Snapped (14 page)

Then it’s back to the contestants and the reveal of the twist:
your DON’Ts are here and your challenge today is to make them over into your personal image!

The DON’Ts walk onto the stage to join their respective contestants. Offstage, Diane urges them to stand a little closer to their photo blow-up. It’s ugly and intense and I understand why the show is so popular.

They don’t show me the tapes of the makeovers-in-progress. There’s no time, Diane says. “It’ll be better this way,” she adds. “You’ll be coming at it really fresh—no biases or preference for one contestant over another.” I don’t tell her that I hate them all.

With my makeup done, it’s judgment time. The first contestant, Marie, trots onto the stage from behind a curtain which has a larger-than-life projection of her DON’T
before
photo. Marie faces us, gives some bullshit wordy definition of her personal style and how she really, really liked imposing her look on her DON’T but she doesn’t say
imposing.
The DON’T comes out and the two women hug and the DON’T looks like a fatter, weirder version of Marie. She can’t walk in her heels and I want to jump onstage and show her how, but I don’t because she looks happy and Diane would kill me if I did. So I ask a couple of questions and make some doodles on a pink index card that a production assistant gave me to score the contestants.

Next up is Yves, who’s made over Marc, who looks surprisingly hot—better than Yves—now that his baby-blue jeans and chambray denim shirt have been replaced with rock-star black and he’s had a haircut. Yves is ecstatic and nearly drooling over his creation as he gushes about his look, his style. I write
blow job
on a pink index card because Yves is looking at Marc like he’d drop to his knees and give him one in a second if Marc—who strikes me as very straight—would let him and I find this endearing.

Finally, there’s Heather and Amy. Heather is striking with razor-cut blond hair to her shoulders, a heart-shaped face and perfect bow-tie pixie mouth that would not be conducive to blow jobs. Amy has a similarly shaped face and mouth and with her hair colored and dressed in a dress that’s short and angular and very modern mod, she could pass for Heather’s sister. It’s impressive, but Amy is clearly uncomfortable and Heather is clearly a bullying bitch. When I ask Amy if she’s
happy with her makeover she says, “It’s not really my style,” which prompts Heather to explode.

“It’s
my
style. You have
no
style.” I wonder if they’ll edit that out.

The contestants and their DON’Ts huddle backstage and get interviewed again by producers as we debate who should win and who should be eliminated. I immediately say Marie wins, Heather goes, Yves stays. The other judges look at me like I’m insane. It’s a toss-up, they all agree, as to whether Yves or Marie goes.

“But Amy was miserable up there,” I say.

One of the judges looks confused. “That’s Heather’s DON’T,” says another, clarifying.

“This isn’t about making people happy, it’s about
personal style
,” says the first judge.

“It’s about bullshit,” I say and all three of the resident judges gasp. The male judge, who’s the fashion director at a national magazine better known for its recipes than its fashion-forward thinking, clutches at his throat, aghast. He’s wearing an ascot. I am quickly outnumbered, outvoted and ignored. Heather wins, Marie goes, Yves stays to compete in the final episode. We tape the announcement, I say goodbye to Diane and am done.

Esther is waiting for me in the lobby. Diane wouldn’t let her in the studio. The season has started airing and she can’t have word leaking out about who makes the finals. “She’s
seventy-five
,” I said to Diane, but there was no convincing her.

“How are you feeling, dear?”

“Dirty,” I say. Esther looks unsure as to how to respond. “Never mind. It’s over.”

“We should get you to a doctor. You’re still looking peaked.”

“I’ll be okay. I just need to get some sleep.” I’m feeling
worn and achy and the nausea still comes in waves, but it’s better. I think I can breathe. I want to go home.

Before Esther drops me off she has me promise I’ll go to the doctor on Monday or to the hospital tonight if I have to. She asks me to call her in the morning to tell her how I’m feeling and invites me for tea if I’m up for it and says that she’ll come over to my place and bring me whatever I need if I’m not.

