“So, ladies,” I said, my heart pounding, “unless we can figure out how to patch things up between us, we’ve got a full-scale roommate war on our hands.”
“Don’t forget that last week when Nell took a bunch of clothes to the drycleaners for me, every garment somehow came back ruined and I couldn’t find a thing to wear on the telecast,” Jem said.
“It must have been a coincidence, then, that whatever I tried on, you told me it made me look fat,” Nell shot back.
“And somehow all my powder eyeshadows turned to petrified granite practically overnight, an entire drawer of new pantyhose vanished into the ether, and none of the clasps on my necklaces will fasten anymore,” I added. “But can we all apologize to each other for playing catty games—pardon the pun, Nell—and hug or something? What’s happening to us? Has Bad Date warped our perspectives this much?”
There was a long stretch of silence as we regarded one another, first warily, then our expressions softened into ones of apology and acknowledgment.
“Yeah, we’re turning into people we wouldn’t even want to have lunch with, let alone live with,” a teary-eyed Nell agreed, stroking Johnnie Walker. “The meanest thing I did to this pookie was to bring her home knowing that Jem is allergic.”
Jem sighed. “I knew Nell had nothing to do with my first date with Carl. He warned me that getting back at Liz for it by using hair from her blonde wig might have an effect on Nell, but I wanted to do the spell anyway.”
“Honestly, Jem, when I saw that you had a great guy right under your nose, I just wanted you to be happy. I’m sorry I didn’t go about it the right way. If there is a right way.” I held out my hand to Jem. She clasped it then turned to Nell and fingered a length of her hair. “You know, Nell,” she said, starting to giggle—a rare thing for Jem—“it’s kind of a pretty color . . . for a frog!”
“ ‘It’s not that easy being green,’ ” Nell began to warble, serenading Jem. Jem’s laughter was contagious. Nell’s singing became interrupted with gasps. It was hard to tell if she was laughing or sobbing. The cat began to yowl in its shrill little voice.
Tremendously relieved, I draped an arm around the shoulders of each of my roommates, while Nell continued to regale us with Kermit the Frog’s signature song. I was giggling, too, especially at Johnnie Walker’s vocal contribution. “Everyone’s a critic,” I laughed. Jem sneezed.
23/
A Night for Surprises
So for the next two nights, Johnnie Walker slept on Nell’s chest and Jem carried her inhaler from room to room. Yet she no longer seemed concerned that she would more than likely get kicked off the show by the end of the taping on Sunday night. In fact, she began to walk around our apartment with a serenely inscrutable expression on her face, which became even more serene and even more inscrutable when Nell and I tried to pry a bit into what she planned to say when it was her turn to sit in the cone throne.
She opted to wear a pair of smoky-lensed sunglasses on the show, as they would hide her bloodshot eyes without entirely obscuring her face from the viewers.
To placate Nell, who was complaining bitterly that she owned nothing that would match her chartreuse hair, I suggested that she hide it, offering her the loan of my Hamptons Artists & Writers softball game cap. She could stick her hair in a ponytail and thread it through the back of the hat, put on a tight jersey top and an equally tight pair of jeans, slip into a pair of wooden-heeled mules, and pretend to be Casual Barbie.
On Sunday, the three of us didn’t travel to the set together and I was late getting to the studio, so I headed straight for hair and makeup. Jack was already there, seated in a chair with his back to mine, but we could see one another through the mirrors we faced. He tipped me a wink when no one was looking. I can’t wink for beans, so when I tried to return the gesture I probably looked like I had some sort of facial tic. When she asked what was wrong with my eye, I told Gladiola (whose hair this week was black except for a skunklike stripe of Halloween orange), that I was being bothered by what felt like a stray eyelash. I could see Jack across the room, trying very hard to suppress a laugh.
