My eyes started to close as soon as the opening credits began to roll.
The next thing I knew, Keith was whispering, “Mallory. Mallory! Wake up!”
“Huh?” I asked groggily, taking in his rough-boy-makes-nice features. “Is something on fire?”
“Erika is here.”
I bolted awake. Erika was his ex-girlfriend—the one he’d been dating when he’d started seeing me. When he’d finally broken up with her, she’d threatened to kill herself, kill him, and kill me. Not necessarily in that order.
So—not a fire, but definitely a five-alarm emergency.
“She’s here?!” I asked, just to make certain.
“Uh-huh. Two rows in front of us, four seats over.”
“Why couldn’t the cat have stayed on the damn tin roof?”
Keith gave me a withering glance and I knew I shouldn’t have said that. I absolutely respected the fact that he still cared about Erika’s well-being. I just didn’t particularly want to see it.
“Do you mind if we sneak out before she sees us?” he asked. “You know how fragile she is. I don’t want her to see us together.”
“But I love this movie,” I said. What I meant was, I thought the fact that you broke up with her and started dating me full-time meant we didn’t have to sneak around anymore.
“You were out cold.”
Keith’s eyes were pleading now. I couldn’t say no to that.
“Let’s go, Brick,” I said.
“Thanks, Maggie. I owe you one.”
We exited the theater as lo-pro as possible. At the back of the theater I stopped for just a moment to enjoy my favorite line from the whole movie. Liz Taylor, dressed only in a white slip (très scandalous in the fifties), is clawing the back of the settee, screeching at her husband, Brick, “Skipper is dead! I’m alive! Maggie the Cat is ALIVE!” That’s the right attitude, Liz. Fight for what you want.
“Sorry about falling asleep on you,” I said when we got outside.
“That’s cool. I know you’re totally exhausted.”
Totally exhausted didn’t even begin to cover it. I was getting three, maybe four hours of sleep every night, juggling scripts and set questions and casting issues and meeting after meeting with the networks, the staff, the stars, and the sponsors. Oh, and I had to do schoolwork, too. It felt like the only time I had to think was when I was alone in an elevator.
“I didn’t realize how much it was going to kill me,” I admitted. “Once we get on the air, it will mellow out … I think.”
“You think?” Keith asked doubtfully.
“A girl can dream, can’t she?”
Keith smiled and pulled me close to him. “How ’bout a trip to Canter’s to make up for the ex-girlfriend drama? I think some latkes and applesauce is just what you need.”
This is why we go through all the confusion and pain and compromise to be in a couple, isn’t it? Just to have someone say, This is what you need, and to have it be true. If he’d asked me what I needed at that moment, I never would have been able to say it. I would have just stared at him blankly, not knowing. But instead, he gave it to me. He knew, even if I didn’t.
I kissed him quickly. Not just for knowing me, but for wanting to.
Canter’s Delicatessen is one of the few real “haunts” in Los Angeles, a city that eats its history faster than models can hide their dinner in napkins. Open twenty-four hours, it caters to the eclectic Hollywood clientele that needs corned beef sandwiches and pickles at all hours of the day. Now, by “Hollywood,” I don’t mean the movie star variety but rather old men who used to “work in pictures” and scruffy, tipsy screenwriters wooing bronzed bimbos with tri-color hair.
As a surly woman named Deena led me and Keith to our table, I marveled at the plastic Tiffany-style ceiling and the way it cast a queer orange and yellow glow, making everyone inside look like they had liver disease. That was always one of the reasons I never ordered the liver and onions. (The other reason being that liver and onions is disgusting.) Keith ordered the Monte Cristo with extra syrup and I had the latkes (potato pancakes to goyim like me) with extra applesauce.
I was just starting to relax when Keith asked, “So what are you gonna do about the opening credits?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really want to talk about work. Because lately it seemed that’s all I ever did. It was nice that Keith cared enough to ask. So many other guys would have been competitive about it. Or would have been liking me for my job, not for who I was. But I knew Keith still saw me as a normal girl with totally abnormal responsibilities. Or at least that’s how I hoped he saw me.
