Swingin' in the Rain

Other books by Eileen Davidson

DEATH IN DAYTIME

DIAL EMMY FOR MURDER

DIVA LAS VEGAS

SWINGIN’ IN THE RAIN

Eileen Davidson

MIND OVER MATTER BOOKS

SWINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, Copyright by Eileen Davidson & Robert J. Randisi. 

Cover Artwork copyright by Tom Roberts.

No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored by any means without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For permission contact Mind Over Matter Inc., 4341 Birch St., Newport Beach, CA 92662

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

To my sister Mary Elizabeth Davidson,

I’m glad you‘ve got my back.

CHAPTER ONE

  “Owww! Your heel’s in my ear!” Wes yelled.

  “I can’t get any traction.” My Herve’ Leger dress, or rather what was left of it, was in danger of slipping off my body completely. I placed my stilettos on Wes’ shoulders. Now I was straddling him.

  “Don’t look up, Wes!”

  “Like I could see anything if I did!” He was right. Rain was pelting us from all sides and flashes of canned lightening were piercing the black sky.  I tried again to inch my way up the muddy and very slippery hillside. I felt my pointy-toed Jimmy Choo slide off his shoulders and whack something protruding from his face. Uh oh. His nose?

  “Holy Crap!” Wes pulled away in pain, jerking himself out from his position under me. Suddenly I was careening downward.

  “AHHHHHHHHH!” I was gathering speed and had no way of stopping. Mud was flying everywhere. A big plop of wet goo landed in my eyes and in my nostrils making me gasp for air. I felt my shoe heel hook onto what I assumed was a cable that connected the lights at the top of the hill to the electrical truck at the bottom. I now had a collection of lights and their metal stands trailing behind me.  I wiped the mud from my right eye and looked behind just in time to see them gaining on me.

  “Oh, nooooo,” I cried.  Just then someone grabbed my arm and jerked me out of the path of the plummeting lights, to safety. It was the director, Sandy.

   “Cut! Turn off the rain!” she yelled. Then added dryly, “You missed your mark again, Alex.” The lights had swept past us and landed in a pile at the bottom of the hill.

  “Gee thanks, Sandy, for being so sensitive.” I spat out some grass and dirt.

  “I got you out of the way, didn’t I?” she asked as she turned to the special effects guys. “I said turn off the rain, damn it!”

   “It
is
off, Sandy! It’s real rain. From the sky rain,” Wes answered covering his nose. He’s a stage hand I’ve known forever and a real salt of the earth kind of guy. Most crew people are.

  Jennifer from wardrobe came running over shielding me with an umbrella.

  “We’ve got to get these prepped in case we have to do another take.” She took my shoes and gave me galoshes.

  “Thanks, Jen!” I yelled as she ran off to the wardrobe trailer.

   “You okay, Alex?” Patti asked covering me with a towel. She was rubbing her hands together to stay warm and I noticed something on one of her wrists.

   “You’re a party girl.” Patti looked puzzled and I pointed to her wrist.  The residual imprint of a fleur-de-lis was still visible on her skin. It looked like what was left of a stamp. You know, the kind they give you at a nightclub that you can’t get off for weeks on end no matter how hard you scrub? “Clubbing last night?” I asked. Patti quickly put her hand in her coat pocket. “I’m impressed! I rarely stay up past nine!”

  “Let’s get you dry, huh? Too bad you didn’t get hit by the lighting equipment cuz then we’d all have to go home, ya know?”

  I
was
impressed by Patti’s clubbing. She had to be pushing 60. She’s been in the make-up department on our soap opera “The Bare and the Brazen” for 30 years and has seen it all. She’s a true professional and I had rarely heard her complain. I guess these adverse working conditions were even getting to her. She smiled wearily and wiped some mud from my mouth with a tissue.

  “Yechh! What the hell are we doing here, anyway, huh? This sucks.”

  That was a good question. “The Bare and the Brazen’s” ratings had been slipping the last few years, along with all the other soaps. Another soap, “The Depths of the Sea” had already been cancelled last year so The Powers That Be decided, in an attempt to bring the ratings up, and avoid cancellation completely, that we’d go on “location” for a few episodes. I use the term “location” loosely. We were in Griffith Park, about fifteen minutes from the studio. It was 4:30 A.M. and we’d been there since 6:00 P.M. the previous night. Gone were the days when we’d go to Hawaii or Paris for a week on a location shoot. Budget issues had relegated us to a park or sometimes even the studio parking lot. To make matters even worse, Southern California was in the grip of the worst El Nino in decades. For all you who are unfamiliar with what El Nino is, it’s a Spanish name for “Lots of Fucking Rain,” or “disruption of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific” that messes with the weather, bringing torrential rains for weeks upon weeks.

