The Next Best Thing (40 page)

There’d be notes from the executives, then a preproduction meeting about all of the details that went into each show. My costume designer would need to know what Daphne and Veronica should wear to work at the restaurant; the set decorator would ask how many cookbooks should be in Nana’s kitchen, and whether they should look worn or new or somewhere in between. I’d have to tell the assistant director how many extras to hire as restaurant diners, and what ages and races and genders they should be. Props would need to know what color teapot Nana should have, and whether we’d see a glimpse of Brad’s apartment when he opened the door, and what I’d imagined the audience seeing in the basement storage lockers. There would be all of these questions, and dozens more, and I would have to answer every one of them . . . but for now, all I wanted to do was bask. I’d pulled it off; I’d actually made it happen. Something I’d dreamed up was actually going to be on TV. And if it wasn’t exactly the way I’d dreamed it, if one actor looked nothing like
the character I’d imagined, another couldn’t read, and the third was my worst enemy, well, compromise was part of the deal. I’d wanted this, I told myself . . . and now I had what I wanted, and I would do my best to enjoy it.

By the time I could take a breath and another look around, an hour had sped by. The actors were back in their dressing rooms; the writers were back in the bungalow, working on the script. The executives had moved on to their next table read, a few buildings down . . . and the back of the soundstage was empty, as if Dave had never been there at all.

T
wo weeks later, I stood next to Big Dave backstage at a different Burbank soundstage for the network’s West Coast up-fronts, the night they’d unveil their new fall shows to ad buyers and foreign broadcasters and the press. I was all dressed up in a silk top, pants, and ballet flats. Dave, in a three-piece suit, a French-cuffed shirt, and a wide silk tie in alternating stripes of raspberry and plum, had a clipboard in his hand and a frown on his face. As actresses paraded past us, waiting to be introduced and go onstage and take their bows, he shook his head, murmured things like “That won’t work,” and scribbled on the page.

“Cut it out,” I said as the actress closest to his whisper stared at him and then tugged at the hem of her dress. “You’re going to give someone an eating disorder.”

“That’s the point,” he said as the actresses, hearing the name of their show, paraded through the curtains, and another group of hunks and beauties took their place. Dave eyed them each, up and down, and then shook his head and started scribbling again. “No,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the blare of the pop music and the applause of the assembled ad buyers and television reporters. “No, no, I’m afraid that just won’t do.”

“Dave,” I hissed as one actress licked her lips and another fiddled with her bra strap. I nodded at the ladies. “Ignore him,”
I said. “He’s doing a bit.” The actresses smiled anxiously, but I knew they weren’t ignoring Dave. Maybe they knew who he was—powerful showrunner, potential employer, creator of
Bunk Eight.
More likely, they were trained to preen for any men whose eyes chanced upon them, to believe that their job in life was to arouse them, and to worry when the evidence suggested that they’d failed.

“Oh, my,” Dave murmured as the actresses, show ponies in short dresses and stilettos, trotted by. “That’s unfortunate.”

I slapped his arm with the silver clutch I’d borrowed from my grandmother. I thought I’d looked nice when I’d left the house, with my hair blown out and my arms and legs smoothed with a sugar scrub, but here, among the actresses, I felt like an elephant surrounded by gorgeous girl acrobats, enormous and ungainly and altogether different. “Cut it out.” To change the subject, I said, “Oh, thank God, there’s Cady.”

Dave’s eyes lit up. I stifled a groan. Among the up-and-coming starlets of L.A., competitive underdressing—showing as much skin as possible without courting arrest for public indecency—was a well-established practice. Taryn had arrived in a handkerchiefsize skirt that barely covered her panties—assuming, of course, that she was wearing panties—and a cropped top that skimmed her belly button. “Hi-i-i!” she’d said, air-kissing me before vanishing into the hair and makeup suite the network had set up on the stage next door. I’d poked my head in to take a look at the dozens of makeup artists and hairstylists, waiting behind chairs set in front of lightbulb-ringed mirrors, next to palettes of cosmetics, rows of bottles of hair-care products, and all manner of brushes and sponges, foam rollers, and flatirons. An hour later Taryn had emerged with her hair curled and piled high, sparkly pink lips and gold-toned eyelids. She was so beautiful, stunning even in this crowd of stunners . . . . and I knew, from a “Body After Baby” feature in one of the gossip magazines, that
the bits concealed by her outfit looked just as good as everything on display.

