“Oh absolutely,” I chimed in. “It’s as clear as . . . Crystal Geyser,” I said, in a burst of inspiration. (Proving once again that I specialize in moronic comments.) Dr. Grayson’s mouth twisted in a frown and her beady eyes narrowed. I took a deep breath. Okay, truth time. I had no idea what she was talking about. And from the little smirk on her face, I had the sinking feeling she was on to me.
“Well, one of you better explain it to me,” Nadine piped up.
“And to me,” Vera Mae added. “And do it quick, because we’re going to a commercial in thirty seconds.”
“I can hardly explain psychodynamic theory in thirty seconds. Maybe you’d like to tackle this one, Dr. Maggie?” There was a tiny edge to the word “doctor,” as if she was putting air quotes around it.
Vera Mae was twirling her index finger in the air in a let’s-wrap-it-up motion.
“No, you do it. Just give us the CliffsNotes version,” I urged. “Please!”
“All right.” She flashed a brief, triumphant smile. “The glass represents Nadine’s conscious mind; the frost represents the unconscious part of her mind. The frost is blocking our view. That tells me she may be hiding her most secret desires from us, and maybe even from herself.”
She waited a beat to let the significance of this sink in, and I put on my best “interested” look.
“That’s intriguing,” I piped up. And to be honest, it might have been intriguing if only I had some clue as to what she was talking about.
Dr. Grayson rewarded me with a thin smile before turning back to the caller. “Tell me, Nadine: is the frost covering all the characters in your dream, or just covering you?”
“The frost? Oh, it’s just over the frozen vegetables,” Nadine said earnestly.
Dead silence. Vera Mae and I stared at each other. Frozen vegetables? Whoa!!
“The frozen vegetables?” Dr. Grayson faltered. “I’m afraid I’ve lost you. Where exactly does this dream take place?”
“I finally recognized the location.” Nadine sounded almost giddy with happiness. “I’m standing in the frozen vegetable aisle at Winn-Dixie . . .”
“Winn-Dixie? You’re telling me you’re in a supermarket?” Dr. Grayson’s voice ratcheted up an entire octave.
“Yes, I am. And here’s the exciting part. Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman are pushing a shopping cart toward me. I’m reaching into the frozen food case for a package of frozen peas and it’s all chilly and frosty in there; you know? And I’m looking at them through the frosty glass. I still have the door to the freezer open and the cold air is blasting me in the face.”
“You’re looking into the freezer compartment?” I asked.
“Sounds like you’ve got quite a dream on your hands, Nadine,” Vera Mae boomed. “Just hold that thought, honey. We’ll come right back to it after this word from Gus’s Body Shop.” Dead crows and dreams about frozen vegetables?
No wonder my show had a minus number in Arbitron.
Chapter 17
“Your momma called during the break, sugar,” Vera Mae said. The show had just ended and the always-delightful Dr. Grayson was ushered out of the studio. From the murderous look on her face, it seemed doubtful she’d ever agree to be a guest on my show again. At least not in this lifetime.
So every cloud really does have a silver lining, as Lola always tells me.
“What’s up?” I asked, taking a quick look at my listener mail. I noticed the pet psychologist had sparked some interest in animal shows and loads of listeners were angling to get their pets on the air. I decided to sort through them later, and was just about to toss them aside, when one envelope caught my eye.
My name was written in block capitals and I felt a funny little blip in the pit of my stomach as I ripped open the envelope. The message was short and sweet. Just two words.
“BACK OFF.”
Back off? Someone had cut the letters out of magazines and pasted them on the page, like they’d read too many noir mystery novels. I felt a chill, almost like a breath of frost, on the back of my neck. They meant back off from the murder investigation, right? What else could it be?
“Lola wants you to pick her up at the set,” Vera Mae said, breaking into my thoughts. “I really think she wants you to watch some of the filming.” She must have noticed the stricken expression on my face because she put her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong, sugar?”