  I looked over and saw my victim, Wes, pulling cable. One hand covered a bloody nose.

  “Sorry, Wes. I couldn’t help it. Did I break your nose?”

  “Nah. I’m okay.” He took a few steps and turned back smiling. “And I didn’t look up your dress. Not that I wasn’t tempted.”

  “Yeah, sure you were.” I smacked him on the back. “Thanks for taking so much abuse. You think we got the shot? Please don’t tell me we have to do this again.”

  Sandy walked up just in time to hear me.

  “Of course we have to do it again. I told you. You missed your mark!” Sandy said pulling a twig from behind my ear.

  “At least we don’t need the rain truck anymore, right?” I asked hopefully. I mean, why would we need fake rain when we were in the middle of an ongoing never-ending deluge. Sandy looked at me with something that resembled compassion.

  “This rain,” she said gesturing towards the sky, “doesn’t look real. We need the fake rain because it looks more real than the real rain.” She said this with a straight face. Only in Hollywood.

  “We have to hurry. The sun will be coming up very soon.” She slogged off yelling, “Reset the lightening and rain to number one and let’s do it again. Quickly! We’re losing the night.”

  “She’s losing the night and I’m losing my mind,” I muttered to myself as I headed to the hair and make-up trailer.

CHAPTER TWO

  I climbed the stairs to the “honey wagon”. {These are trailers and/or trucks set up for hair and make-up and everything else you might need on location. The name “honey” wagon was coined eons ago in reference to portable latrines. Someone had a sense of humor!} Thank God it was nice and warm in there. I shook my umbrella off and unwrapped the towels that had been wrapped around me. Then I looked in the mirror and screamed.

  “Oh my God!” My hair had grass and mud in it and my mascara had completely run down my face, I looked like “Alice Cooper: The Early Years”. 

  George, my best friend and hairdresser, stomped into the trailer behind me. His wet hair was plastered to his head and he had a steady stream of water dripping off his nose. He didn’t look like he was having any fun at all. He held a brush in his hand but I wasn’t sure if he was going to try to do something with my hair, or smack me with it. Granted he was only 5’4” but he could still be intimidating.

  “I can’t go on camera like this. Do something.” I sat down in the hair chair in front of him. He looked mad

  “Please?”

  “I thought you were a method actress. Don’t you want realism?” He was definitely mad at me.

  “Realism is one thing. This..,” I gestured to the mirror, “. . .is too real.”

  “Fine.” And he started combing through my rat’s nest, head of hair.

  “Excuse me. What did I do?” I asked him.

  “It’s what you didn’t do. You have to get up the hill and hit your mark! I wanna go home!” He tossed a make-up sponge at me.

  It’s not my fault that we’re here at all! It’s Felicia’s fault!” I said as I took the sponge and started removing the rivulets of mascara from my face.

  We were here in these horrible conditions because the character I played, Felicia, had amnesia. She had lost her memory after discovering that the man she had always thought was her father, was not. Her biological father was actually a golf pro her mother had had an affair with back in the day.  She couldn’t handle the trauma and had developed amnesia, causing her to leave her mansion and wander off into the hills. During the night. In a rainstorm. Did I mention she was wearing a very short white “bandage” dress when this occurred?

  “That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Missy! C’mon! You can do it! What do you think?” I looked in the mirror and although it wasn’t my finest hour, it would have to do. I got up and George pushed me, prodding me forward with his brush.

  “The bucks are not that big anymore. By the way, I get it. I want to go home, too,” I said swatting at him. “You’re not the only one who has a nice warm boyfriend waiting for you in bed, ya know.”

  George stopped abruptly. “Oops! I forgot to tell you. Jakes called on your cell while you were
not
hitting your mark.”

  “Is it Sarah?” I asked, alarmed. Sarah is my 7 year old daughter. Jakes was watching her that night and it was 4 A.M.

  “No, no it’s not Sarah. I would have remembered that. But he did say it was important.” I whacked him on the head. “Sorry. I’ll go get your phone.” George walked to the front of the trailer.

  Jakes is my boyfriend. My handsome, hunky, police detective boyfriend.

   “Alex! We need you on set. We’re ready to go!” Herbie, our stage manager, poked his head into the trailer.

  “I gotta make a call, Herbie.”

  “We gotta go now, Al. If we don’t, we won’t get the shot.” He gestured out the door.

  I took a peek and saw the beginnings of morning light over the horizon and I could sense panic developing on the set. If we didn’t get this shot before the sun came up it could end up costing Production literally thousands and thousands of dollars. All of this torture would have been for nothing. Now it was all on me.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said as I descended the trailer steps.  A torrent of rain hit me square in the face. Herbie grabbed the umbrella and held it over my head. “You’re sure it wasn’t Sarah, George?” I yelled, trying to avoid the wet.