Chapter 9
Video Village was humming. Dan hovered in front of the monitors, reviewing notes Ian had left him, while Vinnie told us about his older daughter’s dance recital. Three hours long and only six minutes of his kid. He’d sat through the entire thing.
On the monitors, Maggie messed with her rowing machine while Jason watched SportsCenter on an adjacent screen. “Poor Vinnie,” I said. “First that and now he has to sit through this.”
“I’m sure that was more interesting,” said Rahul. “When is lunch?” I checked my watch. Only eleven a.m. This was going to be one of those long days of Reality that translated to thirty seconds of television.
“There’s crap on the couch cushions again.” Lauren came in behind Dan, gesturing to the living room camera feed, where Jason was rising from his vigil. Two back cushions of the sunken couch displayed a splatter of what I assumed was tobacco spit. Gross.
“Tyler must have been here,” I said. The network didn’t mind piles of dirty laundry or an unmown lawn, but the aesthetics of a white couch cushion spackled with tobacco spit were a problem for the test groups.
There was only so much “just like us” the television-viewing audience actually wanted.
The uncanny valley between overripe and rancid, the visceral difference between elegant flowers that went dry in the vase and those that turned rotten and pulpy on the vine after a surprise autumn freeze. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, then let’s figure out lunch,” said Dan. “Sandwiches? Burritos? Pick a place you want and then go out and get everyone’s order.”
The dirty couch ruined what appetite I had.
I grabbed the cushions and took them to the first-floor laundry room, which was packed with clothes, mostly clean and strewn unfolded across the machines.
A pile of Jason’s sweaty workout things lay crumpled in a corner.
I ignored them and grabbed the special spray bottle of heavily researched solution I stored under the sink.
“Cassidy.” I turned mid-spray to see Maggie behind me, wearing running shorts, a sports bra, and a full face of makeup.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I help you with something?”
“You’re the one doing the lunch run, yeah?” I nodded. I was always the one doing the lunch run. “I’m really craving Chinese,” Maggie said. “Can you put me down for kung pao chicken, mild spice?”
“Sure.” I finished up with the stain and grabbed a legal pad and a pen before going to get everybody’s order. Dan wanted egg rolls. Eli passed. Lauren asked for a large tea and some white rice.
“You’re doing that place by the Kinko’s, yeah?
” Sally Ann was setting up her makeup brushes, laying them out in an orderly line.
As always, she was outfitted for the occasion of being on television: a low-cut top held together by shoestrings, low-rise jeans, a pair of three-inch heels.
“I want the number seven, with chicken. And—”
“The sauce on the side and no nuts.” I’d taken this exact order before. What kind of person wanted sauce on the side of their stir-fry? Only in Los Angeles.
“Thanks,” she said.
I placed the order. Filming continued. Maggie’s publicist had a message from Sports Illustrated on which Jason’s publicist then had to weigh in.
The publicist for Honeymoon Stage, who worked at the network, stopped by with a line of scented soaps.
Someone came in to fiddle with the internet connection, which had been disrupted by construction down the street.
Maggie looked through three different handbags for her car keys.
I got in my car to go pick up our lunch.
When I got back from the restaurant, the whole Dean–McKee entourage was gathered between living room and kitchen, trailed by Eli and Rahul and their cameras, as they drank Diet Coke and talked about royalties and tried to choose a spot for Maggie’s birthday dinner.
“Is that couch cushion clean yet?” Dan asked me, even before I’d set down the bags of takeout. “We need it back on set.” He spotted Eli making some camera choice he disagreed with and moved toward him with a frown.
“I’ll hand this stuff out and then check,” I said to Dan’s back.
“I can help.” Jason came up behind me and grabbed one of the bags.
The more success Maggie had, the more Jason had been playing up his down-to-earthness, but he rarely stepped up in a way that actually helped me out.
I frowned. “What? I’m hungry.” To prove it, Jason popped open a paper container and took a bite of an egg roll I knew wasn’t his.
I shrugged, putting my list on the counter so he’d know who belonged to what, and went back to the laundry room.
The cushions were not clean. I sprayed again, wiped, left them to dry.
I came out and sat behind the camera line, my fork in my fried rice.
The flock of publicists had gone, and the guy fixing the internet was off in search of a real electrician.
Eli filmed Maggie and Sally Ann as they leaned against the kitchen island, picking at their respective containers of chicken.
Maggie said something about renting a movie that evening. Off camera, Lauren reheated her tea.
Sally Ann took a bite and then frowned. Maggie was still going on about the video store, whether they should make the trip or stick with something they already had at home.
Sally Ann appeared offended at the thought.
Her nose wrinkled, and she shut her eyes in a cute little squint that made her look like an anime character.
Then she scratched at her neck with a fake fingernail, and made a sound like a vacuum cleaner revving, air sucked through a clogged straw.
That was weird. I put down my lunch. Sally Ann’s neck and chest bloomed pink, face flushing. The microwave hummed its final countdown, and Lauren turned to look at me. I couldn’t read her eyes, but I assumed that her tacit instruction was the same as it always was—do nothing.
“Cassidy!” Eli stood up, gesturing. What did he want with me? Was I in his shot? Sally Ann was bent over now, still making that alien sound.
Maggie understood him right away. She sped to Sally Ann’s purse, a navy leather hobo resting on the back of the chair next to me, and grabbed what I suddenly realized was an EpiPen. Eli had the wall phone, giving the address to the 911 dispatcher.
I felt dizzy. Is this actually happening, or happening for the camera?
Maggie plunged the needle into Sally Ann’s blue-jeaned thigh, and Sally Ann tried to gasp.
