Sky Tongues (5 page)

All
of us?”
   “Hey, it’s not my country. I just live here.”
   “Fuck. I don’t want to have to get dressed up and all that bullshit.”
   “You get dressed up and all that bullshit every day.”
   “It’s not the same.”
   David just continued to smile and went back to studying his lines.
   A couple hours later, when we were finished with our scene, I went and knocked on Dove’s trailer door. He called that it was open and I climbed inside to find him doing yoga on his kitchen table. “What’s up, Frenchy?”
   Frenchy was Dove’s nickname for me since the first day we met; it was in reference to my tongues.
   “I don’t want to go to the Emmy’s,” I whined.
   “Why not?” He was always completely direct.
   “I don’t know. I just think I’ll be uncomfortable. You know me. I don’t want to have to wear some frilly dress and a ton of makeup and all that happy horse shit.”
   Stretching a foot up behind his head, Dove said, “All that happy horse shit is just part of the game, Frenchy. You just have to learn to play it.”
   “I don’t want to. What does it have to do with acting anyway?”
   “Absolutely nothing. Like I said, it’s part of the game.”
   “You’re not helping, Dove.”
   He seemed indifferent. “Sorry.”
   Out of everyone I spoke to, no one understood my reluctance to be a part of that “game”, as Dove had put it. They all agreed that it was no big deal, one night out of the year.
   It wouldn’t kill me.
34
   When the day of the awards show finally arrived, I was much less nervous than I’d initially been. By that time, I’d done a few spots on Entertainment Tonight, had a few interviews here and there and had generally grown into the whole fame thing to some degree. It still didn’t fit quite right, but neither was it completely uncomfortable.
   To be more relaxed, I declined the offer of a limo and drove myself, got stuck in traffic and had trouble with the security guards who had no idea who I was, thereby making me even later, and by the time I finally got inside the show’s producers were furious with me.
   “You’re going to have to hurry and look over this script,” one of them bellowed at me as we made our way through the building and then backstage. He shoved a script at me.
   I frowned as we hustled along. “A script? What’s this for?”
   “For your presentation?”
   “My
what
?”

   “
This is why the actors
need
show up in the
afternoon!”
He was now speaking to his assistant who was jogging beside him. They both stopped suddenly and pointed to what looked like a long row of toll booths side by side. “Your friends are in there,” he said and hurried off to fix yet another catastrophe.
   I made my way through a crowd and saw my name on the last toll booth box. I opened the door and stepped inside to see a little stool before an open window and smaller windows on either side. On the left, where the next booth was a couple feet away, David sat on his own stool facing his own forward-facing window.
   I poked my head inside his booth and said, “What the fuck is this shit?”
   He looked at me and burst into laughter. “Fuck if I know. They keep sending these reporters over to ask us questions, one by one. It’s completely retarded.”
   Looking past him, I could see Lavinia in her booth and Lucia on the end. Beyond her was another booth, which was empty. “Where’s Dove?” I asked.
   David laughed again. “He said he’s already done this bullshit and he’s not doing it again!”
   “That bastard! He told me it was part of the game!”
   “Bugger him! Here comes one of those reporter women now. They’ve been wondering where you were, asking us if you were a no-show like Dove and what it meant.”
   “What it meant?”
   “Yes, like if you were making a political statement or some such bullshit.”
   “Oh, brother.”
   And sure enough, a woman suddenly stuck her head in my window and thrust a microphone in my face. “Sky! Sky, what are your predictions for tonight’s show?”
   David gave me a cheery grin and thumbs up and I could have kicked him.
35
   There were hundreds of other, equally lame, questions thrown at me that night.
   How did it feel to be an overnight sensation?
   Did I care to speculate on what message Dove was trying to send the media?
   Was there anything special I wanted to say to the fans?
   Any advice I might want to give to aspiring young actors like myself?
   What were my predictions for the next season of Exquisite Afterlife?
   Would Star and Sacheverell hook up?
    Were any sparks flying off the set?
   Oh yes, and how did it feel to be an overnight sensation?
Over and over, around and around, until I wanted to scream and rip their eyes out by the roots.
