Reality Jane (8 page)

She looked down, appeared to review the text as if it was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on it, then crumpled my script into a ball. “What is this garbage?” she said.

“Pardon me?”

“What the hell is this?”

“Your lines. Karl approved it. You approved it.” I was bewildered.

“It’s crap.” She then turned and smiled at Joe as if I didn’t exist. “You rolling?”

“Hold on. We’ve got to turn your microphone on,” said Joe, lurching forward to appease her and shooting me a pitying look.

“Joe, you can’t expect me to deliver this dung. I’m going to wing it. My way.” She glared at me as she shimmied her breasts higher in her corset-breast-platter device. “Thanks for joining the party, y’all. We’ve had one helluva ride with MC Toke, the man, my man, the rap-man of all time. Keep partying with us pussies—oops, I mean kittens.” She winked to the camera. “That would be me and my party gals. Find out which lucky Tom-cat gets to hang with da kittens next week.
Meow
!” She reached her hand up and made a kitty claw, then licked the back of her hand and rubbed it on her butt cheek.

“Oh, lord,” I said, dumping my head into my hands. “Let’s, uh, let’s just try that again.”

Lucy ignored me and yanked her mike off as she grabbed Toke. “Yo, MC, let’s shake it!”

Like a complete reality TV pro, Joe pulled the camera off the tripod and moved onto the dance floor to catch MC Toke lifting his t-shirt,
again
, while the girls slithered all over him, tongues wagging and body parts jiggling. Joe knew this would be fleeting. Swiftly, I moved the lights to the dance floor. All eyes were on Lucy and the gang, with a crowd of hotel onlookers whispering, “Who’s that?” A few people recognized MC Toke. But nobody asked for an autograph. After a single song, MC again pushed away the camera lens.

“I’m out!” he said, linking his arm with Lucy’s and the other girls’ as they made their way into a private room and slammed the door firmly behind them. A bouncer immediately parked himself in front.

“Guess that’s a wrap.” I turned to my crew. “Good shooting,” I said, hoping we had enough to build a segment.

“Thanks, Jane.” Joe had already collapsed the tripod and was wrapping cable. “And, hey, you did well—all things considered. There aren’t many like her. She’s one tough cookie.”

“If by cookie you mean totally insane,” I said, spinning my finger around my temple, “I couldn’t agree more.”

The bill came to eighteen hundred dollars, and was put on
my credit card, which I’m pretty sure let out a wail when they first swiped it. After three more equally noisy (and unsuccessful) swipes, the charge was denied. Thankfully, our production manager was reachable and supplied her card info over the phone. So, for eighteen hundred smackers, we got to film a grand total of ten minutes of our stars downing ridiculously expensive champagne, and a measly three and a half minutes of mostly x-rated grinding on the dance floor.

About 1 a.m., I arrived at my quaint one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, seven blocks from the beach—picked it up from Craigslist a few weeks prior as a sublet. The air was warm and smelled of jasmine. I could hear crickets chirping in the distance. I nearly stepped on a couple of avocados from a neighbor’s tree, so plump and ripe that they were dropping to the ground. That nature had adapted so well to the plethora of beachside concrete was comforting.
Maybe Planet Earth isn’t going to hell after all
, I thought. I’d concluded otherwise a few hours earlier.

Something about getting paid to spend eight hours watching other people get wasted made me question my usefulness. I mean, it was interesting, even fun, minus Lucy, and I liked the chi-chi Sunset Strip bar, and the trendy outfits, and even rubbing elbows with Hollywood hipsters. But for all the glamour and intrigue, it was beyond strange. Were people really going to tune into what might be described as a PG-13 orgy? With my name rolling in the credits?

But all the work craziness aside, I was in love, for the first time in five years, which catapulted me into a surreal mix of near-elation and quasi-confusion.

Moments later, Craig pulled up in his Jeep. My heart skipped a beat. Back to elation.

