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  “Okay,” said Kate, sighing and allowing just enough petulance into her voice to show that, although it wasn’t really “okay,” she would rise above it and be a good girl.

  Sam looked at her for an extra beat, trying to figure out if she was really okay, before realizing that there was nothing any of them could do about it anyway. “Okay, then. I will find you and give you an update whenever I have one.”

  After the door slammed shut behind him, Paige turned to Kate. “Well, this sucks.”

  “Not really,” said Kate dully. “Maybe it’s just the universe’s way of telling me I need more time to lose weight.”

  “Oh, fuck me,” shouted Paige, surprising both Kate and herself with her outburst. “I’m sorry, but if the universe is trying to tell you anything, it is to have a fucking snack and get your skinny ass into therapy.”

  “Yeah,” said Kate, tears appearing in the corners of her eyes, “a snack is just what I need. Then I can be fat, lose my career altogether, and have nothing but time for getting to know the ‘real me.’ Well, I know the real me, Paige, and she is fat and lonely and even her mother doesn’t want to be seen with her in public.”

  “Oh, honey,” Paige said, enveloping her now weeping friend in a hug, wishing she could make her understand that the cure for her anxiety and emotionality wasn’t less food. “Can we just get you some protein? Maybe an omelet?” Feeling Kate’s back tense in panic and seeing the vehement shake of the head still buried deep in her shoulder, Paige reconsidered her attack. “How about some egg whites? What if we tell the caterer that we want egg whites in the exact caloric equivalent to what it takes to actually eat them?”

  “Can I chew extra times to burn off the pepper calories?” asked Kate, lifting her face, exposing sad eyes and a mischievous smile.

  “As long as you don’t make any mouth noises or breathe your nasty eggs breath on me.” Paige waited until Kate’s smile reached her eyes and then pulled her out of her chair by the elbow. “Come on, my crazy friend, I’m not even going to talk to you until you have something in your system.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, it’s a promise. The threat is therapy.”

  “I’m in therapy—with Hamilton and Penelo—”

  “Penelope?” interrupted Paige. “Are you kidding me? That’s not therapy, that’s propaganda. She just wants you to go on Jay Leno and plug her stupid book, Men Are in Charge and Women Should Shut Up and Take It in the Ass.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said Kate, laughing in earnest now. “It’s called Loving Our Men: The True Power of Women and it’s really good.”

  “It’s really bullshit. Now, come on, getting some breakfast into you is the first step of your deprogramming. Once you come out of your hypoglycemic haze, then we start on the real work of getting you a hot, young boyfriend who wants you to have an ass that he can rest a place setting on. As it is, you’d be lucky to support one of those miniature souvenir spoons.”

  “Thank you,” said Kate, with an exaggerated shake of her butt as she headed out the door.

  “No, you idiot,” shouted Paige. “That wasn’t a compliment! It was a call to awareness!”

  “Oh, well, in that case you should know that I don’t take my own calls. All calls go through my manager. Would you like Hamilton’s number?”

  “You are hopeless,” said Paige, catching up to her.

  “Maybe so, but at least I’m married.”

  “As soon as I feed you I am going to kill you.”

  “Good, because I always feel like I want to die after I eat, anyway.”

  “Kate.” Paige stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Oh, lighten up,” said Kate, shrugging off her friend’s concern and heading toward the line of people waiting for their breakfast at the catering truck. “I’m kidding.”

  “I hope so,” said Paige, but she knew she wasn’t.

  4

  Twenty yards away, in the forty-foot-long semitrailer that had been outfitted with hanging clothing racks three levels high and two deep, Sapphire Rose was once again reduced to gulping, sobbing, tantrum-level tears.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed, as yet one more skirt didn’t make it over her hips. “Why don’t you buy any clothes that fit me? Do you hate me?”

  Yes, thought Claire, the head costumer of Generations. I do hate you, but that isn’t why your clothes don’t fit, you mean cow. But of course she didn’t—couldn’t—say that. “Of course I don’t hate you, sweetie. How could you even think that?”