“We’re still figuring the opening credits out,” I told him. Which was the polite version of: I am in so over my head that I can’t even figure out how the show starts.
Our waitress dropped off my coffee and Keith’s milk shake. As I took my first sip, I noticed a familiar-looking duo across the restaurant: my former-best-friend Amelia and her kissing-bandit brother, Jake.
I reached across the table and grabbed Keith’s hand. “Don’t turn around,” I warned.
“Famous person?” Keith asked in a hushed tone.
“No. It’s Amelia and her brother.” I sank lower into my seat, trying to hide behind the creamer and pickles. First Erika, now this. All I needed was the third-grade teacher who told our class that Mallory was a boy’s name, and my humiliation would be complete.
“Can we go somewhere else?” I pleaded.
It was one thing to face off with Erika—even if she wanted to tear me apart, I didn’t really think she would touch me. But Amelia, on the other hand, could rip me to shreds with a single glance. It had been a while since we’d last talked, a while since I’d told her she couldn’t be the lead in Likely Story. I’d told her the truth—that she wasn’t good enough—and she’d called me names that most newspapers wouldn’t publish. When it came to destroying our friendship, I hadn’t just pulled the pin on the grenade—I’d sat on it. Now it hurt every time I had something I wanted to tell her. One by one, our happy memories turned sour. She hated me now more than she’d ever liked me as a best friend.
“You know, Mal, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Keith tried to console. “If she really wants to be an actress, she’s gonna have to get used to rejection.”
“But being rejected by your best friend is a different story.”
“She’s been acting like a complete witch,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Then why does everyone at school refuse to talk to me? Or if they do, it’s to call me a celebutard?”
“They’re just jealous. You get to leave school early almost every day—if you even come at all—and when you’re there, you’re too busy texting Richard to notice them. That’s why they play along when she says you’re all high-and-mighty.”
“Do you think I am?” I wondered sheepishly.
“Of course not. And even celebutards have a right to eat Jewish food in peace. We’re not going anywhere.”
This was sort of twisted, since he’d just made me leave my favorite movie to avoid his messy past, but I supposed he was right.
“It makes me sad to not have a best friend anymore,” I confided.
Keith came around to my side of the booth and put his arm around me.
“You have me,” he offered.
“Thanks. I know.” Not entirely the same thing, but still sweet.
Keith started to comfort me some more, but we were interrupted.
“Hi, Mallory.” It was Jake. His grin was its usual happy-evil.
I feigned surprise. “Oh, Jake, what are you doing here?”
“My sister wanted me to give you this.” He dropped a folded paper napkin on the table. “See ya around. I can give you a ride sometime.”
I felt myself blushing. The last time I’d been in his front seat, I’d come dangerously close to treating it like a backseat. A momentary lapse of sanity.
“Maybe it’s a peace offering,” Keith said, pointing to the napkin.
“Read it.” I opened it and tried to keep a poker face. In pink ink, from what I knew to be Amelia’s favorite pink pen, the napkin read:
YOU ARE A SKANKY BACKSTABBING
SKANK.
XOXO AMELIA
My poker face fell. I’d been dealt a really bad hand.
“Let’s get our food to go,” Keith said. “Waitress!”
I couldn’t help looking over at Amelia, who stuck out her tongue and raised a middle finger.
I wished there was a gesture I could send back her way—maybe a raised pinkie to mean “I’m sorry.” Or an index finger–pinkie combo to mean “Give me another chance.” You see, that was the thing that hurt the most—not that she was angry, but that I secretly thought she had every right to be angry. She felt I’d chosen my show over our friendship. I hadn’t meant to. I never would have meant to.
But maybe I had.
Maybe I was the type of person who would stop at nothing to be successful.
And odds were good that I’d end up a failure anyway.
