Unscripted (5 page)

“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
shutter 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.

Instead, I said carefully, “You’re . . . sending each other sexy photos . . . even though you’re . . . in the next room?”

Chasen broke his pose. “Cool, right?”

I was at a loss for words. I glanced at Evie. She was texting someone. I hoped it wasn’t Chasen, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was. “You know what?” I said, with an encouraging smile, realizing I was talking to Chasen in the tone adults adopt when they tell small children to go play and let the grown-ups talk. “The natural light that comes in the skylight of the master bathroom upstairs is really . . . righteous.”

His eyes lit up. “You’re right! Babe, I’m gonna get a shot in there. So cool.”

“’Kay,” she muttered, not moving her barely parted, highly glossed pale lips, as she typed out another text with her thumbs.

“Evie.” I waited. No response except the ticking sound of her nails on her phone. “Evie.” I snapped my fingers. “Up here. Don’t make me confiscate that phone like I do when you’re on the set.”

That got her attention. She sighed, put the phone next to her on the couch, and looked up at me. “Sorry, Faith. ’Sup?”

Oh no, no—not the loop again. “You tell me. I got your note that said to come here, so here I am. What’s going on?”

Her glossy lips parted a bit more, showing off the tips of her brilliant white teeth. “Oh,” she breathed in realization. Then she shook her head. “No,” was all she said before she picked up the phone again.

I crossed to her, grabbed the phone, refrained from throwing it at the far wall, and sat down next to her on the couch. “‘No’ what, Evie?”

“I didn’t send you a note.”

My impatience struggled under my virtual boot. I pressed down harder. “Okay,” I said slowly, carefully. “Then who did? The note—”

I stopped at the sound of the front door opening. The next moment, Jaya was in the room, followed by Ashley, who was apparently her new, permanent shadow. Jaya looked nervous in large sunglasses and a baseball cap (Ashley just looked vacant, her huge eyes staring around at nothing in particular). Jaya paused to get her bearings, probably because she couldn’t see much behind her huge, dark shades, despite the light of the late afternoon sun coming in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows, then crossed to me, her hands outstretched. “Faith . . .”

Good grief, had my once down-to-earth bestie gone Hollywood? Did she expect me to grasp her hands in mine and do an air kiss beside either cheek? I’d do something on either cheek, but I was pretty positive a kiss—even an air kiss—wasn’t at the top of the list.

I stayed where I was on the couch, at a loss for words. What was I supposed to say? “Good to see you?” “Show looks great?” What I wanted to say probably wouldn’t sound anywhere near that polite. So I stayed silent.

Jaya tucked her hands at her sides and looked appropriately jittery. “I’m so—I mean—it’s good to see you.”

“Hi, Faith,” Ashley peeped. I just frowned at her. She’d been a fixture on our set, much to my displeasure, for quite a while, bouncing from job to job and excelling at none of them, mainly because she had the IQ of a baby squirrel that had fallen out of the nest onto its soft little head. Although I probably should have been pleased that she’d finally found her niche catering to Jaya, it just pissed me off, like she’d been rewarded for her incompetence.

“Can we . . . ?” Jaya gestured behind me, toward the kitchen.

Evie took her phone back and started texting again. I didn’t think she would pay attention to our conversation even if we came to blows right over her bowed head, but you never knew what random stuff was going to sink into that girl’s cranium and come flying out later. So I got up and headed into the other room, followed by Jaya, who was followed by Ashley. Once through the doorway, I stepped to one side, let Jaya through, then shoved Ashley backward.

The girl looked at me, bewildered. I glared. Jaya was more polite. “Ash, why don’t you hang with Evie, okay?”

Ashley blinked mildly, then drifted back to the living room. Once Jaya and I were alone, I let out a breath and leaned against the counter, watching Jaya expectantly. I’d be damned if I was going to speak first. But I was ready for a battle.

The last thing I was ready for was what Jaya actually did. She took off her sunglasses and stared down at them while she folded and unfolded them. Click clack. Clack click. I waited. When she finally looked up, her eyes were glassy and red-rimmed. “I’m so sorry, Faith,” she rasped, her voice husky with tears.

