Ocean Beach (8 page)

“Come in, come in,” Max said, motioning with the unlit cigar. “Welcome to the inner sanctum.” He stepped back to allow them to enter the large sun-filled space.

The bedroom was the largest they’d seen in the house. It had a parquet floor, two closets, and a short hallway that led to a bathroom. But it was the room itself, or rather the room’s decor, that grabbed the eye and refused to let go. Two out of three bedroom walls were covered in a black-and-white-striped silk that had faded and yellowed over time. A turquoise silk chaise and a ladies’ dressing table in the same vibrant shade anchored one end of the room. The other had been turned into a sitting area that was dominated by a black leather recliner that had molded itself to Max Golden’s posterior and that faced a tabletop television. The walls were covered in framed black-and-white photos. Maddie tried but wasn’t able to make out their subject matter from where she stood.

Troy and Anthony stood next to their equipment, which had been set up across from the recliner and was currently aimed toward the bedroom door and them.

“I thought we agreed on a nine-thirty start,” Kyra said to Troy.

“Me too,” the cameraman said. He made a show of consulting his watch. “But it’s only eight-thirty now. Yet here you are.”

Madeline could actually feel Kyra wrestling for control. Dustin must have felt it too because he’d stopped waving his arms at Max and was craning his neck to look up at his mother. Avery and Deirdre stood next to each other, together but separate, watching the interchange with interest.

As always, Maddie wanted to step in and mediate, as she’d done when Kyra was a child, but Kyra was no longer a ten-year-old fighting with her younger brother. Or even the twenty-three-year-old who’d fallen in love with a movie star on her first feature film and come home pregnant and unemployed. Maddie held herself back. Ready, but back.

Kyra’s shoulders rose then fell as if she’d drawn in a breath and expelled it. Maddie hoped Kyra was counting to ten, or higher if necessary.

Maddie drew a breath, too, then slowly let it out and was relieved when Kyra said, “It looks like we both have to work on our time management skills.” Her tone turned less conciliatory. “I’m looking forward to talking with the network so that we can clarify who’s shooting what, when.”

Kyra unhooked Dustin from the harness, handed him to Maddie, then raised her camera to her shoulder. “In the meantime, maybe Max can tell us about his personal space. Assuming that hasn’t already happened.”

“No, we just shot his welcome.” The cameraman didn’t add that what he’d really wanted was their reaction, but then he didn’t have to.

“I love to see young people so intense about their work,” Max said with a wave of his cigar that drew all of their attention back to him. “I haven’t worked in years,” he said. “I finished out my comedy career playing lobbies full of retirees. And now I’ve got two cameras pointed my way.”
He shook his head as if in wonder, then shot Dustin a wink. “If Millie were here, we could do one of our routines. It never was the same without her.”

“I bet you two were fabulous,” Kyra said, moving toward Max. “Will you show me some of the photos on the wall?”

“Of course,” Max said, opening his arms wide.

“If it’s okay with you, Max, I’m going to scope out the bathroom and make a few notes,” Avery said. “And I think Deirdre wants to get photos of the bedroom suite. It looks custom made.”

“I believe so.” The old man smiled. “Millie loved nice things. She had an interior designer friend who used to practically live here.”

Without further discussion, Kyra began to pan her camera across the photos while Madeline held her grandson close, trying her best to keep him out of camera range. Kyra’s camera froze mid-move. “Oh my gosh,” Kyra said. “Is that Frank Sinatra?” The camera panned to the next photo. “And Jackie Gleason?”

“Why, yes, of course,” Max said, somehow managing to play to both cameras. Deirdre stopped shooting photos of the furniture and came over to stand next to Madeline. They all strained forward to see.

“Millie and I made regular guest appearances on
The Honeymooners.
And we opened for Frank at the Fontainebleau a couple of times.” He beamed at them.

Madeline could hardly believe what she was seeing. There were photos of Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis standing next to an impossibly fresh-faced Max and a small blond woman, who had to be Millie. In another picture Max and Millie stood with Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, arms entwined, smiles lighting all four faces.

“Desi went to high school here on Miami Beach, though nobody was that wild about him. Lucy and Millie went to the same hairdresser,” Max explained. “And they played canasta occasionally.”

“So you actually knew all these celebrities?” Kyra asked as she continued to shoot.

“Of course,” Max said. “Miami Beach isn’t all that big. Back then it was even smaller in lots of ways.” He adjusted the belt of his smoking jacket and his smile slipped a bit. “We weren’t as big, but we were in the same business.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal. “There are old films of a lot of those years somewhere. If I can find my projector and screen, we can pop some popcorn and have a movie night.”

“We’re in,” Kyra and Maddie said while Avery, Nicole, and Deirdre chorused their agreement. Dustin kicked his feet happily behind their protective barrier. The Lifetime crew filmed on.

Kyra stood in the grocery-store checkout line. She’d already helped her mother unload a bulging cart full of cleaning supplies and now waited impatiently for the checker to finish scanning their items and for the bag boy to pack them up.

Dustin was hanging in his canvas carrier, his head tucked beneath her chin. With her free hand she scrolled down her iPhone, but although it had been almost four days since Kyra had started trying to reach her, there were no unread messages or missed calls from Lisa Hogan at Lifetime. It was starting to become apparent that the lack of response was not an accident.

As she waited she scanned the rack of celebrity gossip magazines. Her irritation kicked up a notch as she studied the airbrushed photos of the already beautiful people. Beneath the photos were superficial articles designed to make celebrities seem like real people with regular problems. Which was absolutely ridiculous. Kyra knew from
her embarrassingly short career in the movie business that by the time a celebrity made the cover of any one of these magazines, any semblance of their original selves had already been surgically removed.

