The Real Real (8 page)

“Right! Because I promised entertaining and you delivered!” I pull my dripping hair up into a bun and reach for the doorknob. “See you out there, costar!”

A wide smile spreading across her face, she pauses her manic primping to throw her arms around me, and we both let out a mini-scream before I dart out to jog down the stairs.

Unpeeling my shirt from my damp bra, I round the corner as Kara turns from the wall of family pictures.

“Hey, Jesse! What’s up?” She smiles warmly.

“Hey. Not much.” I plop down on the couch, aiming for casual.

“I like your enthusiasm.” She laughs.

“Do you want some soda or water or something?”

Realizing she’s not joining me on the couch, I stand back up. “We just ordered a pizza, so . . . ”

“Oh, that’s sweet.” She drops a sidelong glance to the cell phone she angles up with her wrist. “But we don’t really have time for that.”

The microwave beeps from the kitchen, signaling Caitlyn’s masks are ready to be removed. “Sorry, let me just get that.” I turn for the kitchen with Kara at my heels.

“Yeah, so, Jesse, I’m sorry I haven’t been around for morning check-in this week, but there’s been a lot to get organized with the changes. We’ve
finally
got the whole thing figured out—we’ll keep following you in school docu-style. But on weekends we’re gonna kick it up a notch, and I’m just really—psyched—to get—filming.”

She smacks the Formica counter for emphasis.

“She’s in the cast?” I ask. Kara looks at me blankly as the timer beeps. “Caitlyn. You figured it out?”

“Can you—” She tilts her head at the microwave.

“Sorry.” I hit the “clear” button.

“I’ve managed to stave off a migraine for a week now, and I’m hoping to set a new record for myself, you know?”

“That sucks. I mean, that’s great? About the record?”

WHAT ABOUT CAITLYN?!

“So . . .” She purses her lips and tick-tocks her head.

“Right. Fletch is flying in as we speak, and he wants to meet with you first thing tomorrow. So, apologies, but we have to put a pin in Caitlyn for tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” So not. “But, what does that mean exactly?” I flash to us sticking a cartoon-sized safety pin into my best friend’s bum.

Kara shoves her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, her green down vest lifting around her ears, clearly getting impatient with me but trying to pretend she’s not. “It means I told Fletch your ideas and he was really psyched. And he’s the producer, and it’s a creative concept you pitched, Jesse, so it falls under his purview. I’m just the associate producer. But you gave everyone a ton to think about, and it really set us off on what I believe will be a totally compelling direction for our viewers. I’m just really psyched about it. They’ve tripled our crew, we got an award-winning cinematographer, and Fletch is 74

entrusting me with one of the biggest production budgets in the network.”

My heart rises and crashes with her every verb as a cold rivulet snakes down my neck from my dripping topknot.

“That’s great that you’re excited. I mean, I’m glad I could help. It’s just, Caitlyn’s upstairs—”

“You did more than help! Jesse, you
totally
saved this show.” Kara’s cell trills and she flips it open, her other index finger extending to me. Can she even open that thing without her other finger popping out—does it happen when she’s at home and she just finds herself pointing at her cat? “Yes, we’re on our way. . . . I know that, Ben.

Crap! Okay, we’re leaving right now. Yesyesyes, walking out the door.” She flips the phone closed and circles the table to put her arm around my shoulder. “Jesse.”

This is awkward. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow. I promise. Now we gotta move. We just figured this shoot out today, and we’ve got the whole scene set up. You gave us our A and B plotlines, but we gotta do a little C tonight, set the tone, establish dynamics.” She walks me back to the living room toward the front door.

“The van’s outside, so grab your coat—”

“I’ll just run and get Caitlyn; she’s almost ready.” I break from her to head up the stairs. “We’re hanging out—I can’t just leave her here.” But Kara grabs my wrist as her cell rings again.

“Jesse, no! We need to leave
now
. Right now. We’re risking running over.” She flips open her phone, keeping 75

her hand on my arm and kicking a pair of Mom’s boots from the drying mat over to my bare feet. “We’re here. . . .

Then start with Nico! I don’t know, the barrel curls.” She swipes up the boots and shakes them in my face to take.

“How about Caitlyn just watches?” I ask as I grab them, stuffing in my feet, trying to catch Kara’s eye as she pulls open the front door into the dark night and waves to the street.