I handed her the letter and her eyes widened as she scanned it. “This is someone’s idea of a joke, right?” I gave a nervous laugh, hoping she’d agree with me.
“I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “What do you think it means? Something to do with Adriana would be my guess.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” I thought for a moment, my mind scrambling for a different explanation. “We haven’t aired any shows lately that were really controversial, have we?”
Every once in a while we do a show that causes a rash of “negative audience feedback,” as Cyrus likes to call it, and we try to analyze what went wrong. But lately all the show topics and guests had been as bland as baby oatmeal. No drama, no controversy.
Vera Mae scrunched up her face, considering. “There was that cooking show you did last month. Remember the big debate on fried okra versus sauteed tofu cubes? As I remember, that got kind of heated and there were some raised voices. Might have been some hurt feelings; that’s all I can think of.”
I shuddered, remembering that train wreck of a show. Cyrus had been awed by the success of A Chef’s Table, a popular PBS radio cooking show, and he’d decided that WYME could do a copycat version. Except it hadn’t turned out that way.
“I don’t think anyone would get upset enough over fried okra to send me this,” I said.
Vera Mae nodded, her beehive bobbing up and down. “You may be right. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting all fired up over okra. Now if they were complaining about the tofu, that would be another story,” she teased me. “Remember the time you wanted me to try tofu? I nearly threatened to kill you myself.”
Vera Mae and I have finally reached a detente about vegetarianism. When I tried to bring her a tofu burger for lunch one day, she made the sign of the cross with her fingers and waved me away, like Father Merrin in The Exorcist . Since then, I’ve let her eat her turkey burgers in peace while I chow down on Linda McCartney frozen dinners.
She studied the note. “I think we should give this to Cyrus, just in case somebody really has it in for you. He keeps a file of letters like these. That way, if you end up in pieces in three different Hefty bags, we’ll know where to start looking. Kidding!” She gave me a big grin.
“A file? You mean I’m not the only one who gets hate mail?”
Vera Mae leaned close. “Big Jim gets a bundle, because he always screws up the scores at the football games. This is just between us, but I think he takes a little nip of Jack when he’s in the bleachers on cold days; you know?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I looked at my watch. “What time does Lola want me on the set?”
“Now sugar, right now! You go on and I’ll take care of this; don’t you worry about a thing.”
“Over here, sweetie!” Lola called to me from across the set. “I want you to meet someone special.” She was standing next to a blond bombshell, early twenties, who had the kind of chiseled cheekbones and pouty lips that you see on the all the Cosmo covers. She even had long flowing Cosmo hair with caramel-colored highlights, very Sienna Miller (before Sienna Miller caught Jude Law cheating and pulled a Mia Farrow, chopping off her golden tresses).
I stepped over a tangled mass of cables and picked my way past a throng of gawking extras to reach them. “Who is she?” someone asked in a loud whisper. “Is she an actress? Is she anybody?”
“Afraid not,” I tossed over my shoulder.
I noticed that the extras were kept well away from the stars by a rope line. There’s no democracy on a movie set and extras are instructed not to talk to the stars, ask them for autographs, o
r beg them to pose for pictures.
It’s a case of the haves and the have-nots. The extras eat the same Craft Services food as the stars but they eat separately. It’s pretty much a below-deck, above-deck pecking order, just like on the Titanic. If you’re an extra, you’re considered steerage.
“This is my daughter, Maggie,” Lola said with a wide smile. “Maggie, meet Tammilynne Cole, the star of Death Watch.”
Tammilynne looked supremely bored, gave me a full body scan, and then offered a limp fish handshake. She was wearing an outfit I recognized, a top and skirt from Kate Moss’s new line for Topshop. Very hot, very L.A. via London. She’d paired a navy-and-white pinstriped hitched-hem skirt with an ivory silk spaghetti strap T. Just a hint of a black lace bra showed, and I had the feeling that it was deliberate.
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Mom was beaming.
“Gorgeous,” I agreed.
