Reality Jane (33 page)

The crew was busy packing the trucks. I grabbed one of the cameramen. “Hey, do you have a few minutes for one final interview?”

“Are you crazy? I’ve been on the clock fourteen hours!” he said, totally unimpressed while wiping the sweat from his neck.

“I’m desperate. Just one quick interview. Help me out. Please!” I begged.

“All right, but you guys are into double-time,” he said, trying to be nice.

“Fine. Thank you. I appreciate it.” I bowed gratefully.

I now had to convince Laura that we needed her for one more hour. She wouldn’t be happy. She hadn’t eaten since two. Cripes, I hadn’t eaten since my bowl of cereal this morning, nearly 16 long hours ago.

I was starting to crack. But rather than acknowledge it, I grabbed Laura, kindly asked her to remove her necklace, faked a smile, pretended to be professional, and let the series of questions fly:

“So, Laura, tell me what you eat on a daily basis. What do you think when you see yourself in the mirror? Do strangers look at you funny because you’re fat? What do they say? How do you feel about yourself when people stare at you? Why are you fat? What does being fat say about who you are? Are you still gaining weight? How does your husband feel about your being fat? Why can’t you lose weight?”

Two and one-half hours of shameless badgering later, it happened. She cried.

As she blubbered in self-pity, I signaled to my cameraman to roll, zoom in, catch it all. I sat motionless, watching the tears roll down her tired cheeks, feeling her chair creak with each tearful gasp, her sobs drenched in helplessness.

It was too much for me. I couldn’t take it. I too began to cry, dropping my head into my hands as if doing so might make me disappear. Before I could catch myself, and preserve what pebble of professionalism I might still have, Laura rose from her chair and wrapped her arms around me.

“It’s okay,” she told me, feeling like a mother bear, warm, soft, and real. “I’ll be fine. Ricky Dean is going to help me—I just know it.”

Early the next morning, things quickly began deteriorating:

• Wake up call 5:30 a.m., five lousy hours of sleep after dinner of M&M’s and cheese pretzels from mini-bar
  
• Get in taxi at 6:15 a.m.—running late—buckling over from strange new pain in lower gut. Cramps?
  
• 15 minutes later, taxi breaks down 3 miles from airport, won’t start
  
• Begins pouring rain—it NEVER rains in Vegas!
  
• Abdul stands on roadside attempting to wave down car. No one stops
  
• He’s soaked. I freak out—plane departs in 38 minutes
  
• Airport bus pulls over
  
• Bus driver motions me onto the bus, asks which terminal—I can’t remember
  
• He smiles—I’m drenched, caught off guard, try to smile back, forgot how
  
• Enter terminal, trip over piece of tape stock, break sandal
  
• Scrounge, do E-ticket check-in, and forgo 45-person line-up
  
• Barely make flight
  

Alex picked me up at the airport. He insisted. We went back to his place and had sex in the middle of the afternoon. I couldn’t say “no” anymore. There was no reason to. It was time to let our relationship go where it needed to go. My period had mysteriously disappeared—sometime between my day from hell and being starved for 32 hours. Alex was pleased to finally have his way. The morning’s cramps, unfortunately, remained. I didn’t bother to tell him.

It was a tremendous release to finally give him what he wanted and just be together, as a couple. Nevertheless, and in spite of my gallant effort to perform physically, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t stop thinking about work, and that’s a sexual-barbiturate if ever there was one.

But Alex somehow was satiated. That was reward enough for me. In my head, we were the new power team: ultra-successful TV host/model-boy meets ultra-successful producer and soon-to-be supervisor/executive producer. Alex liked to
push me. He wanted me to be better. I liked that about him. He cared.

Around three-ish, he drove me home. I’d planned on spending the weekend with him. It was Saturday, after all, and for the first time since my day off long ago with Grant, I had no shoot scheduled for the weekend. In fact, I had nothing at all scheduled until the office on Monday. It was as if I had a weekend pass from prison.

I was thrilled at the possibilities: lie in bed, snuggle, watch movies, get a massage, eat take-out, have dinner with Alex. Instead, Alex had to meet his agent for dinner.
Ah, Hollywood
.

When I returned home, I found a note on my bed:

The check you wrote me for your share of rent bounced. That sucks! Sorry. Just wondering when you can pay me. I really need the money!!

Love, Toni.

PS –
The Single Guy
aired on Thursday night with Craig. Yuck! It’s Tivo’d. Let’s watch it later and rip on him—L-O-S-E-R. :-)

I couldn’t believe my money problems, and checked the account online. I now felt as if I was on the receiving end of a powerful one-two punch combination: first, my bank account was mysteriously empty when it should have had over $6,000 in it—the studio obviously hadn’t paid my expenses, and my student loans were sucking me dry; second,
The Craig
was suddenly world famous for being a complete tool!

I tossed the note in the garbage, unable to handle the mounting pile of loose ends that had become my personal life. I nearly erased
The Single Guy
that Toni had Tivo’d—not at all ready to see Craig procure the easy ride to fame, or have the time of his life with 10 way-too-hot chicks handpicked for his own TV show.

