Chapter 2 #2
Why do you watch another person? Because you can’t look away. Because you want something from them. Because you want them. Because something has sparked, and it’s not fire season yet, but you’re still wary of the flame.
At the ARCO, everyone was doing about what you’d expect of a production team parked at a service station.
One big van held cables and C-stands and a portable soundboard.
Maggie’s BMW convertible sat by a pump. There she was in the driver’s seat, flipping through a magazine, while Jason leaned on the side of the car, talking to someone out of my view.
I’d thought I’d feel a rush of something when I saw Maggie in person.
But she seemed less a person I’d once known than a character I’d once seen on TV.
To my left, a guy shot B-roll. Someone else was playing Snake on his phone.
At the house, Lauren had asserted herself as my immediate superior, but here I couldn’t tell who I should defer to.
I sat in my parking spot for a minute, considering, before diving into the action.
“Are those the lav replacements?” The guy who’d been on his phone looked up at the slam of my door. “You’re the new PA.” He stood up from the curb and walked over to me, pointing at himself. “Devon. Sound.”
“Oh!” I let the bag thump down from the car. “These are for you.”
As Devon untangled the microphone wires, Jason Dean himself walked over, all six feet two inches in the flesh, to ask if we were finally ready.
I’d grown up watching Jason on ESPN, my brother at one point fancying himself a shoo-in for Major League Baseball.
Jason had been that rare thing, a pitcher who could hit, and in the prime of his career, I’d often stumbled on a Dean jersey in the sweaty pile of clothing on our upstairs landing.
For a few years, he was the king of my hometown of—right outside—Philadelphia.
The Phillies had traded Jason just before he got hurt in ’98, and although his career-ending injury was a boon for us, my brother still mourned.
I could picture Jason on the front page of the sports section, a photo of him giving a thumbs-up, the field behind him kelly green.
Now he stood beside me, thinner, tanned, wearing tinted aviator sunglasses.
He hiked up his shirt for the new microphone pack, revealing the same muscular torso he’d bared in the Got Milk?
ad I’d ripped from a magazine in my dentist’s office and hung in my childhood bedroom.
I tried not to stare. Having delivered the Zebra Cakes, I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I open the cellophane and put them on a platter? Go tap the camera guy on the shoulder and ask if he needed, what, a Coke?
“Where are my manners?” Jason Dean was talking to me. I’d been given strict instruction not to initiate conversation with the talent. “I’m Jason.” He held out his hand, the angle slightly awkward as Devon adjusted his tape.
“Cassidy.”
“Nice to meet you, Cassidy.”
I felt strangely drunk. Jason Dean had introduced himself.
I stood there, wondering if Maggie was going to come over.
If she remembered me from childhood, what would I say?
Thanks for the job. Do you still play with Breyer horses?
She tucked her hair behind an ear and examined her fingernails, the solitaire diamond engagement ring visible even from across the parking lot.
Sitting atop the pavé wedding band, it looked like a sparkling tumor on her frail little hand.
Devon went back to the van while Jason hopped in the car next to his wife and gave her a tiny kiss on the side of her forehead before the cameras resumed rolling.
In this scene, Maggie is—surprise, surprise—getting gas.
She approaches the pump like it’s a horse she has to tame, eyeing it warily, her movements slow so as not to startle.
Will the traumatized teen girl bond with the wild stallion, or will she need a man to step in?
She does okay popping the access door and screwing off the cap, but then she stands there, looking troubled. What to do?
“Can you hurry it up?” Jason says from the passenger seat, absorbed in his BlackBerry. Maggie gives a chipper “Mm-hmm.” Digs through her Louis Vuitton purse for a credit card, presses some buttons, frowns.
“Jason, it’s not coming out.”
“What isn’t?”
“I have the thing on the thing, but there’s nothing coming out.”
“Did you hear the click?”
“What?”
“Did the thing on the handle click down?”
“I stuck it in, but I just . . .” Then the trademark sigh with the bangs floof, the sexy chew of her lip. What can she do? What else can we expect of her?
Jason rolls his eyes, puts his BlackBerry down by the windshield, where the camera zooms in on its sad little screen while mood music plays.