As I watched, Taryn sauntered over to the open bar, ordered a vodka tonic with lime, ignored the trays of appetizers that waiters carried through the crowds, and began working the room with a professional’s poised nonchalance, laying her hand on a male executive’s forearm, air-kissing a female producer’s cheek. I’d kept an eye on her, watching her work, and then looked at the time and gone backstage to wait for Cady, who was waving at me as she hurried over. I exhaled, checking out her short, sheer minidress and towering sandals made of spiked black leather that wrapped around her calves almost to her knees.
Okay, that’s not so bad,
I thought. In contrast to the skintight ensembles the other young actresses were sporting, Cady’s dress had a flowing cut and a high, almost chaste neckline. If you were willing to ignore her nipples, poking at the silk like a pair of pencil erasers, and how the dress stopped halfway down her thighs, it was perfectly appropriate, even conservative. Then she’d turned around. “Oh, my,” Dave breathed as we saw that the back of the billowy dress dipped so low that it exposed the small of her back, the top of her buttocks, and a solid inch of ass-crack.

Big Dave, beaming like Christmas had come early, snapped a picture with his cell phone. “God, I love Hollywood,” he’d said.

“Don’t you dare tweet that,” I told him, slapping his forearm again. Pete Paxton greeted his costar with a wolfish grin. Penny was scowling—she looked lovely in a dusty-rose dress of ruched and pleated silk, but in this crowd she had to be feeling her age. I gave Cady a weak smile. “Wow,” I said to my star. “It’s pretty easy to tell which women are the writers and which ones are the actresses.” Thinking:
The writers are the ones who remembered their underpants.
Cady raised her eyebrows, indicating that she had no idea what I was talking about and didn’t care to learn. Then she
pulled out her phone, snapped the day’s sixth self-portrait, and posted it on Twitter.
Oh, well,
I thought.
At least it’s a shot of her front side.

I pulled out my own phone and glanced at the time. In ten minutes we’d do our little appearance. After that, I’d decided I would mingle for an hour, not a minute less and not a minute longer. At nine o’clock there was an
L.A. Law
marathon on Lifetime, and I intended to be at home, on the couch, when it started.

The cast of
Bunk Eight
trotted into the backstage corral: Whitney Marx, the beautiful lead, and Carolee Rogers, recently cast as her rival, and Willa London, the new bad girl in town. Whitney and Carolee greeted Dave with squeals and hugs, embracing him as if he were a long-lost uncle welcoming them off the boat and into America. Willa gave him a heavy-lidded glare.

“Here we go,” said Dave, as the announcer, sounding like a man on the verge of an orgasm, or possibly a stroke, shouted, “And now, the cast and creator of the returning hit series
Bunk Eight
!”

“Let’s move,” said Dave.

“Yes, massa,” Willa drawled. When Dave returned, I stood on my tiptoes to speak into his ear.

“What’s up with Willa?”

He grimaced. “She hates white people.”

“Good times.”

“You know it, sister.” Dave sighed, watching Willa, her flawless body displayed in billowing harem pants and a jeweled cropped top, stomp out of the holding area. “I thought we were hiring Halle Berry. Turns out she’s Malcolm X. The very first day, she shows up in my office. Wants to know who all the white people at the table read are.”

“The executives?” I guessed, remembering all the table reads I’d attended.

“Right-o-rama. Not much I can do about that. Then she tells me she’s counted up how many people of color there are—how many cameramen, how many extras—and how many of them are Jewish.”

“How would she even know?” I wondered.

