First Stop, New York (4 page)

TRAVIS

And my name is Travis.

That’s when ALECIA, 19, appears. Magnificent-looking with buckwheat-colored red hair, her lunar blue eyes regard Travis coldly. Trent senses her immediately, but he does not turn to face her.

TRAVIS

Hello, Alecia.

ALECIA

Is there someone you need to introduce me to, Travis?

TRAVIS

This is Tessa, Alecia.

She’s good people.

Alecia gives Tessa a withering look.
RAMONE, 18, approaches the group. A tower of immaculately sculpted muscle, with inky black hair that curls around his thick neck, he instinctively flexes his massive pecs.

RAMONE

Alecia, I’ve been searching the beach for you—only to find you here. With him.

There’s no love lost between Travis and Ramone. The two handsomest men on the beach, they regard each other warily.

ALECIA

(caught off guard)

Ramone…what are you doing here?

Suddenly, OLLIE, 17, runs up. All skin and bones, he is totally out of breath.

OLLIE

Tessa, where did you go? I grew concerned when you weren’t where we said we’d meet. Is everything okay?

Tessa looks at Travis with great feeling. He returns her look. Something undeniable is rising between them.

TESSA

I think so, Ollie. More okay than it’s been in a long, long time…

Trader Joe’s Parking Lot—12:45
P.M.

Corliss pulled her car out of the lot and onto La Brea. The infuriatingly calm GPS voice was telling her to make an immediate right on Third Street.

“Okay,” Corliss repeated. “Right on Third…”

“Thath wrong—keep on La Brea,” Legend yelped from the passenger seat.

The backseat was crammed floor to ceiling with cases of Poland Spring, so many that Corliss couldn’t see out the rear window. She was doing her best to ignore Legend—until she caught sight of the shards of rosemary crackers that were piled up in his lap.

“Legend, Max specifically asked for those crackers!”

“But they thuck.”

“I don’t care if they thuck—
suck
—they’re for Max! And they’re not supposed to be good—they’re low fat!” Corliss shrieked. “Okay, okay,” she said, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry, Legend. I guess you were hungry…”

Corliss was strung out. And the worst part of being strung out, she knew, was that whenever she got strung out, her forehead blotched up. She checked it out in her rearview mirror. Sure enough, just north of her eyebrows it was hive central.

“Legend?!”

“What now?” said the child with all the weariness of someone ten times his age.

“Your seat belt!”

Legend sighed and dutifully buckled himself back in. It was the first sign of cooperation he’d exhibited all afternoon.

“Thank you. It was very nice of you to listen to me just then.”

“You’re welcome, Corlith,” he said sweetly.

“It’s just that I’m anxious about my new job. I mean, all these famous people. Real life actors, directors, and producers—it’s all a little intimidating. And it’s important to me to do well. Accomplishment is crucial to healthy self-esteem. But now I’m running terribly behind! Which means I’m doing sucky at my job—which makes my self-esteem go all shrinky-dink. So if I yell, Legend, please understand it’s not
me
yelling, it’s my
lack of self-esteem
yelling.”

Legend considered Corliss with great seriousness for a long moment. “Have you ever conthidered medication?”

Corliss gave him a long, level look. “Okay, now you really have to shut up.”

“Proceed to Robertson,” said the electronic GPS lady.

“Okay, we are very near the Kabbalah Center, which means we can be back on the lot in about, um, half an hour. If we’re lucky.” She looked at her cell phone, wondering if she
should call Max—but it was out of juice.

Legend pointed to something in the sky.

Corliss looked up. A massive concrete building loomed in front of them. It took up the entire corner of Beverly and La Cienega. Emblazoned across the top of it were the words
BEVERLY CENTER.

“But that’s a mall, Legend. We’re going to the
Kabbalah
Center
, which is, apparently, a place for spiritual learning.”

“But the Kabbalah Thenter ith in the Beverly Thenter,” he said with the utmost assurance. And he seemed to be telling the truth this time.

The Soundstage—1:45
P.M.

“The end,” Max said. His tone was blank and completely unreadable.

The cast closed their scripts and sat back in their chairs. The network executives nodded to one another. Max’s assistants stood, prepared to jump. The first read-through was complete. Everyone waited for Max to speak. Instead, he threw the script on the floor.

