Up & Out (2 page)

Jen’s number comes up on the display of my phone. “Hey.”

“I pushed it back,” she says. “Everything else is moved, too.”

“So, I’ll be a half hour behind all day.”

“Right. Janice just walked in.”

“So we can expect John in a respectable five minutes?”

“I’m sure he’s circling the block as we speak,” Jen comments. “Oh yeah, and you’re going to the affiliate party tonight, right?”

“Shit, I forgot about it.”

“I keep telling you to get a PalmPilot, but you insist on Luddite living.”

“I’m not even sure what that means. Where’s it at?”

“Party space at the Seaport. A trek and a half. I’ll e-mail you.”

“Seriously. I guess I have to go and schmooze with bald fatties from the Midwest.” Pause. “Sorry.” Jen was from Min
nesota. “And I’m never going to have a chance to get home. I have nothing to wear.”

“This is why we have H&M. I’ve got to go, Meg’s on the other line. I’ll see you in about twenty.”

She has a point, but when would I find time to get to H&M? My phone rings again. Outside line. Should I pick up? Caller ID makes me scared of the phone. It could be someone I didn’t want to talk to or it could be a solicitor. I take a chance.

“Rebecca Cole.”

“Re, it’s Beth.”

“And Kathy.” They are conference-calling me. They want details.

“Guys, I’m going to have a crazy day. I just found out I have a meeting in like fifteen minutes.”

“We just need the broad strokes,” Beth says a bit testily.

“Yeah, don’t be such a corporate whore. Everything with Rebecca is urgent these days, have you noticed, Beth?”

“Yeah,” Beth says. I can understand their interest, I just feel like I am playing beat the clock and won’t have time to hash it out.

“Okay, the basics, and I got to be quick for real. Divorce is final.” I start to hear them cut in with their opinions, but I have no time to analyze. “And the whammy, she is moving out of the city and up to Martha’s Vineyard.”

I can’t resist pausing for effect. It is too unbelievable.

“Has she lost her mind?” Kathy asks.

“She’s on antidepressants, I’m certain now,” Beth says. Beth prefers dabbling in nonprescription drugs, but enjoys knowing that other people have similar needs.

“I know,” I say. “I know.”

I allow myself one more moment with them and then I have to be a productive bee and get off the phone. They want to know what I am going to do about the apartment, but I haven’t decided yet.

“Don’t forget we have to look at bridesmaids dresses this weekend,” Kathy says. “Try not to plan a meeting.”

I hang up as they laugh. I am certain they will stay on the
phone and talk about it. Kathy is an accountant and this is her slow time, and Beth works at a music studio, hence the trendy crowd. I long for the days when I spoke to my friends three times a day and tried not to laugh too loud in my cube.

I am too young to be nostalgic, but it seems to me that I was much happier when my day was filled with hushed gossip with my friends rather than bullshit meetings on the half hour.

My first meeting of the day doesn’t go as well as I planned. Hackett claims to love what we did with the titles, yet he doesn’t like the font size. This is something he could have told us three meetings ago. But, because he’s the boss, he’s allowed to interject opinions whenever it suits him. And we have to deal. Now we are going to have to re-render everything. Janice’s smile fades, but I’m glad she is here to hear Hackett’s comments. I don’t want her to think these changes had been my oversight.

Janice and John go to work on fixing the problem. I hope their morning interlude was good so they don’t mind working very hard—but not so good that they get distracted with details. Jen and I start on the scripts. I thought we were meeting with Hackett again, but he decided he had another, more important, meeting. That can only mean he is going to decide he doesn’t like the scripts a few weeks from now when it will almost be too late to rewrite.

If only I could do everything, I could insure this shit didn’t happen. It is hard to have a tiny bit of control, which in the end amounts to nothing.

“Rebecca Cole.” I answer the phone while Jen is still in my office.

“Hey. It’s Tommy.” He must have talked to Jordan about Lauryn and wanted to see if I was okay about losing a roommate at my overpriced apartment.

“I’m fine.” I don’t want to stay on the phone long. Plus, I hate talking to him in front of people—it only leads to questions. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it yet.”

