As Seen on TV (26 page)

He shrugs. “I can’t see anything anyway.”

I lie on my back so I can’t see myself in the new mirror above the new dresser (recent Stark’s purchases). “It starts small and then blows up. It’s horrible, Steve. Trust me. I know about this. I get them all the time. I’ve been getting them since I was a little girl.”

His eyebrows gather in confusion. “What are you talking about? We’ve been together a year, and you haven’t had one.”

Yes I did, I just didn’t tell you. “I
used
to get them all the time. Where’s my medication? I need to put on my medication.”

The earlier you put on the cream, the faster the abomination self-destructs. Where is it? I jump out of bed and search through the medicine cabinet, trying to locate it amidst Steve’s chaos. Two empty spray deodorant cans. Two? I toss them both into the garbage can. A razor without the cap. Does he not know how dangerous that is?

“Steve, do you think you could tidy your stuff in the medicine cabinet? I can’t find anything.”

I need to find my medication
now.
I have to apply the cream
immediately
or it won’t work. Every second counts! The instructions say to start using it when you first experience the tingling. What if the tingling started when I was asleep? What if it’s been tingling for hours?

“You have to relax,” Steve says from the other room.

“There’s no time to relax.” Here it is, sandwiched between the cotton balls and my never-opened bottle of nail polish remover. Why struggle with the removal myself when I can have a manicurist do it?

I apply it liberally (translation: smother) to my top lip and then return to the bedroom.

Steve is sitting up in bed, smirking.

“I’m glad you’re amused. This could get me eliminated.” Alcohol is a herpes no-no. What if there’s a beer-guzzling contest?

Shit. What if there’s a kissing contest?

“You don’t think this whole thing is hokey?” He makes his voice two octaves lower. “Who will be the Ultimate Party Girl?”

“Is that your talk-show-host voice?”

He rubs his hands together gleefully. “Yup. What d’ya think?”

“Needs work.”

“What are the challenges? Who can drink the most shots without breaking a nail, while dancing blindfolded on the bar? Are you going to train?” He laughs hard, holding his stomach.

Luckily I have not shared my week’s agenda. I’d never hear the end of it. “I’m glad you’re amused, but I have to tell you, I have no intention of losing. Remember the prize? Five thousand cash is nothing to sneeze at.”

“And getting to host the next
Party Girls
means nothing, right?” His face turns serious. “So, if you win, will I be allowed to exist? How long are you supposed to be single?”

“I don’t know,” I answer testily. “I couldn’t exactly ask them, could I?” I don’t want to talk about this now. I know
where this conversation is heading, and I’m not really feeling up to the drive. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Why don’t you just take the Soda Star job and forget about this TV stuff already?”

At least I told Steve about one of my e-mails. “How can I work for a company that screwed me over like that? No way. And I don’t even think I want to work in new business development.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to win
Party Girls.
Be the host.” I want to be someone tabloid reporters consider worthy of their film. I want to get fan letters. Loads and loads of them that cram up the mailbox. I want to get into a role, really get under the skin of a character. At Panda I was getting tired of developing products and then handing them off to someone else to manage. I want to see the character through. Grow with the character. If the host thing doesn’t work out, I think I’d be perfect for a sitcom. That way I can grow a little bit each week.

“Last month you were too nervous about applying for a manager’s position because you didn’t think you had enough experience. This month you want to host your own show?” He cracks his neck.

“I have a little more self-confidence these days, I suppose.”

Steve’s eyes are zigzagging around the room, and I can tell he’s thinking. “Will the new
Party Girls
be in New York? They won’t want to try something different?”

Oh-oh. I take off the shirt I slept in and, on the move to the bathroom, drop it into the hamper. “Did you see that, Steve? While you seem to have allocated the job to the floor, that is the basket officially responsible for collecting our dirty clothes.”

“Are they shooting
Party Girls II
in New York?” He’s not letting me change the subject.

“Who knows? I’m sure I won’t win, and if I did, which is not going to happen, they said no matter where we are, even L.A., I could come back to New York whenever I want.”