  “How could I even think that? How could I think anything else when every day of my life I put on my clothes and they don’t fit? Do you know how hard it is to be Sapphire Rose, to be People magazine’s second most favorite actress of 2003? It is a tremendous—a tremendous—amount of pressure to be looked up to by so many as a role model and a style icon. How can I be all that my millions of fans need me to be if my clothes don’t fit?!” With that, Sapphire fell back onto the nearest folding chair and proceeded to completely ruin what was left of her makeup with more messy, snotty sobs.

  Oh boy, here we go again, thought Claire, wondering where they were going to put yet another set of clothes for their shape-shifting star. As it was, two-thirds of the trailer (which was intended to hold the wardrobes of all ten of the principal actors, as well as extra clothes for scenes involving background artists) was now dedicated to holding row upon row of outfits for Sapphire, in graduating sizes. The most difficult part of Claire’s job should have been the weekly challenge of choosing clothing for each individual character in that episode’s script—clothing that not only suited each character’s journey and each actor’s personal preferences and creative vision, but also worked together as a whole with the set design and the ideas of the director and the producers. Sadly, most of her energy, and that of her five-person crew, was wasted on trying in vain to keep her star happy and well dressed, which involved the daily challenge of trying to judge her current size by sight and placing clothes in her trailer that either fit her or, barring that, were too large. The most recent diet debacle, the “Bah-Bah Thin Sheep” diet, had Sapphire eating nothing but incredibly pungent lamb kebabs, lamb stew, and the occasional King Henry the Eighth–style leg of lamb. She gained fifteen pounds in two weeks, which made the too-large option a practical impossibility, at least until Claire’s assistant made it back from Bloomingdale’s. Even then, with the clothes in hand, they would need time to replace all of the size tags in the new garments with the size 6 labels that Sapphire preferred.

  “How could you let that horrible little assistant”—even Sapphire understood that whenever possible it was best to blame those lowest on the totem pole—“continually put clothes in my room that don’t fit? Do you have any idea what that does to my self-esteem? I am an artist. I need to be taken care of like a flower, like a hothouse orchid, not squeezed into some polyester casing like a sausage!”

  “Yes, Sapphire,” sighed Claire, having learned long ago that trying to inject logic—or any level of objective reality—into a conversation such as this only prolonged the torture. “Of course you need to be handled with care. Don’t we all?”

  “Don’t we all? Don’t we all?” snapped Sapphire in a spiteful, mimicking tone. “What is that even supposed to mean? We all don’t need to be on camera in five minutes. We all don’t have the fate of this entire show resting on our shoulders every single day of our lives!” Collapsing once again in tears, the actress was barely able to summon the strength to reach into the candy jar on the counter and grab a handful of Jelly Bellies. “Why does no one understand how hard my life is?”

  Because it is difficult to have compassion for a wealthy, childlike, mean-spirited, spoiled brat, thought Claire. But to the heaving, chewing mass of misplaced talent she said, “Oh, honey, I hate to see you so upset. I’m sure we will find you the perfect outfit. If we don’t have it here, we’ll just send someone out to find you something that you will feel comfortable in, okay?”

&
nbsp; “And that looks good. It has to look good.” Sapphire sniffed as she reached her damp, snotty hand back into the jar of jelly beans.

  “Well, of course it will look good, darling—it will be on you, won’t it?” Claire was rewarded with a small smile and, seeing her chance to get on with what was left of her morning, coaxed Sapphire out of her trailer by slowly backing toward the door with the now disgustingly sticky candy jar held suggestively in her hands. “Now, why don’t you just take these over to Bruce’s trailer and let him fix your beautiful face while I put together the most gorgeous outfit you have ever seen?”

  “Okay.” Sapphire sniffed again, taking the jar and explaining, “They’re not for me, though. My new raw-food diet doesn’t allow sugar, unless it’s raw like honey or molasses or sugarcane in its—”

  “Wow, isn’t that interesting,” said Claire, ushering her out the door as quickly as possible without actually injuring her. “I can’t wait to hear all about it just as soon as we get you all prettied up again and ready for your scene.”

