Reality boulevard, p.10
Reality Boulevard, page 10
Sophie came home on Monday morning, leaving a message with Cherry before she reported back for work. By Monday night, she hadn’t heard from Davis. She called his private number three times on Tuesday, but quickly self-corrected when she sensed that he might sense her desperation. The day passed without a word, then Wednesday, then Thursday. She could barely focus at work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. She nearly fainted one morning while standing under the hot lights of the MommyHood set. Then, on Friday morning, she looked out her front window to see the black Town car idling in her driveway.
Trembling, she opened the door and slid onto the back seat, where Davis was waiting, computer on lap, cellphone to ear. After a few torturous minutes while he finished his business, he finally turned to her. He appeared somehow unreal, in the familiar but vaguely cartoony way a popular actor seems the first time you meet him in person. She smelled his steely clean scent and felt the coolness of his energy toward her, and her heart fell away because she realized she truly worshipped this man and that she had made a terrible, uncorrectable mistake.
Davis was silent and serious for another long moment. Then he sighed.
“I saw Les Moonves on the golf course last weekend. It seems you’ve found your way to his short list for a new position at CBS - VP of Alternative Programming. Barron-Cobb may have to promote you to something even bigger to keep you. I was thinking, General Manager of GIRLZ!. Maybe add a couple of our new networks on to that package.”
Sophie breathed out a little. On the surface, this sounded like a promotion. But she knew him, and all the denial in the world couldn’t block out the fact that his displeasure with her was palpable.
“Seeing Les on Sunday made me realize something,” he continued. “You have a huge career ahead of you, far beyond your current role at GIRLZ!. And you are far too capable a woman to let yourself be accused of having made it to the top unfairly. Our time together has put you at risk for such gossip. Perhaps the kindest thing I can do for you is to remove myself from your life right now, before we trip up in our discretion. Before you’re in a position where rumors can really hurt you.”
This was the Wharton School of Business version of “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Sophie’s mind raced to find the appropriate response. Helplessly, she felt all her hardness melt away.
“Look. I know it was flaky of me to disappear like that.”
“It wasn’t flaky, Sophie. I know you and you couldn’t be flaky if you tried. It was a deliberate tactic. An ill-calculated tactic that was not only beneath you, but frankly, incredibly insulting to me.”
She felt her throat constricting. He was on to her, as, of course, she should’ve known he would be. She had plotted the moves of a reckless strategy, and she couldn’t begin to see her way across the black and white squares on the board anymore.
“I think there’s been a miscommunication here,” she began. “And I’m running late for the office. Can’t you come by tonight so we can talk about this without a ticking clock?”
He regarded her for a moment with compassionate curiosity.
Back inside her house – the house he’d bought her – she collapsed in the front hallway and began breathing hard. She rushed to the bathroom and threw up the little bit of breakfast she’d been able to get down. Then she curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor and began to weep: guttural, wounded animal sobs. She cried for the first time since she was in college, when her disinterested mother had chosen a tennis tournament at her club over her only daughter’s graduation ceremony. Not a tear had touched her face since then. And after three hours of sobbing and vomiting, after she had showered, brushed her teeth a hundred times, taken a Xanax and composed herself, she swore no one would ever make her cry again.
And then she missed her period. She was as regular as clockwork. It explained the vomiting, the breast swelling and the exhaustion. The little plastic stick confirmed her belief.
This had been part of her plan. She had set it in motion herself. Now what?
She called him. Left four messages. Waited, terrified. A day later, he finally called her back. He jumped right into the conversation, leaving her no opening to share her news.
“I regret having been so distant,” he said gravely, “But I’m coming to believe that my first instincts were correct. It’s time I removed myself from your life. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you. I do want you to be clear about that. But I’ve assessed that a clean break –”
“We made a baby,” she interrupted. Made a baby? She sounded like one of the heroin-victims in a Lifetime movie. She was working at the wrong network.
He was silent on the other end of the line, for a very long time.
“Sophie, you’ve been making some unwise decisions lately. Decisions more careless than I’ve ever seen you make. It’s my experience that when a formerly crack executive starts slipping up in such an obvious way, it means they’re desperate. Desperate about losing the job, losing the sale, losing the promotion. But here, Sophie, there is no hope of a promotion. All the positions are already filled to this CEO’s satisfaction. It’s your metaphorical glass ceiling. It’s time to move on to a new company. And I’m not talking about Barron-Cobb.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
She’d heard him enraged before, but never at her. She knew his temper. For him to blow like this, it was for one of two reasons. One was after something had been building up inside him for a very long time. The other was for effect. To scare his opponents into submission. Which was this?
“I’m pregnant, Davis. I think that’s the first order of business to consider here.”
Again, he was silent. She could hear him breathing hard. The breathing meant he was indeed furious. This wasn’t a gambit. This was for real.
“Once again, Sophie, you insult my intelligence and your own.”
