Size 12 and Ready to Rock (18 page)

“Black and purple? Like a bruise?” I ask.

“No, not a bruise,” Stephanie says, so loudly that I jump. I have no idea she’s snuck up behind me. “Catwoman, or in this case, Tania’s face superimposed over Catwoman’s body, with a bubble coming out of her mouth saying, ‘You’re purrfect,’ and the girls’ names. And the Catwoman figure is going to be holding a whip. Lauren, find out how long the art department is going to be on those door tags.”

Lauren, the ever-faithful production assistant, lifts her phone to shoot off a text message.

“Check-in is today,” I remind Stephanie, feeling panic beginning to swell in my chest. “In
one hour,
actually
.
The campers and their moms are all waiting outside. They’re really angry we’re not letting them in now—”

“That’s not my problem,” Stephanie says in an infuriatingly calm voice. “No one told them to get here early. We do things on our schedule, not theirs.”

I glare at Stephanie. It’s way too early in the morning—and way too humiliating—to be having this discussion in front of my new boss. And
her
boss. And
his
boss, and
his
son, who is clearly so bored by all of this, he’s taken out his cell phone and is texting someone. Maybe even Stephanie, since she lifts her phone and starts laughing at something. Seriously?

“Does it really matter what the door tags look like?” I whisper, trying to get Stephanie’s attention. I tilt my head at Davinia, who is looking crushed that her mermaids have been replaced by dominatrixes in cat suits. “She worked super hard on them.”

“Uh, yeah, it does matter,” Stephanie says, not looking up from her phone. “The color scheme didn’t work. She had some sort of aquatic theme going, and the sixteenth floor is supposed to be hard rock. Bridget and Cassidy are going to be on that floor, with that Mallory girl. Right?”

I have no idea she’s even addressing me and not her phone until Simon Hague, who of course has been paying keen attention to the conversation, says, his mouth full of honeydew, “Uh, I think she’s talking to you, Heather.”

“Oh.” I spring into action, but only because all of my supervisors are watching. “You need their room assignments? Let me see.”

I hurry to the front desk, where the binder containing the room assignments is kept. None of the front desks at New York College has a computer, allegedly due to budgetary constraints, but actually due to the fact that the front desks are manned by student workers and the president’s office fears the computers will be used to look up porn or stolen.

“Hey,” I say to Gavin. He’s sitting in the tall swivel padded chair behind the front desk, where he has access to the room assignments, the lockbox containing keys to every room in the building, the intercom system (the only way students can be contacted in their rooms to be told a visitor has arrived, unless they’ve given that visitor their cell-phone number), and the student mailboxes. “Give me the roster.”

He slaps a black binder into my hand.

“Why’d you let them back there?” I whisper to him, nodding at Jared and the film crew, who are crowded behind him, sitting on the edge of the air-conditioning unit, the windowsill, and the table where mail is usually sorted, having an earnest conversation about the merits of zombie films over slasher pics. “You know no one’s allowed back there but you guys.”

“Dude in the suit told me to,” Gavin whispers back, nodding at Dr. Jessup. I wonder briefly how the vice president would feel to hear that he’s been referred as the “dude in the suit.” Dr. Jessup tries hard to keep up with what he thinks is the Millennial generation’s lingo. I once heard him refer to a movie he’d seen directed by Woody Allen as “baller.” “They want to film the reactions of the girls as they check in. Their screams of excitement and joy or whatever as they get the keys to their rooms in fabulous New York City.”

He’s trying to sound sarcastic, but I can see that he’s put on a pair of clean khakis—long ones, not shorts—and a white button-down shirt that someone—I’m guessing his girlfriend, Jamie—has taken the trouble to iron. His hair is wet around the edges, indicating that he showered before coming down for work. Normally he rolls out of bed and comes to the desk eating a bowl of Fruit Loops in his pajamas. The distinctly pungent odor of Axe body spray lies heavy in the air.

What is going on? Gavin—who, out of all my student employees, tries hardest to act like he doesn’t care—is actually trying to look good for a goofy docu-reality series being filmed for the Cartwright Records Television network? I’m struck by a sudden urge to cry at how cute this is. Maybe my continuous-cycle birth control pills aren’t entirely suppressing my hormones after all.

