Unscripted (8 page)

“Alex, I’ve gotta go,” I said in a rush. I had to get this idea down before it got away from me. I nearly jumped down the steps, but I caught myself at the last moment and turned back to him. He had stood up. He wasn’t very tall; in fact, in my boss-lady business heels, I was about the same height as he was. He probably wore a smaller jeans size than I did. I tried not to think about that. “Thank you.”

He fixed me with that hypnotic gaze again. “You’re welcome,” he murmured. And then he kissed me.

Trouble was, it was just on the cheek.

Or maybe that was a good thing. I don’t know what I would have done if it had been more. I forced myself not to put my hand to my face like some delicate flower of a fictional female. Then I tore my gaze away from his and got out of his trailer before I did something stupid.

So it was Alex who inadvertently inspired the famous Hershey’s Kisses scene, the one that captured the imagination of the show’s fans. David left a trail of candy, silver foil glinting in candlelight, for Sabrina to follow, to find him waiting to declare his love. I heard sales of the candy went up noticeably in the weeks after the episode aired. It did work beautifully, I had to admit. And what was even better—when we ran through the scene before we filmed it, Alex glanced over while he was running his lines, and gave me this intimate . . .
look,
the likes of which I’d never gotten from him before. And suddenly the teenager in me started to think that maybe, just maybe, I had a chance with him.

* * *

Cripes, all this nonsense was supposed to be behind me, but I was going through it all over again. I knew what I had to do—remind myself of what happened
after
those heart-fluttering incidents. Nope, didn’t want to. I liked staying in Happy Memory Land. So instead of running through our entire history, I turned off the playback right there. At the good times. I rolled over and closed my eyes . . . then heard voices coming from the main part of the house. I wondered who Jamie was entertaining this time. Because I was nosy, and because (I told myself) I wanted some water, I made my way down the hall.

My dining room table was covered with empty beer bottles and an open pizza box, Jamie and two other guys lounging around it, laughing and talking. When they spotted me, the two strangers froze, their eyes wide. Oh great. Fans. And me in my pajama bottoms and cami.

“Evening,” I said conversationally, snagging a slice of cold pizza from the box as their eyes followed my every move. One was a scrawny dude with a white-boy ’fro, glasses with huge black frames, and a mud-colored T-shirt with a stretched-out neckline; the other was a rather large young man, with a mop of dark hair and ruddy cheeks glistening with a sheen of sweat.

“Whoa,” the skinny guy breathed. “You’re Faith Sinclair.”

“That’s true,” I replied calmly. “And you are . . . ?”

“This is Evan and Sean,” Jamie filled in. “Met them at a party in the Valley.”

Evan nearly fell over getting out of his chair and sticking out his hand, while Sean waved hello. “We’re huge fans,” Evan breathed.

Hm. They didn’t fit the demographic of the show, but I’d heard weirder. “Thanks.”

“Jamie told us what happened. Sucks,” Sean said.

“We’re, uh, in the entertainment business too,” Evan said. “We’re co-presidents of Random Shit Productions.”

Co-presidents. Wasn’t that cute. I wondered where their tree house was. “Random Shit Productions,” I repeated neutrally.

“Yeah.” He winced. “Oh, I hope the profanity doesn’t bother you.”

Poor kid. He looked green. I decided to throw him a bone. “You fucking kidding me?”

Relief lit up his face as he let out a laugh. “Oh. Cool. We, uh, shorten it to RSP.com for the site name. Don’t want to get banned from search engines, classified as some scat fetish site, you know?”

“And RSP.com is what now?”

Jamie decided to clarify. “It’s, ah, you know, like that other one—wassit—Funny or Die.”

“What, like, with shorts and Web series and everything?”

“Yeah,” Evan enthused. “It’s going to be huge—we’ve got big plans.”

“Really. Like Funny or Die.” I was skeptical, but what did I know? Heck, I used to think Funny or Die was a Web site about a clown named Ordie—you know, Funny Ordie—until they changed the capitalization and the penny finally dropped. What could I say? On rare occasions I was slow on the uptake. I had gotten up to speed since then, however. “But that site is a fluke, a one-off.”

“It’s pretty darn huge for being a fluke,” Evan argued.

“It’s a side project of some major players, something for fun, and it just happened to take off. How can you do the same thing? If you don’t have Will Ferrell, or a foul-mouthed toddler video, how are you going to get on the map?”

“We could
make
a foul-mouthed toddler video. Or whatever,” Sean stammered. “And then we could be millionaires in, like, six months.”

Evan added, “The Web is the next big entertainment medium for scripted shows. We want a piece of that.”

“All you need is a bong and a dream,” I muttered.

“Faith, it’s the future of entertainment,” Jamie said, a twinkle in his eye. He was just trying to “wind me up,” as he would say, to see if I’d take these guys to the woodshed for daring to try to teach me something about my field.

Just their luck, I was feeling cranky enough to dive in. “So tell me,” I said, “what’s your business plan?”

They blinked at me, silent. I wasn’t surprised.

“Budget? Strategy?” I persisted. “Long-range goals? Marketing plan? In fact, where are you getting your material? Who’s writing it? Who’s shooting it? Who’s editing it?”

They looked at each other, and I could practically hear the beer sloshing in their gullets as they tried to get a more solid footing.

And maybe it was the time of night, or maybe it was the fact that I’d spent way too long cooped up in my house, stewing in my own juices, but the next thing I knew, I slid into a chair opposite them, tossed the rubbery pizza crust back into the box, and said, “You need answers. Lucky for you, I’ve got some. Let’s talk deal.”

Chapter 5

Regrets? I had a million. Top of the list at the moment: jumping into this new “job.”

