The Next Best Thing (44 page)

A jolt went through me, and my hand went reflexively to my hair, tugging it against my cheek. I hadn’t seen Rob in person since our night together. I’d seen pictures in magazines, You-Tube videos, and interviews he’d done on red carpets, at Taryn’s
side. If I’d been hoping for physical devastation, a bald spot, weight gain, maybe the loss of a limb or two, I’d have been disappointed. Rob looked the way he always did—tanned and fit and handsome, with a curving, cynical smile. His hair was still dark and thick, his chest solid underneath his T-shirt. His jeans and unlaced black Chuck Taylors could have been the same pants and shoes he’d worn when we’d worked on
The Girls’ Room,
but I knew that he ordered them in bulk and replaced them every six months. Once, I’d been the one to place the orders, sign for the boxes, unwrap the clothes and shoes, and recycle the cardboard. Once.

“Hi, boss!” Taryn called, making me think yet again that she hadn’t bothered to learn my name.

“Hi, Taryn.” Then, because I saw no way of avoiding it, I made myself face him. “Hi, Rob.” I waited for my stomach to clench, for my face to get hot, for my eyes to start burning with shameful tears, but instead I felt nothing . . . nothing but the memory of Dave’s arms around me, his lips against my neck, whispering,
Good morning, beautiful,
and me, not doubting for an instant that he meant it.
He doesn’t get to win,
I thought, and straightened my back. I had a man, and I had a show, and he had nothing except a future with the unpleasant ditz he’d chosen over me.

He had the good grace to look embarrassed as he lifted a hand in greeting. “Hey, Ruth. Congratulations on everything.”

“You, too,” I said. Rob squirmed. He didn’t look like the happily married husband and father, a TV writer on top of the world. He looked like a man with no job except holding his wife’s purse while she went to work.

Taryn, meanwhile, was looking from her husband to me. “Omigod,” she said. “Do you two know each other?”

“We worked together,” I said. “I was a writer on
The Girls’ Room
a while back.”

You could almost hear the wheels turning ever so slowly as she considered what was clearly new information. “Omigod,” she said again. “I remember you!”

“Great,” I said, not adding that she’d found my face so offensive that she’d asked the showrunner to have someone else deliver her scripts to her dressing room.

Taryn was frowning, her brain, such as it was, still hard at work. “So, you were an assistant? And then you wrote for
The Girls’ Room
? And then you wrote this show?”

“You got it.”

“Ro-ob,” she said, turning to her husband with a whine it was hard to imagine even the most besotted man could find charming. “Why don’t you write me a show?”

His smile thinned, and his voice sounded strained as he answered, “That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

“Then,” she said, “we could be together every day!” She swung their linked hands upward, pretending to smack him in the nose, giggling. From the way he winced, I wondered how hard that fake smack had been. Then I wondered what he was doing here. Didn’t he have work of his own, an office to go to? I was startled to realize that I didn’t know the answer. I hadn’t checked. I knew that
The Girls’ Room
had been canceled after eight so-so seasons, but I hadn’t taken the step of Googling to figure out where Rob had landed, or if he was working anywhere at all. Which meant that time had done what time was supposed to do. My wounds were healed. I’d moved on. It was almost enough to make me smile. It was the brightest moment of my day . . . that, and when we’d finally finished the reshoots, and my grandmother had gotten out of her seat in the front row with a bouquet of roses in her arms.

