Reality Jane (38 page)

She was unemotional, matter of fact. I looked at her with a half-smile and began shaking my head slowly.

“I’ll get back to you tomorrow,” she said, shooing me from her office.

“Don’t bother,” I whispered as I walked out the door. “I quit.”

“You should at least try to give them two weeks’ notice and a formal letter,” Penny said from the other end of the telephone.

She was the only lawyer I knew personally and my closest friend from college—also, the single mom I’d referred to with Corinne. I was sitting with my editor’s cell phone attached to my ear on the steps of the fake City Hall on the studio lot, surrounded by concrete columns and wooden storefronts that appeared entirely authentic. It was all a stagefront.

“But
can
I get out of it? I’m worried.”

“Depends. Every employee contract, whether with a Hollywood entertainment company or something else, carries with it an implied ‘good faith’ clause that assumes the artist or employee will be provided
reasonable
working conditions. And I must say, repeated 90-hour weeks, not to mention no meal times, are unquestionably unreasonable. That’s your out.”

“But what if they blacklist me after I leave?”

“Seems ridiculous to do that, but it is Hollywood, after all.”

“So this is the Hotel California they talk about: ‘Check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’”

Penny laughed. “Ah, Jane, always dramatic.”

Slumping back into our building, I felt the walls closing in on me. The bullpen, ordinarily a proud walk down the talk-show runway for a star field producer, felt like a cage. Unsure what else to do, I returned to my desk to draft my final e-mail to Meg.

Dear Meg,

Please consider this my official resignation and my two weeks’ notice. I would prefer to finish my time here tomorrow, but am willing to work the two-week period following today if that is what suits you. Please advise on how to settle this. I’m hoping you will gracefully let me out of my contract.

Sincerely,

Jane Kaufman

I said a quick prayer and hit send. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. The office was sleepy. People were unaccounted for. Now that the show was on a short hiatus, people had been slipping out early. I skulked out the backdoor behind the edit suites without anyone noticing and headed for home.

She had strawberry blonde hair and moved gracefully. She was also tall and thin, sans any plastic body parts, and had a smile that was totally authentic. Her black bikini top and
low-rise powder blue surf shorts hung off her body as she hugged his elbow. They meandered along the beach contentedly. I wanted to duck, but it was too late—they’d seen me.

My surfboard barely fit under my arm. I jammed it into my armpit to wrap my fingers around the rails. Still, the tail dragged along the sand. Nothing worked. The wind blew the board away from me, then into me, then away from me, like a giant piece of particleboard. It was a ten-foot long, nearly two-foot wide boat of a board that could have floated a rhino over the wave, let alone me. It was also the board Grant and I had bought together one weekend after arriving home from France. Actually, he bought it for me, the day he promised he would help me graduate from try-hard to riding barrels.

I stopped twenty feet from the Manhattan Beach break, coincidentally just a mile or less from Grant’s house, stalling in an effort to avoid him. I rested the board beside my feet and pretended to stretch in a forward fold, pressing my palms into the sand and breathing deeply as instructed in the yoga class I never got to.

After a minute, and figuring the couple had passed by now, I straightened myself out of my pike and came to full standing. Big mistake. My head whirled in circles. I felt faint and stumbled down onto one knee. The force of the collapse sent me onto my back like a turtle: legs sprawled, stars and diamonds spinning around my head. I wanted to die.

Grant and his girl were suddenly smack in front of me. “Are you okay?” she said sympathetically, cradling my shoulders.

I stared at her stupidly.
Damn! She’s nice, too.

“Can I get you something?”

Grant placed his board next to mine and crouched on the other side of me. I couldn’t look at him. My hands were shaking. I was probably drooling. Like a crab, I wanted just to slip away into a giant sand hole.

“I’m okay, thanks. Just a little light-headed,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I never faint.”

“Is there anything we can do?” she said. “Grant, maybe you can get her some water.”

They seemed close. Maybe they’d been dating awhile.
Maybe they’d been dating while Grant and I were dating! Maybe Grant had been cheating too! Maybe he was just like every other guy in superficial Hollyweird! Maybe there never was a man of my dreams, and never would be!

“It’s okay,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m okay. Really.”

“How you been, Jane?” he said, looking at me with a curious expression.

I couldn’t tell if he was about to burst out laughing, or pitied me, or both.

“Do you two know each other?” the girl asked with a sparkle in her eye, excited at the prospect that this might be an ex making an ass of herself right before her very eyes.

