Reality Jane (36 page)

“Pardon me for saying,” he started in his artful twang, “but in all my rides, I ain’t never seen a soul torn up like yours.”

As he politely scoped me out through the rear-view mirror, I felt as if I’d undergone a complete reversal of roles. Suddenly, I was the damaged girl, like all the people I’d ever interviewed, and he was the expert, with his years of practical wisdom, driving strangers to their destinies.
What will she do? Fix her life or madly continue on her career fast-track?

“Can’t live like that,” he said. “Some people do, ignore the voice, wake up a different person. Empty. That’s why they call them LA folk shallow. Ain’t nobody born shallow. It happens. Life, money, success, greed. . .”

I nodded as he continued to lay out his small-town philosophy for me. It sounded anything but small.

Over and over, I repeated his phrase to myself—“soul torn up.”

He was right.

T
he LAX taxicab dropped me off outside the gate to my apartment. The air was moist and heavy. Streetlamps lit the beach walk with a mellow orange glow. The lights were new, added to reduce crime and to keep the vagrants from sleeping on the benches. Instead, the homeless slept on the beach, wrapped in blankets pilfered from various garbage heaps. On any given day at sunrise, I could look out at the beach and see large gray cocoons of the homeless spread across the sand. One morning, I counted 30. Santa Monica was a homeless person’s haven—free pizza crusts and a soft sandy bed in the world’s friendliest climate.

It made me think of a news story I did in Canada on a homeless man named Harry. After one of the harshest winters in Alberta’s history, he lost all but one or two of his fingers and toes. For more than three weeks, it had been 40 below—the kind of weather where your nostrils ice together with each breath, and your flesh freezes in ten seconds flat. It was a miracle he’d survived the brutal prairie winter at all. Harry had once been an engineer at an oil firm, but became an alcoholic. He lost his wife, his family, his job, and his life as he knew it. All he had left was a love affair with the bottle, and an old winter parka.

A month ago, while en route to one of my shoots, Mom told me that Harry had died during our latest winter. I thought:
Good. It’s the best place for him—whether he goes to heaven or hell, or just sleeps forever
. I didn’t like the flippant, cynical girl who’d reacted that way. She was a girl who cared only for herself, a girl who was kind only as a means to an end, sugary sweet when convenient, and pleasant and courteous with an
agenda, but otherwise single-mindedly ambitious.

Voices carried over the bougainvillea. I heard Toni’s laugh. I heard a man’s voice, too—perhaps some new guy she was dating. I figured I would say hello, then hole myself up in my room to draft a letter to Hank Griffin, YBC Studio’s Vice President in charge of TV programming, and Naomi’s boyfriend.

Primed to request some major changes, I felt my batteries recharging already.
Maybe I can be the one who fixes the system!

I turned the doorknob to enter.

“Honey!” Alex, always playful, held out his arms as he stood up from the couch to hug me.

“What a nice surprise,” I said, not really wanting one.

On the coffee table sat a half-empty bottle of wine and two nearly touching glasses. Toni stood up with a huge grin and winked as if to say, “This one’s a catch.”

“Toni said you’d be home around now and I wanted to see you,” Alex said.

“We’ve been waiting for you!” Toni said.

Their gleefulness contrasted sharply with the darkness of my mood.

“I totally recognized Alex from TV!” Toni exclaimed.

“Oh, stop,” he said, shooing her away as if they were old friends. “Jane, I love this pad.” Alex reached for my butt. “And your roommate!” He looked at Toni the way he’d often looked at me. “Why didn’t you tell me? Me and the two hot Swedish sisters.” He shot his eyes up and down Toni. “Let’s see, one of me, two of you. What’s right with this picture?” He laughed as if he was joking, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

“Yeah, okay, Alex,” I said. “Can you guys give me a sec?” I walked toward the bathroom. “I’ve had to go since I got on the plane.”

I was sitting, crouched over, peeing and blowing my nose, when Toni rattled open the bathroom door.

