Unscripted (15 page)

“First Alex, then me? Pretty good deal for a backwater college. And my presence you can publicize.” Absolutely brimming with righteous indignation, I heaved myself to my feet and thrust the mug back at him.

He caught it and skipped backward to avoid coffee sloshing all over his shoes. “You can be really cynical sometimes, you know that?” he said mildly.

“I’ll try not to lose sleep over it.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, that wasn’t what I—” His office phone rang. “Just a second. Please.”

And I was supposed to wait for what? To go another couple of rounds with this guy? Forget it—I had a pounding headache already.

“Hi,” he said into the phone. “Yeah . . . That’s definite, then? . . . Oh, I’m sorry to hear it.”

I flung my bag over my shoulder and started for the door. He held out his hand to stop me while he said to the caller, “I understand . . . Nope, can’t be helped . . . No, I think we’ll be okay. Keep in touch; maybe we can figure something out at a later date . . . Yeah, take care.” When he paused again, then said, “What’s that?” I’d had enough. How could I stomp out in a snit if I had to keep waiting for him to finish his phone call? Didn’t he know anything about dramatic exits?

I escaped into the bright white corridor, heading for the doors, my shoes ringing on the linoleum.

“Faith!”

I kept walking.

“Faith, hold up!”

I spun around. “What for?”

“Well,” he said, a little breathlessly, “I . . . I just . . . think—”

“You know, you make
no
sense. You irritate me, you insult me, you stonewall me, you threaten to throw me off campus, and then you invite me to give a lecture. You make
nosense
.”

“I know. You’re right. It does sound contradictory.”

“And self-serving,” I spat, happy to throw his own words back at him. “You don’t want me here, until you think you can get something from me. Then the rules change. You’re just like everybody else.”

“Faith,” he said quietly, and his low tone caught my attention. “Really, I’m not.”

There was a beat or two of silence. I shook my head and studied the ceiling tiles. “What do you
want,
Mason?”

“You’re really going to keep coming back until you talk to Alex?”

“I’m stubborn that way. Threaten to sic your rent-a-cops on me all you want. I’ve had worse.”
As you witnessed,
I thought.

“Well, then, if I can’t keep you away from Alex, let’s do this the right way. You’ll be welcome, as long as you don’t badger him. Observe, instead. See what he’s learning, see why it’s important to him. And then you can decide if he’s better off here or back on the show. And in exchange, I’m asking you to give something back to our department—”

“Cash?”

“Faith!”

Of course he was the type who couldn’t be bought. “What, then? And don’t ask me to give a lecture about my mother’s career again.”

“Forget the lecture. I want you to teach a course.”

Yeah, it finally happened. Dude rendered me truly speechless. Eventually I fought out, “Are you
insane?
”

“Well, not an entire course—and not alone. I want you to help me out with one for the fall semester, which starts middle of next week. My guest lecturer just bailed on me—that was the phone call I just got. I’ll have to take on the course myself now—I can’t find a replacement at this late date—but I’ve got so much to do already . . . I thought you could teach it with me. You can speak to a moderately sized group of people, I suppose?”

“I—” My words caught in my throat, and I just stared at him, incredulous.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Wait,” I said, closing my eyes tightly for a minute, trying to get my equilibrium back. “
Why
in the
world
would you want me to help teach a class?”

“Well, the kids would eat it up, for one thing—the legendary Faith Sinclair, real-world experience, all that. And if you’re going to camp out here to try to change Alex’s mind about his life choices, you might as well make yourself useful.”

“And Alex would take the class.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Well, then, what’s the point—”

“It’s not part of Alex’s course schedule for his acting studies. Besides, if it were, I wouldn’t ask you to do this. It would be unethical for you to have any academic influence over him. You can communicate with Alex on his own time,
if
he wants to talk with you. In fact, this offer is contingent on whether he’s okay with having you on campus at all. I’m doing this because I think . . .” He sighed, then admitted, “Because I think you’re right—Alex should have an opportunity to know all his options, including going back to
Modern Women
if he wants
.
But he also should have the freedom to make his own choices, so no full-court press on the guy.”

I couldn’t believe the next thing that came out of my mouth. “What . . . what’s the subject?”

It looked like Mason was trying to suppress a smile, failed. In fact, he was beaming. “Scriptwriting. I figure it’s up your alley.”

“Well,
yeah.
”

“So you’ll do it?”

God, he looked so hopeful. And Jaya was right—he
was
pretty adorable. He had that kind of open face and those eager eyes that made you want to take him home. Like a puppy. So it actually hurt me a little bit when I whapped him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Figuratively, of course.

“No way in hell.” And I shoved open the double doors and walked out.

* * *

“Oh,
COME ON!
”

I realized that roaring at my windshield, and at the taillights of the cars in front of me, as far as the eye could see, through that windshield, wasn’t going to move traffic along any faster, but I was frustrated. And baffled. It wasn’t rush hour, it was the middle of the day. There was no good reason for traffic to be backed up. None at all. Yet here we were, roasting in the noon sun. Even the carpool lane was stoppered up. Not that I was considering illegally crossing the double yellow line and illegally using the lane without another person in the car or anything. Not at all.

I glanced at my phone. No messages, no texts. My traffic report app highlighted the stretch of highway I was on with a fat red line. An alphabet salad of strange abbreviations may or may not have been explaining there was an accident somewhere up ahead.

I reminded myself for the hundredth time to check the traffic app
before
getting on the highway.