When we left hair and makeup to head off to our respective dressing rooms, our hands brushed against one another and Jack gave mine a little squeeze. “I don’t dare risk doing any more than that here,” he whispered to me. “Just believe that I want to.” I looked up at him and felt my heart begin to race, thinking about our magical time together in Miami, and how much I wanted to hold him again, to feel him touch me. A mere caress would have sent me over the edge.
When I got to my dressing room, there was a bouquet of pink roses and a card in a pink envelope with my name written on it. That sneak, I thought to myself. I figured I had better open the card before Candy Fortunato walked in. Grinning like a lovestruck idiot, I tore open the envelope and read the card.
To my partner in crime, my wittier mate:
Coffee? Or Champagne?
You set the date.
It was signed “Rick B.”
Rick?
I felt the corners of my smile turning down. What was our host up to? Was he still trying to woo me to ghostwrite his onstage banter? Or . . . and this was pretty unthinkable . . . I mean the man was a major movie star . . . was he trying to woo me, period? He’d been leaving messages for me on my office voicemail for the past few weeks, but I never returned his calls. It had seemed, even from his behavior that afternoon in Starbucks when he tried to hire me under the table, that he wouldn’t stop at seduction to get what he wanted, but until now, I hadn’t taken his romantic interest even remotely seriously.
I heard a noise outside the dressing room and shoved Rick’s card with the envelope into a zipper compartment of my purse, then quickly checked the roses for any little cards that the florists stick in with the arrangements.
Candy’s “pleather” miniskirted rear end entered the room before the rest of her did. I heard furtive giggling. Candy and someone else’s. The next thing that caught my eye were the pale, slender fingers exploring Candy’s ample boobs—fingers that were adorned with several unusual Celtic rings.
Candy and Allegra almost fell into the room. Allegra, red-faced, shut the dressing room door behind her. “Don’t tell anyone what you just saw!” she hissed. So much for that tinkly little speaking voice she used on camera.
“Allegra, everyone knows you’re gay. By now, all of America knows you’re gay.” I did a double take and looked at Candy. “But I didn’t know you were!”
“It’s not about my lifestyle choices,” Candy answered anxiously. “It’s about the no-fraternization clause. Hey, Liz, why’re you smiling? Wanna get in on the action?”
Did I really resemble the Cheshire Cat? “I’m not going to say a word, believe me,” I assured the two of them. “I guess Candy surprised me a little because all her bad date stories so far have been about men. I mean most of your boyfriends end up dead.”
“Yeah, well,” Candy said, tracing the curve of Allegra’s breasts right in front of me. “I figure I have such bad luck with guys that maybe I should try women. I’m not doin’ it to be in vogue or nothin’. Ya know, a lot of strippers are bisexual or gay. I don’t want to get into what gets some of us started in the business, but it’s not surprising that a lot of us prefer women.”
“I thought you were an ex-stripper, Candy.”
She cracked her gum. The pop almost echoed in the dressing room. “Yeah, well, whatever.”
“Just promise not to tell anyone about this,” Allegra repeated, just as insistently, though more softly now. She kissed Candy full on the mouth. Then she opened our door very slowly and peered out, checking the corridor in both directions before gliding noiselessly down the hall to her own dressing room.
“So are you two a couple?” I asked Candy.
“Don’t know yet. Want some gum?”
“No thanks. Maybe later.”
“Hey, these are gorgeous!” Candy exclaimed, noticing my roses. “Got a secret admirer?”
> I debated whether or not to share the information. It might not be such a bad idea to have a witness with no stake in my personal life who could attest that Rick had been hitting on me, so that in the event the producers or the media somehow got wind of it and decided to treat it as a violation of Bad Date’s code of conduct, Candy could corroborate that Rick had been the aggressor and I’d done nothing to encourage him. After all, he was the big movie star host, and who was I in comparison? Without a confidante, my version of events might not be believed and I could end up booted from the show. “My admirer’s not so secret,” I told her.
“C’mon, tell me. I swear it won’t leave this room. Besides, you got something on me now, so we’d be even.”
I leaned over and whispered the name in her ear.
