Reality Jane (19 page)

“Really? Well, let me take a crack at it.” Dominic looked earnest.

And before Grant could get a word in, Dominic dug his thumbs into Grant’s shoulder blades for a little boy-on-boy massage.

“Dude, that’s okay.” Grant glanced at me uncomfortably, with one of those “help-me” looks. “It’s not that bad. I just need to—”

“No, seriously, I’m good at this. Relax. You American boys— you’re so uptight.” Dominic kept massaging, his accent coming on thick.

Dominic was no American boy. He was some rich Italian kid linked in some way to royalty. How exactly? No one really cared. All that mattered was that he was dating Dagmar, and that it could have been serious—marriage serious. That was it. This show wasn’t about history or depth or anything even remotely intelligent. It was, as Karl had put it, “a voyeuristic sideshow for the drooling masses.” And I was just doing my job.

Still on break, and after a few minutes of what actually looked to be semi-therapeutic, Grant relaxed. So did the rest of us. I was thinking I could use a massage, too.
Where do I line up?
Then, just as all of us were getting comfortable with the fact that Dominic was trying to help our dear, sweet, handsome hunk of a cameraman, Dominic whispered something into Grant’s ear. Slowly, and ever so carefully, his hand drifted down,
down, down, and he goosed Grant.
Gross!

“Fuck you, dude,” Grant said. Pushing Dominic into a rack of shoes, our camera man seemed poised for a knock-down drag-him-out session with Bi-Boy.

“Hey, man, it’s all good,” Dominic said, brushing it all off with a nervous giggle. “You American men are so square.”

He couldn’t decide whether to be his signature smug self, or frightened for what scraps would soon remain of his manhood. Grant tightened his fist and reached back, ready to deliver a grand sacking. I shut my eyes out of fear for Dominic, but secretly hoped Grant would pound the bejeweled crap out of him. Just then, Princess Dagmar came barreling out of the change room with the $90,000 dress around her ankles, luminous branches draped around her neck, and a flesh-colored panty in between. She took one look at the scene and gasped.

“You sick mother fucker son of a bitch!” she shrieked, tearing the silver branches from her neck and attempting to stab them at Dominic’s eyeballs. “It’s over! Fuck you!”

Dagmar lifted a three thousand dollar trench coat off the rack, threw it around her shoulders, and ran out the door screeching expletives.

We all stood blinking in horror.

I hesitated, thinking.

“Follow her!” I soon yelled to Grant, as if his very manhood hadn’t just been assaulted. “Grab the damn camera!”

Within seconds, we were chasing Dagmar down the streets of Paris. Camera rolling. Dominic and dogs in tow, like real hounds released into the wild. I couldn’t believe it—a full-on sprint!

Grant was leading the pack with a 35-pound monolith on his shoulder and rolling at the same time. His audio mixer wasn’t far behind with a boom pole, like a spear, clearing the way through startled crowds. The camera assist was leaping small children with a forty-pound backpack and two camera bricks. After about eleven minutes of racing and weaving through traffic, people, statues, and fountains, we saw Dagmar dive into a taxi. For about another ten seconds, the guys thought it a
brilliant idea to do a foot-chase after her taxi.

Noooooooo!

About a full minute later, I jogged up to my team as they stood hyperventilating on a street corner.

“We can’t catch her,” Grant panted, gasping for breath.

“We tried,” I heaved, my lungs raw from the chase.

No way in hell was I running any more, even if we could catch her. I, for one, liked my lungs and wanted to keep them inside my body, where they belonged. In my entire life, I had never run so fast. I buckled over, my hands placed firmly on my knees to get air. I thought I might puke. Then, when Dominic walked up, I thought Grant might puke. Dagmar’s European boyfriend was actually a bi-friend, and not a very good one at that.

“Sorry, man,” he said, looking at Grant. “Guess the show is over,” he said, half-laughing and hailing a cab.

“Where are you going?” I said to Dominic. I was coughing and still catching my breath.

“Nothing left for me here,” and Dominic jumped into the cab without waving good-bye.

“Your dogs?” I said, pointing to the rabid little rodents on the sidewalk as they frothed from the only real walk/run of their lives.

“Give them to their bitch,” Dominic said coolly.

With a wave of indifference, he was gone.

O
n a brisk, sunny Los Angeles morning, Toni picked me up at the airport, over-the-top excited to have me back. We had “catching up to do.” In her mind, that meant several nights of consuming bone-dry martinis, chain-smoking in musty, cave-like nightclubs, and picking up twenty-year-old hotties driving Escalades.

At LAX, awaiting the arrival of my baggage, Toni took one look at Grant, then one look at me, then another look at the two of us, and her balloon began to slowly deflate. She would now be sharing me.

“Have you slept with him yet?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“Actually, no. Not sure we’re ready yet.” I had no intention of spoiling what Grant and I had together by blabbing about it.

“If the sex sucks, the relationship sucks. How do you know you like him?”

“Toni, I like him. . . a lot.”

I pulled my sweater tighter as Toni peeled away from the curb at the airport, the roof of her Beemer convertible tucked neatly into its compartment, the breeze whipping my hair onto my face.

“What if he has a small shlong? That’s grounds for Dumpsville,” she said, wagging her finger at me, completely certain of the truth behind her statement.

“He doesn’t,” I said.

“What about Alex-hotty-host? You like
him
. You should give
him
a chance!”

“He’s done,” I said, wondering if that was true.