People gasped. Rocco nodded approvingly.

“Where are the writers?”

Max cast a glance about the soundstage. Six desolate-looking people without tans raised their hands. Out in front was Petey Newsome, the head writer and the most desolate of all.

“We’re here, Max.”

Petey Newsome was a teenage prodigy who’d graduated from Harvard when he was nineteen. All he wanted to do was
create the next
Sopranos
, but he was stuck on this teen jiggle show and he couldn’t hide his contempt. He also couldn’t hide the dark rings under his eyes from all-nighters spent in front of the computer.

Petey, who was now twenty, was jaded before his time.

“You call this a script, writers?”

“Uh, we do have names, Max,” Petey said wearily. “And you approved the script last week, you might recall, after you read it.”

“I may have
read
it,” Max countered, his eye twitching, “but that’s quite a different experience from
hearing
it. Those processes involve two different senses entirely.”

“The visual and the aural,” offered Rocco.

“Thank you, Rocco,” said Max tartly.

“Yes,” said Petey, not hiding his contempt. “I realize coordinating those two senses at once might be challenging for a director.”

With that, Max retrieved the script from the floor and tore it to shreds.

“Okay, all of the writers are fired.”

There was another gasp. The writers stood there, stunned. Except for Petey, who didn’t flinch.

“Do you think I’m kidding? If you do, you’re sadly mistaken.”

The writers all looked at one another, slowly gathered their things, and one by one moved toward the exit.

Except for Petey, who sighed.

“You can’t fire me, Max, it’s in my contract. You can make me iron your twelve-hundred-dollar pants, or detail your Mercedes, but you can’t fire me.”

Max tried hard not to blush, but he was embarrassed in front of the network executives. He could tell they were waiting to see how he’d handle this sleep-deprived upstart.

“Okay, then, fine! Stand near my assistants and try to blend in.”

Petey shrugged and moved toward Max’s assistants.

Max then turned to the cast. “Listen to me, people, and listen good. Thank God I never learned the writers’ names, because it would have made it harder for me to fire them just now. Except for that one with the raccoon eyes.”

“The name’s Petey. P-E-T-E-Y.”

“And even though I know the
actors’
names,” he said, ignoring Petey, “that still won’t keep me from letting go anyone who is not producing excellence. I need you to become these characters;
live
these characters;
eat
,
sleep
, and
go to the bathroom
as these characters.”

A big guffaw escaped out of Anushka. Max shot her an icy look. She immediately put her serious face on. “Sorry, Max.”

“Are we all in complete agreement?” Max looked at each of them to make sure they were. Tanya and Trent were making goo-goo eyes at each other. JB was twitching. Rocco was doodling once again.

“Good, then I expect the same from the script. Tonight you will have a total rewrite!”

“What…” stammered Petey. “You can’t mean
tonight
, Max.”

“I mean tonight!” He turned to the cast. “We’ll break early so the writers—er,
writer—
can get to work. Expect a new script delivered to you this evening.” The cast looked impressed. “You are now dismissed.” He waved his hand like a wizard, then
looked at his watch. Four hours had passed. Corliss should have been back long ago.

“Where’s my new assistant?” he whispered to no one in particular. His assistants dispersed like a flock of seagulls to find Corliss.

Godiva Store, the Beverly Center—2:05
P.M.

Corliss was about to lose her mind. Not only was the Kabbalah Center
not
in the Beverly Center, but Legend was now sprawled facedown in the wreckage of about two hundred chocolate gift boxes.

“I don’t believe it…” said Corliss, her lower lip quivering.

“Help,” Legend said.

But she was too stunned to react. She was still reeling from what had happened: He’d reached up for the highest box of hand-rolled truffles, missed it by a mile, and demolished a seven-foot display. He’d made quite a scene—not to mention a rather large pile of very expensive chocolate pudding.

As she pulled Legend from the wreckage, a gaggle of stern Godiva salesladies descended to stare Corliss down.

“Young lady,” one said, “is this child your respon-sibility?”

“No, I mean yes, I mean—he didn’t mean it!”

