The extra series 1, p.14
The Extra Series, #1, page 14
She squeezes my arm and heads off to wardrobe, while I head over to get my breakfast. I’m beginning to recognize the black-outfitted crew enough to smile and wave at several of them and only receive blank stares back from about half. I pick through the offerings on the craft services table with the confidence of someone who belongs here. A huddle of new extras watches me as if trying to suss out how I fit into the operations here, whether I’m someone important. It won’t last much longer once they see me report in to Clint alongside them, but I try to enjoy it for the moment.
Anything to take my mind off of Felix.
“So, how was your weekend?” Will’s voice comes from behind me, and in testament to my getting used to life here on set, I manage to neither choke on nor drop my cronut.
The fluttery feeling returns to my stomach. Because he looks so much like Sean, I reason. And I gather he wants to know about a specific part of my weekend, and not the part where I tried to decide if I could save money by buying off-brand peanut butter (which was a mistake.) “I suppose if you wanted to supplement your soap writing income, matchmaking might help pay the bills,” I say. “You appear to have a passable talent at it.”
“Are you and Sean going out again?” He leans just enough against the table to look casual and not topple the thing. I have a feeling I would be able to do neither.
“Maybe. I mean, yeah, I guess. He wants to get dinner again this weekend.”
Something flickers in his green eyes and is gone, a hesitation that precedes his smile. “Good. I figured he’d like you.”
“Because I’m not . . .” I make the same so-so gesture he made when describing the type of women Sean normally dates. “Right?”
“Right.” There it is again, that hesitation, a tension around his eyes. Or am I imagining it? Why would he have a problem with things working out with Sean and me? Isn’t that what he wanted?
Isn’t that what I want?
“How’s the writing coming?” I ask, because the twistiness in my gut is confusing me and I hope switching the subject from my dating life will eradicate it.
“Well, now that we have to limit the scenes between Bridget and June—”
“Not that writing, your novel. You said you’d try working on it again.”
He looks uncomfortable, even in such a casual pose. “Ah, that. It’s . . . I don’t know, something’s just not working about it. It’s probably not worth the mess. “
“Just ‘cause you’ve got a flat tire doesn’t mean you go slash the other three.”
His eyebrows raise. I notice how his left eyebrow is slightly crooked. It should decrease his attractiveness (symmetry being the desired trait that it is), but it actually does the opposite. I wonder if Sean’s eyebrows are symmetrical.
“It’s something my childhood nanny LaRue used to say,” I clarify, tracing my finger in the powdered sugar lining my plate. “Of course, she always followed it up with ‘The only tires worth slashing are a cheating ex-boyfriend’s.’ But I think the overall message about not giving up because of one set-back is relatively sound.”
He laughs. “I would very much like to hear more about your childhood sometime. It sounds amazing.”
A touch of panic sets in. Tell Will about my childhood? About my successful parents and brilliant sister and musical genius brother? About how my whole family is falling apart now, and I’m still capable of no more than just filling space in the background?
Like dating, this is another subject I choose to avoid. “And I would very much like to read your novel. So you’d better get past that flat tire.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint my only potential reader.” His easy grin is back, and I wish I didn’t have to avoid any topics with Will. That I could just tell him everything and still have him smile at me like that. I find myself returning the grin without meaning to, warmed by the green depths of his eyes.
So much so I don’t notice Sarah’s arrival until she’s standing at his side. I drop my eyes to my plate, too quickly. It looks guilty. For what? For talking to her fiancé? For encouraging him to follow his dreams when she just wants him to be at her side for hers?
It is neither of those things, and yet I don’t want to focus too much on what it actually is.
“Aren’t you running late?” Sarah says to me. “Clint’s gathering the others now. You wouldn’t want to lose that prime reception spot.” Despite the words, her voice itself isn’t as razor-threatening as usual. Her hand is pressed against Will’s back, but the way her gaze flickers around behind me as if looking for something makes it feel less possessive than it might otherwise.