She and Dustin had appeared on the cover of
People
and in the pages of other less stellar rags, but
her
photos had not been touched up in the slightest. They’d appeared under nasty headlines like
YOUNG FILM ASSISTANT TRIES TO BREAK UP HEARTTHROB’S MARRIAGE
and later
DANIEL DERANIAN “LOVE CHILD” PATERNITY QUESTIONED.
She needed no reminders that the famous and outwardly beautiful rarely looked as attractive when their true emotions and motivations were displayed.

Kyra shifted Dustin slightly in the canvas carrier and tickled one of his feet before burying her face in his soft dark curls. He was the one good thing that had come out of her brush with celebrity.
Do Over
was her chance to build something for herself and her child; she couldn’t let anyone—not a cocky cameraman or a nonresponsive network executive—compromise that opportunity.

In the parking lot she buckled Dustin into his car seat and helped her mother store the bags in the back of the minivan. “Can you give me just a minute?” she asked Maddie. “I’m going to try Lisa Hogan again. I can’t take this standoff with Troy Matthews. I’m tired of trying to hide Dustin from him.”

“Go ahead.” Maddie leaned over to rub noses with her grandson. “We’ll be right here. Won’t we, big guy?”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Kyra walked around the corner of the building wishing that Karen Crandall, the development director who had originally offered them the show, was still at the network.
Although they’d only spoken with Lisa Hogan a few times, it had become increasingly clear that her vision for
Do Over
had little in common with her predecessor’s.

In a shady spot beneath a palm tree, Kyra dialed Hogan’s phone number. She was preparing yet another firm but succinct message, when the network head answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Yes,” Lisa Hogan replied.

Kyra felt a brief burst of nerves and shoved it away. This show was too important to all of them to jeopardize, but she was not going to spend a whole summer being screwed with.

“Hi, Lisa. This is Kyra Singer. Down in Miami.”

“Oh,” Hogan said. “I thought this was…Never mind. Hold on just a minute.”

“No!” Kyra practically shouted. “No, don’t hang up or put me on hold. I’ve been trying to reach you most of the week. There’s a problem down here.”

“Oh?”

Well, at least she’d gotten the woman’s attention. Though not necessarily in a good way. Still, if she didn’t speak she’d have no one to blame but herself.

“Yes,” Kyra hurried on. “It’s your camera guy, Troy. He’s shooting without my permission. We weren’t expecting and we don’t need a crew here. I thought you were happy with what we did at Bella Flora. Isn’t that why we’re here in Miami to…” She paused to regroup. She needed to stay direct and on target. “I understood we were shooting a show about renovating a really great home, but this is a—”

“Reality show,” Lisa Hogan finished for her. “I know. Lock a bunch of disparate people up in a stressful situation
with a camera rolling and watch what happens. It’s genius. And relatively inexpensive.”

“But—”

“Reality shows are huge right now, Kyra, and so is home renovation,” the network head said. “
Do Over
is a win-win as far as we’re concerned.”

“But…” Kyra’s stomach was churning from a particularly awful combination of horror and humiliation. How had she let this happen?

“Is there something else?” Hogan asked. “Because I’ve got someone waiting on the other line.”

“I can shoot what we need,” Kyra said. “We don’t need the crew. I don’t want—”

“The crew stays.” Hogan’s tone was crisp and firm.

“Then I need them to answer to me.” Kyra was scrambling now, looking for a way out. If she couldn’t be calm and collected, she’d have to settle for firm. “I can’t have them just shooting whatever they want whenever they feel like it. They’ll disrupt everything. No one will be able to relax long enough to focus on the work.”

“That’s a no,” Hogan said. “Troy and Anthony are network employees, so we really can’t have them answering to a freelancer. And especially not to a freelance talent.”

“I’m not talent,” Kyra said. “I’m a videographer and I understood that I was the show’s producer.”

“Sorry,” Hogan said, though it was clear she wasn’t. “I didn’t see that anywhere in the notes Karen Crandall left me or the contract you all signed. Troy and Anthony have their instructions and Troy will be feeding footage to my office on a regular schedule.”

Kyra took a deep breath and thought, briefly, about
counting, but she knew she’d be in the thousands before she cooled down. Lisa Hogan would have already hung up.

At the moment she was zero for two. It was time to focus on the most important part of the conversation.

“My son can’t be a part of that footage,” Kyra said. “I don’t want him on camera.” She stared out over the parking lot.

There was a silence. And then: “You’re joking right?”

Kyra didn’t answer. Partly because she couldn’t.

“Well, I’m afraid that belongs in the land of ‘not gonna happen,’” Hogan said. “Your child is Daniel Deranian’s son.” She said the last words slowly and with relish. “That alone will have people tuning in. I assumed you realized that was one of the reasons you were offered this show.” She no longer seemed in a big hurry to hang up. In fact, Kyra was getting the uncomfortable feeling that Lisa Hogan was enjoying herself.

“There have to be some camera-free zones,” Kyra continued. “I’ll shoot them myself so that footage exists, but your guys will have to acknowledge that certain places and times will be off-limits.”

“No,” Lisa Hogan said blithely. “That’s not going to work out either.”

Kyra’s stomach stopped churning. The anger was back and there was far too much of it even to feel her stomach, let alone what might be taking place inside it.

“The upstairs bedrooms and baths are off-limits,” Kyra said clearly. “And we get sunset toasts to ourselves.” She named the tradition her mother had started in the grimmest days at Bella Flora, when they’d each had to come up with at least one good thing that had happened that day.

“Oh no,” Hogan said. “I don’t think so.”

Kyra closed her eyes. The phone turned slippery in her sweaty palm as she prayed that the others would never find out about the gamble she was about to take with their futures.

“We get those camera-free zones and times,” Kyra said on held breath, hoping that twenty-four was, in fact, too young to stroke out. “Or we walk.”