“I did the test today, Davis. This is the fact of the matter. I’m pregnant with your child.”
More silence. More breathing.
“There is only one acceptable outcome to this situation, then, and you can figure out what I expect it to be. If you really are the clever girl I’d assumed you were, this is the same outcome you’ll choose, too.”
“It’s our baby. Yours and mine,” she said. Her voice was trembling. How could she let him hear her voice tremble?
His disdain came through in his sigh. “Then Door Number Two: single motherhood. It’s in, it’s hip, and it’s very, very GIRLZ!. If that’s the option you select, then good luck to you. But my personal connection to this matter ends here.”
Then he hung up the phone.
She didn’t think she had any more tears in her. But she did.
That same evening, she saw the town car pull up outside her house and linger at the curb. While she was wondering if she were expected to go out and meet him, her doorbell rang. She smoothed down her ASU sweatshirt and splashed some water on her face before going downstairs. Perhaps this was the turning point at last. His final change of heart.
Standing on her doorstep were two men, two very large men, dressed in dark, expensive suits, looking as somber as if they had just come from a funeral. One of them was carrying an enormous flower arrangement that was itself funereal. The other held a fat 8½ by 11-inch envelope in his left hand. His right was pocketed.
“Ma’am,” said the envelope carrier, sounding like a television cop or FBI agent. “We’re here on behalf of Barron-Cobb International Media. Can we come in for a minute?”
Confused and suddenly fearful, Sophie crept backward a few steps, letting the two grim gentlemen follow her into the hallway. The flower arrangement carrier deposited the large vase on her hall table, dabbing the bottom of the glass with his sleeve to make sure there was no excess moisture to stain the expensive wood. The other man handed her the envelope.
She opened it. It contained a few official documents. There was paperwork from the deed to the house he had bought her, which showed it had been transferred into her name alone. The second was a thick bankbook from Credit Suisse, with Sophie Warner printed on the front in embossed letters. Inside the book was a statement introducing her to her new money market account. Her new four-million-dollar money market account.
Four million, she thought. Four. No accident there. One million for every year of my life that I gave to him.
“With Mr. Barron’s compliments,” said the envelope carrier firmly. “And his insistence that you understand and acknowledge that your personal connection with him ends here.”
Envelope Carrier took his right hand from his jacket pocket and casually grasped the belt loops of his pants with his thumbs. As his jacket fell open, she glimpsed a strap running down his shirtfront, and something flashed near the beltline.
Sophie froze. Was she losing her mind, or was the man wearing a gun?
Both men looked at one another as they waited for her response. “Mr. Barron insisted I get a verbal response from you. Do you understand?”
Fearless, unshakeable Sophie was trembling. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I understand.”
“Mr. Barron wants you to verbally acknowledge that you’re grateful to him.”
“Yes,” she rasped. “Tell Mr. Barron I am very, very grateful.”
The serious man closed his coat and smiled. “Good. Well. Best of luck to you.”
And they were gone.
Sophie took a week off from work, keeping all her doors and windows locked. The flowers wilted, died, and stank. There was no food in the house, and she told the housekeeper to stay away. Despite the growing baby in her belly, she popped Xanax constantly so she could sleep away most of the lifeless days. Toward the end of the fourth day, she got up, ordered mushroom barely soup, bagel chips, and ice cream delivered from Jerry’s Deli. And she began to formulate a new plan.
Davis was right. Look at all the single moms around her. She was 32. What a perfect lifestyle choice for the future General Manager of GIRLZ!. Gutsy, courageous, heroic, even. She could appear on MommyHood herself and talk publicly about her decision to go to a sperm bank and conceive a child. What better promotion for the network could there be? Now she owned her own house and had the financial freedom to be able to hire as much help as she needed. Why should she deprive herself of the unique biological experience that so many women swore up and down would finally complete her and assuage the gnawing hunger inside?
Now she would have someone to take care of her in her old age.
2011
It was 9:25 am as she strode, unsmiling, past the fourteenth floor receptionist. She saw her assistant, Melanie, rushing toward her. Sophie scowled. Melanie had come with the new position at Prime and her performance reviews unanimously rated her as an exceptionally loyal and efficient employee. Sophie had no complaints about Melanie’s execution of her duties. She was an Ivy League graduate, overqualified for an assistant’s job. It was the girl’s physical appearance that irked her. At 27 years old, Melanie already had smile lines near her eyes and around her mouth, the result of sun damage or sloppy skincare. She rarely wore makeup, and when she did, the cheap drugstore cosmetics she bought were haphazardly applied, with clear demarcation lines on her chin and by her ears. Melanie needed a better haircut and a manicure on her stubby, close-bitten fingernails. Her low-end wardrobe did little to flatter a curvaceous but softly undefined figure that clearly didn’t spend enough hours in the gym. Nothing could disguise the fact that she should have had braces and a nose job as a teenager, but Melanie was a girl who would be reasonably good-looking if she’d just spend a little time and money at it. Sophie firmly believed that any self-respecting woman working behind the scenes in the entertainment business should hold herself to the same aesthetic standards as every woman working in front of the cameras. That meant doing whatever it took to present a polished exterior, whether it be dental work, fitness training, daily blowouts, plastic surgery – whatever. As for actresses or other onscreen talent who let themselves go, well, to Sophie, they were disgusting blots on the entire business. They were lebensunwerteses far as she was concerned; in professional terms, lives unworthy of life.