Standing on her tiptoes, in a vintage shirtwaist of crisp pale-blue cotton, she’d hugged me, whispering, “I’m so proud,” in my ear. At that moment, whatever hard feelings were left between us, the lingering anger over my failure to be ecstatic about her
wedding, or the changes Nana Trudy’s character had undergone, seemed to finally disappear. Grandma turned, with her arm around my waist, guiding me to the center of the stage, into the spotlight where the actors stood. “Hey, Ruthie!” said Pete, amiable as ever. Cady had narrowed her eyes, clearly unhappy about sharing the attention, and Taryn had shot us a poisonous glance before continuing to wave at the crowd. Grandma ignored them both. She raised her voice over the audience members and extras, the blare of the music and the executives’ conversation. “Everyone!” she’d yelled. “This is my granddaughter. She wrote the show!” For one moment, I basked in the applause, halfhearted and puzzled though it was, and let myself imagine that things had gone better: that I’d gotten the star I’d wanted, that Cady hadn’t gotten skinny and then ruined multiple takes by giggling and posing like she was at a photo shoot for
Playboy,
that Pete, God love him, with his lines scribbled on his hands and his wrists, hiding pages of his script in the newspaper he was leafing through onstage, had learned the words he was supposed to say.

Little victories. Small moments. I’d tucked my grandmother’s roses into a vase and set them on my desk, a visible reminder that this endeavor had not been a complete disaster. I had written a show that would be on TV. That was something. I poured myself another drink and stared up at the poster on my wall. There was Cady Stratton standing in the living room, one arm flung over her head in carefree, girlish abandon. She wore an apron and held a whisk in one hand and a mixing bowl tucked against her hip. Penny Weaver stood slightly behind her, looking on with an expression of mingled anxiety and pride. Cady’s hips had been Photoshopped to reflect a compromise between the girl I’d hired and the girl I’d wound up with (cost of said digital manipulation: $30,000), and I’d spent three tense hours on the phone with Penny’s management, negotiating the size of
the font in which her name would appear, and precisely how far behind Cady she would be standing. “They’re Going to Make It After All!” read the copy over their heads, in what I worried was a blatant and lawsuit-baiting rip-off of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
(the executives had assured me it was fine). Underneath Cady’s skirt was the title of the show:
THE NEXT BEST THING
. My name appeared nowhere on the poster, because people didn’t tune in to TV shows because of their creators; they came for the same reasons they went to planetariums—in short, to see the stars.

I wandered out to my assistant’s desk and sat in her chair. There was an economy-sized jar of Advil in her drawer. I took two, then a bottle of water from the pantry. My phone trilled in my purse.

“Ruthie?”

I felt myself smile, and suddenly everything I’d been worried about—the taping, the ratings, whether we’d last past our initial airing—didn’t seem to matter as much. “Hey.”

“You coming home?”

I grabbed my keys, my water, and flicked out the lights. “As soon as I can.”

T
he first review of
The Next Best Thing
appeared in
Variety
the morning of our premiere. “
The Next Best Thing,
” read the headline. “If the Title’s True, We’re All in Trouble.” I was at home, in my bedroom, where I’d returned after spending two nights in a row at Dave’s house, telling myself that I needed to play at least the tiniest bit hard to get. Besides, he had his poker game, and I could watch
Grey’s Anatomy
with my grandmother, let her feed me, and smile, looking smug, when she asked about my “young man.”

I clicked away from the page as fast as I could and collapsed onto my bed, the very spot where I’d gotten the news about our pickup, with my fists pressed against my eyes, trying to un-see what I’d seen. Then, feeling numb, I made my way to my car, put my cell phone on speaker, and dialed Two Daves Productions as I began my drive to the lot. “Help,” I said when Big Dave got on the line.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said in disgust. “Are you reading the reviews? Have we taught you nothing?”

“Where are you? Can I stop by the offices?”

“I’m meeting Dave at a thing,” said Big Dave. “Pitch meeting.”

“
Time-Share
?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, no. It’s a new reality show. Scripted reality. Well, semi-scripted.
Butterface.
”

I pulled onto the freeway. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Nope. It’s
The Biggest Loser
meets
Extreme Makeover
meets
The Bachelor.
Twelve women with great bodies but, um, less attractive facial features live in a house together, where they compete for dates and plastic surgery.”

“And this is going to be a Two Daves show?”