“See?” she calls past the porch. “She’s right here! We’re coming right now.”

“Hey, guys.” We both turn to see an impressively Blake Lively-ed Caitlyn descending with restrained casualness from the top stair. I beam with pride morphing back into panic as Kara gives a dismissive wave her way before planting one UGG on either side of the threshold to clap at me,

“Let’s! Go! Let’s! Go!”

Caitlyn’s made-up face freezes. “What’s up, Jess?”

“Um, apparently I have to go shoot some scene somewhere—” The van starts to emit a series of long honks.

“But Fletch is really psyched about you, and he’s going to meet with me tomorrow about it so—” Kara tugs me onto the porch and slams the door as I scream, “Watch the funny one! I’ll be home for the scary! I promise!”

REEL 6

Two hours later, while someone wraps my hair around a huge curling iron one strand at a time, Kara’s words—

psyched
—
new direction
—
A plot, B plot, C plot
—circle through my head as I try to piece together evidence that I’m going to get the answer I want—
we
want. “Can I just ask?” I toss out into the chaotic mass of powdered pigments and aerosol thickening the air in the trailer. “Why I have so much makeup on just to go into a spa where they’re going to take it all off?”

“Welcome to the business, sweetie,” Tandy, the makeup maven, mutters. “And you . . . are . . . done. Open.”

I lift my heavy lids to see a magazine cover staring back in the yellow reflection. Wow. I bat my fake lashes a few 77

times before raising my hand to touch my bronzed cheekbones. But before I can confirm that’s me in there, it’s swatted.

“No touching. From now on there is no touching your face. Ever. Are we clear?”

I open my glossed lips to answer and am met with a blast of hairspray directly to the back of the throat that proceeds to hiss around my head in slow motion like I’m the cornered cockroach in the kitchen who
just . . .

won’t . . . die
. I hear the trailer door swing open, and a waft of crisp air reaches me through the sticky haze covering my nostrils.

Kara jogs up the steps into view and starts clapping her hands again rapidly, like a cheerleader. “Oh my God! You guys look
amazing
! This is
perfect
. Fletch is going to
flip
.”

Nico, looking like the
Harper’s Bazaar
version of herself, tugs out her earphones and hops from her chair like she does this every day. Which she probably does. Which would explain why no amount of Prickly Pear–subsidized John Frieda Brilliant Brunette adds me up to that. Melanie looks to her beauty handlers for clearance before following suit in the knee-high suede boots Diane’s dressed her in. I stand, unsteady in the white wookie boots she’s insisted I wear, and tug self-consciously at the fitted cream cashmere turtleneck that hugs my skintight white cords.

“Jesse,” Kara murmurs in disbelief.

Even Nico raises an eyebrow. “You look good,” she bestows matter-of-factly.

“It’s those cheekbones, the profile,” the woman sliding the pointy end of a comb into my hair offers as she lifts my roots in painful little tugs.

“All right, ladies!” Kara shoves her fist into the air and yelps. “We’re ready for the first shot of your new reality!”

Our new reality? Nico and Melanie exchange a look of excited anticipation.

After shrugging on our assigned coats and having our copiously lacquered waves lifted gingerly out and over, we fall into line behind Kara down the steps of the trailer and up the walk, through thirty or so added crew members, to Melanie’s mom’s spa. Well, Melanie’s mom’s spa’s “new reality,” which, apparently, is midday instead of—CR AP!

“Kara!” I shuffle awkwardly through the shoveled snow as our threesome parts a clump of teamsters tending to the bulky black equipment. “Kara, I have to call Caitlyn and tell her we’re running late. Can I please have my cell back for just one sec before we do this? What time is it even?” I look back to Nico and Melanie, but they just shrug.

“I told you the last three times you asked, no phones on set, Jesse. Unless we need a call or text to be part of a scene and then we’ll give you an assigned one. Network rule. I have to have this footage for Fletch to watch tomorrow.

Just work with me. Please?” Kara snatches a megaphone from a canvas folding chair, even though we’re right beside her.
“Okay! You three go stand by the door and wait
for my cue. Remember, it’s just a fun Saturday girls’

day out. You’re swinging by the spa to hang and catch
79

up from the crazy week at school. We want it just really
friendly and girly. Girl time, okay? Natural girl time.”