“Everything okay?” she whispered sweetly, poking her head through the side of the door. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, surprised by her compassionate tone. Aside from Toni’s night of humiliation, we hadn’t connected in
ages. Lousy-friend guilt began to surface in me.

“Jane, I just want you to know, I’m here for you, no matter what. And I’d never hurt you again like I did at the party,” said Toni. “I’ve never apologized for hitting on Grant that night. I’m so sorry. I’ve been meaning to tell you, and I know I should have told you sooner. I’m such a loser.” I tried to interrupt her, but she kept on going. “Alex and I were talking,” she said, “and he was raving about you. I realized, all this time, I’ve been jealous of you. Yeah, jealous.” She shook her head. “How lame is that? But tonight I wasn’t. I just felt—well, I felt love. I miss you.”

I stared up at her, my butt now cold from the toilet seat where I’d long since finished my pee.

“Are we still best LA buds?” she chuckled. “BFF’s?”

“Of course,” I said, shocked by her confession. “I feel like I should hug you, but may I wipe first?”

We laughed as she dove in for a hug. I suddenly wanted to be good to her, to help her and the people around me.

“Jane, I saw the look on your face when you walked in tonight. I want you to know you can trust me.” Toni smiled wistfully. “With your boyfriends. And it’s so sad that I have to even say that, but I feel like I need to prove myself to you.”

“I do. I do trust you.” Our eyes locked. “And Toni, I’m sorry too. I haven’t been here—not for you, not for myself, not for anyone.”

“BFF’s?” Toni asked.

“BFF’s,” I replied.

Only Toni and I could have a touching moment of true friendship while I sat, pants around my ankles, sitting on the john, the door half cracked and my hotty boyfriend guzzling wine on the couch. We burst into girlish giggles.

“Sorry about Alex. He can be such a cheese-ball, and you handled it well.” I hesitated, slightly embarrassed that the guy I’d slept with—my boyfriend—was flirting with my best friend. “He’s just kinda like that,” I said, unable at the moment to offer a better explanation.

“It’s all in fun. Besides, he really cares about you,” she said.

“Hey, I need you to do me a little favor. I need to talk to Alex about what happened at work today. It’s really important—”

“Don’t worry about me,” she interrupted. “You guys need to be alone. And, hey, I want only the best for you.”

“Sometimes I think you should be my boyfriend,” I said before she could close the door. “I’ll give you full deets in the morning.”

“Copy that.” Toni beamed.

I debated primping for Alex, but I was too anxious about my career epiphany to give coiffing the ten, twenty—okay, forty-five—minutes the task required. Instead, I slapped on some lip gloss and started for the living room.

“Hi, babe. You’re getting so skinny.” Alex pulled my arms to sit beside him and began tickling my stomach. “Actually, babe, you look tired. Do you want to take a minute, maybe have a shower?”

“No, I feel fine,” I said, trying not to lose momentum.

“I mean, next to Toni, you’re looking like the dumpy step-sister.”

“Whatever!” Toni said loudly as she headed for the kitchen. “Jane’s exhausted. She hasn’t had a decent sleep in three months.”

“I know. I know,” he responded defensively. “We talk.”

I looked at Alex with my most serious expression. “Alex, I need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” he said flippantly. “But first, promise me we can have a sleep-over.”

Toni uncorked a fresh bottle of wine and poured me a glass as she stood beside the coffee table. “Sorry, guys. Love to stay and entertain you, but it’s beddy-bye for me. I’ve got a big day tomorrow, and a hot date tomorrow night.”

She winked at me as she filled her glass and strutted off down the hallway.

“Nice meeting you,” Alex said, watching her butt as it swayed like a fleshy metronome. “She’s a very good-looking girl.” He turned to me with an earnest look on his face, as if his latest observation nullified his earlier threesome crack.

“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” he laughed.

I wasn’t convinced. “I need you to listen, okay? I have
something important to tell you.”