   Finally, the questions abated somewhat and the show’s director came over to me to ask if I’d looked over the script yet and did I have any questions. I had to tell him that, no, I hadn’t had a chance to look at the script but I would momentarily. He grimaced and made me promise.
   “Fuck!” I said once my window was clear. “This is insanity.”
   David continued to look amused. “By the way, love, you look quite stunning in that dress.”
   “David, I’m not wearing a dress.”
   “I know!” He laughed again. “The studio is going to kill you!”
   “Well, thanks. You look very nice in your tuxedo as well.”
   He laughed loud enough to make Lavinia glance over at us, with an expression that said, ‘Good lords, I hope those kids don’t embarrass me.’
   “You’re stoned, aren’t you?” I asked him.
   He brought the magazine he was reading up to his face so that only his eyes showed over the top of it, nodding emphatically. “What am I going to bloody do?” His voice sounded panicked but he was still laughing.
   I shrugged. “Drink some water or something. I don’t know.” Then I turned away from him. I had my own problems, the current one being this damn script I was supposed to already have memorized. Opening it up to where someone had stuck a tab with my name on it, I silently read what was supposed to be going on.
   Apparently, Lavinia, Lucia and I were all to present the award for Best Sound Effects in a Drama and before doing so, we were to engage in pathetically non-humorous banter with each other, as well as read a few ads and
sing a song!
   “What the fuck?” I leapt off my stool and flung open the door of my booth, racing over to Lavinia’s booth, flinging open
her door
and repeating, “What the fuck?” while waving the script around.
   She barely glanced up at me. “What the fuck what, Sky?”
   “This thing says we’re supposed to sing some stupid jingle!”
   “No, no, no,” She corrected with a pointed purple finger. “
I
am supposed
to sing a
song
.
You
are supposed to sing the stupid jingle.”
   I was speechless, turning nearly as purple as she was in my outrage. Finally, I coughed out, “What about Lucia?”
   Lucia leaned in from her own booth. “I already told them I don’t sing.”
   Lavinia looked at me. “She doesn’t sing.”
   “What the fuck?
I
don’t sing!”
   They both couldn’t have cared less whether I sang or not.
   After a moment, I left Lavinia’s booth and went in search of someone in charge. Every time I saw a person who appeared to be part of the crew, I asked, “Who’s in charge around here?” Everyone pointed to everyone else. I kept muttering “Fuck” under my breath and moving on to the next person.
   “Where’s that guy?” I began shouting to anyone I encountered backstage. “That guy who gave me this! The producer. Or the producer’s assistant. Where’s that guy?”
   I’m sure everyone thought I was the druggie of our cast instead of David, but I didn’t care. There was no way in hell I was about to sing for anyone, especially since they hadn’t even asked me first.
   In the end, I gave up searching for the guy who had handed me the script and I went back to my booth and sat docilely like a good girl, answering stupid questions with a smile and simultaneously trying to talk David down from his high.
   On the whole, I wouldn’t say it was a good beginning to the night.
36
   Half an hour passed and then someone from the show told Lucia that we still had an hour before we would be presenting the sound award.
   Restless, I couldn’t sit still inside that damn booth for another hour, so I left. I decided to go exploring and since there wasn’t much to see back stage and since we weren’t allowed to sit in the audience until our own nomination for Best New Show rolled around, I went outside.
   The world out there instantly reminded me of the old carnival atmosphere I used to love so much. There were games and rides and everywhere you looked people were enjoying themselves. Unlike the old carnival days though, this place was full of celebrities walking around, being entertained and eating fried dough.
   It was all very surreal.
   I was out there for perhaps twenty minutes before I noticed all the bleachers set up around the carnival, bleachers full of people, onlookers who wanted to watch their favorite personalities win a teddy bear or ride the Whip.
   Amazed, I walked around to the rear of one of the rides and looked up at the crowd looking down at me. There were a few Mues shouting my name and waving frantically. I waved back, smiling, trying to pretend this was all very normal to me.
   I started to feel like the whole thing was part of a twisted nightmare that I couldn’t escape from so, I decided I was better off inside after all. As bizarre as things were in there, they still didn’t compare to what was outside.