“Right,” he says. He doesn’t really seem that concerned, after all. “I was wondering if you had my
Matrix
DVD.”

I moved out almost a year ago, yet he constantly finds reasons to call me. At times, I am happily convinced he is still into me. At other times, I’m annoyed by it and want him to just leave me alone. Right now, I’m getting pissed that he’s calling about his stuff and not my feelings.

“No. I don’t. I would have found it by now. Check the hall closet. I bet it’s in there.” Jen looks up at me and then turns a page as if she’s really intently reading the script copy. I lower my voice. “Did Jordan tell you about the divorce?”

“Yep.”

“Well, did he tell you about Lauryn moving up to the Vineyard?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Were you a little bit curious as to what I was going to do with the giant rent?”

“Well, I guess so.” Herein lay the problem in our relationship. Sometimes we clicked and other times we needed a translator to communicate. I hear an electronic sound in the background. Tommy tries to cover it up by speaking really loud and fast. “So what
are
you going to do?”

“Are you playing Grand Theft Auto III right now?” I yell so loud Jen jumps. I can’t believe him. You’d think he could focus for a five-minute phone call.

“Uh, yeah.” I hang up on him. When we were dating, we promised never to hang up on each other, but now that we’ve broken up there are no rules. I smile at Jen. Her eyebrows rise over the pages she is reading.

“So, getting back to the scripts…” I say.

We are in a meeting actually called the War Room. I don’t know who thought of that name, but it pretty much sets the tone for bloodshed. It happens every Thursday and it almost always lasts too long and accomplishes very little. Production and Programming duke it out about their priorities and resents one another and wastes the time that everyone needs.

Even the seating in the meeting is combative. The round table has too many chairs around it, so everyone bumps arm
rests and apologizes constantly. Programming stakes their claim early. I am always running late, but once I managed to show up fifteen minutes early and they were already there, plotting their means of attack.

This week the programming department has decided to be sour at me for not having all the scripts I was supposed to have. As punishment, they decide they need to preempt episodes of Esme for sporting events they seem to be making up on the spot. How can they know that the candlepin bowling championship is going to happen on the day the episode airs where Esme figures out who vandalized the library? Jen tries to argue with them, but I shake my head. They are Programming, they can do anything. They confidently sip their coffees knowing they have people at
TV Guide
on speed dial.

Eventually, the programmers grow tired of toying with us and decide to attack Don Beckford, the producer of another new show,
Gus and the Gopher.

“Yeah, we’re completely on schedule,” Don says. “There’s no way we won’t have thirteen eps ready to roll out in September. There was an article on the type of animation we’ll be using in
Tyke TV
magazine. Did anyone see it?”

Don is handsome in a way that is not completely trustworthy. He is in a constant frenetic state. He practically bounces when he talks and he always has a way of selling his show. (I kind of admire him.) He also refers to the trade rags a lot. Who has time to read the latest issue of whatever stupid magazine the industry puts out to pat itself on the back? Not me.

But the programmers did and they loved to brag about it—but today they aren’t taking it. Cheryl, who has some position of imagined power and a haircut to go with it, clears her throat.

“You may have the animated aspects intact, but you don’t have a live action host yet. The show is called
Gus and the Gopher.
Without Gus, it’s just a gopher.”

“Right,” Don says. He is preparing to use a lot of words to say nothing. “Well, we are in the process of casting at this point. The animation is going to be a lot harder to deal with than the host.”

“Can we see who you’ve narrowed it down to?” Cheryl asks. She definitely has an attitude.

“I really don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you yet, but I can assure you we’ve narrowed it down to three terrific personalities. They are going to be like nothing kids have ever seen.” They are doing a complicated dance. Don was hired away from the Cranium Network to create a kids’ show that looked like all the ones he had already produced for Cranium. No one seemed to notice or want to admit that
Gus and the Gopher
sounded a lot like
Bob in the Barn
and
Amy’s Animal Adventures.

“Well, get us a tape as soon as you can,” Cheryl says. Programming always wants a tape.