Tammilynne had a figure to die for. She looked like she might be a size 00 with a tiny waist and impossibly long legs like a gazelle’s, but she managed to look fragile and voluptuous at the same time. I could see Lola was trying not to be too envious or at least not to let it show.
A grip stopped to stare at Tammilynne with a wistful look, as if she was a slice of key lime pie and he’d just signed up for a year on Atkins. She gave him an “in your dreams” glare and he turned away.
“So . . . it must be exciting starring in your very first movie,” I said, when it became obvious that she wasn’t going to bother making small talk with me.
Tammilynne opened her mouth, popped a huge pink bubble, and snapped it shut like a turtle.
“Kind of.”
Kind of? That was the best she could do? This was the opportunity that thousands of actresses in Hollywood would kill for. And all she had to do was sleep with Hank Watson. Or kill Adriana and force Hank’s hand. Is that what really happened? I wondered.
The thought slipped into my mind unbidden. It was hard to imagine the Ice Princess having the technical know-how or the energy to rig the prop gun, though. Unless she had an accomplice? But why would she bother? She didn’t even seem that interested in her starring role. I was more confused than ever, my thoughts fluttering like moths in my brain.
“It’s a dream come true!” Lola gushed, as if she was Tammilynne’s publicist and the young starlet was a sulky client. “Isn’t that right, sweetie? This is what you’ve been waiting for your whole life.”When Mom wants to be enthusiastic, she pulls out all the stops. I always thought she missed a great career as a Home Shopping Channel hostess. She can wax enthusiastic about anything from cheese graters to cubic zirconia and she can do it at two in the morning.
Tammilynne stared at Lola for a long moment and shifted her gum from one side of her mouth to the other. “I thought acting in a movie was pretty wicked at first,” she said, letting the words roll around in her mouth like marbles, “but it’s getting old real fast. You know?”
“Really?” I hadn’t expected this. Isn’t this why she’d stuck with Hank Watson for the past two years, all to get a crack at stardom? “I thought you’d be over the moon. What part of the movie business is”—I searched for a word and gave up—“getting old for you?”
Tammilynne heaved a sigh, and her underwire bra gave a sexy little ripple under her silk top. “All this standing around, you know.” She waved her hand dismissively at the crew members, who looked like they were setting up for the next shot.
“But it’s part of the job,” I blurted out.
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t get the memo,” she said scathingly. “I thought I’d just be able to do my scenes and, you know, go home and chill. I didn’t know there’d be like a zillion retakes of every scene. And the early morning calls! Why do they have to start at the crack of dawn? I’m not used to getting up until ten or eleven.”
“It’s always like this on a film set, honey,” Mom said soothingly. “Start early and finish early, if you’re lucky.”
Tammilynne turned the corners of her bee-sting lips down in an unattractive pout. “Well, we’re not finishing early today, are we?” she said sarcastically. “It’s dinner time, the sun is setting, and we’re still stuck here filming. I’ve had the same makeup on since six o’clock this morning,” she whined. “I feel like this industrial-strength Pan-Cake crap is eating into my pores. I bet I look a wreck.” She rummaged in her purse and held up a small hand mirror to inspect her perfect features.
Naturally, she looked flawless.
“You look gorgeous, Tammilynne,” Mom told her. “And you’ll really photograph beautifully in this light. You’ll be even more of a knockout than you already are.”
“The golden hour,” I murmured.
Mom nodded. “Maggie’s right. That’s what photographers call it, the golden hour. There’s something special about the lighting at this time of day. Everything has a sort of golden glow to it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She was right. The sun was a blood orange hanging low in the west and the ceramic blue sky was exploding into ribbons of rust, red and gold at the horizon. The water in Branscom Pond would soon turn to violet in the setting sun. I figured Hank had time to shoot one more scene and then they’d wrap for the day.
“I’m not into lighting,” Tammilynne said dismissively. “I just want to get back to my trailer, away from the bugs and the heat; you know?” She popped another big pink bubble and I winced as it splattered on her face. “This is the time of day I like to kick back and have a few margaritas.” She let out a dramatic sigh and Mom and I exchanged a look.
