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  Real news.

  That had been his dream: to be a part of the world of “real news.” He had grown up watching twenty-four-hour news shows. Michael and CNN had been his father’s constant companions. His father had been his stability and his rock during the topsy-turvy years of Michael’s mother’s descent into mental illness, and the sound of the twenty-four-hour news channel had been Michael’s lullaby. He would fall asleep to reports on the Gulf War, dreaming of one day being the reporter on the scene—barely flinching as bombs exploded all around him, putting forth a calm presence for the people at home, people such as a little boy with an erratic mother. But then his father had died of a heart attack during Michael’s last year at USC. Between the pain of losing his father and that of his mother reentering the mental ward at UCLA Medical Center, Michael felt overwhelmed by the drama of his own life. So he had chosen an internship at super-agency BAM over the one he had been offered at CNN. The internship at the news giant would have been a step closer to his dream of being a reporter, but it was also two thousand miles away from his institutionalized mother and his childhood home, which was the only place in the world where he still felt a connection to his father.

  As time passed and he climbed the ladder at BAM, moving from intern to assistant and finally to agent, he told himself that next year he would move to Atlanta and start his “real life.” But every year there was another raise, followed by a newer car, a bigger house, and a more beautiful (and thus more expensive) girlfriend. He joked with his fellow agents about the “golden handcuffs” that kept him bound to his childish clients and a job that they all agreed was shallow and soul killing. But his ability to be excited about the next model of BMW was fading, along with his ability to generate even phony interest in Sapphire Rose’s latest diet or inane demand, leaving him increasingly depressed and dissatisfied.

  In other words, way too much like his mother.

  3

  Kate stepped up into the makeup trailer and was immediately enveloped in the homey smells of coffee, bacon, and hair-care products.

  “Good morning, Herself,” trilled Paige, Kate’s makeup artist and main source of sanity on the Generations set. “What can I get for you, besides a larger costume and an apple fritter to help you fill it out?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Kate as she settled into the barbershop-style chair and sighed with pleasure as Paige pulled off her Ugg boots and worked her cold feet into a pair of electric warming booties. “Maybe an earthquake of some sort. Nothing major enough to hurt anyone, of course, just enough shaking to shut us down for a day or two to give me enough time to do a beet-juice colonic fast or get liposuction on my entire body.”

  “Well, I’m a little short on beet-juice colonics, but I can offer you coffee strong enough to create an earthquake in your bowels. Will that help?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. Nothing like a little liquid doody to really give a lingerie scene that extra juice—pardon the pun.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” said Paige, trying not to laugh coffee through her nose. “I swear I am going to call the Enquirer and tell them that their sweet little princess is a foulmouthed lunatic.”

  “Please do. I am so sick of seeing pictures of myself with the caption, ‘The always adorable…’ Of course, it still beats ‘The always expanding…’”

  “Oh please,” scoffed Paige. “You were never fat. In fact, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you actually looked much better then, much healthier. Truly, you look a little gaunt these days. I’ve stopped shading your cheekbones altogether, and I am seriously considering injecting some of my own fat into your cheeks if you continue to lose weight.”

  “Hey, speaking of fat cheeks, did you read that people are having ass implants?”

  “I believe I did read that,” said Paige, affecting a studious air. “It was in the Financial Times, was it not?”

  “Oh, shut up,” laughed Kate. “You know as well as I do that I probably didn’t even read it at all. I probably saw it on E!, which, sadly, is where I get most of my news. But my ignorance is not the issue here.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it’s not. The issue here is that women are now getting implants to imitate J. Lo’s ass, when I have been starving myself in my effort to achieve the near asslessness of a young Greek boy.”

  “No, you wack job,” said Paige, shaking her head and beginning to apply foundation to Kate’s nearly perfect skin. “The issue here is neither your ignorance of world events—beyond the current trends in plastic surgery, of course—nor the size and shape of J. Lo’s ass. The real issue is the fact that you think ‘near asslessness’ is a goal worth aspiring to.”

  “Well, I was going to save the world,” answered Kate, enjoying the feel of the makeup sponge moving over her face, “but I was just so damn hungry.”

  “Ha ha,” said Paige dryly. “You think you’re joking, but there is more truth in what you say than you think there is. Come to think of it, judging by your weight right now, you probably aren’t taking in anything I’m saying, are you?”

  “Not really,” admitted Kate. “Right now you just look like a big, fuzzy doughnut. You’re probably better off waiting until after this scene to tell me anything important. Unless it is an important recipe of some sort, or a really detailed description of almost any carbohydrate-based food product, or—”

  “Oh, shut up,” laughed Paige. “The only thing more boring than a do-gooder celebrity is a dieting celebrity. God forbid they combine and become the truly terrifying hybrid of the celebrity who is trying to do good by sharing her diet secrets. I do believe that is the first sign of the apocalypse.”

  “Do you think the apocalypse is imminent? Because then I could certainly have a cookie.”