The air was stifling as I stood outside Random Shit Productions’ “corporate offices”—a brick-front ranch somewhere in the middle of Highland Park. A random mix of nicely tended and run-down low-slung houses dotted the flat, treeless street. The one across the street, painted pink and turquoise, was a church of some sort, according to the hand-lettered sign in the tiny dirt yard. The street was eerily devoid of any other people.

I walked up the single step and rang the doorbell. “Oh,
man!
Faith!” Evan hurriedly pushed open the black-barred screen door. As I stepped inside, he shouted over his shoulder, into the dim recesses of the house, “Dude! Faith’s here!”

I heard a faint voice holler back, “No way!”

“Come on in!”

I put on what was probably a tight smile and squeezed past him. The place smelled like damp cardboard, probably because there were a dozen pizza boxes stacked up in the hallway.

He must have seen me looking at them, because he said, “That’s our Leaning Tower of Pizza.”

I raised my eyebrows and tried to look amused.

“Aw, man, that was weak, I know. Sorry. Come on through.” He gestured for me to follow him farther into the house. Not much furniture, bent blinds on the few windows I could see. The décor was pretty much “frat boys turned loose.” Not for the first time, I cursed Randy B. Scratch that. Cursed myself. The only person who got me
here
was me. I had suggested this. Could’ve shut up at any time, I reminded myself. But I didn’t. So much for making business plans at three in the morning.

“Wow, this is so cool. I’m sorry,” Evan stuttered, “I just can’t believe you’re going to help us out.”

I heard rustling, and Sean appeared in the dim hallway. “Hi, Faith. Come on in and see our operation.”

Fleetingly I wondered if I was in danger. You know—single female goes to a job at a place that turns out to be a run-down house with no discernible evidence of an actual business. Single female disappears, then twenty years later single female’s bones turn up in the backyard when new owners dig it up to put in a poured-cement patio.

“Would you like something to drink? Water? A beer? Monster?” Evan offered.

“No thanks.”

Nah, these guys weren’t killers. If anything, they were more nervous than I was. Sean disappeared into a back bedroom, and since there wasn’t anywhere else to go, I followed. I walked into the dark room and my breath caught. I may have known very little about technology, but the collection of computers, monitors, servers, keyboards, editing bays, and everything else with green and yellow lights blinking in the computer-nerd gloom was truly impressive, even to me.

“Wow.”

“You like it?” Sean breathed eagerly. “A lot of the equipment is actually outdated. I’m hoping once we get successful, I can get more up-to-date stuff.”

I cocked an eyebrow, looked the sweaty boy squarely in the eye. “You do realize I’m not here to invest in your Web site, right? I’m just here to help you guys out.” They nodded reverently. I fought down the regret surging through me again. I had offered to rescue these half-drowned puppies, so rescue I would. “Okay. Let’s get to work, shall we?”

Evan piped up, “Oh dude, we’ve gotta get a big banner up on the home page. Right fuckin’ now, man: ‘Faith Sinclair Joins Random Shit Productions!’”

Although I hated to burst their bubble, I wasn’t about to shout to the rooftops that this was how I was spending my free time, so I fixed him with a stern look. “Let’s keep this, um . . . under wraps for now, okay? I’m just helping you out unofficially. Now, I’m assuming you don’t have any stock options yet . . .” They looked at one another rather guiltily, as though they should have had some to offer. “So I’ll accept payment in coffee runs.
Frequent
coffee runs.”

They both breathed a sigh of relief. “Cool,” Evan smiled.

* * *

You know, there’s always a lot of talk about people who hit “rock bottom” before turning their lives around. Granted, it’s usually reserved for serious addicts, not someone like me who had experienced a mighty comedown in a professional sense, but it applied all the same. Random Shit Productions was my rock bottom.

Sure, when I had signed on with them I had been all sorts of arrogant, thinking I could teach these whippersnappers a thing or two about writing witty shorts that would get them on the map. I sneered at their fresh-from-the-curb-on-garbage-day furnishings. I rolled my eyes at their wide-eyed optimism. I looked down my nose at their (lack of a) business plan, misguided perception of the entertainment industry, and just about everything else.

But in the end, I had to admit that the whole thing had me beat. And it only took a few weeks. And half the time I didn’t even show up for “work,” just sent them ideas and suggestions . . . and, more often than I cared to admit, admonishments that they freakin’ get their act together or give up on the idea entirely. I had a bad habit of being a bit scoldy. And a bit of a control freak.

Maybe it was the vast divide between what these hipster frat boys saw as clever, humorous, and production-worthy and what I thought was worth their time, effort, and pixels. Or maybe it was the fact that when I’d offered to help them out, I had been more interested in filling my days than actually getting RSP off the ground. All I knew was the Grand Canyon came to mind when we tried brainstorming ideas. Our sessions went something like this:

One of them: “We can interview homeless people—”

Me: “No.”

Them: “But it’ll be funny—”

Me:
“No.”

“Okay. We get a cat—”

“Oh no.”

“And we put vodka in its water bowl. It’ll be like Maru, right? But a drunk Maru!”

“No!”

“Jump out at people wearing a gorilla mask?”

“Bad idea.”

“And flash ’em.”

“Bad idea
and
illegal.”

“Secretly film our hot female neighbor.”

“Also illegal. And that’s a dude, by the way.”

And then the inevitable digression:

“Didja ever wonder if strippers get dizzy going around that pole?”

“Dude, I am so there!”

The boys together: “Vomiting strippers!”

Aaaand I was out.

Repeated scenes like this, albeit with slight variations (very slight), made me wonder not only what I had gotten myself into, but why I ever thought I would be able to communicate with a pair of individuals who were, at twenty-five years of age or so, nearly fifteen years younger than me. Even though
Modern Women
had a lot of younger fans, when I was one on one with twentysomethings, I found myself as confused as an octogenarian with a smartphone.