Unscripted Page 3

  “Are you a psycho stalker?”

  “Not even a little bit. Just an . . . admirer.”

  “Well then. You’re awfully cute, and as you’re not a psycho stalker—according to you—I might suggest we grab a drink, get to know one another. But not today, I’m afraid. So if you’ll excuse me—”

  Randy B. had just come out of the building with two other, younger guys in tow, talking and gesturing, probably pontificating on some “big ideas” he wanted them to get on. Without another look at the guy beside me, I dashed back across the road.

  “Aw, geez,” the Bastard muttered when he saw me.

  “Randy,” I panted, trying to get everything out before security found me. “Just give me a minute, all right? Just give me one second.”

  “I don’t have to give you anything. You know I can have you arrested for assault?”

  “I know. I know, and okay, I’m sorry for grabbing your nuts. I was upset, now I’m not. So are we square now?”

  He narrowed his tiny eyes at me. “No, we are not ‘square.’ You assaulted me. What part of that don’t you understand?” He turned to his minions. “Call security.” One of them dashed back inside to talk to the desk attendant.

  “They’re already on their way,” I informed him. “But I’m not leaving until you say we’re okay.”

  “We are NOT okay!”

  “Randy! Come on! I want—I need—to get back to the show!”

  “Tough shit,” he snapped. “You’ve been replaced. And I want you off the lot now.”

  “Randy—”

  But the next thing I knew, the security guards pulled up in their golf cart. They positioned themselves on each side of me and reluctantly grasped my arms.

  “Sorry, Faith,” one of them muttered.

  “Not your fault, Sandra.” I turned, with difficulty, back to Randy and demanded, “So that’s it, then?”

  “It’s two minutes more than you should’ve gotten. Now get the fuck out.”

  God, he pushed my buttons. And you know, I wasn’t sorry I had grabbed his balls. “Yeah? Well, screw you!”

  “Screw you too!”

  One of Randy’s worst traits—of oh so many—was that he always had to have the last word.

  As our raised voices carried farther, the guy I had left by the cars started to approach. He looked concerned, instead of eager to get this on video, which impressed me. And I had to admit it made him look pretty darned sexy. I wanted to investigate this unexpected—and poorly timed—notion a little more, but it was kind of difficult, what with Sandra and her partner tugging on my arms.

  “Stay back, sir,” Sandra ordered. He stopped in the middle of the road, hands on his hips, watching intently. But he didn’t go back to his car, either, as though he planned to wait to see how things turned out.

  “You get the fuck out too,” Randy ordered him, which made the guy draw his tousled head back in surprise. Randy’s phone rang; he immediately answered it and walked a few steps down the sidewalk into the shade, indicating he was done with me. He took a moment to snap at the guards, “Get her out.”

  I let them lead me to the gate, where I had left my car. As I passed the man, I called, “It’s okay. Thanks, though.”

  He stayed where he was, watching me. The guards turned me away from him.

  At the gate, they let me go, then stood by as I rounded the barrier and headed for my car. I kept my face impassive, but I was absolutely dying inside.

  Bea called after me, “What about your stuff?”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about until she yanked my box of personal items out of the guardhouse and dropped it in the doorway with a thud. I thought I heard something fragile shatter, but Bea didn’t bat an eyelash.

  She nudged the box forward with her black-sneakered foot. “Whaddya want me to do, gift wrap it for you?”

  The dusty Toyota I had hidden behind pulled up on the other side of the guardhouse in the exit lane, and Bea turned away from me. It was like everyone at the studio was done with me; I was suddenly invisible.

  Bea leaned closer to the car. “How’d it go, honey?”

  Honey?

  The driver handed back a visitor pass through the open window. A dirty-blond head followed. “I don’t know, Bea. All right, I guess.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “They’ll ‘be in touch’?” He squinted up at the guard with a queasy smile.

  Applying for a job, eh? Hm. That response could have been a kiss-off, could have been a promise to call soon. I wondered what he’d been interviewing for.