“Last names,” said Dave. “Of course, the irony is, we’re probably more diverse than most of the shows out there.” I nodded.
Bunk Eight
’s house director, the man who shot the majority of the shows, was Lannie Dawson, a black man as experienced and respected as Chad. There were two black writers, a black set designer, and a Hispanic assistant director. “So I explain to her that of course we care, and of course we’ve noticed, and we’re doing the best we can to hire people of color, but there just aren’t that many of them, and the good ones have their choice of any job they want, and she’s giving it right back, talking about my unexamined privilege and how I’m not trying hard enough, and finally, I say, ‘Okay, Rosa Parks,’ and she looks at me”—Dave leaned close, lowering his voice—“and says, ‘Was Rosa Parks one of the girls in the
Charlie’s Angels
remake?’”

I closed my eyes. There were no words.

Dave tucked his clipboard under his arm, loosened his tie, and turned to me. “Never mind my privilege problem. I invited you here for a reason,” he said.

“You didn’t invite me here,” I pointed out. “The network did.”

He waved one big hand dismissively. “Me, network. It’s all the same. We need to talk.”

“What now?” In five minutes, I’d be onstage with my cast, and then we’d both have to work, glad-handing foreign reporters and big shots who bought ad time for tampons and Swiffers and weight-loss programs.

“Now.” He turned to me, for once managing to look serious. “What is going on with you and my boy?”

I tried to keep my face expressionless. “What do you mean?”

“Every time I mention you, he gets this look.” Dave gave a wince that made it seem as if lunch hadn’t agreed with him. “And I know he’s barely been to your set all week.”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “He was there for the table read. I’ve got everything under control.”

“Ruth,” he said. “Talk to your daddy.” He put one heavy hand on my shoulder. “I know you can’t be happy about Taryn. The network cast the girl who stole your man away.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said, blushing. “And really, the issue with Taryn isn’t our history. The issue is, she’s not very good.”

Dave kept talking. “And you had to replace Annie, who we all loved, and you’ve got the whole Cady situation.”

“She’s not wearing underpants,” I blurted as another clutch of actresses came teetering by.

“I noticed,” Dave replied. “So did the shooter from
People
magazine. And don’t tell me everything’s fine. I know what’s going on.” He looked at me, for once not tossing off a joke or telling a funny story or doing his impression of his father trying to pass a kidney stone.

I didn’t answer. Vaguely, I was aware of movement around me, actresses stepping onto the stage, more actresses taking their place. I heard fabric rustling, heels clicking, fingers snapping, very close to my face. “Um, hello? Earth to Ruthie? Come on! We’re up!” Taryn Montaine’s breath smelled like olives, and she was standing so close I knew that, if I looked, I’d be able to see the scars from the face-lift she’d lied about having.

“You broke his heart,” said Dave . . . but before I could think of what to say, I heard the announcer’s voice.

“And now!” he shouted, as the music—“Do You Really Want
More?”—played even louder. I knew the clip they’d show by heart. I’d picked out each scene and edited it myself. There was Nana getting dumped, Cady getting fired, Cady on her Rollerblades, Nana holding Cady’s chin in her hand, promising her a big life, the life her mother would have wanted her to have. “The stars and executive producer of the debut comedy
The Next Best Thing
!”

“I have to go,” I whispered to Dave, and stepped through the red velvet curtains to stand onstage with the bright lights in my eyes and the cast on either side of me, letting the music and applause wash over me like water.

*  *  *

As soon as I climbed down the steps, my girl-stars gliding ahead of me and Pete ambling behind, Big Dave grabbed me by the elbow and steered me to an empty cocktail table in a corner. “I am going to get you a drink,” he announced. “And you are going to tell me what’s going on, and we are going to fix this.”

I shook my head. I’d already decided that I could give him only the vaguest outline of the situation. I wasn’t going to betray Dave’s privacy or embarrass myself. Besides, what Dave had said couldn’t be true. I hadn’t broken Dave’s heart. It wasn’t possible. By the time Big Dave came back, with two glasses full of clear liquid and ice and wedges of lime, and a plate full of skewered chicken and slices of sushi, I had a speech planned.