  Always happier when groups of people rallied around the cause of beautifying her, Sapphire allowed herself to be aimed toward her personal makeup trailer and her very own team of ego boosters.

  5

  Driving home eight hours later, having finally been allowed to leave the set with the caveat to “stay close to the phone in case we need you,” Kate felt better than she had in weeks. Maybe it was just the grounding feeling of having some food in her (Paige had somehow tricked her into eating lunch, too), or the relief of having her near-nude scene postponed. Her sense of well-being definitely wasn’t the result of the six hours she had spent sitting in her dressing room, mindlessly flipping channels on her tiny television set.

  First, the entire crew of 150 people was on hold for an hour and a half while they waited for Sapphire’s new clothes to arrive from the local mall. Then they sat around for another several hours while her makeup was re-re-reapplied after the first two outfits she tried on proved to be too small, too, bringing on two more crying jags. The last one—lasting more than an hour—came complete with threats to quit the show and culminated with the star locking herself in her trailer and demanding a meeting with the producer, executive producer, and her agent. Thanks to the three men’s combined and well-practiced ass-kissing skills, they were able to convince her that she was the most important, beautiful, and talented actress of her generation. And that her ass did not look fat in skirt number three. At that point, it was too late to film the scene in the outdoor restaurant because they had lost the light. This led to a brief—and terrifying—moment where it looked as if Kate would have to film her scene after all. Sam even told her to get dressed in her tiny costume and gave her a ten-minute warning—the entire thirty minutes of which she spent sitting on the edge of her hard little couch trying to keep herself from either hyperventilating or crying over the fact that she had allowed herself to eat two—two—meals and now she and her belly would soon be the target of the “Is She Expecting?” pages of Star magazine. Thankfully, just as her attempts at relaxing, meditative deep breathing were beginning to cause the decidedly unrelaxed feelings of dizziness and vertigo, Sam appeared at her door with a big smile on his face and the sign-out sheet in his hand. Sapphire, it seemed, didn’t want her “time wasted” by being sent home without shooting a scene. In order to keep the fragile peace, the producer had found a short scene involving Sapphire sitting home alone, thus allowing the company to avoid another tantrum and finish the wasted day at a decent hour. They could then start extra early the next day, in the hopes of making up some of the time they had lost.

  In the scene they ended up shooting, Sapphire was wearing a bathrobe.

  Feeling like a death-row inmate who had been granted a last-minute reprieve and, miraculously, a BMW sports car in which to enjoy it, Kate drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, singing loudly and completely off-key with Sheryl Crow, “All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die. As she bopped her head from side to side, enjoying the view and her own terrible singing, Kate thought about how much she wanted to get back to being the person she used to be—the optimistic girl who had come to Los Angeles to become an actress because she loved the camaraderie of the stage. She loved that part of being an actor: being surrounded by imaginative, interesting people all working in tandem to piece together an entire world out of the combined energy of their collective pain, wisdom, and joy. The creative process was magical, spiritual. When had she made the shift from working to feed her soul to working for a paycheck, for the approval of a capricious press, for the validation of the masses? Somewhere along the way there had been a fork in the road and she had clearly turned down the wrong path. But maybe it was like Paige was always saying: it’s never too late to start your day—or your life—over.

  My life, thought Kate. This is my life.

  She turned up the music on her car radio and a joyous white-girl-dancing grin spread across her face. She made the turn up Chautauqua Avenue, singing at the top of her lungs and waving at her fellow drivers, watching their judgmental stares turn into surprised waves and giggles when they recognized her as “that lady from TV.” Or maybe they just couldn’t believe that a driver in Los Angeles was being friendly. Either way, Kate felt like the whole world was smiling with her as she rounded the final corner before her house and made the turn into her wide, gated driveway. She punched in the gate code (Hamilton’s birthday) and pulled up next to Hamilton’s Porsche just as she and Sheryl were finishing their duet.

