Reality Jane (28 page)

“We don’t do nose rings.” She smiled an un-smile. “You should know that. No interview should come back like that.”

“But the interview was softly lit, nice backdrop—”

“I said no nose rings.” She turned to walk away.

“But she didn’t have a—”

“Your subject had a nose ring.” She stopped walking, and her face looked angry. “It looks cheap.”

I racked my brain. Did she have the right girl?
Nose ring?
I turned to Corinne.

“It’s true,” Corinne whispered. “It was just a tiny stud on her left nostril. Sort of distracting. Don’t worry. Just make sure you catch it next time.”

“I didn’t even see it! It must have been miniscule,” I whispered back. The auditorium had quieted in anticipation of Ricky Dean’s arrival. “Besides, I have no right to remove that.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Corinne patted my leg. “Here’s the man.”

Ricky Dean walked toward center stage, his dark gray eyes staring out at the crowd. He was a formidable presence: six-foot four, broad-shouldered, black hair that molded to his scalp. His thin lips fit neatly on his face, which was neither smiling nor frowning. After forty-two years of walking the planet, he commanded instant deference. The chatter volume decreased to a murmur, then to nothing.

He smiled. “I don’t want this show to be good,” he said, enunciating every syllable. We all stared at him curiously. “I don’t want this show to be great.”

I cocked my head.
Where is this going?

He paused. “I want this show to be excellent.”

Me too!
I thought, forgetting about Meg and simply awed by
the
Ricky Dean.

“And if this show is going to be excellent, everyone in this room needs to be excellent. If even one of us is not excellent, we will fail! And
I
don’t fail.” He paused again for effect. “All of you
are here because you’re the best at what you do. We scoured the nation looking for the best of the best. But I know, as I look around at all your faces, that one-quarter of you won’t be here a month from now. You’ll be gone. Some of you do not have the will to be excellent. And that’s fine. If you don’t want to do what it takes, then go work somewhere else.

“But I know that most of you share my enthusiasm for what we’re creating. Something that television has never done before: change people’s lives. Their LIVES! Now, that’s something. And in order to do that, we have to give this show everything we’ve got. I know some of you have been burning the midnight oil, and trust me when I say, it won’t always be that way. But this is what we need to do now to be excellent!”

He had me. When he finished, everyone applauded loudly.

“Now get to work!” He clapped his hands together.

Meg ran to his side to commend him, her shoulder length fringe-cut swaying in sync. I envied their relationship. She was clearly his confidante, and probably the only person on the lot who regularly had his ear.

We shuffled out like loyal worker bees. I thought about his words. They had struck me deeply.
Excellence
. I had never considered what excellence really meant until that day—being the best, the very best. I vowed at that moment to never be in Mr. Dean’s
un-excellent
quarter.
Whatever it takes, I’ll do it! I’ll be the best damned producer on the lot!

Corinne grabbed my elbow as I walked away. “Whoa! That was amazing!” she said, her mouth gaping.

“He’s something else,” I said in agreement, gauging her mood.

Corinne and I had this awkward history that we both ignored, and this intense professional relationship that we couldn’t ignore. I knew she was a bit of a dragon, yet she had this girly side of her that bordered on gooey. Every day, part of my challenge was to figure her out. A part of me found her endearing. I liked her. And that was strange, given our beginning.

“I can’t believe I’m working on this show. I mean, how weird is that?” she continued in a child-like way. “It’s like, I still can’t even believe I’m working on a studio lot. It’s all so surreal!
We’ve come so far since
The Purrfect Life
.”

“I hear they’re pouring more money into Ricky Dean than any other new show,” I said. “He’s unproven on TV, so it’s extremely rare.”

“Get out!” she gasped, as if I’d confessed some deep secret.

“This show is costing zillions.”

“No friggin’ way!” she said, shaking her head.

I laughed as we strolled between the buildings, making our way back.

Suddenly, Corinne stopped me. “I’ve been noticing,” she said, taking a good close look at my face. “You could use a little Botox on your brow lines.”

Cue bad Sybill.

“Botox?”

“Yeah, Botox. Just on your forehead. Everything else looks great. I use it. See? No lines.”

“You really think I need it?” I said, wondering if I should have felt insulted.

“Just a little. It’s only Botox, baby,” she whispered in my ear. “I won’t tell anyone. We’ll go sometime. It’s totally painless.”

“
Hmmm
. I’ll think about it.”

We settled back at our desks. Corinne had perfect skin—not even the hint of an old crow stomping across her delicate eye area. I felt my brows. I seemed to be frowning a lot lately, or maybe I was just more serious at the new job. It sucked that I had to start worrying about pesky brow lines, the scourge of professors and old people.

I took a minute and typed “Botox” into Google and began to read and look—pictures of women with flawless skin dominated the pages. I imagined myself, like them, sailing into my 50’s, skin plump and taut like that of a 15-year-old ingénue. It was nearly irresistible, the idea that with the jab of a needle and the swift injection of a clear liquid—and a mere three hundy or so—I could be wrinkle-free into the distant future.
Brilliant.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have dared consider Botox.

“Good girl,” said Corinne, who had snuck up behind me. “Try it once and you’ll be hooked.”