Before Grant could answer, I interrupted, too embarrassed to prolong the agony. “Grant and I worked together on a crazy reality show in France. Anyway,” I said, starting to get up, sweeping the sand off my wet suit, “I’ve really got to run. The sun’s going to set soon and if I’m going to make a proper ass out of myself, I better go where I do it best—in the water.” Still dizzy, I grabbed my board clumsily and started toward the shore. “Nice meeting you.”

I looked at her, still crouched in the sand. Her mouth was wide with a curious grin. She probably thought I was a tool of the most extraordinary variety.

“Good seeing you, Grant. Take care. Thanks to your friend, too. I’m fine, really.”

I waved with my free hand and nearly dropped the board again. I couldn’t escape quickly enough. What was I thinking— going to Manhattan Beach, knowing this was Grant’s surf spot?
For Chrissakes, he lives a short distance away.
Maybe I secretly wanted to bump into him. But not with her. It was humiliating.

I would have gone home, never to surf again, but I figured they were still watching me and I couldn’t bear to face them again.

The water smacked against the beach. The waves were chest-high and closing out. I fastened my leash and began my paddle out, praying I wouldn’t get tossed over the fall for a humiliating tumble in nature’s wash-machine.

God or karma must have pitied me. I made it out past the
break without incident and managed to get myself into a sitting position on my board. The sun was beginning its daily descent into the horizon. It bounced off the waves with silver twinkles. It wasn’t long before the peaceful rocking motion of the ocean had lulled me into a semi-hypnotic state. My mind wandered back in time to that hopeful day on the bus in France, when Grant had talked about what was, to him, the blissful world of water.

F
riday was the longest day of my life. Arriving diligently at 9:00 a.m., I immediately began looking for Meg. Two people from the show producer teams had been fired the night before during shakedowns. I wondered why I couldn’t have been one of them—it seemed the only easy way out of a studio contract.

Corinne took a sick day. And I’d heard through one of the editors that Gib had taken his family to Palm Springs, seeking solace from his
Fix Your Life
quagmire. Meg crossed my path a number of times in the morning, each time an officious finger waving in the air. “Gimme a sec” or “I’ll get to you.”

Then, finally, at two o’clock, I got the call.

“Jane?” I heard the other end of the line say in a nasally voice. “Mr. Dean would like to see you in his office.”

I nearly choked up my sixth cup of coffee for the day. “Mr. Dean?”

“Yes, your boss,” his assistant said.

As I walked toward his office, I felt my face get hot, then my fingertips, then my chest. Was I about to faint—again? Then I recognized the feeling. It wasn’t excitement, nervousness, embarrassment, or humiliation. It was fear. Good, old-fashioned terror, radiating through me like the Ebola virus.

“You wanted to see me?” I said, pushing through the half-opened door.

It was like a palace inside, with no resemblance to the rest of our offices. Beautiful ebony cabinets sat boldly on granite floors. Huge Ralph Lauren leather couches and lounging chairs faced the movie-sized plasma screen. Beyond was a bathroom with a swimming-pool-sized Jacuzzi tub and steam room. At an
arm’s reach, behind Mr. Dean’s desk, was a full bar with an espresso maker, and a mini-kitchen stocked with fresh fruit, healthy muffins, and an assortment of Kombucha flavors (the latest miracle drink at four bucks a pop).

All of this put our
Fix Your Life
crew kitchen to shame, with our one industrial coffee maker and powdered petroleum byproduct creamer—real cream was too expensive. We also had a fridge for our lunches—as if there was time to eat them— with a warning that read: “Your mother doesn’t live here!” And below that: “We toss everything without a label!”

“There are only two reasons I call an employee into my office,” he started, sounding grave. “One, spectacular performance. Two, abominable. Which one do you think you’ve been called in for?”

Though I knew the answer and desperately wanted out of the whole mess, part of me still hoped he’d say, “You’re spectacular.” I felt a brief sliver of exhilaration, then reality crept over me. I sat silent.

“Allow me,” he said. “Abominable!” He shoved a print-out of my e-mail under my nose. “What kind of garbage is this?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “
Unethical
? You think what we do here is
unethical
?” He looked at me with cold gray eyes. “Do you know how much fan mail I get in one single day? Well, do you?”

I looked at him pitifully. “I just. . . I’ve heard. . . some people. . . well. . . they’ve been hurt by the process—our process, that is.”

“
Torture TV
?” his voice boomed. “You call this torture?”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Was this a hanging offense?
I wondered, ever grateful this was America.