Sunday #3
“About as well as you’d imagine.”
Looking up, Audrey treated Grace Forsythe to her most interrogative expression. “So why are you so keen for us to keep, um, fucking each other in whatever configuration suits us?”
“Partly, I just think Jennifer needs to get laid really rather badly, but I’ve also got a sneaking suspicion you’d be good for her.”
“But would she be good for me?” Audrey wondered out loud.
Grace Forsythe shrugged. “I think she could if she’d let herself. Although I admit that’s a very big if.” She grimaced. “Thinking about it, probably not what you’re looking for in a girlfriend. Forget I said anything.”
Before Audrey could reply, Grace Forsythe had set off determinedly for the ballroom, spitting obnoxiously loud vocal exercises as she went.
Now that she’d been interrupted, Audrey couldn’t quite say what she was intending to do once she got to Jennifer’s trailer.
She’d started with the intent of having a vaguely self-righteous storm, something in the vein of “I won’t be treated like this,” which would inevitably fail as hard as it had every other time she’d tried it.
On the other hand, she didn’t think there was much mileage in showing up with “An interfering boomer who works for you thinks we should bang” either.
It had the virtue of honesty, but the not-a-virtue of being absolutely mortifying.
Storming, on the whole, was probably safer.
“Fuck off, Audrey,” called Jennifer Hallet when Audrey banged on her door.
“No.”
It was a little surprising to Audrey that the door opened immediately, rather than after a lot of frustrating back-and-forth. Jennifer looked like she’d slept so badly she’d crossed the line from interestingly raddled to babe, are you okay? “You understand we’re filming?”
“I’ve been on set. I know how much waiting around there is.”
Looking down, Jennifer scrutinised Audrey like she was an application from a prospective contestant with questionable credentials. “I suppose you’re why Grace is late?”
“Pretty sure Grace is why Grace is late.”
With the barest shrug of acknowledgment, Jennifer vanished into her trailer and sat down in front of a bank of monitors, each showing the feed from a different camera.
She hadn’t strictly been invited inside, but adjusting for the Jennifer factor, an open door combined with only being told to fuck off once was practically a welcome mat, so Audrey followed her in and then hovered behind her, just watching her work.
If she’d come to say anything, it stayed unsaid while Jennifer switched from feed to feed, channel to channel, keeping her eyes on everything.
On one of the screens, Grace Forsythe was launching into her opening monologue. It was odd, seeing it tiny and silent. So odd that Audrey didn’t notice that Jennifer was holding up a headset.
“Since you’re here.”
And Audrey took it. She felt almost like she was in a dream, with the lights down and the screens glowing and Jennifer for once focusing on something that wasn’t swearing creatively.
“—traditional,” Grace Forsythe was saying in the ballroom, “but exceptional. For this week’s baketacular we want you to make your finest, fanciest, child-luring-into-the-woodsiest—”
Jennifer pushed a button. “Colin, get her to can the paedo talk.”
The way the microphones were arranged, it was hard to know what Colin was actually saying, but Grace Forsythe’s reply came through clearly enough. “It’s a fairy-tale reference, Jennifer; everybody will understand.”
“Just tell that glorified Fringe show we call a host to redo it.”
There was a little more from Colin. Then, “Finest, fanciest, Hansel-and-Gretel ensnaringest—really, Jennifer, I think we’re pandering—gingerbread house.
It can be tall or short, classic or contemporary, as long as it has four walls, a roof, and stands up by itself.
You have five hours, starting on three. Three, darlings. ”
Jennifer Hallet slid her headset down for a moment. “I fucking hate it when she says that.”
Not wanting to be the only one getting audio, Audrey reciprocally de-headphoned. “Really? Isn’t it sort of iconic?”
“It’s so twee, though.” Jennifer gave an audible sigh and a visible shudder. “Starts on three: three. Every single episode. For eight fucking years.”
“Isn’t twee the point?” asked Audrey, slightly confused by this not-currently-raging version of Jennifer and not wanting to ruin it. “I mean, it’s supposed to be a comforting show.”
“There’s comforting, and there’s kicking off every week with a dad joke.
” The look in Jennifer Hallet’s eyes was one of weirdly sincere pain.
“But apparently that’s what the public demands.
Because the public are a giant fucking nest of baby birds with their beaks open screaming for people to come and vomit entertainment into their lazy gaping mouths. ”
This was beginning to sound more like the Jennifer Audrey knew. “Do you really have that much contempt for your audience?”