But the women didn’t seem convinced.

“It looked to me like he jumped right into the display on purpose,” another said. Corliss had a terrible feeling this might be true. Legend shook his head.

“No way, Corlith. I wath juth trying to thmell the chocolate!”

“I’m really sorry for this,” Corliss said to one of the salesladies. “I’m happy to pay for it. How much do you think it will be?”

The meanest saleslady stepped forward and hissed, “At a glance, I’d say about seven thousand dollars.”

Corliss went white.

“Ith that a lot?” asked Legend, tugging at her acid-washed jeans.

“Seven—th—th—thou—” Corliss couldn’t even say it.

“Or thereabouts,” spat the saleslady. The other Godiva ladies had already begun wading through the decimated chocolate, salvaging what they could.

“But how—how—” Corliss saw her career flash before her eyes. It hadn’t even started and already it was over. Legend tugged on her shirt and gestured that he wanted to whisper something in her ear.

Corliss bent down. “Not now, Legend.”

“Uth the credit card,” Legend said as he kept tugging on her shirt.

“What?!
Max’s Amex?
To charge seven thousand dollars?” Corliss was now almost shouting.

Legend put a finger to his lips and tugged on her shirt again. “He never checkth the billth. They go to the money manager.”

“Oh my God, Legend,” said Corliss, looking at him with real terror in her eyes. “If I use Max’s American Express and it turns out you’re up to your tricks and they take me to jail, I’m going to—”

“It actually only comes to $6,397. I assume you’ll be charging this?” asked a slightly less mean saleslady.

Corliss gulped. “I guess so.”

Legend nodded.

Corliss handed over the jet black American Express card Max had given her. “Here you go,” she said as her stomach turned in on itself.

“Thank you,” said the saleslady. “I’ll ring this up immediately.”

Time seemed to slow as the card left Corliss’s hand and passed into the hands of the Godiva lady. She was about to use her new boss’s American Express card to purchase $6,397 worth of pulverized, high-end chocolate on her first day of work.

“You’ll thee,” said Legend with a wink. “It’ll be fine.”

The ’Bu
Soundstage—3:32
P.M.

Max and Petey Newsome—the only two remaining in the vast space—were deep in conversation when Corliss careened through the doors that led to the soundstage. Right away Max noticed something crazy going on in her eyes.

“Corliss…?”

She was tugging at Legend, who was digging his feet in.

“But you promithed me peanut brittle!”

Corliss was gritting her teeth, trying to smile.

“Is everything all right?” asked Max.

“Oh, yeah, totally fine, Max! Legend and I had sooo much fun—”

Max looked at his watch.

“We got all the water,” said Corliss. “The regular kind and the holy Kabbalah kind. It’s all in your office. I even got these little red string bracelets for everyone in the cast. Aren’t they cute?”

Petey circled Corliss, looking her up and down.

“Corliss, I sent you on that errand at ten this morning,” Max said.

“Really, huh, that long ago?” Corliss said, pretending she had no idea how late she was. “Hey, did you know Ashton Kutcher was into Kabbalah? Good enough for me!”

“Corliss! You left the studio
five and a half hours
ago. It took you
five and a half hours
to get water?”

“And brathleth,” lisped Legend.

“He means
bracelets
,” said Corliss. “It took me a while to figure out what Legend was saying. He has such a unique way of talking and—”

“Legend has a lisp, Corliss,” said Max sternly. “He’s working very hard to fix it with several of the top Hollywood vocal coaches.”

“I don’t have a lithp!”

“Corliss, I can’t have you gone for five and a half hours on an errand that should have taken two hours tops.”

“Yes, Max.”

“Okay, then,” said Max. “I’ll need to you report to location at Malibu beach at seven
A.M.
tomorrow.”

“Seven
A.M.
!” shrieked Corliss.

“Yes, that’s when the cast and certain members of the production staff, including you, arrive to move into your luxury condos. The cast and writing staff also need to get situated in their trailers at that time, so as you can see, it’s going to be a
very busy morning. Do you have a problem with a seven
A.M.
call time, Corliss? If you do, say so now. There’s a long line of ambitious people who’d be more than happy to wake up knowing mine is the first face they’ll see.”