Grant made the most delectable salads: red lettuce, persimmons, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow peppers, chick peas, and a creamy poppyseed dressing—and that was just a warm-up. When we finally sat down to dinner, he presented a delectably seasoned quinoa with sun-dried tomatoes, local asparagus grilled and topped with chunks of fresh Parmesan, and “catch of the day” blue-fin tuna. His bouquet of red sunflowers reminded me that, in actuality,
he
was the catch of the day—and probably the decade. The card in the flowers read:

To my little ray of sunshine, I’ve missed you lately. Want to sail this weekend (or next time you’re free)?. . . XOXO, Me.

Each time we got together, I learned something new about Grant. It was like peeling back the layers of an onion, and unlike my former boyfriend, Craig, this onion didn’t stink. So many LA guys would spill their entire life story, the fine-print of their resumé, their grand ambitions, their damaged upbringing, the whole grand epic, before anyone had even gotten up to pee. Grant was different. He never bragged or droned on about himself. He was subtle and charming, the type of man who didn’t need much to be happy, at least not in the way of ego food or gratuitous praise.

Tonight, I learned that he’d earned his boat captain’s license. I found out, too, that he and his dad had sailed to South America on their yacht, catching tuna, roughing it through fifty-foot swells—the real deal. He promised we would do it together, too, “if I wanted.” It made me want to know more, but I was tired and dreading another long day at work—my next day’s flight left at six in the morning.

We finished dinner and skipped the movie so I could rest.
This is what it takes to be excellent
, I reminded myself. Chumming up to ass-kissing colleagues like Danny, or chasing Kittens around the mansion, felt like a century ago. At 29, my clock was most definitely ticking, and not the biological one—the career
clock, which was the important one to me now.

Grant rubbed my back softly. It comforted me, like a bed of rose petals or a kitten cuddling into my neck. Then I thought briefly of Alex and our date a few weeks earlier. My comfort level dropped a notch—first to uneasiness, then to guilt. Alex had called a few times since. Each time his charm practically oozed through the voicemail into my head.

Things have finally come together for me. Grant is enough. He should be enough. Look at him. He’s fabulous. So why am I thinking about Alex? What’s this compulsion I have? What’s wrong with me?

“You’re cheating whenever it
feels
like you’re cheating,” I heard my mother’s voice say.

Grant kissed my neck as I drifted off to sleep.

I
n just two months with Ricky Dean, I’d boarded 62 airplanes, traveled to 31 cities, and slept in 20 different hotels. The production coordinator always tried to schedule me in and out on the same day, but sometimes it was impossible. The shoots took ten-to-twelve hours—plus long cab rides to locations, tedious airport check-ins, and the occasional strip search that left me standing in the security line-up barefoot, pants slipping past my butt crack while my soy latté went from extra hot to dish-water warm.

Over these 60 or so days, I’d missed countless meals, hadn’t enjoyed a single day of rest, unintentionally lost ten pounds, and churned out 38 two-minute video vignettes from the edit suite, complete with back-story, intrigue and, most importantly, oodles of human suffering. All of them ended with a similar plea: “Mr. Dean, can you help me?”

People at work began to take notice. The other show producers wanted me to do their interviews. I overheard comments like: “Jane’s stories are solid!” “She gets it every time!” And “I want her doing
my
field pieces!”

As for my social life, it had devolved into phone calls and the occasional meal. I’d become expert at leaving enticing three-minute updates just before Grant’s voicemail cut me off. Whenever he could, Grant met me for lunch, and we made a point of having dinner once a week—usually out of a box, and totally unglamorous. He would ask me how long I was willing to put up with the hours and I’d say: “It’s a start-up. This is how it goes.” Meanwhile, I was buckling from fatigue, but I refused to complain for fear of sounding
un-excellent
.

Alex called too. We were friends. He made me laugh and
always encouraged me to flourish. “
Fix Your Life
is your ticket,” he would say, before launching into a story about some mishap from his day. He’d picked up a month-long gig in Florida hosting a fishing show, and was due back any day. I still didn’t know what to tell him about Grant, or what to tell Grant about Alex. It was as if time had stopped in that matrix of my life. Everything but work was frozen, stuck exactly as it had been two months ago. Nothing progressed, just this monolith of a show that had become me.

Even Toni was begging for attention. We never had the heart-to-heart we needed. I wasn’t sure if I was still pissed at her for the party mishap or, worse, had outgrown her. Somehow, I knew she regretted that night, but it was shoved under the carpet like a dead cockroach. All that was clear was the distance between us. She was partying more than ever, and I wasn’t. My new schedule was not what she’d expected when we became roomies and BFF’s.

I justified my life, or lack thereof, on Machiavellian grounds— namely, the end would justify the means. It was all about my career. No time to contemplate feelings or whether I even enjoyed what I did. My nose was alarmingly near the grindstone, too close to see anything but the wheel swiftly churning and my ultimate dream—executive producer—increasingly within my reach.

On the lot, staff members were dropping like flies, often sick with the flu, yet spreading their germs in the big Petri dish that had become our world. Supervisor Gib looked to be on the verge of collapse. He hadn’t seen his boys in a week. His wife had been sick and unable to care for them. Gib hired one of the girls from the office cleaning staff to help at home. Between urgent work requests and his non-existent home life, Gib, not our guests, needed a reality check, if not a Ricky Dean intervention.

Each time I told him to go home, with an, “I’ve got this under control, go get some rest, see your family,” he would sigh and say, “Can’t. Need to make sure the tapes get handed in. Need to be at the nine o’clock meeting.”
Need to, need to, need to
. . .