   Attempting to go back, I had yet another argument with yet another security guard who kept saying he didn’t recognize me, he’d never heard of me, etc, so it was
another
twenty minutes before I was even back in the building.
   I knew I should head immediately back to the booths but I couldn’t face that weirdness again just yet. Instead, I wandered around backstage, trying doors and finding most of them locked. When I finally found one that wasn’t, I quickly slipped through it without anyone noticing.
   One white bustling hallway led to another somewhat less bustling white hallway until I came to a completely silent, completely deserted white hallway. I tried various doors in this hallway until I finally found one unlocked. I opened it and stepped into a plain white room with furniture of shockingly bright colors in striped and polka dot designs. There was nothing in this room besides the furniture, consisting of a single loveseat and several funky armless chairs, except for a mirror on one wall with a magazine rack hanging beside it.
   I did what anyone would have done: I chose a magazine and sat down on the loveseat to read it.
   When I opened the magazine in the middle, there was a bright psychedelic painting of the late John Lennon of the Beatles, a musical band that was popular over a century ago.
   The accompanying article was a description of the process of creating the painting. The writing was so vivid, I could actually hear the squishing sounds of the brush moving through the paint and then scratching against the canvas and all I kept thinking was,
This would make a great script. I have to remember this. It would make a great script.
   Then a woman entered through another door I hadn’t noticed when I’d first come in. with a paper towel, she said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
   “No,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”
   “Well, you’d better hurry up then,” she said tossing the used towel into a basket on the floor beneath the magazine rack.
   
That’s weird,
I thought.
I’d swear that basket wasn’t there before.
   “Hurry up for what?”
   “To practice your presentation, of course. Did you forget why you’re here?”
   I looked down at the magazine in my lap, my thumb tongues caressing the glossy pages, the colorful image of John Lennon’s face, his famous round eyeglasses. “I guess I did.”
   When I looked up, the woman was giving me a disapproving stare, then she shook her head and went back through the door she’d emerged from.
   She was right though. I needed to get back. How long had I been in here anyway? It seemed like forever but when I looked again at the magazine, at the words written there, I saw that I had only read the first line of the article. Maybe repeatedly, but I couldn’t be sure. How had I thought a single line would make such a good script? The whole thing was rather mystifying and I wanted to take the magazine back with me, show it to the others and ask them what they saw in it. But, I was afraid that if I took the magazine from the room, something horrible would happen, something I couldn’t predict. I knew without a doubt that I would find myself in huge trouble. Perhaps arrested.
   I stood up and hurriedly put the magazine back in the rack and exited the room, wondering which door I had entered to come to this abandoned hallway in the first place. Where the hell was I?
   Running up the hall, trying every door along the way, I was distressed to find them all locked. I was on the verge of panicking, of shouting for help, when I tried the last door and it opened into another hall with a few people entering and exiting various doors along it.
   I peeked into all the doors I could and at least tried the ones I couldn’t until I found the one which opened on a vaguely familiar scene.
   Soon, I was in the busy backstage area again, moving past people and heading for that ridiculous row of booths we were assigned to.
Entering my own booth, I was happy to see David in his and I sat down, breathing a tremendous sigh of relief. After all that, I knew that presenting a little award would be nothing but a piece of cake.
37
   I was wrong.
   Getting back only minutes before we were told it was time, I hadn’t memorized what I was supposed to say yet. I told the assistant who was sent to fetch us and he said not to worry about it. There would be a teleprompter. I also told him I had no intention of singing any jingle and he said he doubted there would be time anyway, since the show was running behind.
   Reassured, I felt much better as the three of us were led to the stage entrance and told to wait for our cue. Both Lavinia and Lucia were perfectly calm. They seemed almost bored, which was usually Lavinia’s natural state and unsurprising at that point since she had been to these things before. But I figured Lucia would be at least as nervous as I was. Instead, she calmly waited, checking herself in the mirror now and then.
   We watched as someone received an award for Best Original Screenplay and then we were up. I was scared to death I might trip and make an ass out of myself, but the walk across the stage went well, with Lavinia leading, Lucia in the middle and me bringing up the rear.