“Why are
you
back there?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at Brad, since he’s leaning on the edge of the intercom system next to Gavin. I need to distract myself before I begin weeping in front of both of them.

Brad looks startled, which is his normal expression.

“It’s check-in,” he says. “I thought we all had to be here.”

At least Brad hasn’t showered
or
dressed up. But then, Brad doesn’t need to. With a body like a Dolce & Gabbana cologne model from his strict workout routine—his fallback plan, if his physical therapy major doesn’t pan out—he’d look good wearing a paper bag. This has nothing to do with why Sarah and I hired him, of course.

“Yeah,” I say, flipping open the binder. It’s divided into sections, first alphabetically by resident, then by floor. “Well, thanks for coming.” I wrinkle my nose. “What’s that smell?” I don’t mean the body spray. This is, if possible, stronger and more cloying.

“Oh,” Gavin says. “That’d be the flowers. They’re for Tania. Her fans know this is where her rock camp is being held and Tweeted about it. They’ve been coming in and leaving ’em all morning, hoping they’re going to see her,” Gavin goes on. “But Pete’s been making them drop them off and get out, telling them they can’t hang around.”

I look where he’s pointed and realize that lining the windowsill behind the
Jordan Loves Tania
film crew are enough bouquets of roses to make a florist jealous. Some of them have balloons attached.

I groan. This is the last thing we need.

“They’ve been leaving other stuff too,” Brad says excitedly, holding up a pink box. “Look! Ice-cream cake.” His tone turns reverential. “It’s
Carvel.
”

“Ew,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “You are
not
eating that.”

“Of course not,” Brad says, looking hurt. “It’s for Ms. Trace. Besides, I would never put all that processed sugar and flour into my body.”

“I would,” Gavin declares. “I’m just waiting for Jamie to bring me a spoon from the caf. She’s been too busy dealing with Davinia’s meltdown—”

“
No,
” I say firmly. “What is wrong with you? Didn’t your mother tell you not to accept candy from strangers? Throw that away right now before it melts and makes everything all sticky.”

“No one’s throwing anything away,” Jared says, in a warning voice, suddenly paying attention to our conversation. “After Tania’s seen everything that’s been dropped off to her by her fans, we’ll gather it all up and take it over to one of the hospitals and donate it to the children’s wing. That’s what she likes us to do.”

“Wait,” I say, noticing for the first time how he’s occupying his time while waiting for filming to begin, besides his horror film discussion. “What are you doing?”

“Well, we obviously don’t donate the
perishable
items,” Jared says with his mouth full. “We eat those ourselves. Want one?” He tilts a pink-and-white polka-dotted bakery box toward me. “They’re good. From Pattycakes, that vegan bakery over on Bleecker Street.”

“Oh, Pattycakes?” Muffy Fowler suddenly throws herself into the conversation, leaning against the desk beside me. “How sweet. You know Tania and Jordan used Pattycakes to make their wedding cake.”

“That’s why no one but Jared will eat those nasty things,” Marcos, the sound guy, says with a snort. He’s got his hand in a bag of vegan pita chips that has a note—“For Tania, Divalicious”—taped to it. “Who wants a cupcake made with no eggs, dairy, or processed sugar?”

“I’ll have you know,” Jared says, taking another bite from the heavily frosted cupcake in his hand, “that these cupcakes won
Cupcake Wars
on Food Network.”

“They won
Cupcake Wars?
” Now Stephanie is interested. “Give me one.”

“Oh, I’d like to try one too, please,” Simon says, bellying up to the desk.

I can’t tell if it’s Stephanie that Simon is interested in or the cupcakes—they do look good, piled high with vanilla frosting and finished with a purple candied flower on top. But either way, I don’t like how this is going, especially given the fact that no one seems to remember there are fifty campers and their mothers waiting on the sidewalk outside and I’m working on a Saturday, hours for which I’m not paid overtime or compensated with time off.

“Can we at least,” I say, “start check-in, since we’re all here?”

“God no,” Stephanie says. “Let everyone finish breakfast in peace. The minute we let them in, they’ll start making demands. I’m surprised at you, Heather. I’d think you’d know a little something about pushy stage moms.”

I smile humorlessly back at her. Ha ha.

Gavin swivels on the desk chair to complain, as Jared passes Stephanie a cupcake, “How come
they
get to eat the stuff people have dropped off for Tania, and you won’t let us have any?”