“Hi, babe,” I said suggestively, anticipating Craig hauling me into his arms and throwing me on the bed, repeating the words he’d typed only hours ago—“I love you, I love you, I love you”—and pasting my body with kisses.

“How’d it go?” he said disinterestedly as I led him through the door and into my apartment.

“Huh?”

“Your shoot. You were all nervous about it. Was it good?” He chucked his jacket onto the floor and unbuttoned his jeans.

“Um, well. . . um.” I’d been taken off-guard. Where were the diamond tennis bracelet, the flowers, the barrage of love poems? “Yeah, it was good. Actually a little weird. Are you sure this is what you want to talk about?”

“Just curious,” he said, already naked and sliding into bed. “Hop in. Let’s talk.” He perked his eyebrows and patted the mattress playfully, as if I might jump up on all fours. “Was there a cat fight?
Meow
.”

“Very funny. No. Well, I mean, ok, aside from the fact that Lucy treats me like crap, which I’m beginning to think is part of my job description, and which at two G’s a week, I’ll take, no questions asked.” I realized I needed to vent.

Actually, the day’s events called for a full-blown decompression, or at least a five-minute diatribe. “You know,” I continued, “after an eight-hour shoot, we got two 30-minute tapes, and the second tape has maybe five minutes on it. And, well, there’s no story. Whatever happened to story? Three hot babes on a date with a megastar rapper, and they booze and make small talk for eight hours—oh, and some smarmy foreplay. The girls get a thousand bucks a day. Plus, everything’s paid for. Cush! I’d love to get a thousand bucks to look fabulous and party. Not sure what Mr. Rap Star gets. Free promotion? A boner? I guess I expected a storyline or something. Imagine that—
story
. What’s so hard about that? Girl meets boy, girl dry-humps boy, boy grinds girl, girl and boy ride off into sunset in white-pimp-limo with hot-tub. Come on!”

“
Shhh
.” Craig put his finger up to my lips and pulled me onto the bed. “Enough talk. Let’s you and
I
grind.”

And just as I was getting into my harangue, it was over, which was probably for the best. Every minute with Craig was like a nosh of heaven. I didn’t want Lucy infecting that too. It was bad enough that my career, my very future, revolved around her neuroses. No sense bringing her, or them, back to the bedroom with me.

I waited, hoping that during sex he might bring it up while staring romantically into my eyes. No such luck—it was a sprint
of a session. Then, nearly asleep, my body fitting neatly inside his chest cavity and our legs intertwined, he squeezed me softly as I prepared for some lovey-dovey talk.

“Hey, babe?”

“Yeah?” I nuzzled even closer, smiling sweetly.

“Just wondering,” Craig hesitated. “Can you help me write this pitch for North Face tomorrow?” He sounded almost businesslike.

“Uh. . . okay.” I tried to be enthusiastic. “I mean, sure.”

“About five pages.” He stroked my hair. “You know, my bio, and some kind of storyline for filming my expedition—the usual. They want it end of day.”

“Oh. . . um. . . sounds good.”

“Good night, babe.” He squeezed me.

Ten minutes passed. I was nearly asleep when he pulled me toward him a second time. “I wha oon.”

“What?” I whispered. “Craig, did you say something?”

Nothing.

“Hey, did you say something?” I repeated.

“
Um-hmm
,” he sighed deeply. “I lugoo.”

“
What
?” His face was stuck in my hair and he was half asleep. I turned to him. “What did you say?”

“I love you.” He sounded irritated, or at the very least, unromantic. “Yeesh.”

“Oh, yeah, me too,” I whispered carefully, not wanting to upset him. My heart pounded as I felt a sudden gush of emotion. “I love you, too.”

Craig released his Samson-like arms from my naked chest, rolled onto his back, and let out a giant sigh.

“A
re you sure everybody does this?” I asked warily.

“Of course. Time for you to clean up this sugar shack!”