The phone is ringing as I walk in the door and I run to pick it up more out of habit than any actual desire to talk to anyone. Gen once told me that pregnant women can be very moody and scattered. I pick up. It’s Ted wanting to know where I was today, what’s going on, why Esther answered my cell when he called earlier. I am limp, my exhaustion a full-body sensation.

“I was sick and then I had that taping for
Stylemaker.”

“What taping?”

“Diane asked me to be a guest judge on the show—it was awful. Look, can we talk tomorrow?”

“You’re a judge on fucking
Stylemaker
?” Ted spits the words out slowly.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Sara. Don’t you think you should have talked to me first? We have to make these decisions together. What’s Diane’s cell number? I’ll call her and tell her it’s a no-go.”

“It’s already taped.”

“Then they’ll have to retape. We can’t have you on that thing—it would be diluting the brand.”

“Don’t talk to me about
diluting the brand.
You’re the one who wants
Snap TV
and to make everything all
people power.”

“We have to move the brand forward—but not by going on fucking
Stylemaker.”

“We don’t
have
to do anything.”

“We need to have a meeting.”

“I don’t want to have a meeting.”

“What
do
you want, Sara?”

“I want out.” This escapes from my mouth before I have a chance to stop it.

“Out of what, exactly?”

My breath gets short. I should say I need a vacation, a leave. I could say I want to work on the
Snap
online-TV-whatever stuff with Jack. I should tell Ted I need time to think, but I don’t. “I want out—of all of it.”

“Think about what you’re saying, Sara. This is
our
company, this is
our
vision.”

“We never had a vision, Ted, we just thought pictures of people in bad outfits were funny.”

“Don’t devalue what we’ve built.” Ted sounds defensive. “What are you going to
do?
Work at an agency? Pay people like us to tell you what’s good? It’s not going to get any better than this, Sara. You can’t just walk away.”

“I have to.”

“Can we please have a meeting to discuss this?”

“I can’t.” I find my purse and take out the Polaroid camera.

“Is this about Eva? Because that’s over, it’s done, it was a mistake. It’s completely over. I told Gen.”

“It’s not about Eva.” I lie on the living room floor and hold the camera above my face. I can’t believe he told Gen. I’ll have to call her back.

“Fine, then. Let me know what your plans are for your shares.”

“I will.” I press the shutter and the flash goes off, blinding me momentarily.

“Are you at least going to finish next week’s issue?”

“I can’t.” I crawl over to the coffee table and open my notebook to a blank page.

“Fuck, Sara.” He sounds more exasperated than angry.

“I’m sorry, Ted. I really am.” I fan my face with the Polaroid until the picture starts to come through.

Ted called Jack and Jack calls me freaked out and fucked up and I’m calming
him
down. He’s teetering on hysterical, telling me I’m having a meltdown. I light a cigarette and flip through one of Lila’s
Flair
magazines. “I am not having a meltdown,” I say, blowing smoke into the mouthpiece of the phone, wishing it was Jack’s face.

“You need to think about this, Sara.”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“You’re not thinking clearly. Are you drunk?”

“Fuck you. I’m not drunk.” I pick myself up off the floor and go to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of wine.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Have a drink?” I think I’m funny.

“Seriously, Sara. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“We had
plans
.”

I have no idea what Jack is talking about. My heart jumps.
Could he know about our mutant baby? Maybe we’re one of those couples who can read each other’s thoughts; maybe he’s feeling sick. He could have phantom morning sickness—I think I’ve heard about this. We could, we should, be part of a study at a university about psychic couples but we’d have to be called Jane Deer and John Doe because I don’t want to be harassed by nutters calling up day and night wanting relationship advice once word of our remarkable connection gets out. And we wouldn’t get married, so there’d be the name thing to deal with. The mutant baby would be called Baby Deer-Doe in the university study and in the press, and no one would know it’s a mutant baby and if we ever went on a talk show we wouldn’t take the baby but we would wear bad wigs and sunglasses and the producers would have to alter our voices with a computer so we sounded like generic robots.