Was I supposed to cave? Was I supposed to be charmed by the humility in my former best friend, run to her, hug her, and reassure her that whatever she’d done was all right, that I understood?

“Faith?” Jaya prompted. “Please say something.”

Before I could speak, Evie called from the living room, “Jaya? Ask Faith about my bulimia story line.”

Bulimia?
I gave Jaya a suspicious look. This I could handle. This was a concrete issue I could grasp, to keep from being blown off the cliff into the bottomless pit of emotions I couldn’t sort out. “What about bulimia?”

Jaya shrugged, then took a quick swipe at the corners of her eyes. She murmured, “We’re thinking of having Ariel struggle with bulimia. You know—the character’s modeling career and all.”

Shaking my head, incredulous—and suddenly furious—I stammered, “No. Absolutely not. We decided ages ago that Ariel would never have that kind of a problem. I’m not against body dysmorphia awareness, but—”

“But it’d be a really great opportunity for Evie to show off her acting chops and—”

“She
has
no acting chops, and you know it,” I hissed. “That’s why her character is a brain-dead model. Art imitates life. You think she can convey the emotional impact of such a loaded topic? Seriously?”

Jaya shrugged again and studied the tile floor, and everything became crystal clear. As I suspected, she wasn’t calling the shots. She hadn’t stolen my job—not willingly. She was in over her head, and she knew it. I didn’t know how Randy B. had convinced her to take over, but at this point I didn’t care. I needed to reestablish the integrity of
Modern Women
before he turned it into just another nighttime soap with sensational plots that were cheap excuses to put my female characters in lingerie and have them vomiting over their toilets. Just what he’d always wanted.

I shook my head again. I was well and truly disgusted. “And another thing—what’s with the ‘we,’ Jaya? This all sounds like Randy talking. Just him.”

Her head snapped up. “How do you know it wasn’t my idea?”

“Because you’re too smart for that. And because ever since
Bridesmaids
came out, Randy thinks that for any movie or TV show to be ‘cutting edge,’ it has to have a gross-out scene with diarrhea or vomit. Preferably both. Featuring women. So this is his chance. But I’ll be damned if he does something like that with my show.” Jaya opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. “Don’t you
dare
say it’s not my show anymore. It’ll
always
be my show.”

“I know. I know.” She took a step toward me, her words tumbling out. “Faith, I swear, I didn’t go behind your back. I didn’t want any of this. Randy came to me after he fired you and said he needed a showrunner or
Modern Women
was off the fall schedule. It was just before the upfronts—I had to act fast or he was going to yank us on the spot. And then everybody on the crew would be out of a job.”

That stopped me. If Jaya was telling the truth—and I’d never known her to lie in all the time we’d worked together—then she had done the right thing. Everybody knew I put the cast and crew first—especially the crew, who didn’t do this for any glamour, just a steady paycheck and health insurance.

“I just wanted to save the show,” she whispered.

“Is that what you call it?” My words still came out hard and bitter.

“Yes!” she protested. “And . . . and Randy said he would charge you with assault if I didn’t step in and keep the show going. I wanted to keep your name out of the papers.”

“Well, mission accomplished. Practically overnight, I’m nobody,” I muttered, but my mind was racing. I studied her; she looked pretty vulnerable and downright afraid. “So you’re going to stand there and swear to me that you never had your head turned by the thought of being the one calling the shots? Not even a little bit?”

She shook her head, eyes wide. “Never.”

“Bullshit.” But I couldn’t prevent the corner of my mouth from turning up, just a bit. Jaya noticed it, and she visibly lightened up, probably relieved that I wasn’t going to kill her here in Evie’s kitchen with one of the unused knives in the wooden block by the similarly unused oven. Still, I wasn’t going to let her off that easy. “Show’s going straight to hell, you know.”

She pressed a hand to her temple and smiled ruefully. “Oh, I know it, Ms. Sinclair. Nobody knows that better than I do. See my new crop of gray hairs?”

“You do look like crap, woman.” I shook my head. “This is why I wanted Randy’s paws off completely. This is what he does: makes a mess.”