Heart Restoration Project

Chapter Three

Nancy was on a call when I walked into her office about a week after the Celebrity Ballroom finale aired. She held up a finger and motioned for me to take a seat while she wrapped up her conversation. As she finished up, I slid my trench off my shoulders, draped it over the back of the chair, and took a seat across from her.

“Darling, it will be fabulous, and the ten weeks will fly by, trust me. Okay, call me when you’re back from Sydney, love, and good luck.” She hung up the phone, turned to me, and lowered her voice. “Hugh finally agreed to do Star Spy House, Australia. Can you believe it?”

I racked my brain. “Hugh? Hugh Jackman?”

She waved her hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, how are you, darling? You look good, considering ...”

“Considering what? That I’m a GIF now,” I said, holding up my phone to show her a boomerang clip of me struggling to rip off the Regency ball gown. The video went viral mere minutes after the Celebrity Ballroom finale aired.

“Viral can be good—great, even. Viral gets you other gigs,” Nancy said.

I slid back in my seat. “That’s why I’m here. What’s next? What’ve you got for me?”

She rolled her desk chair forward and lowered her voice. “I should have prefaced, viral gets you other gigs when you’re a new sensation, and darling, you’ve been doing reality television longer than I’ve been an agent.”

“EVERLYday doesn’t count. I was eleven when the show started. So, c’mon, what’s next? What fantastic opportunity to make a fool of myself on the national stage do you have waiting for me in your inbox?”

Nancy, completely oblivious to my sarcasm, swiveled her chair back around and popped open her laptop. “Like I told you before we got the offer for Celebrity Ballroom, the opportunities have been few and far between. That show was a gift.” Leaning in to her computer and sliding her readers farther up on her nose with a rigid finger, she continued to read down her screen. “Let’s see, there’s that celebrity psychic show we talked about a few months back, but unless you’ve had a parent, sibling, spouse, or pet die recently, they’re not interested. Hmm ... what about the Masked Painter show? That sounded interesting. Nope, never mind, the network’s decided not to move ahead with it.” She looked up. “Can’t imagine why. The Food Network’s got to have something. They always have something. Buuuut, as we also discussed before, with Pear’s new whole food, plant-based cooking show set to debut next month, they aren’t interested in another Everly in the kitchen right now.”

I shifted uncomfortably, mustering the bravado needed to tackle this next bit. Leaning in, I lowered my voice and struggled to keep it from breaking. “Nancy, the truth is, I don’t want to compete for anything. I don’t want to be the Real Housewife of anything. I don’t want a makeover or a makeunder, and I’m pretty sure my joints can’t take another Wipeout-style obstacle course. I cannot do another show where I’m the butt of the joke. I’m pathetic. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old washed-up reality star.” I swallowed back my tears and managed to keep my face even, in spite of the humiliation I felt speaking those words aloud.

She sat back from her computer and folded her hands in her lap. Nancy was all business, and her discomfort with these kinds of emotional conversations was more than obvious. “Look, we were both banking on you winning Celebrity Ballroom and capitalizing on that for a while, so I didn’t bother mentioning this one other project that was pitched to me a few weeks back. Have you ever heard of Tributary?”

“Um ... they’re that new streaming service, right?”

“They have that one show about zombies set in ancient Egypt with Jon Hamm, Mummy Mayhem, that’s been getting some buzz. Anyway, their head of reality TV development, Kate Wembley, is incredibly hungry and apparently ready to make a name for herself after working for a number of seasons on that big Top Designer show. I just heard she got the green light for a passion project of hers about small villages in France that are selling dilapidated chateaus for one euro in the hope of infusing some new life into these old homes.”

“Really?! What kind of property could you possibly get for one euro?” I was simultaneously shocked and intrigued. With my paltry bank account lately, I was actually curious. What kind of property could I get for one euro?!

Nancy turned the computer to face me. “Here, she included a few photos in the abstract. Voilà, Chateau Mirabelle,” she said in an overly affected French accent.

I looked at the photos, realizing that while the estate was clearly impressive, it was in a very noticeable state of disrepair. This wasn’t a little project, this was an overhaul. I thought of my last DIY project, when I attempted to wallpaper my bathroom. I forgot to account for the wall’s electrical outlets. I ended up having to cut around them, resulting in horribly jagged and uneven edges that made it look like a kindergarten art project gone wrong. “Oh, it’s very charming, but I don’t know the first thing about home restoration or construction.”

“Hmm ...” Nancy scrolled through the abstract and shifted her readers again. “It says here they’ve hired a local contractor and small design team to assist the talent.” She glanced up from the screen. “Kate’s been pretty relentless. She seems very keen to get you attached to the project. But I won’t lie to you. It’s rather small potatoes, Plum. The production company will cover your expenses while filming—room, meals, blah, blah, blah—they can’t actually pay you, which is another reason why I didn’t mention it earlier. Buuut,” she said, skimming through the prospectus, “it does say that you would own the house outright at the end of the renovation. So I suppose you could keep the property or sell it.”

“Where’s it being filmed? What part of France?”

She adjusted her reading glasses again and inched closer to the screen. “Maubec, a small village in the Provence-Alpes-C?te d’Azur region in southeastern France, near Avignon. It says that filming runs from June through August.”

“I don’t know. This one sounds like too big of a stretch, even for me.”

Nancy sighed, glimpsed the gold watch around her wrist for the time, and rose from her chair as if to suggest that this meeting had fizzled to its end, apparently much like my career. “Listen, hon, I’m gonna be frank with you, your options are limited. But c’mon, it’s Paris in the springtime! That’s gotta be a draw, no?” Nancy continued to bustle around her desk until she made her way behind me.

I craned my neck to look at her and asked, “I thought you said it was taping in Provence ... in June?”

Nancy yanked my coat out from under my back, practically catapulting me out of the chair. She didn’t miss a beat as she cooed, “Paris, Provence. Springtime, summer? Does it even matter?! I mean, it’s all magnifique, no? At the very least, I think you should take a meeting with Kate. See what she has to say.”

With a guiding hand crooked around my elbow, Nancy walked me out of her office and offered a supportive pat on the shoulder (or shove out to the elevator bank, I kinda couldn’t tell).

“Nancy, I only know like five French words, and merde is one of them,” I protested.

“Then, darling, you’ll be just fine,” she offered before turning on her heel and snapping the door closed behind her.