“Why? What happened?” Toni’s face contorted in disappointment. “I’ve been prancing around here, proud of your scandalous behavior. And now you’ve gone all goody two-shoes on me and settled for just
one
man? Oy! I give up.”

“Well, first, he has a girlfriend. And, second, I heard from one of the chambermaids that she’s like eighteen.”

“So?”

“So, he’s like thirty-six.”

“So? And what the hell does a chambermaid know?” Toni grunted. “Next thing you know, you’ll be consulting
Star
magazine for stock tips. Anyway, you should at least confront him before you dump him,” she said as we sped down Lincoln Boulevard toward my apartment.

It had all happened so fast. The show ended—or should I say collapsed—in Paris after Dominic leapt out of the closet. Grant, the boys, the mutts, and I were picked up in a van about an hour later and driven back to base camp, where an emergency meeting was called. Grant and I were at the center of it, explaining in detail our ridiculous day. The after-party, which at this point was all I really cared about, was about to become an after-thought, when Naomi decided to end the show on a high note and broke the bank with an elaborate bash featuring endless amounts of booze. This is where I discovered Alex’s duplicity. Mid-shot, the sleazy French maid, who had had her eye on Grant, revealed that Alex and she were “amis,” and that he had told her all about his 18-year-old Slovakian model-girlfriend who lived in Milan hauling in $3,000 a day, and that they were still together. I wanted to slap him, but I couldn’t—he’d already caught a plane back to LA for a gig starting the next day.

This was not altogether horrible. I still had Grant, and Grant was certainly no consolation prize. Before hearing any of the Alex-related rumors, I had been leaning toward Grant as the man to choose. Our van ride back from Paris put me over the top. He was scrumptious, and very much a gentleman. Plus, he was the commitment type. I could just tell. He and I sat alone in
the backseats while the other two crew members, up front, played video games, the heirs’ pooches Tofu and Steak nestled blissfully on their laps. It was probably the happiest those dogs had ever been—they weren’t stuffed into a purse or choking on dried sea-kelp doggy bones.

Finally, with some alone time, Grant and I got to know each other. He told me about his surf trips, his three years in Chile on an oregano farm, his family, his start in the biz, working his way up the ranks as a camera tech, and now owning and running a small company with a full set of camera gear and lighting equipment. There was nothing about him I didn’t like. Not one single red flag appeared.

At one point during the drive, he stopped to let one hand drift across my chin, while the other pulled my body tight against his. I’d forgotten whether or not he was a good kisser—I couldn’t remember from our drunken night together. But in this pristine moment, in the back of a white crew van, it was all coming back to me: his gentle touch, his meandering kiss. It was sexy and intimidating, and probably wrong to let it happen here in the van, with people and dogs only inches away. But I acquiesced, hoping the rattle of a van, bouncing on its hinges, would drown out the sound of our kisses.

“More,” I whispered, unveiling my sultriest tone.

Grant pressed his lips against my ear and communicated to me in an exquisite fusion of kissing, breath, and whispers. I soaked it all in. After much smacking and twisting, we finally pulled away and stared at each other, cheeks touching, my legs resting on his. Content.

After the show ended, Grant and I spent two extra weeks touring France. With Craig, for the most part, replaced, and Alex mostly forgotten, I had in Grant a man who was better than any before him. Now, my only issue was that itty-bitty thing called a career.

As far as I could tell, I was unemployed. Karl had already lined up his producers for the edit suite, and I hadn’t talked to Naomi in ages. She had been too busy.

The honeysuckle glistened as Toni pulled her car into the driveway of my sunny one-bedroom. For the first time ever, Los
Angeles felt like home and not some temporary stopover. I couldn’t wait to settle in and have a little girl-talk with Toni while sipping wine on the porch.

As I dragged my bags up the front walk, the phone rang. I stopped to suck in the moist salt air—we were a mere seven blocks from the beach.

Never one to miss a call, Toni fumbled to get the key in the door as quickly as she could, and ran to grab my phone. “Jane, it’s for you,” she said, disappointed.

“Who else would it be for?” I laughed.

I gently placed the phone on my ear and gave a soft “hello,” assuming it was Grant calling to say that he missed me already.

“J. . . a. . . n. . . e?” the caller said in a high-pitched drawl, the grating hum of an eleven-year-old boy entering puberty. “How are you, Sugar Blossom?” It was Danny. “I have great news. Karl wants you to produce the wedding! I’ll be supervising to make sure everything’s perfect! I’m so excited.”

Supervising?

“What wedding? How did. . .? Are you. . .?”

Danny, please tell me you’re not suddenly my boss!

I cleared my throat in an attempt to understand. “So, wait. . .” I was about to launch into the whole
supervising
thing. Then it dawned on me.

“Dagmar and Dominic are still Quitsville, right?”

“Honey,” he said condescendingly, “Sally and Matt. The assistants. One of the surveillance guys, in an act of brilliance, recorded them the entire month in France. We’ve got reams of footage of the little lovebirds together. So Karl persuaded Matt to propose to Sally, and now the network wants to pay for their wedding. It’s a great twist for our show. We have our happy ending. It’s the big payoff.”

“What?”

“Yeah, the network saw our killer surveillance footage and dished out a million dollars for the wedding. For. . . the. . . rights! It’s going to be a two-hour special that airs after our last episode.”

“
A million dollars
?” I said, still stumbling over my words. I was completely floored. “
Two-hour special
?”

First of all, it was my “act of brilliance” that had recorded the two little lovebirds. Second, who gets a million dollars and two hours of primetime to tie the knot just for showing up?
I wanted to say all this, but nothing came out.