  “You keep your chin up, honey,” Bea answered, more warmly than I’d ever heard her say anything in her life. Even “Merry Christmas” sounded like an epithet coming from her.

  “Thanks for all your help. You’ve been great.”

  Now I’d heard everything.

  “Good luck to you.”

  “Thanks, Bea.” Then he looked at me. “Everything okay, Ms. Sinclair?”

  Aw, that would have been a nice, chivalrous moment, if Bea hadn’t snorted with derisive laughter, then coughed up a loogie that she spit into a tissue she drew from her pocket.

  “Fine. Thanks for asking.”

  He hesitated, then nodded, rolled up his window, and drove off.

  I should have just picked up my box and left too, but I couldn’t help asking, “Who was that?”

  Bea turned away and dug a cigarette out of her bag. She mumbled an answer I couldn’t make out.

  “What?”

  She straightened up, tugged at her blouse, then lit the cigarette. “I said, ‘a nice guy who deserves to be treated better than what he’d get at this place,’” she snapped, blowing the first puff of smoke straight into my face. “What’s it to you?”

  “Gee, I dunno, Bea,” I answered, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “If he’s looking for a job, maybe I could help him out.”

  “Not anymore you can’t,” she grunted, giving my box one last shove so it was perilously close to teetering over the lip of the doorway. “You got no pull here. Everything you are now is in this one box.”

  “You’ve been waiting for this day for three years, haven’t you?”

  She eyed me with her lizard squint. “Maybe.”

  “Bea, why do you hate me so much?”

  “I hate everybody.”

  “You seemed to like that guy who just left.”

  “He’s not a Hollywood asshat.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I picked up my box of belongings—it couldn’t have been any more clichéd if there had been a giant coffee mug and a sad-looking plant sticking out of it—before it could pitch out of the guard station and hit the ground.

  “You think I’m a Hollywood asshat, Bea?”

  The woman actually stopped and thought about it for a minute. My hopes rose. Maybe she didn’t hate me. Maybe she saw the good in me—the good that most everyone else recognized. The good in me that I was darned proud of, that I had cultivated over the years, making sure I wasn’t like every other jackass in Hollywood, despite my upbringing, despite the fact that I’d spent my whole life around showbiz people.

  Bea delivered her verdict. “Yeah. I do.”

  I sighed. “Thank you for your honesty.”

  “Still,” she went on, pinching out the end of the cigarette and squirreling it away behind her (she wasn’t supposed to smoke on the job), and my hopes inched up again, “from what I hear, you got dicked around pretty bad.”

  Apparently Bea, when she was talkative, liked to use quite colorful language.

  “You’ve seen a lot of people come and go, haven’t you, Bea? I mean, in the business, not just in and out of the gate,” I finished lamely.

  She grunted assent.

  “You probably hear a lot too.”

  “I hear enough.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “About you?” She considered, then let out a strangled sound that I think was supposed to be a laugh. “If I were you, I’d get
outta town for a while.”

  Chapter 3

  I didn’t get out of town—where would I go, anyway?—but I did the next best thing: I put myself under house arrest. I kept the hours of the unemployed, sleeping late, staying in my pajamas till well past noon, availing myself of the delivery service of every takeout place I could think of. I even had my groceries delivered. And I enjoyed it. I also watched a lot of television, sometimes from daytime through prime time all the way through late night, including every episode of Modern Women. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, but I couldn’t resist. I had lived and breathed that show for three years—how could I turn my back on it now?

  So I watched, every Wednesday. I monitored. The first two episodes were the ones that we had in the can before I got canned. But then there was the season finale. And what I saw made me want to rip the stuffing out of my throw pillows.

  “Look at that,” I shouted, waving my arms around. “Look at that! Can you believe that?”

  “No indeed,” Jamie responded dutifully. The fact that he was rubbing his forehead with his thumb and forefinger was the only sign that he was weary of my ranting, which had been going on since the cold open. “Can’t believe it. Er, what can’t I believe?”