“L.A.? You’re moving to L.A.?” His face turns bright red and he starts shaking it side to side frantically. “You’re not
really thinking of moving to L.A., are you? Sunny, didn’t you take this job to be with me?”

Naked, I lean against the wall. “It’s not a big deal,” I say and look him in the eye. His eyes look sad, and I can’t bear it. I look away.

“Yes, Sunny,” he says. “It is a big deal.”

For a second, neither of us speak.

“Steve, I love you, you know that. But this could be a huge opportunity. It’s only for a few months. I’m not going to waste my life just to make you happy.”

“Waste your life? How could you say that? When have I ever asked you to waste your life?”

“You have to learn to be a bit more flexible. You’re stuck living in New York because of the restaurant. Fine. I’ve always understood that. Now it’s your turn to be a little bit more understanding with me.”

I look back up at him, and he still has that pained expression. I can’t deal with this now. I’m stressed enough already. “We can worry about this when the time comes, all right?” Without waiting for an answer, I disappear into the bathroom and close the door behind me.

By Wednesday my face looks as if someone punched me in the lip.

I’m hideous. I refuse to leave the house (what if a tabloid photographer sees me? You never know. Where are the tabloid photographers? Why is it that not once has someone tried to snap my picture?). I spend the week training for all potential challenges that can be practiced from the confines of my apartment, such as memorizing maps of New York I find on the Internet, and practicing balancing techniques on the kitchen chair. I’ve even figured out how to practice the challenges that require outside appliances. For example, since I do not have a Jacuzzi, I make do with holding my breath in the bathtub while simultaneously kicking my legs to produce the required waves.

The majority of these preparations are staged when Steve is at the restaurant, leaving him unaware of my insanity.

I take a break three times a day, when TRS is showing reruns of
NYChase.
By the end of next week, I should be up to date with all three of the show’s seasons.

Matt is driving way over the speed limit trying to catch a bank robber, when Steve calls. “What are you doing?” he asks. He seems to have dropped the moving to L.A. issue for now.

Last month he would have assumed I was searching for jobs. Now he knows better.

“Practicing dancing blindfolded on the table.”

He chuckles. Then,
clink.
“Shit. I just broke another dish. What’s going on outside? Sounds loud.”

Matt’s siren is on.

“Car chase,” I say. “All the way down Houston.”

No way he wants to know what my new favorite show is. Fine, I’m a terrible girlfriend for ogling Matt on TV, but it could have been a lot worse. Sure, I replied to his e-mail (had to, didn’t want to be rude), but did I agree to meet him? No, I did not. In fact, I waited thirty-six hours to reply and then wrote:
We’ll see.

By Thursday evening the cold sore is a huge ugly volcano of repulsive deformed skin on my top lip.

I’m sitting on the tiled floor, emptying the bathroom garbage into a plastic grocery bag, when Steve returns from work. “What’s that?” he asks, poking his head into the bathroom.

“I’m glad you asked, honey. This is the act of transporting our waste from the bathroom to the garbage chute. I know you think the tissues and Band-Aid wrappers are biodegradable, but alas, they are not.”

“I meant, smart-ass, what’s on your face?”

“I’m trying out Islam.” I have wrapped one of Steve’s old bandanas over my mouth in order to cover my hideousness.

He crouches next to me on the bathroom floor. This is
Steve’s idea of cleaning: keeping me company while watching me do it.

He cracks his neck. “So you’ve given up on atheism?”

Way back, almost a year ago, I had referred to myself as an atheist. “Really?” he’d said, obviously shocked. “I’ve never heard anyone say that out loud before. I mean, I know a lot of people are, but aren’t you afraid to say it? In case you’re wrong?”

“No, silly,” I say now, tying up the garbage bag and placing the pail back next to the toilet. “You know how you’re more of a cultural Jew than a religious one? I’ve become a fashion Muslim.”

“What do you mean by ‘cultural Jew’?”

“It means you keep certain traditions, but you don’t really believe in them.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again. “What do you mean, ‘don’t believe in them’?”