  “If I thought it would make you eat more, I would call God personally and arrange it. I must say, the idea of watching you ingest a carbohydrate would almost be worth watching the world as we know it end. I wonder if I could have a cocktail on the eve of the apocalypse. The fires of hell would sure be a lot easier to bear if I could have a nice, big frozen margarita…or ten.”

  “Oh man, I would love to see you drunk,” said Kate. “I bet you were a blast.”

  “Yeah, for a minute,” said Paige. “Until the tears started flowing and I started vacillating wildly between proclaiming my undying love for you and screaming—well, scream-slurring—‘You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.’”

  “I know you say that,” said Kate, “but it is just so hard to picture you like that.”

  “Trust me, it wasn’t pretty. Now, why don’t you just relax so that I can get to work transforming you from a little Irish waif into America’s favorite Waspy femme fatale.”

  “You’re the best,” sighed Kate, leaning back against the headrest.

  “Thank you,” said Paige, truly grateful for the compliment, because she so clearly remembered a time when the only thing she was the best at was ordering another drink.

  The Paige that Kate and everyone else at work knew was the very definition of a “together woman”: smart, responsible, upbeat, and charmingly self-deprecating. Just heavy enough to be non-threatening to women, but fit enough to be attractive to men. The Paige that they would have met ten years ago, however, was quite a different picture. Before she had been lucky enough to get “a nudge from the judge” in the form of ten court-ordered Alcoholics Anonymous meetings after her second DUI arrest, she had been a daily drinker on her way to becoming an every-single-minute-of-the-day drinker, having recently discovered the joys of the morning cocktail. In fact, she had been arrested first thing in the morning while on her way to work, which had turned out to be a plus. Even her well-honed denial couldn’t rationalize a .05 alcohol level at seven-thirty in the morning as “normal drinking.” Even so, if the Los Angeles court system hadn’t insisted on her getting her court card signed at the end of every AA meeting she was forced to attend, she wouldn’t have sat through a single one in its entirety. H
er first meeting felt like the worst of high school assemblies, with all of the popular kids laughing and greeting one another while Paige stood alone feeling shy and insecure, still woefully ignorant of the rules of the popularity game. This is precisely why I drink, she had thought, standing at the door and trying to look like she wanted to be alone, that she had a very good—and very cool—reason to be hovering at the door looking lost, frightened, and pathetic.

  “Hi, I’m Brad,” said a voice to her left, startling her out of her self-pitying revelry. She turned to find a balding, middle-aged man standing next to her with a broad grin on his plain face and his right hand extended. Was she supposed to shake it? If she took his hand, did that mean they were going steady?

  “Hel-lo,” she answered in her best I-am-not-available-and-even-if-I-were-I-wouldn’t-choose-you voice, perfected through years of barroom exchanges with overly friendly guys just like this one. When paired with her standard pursed lips and haughty head turn, it was virtually guaranteed to get the because-I-am-too-good-for-you message across, without the need to exchange any actual, and possibly awkward, words.

  “Yes, hel-lo,” continued Brad, in an almost perfect imitation of her pseudogreeting, not only not taking the hint, but reintroducing his proffered hand and adding an indulgent chuckle to his silly grin. “And what is your name?”

  Taken aback by his complete inability to understand when he was being blown off, Paige found herself taking his hand and telling him her name—her real name, even. She was that confused.

  “Well, Paige, welcome. Is this your first meeting?”

  Flustered further by his apparent ability to read her mind, Paige replied, “Yes, but I’m not really here—I mean, I am here, obviously, but not because I need to be—I mean, I need to be, but not because I have a problem with, you know…”

  “Alcohol?” asked Brad, not unkindly.

  “Right…alcohol. I mean, not right because I have a problem, but right because…well…never mind. The point is that I am here because I got a stupid DUI and I need to get this paper thingy signed.” Paige rifled around in her oversized Le Sportsac handbag (decorated with countless colorful little martini glasses—in hindsight, perhaps not the best choice) until she found the narrow green card her lawyer had given her, along with instructions to have it signed at the end of ten different AA meetings. Thinking that maybe she could avoid ten wasted evenings, she held up her card and, treating Brad to her most winning smile, said, “Do you know where I go to get this silly thing signed?”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” said Brad, returning her smile.

  “Really?” said Paige, leaning into him conspiratorially and actually beginning to enjoy both the flirtation and the promise of using this man’s obvious attraction to her to her own advantage. She might even let him kiss her. Buying her a drink was probably out of the question.

  “Really,” he said, once again matching her tone. “Come right this way.” She allowed him to take her arm and lead her toward the front of the large auditorium, which was already three-quarters full with laughing, chatting, way too happy people. Were they going directly to the card-signing room? Excellent, she thought, she could be out of there in time for happy hour. “And here you are,” he said, leaning over and grabbing a business card off a center-aisle front-row seat.