  I gaped, incredulous. “Are you kidding? That . . . all of that! That’s not my show! That’s not my season finale! They . . . they . . . Marcel would never act that way!”

  “Which one is Marcel, now?” he dared to venture.

  “The older dude. The one played by Larry.”

  “Larry—?”

  “Lawrence Witherspoon! Only one of the most venerated veteran actors of . . . of . . . the past four decades! You don’t know Lawrence Witherspoon?”

  Jamie shrugged. That was all the fodder he was going to give my tantrum. I barely noticed.

  “Well, Marcel—that’s who Larry plays—he’d never talk to Sasha that way! That is totally out of character!”

  “Oh.” He nodded, trying to appease me.

  Even worse, Raine, my toughest, most independent, most confident character, suddenly had a crisis of confidence in her relationship with hunky but intellectual (and perpetually devoted) Stephen. So she went to his workplace after hours wearing naughty lingerie under a trench coat!

  “What the fuck!” I burst out, practically jumping out of my seat.

  This was not my script, these were not my plot arcs. This episode had someone else’s fingerprints all over it. Not Jaya’s. And usually we were the only two who wrote the scripts. No, these were obviously male fingerprints. So that meant . . .

  “Randy Bastard,” I snarled.

  “Think so?”

  “No doubt. This was the kind of crap he was trying to get me to put in—actually, this was exactly what he was trying to get me to put in when . . . er . . .”

  “You grabbed his plums?”

  “Do we have to keep bringing that up?”

  “Well, it is rather relevant.”

  I dismissed my stepbrother with a wave of my hand. “The point is,” I continued, “that with Jaya ‘in charge,’ he’s free to mess with the show. She’s not going to stand up to him and . . . and . . .”

  “Grab his plums?”

  I shot him my best stink-eye, then turned back to the TV. “And all because he wants to see Lisle—that’s the actress playing Raine, if you’re keeping score—in slutty underwear,” I muttered. “And where did they come up with that stuff about Teeney making a move on Roman?”

  “Wasn’t in the grand plan?” Jamie asked patiently, although he already knew the answer.

  I made a tchuh noise. “She’d never give him the time of day after how he treated Elspeth! . . . Her cousin she grew up with,” I filled in, since it was clear he had no idea what I was talking about.

  At a commercial break, as my blood pressure dropped about half a point, I studied my stepbrother. “You told me you watched my show.” I meant to ask a question, but it came out as an accusation.

  “Here’s an idea: ice cream.”

  “Jamie?”

  He leaped up, eager to escape to the safety of the kitchen, but I pinned him with a suspicious glare.

  “Well, that is, erm, I do. Of course. But . . . well, you know, Faith. My line of work—”

  “Is that what you call it?” I snorted.

  “Doesn’t really leave me time to watch every episode, does it?”

  “I know you know how to work a DVR.”

  “Is there any chocolate sauce?”

  “Don’t think you can buy me off with chocolate sauce!” I shouted to his retreating back.

  Traitor. My own flesh and blood—well, by association, anyway—didn’t even watch my show. Fired by Randy, betrayed by Jaya, and now my favorite ex-relative had milked me of cash, raided my fridge, and messed up my house, and yet he wasn’t a fan of my work.

  I muttered and grumbled while I ate all the ice cream Jamie handed me, but I was stung. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was completely alone in the world, like absolutely nobody was on my side. And that really, really hurt.

  * * *

  In accordance with my new routine, I slept late the next day, shuffling out of the bedroom only when my stomach demanded food. I stopped in the foyer and sifted through the day’s mail. I didn’t expect to find anything worthwhile in the stack; however, there was one official-looking slim envelope buried under a bunch of catalogs and coupon flyers. Return address: the network.

  “Fuck a duck,” I muttered as I scanned the letter.