Oddly, the plain, down-to-earth Melanie seemed to draw the attention of every man who visited her boss’s office. Sophie found it infuriating.
“Your ten o’clock is early,” Melanie chirped. She was relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, another irritating quality. “I’m trying to rustle up the others, in case you wanted to get started right away.”
“What? This early?” To arrive a few minutes early for a meeting was only polite. But 35 minutes early? That was a sign of something – insecurity, anxiety, rudeness – something. Then she saw the man in the powder blue sweater sitting in her waiting area; the man with the obsequious expression on his face and the pink box of pastries from Clementine’s on his lap.
Oh yes. Now she remembered. This was her ten o’clock meeting.
She was still wound up from her breakfast spat with Ashley, she had been thinking far too much about Davis Barron lately, and she was itching for a dog to kick.
This was going to be fun.
Chapter 5: Dinosaur
The eel oozed through the shallow waters of Malibu creek just as Marty’s Lexus crossed over the bridge. It was a smoky, glossy gray and appeared to be at least a foot thick, and long – maybe six feet. How it caught Marty’s eye was a mystery, since he was habitually a safety-conscious driver who rarely let his focus wander from the road. When he saw it, he was filled with a primal sort of dread that nearly made him rear-end the car in front of him. He looked around at the other drivers and two scruffy middle-aged surfers fishing off the bridge. No one else seemed to have noticed it. His glimpse had been so fleeting; he wasn’t even one hundred percent certain that it had actually been real.. Hallucination or not, it’s image and the trepidation it inspired had already poisoned his day.
The morning hadn’t begun darkly at all. In fact, his first thought upon waking was that this was the happiest and most successful day of his life – eclipsing even the moment he stood upon the stage at the Shrine Auditorium to accept his Oscar statuette. Beside him in his bed lay his willowy Crimson, her elegant lips parted slightly in sleep, her black hair splayed like a silk curtain across his pillow. Now she was his fiancée at last! His! She had been asleep when he’d gone to make breakfast at six, but he’d gently lifted her hand off the pillow where it lay to gaze at the shimmering pink gemstone. It hadn’t been a dream. She had finally said yes!
As he went about his morning, he replayed carefully edited movie trailer moments from the night before – the mimosa sunset background as he knelt on the beach, the dazzle of the diamond as he liberated it from its box, the welling in Crimson’s brown eyes as they turned almost black with tears. He left most of the long evening’s scenes in a dustbin on the cutting room floor – Crimson’s first refusal, for instance.
“As much as I care for you, I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of commitment. I’m only twenty-six.”
Marty had prepared for the age differential argument. “I may be fifty-six on paper, but I’ve got the drive and energy of any man half my age. You’re always saying that yourself.”
“It’s just that... there is so much happening in my career right now. So many things are breaking. I can’t afford to lose myself in a man. I don’t want to end up spending my life in your shadow.”
“I’m offering you the kind of security you need so you can pursue your career, stress-free. Haven’t I always cheered you on? Haven’t I always made sure you came first? I’m nothing like that Orsino.”
At the sound of his name, Crimson blushed and looked away.
Marty blanched. “It’s him, isn’t it? You’re still in love with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
“He asked me –” She stopped, and looked down at the sand.
“Did he propose to you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. I’m so confused.”
I knew it, Marty thought. I wasted precious time. I let Jerry Stone make me second-guess myself.
“What did you say?” he croaked.
“I told him ‘No,’ Marty. But... he won’t stop calling me, and making promises.”
“What kind of promises?”
“Oh, that he’ll change, you know.” After a beat: “And he’s been offering me things.”
“What things?”
“You know, like, my own bank account. My own money so I could be assured of his support. So I’d never have to ask him for permission.”
The fury began to rise within Marty, along with every ounce of competitiveness and determination he possessed.
“Can’t you see it, Crimson? He’s trying to buy you! More proof he doesn’t respect you. You know that!” Then, after a pause: “How much did he offer you?”
“What does that matter?”
“How much?”
Crimson raised her eyes, drenched with tears and running mascara. “He offered me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“The bastard!” cried Marty. “Crimson. He doesn’t love you and you know that. He just wants to own you.”
“I don’t know what to think,” she sobbed. “This is my life we’re talking about. These are enormous decisions.”
“Marry me,” Marty pleaded. “I love you. I respect you. And I can offer you so much more than he can.”
“More than a quarter of a million dollars?” Her voice was barely a whisper through her tears.
“Much more!”