“You’re shittin’ me!” she gasped.
I showed her Rick’s card, adding that only in his mind was I in any way his “partner” or “mate.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. He’s certainly got a case of the hots for you.” She plunked herself down at her dressing table. “Is my makeup okay? Allegra didn’t kiss it all off, did she?” Before I could answer, Candy began reapplying her lipliner and filled in her lips with a dark berry shade that matched her midriff-exposing tank top.
There was a knock on the door and Geneva gave us our five-minute call. As we headed down to the set, I had the feeling that living rooms across the world were in for some wild entertainment.
We were definitely captivating our audience this week. Jack told the viewers a six-year-old story about what happened when a woman from Detroit with whom he’d been carrying on a long-distance relationship came to stay with him in Miami for the weekend. She’d combed through his closet and cut an Armani sportcoat and a half dozen Valentino neckties to ribbons because her father had once been arrested by a carabinieri in Rome for some traffic infraction, so she was determined to detest everything Italian from that point on. The fact that he didn’t know this about her and had gone to great pains to make osso buco, one of his culinary specialties, only compounded matters. She threw the food, plates and all, into the neighbor’s garden.
“Hey, Liz,” Rick said, sauntering down to my chair after my ball popped out of the machine. “You look like you got a little color this past week. You look great. You’re positively glowing. Or maybe you just got lucky. Where were you, Temptation Island?”
He’d cut a little too close to the bone, so he had to be stopped before the conversation drifted into more dangerous waters. “Gee, Rick,” I replied, smiling sweetly, “I just love reality TV jokes. In fact, I rented a video of one of your movies last night and I’ll be goshdarned if you weren’t the weakest link in the cast.”
“Good-bye! Whoa there, girl.”
I slipped my fingers into the electrode cones and told the world about a three-day weekend from hell I’d spent at one of the Club Meds with a lawyer I dated several years ago. The biggest surprise was that he’d invited his mother to join us—a fact I didn’t learn until we actually arrived on the island. It got to the point where I tried anything to get away from them, including signing up for an off-shore underwater excursion to swim with sharks—probably my all-time biggest fear in the animal kingdom, trumping cockroaches and snakes by a two-to-one margin.
Candy discussed how a guy she went down on behind the P.C. Richards appliance store confessed to her that she had just given him his last blowjob before he got married. His nuptials, with a full two-hour Catholic mass, were scheduled to begin fewer than eight hours after Candy had entertained him. “So when the priest says, ‘Has anyone got anything to say,’ ya know, ‘speak now or forever hold your peace,’ I stood up and said, ‘Yeah, Father Rizzoli, I got something to say. I was holding Frankie’s piece at about four-thirty this morning, back behind the P.C. Richards on Flat-bush Avenue. In fact, I was holding his piece in my mouth. So I don’t know what youse wanna do about it, but I’m in a church here and I got the fear of God in me, and while I did some things in my past that I’m not too proud of, I don’t want to go to hell for blowing a dirtbag like Frankie. So I gotta confess.’ ”
This was good. This was good TV! I could bet that right now, millions of mothers were clapping their hands over their children’s ears while no doubt staring open-mouthed at Candy Fortunato. The kicker was that Candy hadn’t said anything that was technically “beep-able.” All of the contestants and the entire studio audience were in hysterics. No one in his or her right mind was ever going to vote this woman off the show; she was far too entertaining . . . and she was serious competition for the rest of us.
Still, as much fun as we had listening to Candy, the moment I was waiting for had yet to arrive. Jem had been wearing a beatific smile for the entire show. Even when she walked on set, she seemed to be gliding an inch or two above the floor. Her name was the last one to be called and she approached the cone throne with her customary regal dignity. Smooth, polished Jem.