Back in the car, after our takeout meal was finished, Keith tried to kiss me into a better mood. But then I had to leave the car and head back to reality again.
Unfortunately, that reality contained my mother.
I know that some girls can go to their moms and have heart-to-heart talks. With my mom, it was more like heart-to-fangs.
After a long and rather pleasant goodbye with Keith (heart-to-mouth-to-mouth-to-heart), I forced myself up the garden path, past the gazebo and swan pond, hoping to delay my confrontation with Mom for as long as possible. Through the kitchen bay window, on the other side of the never-used copper pots and pans that hung above the center island, I saw her. She was working through the better part of a bottle of Grey Goose vodka. To make matters worse, she was mixing it with the nasty pomegranate juice her trainer had convinced her was “cleansing.” I didn’t think it was going to do much cleansing when it was cut with alcohol.
I came in through the back door.
“Welcome home, sweetie,” she said with a beam. Immediately I knew something was up. When my mother tries to imitate a nice person, there’s usually a big hitch underneath.
“How was your evening out with the beauhunk?” she slurred, her teeth stained purple by the juice.
“If you really want to know, we ran into his ex-girlfriend at the movie and then were ambushed by Amelia at Canter’s.”
“That’s what happens when you get successful—you find enemies lurking around every corner. That’s why God invented VIP rooms.”
Mom was always worried that her VIP status would go RIP. She’d come pretty close lately when her show, Good As Gold, was dropped by the network. But like the woman on the Titanic who just happened to have a lifeboat in her pocket-book, my mother managed to survive that one … by being given a part on my show. It was her most effective maternal ambush to date.
I hadn’t really had a say about whether to hire my mom for Likely Story … but I did have a say in what character she’d play. Things had been pretty tense around the old homestead as we haggled over what her role would be. Since she somehow managed to wrangle “character approval” from the network in her new contract, I was forced to shoehorn her into my show in a way she found appealing. My first ideas had been met with scowls—or at least what her Botoxed face could approximate as a scowl. When I suggested a humpback librarian, she literally spit on the script and said she’d sooner play Benjamin Franklin than play deformed. I spent three days after that trying to work the ghost of Benjamin Franklin into the show. It didn’t work. Even worse than her rejecting my ideas was when she tried to come up with ideas of her own. “What if I play a high-powered newspaper editor with a penchant for younger men?” she’d suggested. I pointed out that this was the same exact character (give or take a few personalities) she had played on Good As Gold. She scoffed at my ignorance and retorted that she had played a magazine editor, not a newspaper editor—they were two totally different things.
Eventually, after a few more volleys that included such classics as the Ghost of Deception Past (my idea) and Melinda the psychic pharmaceutical heiress (her idea), we settled on the notion that she would be the guidance counselor at Deception Pass High School. Since my mother’s idea of “guidance” is “Which way to the bar?” and her idea of “counseling” is “That scarf makes your whole body look fat,” we took certain liberties with the character’s past. In other words, she wasn’t just a guidance counselor but an aging movie star in witness protection who was masquerading as a guidance counselor. Of course I didn’t use the word “aging” when I pitched the idea to her. I said “former.” So now that she didn’t have to be worried that I’d make her a great-grandmother or a Founding Father on the show, there wasn’t any real reason for her to pretend to be nice to me. But her Kindergarten Teacher Voice was back as she sweetly asked, “Are you ready for your big day tomorrow?”
“It’s a Monday—are those really bigger than the other days of the week?” I responded as I poured myself a glass of orange juice.
“It’s not just any Monday—it’s cast photo Monday, “she reminded me, making another Pomtini. “We’re taking a portrait for the cover of Soap Opera Bi-Weekly.”
“What do you mean, we?” I asked. The last time I’d checked, I wasn’t a member of the cast.
“Hasn’t Richard told you?” My mother halfheartedly attempted to put some surprise in her voice. “I’m positively sure it was in that memo. You, me, and Dallas are going to be on the cover. Isn’t it a scream?”