“What about
Snap TV
?” Jack asks.

“Sounds like it’s a go,” I say, trying to sound flippant and airy. I have no special powers. Jack is not phantom sick, phantom pregnant. I take a big sip of wine, not bothering to wait for it to breathe, which according to wine people I’ve met is something you really should do and is not some affected wine-people bullshit.

“This is putting me in a really uncomfortable situation.” The mutant baby screams inside me as red wine splashes all over its two squinty faces. “I thought we were going to work on this together and now if you leave
Snap…
”

“I’ve left
Snap.
”

“Ted says you just need a break.”

“Ted is fucking around on his wife.” This has nothing to do with anything but it’s the easiest thing to say.

“And you’re fucking with
me
. What the hell am I supposed
to do now? I’m supposed to be coming out there on Sunday. I thought we were supposed to be working together. We talked about this when you were here.”

“We didn’t talk about it—I said I’d think about it. And it doesn’t matter—just do it with Ted.”

“Ted says everything is up in the air until you guys work this out. I have a
plane ticket.”
And I have a mutant baby inside of me growing two heads and not enough toes. I pace in front of my living room window. The sky is dark, threatening rain. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do what you want,” I say. The wine is numbing.

“Can’t you see how this affects me?” He’s whining now.

“This isn’t about you.”

“Because it’s all about you. It’s always about you.” Jack’s voice cracks. I stifle a laugh. Thunder crashes outside and I’m sure we’re in a movie. Jack’s the victim and I’m the broad, a great dame like Marlene Dietrich who says snappy things and wears men’s suits. I put out my cigarette and light another. The movie is black-and-white, all shot in the rain.

“I’m really tired. Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I fake a yawn. So much for snappy.

“I need to know what you want me to do.”

“I don’t care what you do.” I’m bored, tactless, wrong and a bitch.

“Fuck you, Sara.” There’s a click and dead air.

“Hello?” He’s gone. I’m elated and light even in my mutant-baby pregnancy bloat.

I drink wine and call Gen on her cell. The thunderstorm has begun and my movie has changed. It’s color and affirming, about the power of female friendship in the face of patriarchal adversity. I’m the quirky one who ditches her job
and her boyfriend; she’s the beautiful one who leaves her cheating husband. We have a slumber party—we need to have a slumber party now, tonight, I’ll invite her over, I’ll insist she come, as soon as she picks up—and hatch a plan, something kooky and unexpected. We open a business or put on a show. We do something daring or go on the road. Gen’s phone rings to voice mail and I leave message, saying it’s urgent, it’s imperative that she call me right back. I use the word
pronto
and silently blame it on the wine and the stress and mutant Baby Deer-Doe.

I take the phone into the bathroom and check my messages while I pee. I’ve dealt with Ted and with Jack, there’s nothing to fear. I skip through them, fast-forwarding, deleting, pleased with myself, my new life and the affirming chick-flick I’ll make with Gen. This is what I needed. Ellen was right—life really is all about options.

There’s a message from Gen and I can tell immediately that she’s upset. I listen once then play it back. I dial her number and it’s voice mail again. I leave a message. A clap of thunder booms outside. The air is dense and wet. I’m sweaty and breathing hard. I listen to Gen’s message over and over. I fill her voice-mail box with messages. I plead, I’m angry, I need to make her understand that I didn’t want her to get hurt, I wanted to stay out of it, that Ted fucking Eva was none of my business, that she needed to hear it from Ted and not from me.
If you were my friend you would have told me
. That’s what she said.
I can’t believe you knew and you didn’t tell me
. I wipe myself and there’s blood on the toilet paper: my period.

I walk in the rain without an umbrella. It’s warm and I’m soaked and it doesn’t matter. I could pee as I walk and no one would notice. The chick-flick is in turnaround. I can only
make sad epics now, ones with sweeping scores and characters that are unrepentant smokers.