“Because,” I mutter—even more irritated when Christopher Allington saunters over to Stephanie and murmurs, “Gimme a bite, babe”—“in this building we have a policy. We don’t take—or
eat
—things that don’t belong to us.”

“And Heather was right when she said that you don’t know where those came from,” Lisa points out. But I don’t miss the envious glow in her eye as she watches Stephanie take a bite.

“We know exactly where these came from,” Stephanie says, chewing. “Tania’s fans. Let’s not forget, they’re the ones”—she makes a slight face—“paying our salaries.”

Christopher walks over to the nearest trash can and spits out what was in his mouth, but Simon tries to be more discreet.

“I think it’s quite good,” he says, chewing. “A bit dry maybe.” I notice, however, that he leaves the rest of his on the paper plate holding his fruit salad.

Muffy looks disappointed. “Oh, now that’s a darn shame,” she says. “And I heard so many good things about them too.”

President Allington has been holding his hand out across the desk. Now he withdraws it.

“No thanks,” he says. “Trying to keep my girlish figure. No sense wasting calories on something that doesn’t taste as good as it looks.”

I notice some of the basketball players have gathered in the lobby as well. Nothing would keep them away from a chance at grabbing some free food and perhaps a glimpse of Tania Trace, and they glance at one another with barely suppressed smirks on their faces.

“Honestly, Jared, he’s right,” Stephanie says, oblivious to what’s going on behind her. “How can you sit there and eat those? They taste like cardboard.”

“I don’t know,” Jared says. He seems to have lost some of his previous enthusiasm and is dabbing at his nose with his sleeve. “I was hungry. I skipped breakfast.”

“Well, go get a bagel in the cafeteria,” Stephanie says irritably. “So what rooms are Cassidy and those other girls in?” she asks me.

“Sixteen twenty-one,” I reply without checking the roster.

Lisa smiles at me, impressed, but the truth is, I’ve known all along. I’ve been stalling for time in order to get a sense of what’s going on behind the desk. I have all the room assignments memorized, given that I did them myself. I can’t use the computer system—for which Muffy Fowler told me the college spent a “scandalous” amount of money—to do Fischer Hall’s room assignments because it makes too many mistakes, assigning people who’ve requested a room on a “low floor, south-facing window,” to a room on a high floor with windows that face north. It’s easier for me simply to do the assignments by hand.

“There was a note telling me to put Bridget, Cassidy, and Mallory in the same room,” I explain to Stephanie. “So I did, with Cassidy’s mom in the outer room as chaperone. But now that I’ve met Mrs. Upton, I think she might not be too—”

“Brilliant,” Stephanie says, not waiting for me to finish. “Those three girls got the highest TVQ ratings from the test audiences who viewed their audition tapes. If we could get a smackdown going on between them for the Rock Off, it’d be terrific.”

My eyebrows go up, and I hear Lisa ask, “
What?
” in alarm.

“Not a real smackdown,” Lauren the PA assures us. She hasn’t been in the television business long enough to have become as jaded as her boss. “She means a vocal smackdown. The Rock Off is the talent show we’re going to have the final night of camp to see who the most gifted performer is. The winner gets fifty thousand dollars and a recording deal with Cartwright Records.”

“Those three girls all sang the same song when they auditioned for the show,” Stephanie says. I notice that she says “the show” and not “camp.” “It was ‘So Sue Me.’ ”

“Oh, I love that song,” says Jamie, and the other female RAs, Tina and Jean and even Davinia, all nod enthusiastically.

I don’t blame them. “So Sue Me”
does
have a different feel than any of Tania’s previous songs, and not just because it perfectly showcases her powerful voice, or because it’s the title track to her newest album and her first real Mariah-style power ballad. Although singers—especially popular ones like Tania—are often given cowriter credit for the songs they sing, it’s not always because they’ve actually written the song. Songwriters are guaranteed residuals by the label, but musicians and performers are not.

Every word of “So Sue Me,” on which Tania has a cowriter credit, sounds like it means something personal to her, however, and is coming from a place deep within her soul. Since every time I hear her singing it I get chills, I can almost believe she wrote it herself.

And so must everyone else, since it’s been the number-one song in the country—and Europe—for weeks.