Of course, why on earth would a woman like her be jealous of me? If she’s irritated I’m talking to her fiancé, it’s probably because it might interrupt her fantasy of a soap opera set that runs without problems.
“She’s filling me in on the date with Sean,” Will says. “I’m sure Clint can wait another minute or so.”
I wasn’t talking about Sean at all, but I am unreasonably pleased he wants to keep the conversation going, even for just another minute.
“Damn it, Rosemary! If I wanted Lucy St. James dressed like she was going to a funeral at a strip club, I would have said so,” she calls to a passing crew member toting a black dress with far too many slits to appear like it could actually stay on a body in one piece. I don’t love Sarah’s treatment of the crew, but I kind of have to agree with her on this one. “Sorry, love, I’ve got to go handle this.” She squeezes Will’s upper arm, and they meet eyes, and in that moment I know that my strange attraction to Will is entirely futile, no matter how many great conversations we have.
Despite their problems, he still loves her. I can see it in the way his gaze focuses on her, how he tracks her as she walks away, his smile softening in a way completely incongruous with the kind of guy who should be upset with his fiancée bringing underlings to tears on a daily basis.
It should make me like him less, but all I can think is that he must be an incredibly loyal guy to still see the girl he fell in love with. Still feel that, deep down, she’s still whoever the girl is that he got to know while wading through international police bureaucracy and sharing drinks over their success.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Sean’s the one I actually like. And maybe, just maybe, he likes me back.
As if he can read my thoughts about Sarah, Will frowns. “You really should get to know her,” he says. “She’s not always like that. It’s just the stress.”
That’s the dozenth time he’s made lame excuses for her she has no compunction to make for herself, but I’m not going to be the one to point it out. “That would be cool,” I say. Totally cool. The picture of cool. I would be on freaking Antarctica about spending more time with Sarah and really getting to know her.
I hate how much I have to fight even to think it.
And then I have an idea. “Why don’t we all go out sometime?” I ask.
Will blinks at me. “What?”
“You, me, your brother, your fiancée. Why don’t we all go out to dinner? You guys do eat dinner, right?”
He seems stunned, as if I’ve just suggested that we take over the roles of Lucy and Sondra ourselves, excessively slitted dresses and all. “Y-yes!” Will says. He shakes his head as if to get a hold of himself. “Yes, everything you’ve heard about writers subsisting on their own tears is a myth, I’m afraid.”
“Okay,” I say. “So we’ll all do dinner, and I’ll get to know Sarah, and you can hang out with your brother, and everybody wins.” My palms begin to sweat as I realize all the things that could go wrong with this plan. Maybe Sean doesn’t really want to go out with me again, and now Will is going to be the one to break it to me. Maybe he can tell that I’m just doing this to spend more time with him, even though I am definitely more interested in his brother and definitely just trying to keep all this from becoming horribly awkward when Sean and I go on our honeymoon to somewhere not at all tropical and clothe some other kind of animal entirely based on an as-yet-undetermined but ridiculously adorable inside joke.
“Sure, yeah,” Will says. “Everybody wins.”
I’m afraid he can sense my panic, especially when I take a step back like a cornered animal. “Sarah’s right, though. I’d better get going.”
“Sure, yeah. But . . .” he frowns, scuffs his foot on the floor. “Hey, you’d really want to read it sometime? My novel?”
I blink. That’s right. That’s what we’d been talking about. “Of course,” I say. I remember wanting to do so way back when we worked at the bookstore together. I find I want to even more now.
“All right, then.”
“All right.”
He takes a bite of cronut, and smiles a shy powdery smile. “I’ll talk to Sean. Set up dinner.” And then he walks off at a stroll, not the full out run I’d assume he would break into if he knew even one of the many things going on in my head.