Jason, hero that he is, knows how to pump gas and demonstrates this knowledge with admirable skill.
Look at those biceps! Maggie is certainly looking.
She wraps her arms around his waist and nuzzles into his shoulder, and although she has wrenched our leading man from his very important business, we love her, because she is, at her core, sweet and lovable.
We wouldn’t want her to be perfect. God forbid she look this good and also know how to get gas.
“Thanks, babe.”
“No problem, babe.”
I didn’t actually watch this scene film, only saw it air when everyone else did.
Unsure of who to assist, I’d instead obeyed Lauren’s instructions to return to the house.
When I got back, the lights were on, and there was more crew milling around, which made the whole place feel even more like a set getting dressed on a studio lot.
Lauren walked me through the camera setup.
In agreeing to the show, Maggie and Jason had effectively agreed to live their entire lives for Big Brother.
They had a permanent camera on top of the living room television, and another angled down to catch anyone standing at the kitchen island.
One hung on the side of the house to get the patio and pool, another the garage.
And of course there were the camera operators, shadows that shifted not with the sun but the direction of the drama.
Since shooting was an almost twenty-four-hour endeavor, we had two ENG crews that traded off—a field producer-director and their assistant producer, two camera operators, the sound mixer, a camera assistant, and me, the PA—working in a fairly continuous relay.
Production admitted that there likely wouldn’t be much to film between one and five a.m., so we could theoretically all be off, although in practice there was usually someone hanging around with a Red Bull and unfortunate undereye bags, fiddling with equipment or emailing the story producers.
Ian’s team, to whom I’d just made my delivery, would take off today around two p.m.
My crew, Dan’s team, was assembling at the house, awaiting the return of our stars.
Nominally, Dan was in charge of us, but anyone could see the real buck stopped with Lauren.
She’d gone to school in Boston (yes, Harvard), and was maybe ten years older than me, with the general vibe that unless you were announcing her winning lottery ticket you were always wasting her time.
Vinnie, our sound mixer, was basically her polar opposite: a bear hug of a guy with time for everyone.
Eli and Rahul operated the cameras, and during my tenure, they were assisted by a series of gangly white men who either found a better gig or pissed Lauren off enough to get walked off the property.
Everyone was there that first day when I got back from the ARCO, checking camera feeds and going over Maggie’s upcoming travel schedule.
“Cassidy.” Lauren always said my name like it was a clipped call to attention. “The housecleaners put away Maggie’s bags. We need them back in the entryway.”
I nodded, having learned my lesson about follow-up questions. Put bags back in entryway. How hard could that be?
What kind of bags? Where were they? The foyer closets had more unpacked moving boxes shoved into them, but nothing that seemed like a bag Lauren needed set. Upstairs, then.
I crept up the spiral staircase, without having had the tour of the house Lauren had promised me, unsure of what constituted Maggie and Jason’s personal space.
Luckily, a camera was setting up in the den.
Adrian, camera assistant du jour, stood in as Rahul adjusted for natural light. I knocked on the open door.
“Ummm, hi. I’m Cassidy?”
They both looked up at me and waved, introduced themselves by name, and went back to their own jobs.
“Lauren says to get Maggie’s bags. Any idea where those might be? It’s just—I don’t know if I’m allowed in their bedroom.”
“Oh, you can go in. She won’t notice,” Adrian said. He was the younger and clearly less senior of the two, so I wasn’t sure how seriously I should take him. “Officially the bedroom is off limits, but it’s not like they know if you’re popping in or out. Lauren probably means the suitcases.”
“That’s not, like, a violation of privacy or contract or anything?”
Adrian blinked at me. “They’re celebrities putting their lives on TV. What even is privacy?”
This was clearly not the time for an ethical debate, but I chewed my cheek for a second, considering.
“I don’t think Maggie McKee would even notice if you disappeared that suitcase entirely,” said Rahul. “She’d just find another of her dozens. The other day Eli took some of her hand cream home for his wife after she messed with his shot. You’re good just walking in her room.”
“We got your back,” said Adrian in a tone that failed to assure me. Still, I thanked them and slunk over to what seemed to be the primary bedroom.