She slid her fingers into the metal cones and began to speak. “I believe that I am the luckiest, happiest woman in New York today.” The polygraph lines didn’t wiggle so much as a hair. “I had the most wonderful date with a remarkable man. Believe it or not, we’ve known each other for more than seven years, working side by side; and ladies, I am here to tell you, to remind you, to beg you not to judge a book by its cover. Well, actually, my man has a damn fine ‘cover,’ it’s just that he and I don’t necessarily share the same religious convictions. Let’s just say I was born and raised a Christian and he practices something else. Now I didn’t believe for a moment that because of Carl’s religion and his cultural and extracurricular interests that we had a snowball’s half-life in hell of being compatible. But something made me finally give him a chance . . .”
I looked at the television monitor that showed the polygraph screen to the other contestants. It still wasn’t zigzagging. I guess it was because Jem had truthfully acknowledged that “something” had made her change her mind about Carl. She just didn’t say what that particular “something” was.
“Uh, Jem,” Rick Byron interrupted. “I thought you’d be one of the last people I’d have to remind that the name of the show is ‘Bad’ Date.”
“I know,” Jem beamed. “Isn’t it great! I am never going to have to go on another bad date again. Because I have found a good man. I am in looooove, ladies and gentlemen, and it feels sooooooo good. So I would be proud to be kicked off this sorry show tonight, and get on with my life! My happy life.”
Jem removed her fingers from the cones and raised her arms above her head, as triumphant as Muhammad Ali after a knockout. The audience went nuts applauding for her. In fact, they gave her a standing ovation.
Then they kicked her off the show.
“Congratulations,” I told Jem, on our way back to the dressing rooms. “You scored one for romance.”
“I’m feeling very munificent after that little on-air revelation.” She leaned over and whispered in my ear. “You don’t have to apologize to me anymore for ‘sabotaging’ my first date with Carl, because if you hadn’t sent over the champagne . . . I’ll never know . . . maybe that was what clinched it for me . . . that he somehow knew what my favorite was. Get Nell and we’ll go to Pinky’s for a drink. My treat.”
I really wanted to take her up on it, but I hadn’t had the chance to see Jack one-on-one since Miami. “Tell you what,” I said, checking my watch. “I need to talk to Candy about a couple of things before we go. How about I meet you over there? If I’m not there by eleven o’clock, don’t wait; just go on home without me when you’re done.” I hugged her. She hugged back. Jem is not a hugger. At least she never used to be.
“I had been debating with myself whether to say something on live television about you playing Cupid. About how pissed off I was at you after my first date with Carl because I thought you were trying to screw up my chances on the show. Then I decided that would, to quote Nell, be ‘really bad karma all around,’ so I kept my mouth shut. There are some things not ev
eryone, and certainly not a gazillion Nielsen households, need to know.”
“Thank you. You know, I couldn’t be happier for you, Jem. And I’m really glad you don’t hate me.”
“I could never hate you, Liz. Want to snap your neck in half on occasion, but never hate you. God, we all had these grand idealistic, altruistic plans about what we would do with the money, back when we auditioned for the show. But face it, as much as we really believe we’d do something noble if we won the million dollars, it was still a get-rich-quick scheme.” Jem was brimming with “happy tears” I’d never seen her experience in all the years I’ve known her. “It stopped being about going for the money, Liz.” She held out her hands, fists closed. “Pick one,” she instructed me.
“Pick one?”
“Left hand is love. Right hand is money. Pick one.”
I looked at her face. Talk about glowing.
Jem looked me straight in the eye. “You didn’t pick a hand, Liz. Doesn’t matter, though—you should already know the answer.” She all but floated down the hall to her dressing room.
24/
Animal Instincts
Candy and I hung around our dressing room for a while, allowing everyone to leave the building before us. She was waiting for Allegra. I was waiting for Jack, but Candy didn’t know that. She thought I was waiting to speak with Rick. I didn’t correct her.
I counted on Allegra and Candy being too wrapped up in one another to pay much attention to my business. We jumped when there was a sharp knock on our dressing room door. I went to open it. Jack stood there with his brown leather bomber jacket draped over his arm.
Reality Check Page 19