As I head to the extras area, trying desperately to think of anything other than how good Will’s lips must taste right now, I see Sarah again, this time with HD. Her eyes are narrowed and she’s shaking a script at him as she talks. I’m not close enough to hear the words, but I can tell he’s getting it worse than poor Rosemary just did. His perfectly shaped lips are tightened as if restraining what he really wants to say back to her. It’s nice to know that even the stars are afraid of Sarah’s wrath.
I volunteered to go out to dinner with this woman?
“Good Lord, girlie, you almost lost out to that one!” Karen all but yells as I reach the extras pit. She points at a young man in glasses who shrinks back at the thinly veiled contempt in her voice. “I told Clint you’d be here, though.”
“Thanks Karen. I owe you one. And maybe I’ll get Clint a VitaminWater or six to make up for it.”
“I prefer the pomegranate apricot, if you’re just giving them out,” Clint says, jotting notes in his clipboard as he steps out from behind a rack of nurses’ uniforms. The way a man his size wearing an equally large cowboy hat can do that is amazing.
“So I’m still in reception?”
“Today. But seven a.m. means six-fifty. Not seven.”
“Noted.” It’s actually only six-fifty-eight, but I’m not inclined to argue right now. I’ve gotten fired for following such an urge to clarify before.
His lips pucker under his thick mustache as he considers me as if to check for sarcasm. Then he nods and gives us our marching orders for the day.
Hair and makeup go as quickly as usual, what with nurses or receptionists not needing much more than to not look like total crap. I tug on my scrubs, realizing that this is the most comfortable work uniform I’ve ever had. It sure beats all the skin-tight dresses and sky-high heels they always have Anna-Marie in. I’m dressed and camera-ready (or as much so as I’ll ever be) and heading toward the set when I hear Bernard’s booming voice traveling practically from one end of the sound stage to the other.
“Sarah!” I turn around and manage to step aside in time to keep from being run over as the director storms his way over to her with alarming speed for a man his size. I don’t think he notices my existence at all, even though his elbow hits mine when he passes me.
Sarah’s eyes widen. “Bernard, I’m working on it,” she says. “I’ve talked to some agents and we should have a new—” She cuts off when she sees me staring, her gaze sharpening to a deadly glare, and I start walking again, pretending an intense fascination with the lighting setup overhead.
“I don’t want to hear ‘working on it.’ I want to hear that my problems are fucking fixed. Now.” Bernard speaks in a tone that makes me want to hide behind the nearest boom mic operator. “Or I’ll find an assistant who does their damn job.”
I can’t help but look back, and see Bernard storming off toward the hospital set, Sarah staring after him, her already pale face as white as the script paper. She blinks rapidly, her lips tugged down, and as she turns away from me, I see her wipe at her eyes.
Oh my god, Sarah is crying.
It’s not my business, I tell myself. And god knows she’s made plenty of others on set cry. Keep walking.
But guilt pulls at me, and something else—sympathy. I know what it’s like to feel not good enough. And for all that can be said about Sarah, the woman does work her ass off for this show. If Will loves her, there has to be something else under all that bitchiness.
Against my better judgment, I turn back and walk towards Sarah. She’s facing away from me, her hand up over her face. I hesitantly reach out, though I can’t bring myself to actually touch her hunched-in shoulder. “Hey, Sarah, are you okay?”
She spins around so quickly I lose track of my words under the anger in her ice blue (though clearly teary) eyes. Her face isn’t stark white anymore so much as patchy red. “I’m outstanding,” she growls.
“Um, great. Good.” I should just run off right now and never look back, but she is Will’s fiancée and Will is my friend, so I make one last attempt. “But if you need anything, you know, like someone to talk to or—”
“The last thing I need is some hair-braiding bonding session with an extra,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.
Now it’s my cheeks flushing. I want to tell her she could at least try to be a decent person, that she could at least make the faintest effort to be worthy of a guy as incredible and kind and funny as Will.
But no. Their relationship is none of my business. God, I’m glad that Sean’s the one I actually like.
So I don’t say anything more to her, just turn and walk away, fighting to keep my head high. Fighting to keep from crying myself, though I have absolutely no reason to.