  Getting out of her car, she took a moment to appreciate the perfection of the house she shared with her husband. She had to admit, Hamilton had done a wonderful job creating what he referred to as “the face we show the world.” Even their cars were color-coordinated with the white and gray shades of the Cape Cod house and the pseudorandom English-garden landscaping. He had called in a decorator, a feng shui expert, and, of course, Penelope to collaborate on creating the perfect “power house.” In fact, the only person whose opinion he hadn’t solicited was Kate’s, but her instinctive desire for a warm, tchotchke-filled space was so at odds with his vision that she (and Penelope) had decided it was in the best interest of her marriage to let him have free reign. His goal was to have their visitors enjoy an immediate feeling of warmth and welcome, but go home with a vague sense of inadequacy about their own imperfect sense of style. Judging by how Kate often felt in her own home, he had accomplished his mission.

  Today, though, she was buzzing with positive energy as she danced through the side door into the granite and stainless-steel kitchen, looking forward to sharing her great mood with her husband.

  “Honey, I’m ho-o-ome!” she called, taking off her shoes and placing them in their assigned basket next to the door. “Where are you?” She dropped her keys into the sterling silver key bowl that had been her Valentine’s Day gift the previous year and headed through the house to look for Hamilton.

  She found him in their backyard, sitting in one of their ecologically unsound but beautiful teak lounge chairs, talking into his telephone headset while typing expertly into his BlackBerry. She sometimes still felt a jolt when she saw him; his full head of thick, dark hair (expertly cut by Sally Hershberger to look as if he had just rolled out of bed—all for just five hundred dollars a pop), his square jaw (tanned to perfection from his weekly visits to Mystic Tan, ever since his cosmetic dermatologist had deemed exposure to the actual sun “poisonous”), his full lips (God given), and his gym-and Zone-toned body all worked together to turn her knees to jelly, just as they had on the first day they met. Maybe a little lovin’ before dinner, thought Kate as she bounded into the yard. Maybe even a little lovin’ right here on this chaise. But her happy plop onto the edge of his chair was met with annoyance and the always charming “back off” gesture, communicated with a dismissive flick of his right hand.

  For once, Kate didn’t get offended or hurt. Thanks to her good mood, she found only humor in the image of Fran Drescher doing “
talk to the hand.” Rather than lighten his mood, however, her giggle just seemed to annoy Hamilton. Adjusting his body so that he was now turned completely away from her, he curled his legs up in a decidedly girly way, forcing his arms into a cramped typing position. He looked exactly like a prissy schoolgirl writing a supersecret boyfriend note to her equally prissy BFF. Kate’s giggle erupted into a full-blown laugh, and her pleasure—and her image of Hamilton as a love-struck teen—was not lessened by the snotty “Would you hold on one minute while I go somewhere quiet?” that he hissed into his silly headset. He glared at Kate with an exaggerated expression of disapproval, like a little girl imitating her mother’s anger. That did it: Kate was now completely helpless with laughter, reduced to clutching her sides in happy pain. Hamilton leaped off the chaise and stormed into the house, pausing briefly at the door to nail her with yet another dirty look. Sadly, rather than looking menacing, he resembled Marcia Brady right after being hit in the face with her brothers’ football. I am so going to pay for this, thought Kate, wiping tears from her eyes as she lay back on the chaise, exhausted and sated. But it was so worth it.

  Forty minutes later, she was still waiting for Hamilton to come back outside and the few moments of giddy mirth began to feel a little less worth it. Was he mad at her? Or, even worse, hurt? As the minutes ticked by, Kate felt her light mood turn dark. Her heartbeat sped up as her dread began to mount. Even her breathing quickened as she tortured herself with thoughts of how she might have injured Hamilton’s ego—and how he might react. You know better than to make fun of him, she scolded herself. Penelope’s words rang in her ears. A man is just an ego on two legs. Treat him like a king and he will take care of you like a princess. How could she have forgotten? How could she have made such a basic, stupid mistake?

  Kate jumped when she heard the sliding door open and found herself holding her breath, watching Hamilton walk toward her, a look of pained dignity on his face.