Sighing raggedly, I closed my eyes. So far, today had been a total waste of makeup. Restless, I fired up the speaker phone and hit Jaya’s number.

“Jaya Singh’s line. Ashley speaking. Can I help you?”

Oh Christ. “Ashley. This is Faith.”

Before I could get another terse word out, there was a rustling, then Jaya’s voice. “Hey, you.”

“Got Ashley trained to hand over the phone now, have you?”

“Just for you, nobody else.”

“Try to get her to balance a ball on her nose next.”

“Stop.” But she laughed.

“No, really—I think she’s ready.”

“What’s going on? Where are you—Needles?”

“If you mean Moreno Valley, the answer is ‘sort of.’”

“You don’t even know?”

“I’m on the 210, westbound. Gridlock.”

“Say no more. Did you talk to Alex?”

“No. He wasn’t around.”

“When do you start stalking him, sleeping in your car so you can jump him on his way to class?”

“Ah, you’ve discovered my plan B. Soon, grasshopper. Soon. What’s going on there?”

“Well . . . ,” Jaya spoke slowly, which usually meant bad news. “We’re ready to shoot the Christmas episode.”

“Okay.”

“But I just heard from Randy.”

“Oh no.”

“Exactly.”

“He wants changes?”

“Worse. He’s . . . thinking of pushing us to midseason.”

“What! He can’t do that! It’s August . . . crap . . . what, twentieth? We’re locked in for a September twenty-ninth season premiere, and that late start is bad enough!”

“I know. I do
not
want to have to rewrite the episode to hit all the plot points in some nonspecific time frame.
And
we’d have to return all the holiday decorations to Props, which pisses me off. We scored the good ones this year—I want to
use
those bad boys.”

“He can’t,” I declared. “Logistically, he just can’t. What in the world would he do with a hole in the fall schedule at this late date?”

“He threatened to fill our slot with some of his . . .
pet projects
.”

I groaned. “Oh God, not those old-school laugh-track sitcoms he’s always pushing.”

“He’s sitting on at least four pilots that didn’t get picked up. He’ll choose the two that suck the least, and we’re history till January.”

“January!” I repeated with dread. “Shit, if he yanks the show now—”

“It’s telling the whole world we’re in trouble. I know.” Jaya hesitated, then said, “Faith, I hate to do this to you, but I think we need to confirm Alex sooner rather than later. If you can get him to commit, then I can tell Randy, and we’d get ourselves a reprieve.”

“I’m right there with you. We’ve got to do it.”

“Can you?”

“What, convince Alex? Looks like I don’t have a choice.”

“Promise him
anything.
”

“Oh, you do
not
know what you’re saying, my dear. Besides, I’ve got to get to him first.” I sighed heavily. “But at least I know what it’s going to take to get access.”

“You do? That’s great! Whatever it is, do it! Oh wait—hang on a sec.” The phone was silent for a bit, then Jaya came back with, “Faith, I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go. Wardrobe’s dressed Kimmie up like a ho again.”

I could sympathize; Kimmie was one of our sweet ingénues, yet half the time she came out of the wardrobe trailer looking like a streetwalker. “Ugh. All right, go bust some heads. If I were you, I’d get a bead on Marguerite first,” I advised, naming an assistant wardrobe mistress. “She hates Kimmie. Does this on purpose.”

“Got it. I’ll call you later.”

“Keep me posted.”

Jaya’s news, and the fact that everyone on the freeway had moved about six inches during the entire phone call, made me even crabbier. I turned up the AC and went to a bookmarked site on my phone: the IECC Web site . . . faculty directory . . . Mitchell, Mason—Theater Arts, Film Studies. And I called.

Chapter 9

I got out of bed with a sense of purpose bright and early Wednesday morning. I was going to be a teacher. How cool was that? A noble profession. I’d be brilliant, the kids would love me. It’d be like those teacher movies, I thought as I selected a professional-yet-stylish outfit for my first day—I’d change lives by expounding brilliantly in echoing classrooms, writing wildly on chalkboards, marching across sun-dappled, leafy campuses with my protégés following in my wake, eagerly hanging on my every word. Okay, I was conveniently ignoring the fact that the IECC campus was more like Death Valley than verdant New England, but still. My protégés could follow me around
inside,
where it was comfortably air-conditioned.

I could do this. I could.

At least Alex had given his okay for me to be on campus, according to Mason, I reflected as I hit the freeway and started heading, yet again, to Moreno Valley (God, this drive was getting old). That was something. It felt like getting the nod from the other side of the velvet rope at one of the hottest West Hollywood clubs. (Not that I was a club-going sort, but I’d heard stories from my non-famous friends who had to wait in line.) Now all I had to do was get to Alex—maybe, to further the analogy, that was like being allowed access to the VIP room. I was just going to have to be careful when I approached him, speaking softly and walking gingerly, like I was approaching a wounded animal. Not that there were wounded animals in West Hollywood clubs . . . oh crap. Analogies were stupid. I turned off the freeway and headed for IECC.

Gasping as I staggered across the fifty or so parking lots on the perimeter of the campus toward the classroom building, I wondered why visiting faculty didn’t have reserved parking spots right outside their building. What if I wanted to bring a visual aid, like a . . . a styrofoam-ball model of the solar system? (Oh heck, adjust for theater—okay, a scale model of Shakespeare’s Globe made out of toothpicks.) I’d have to carry it all this way, in the stifling heat? Luckily all I had to carry today was my morning coffee.