Water spat from behind the shower curtain as I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. The sun powered through the window, making the dust particles glimmer. My breasts had shrunk to the size of raisins, from a solid B to barely an A. I
longed for clouds and rain. Not the angry rain from this morning in Vegas, but a tranquil, gentle, soothing rain. I used the tips of my fingers to feel around the edge of my breasts for lumps, but gave up after a thorough squishing. They felt like miniature sacks of pebbles.

My organs began twisting and turning, and I was reminded of my nasty cramps. They had been there all along. I was just too distracted to notice.

Oh my God! Did I? Could I? Had a miscarriage occurred two nights ago?

The thought was nearly too painful to bear. I attempted the math. I’d thought I was regular. I
was
regular. Or was I? Was this one of those mega-early miscarriages? And how the hell did I get pregnant in the first place? I’ve got the patch. Or was it just some freaky-deaky period.
Yeah, that’s it. I’ll stick with that— just a super freaky, I’ve-been-worked-to-the-bone stress reaction. My body’s personal alarm bell shouting: “Slow the hell down!”

As I rifled through the medicine cabinet for painkillers, nothing made sense. My pseudo-promotion felt more like defeat than accomplishment. The new boyfriend, the supposed “right” boyfriend, left me feeling more empty than complete. And worse was the scary, sad, confusing reality that, albeit very briefly, I might have been pregnant with Grant’s baby.
What is happening to me?

Finally, behind the Band-aids, I spotted the Vicodin container left over from an abscessed root canal. Five pills left. I wondered if they would help—now would have been a helluva time to start a Vicodin habit.
Perhaps a good time
. I grabbed one pill, downed it with a sip of tap water, and settled into bed.
Perfectly harmless
.
Everything’s going to be just fine. I’ve got a great life—and precisely the life I wanted.

It was 4:30 in the afternoon when I slipped under the covers for the night. The pain of my cramps had subsided a bit, but my throat felt sore and dry. The sun, forever happy in southern California, continued to penetrate the cracks in the blinds. My room felt like a sauna. I hated it.

A
waking in a cold sweat a shocking eighteen hours later, I was jolted back to reality. I’d had a nightmare, and it had rattled me. It felt too real. It took place on the sweltering African grasslands. One voracious lion was chasing down gazelles, lunging at their delicate necks and then ripping out their innards. This particular lion wasn’t ordinary; he was sadistic and cruel. None of the other lions got to eat. He ate, and ate, and ate, and became stronger and hungrier with every meal.

The gazelles weren’t ordinary, either. They were spooky shape-shifters. They transformed from people to hoofed animals, and back to people. At one point, they were just ordinary people with beer bellies and bad perms and a desperate look in their eyes. Then I saw Laura and Brenda and Oliver and some of the other show guests huddling together, looking frightened, along with the other gazelles. It was haunting and weird. I felt myself running and running. The more I ran, the closer I came to the lion’s grasp. He was the ultimate predator. The rest of us were his prey.

Then something strange happened—I was able to leave my body and, from the outside, I saw myself running. Only I wasn’t a human being or even one of the gazelles. I, too, was a lion, and blood was dripping from my teeth.

It was the first weekday I hadn’t been on a plane in months. I rolled in early for a production meeting called for 9:30 a.m.
Before I could get to my desk, I was stopped by one of the PAs.

“Hey, Jane, long time no see. Where you been?”

“On an airplane.” I smiled and patted him on the back. He was one of the younger, greener PAs, but as keen as they came. He told me he was hoping to make AP by next month.

“Good job on ‘The Hitter’ story. I don’t know how you got her to smack her kids on camera, but she was unbelievable! She scared the crap out of me!”

“Oh shit! Has that aired already?”

I so rarely got to see my work on television. Too busy. Thank God for Toni’s Tivo. At least now I had some record of my accomplishments, even if I rarely had a chance to see them along with the rest of the world. I think I saw
The Purrfect Life
once—that was pre-Toni’s Tivo machine.

“Yup. And, of course, you missed her at the studio shoot. She was asking for you.”

My stomach flipped. During the field shoot, I’d promised Brenda I would meet her back-stage and help her with her nerves. She’d begged for my help in an e-mail this weekend. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.

“Damn, that’s not good,” I said regretfully.

“Her show aired yesterday. They flew her in pronto because her story was so riveting. It was nuts. We’ve already received tons of e-mail. People are saying we should get Social Services involved!”

“Social Services?”

“Yup, take her kids away. You should have seen her, Jane. She was bawling after she saw the video piece. You showed her who she really is.”

“She cried?” My stomach dropped another notch.

“Oh, yeah. Then Mr. Dean gave it to her. He told her what an awful mother she was. I swear, she couldn’t speak for all the tears. It was embarrassing. Then he had her son, Oliver, on stage, and asked him what he thought of his mom smacking him. The kid just bawled. Then Mr. Dean brought Brenda back on stage so she could see what she was doing to her son. It was bru. . . tal!”

My face tensed, cringing from the torment we’d unleashed
on this poor woman.