“Well, I have a three o’clock,” Sarah says. She is another programming henchman. “I think that’s all for today.”

We file out of the conference room. I race to the bathroom on my floor. All the programmers will be in theirs. The problem with seeing them in the bathroom is that they try to talk about work and get you to agree to do things for them when you just want to pee in peace.

It’s almost three o’clock and I still haven’t had lunch. I have a four-thirty meeting and I was supposed to complete segment two of episode ten so Janice and John could work on it. We have a process of getting episodes in and approved, so we can start doing the voice-over. I don’t want to be the one to get us off schedule. I also have to get something to wear tonight.

I grab some free coffee in the kitchen and add a ton of sugar. I open one of my drawers looking for a snack or a fabulous outfit I forgot about. I find some microwave popcorn and the spare pair of underwear I keep in my desk, just in case. (There haven’t really been any “cases” lately.)

I bring the popcorn into the kitchen and start making notes on the script while it heats up. Jen wrote this script and I’m impressed. I like getting a fresh perspective on Esme. It was hard for me to accept that other people were giving her a voice, or a look, like Janice and John have been doing with their animations of her.

“Hey, you.” I look up to see Claire Wylini, Director of Production Budgets, smiling at me. She is so flaky; Miss Nice-Nice—until you go a dollar over budget. Then she stops smiling.

“Hi.” She points to the clock.

“It’s almost time for our meeting.” She speaks in the singsong voice you might use to talk to a preschooler. She has a four-year-old and a two-year-old and each of them has their
own
nanny. Her children give her a certain amount of credibility.

People who work for kids’ TV are always trying to figure out ways into the minds of children. It’s kind of sick. Of course the further up the ladder you move the less in touch you are with kids. People tout that childlike creativity, but basically we’re adults trying to sell a product. Anyone in children’s television who has kids likes to reference them constantly. It’s some sort of badge of honor. They feel that their opinion is always correct and defend it with things like, “Well, my five-year-old would love that.” I suspect that some people have kids as a type of business insurance.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be there. Just finishing up a script. Popcorn?” I hold the bag out to her and shake it.

“No, thanks. You’re sweet. Okay. I’ll see you in the meeting.”

“Okay, see you. Bye-bye.”
Bye fucking bye?
I’m even talking like her. Who am I turning into? The day is mostly over and I haven’t done anything but go to meetings and comment on other people’s work. I’ve created nothing. I’ve done nothing.

Jen pokes her head in. “Mmm, that smells good.” She grabs a handful of popcorn. “Oh, you’re reading my script. How is it?”

“Really good. You did a terrific job. I only have a few more notes to make.” She grimaces. “Not big things, just continuity. We got to get to the meeting.”

After two more unproductive meetings I leave work to get something to wear. The crowd at H&M is horrendous, as usual. I weave through the tourists and club kids and find a see
through shirt with flower designs. I grab a tank and black pants. It’s a good thing I wore black shoes today.

The pants are too tight, even though they should be my size. I have to go back to the floor where hip-hop is blasting. It’s getting more and more crowded as people get out of work. Of course, the only other sizes of the pants I want are four and six. A preteen grabs a pair of the fours. Another reason teen girls rule the world—slim hips.

I bypass the skirts. I can’t deal with tights and my legs are stubbly (hey, I’m not dating anyone). I find more pants. These look like they would be even tighter. They don’t have any pockets in back, my butt is going to be huge. I take my size and the sizes one and two up from mine. I don’t want to think about how high into the double digits I am getting. I have no time to go to the gym, and besides, I hate going to the gym.

Now there is a line for the dressing room. I look at my watch. I’m never going to make it. I split the difference and grab the pants that were a size above mine. If they don’t fit I might as well just call it quits, anyway. I also grab a sweater, just because it’s cheap and I continuously laugh in the face of my increasing debt. The more I make, the more I spend. I still have college loans.

I take a cab down to the Seaport to save time. With traffic, it costs me an outrageous sixteen bucks—one whole plate of tempura. I’ll expense it. There is a pizza shop nearby. I smile at the guy behind the counter and ask if I can use the bathroom.