If by scream she meant Edvard Munch’s panicked painting, then yes, I was about to slap my hands on my cheeks and howl. “Me? I’m not a cover girl! I never agreed to this.”
“I’m sure your contract says you are willing and able to participate in any and all publicity for the show.”
“It does not!” I argued, though I had a feeling she was right. All those little paragraphs and sub-paragraphs that were part of a legally binding contract had a way of sneaking up on a girl.
And that wasn’t the only thing sneaking up on me. There was also my mom’s mention of Dallas, the star of my show. Every time I saw him, I got that little shiver of excitement. And hearing his name was like an echo of that shiver. Not just because he was beautiful. But because my show’s future was resting on his shoulders. And it felt right for it to be there.
A whole photo shoot, with us posing so close to each other. After I had spent months making sure I didn’t have any reason whatsoever to touch him.
I didn’t want to think about it. And I didn’t want my mother to think about me thinking about it.
“Want some Pom?” she asked.
“No, Mom. No Pom,” I said as I gulped down the last of my OJ. “I’m going to my room.”
As I walked up the stairs, I heard her call after me, “Are we still carpooling to work tomorrow?”
I didn’t answer her. I swear, she was enjoying this.
I got to my room and looked at the pile of half-written scripts littering the floor. My computer blinked at me. Only 157 new e-mails. Probably all of them urgent. I was hopelessly behind on my life. So I dealt with it the only way I knew how: by dropping onto the bed and falling asleep before I could even take my Steve Madden boots off.
So this is what I dreamed. I would spend the next day trying to block it out of my mind.
The hot Mexican air wafted through the beachside cabana while I sipped a virgin daiquiri. I grabbed some sunscreen from a table littered with the leftovers of our lobster quesadillas and bent down to kiss my napping Keith on the forehead. He looked so cute, passed out like a bum in the sun. His trunks were riding up his thighs, caught on the chaise lounge. His hair was pasted to his forehead, still wet from his pre-brunch dip in the warm Gulf waters. I am such a lucky girl, I thought to myself.
Walking out from the shady cabana to the beach itself, I couldn’t believe this was really happening. Where had Keith gotten the money to whisk me off to Puerto Vallarta? I didn�
�t know and, frankly, I didn’t care to ask. It would take a lot of extra hours at California Pizza Kitchen to afford a flight down here.
The sand was burning my feet, so I quickly darted the few feet to where my towel and magazines lay. Rubbing my arms with lotion, I stared out into the Gulf of Mexico and smiled to myself. It was so great to be away from all the stress of Likely Story. I reclined back on my hotel towel and grabbed the copy of Night of the Iguana I’d picked up at Sam French before heading on the trip. Just as I cracked the spine, Keith came up behind me.
“Hey, Tennessee,” Keith said.
“Hey, Minnesota,” I replied. “How was your nap?”
“Four stars.” Keith sat down next to me on the towel and cooed in my ear, “I want to go parasailing.”
“Have fun. I’ll wave to you from here.”
“Come on, Mallory, I want you to go, too.”
“If I para-sail, I will end up para-plegic.”
Keith shook his head and stood up. “You’re hopeless.” He started doing yoga poses, salutating the sun and whatnot. This was strange, since I’d never seen him do yoga before. I returned to the play but couldn’t get a focus on it. It seemed as if all the words were swimming around the page like sea monkeys. I looked up to the horizon, blinking my eyes. It was then that I noticed the slow darkening of the sky. The light was sepia-toned, making everything look like an old photograph. I figured I was getting too much sun. How long had we been here in Mexico? Didn’t I have work to do in the States? Were all those scripts really finished?
It was then that things started getting really weird. Was I crazy, or did I recognize that shimmering young man emerging from the salty waters? The rivulets of water streaming down his chest glistened like semiprecious stones. Yes, I did recognize him. What was Dallas doing here?
Likely Story! Page 14