She deposits us at the door and kick-runs through the snow to the shadows while somebody scurries behind her with a broom to smooth out her tracks.
“Okay, everyone!

And . . . action!”

I scan the red-nosed faces staring expectantly at us.

Screw it.

“What time is it?” I ask into the lights.

Melanie tsks me under her breath.

“
Don’t
look out here at us, Jesse! And . . . action!”

“What time is it in real life?” I ask again, sweating into my borrowed cashmere.

“Three minutes after ten!” Ben yells from behind his camera.

“Thank you!”

“Cut!”

“Jesus Christ,” someone groans.

“Jesse, I don’t want to be stern,”
Kara calls sternly into her megaphone.
“But the longer this takes, the longer you’re here. Got it?”

“Sorry, just—”

“Girl time. Go.”

Nico springs to life. “Melanie, I can’t wait for a pedicure, can you?”

“Totally!” Melanie says, pushing open the red door, beyond which the three of us are dumbfounded to find the brilliantly lit spa abuzz with attractive women we’ve 80

never seen before getting services at every station. I hold my breath for them to break into a coordinated dance number, complete with rolling nail carts. We exchange glances before Melanie recovers. “Hey, Mom!”

Mrs. Dubviek steps stiffly from around the desk, her blond hair wrapped in a twist as tight as her smile. She has on a variation of the same outfit she wears to science fairs and football games, her leopard-print bolero matching the leopard-print pockets on her Just Cavalli jeans.

I always imagine her at the Cavalli store, in her clipped Eastern European accent saying, “No, no, no, just give me whole thing—underwear, bra, socks, I take it all.” It’s her own personal Elle-Woods-grows-up-and-marries-a-Latin-American-dictator aesthetic. “Melanie, Nico, and—”

“Jesse,” I jump in as she has one arm around Nico and one around Melanie and has never talked to me a day in her life. “Hi, Mrs. Dubviek.” In her defense, I’ve never set foot in her spa. CVS self-pedis all the way—ugh, Caitlyn . . .

“We’re so ready for our pedicures; what’s the hot color this week?” Nico drops her head onto Mrs. Dubviek’s padded shoulder, the sweet, almost private gesture eliciting a softening in Mrs. Dubviek’s taut face.

“How about nice classic Chanel Redcoat?”

“CUT!”
Kara’s voice booms into the spa with a godlike echo. Everyone freezes.
“Where’s the new Essie color?

We’re supposed to place that! Someone place that!”

The teamsters in dirty down jackets and baseball hats swoop in around us while two guys in skinny jeans and 81

bowl cuts follow behind them on their hands and knees, mopping at the tracked-in snow with towels.

Mrs. Dubviek squeezes Nico’s chin and then wipes the bangs out of her daughter’s eyes. “This is good job. Your cousin in Ukraine work herring factory. I proud of my girls.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Melanie says.

“Thanks, Mamma D,” Nico chimes in. “I’m going to run to the bathroom. Can I use the office?”

“Of course, Nikita.”

“Can I use your phone?” I add while we’re making requests.

“Over there.” Melanie points to the front desk. “But I don’t think Kara wants you making calls—”

“Great, thanks!” I race around the faux-marble console and, ducking down, pound in my home number before anyone can stop me.

“O’Rourke residence.”

“I am sooo sorry. This sucks! Do you want to go home?”

“How? On your skates? My mom dropped me off, remember? She’s doing the night shift at the hospital. And I’m not biking uphill on this ice, so don’t even suggest it.”

“Right. Crap. Well, we’re finally shooting this thing, so it shouldn’t be that much longer. Do you want to watch the other movie?”

“And get freaked out by myself?!”

“Jesse!”
Kara booms into the bullhorn, and I stand up 82

to see the entire spa floor staring at me.
“We’re rolling!”

“What the hell?” Caitlyn says. “Who’s yelling at you in surround sound?”

“Gotta go. Watch the movie! I’ll be there soon!”

But soon doesn’t come. Between the humming “daylight,”

the clocks perma-set to one thirty-two p.m., and the desperate caffeinated perkiness of a room full of professional extras, time has stopped altogether.

“I’m gonna break out,” Nico listlessly observes from where she reclines on her treatment table. I loll my towel-wrapped head, gazing past Melanie to watch Nico hold up a mirror, inspecting a face that has been cleansed, masqued and then made up along with ours no fewer than eight times.