mind you being un-p.c., but the smarmy little dweeb part began to wear thin very quickly.”

  Rick’s smile lit up the dark recesses of Starbucks. “Aha! I was right! Liz, can I tell you something? I hated every line they gave me to say. I felt like a total moron up there, except when I was talking to that Diz woman about her Harleys. Hey, you two could have a talk show. ‘The Liz and Diz hour.’ So this is what I want you to do for me. A major league favor. You’re an advertising copywriter, right?”

  I nodded, taking a sip of my iced coffee.

  “I mean, you made up the ‘site bytes’ stuff.” He removed his Ray•Bans, placed his palms on the table, and sat up straight, his gaze level with mine. “I want you to write some copy for me to say on the air. And instead of doing the crap the writers give me, I’ll say your lines and make them look like ad-libs.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Rick, you have to say the lines you’re given. You can’t bring in a new writer.”

  “I can do anything I want. If I walk off this show, it goes down the toilet. I don’t mean to burst your bubble here, but people aren’t tuning in to see you-all up there. It’s me they’re turning on the tube for.”

  “At the moment, anyway,” I countered. “The stakes are still low and the nation hasn’t had the chance to get to know us—and therefore truly despise us—yet. Why don’t you just take your clout to Rob Dick and the writers and demand better material? Don’t you see it’s a conflict of interest for me to be writing dialogue for you and be a contestant on the show?”

  Rick leaned in to me, dropping his voice to a whisper. “To answer your first question, I have a bit of a reputation for being kind of a bad boy. I was once referred to by a director as the only straight diva he’d ever worked with. My manager keeps reminding me that I’ve got to stop ruffling so many feathers or I’ll end up in straight-to-video releases for the rest of my natural life. So I need to get my way by finding a back door, so to speak. You’re that back door, Liz. C’mon ... I’d make it worth your while.”

  I matched his pitch and prayed he wasn’t wearing a wire and this wasn’t all some sort of elaborate entrapment scheme set in motion by producer Rob Dick. “Then pay me a million dollars, Rick.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “That’s the grand prize, though. All the marbles. That’s the reason I agreed to do Bad Date. Why should I settle for less?”

  “Because you’ll probably get voted off the show long before you get to the million dollars, so what I’m offering you is considerably more than what you’ll most likely end up with.”

  Although he hadn’t put a dollar figure on the table, the offer was indeed a tempting one; but from what I’d heard about Rick’s dealings with Kitty Lamb, his modus operandi was to get an attractive woman to help him look good professionally and then deny her the opportunity to derive any recognition for it. Now he was pulling the same stuff with me that he’d done with Kitty. If history was a good teacher, I wouldn’t even be able to take my ghosting credit to the job bank, and it would be a gamble that I could leave my job at SSA, hitch my star to Rick’s wagon, and thereby make enough money to s
tart up my own agency. In any event, the deal amounted to a clear conflict of interest, whether or not I got credit down the line for ghostwriting Rick’s banter. As I sipped my frappuccino I pondered the pros and cons of the scheme. I felt something graze my ankle and suddenly realized Rick was playing footsie with me. I looked over at him, completely surprised, and before I knew it, Rick had reached over the table and was kissing me. His hand traveled from my hair to my throat and down to my right breast. Because my body was essentially blocking his from view, unless someone was looking very carefully, they would not have been entirely sure what he was up to.

  Is it really bad form to say that Rick’s kiss was definitely not bad at all, but Jack Rafferty’s were a lot better? And what is this current mania that seems to have struck New York men in the past twenty-four hours where they seem to feel the need to grab me and kiss me? Where have they all been? I broke away from the kiss.

  “I said I would make it worth your while to write for me,” Rick said, seating himself again.

  “You must be pretty desperate then,” I responded, “to offer me sexual favors. Or else you think I must be pretty desperate to accept them. Or your offer.”

  I continued to evaluate both sides of the issue. Who would turn down Hollywood’s Reigning Hunk? Even my own mother would think I was crazy. But I wasn’t ready to give up on Bad Date right away. I’d only gotten safely through a single episode. Jem thought Jack tried to deliberately poison me to prevent me from appearing on the show. Now, the very famous and very handsome host was asking me to compromise my integrity, to do something that would no doubt count as several violations of my contract with the show. Did these men know something I didn’t?

  To some people, the choice before me would have been a no-brainer: let the gorgeous movie star do whatever he wants to with your body while you pretend to be appalled, then take the pile of money he’s offering you to ghostwrite for him.