  “Is this where I get my card signed?” she asked, beginning to panic as an attractively dressed blond woman behind a podium—a podium that stood roughly three feet in front of Paige—began to knock on its surface and call out, “Meeting time!” in a cheerful voice. If Paige didn’t get her card signed and get out of there quick, she would be stuck.

  “Yes, it is, and that woman right there is going to sign it for you.”

  “Great,” said Paige, relieved, as she started toward the podium.

  “Right after the meeting,” said Brad as he pulled her gently back toward the chair he had cleared a moment ago. “Carolyn,” he called up to the podium woman, “Paige here needs you to sign her court card for her after the meeting, okay?”

  “Okay,” answered Carolyn, smiling down at her with that same moony smile. “I’ll sign it right after the meeting. You just sit tight.”

  Sit tight? Was this a meeting or was she getting a shot at the doctor’s office? She did sit tight, though. What choice did she have?

  The meeting went by in a blur of words, movement, and intermittent applause. Paige had trouble following the speaker, an older man whose tragic story of lost jobs, car wrecks, and a nearly broken marriage was met with laughter and nodding heads all around her. She was shocked that the audience wasn’t treating his story with the gravity it deserved, but at the same time was envious of what seemed to be an easy camaraderie between the speaker and his audience and among the audience members.

  After the speaker, Carolyn returned to the podium, looked pointedly at Paige, and asked if anyone who was “new to the program would like to stand up and introduce themselves?” Introduce themselves? Whatever happened to Alcoholics Anonymous? To her surprise, Paige heard the scraping of what sounded like a lot of chairs and turned around to see at least twenty people standing. One by one, they said their names followed by the phrase “and I am an alcoholic,” which was then followed by applause and shouts of “Welcome” and “Keep coming back.” The energy was infectious and Paige found herself wanting to leap up and proclaim herself a part of this happy club. Fear and insecurity held her to her chair, however, until an encouraging smile from Carolyn helped Paige gather enough courage to half stand on shaky legs and mumble, “Um, my name is Paige and I am…well…I don’t know what I am.” She held her breath, waiting to get thrown out for not following the rules, but instead felt warm hands patting her back and heard laughter, applause, and shouts of “You’re in the right place, Paige!” and “If you find out, would you let me know?” which was followed by more laughter and a warm smile from Carolyn.

  As Paige was putting the final touches on Kate’s makeup, spot-covering her more insistent freckles and subtly overlining her lips to create the illusion of collagen without the danger of looking as if she’d been hit in the face with a two-by-four (although occasionally she did take it too far, eliciting cries of “Lucille Ball! Lucille Ball!” from a clown-faced Kate), there was a rapping on the makeup trailer door, followed by Sam’s head poking through.

  “Thirty minutes,” said Paige, before he could get a word out. “I still have to blow out her hair or America will think Melania got her finger stuck in a light socket.”

  “Hey!” said Kate.

  “What?” asked Paige innocently. “It’s my fault you come in here looking like a poodle?”

  “Ladies,” interrupted Sam. “Believe it or not, I did come all the way over here for a reason. Basically, thirty minutes is not going to be a problem. In fact, if you had an urge to do cornrows or hair extensions, now would be a good time.”

  “Oh shit,” groaned Kate. “I have the sinking feeling that whatever you are going to tell me is bad news. Although I will say that whatever the sucky news is, the fact that it’s coming from a guy who not only knows what hair extensions are but also how time-consuming they are to apply makes it a little easier to bear.”

  “Well then, let me start with this: eyelash extensions are the new hair extensions.”

  “Oh my,” said Paige, fanning herself with a makeup brush and feigning a sexually charged swoon. “This must really be bad news. But on the upside, I think I just came.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Sam with a businesslike nod. “Now on to the less enjoyable reason for my visit: Sapphire is having the teensiest, tiniest little wardrobe issue and we may have a short delay.”

  “Oh, well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” said Kate, relieved that she would soon be on her way to doing—and finishing forever and ever—her dreaded scene. “It’ll give me an extra twenty minutes to drop a few pounds.”

  “Very funny,” said Sam, clearly not enjoying her joke. “Anyway, your own skinny-assed insanity aside
, I said we may have a short delay. The other possibility is that we may have a long delay. We’re already an hour behind schedule because of Sapphire’s wardrobe dilemma, and if we don’t get the scene before yours done by eleven o’clock, we are going to need to move outside to the restaurant scene because of the light. Then, and only then, will we know if we have enough time to come back here and get your scene done today, or if we will need to move it to tomorrow, or—don’t hit me, I’m just the messenger—it may even need to be moved to next week sometime.”

  Kate’s heart sank. As much as she had been dreading being filmed—and criticized—nearly naked, she had begun to see a light at the end of the tunnel. It was like dreading some sort of painful elective surgery for weeks and then, just as the gurney was being wheeled into the operating room, hearing that the surgeon had a very important golf game and the surgery was going to be postponed indefinitely. There would be relief, sure, but also a return to the hideous feeling of dreadful anticipation.