“Hey, listen, if we’re involved, at least it won’t be totally degrading. And quit with the reviews! They don’t matter,” he said. “People just tune in because they want to see the stars, or because someone told them it was interesting.”

“
Butterface.
”

“Shut up,” said Dave. “Word of mouth matters. Ad campaigns matter. Name recognition matters. Not reviews. Not for TV.”

“I know.” I pulled onto the exit for Ventura Boulevard and then stopped at the light. “So how bad is it?”

“Hang on,” Dave grumbled. I waited, my heart beating painfully, while he accessed his iPhone and then hummed as he read. “It’s actually not terrible,” he finally reported. “I’ve seen worse. The
Times
thinks you’re solid.
Variety,
not so much.”

“So is there any kind of consensus?” I asked, thinking that if all the critics said the same thing—that Cady was terrible, that Penny was written too broadly, that the music wasn’t right or the laugh track was too intrusive—it would actually be helpful. I could fix the things that everyone agreed were wrong. But as I suspected and Dave confirmed, there was no agreement among the half-dozen outlets that had reviewed the pilot. A few of the critics had loved Cady’s performance; a few had found it grating and lazy. For everyone who’d written that the show was cheesy and obvious, someone else had found it a charming throwback.
Everyone had picked on something different . . . and no one, I discerned, had said that it was great.

“Listen to this,” said Dave. “The guy at the
L.A. Times
says that the writing has ‘a tart sharpness’ and ‘a refreshing verve.’”

“Sounds like we’re a grapefruit,” I said. “And I feel a ‘but.’”

“Do you want to read them yourself?” Dave demanded.

“I promise you, I do not,” I said. The light changed, and I turned onto Ventura. My plan was to stop at Big Sugar Bake-shop to pick up a box of doughnut muffins for the writers’ room, and get to my office early enough to sit with a cup of tea and figure out what I’d say to all the people who had probably seen the same reviews I’d heard by now. “See you at the party?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Dave as I pulled up to the curb, plugged quarters into the meter, and walked into the store. The girl behind the counter smiled at me; the security guard, a guy named Cliff, didn’t look at me like I had a communicable disease; and I was feeling almost cheerful by the time the writers showed up. I greeted them with a calm look on my face and a box of baked goods in my hands. The truth was, the reviews might have been truly devastating if I didn’t know that at the end of the day I could go home to Dave and tell him all about it.

“So listen,” I began. “I know that some of the reviews have been a little mixed, and I’m sure you guys all know that they don’t really matter much. People in Connecticut or Ohio aren’t going to tune in or not tune in because of what
Variety
says. They’re going to tune in because they want to see Cady Stratton looking skinny, or because Pete Paxton’s a hottie, or because the promos were funny, or whatever they normally watch on Wednesday nights is a rerun.”

“Or because the batteries in their remote are dead, and they couldn’t change the channel even if they wanted to,” said George.

“Hey. People who can’t figure out their remotes count, too.
And the bottom line is this: We can’t worry about the things we can’t control.” I looked around the table, making eye contact with each one of them. “We did the best we could with what we had. And today we’re going to write the best script we can, and have the best run-through we can, and the best party. The rest of it’s out of our hands.”

“Will there be a moon bounce?” asked Sam, who evidently had confused
launch party
with
rave.

“No, but there will be an open bar, and a face painter.” I’d been surprised to learn that the network was not throwing us a premiere party. I’d assumed that they’d footed the bill for the catered bashes I’d attended at the start of both seasons of
Bunk Eight
I’d been around for, but the Daves had been quick to inform me that they’d paid the bills themselves. The network couldn’t afford to drop thousands of dollars on each new show, especially since the majority of them wouldn’t last past a season. So I’d unlimbered my pen and my checkbook and invited everyone, cast and crew and writers and spouses and their kids, knowing, even though it hurt to think about it, that the party I was planning could be both a celebration and a farewell.