No female had ever ventured this intimately into this part of my body, and I was pretty sure no man had either. Laser Lydia’s Aurora light beam was focused somewhere between my bikini line and my butt cheeks, in a place that should not have had hair. She nudged my legs further apart, her goggles—and gloves—firmly in place.

“Ow,” I bellowed, straddling her table on my hands and knees—the height of inelegance.

“Just let it out, babe. Almost done!” she announced, like a surgeon who’d been sawing through bones for years.

This was all standard fare in the beauty biz. Clients on all fours, hair follicles burnt—in this case lasered—to a crispy black death.

“But all I care about is the hair on my
actual
bikini line,” I said, my butt in the air. “Nobody will see
that
.”

“Nobody?” Lydia stopped to make eye contact, extracting her fingers from what felt like my butt crack and nudging her purple space goggles onto her forehead for emphasis. “How about your husband?
Hmm
?”

“You know I don’t have a—”

“Exactly.” She paused, scolding me for my naiveté. “Men notice. Don’t kid yourself, babe.”

“Lydia, you do remember I have a guy, don’t you?” I said, wondering how she could forget about my man-angel, love-Buddha, and more-than-likely if-there-was-a-God future husband Craig. “We’ve been together almost eight months!”

“That’s great, sweetie,” she said, focused on the task at hand. “I have to turn up the intensity for you because your hair is fair.” Lydia patted my now splotchy, neon-red, bikini line. “This machine works best with dark hair, but it’ll still work for you blondes. That
is
your natural color, isn’t it?”

“You mean down there?” I moaned as she continued her New Age torture.

If anyone had the scoop on whether the carpet matched the drapes, it was Lydia. After all, this was the woman who had promised: “You’ll never have to shave or wax again!” The first time Toni took me to her shop, a big white machine hummed from the corner, alongside an operating table neatly covered in a plain blue hospital sheet. I watched in shock as this stylish middle-aged woman pulled down her pants and underwear past a well-trimmed patch of pubic hair to reveal the cleanest, silkiest bikini line I’d ever laid eyes on. “See this?” Lydia said, swiping her finger past the woman’s privates. “Three treatments. Perfect, isn’t it?” I was sold. A 50-year-old woman I didn’t know had shown me her landing strip—this could only happen in Beverly Hills.

“Hey, chiquitas!” Toni announced unexpectedly, yanking the curtain aside, which had been the only thing separating me from total humiliation.

“What the fuck?!” I shrieked, collapsing a rather cheap cat pose into a belly flop.

“Crotch cam!” Toni yelled, laughing and positioning her phone to snap the first ever digital photograph of my ass.

I squealed while Lydia and Toni buckled over in hysterics. “Shut the damn curtain!” I pulled the blanket around my hips. “Are you two crazy?”

They were too busy laughing to respond.

“This one’s on the house,” Lydia bellowed. “You girls made my day.”

I could have killed Toni. But inasmuch as she was my new best friend, if you can call someone a best friend after barely seven months, it was better to just go with the gag and run with it. Besides, she was a bit of a force.

At 26 years old, Toni, it seemed, had it all figured out: men,
production, her head, my head, Los Angeles. By appearances, she was quintessential Hollywood: from her brand new, base model BMW (which she leased); to her dyed yellow blonde hair; to her first shots of Botox two weeks ago (complements of Lydia and totally unnecessary, but who was I to question prevention?); to her bling sunglasses (worn indoors and out); to her endless texting (even in meetings); to her required daily dose of steaming NSA lattés (CBTL of course); to placing her name on VIP lists at the five most exclusive night clubs in Hollywood (how she accomplished that remained a complete mystery to me); to insisting on shopping only at Fred Segal (though it was miles beyond her budget); to her IV vitamin therapy (?); to losing ten pounds’ worth of body curves and claiming she was still “chunky” with a 27-inch waist; to getting drunk with Toby McGuire and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (but not at the same time); and finally, to completely mastering the art of celebrity name-dropping.