By the time they’re ready for us on set, I’ve managed to push down all the shame and anger of my interaction with Sarah, and am feeling somewhat better. I tried to be nice, and if she can’t be nice back, that’s her problem.
I worry, though, that this doesn’t bode well for the double date I stupidly suggested.
Karen and I and all the other extras and actors are on-set and ready to go when the action finally happens. Only this time, it’s not the action that’s supposed to be happening.
The scene is supposed to be Anna-Marie’s character Helena (I give Anna-Marie a little wave before the camera rolls) and her current lover (in both the soap opera and real world) HD discussing the likely outcomes of the surgery her one-time lover Diego needed after being shot. Lucy St. James (June Blair) is also there for the conversation, fretting about her son’s health, even though she doesn’t remember that he is her son and thinks he’s just a very nice young man who jumped in front of the bullet to save her.
Fairly simple, in soap opera plot terms, and Anna-Marie is doing a lovely job (despite the director Bernard’s occasional harangues about her “wooden stance”). I do my typing thing and even get to answer a fake phone call and receive a folder handed me by Karen, who has taken to trying to get me to laugh by putting post-it notes with hilariously accurate sketches of various cast members on top.
And then, as HD describes various organ traumas (which he is somehow able to make sound sexy), a shout comes from the darkness beyond the set.
“Arrest her! I insist she be taken into custody at once!”
Everything on set freezes. Everything except my fingers, which have become so accustomed to pressing keys that I end up typing for about ten seconds after the rest of the set has gone silent.
Bridget Messler, Dame Sondra Hart herself, steps up onto the stage wearing a cream silk dressing robe and little else. Her hair and makeup are already done, and little gold and ruby chandelier earrings swing as she strides across the set toward June Blair, a long thin accusing finger outstretched.
June drops her character’s vaguely confused concern instantly, and puts her hands on her hips. “What are you on about now, you crazy old bit—”
Bridget slaps her hard across the face with a resounding crack. Gasps sound, and Karen drops the phone in her hand onto the reception desk.
June stumbles back, her hand up to her now-red cheek, then launches herself with a roar at Bridget. Anna-Marie makes the noble but perhaps ill-conceived effort to place herself in front of the elderly acting legend, and gets taken down in her stead. June and Anna-Marie are a tangle of arms and legs and beaded designer purses, and Bridget cackles like some fairytale witch.
I instinctively run out from behind the desk to help Anna-Marie, and pull her up and away from June, who is being held back from another lunge at Bridget by HD.
“Enough!” Bernard roars, as several crew members wearing matching black outfits and horrified, slightly gleeful expressions step up to stand in between Bridget and June, like they are forming their own diva protection brigade. “My set will not be made into a circus!”
He should probably rethink that sentiment, this being a soap opera set and all. This is far from the craziest event this set has seen, though possibly the craziest real-life event.
“That woman is a criminal and needs to be arrested,” Bridget says with a sniff, her haughty demeanor firmly back in place.
June’s jaw drops, her botoxed forehead even managing a wrinkle. “She’s insane!”
“What do you think June has done exactly, Bridget?” Sarah steps onto the set, her voice calm and hands outstretched like she’s dealing with an escaped tiger at the zoo.
“She stole my Daytime Emmy,” Bridget says.
Sarah stares at Bridget, eyes wide and mouth slack. A moment passes in which I think all of us are wondering whether someone is going to jump out and yell “You’ve been punked!”
This doesn’t happen.
June lets out a crazed-sounding bark of a laugh. “You don’t even have an Emmy! She’s totally lost her mind!”
Bridget folds her long slim arms across her chest, the very picture of calm and control now that the slapping is over. Though we all know June is speaking the truth, June’s the one who looks crazy. “Obviously you’ve never heard of Taiwan’s ‘Most Resplendent Bubble-Time Star’ awards, my dear. They copied it exactly after the Daytime Emmy trophy.”