The rain is coming down so hard I can’t keep a cigarette lit. My mouth tastes bad and I wish I had some gum. My abdomen contracts in dull cramps. I’m only half-drunk, but my brain is so heavy I’m surprised my neck doesn’t snap under its weight.

I have options. I hate Ted for telling Genevieve that I knew about him and Eva, but I can either sell my half of the company to him or to someone else. This really isn’t much of a choice because I don’t know anybody else and can’t fathom calling the agencies and people we’ve worked with and say, hey, can I sell you my half of the company? I can have my office boxed up and delivered to me at home or I can do it myself. I can keep trying to call Gen or I can stop. I can buy tampons made of recycled paper or continue using the environmentally unfriendly but easier-to-use ones with the plastic applicator I have stashed in my bathroom closet. These are my options.

“I think I quit my job.” I duck under the canopy of a defunct shop. I have to talk loudly into my cell phone for Ellen to hear me over the rain and rumbling thunder. It’s her last night in town and she’s at a dinner-drinks meeting but says she’ll come over after. She says she’ll bring some wine. She says it’ll be fun and I should be excited—I get to do something new, I’m free to do anything I’ve ever wanted. She urges me to think about the boundless opportunities.

I buy a bottle of champagne on my way home. It’s not very good, but it was the only one at the store that was chilled and ready-to-drink. The bubbles fizz up into my face as I take a sip. I strip off my wet clothes and change into a vintage dress
that I’ve never worn but suspect that Lila would have if it were black and not daffodil-yellow with a green-leaf print. My Lila clothes are still at the cleaners.

I drink champagne and page through Lila’s notebooks, reading and rereading her notes and letters, looking for clues. I’m Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy, I’m a girl detective, a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, trash-talking private eye who dresses like a real lady and who all the boys want to fuck. But she never mixes business with pleasure. She has morals and standards, she lives by a
code
. She’s a loner and mysterious but not in a serial-killer way. She’s harmless, but she’s been hurt. She cares about her clients, she solves every case with flourish and aplomb. She doesn’t give interviews, she doesn’t talk about her past. She’s a hero to wronged wives and the parents of runaway teens. She’s passionate and determined. She takes the cases no one else will touch. People say she’s
feisty.

I reach for my notebook and put Lila’s aside. I make notes and write the opening scene. This is my movie—it’s a mystery, it could be a thriller, it’s certainly a blockbuster, it might be a
franchise.
I wake my computer and start to transcribe what I’ve written in my notebook but I need some inspiration and order six screenwriting books online and make a playlist of songs that I’ll insist be on the movie’s soundtrack. It will have to be a double album and we’ll release it on vinyl, too, in a limited edition, each record numbered and the songs remixed by famous DJs.

The music sounds tinny coming out of my computer speakers. I sit very close and turn the volume up to its maximum. I sing along and think I don’t sound terrible. I play the chorus of my new favorite song back again and sing until I’m sure my voice is blending seamlessly with the lead singer who,
once he hears about how his band’s music provided key inspiration to such a successful film, will invite me to sing the song with him onstage at an outdoor festival. And I’ll play guitar and everyone will be surprised and someone will write about this in a magazine profile about me. I make a note on a Post-it to get a voice coach and sign up for guitar lessons.

I kill an hour answering imaginary questions from a contributing editor of
Vanity Fair
who’s writing a feature story about me and my movie and my life. I wasn’t going to sit for an interview at first but was eventually persuaded after reading some of the writer’s work. In every piece she’d write about how good her subjects looked, how their skin glowed and
without a stitch of makeup,
though I’m unconvinced that makeup is measured in stitches. So I agree to talk to her. When she asks me about my high-profile friendship with a particular Hollywood star known for his roguish behavior I blush and play coy. When she asks me about my days at
Snap
I smile and speak fondly of the experience and even of Ted. And when she asks me about how it feels to be looked up to by so many young women I tell her how flattering it is and that I take being a role model exceptionally seriously.