“Every week, we get at least one letter of complaint from somebody who burned themselves trying to make something they saw on the show. Or from somebody who put something they were allergic to in a cake and then ate the cake, and now think it’s my fault that they’re feeling poorly.
So no, I don’t think I have too much contempt for my audience.
I think I show them too much fucking respect. ”
“Isn’t that a small and unrepresentative minority?” suggested Audrey, not really expecting the suggestion to be taken.
“True. Then there’s the hipsters who watch ironically but never miss an episode.
And the housewives who watch because they want to fuck the one with the nice arms. And their husbands who watch because they want to fuck the one with the nice tits.
And the kids who watch because they don’t realise their parents are only watching because they want to fuck some of the contestants. ”
“That feels reduc—”
“And then of course there’s people like you. Who watch because you so desperately want to believe that this chocolate-box fantasy we’re spinning out of sugar and bullshit is real.”
Jennifer had said some pretty vile things to, about, or just generally around Audrey, but for some reason, this one landed harder. She could feel herself beginning to tear up, which was absurd. More than absurd, it was humiliating. “Nice things exist,” she said.
“Quite the philosopher, aren’t you,” replied Jennifer, though her tone was less acerbic than Audrey might have expected. It was almost defensive. Without waiting to see if Audrey had a response, Jennifer slipped her headphones on like they were armour.
And Audrey…Audrey just hung. Like she was buffering. It seemed like a really good time to leave, but also it seemed like a really terrible time to leave. Because quite the philosopher, aren’t you was such a fucking condescending line to go out on.
Of course waiting for Jennifer Hallet to apologise for anything was the platonic ideal of a waste of time so…
And then Jennifer Hallet glanced upwards. Just for a second.
It wasn’t sorry. Nothing in her expression said sorry.
Almost nothing.
But sometimes, almost was enough.
Or maybe it was just that some deep and primal part of Audrey had to follow any story to its conclusion. Even one she’d been written out of. She put her headphones back on.
“Honestly,” Doris was saying to Wilfred Honey, “this might not be my week.”
“You must’ve made a fair bit of gingerbread in your time, though,” he replied, walking the fine line between acknowledging Doris’s seniority and just straight up calling her old. “I’m sure you’ve got a great recipe.”
Watching Doris and Wilfred Honey interact was like watching a competitive grandparent-off. She nodded warmly. “I do, love, I do. But it’s the piping.” She held out a hand, which, from what Audrey could see through the monitors, was still steady as a rock. “Old fingers.”
While Wilfred Honey was making small talk, Marianne Wolvercote was poking at Doris’s ingredients. “Am I right in thinking you’re using a heritage recipe?”
Doris nodded and didn’t elaborate.
“Well that’s lovely,” said Wilfred, who couldn’t hear the word heritage without going into at least a bit of a reverie. “It’s interesting you see, Marianne, how gingerbread has changed through history. Because it used to be a lot more like a cake and a lot less like a biscuit.”
Marianne seemed to find it less lovely. “That’s what I’m concerned about. Isn’t structural integrity going to be an issue?”
“I’m just using it for the floor,” Doris explained. “The walls’ll be something else. It’s the decorating I’m concerned about.”
Wilfred Honey gave an encouraging grin. “I wouldn’t worry, pet, there’s life in us old dogs yet.”
“Less of the us”—Doris grinned back—”you’re young enough to be my son.”
Audrey followed from monitor to monitor as the presenter and judges went about their rounds and Jennifer flipped from camera to camera, keeping track of the whole complex business.
It was remarkable, in a way, how quickly the hours passed.
Not as quickly as they would have if she’d still been competing, of course, but quickly none the less.
There was something voyeuristically calming about the producer’s-eye view.
About being able to watch each contestant attacking the bake in their different ways—Linda staring at her ingredients like they were about to bite her, Reggie measuring twice and cutting once, Joshua very much doing the opposite, and Alanis, after her conversation with Audrey that morning, looking more confident than Audrey had feared she would be.
“You talked her round, then,” said Jennifer, her eyes meeting Audrey’s as they both glanced at Alanis’s monitor.
“We talked. I think she brought herself around, to be honest.”
Jennifer nodded, only half paying attention.
But perhaps half was exactly the right amount. “You could have been nicer, you know.”