“You don’t
really
believe that an all-powerful being named God said, ‘Let there be light and don’t mix milk with meat.’” I can feel my cover-up bandana slipping below my lip, but I don’t bother fixing it.

“Who says I don’t?”

“If you believed in all that, you wouldn’t have eaten a bacon cheeseburger at McDonald’s last week.”

“But I do believe. On the scale of believe and don’t believe I definitely tilt toward the do side. I may have stopped keeping kosher outside the restaurant, but I still believe in God.” He spots a discarded Q-Tip in the crack between two tiles, and lo and behold, picks it up and drops it in the garbage pail. “I think my understanding of God is a bit more general than Judaism allows for,” he continues. “Or maybe it does allow for it, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about taking a course.”

“A course? A school course? Like at NYU? A course about what?”

“About Judaism. About Christianity. About Buddhism. I’d
like to learn about all the different religions before coming up with my own version.”

I’ve been thinking he should take some classes, too. Maybe some business classes. In case he ever wants to turn Manna into a chain, expand across the country, make a fortune. “I didn’t know you were considering starting your own religion,” I say instead. The bandana is now around my neck, like a necklace. My lip is exposed.

“Is wanting to have a bit of…a bit of spirituality in your life so terrible?” Suddenly he laughs. “Do I sound like a hippy?”

I laugh with him. “All you need is love, a pair of Birken-stocks and some tie dye.”

“You really don’t believe in anything?”

I shake my head, slowly. “Try to stay alive as long as you can?”

“But doesn’t everyone need something to believe in? Some kind of deity?”

I shrug.

“Isn’t that sad? Believing in nothing?”

The truth is, in the past month I’ve been too possessed with the show to be sad. I’ve spent all my energy obsessing about how I look and how I’m perceived to have any left over to dwell on anything deeper.

Is that what fuels celebrity and fashion? The need to hide from the substantial in the superficial?

“Sometimes,” I say.

His eyes look right into me, flickering with love and hope and sadness, and he leans over to kiss me.

“I’m contagious,” I say, turning my head.

He gets my cheek.

By Saturday morning the cold sore is in its final stage.

“It’s a miracle!” Steve says as I gaze at my reflection above the bathroom sink.

“There’s still a scab,” I say. The scab is a brown layer of crust
about a quarter of the size of a fingernail, over what used to be the sore. The problem with the scab is that because of its color, it’s actually more noticeable than the previous fat-lip stage.

“Honestly, it’s kind of sexy. Dangerous-looking. Like you’ve been in a motorcycle accident.”

Fabulous. “Steve, do I want to go on television looking as if I’ve been in a motorcycle accident?”

“I’m not lying, I swear. I like it.”

“I’m ripping it off.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to rip scabs off. Aren’t they there for a reason?”

“It has to go. I can’t let anyone see me like this.”

He shrugs and leaves me to my surgery.

The problem with removing a scab, which I learned from once ripping one off my knee, is that it leaves a scar.

Do I want a scar on my lip for who knows how long? I’ll have to cover it with foundation and lip liner and always wear lipstick.

Do I want to have a scab on television?

It won’t be a huge scar.

I choose instant gratification and rip the sucker off.

With a tissue pressed to my lip to stop the blood, I call Carrie.

“Where’ve you been all week?” she asks.

“Hanging out. Not much. Car, what am I supposed to wear tonight? Regular slut outfit?”

“It’s not a good idea to change your style midseason,” she says.

“Any idea what we’re going to be doing?”

“I may have had a hand in planning tonight’s activities,” she answers coyly.

“You know what it is? And you’re not telling me? How can you not tell me? Do you know who’s on my team? Is it Miche?” I’m hoping it’s Miche.

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’d lose my job if anyone found out I told you.”

Time for my trump card. “But, Carrie, we’re practically family.”

She sighs. And then she giggles. “Okay, but if you tell any of the other girls I’ll kill you. And I’m only giving you one hint. That’s it. One.”

“Okay, fine, tell me.”

“Remember those running shoes I made you promise to never wear in public again?”