Ellen is right—opportunities abound. I can make movies, take guitar lessons, be a role model for young women. I can be a successful screenwriter and I can sleep with roguish movie stars. I can travel and design handbags that sell out in Japan. I can have another glass of champagne and wait for Ellen.

Lila’s notebooks are spread out on the living room floor. There’s a stack of Polaroids on the coffee table. Several letters on my computer keyboard are stuck together. I take a sniff. It’s white wine. There are pages in my notebook filled with
bullet points about Lila; there’s a list of songs I want to learn to play on guitar. In unfamiliar handwriting—it must be Ellen’s—there’s the name and phone number of a well-known literary agent.

I unzip the back of my yellow vintage dress and head for the bathroom. It’s past noon. There’s no sign of Ellen. As I peel off my dress I notice a stain of menstrual blood on the back. My inner thighs are wet and red—I’m leaking. I change my tampon and step into the shower to scrub myself clean.

I have one message, but it’s not from Gen. It’s Ellen; she’s at the airport. She thanks me for my hospitality and moans about her hangover. She says she’ll call me and we’ll do the interview for her book over the phone. She says to call her agent but to wait until Tuesday so she’ll have the time to talk to her first, to tell her all about me and my book idea. “It’s gonna be great,” she says. “I just know it.”

What’s gonna be great is getting a jumbo bottle of extra-strength Advil down my throat with about a gallon of coffee, but I’m out of Advil and too impatient to brew coffee myself. As revolting as I feel I look, I head out into the sun.

It’s Saturday afternoon and navigating my way to the counter at the café on the corner proves an obstacle course and an exercise in forced manners. It’s stroller gridlock; all the suburban mommies are running their city errands. They wear heels and tight, expensive jeans. I look among them for Gen, but of course she’s not there. She’s probably crying in her walk-in closet, cursing me and throwing Ted’s clothes in a garbage bag that she’ll drop off at the Salvation Army. I’d climb into a garbage bag and gladly throw myself into the donations bin at the Sally Ann. I’d smell like mothballs and no one would be quite sure how to price me and I’d live in
fear of being bought by some perv when all I’d really want is to go home with a nice little girl and play dolly dress-up. But before donating myself to charity I have to buy a new keyboard for my computer and I should pick up my dry cleaning and then there’s that book I need to write that I can’t remember anything about though I like the idea of recasting myself as a bestselling author. Everyone knows screenwriters get treated like shit and I’d likely have a better chance of sleeping with a roguish movie star as an author because Hollywood people are impressed—if not intimidated—by creative intellect and there is no doubt that if I write this book I will be regarded as nothing less than a
creative intellectual.

I walk into a drugstore to buy the Advil, a liter bottle of lemon-sweetened iced tea and a new keyboard because drugstores today sell home electronics and patio furniture. I queue up to pay and wonder whether my book is supposed to be fiction or nonfiction.

The woman in line in front of me is wearing the worst possible thing. First, it’s a Lycra dress, which is never good, especially if you’re wearing a lumpy bra, which she is. Second, it’s neon pink with cutouts that expose her shoulders. Third, she has it cinched with a three-inch elastic belt with a giant butterfly clasp that her stomach spills over. She’s a spectacular DON’T and I reach for my camera, which I didn’t bring, and suddenly I’m weak and hot. My breathing gets hard and the pink-dress woman glances over a bare shoulder at me with an expression more of disgust than concern. I can’t breathe properly through my nose because it’s stuffed with gooey snot the way it always is after a night of too many drinks, so I’m forced to breathe through my mouth and this is not attractive and the more I think about it and try to control it the more
laborious my breathing becomes. People are looking at me and it’s freaking me out. I tell someone I have asthma and have forgotten my puffer. This seems to appease them and the pink-dress DON’T lets me cut in front of her.