She was wheezing; the microwave was beeping.
I couldn’t tell if the pen had made a difference.
Her lips were growing into overstuffed pillows.
I’d thought of myself as someone competent in the face of disaster, the one who’d do the calling of the ambulance and the checking of the pulse.
It was my job, after all, to assist the production.
But I just stood there, watching as Maggie and Eli helped Sally Ann to the door, where we could already hear distant sirens.
Lauren pressed her lips together, looking right at me. “It’ll be okay,” she said.
I nodded. It would be fine. The epinephrine would kick in, and Sally Ann would come to, and pretty soon, we would all laugh about this near-disaster.
Postproduction would cut this into an episode, and the EpiPen would become another icon—alongside the dry boxed pasta and the Boyz II Men knockoff—another fan-favorite moment to print onto a personalized mug.
People had allergies. Modern medicine was a miracle.
The EMTs rushed in and loaded Sally Ann onto a gurney, and the ambulance pulled out of the drive.
No one had tossed my crumpled order list from earlier—there it sat on the kitchen counter, next to the empty paper bag now sticky with duck sauce.
While everyone was gathered in the foyer to watch the flashing lights, I inched over.
There, in my loopy handwriting, was written SA—#7 chicken, no nuts, sauce on the side.
Maggie went with Sally Ann to the hospital.
Jason made a series of phone calls, though I couldn’t imagine whom he might need to inform.
The publicists? Lauren was talking to the network.
Until we knew Sally Ann’s status, we were told to keep filming.
The allergic reaction was content, right up until it wasn’t.
I replaced the missing couch cushions. I dabbed club soda onto the fallen soy sauce staining the rug.
“Should we have sent a camera to the hospital?” asked Lauren. Rhetorical, because we would not send one now. Maggie texted Dan to let him know that Sally Ann was being taken into the ICU.
What had just happened? The entire past hour was a parallel reality, the same people and places of my usual life but out the other side of the looking glass.
“She’ll be fine,” Lauren kept mumbling. Eli’s camera stayed with Jason, who was mostly on the phone. It felt gauche to turn on the TV before we knew if Sally Ann was okay, so he had the basketball game on the radio.
It was Dan who found me in the laundry room, where I’d been sorting Maggie’s socks for lack of anything else tangible to do.
“Lauren says she’ll be fine,” I said, pairing a novelty set printed with half-peeled bananas.
“They don’t put you in intensive care if you’re fine.” Dan wiped his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Epinephrine is supposed to kick in within twenty minutes.”
“The food. The lunch orders . . . I didn’t—” I half hated myself for being so focused on my own involvement when this was not about me.
Yes, I hoped Sally Ann would be okay, but I also hoped this wouldn’t screw me over.
I’d delegated my one regular assignment, the passing of the lunch.
Then I’d just stood there, watching Sally Ann’s death scene play itself out.
If I said nothing, it was possible my part in this whole thing would fly under the radar.
But the words cascaded out of me, my moral compass stuck at north.
“If I had double-checked to be sure they left the nuts out, she wouldn’t have—”
“The production’s not at fault here,” Dan said.
He was giving me that are-you-too-dumb-to-function stare.
“Were the production at fault, we would have to figure out who dropped the ball. Any legal ramifications of today’s events would then fall on that person.
” He paused. “Luckily, in this situation, production is not at fault.”
Maybe I was too dumb to function. He was implying I should keep my mouth shut, right? Or was he asking me to take the fall?
“I don’t think—”
“Good thing we don’t pay you to think.” Dan could be such an asshole. I usually had Lauren to buffer us, and I wasn’t sure how she could stand him. That he sometimes brought in donuts for the crew didn’t negate his condescension. Besides, they did pay me to think. Just not about this.
“If I had—”
“Let’s wait and see what happens.” Dan gave my hand a pat. He wrinkled his nose at the laundry room, then left me to my sock sorting.
I took a deep inhale of dryer sheet and slid my back down the laundry room wall.
Breathe in. Breathe out. I’d always been so good about accommodating everyone’s diets.
No dairy, no sugar, sauce on the side. Jason hadn’t known to be careful with Sally Ann’s container.
But wasn’t it ultimately incumbent on the person with the allergy to check that they were eating the right food? It wasn’t like I had tricked her.
I’d sat there. I’d sat there, wasting precious seconds, watching Sally Ann’s throat swell while the antidote was next to me. I’d let her suffering be part of our show. Her purse was within arm’s reach—I wouldn’t even have had to stand up.
After digging my phone out of my pocket, I did what anyone would do and called my mother.
As the house phone rang, I pictured my mother’s kitchen: the kettle with the red plastic bird whistle that sang out when the water was boiling, the tiled backsplash that my stepfather despised but my mother said gave the house character, the used tea bag sitting on a spoon by the sink just in case someone needed more out of it.
Afternoon in LA was early evening in Pennsylvania, but no one was home to pick up, which was probably for the best. Crying to my mother would only make her worry.
She couldn’t even give advice until we knew how Sally Ann would come through, and if she had given advice, I likely wouldn’t have taken it.
The socks were all partnered.
“She’ll be fine.” Lauren filled the doorway. “Get off your ass and get back to work.”
So, I sat on hold with the company that’d sent us the wrong lighting gels, then double-checked a set of permits. Lauren kept asking Jason questions, trying to get him to emote about the accident, and through it all she kept telling everyone that Sally Ann would be totally fine.
She continued to insist that Sally Ann was fine until she went to take a phone call and came back to tell us Sally Ann was dead.
I still had four hours left on my shift, but I immediately walked out the door.