   Once we arrived at the podium, Lavinia did most of the talking without ever glancing at the teleprompter and I was able to scan the crowd. As soon as I saw the sea of people sitting before us, I calmed down. It was just like doing theater, I thought, except that everyone here is dressed in fancier clothes. I figured if I’d ever made it to Broadway, the audience would have looked exactly the same as this one did.
   Meanwhile, Lavinia had begun singing her song, while Lucia and I took a step back and let her have the spotlight. We both made it look good, swinging our hips back and forth and smiling like lunatics. Lucia snapped the fingers of her four hands and I tried clapping with my tongues, without much success.
   Thankfully the song was brief and we stepped forward again, patiently waiting for the applause to cease. When it finally did, it was time for Lucia’s mini-monologue and I stood idly by, trying to look fascinated by what she was saying. All too soon, she was finished and it was time for me to ramble on about nonsense. I calmly smiled and for the first time flicked my eyes at the teleprompter. To my dismay, I couldn’t read a single word on it. One of the ceiling lights was casting a glare and all I good see was its reflection. Distressed, I did the only thing I knew to do: I improvised. I made small talk with the audience, saying how exciting the whole event was, meanwhile trying to remember from the script what I was supposed to say. I managed to recall the bit about the award we were presenting almost verbatim, but then it came time to do the little plug for one of the shows sponsors. I knew it was for some chain restaurant, but that was about all I could remember. Which restaurant? No clue.
   So, I made one up and began talking about Charley’s Big Tine Saloon. It was the first thing that came into my head. I tried to ignore the crew motioning for me to look at the teleprompter and generally going crazy, and I just rambled on. Charley wanted everyone to come on out and try his spicy baby-back tofu ribs, his special secret sauce tofu buffalo wings and of course, the infamously huge forks. His slaw was also to die for and if you were looking for a casual place with sawdust on the floor and live country music, Charley’s Big Tine Saloon was the place to go.
   I noticed the audience exchanging glances here and there, but most just sat, either looking bored and yawning or staring with a blank smile.
   Lavinia and Lucia, gods bless them, stood by and remained absolutely neutral, as if they’d known all along about the Big Tine Saloon. Then I noticed the director frantically dragging his finger across his throat, motioning me to shut the hell up, so I did and Lavinia began reciting the nominees.
   A fine sheen of sweat had developed on my brow but I pretended it wasn’t there and waited for Lavinia to open the envelope. Together, all three of us read the winner aloud and then acted ecstatic over it. The winner came up and we casually faded back, waited for him to finish his speech and then escorted him off the stage.
   Once we were backstage, chaos ensued. I had about half a dozen people screaming at me while my cast mates burst into hysterical fits of laughter (including David, who was there to present an award with a little Uni kid.) I began to laugh uncontrollably myself, but it wasn’t real laughter. I was acting and secretly mortified. I just wanted to go home and forget this night ever happened.
   But I couldn’t do that. The night dragged on for another hour, during which time we were permitted to sit in the audience and wait to see if we won Best New Drama series, which was one of the last awards given. We didn’t win, but Dove did and David went to accept the award on his behalf, saying that Dove sent his apologies for being unable to attend.
   Then the show ended and the media frenzy began. I don’t even know how many times I said how thrilling it was just to be nominated. I was making myself ill. And of course I kept getting asked about my presentation performance, which I insisted was all part of the plan to add a little humor to what was always a tense night. In fact, our whole cast and crew would be asked about what I did for an entire week to come and by the end of it, they were as displeased with my stunt as the show’s bigwigs were.
   And that was how I became to be known as a drunk at the age of 22.
38
   It was shortly after the Emmy fiasco that I became a favorite among the rag-mag crowd. To read those things, you’d think I was drunk or stoned 24/7, not to mention having sex with everyone in Hollywood. I did my best to ignore the crap they were printing about me, refused about a million interviews and tried to concentrate solely on my job.
   Relief finally came during our seasonal hiatus when I was offered a supporting part in a feature film that was to be shot overseas. I jumped at the chance, packed my bags and bought a ticket for the first plane out of the states.
   The movie was called