“All right, but first, I don’t know about that color on you.” He dabbed his finger across my lips.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your lip gloss—not a good color.” He crinkled his brow as he sized up my look.

“You’re driving me crazy. This is about my future, not a stupid tube of lip gloss!”

“All right, all right,” he said sarcastically, “but I liked it better when you at least
tried
to impress me.”

“Alex!” I yelped.

Finally, he realized how serious I was. I took a deep breath.

“Okay, so today, after the shoot, I was ready to quit. And I was going to give it to them. Go straight to Mr. Dean. Tell him how awful it all is. How he’s running a psycho-babble whorehouse. I mean, I was going to walk—”

“Quit? You were going to quit?” His jovial demeanor evaporated.

“No, it’s okay. I’m not quitting. But I
am
going to raise a little hell with a serious proposal to reform the show. Listen, what we do on the show—it’s not good. Like this little girl today—she’ll be traumatized for life. It was awful. I want to make sure that never happens again. So I’m proposing we turn
Fix Your Life
into a true self-help experience. Like a service: We help people, or at least try. And I know just how to do it!”

Alex looked at me as if I had flown the mental coop. “I might be a little drunk. But are you fucking high?”

I laughed. “Listen, this is good. My plan is to go to Hank Griffin, who I have a connection with, and tell him how we manipulate people and make them cry—which is completely at odds with what they vowed at the beginning we’d never do. Then I’ll present my plan to get
real
trained psychologists on staff as advisors. Today, I kept pushing that little girl, and any good psychologist would have begged me to stop!” I was practically shaking. “We’ll have Mr. Dean give a fifteen-minute one-on-one session for each guest
prior
to the show—that way, they’re not thrown into the spotlight and caught off-guard.

“Then, I’ll tell Hank our guests should get two free follow-up
therapy sessions after our show by a licensed therapist, to make sure they’re on the right track. And of course, we need to compensate the guests for days lost from work, plus lunch when we’re with them and dinner after the show. Anyway, that’s a start. I’m going to write up a proposal tonight. What do you think?”

His eyes roamed up and around my head as if unable to find my eyes. It made me nervous.

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said quietly.

Stunned, I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s juvenile! That’s what I’m saying.”

He had a scowl that even his picture-perfect man-features couldn’t cover. I felt a sweat break from my forehead as I shifted my hand off his leg. He placed his wine on the table and turned to me angrily, his eyes reduced to squinty half-slits. “Tell me you’re joking. Really, Jane, this is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He waited for me to speak. I leaned over my knees, holding my stomach.

“I’m serious,” I said, trying to get a breath.

“Then you need to get your head checked,” he said angrily. “I hooked you up with the job of a lifetime, now you’re due for a promotion, and this is how you repay me? By embarrassing me? Making me look like a complete ass to Meg, Hank, the network? This is business. Not just TV!
Business
! Making money! Ratings and numbers and profits—that’s what matters. Welcome to the real world! And what about your master plan? Making supervising producer? You’ll never get anywhere until you
get the system
!”

“Well,” I said, still gasping, “maybe I don’t want to be a supervising producer, or any kind of producer, in this environment. It’s dishonest. I thought you’d be proud of me.”

“Proud? Are you an idiot?” said Alex. “What you’re doing on the show is what needs to be done to get to the top. You work in the entertainment business. Not charity! People get crushed. It’s every man for him-fucking-self!
That’s reality
!”

“You can be successful
and
have integrity!” I yelled, with all
the passion I had left. “Besides, it is our job to make sure those people are helped. That’s a small price to pay for a show that makes millions and millions of dollars! And
frankly
, if you don’t get that, you’re the idiot!”

“Well, I guess we’re both a couple of fucking idiots. Only I’ll be a rich fucking idiot, and you’ll be a naïve, hopeless idiot with barely two pennies to scrape together,” he said. “I can’t take this Pollyanna bullshit. I’m out of here.”