  “Redundancy letter?” Jamie said as he entered the foyer.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Iss all over the trades. Aren’t you checking?” he asked, taking a swig from a can of Coke.

  “No need. I mean, I was pretty sure this was coming. They have . . . ‘opted not to renew my contract,’” I read from the letter. I tossed it on the pile of junk mail. “Nice of them to make it official. Gives me a sense of closure.”

  “A messenger brought this. Looks important.”

  He handed me a small envelope. It did look pretty impressive. Nothing on the outside of the heavy, cream-colored card stock—if it were any bigger I’d think somebody was getting married—but inside was a note that said, “Need to speak with you. Come to Evie’s at 4:00.”

  Like a dimwitted protagonist in a bad movie, I flipped the paper over, looking for more information, a signature—something. I wondered if I should hold it over a candle to see if invisible writing showed up.

  “What is this?” I asked Jamie, even though I knew it was pointless. “Did the messenger say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did Evie send him?” I couldn’t imagine Evie, one of my cast members, engaging in any cloak-and-dagger stuff.

  “Dunno. He just handed me the envelope and walked away.”

  This was ridiculous, but if I wanted to find out what the note meant, I had to play along.

  * * *

  I had no idea what to expect when I was buzzed through the gate at Evie’s house. She lived high up on a hill on the inland side of the Pacific Coast Highway, with a breathtaking view of the coastline. I kind of felt like I was part owner of her incredible house, since it was the paychecks I generated that helped her buy the place. Well, that, and a record number of cleavage-baring magazine covers and cosmetics ads she did in her spare time, along with, it was rumored, quite a few foreign product endorsements.

  I found Evie in the living room, draped upside down across a low, wide sofa with enormous square pillows, their neon colors popping against the neutral upholstery. Her head was hanging about an inch from the floor, and one leg was bent at a strange angle.

  “Somebody call the paramedics,” I deadpanned. “She’s snapped her neck.”

  Evie ignored me and instead adjusted the phone she was holding high overhead so she was framed perfectly on the screen.

  “What’s new, Evie?”

  “Just a sec,” she said. Once the phone let out its old-fashioned whizz-snap shut
ter noise, she sat up and shook out her impossibly huge mane of dark hair. “’Sup, Faith?”

  “That’s it? No ‘oh Faith, how I’ve missed you, the show hasn’t been the same without you’?”

  She gazed at me sleepily, as if her false eyelashes were so heavy she couldn’t keep her eyes open. “Well, yeah,” she said. She checked the photo she’d just taken. “Hey, does this look good?”

  She turned the phone toward me. What the hell—of course it looked good. Every photo of her looked good. All the time. Picture in a cell phone? Looked just like a retouched shot for the cover of Cosmo. “It’s great,” I said, holding down my impatience with a virtual boot on its neck. “Look—”

  “Just a sec,” she said again, all her attention on the phone. She pushed a couple more buttons. I wasn’t sure how she did that with her two-inch-long nails in the way. It was like watching a gorilla—albeit a very attractive one—do cross-stitch. Eventually she managed it. “’Sup, Faith?”

  Before we got caught in a conversation loop, we were interrupted by Chasen, Evie’s boyfriend, who wandered into the room staring at his own cell phone. I was practically blinded by the glare off his Ken doll-shiny waxed pecs and six pack framed by an open cotton shirt; I couldn’t help but wonder if these two clacked when they embraced.

  “Babe, that one was righteous.”

  “Chasen . . .” I ventured.

  He barely glanced up. “Oh, hey, Faith. ’Sup?”

  “Did Evie just send you a photo of herself?”

  He grinned. “Yeah! So cool. Now it’s my turn.” And he held out his phone at arm’s length and struck the round-shouldered pose so popular with chiseled male models these days—one that made them look vaguely Neanderthal . . . and that would have made my mother snap, “Stand up straight!” I shuddered when I realized I wanted to say the same thing. The last thing I needed was to start turning into my mother. I had enough problems already.