Hmm. So the strain of a movie career was already getting to her. Hank Watson had the reputation for being a perfectionist and maybe he was finding it a challenge to get a good performance out of his Malibu Barbie star. After all, she’d had no acting training, and I wondered if she could even memorize lines? Maybe the drama coach wasn’t doing enough to help her, or maybe she’d given up.
“Now, you just need to hang in there and you’ll be just fine,” Lola said, patting her hand. “Remember what Woody Allen said. ‘Ninety percent of life is just showing up.’ ”
A long beat. “I guess.” I wondered if she’d ever seen a Woody Allen film in her life. Probably not.
“You’ll just find the rhythm of working on the set and after a while, you won’t mind the early hours or the long days. It just goes with the territory, you know. We all have to put up with it.”
“Whatever,” Tammilynne said ungraciously. The gorgeous young actress had a way of sucking the energy out of the air around her. The set was bustling with activity but she was in the Dead Zone, wrapped up in her own self-absorbed little world.
A few minutes later, Marion Summers called her name from the production trailer and Tammilynne perked up. “Gotta go; they’re gonna make me go over my lines one more time before we start shooting. If I can’t remember them, they said they’d put them on cue cards. It’s either that or I’ll have to write them on my hand.” This was the most animation I’d seen out of her. “Catch you later, Lola,” she said as she darted off.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said under my breath and Lola giggled.
“Now honey, don’t be mean. She’s just young, that’s all. The poor thing is barely out of high school.”
“I know. She looks like she should be playing a troubled teen in an After-School Special.” Meow. “How is she doing with her lines? I hope they have someone really good working with her.”
“Hank didn’t have time to hire a drama coach,” Mom confided. “So Marion stepped in and she’s trying to do her best, bless her heart, but it’s slow going. The word on the set is that her acting is so bad, they’re going to have to loop all her dialogue when they get back to L.A.”
Mom had told me before that looping is an expensive, time-consuming process. The actor has to go into the studio and redo every line of dialogue, making sure it matches with the lip movements on the screen.
I couldn’t imagine Tammilynne being up to the task. Of course, a
nother possibility would be to hire a different actress to redo all the dialogue. If Tammilynne’s acting was really hopelessly robotic, perhaps that’s what they’d have to do.
“Really? That’ll cost a fortune. And Hank’s trying to keep costs down.” I paused. “Is she really that bad?”
Lola leaned close. “Do you remember Sophia Coppola playing Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part Three?”
“Yes, it made me cringe. The ultimate in bad acting. And to make it worse she was playing opposite Andy Garcia, who could outact her even if he was in a coma. I heard all her lines had to be redone.”
Lola grinned. “Sophie Coppola is Meryl Streep compared to Tammilynne Cole.”
“Oh, no!” I giggled. “This is going to be one hell of a movie.”
Lola got the high sign from Maisie, who tapped her watch and pointed in the direction of the pond. Lola immediately charged into high gear, and I could feel the energy pouring off her. “Maggie, my scene’s coming up; do you want to watch?”
“Sure; which one is it?”
“Another party scene. I only have a couple of lines, but it should be fun.” She smoothed her top—a pale chiffon dropped tunic—and grabbed a plastic champagne glass off the prop table. It was filled with a pale amber liquid. “I have to pretend this is Cristal,” she said, making a face.
“And what is it really?”
“Take a sip, dear. Don’t worry, it’s not lethal.”
She handed me the glass and I barely touched my lips to the rim of the glass. It’s not lethal? But that left a lot of wiggle room. Did it come from somebody’s swimming pool? Or from a chemistry set?
“This can’t be champagne. And it’s lukewarm.” I looked at it suspiciously, wondering if I’d been poisoned.
“It’s not champagne. They never use the real thing; the crew members would guzzle it down before shooting even started. It’s cheaper for the prop manager to use soda or iced tea and that way he doesn’t have to keep refilling the bottle. No one wants to drink this stuff, especially without ice.”
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