Chapter 11
Thank god for Gabe and the promise of meeting him for dinner.
My butt would be numb and my foot asleep and my eyes about to burn out of my skull if I saw any more footage of Jason Dean watching SportsCenter, but then I’d imagine what Gabe was going to sear for me that night in his cast-iron skillet, what wine we’d have, how he’d hold my hips and put on jazz and make me giddy with the promise of adulthood.
How he’d nuzzle my neck and make a dumb pun about something in the news.
I’d think about how happy I was in my personal life, even as work broke down around me.
Even as Sally Ann had died, and we kept filming a TV show.
In one episode, Maggie’s parents are coming to dinner.
At four thirty p.m., she realizes they have nothing to eat.
She sends Jason to go pick up something catered.
She changes her clothes. When he returns, they pour each individual carton of salad into a large teak bowl, move the beautifully caramelized lasagna from the aluminum into a porcelain casserole dish, put the rolls in the oven.
Maggie’s mother compliments the cooking, and Maggie and Jason share a hidden smile before Maggie blows their cover and admits it’s from Al Prato.
That’s what aired. Now here’s what I saw:
CAM A 0:00–6:22. M comes in door, on phone talking about something that just happened at recording studio, seems stressed (somebody named Denny?)
6:25—Remembers dinner—*good face*
6:30—opens fridge, opens cabinets, rolls eyes and mutters something indecipherable, sits drinking a Coke (jib bounce)
9:00—calls for J, downstairs couch, watching TV
9:10–13:00—awkwardness about who was supposed to make plan . . . him, her, blah blah he’ll get from Al Prato (mic taps: can’t use sound)
13:12—J leaves (see CAM B)
13:20–23:15—M shower, no visual
25:00–40:00—M blow dry, robe
45:00—M makeup
54:11—M downstairs couch
1:13:18—M emptying dishwasher
1:26:00—M downstairs couch
1:37:09—J comes in with bags, empties things into containers
1:52:12—Both couch
So much couch. So much dishwasher. So much blow-dryer and closed bathroom door.
The minutiae of a life might be interesting to Proust, but only because he wasn’t watching from the outside.
Imagine seven volumes of text where a guy very slowly sits and eats his cookie and you never know what’s going through his head. That was my gig.
Two weeks into my sentence in postproduction, I showed up to a huge roll of tape at the top of my pile.
Old security cam by garage, someone had scrawled—Ian maybe, who ran the crew opposite Dan’s.
I’d grabbed a croissant from Celia’s coffee shop on the way to work and had buttery flakes all over my black pants.
I was more focused on sweeping them under the swivel chair’s carpet pad than on the slightly grainy footage on my monitor.
Between the pool house and Jason and Maggie’s garage was an awkward strip of space I’d always thought to be completely camera-free.
The tripods couldn’t fit between it, and there’d been no reason to bring any handhelds back.
I supposed someone could hang out in there if they wanted to, but it was mostly just runaway knapweed, so what would be the point?
It was a non-place. Barely worth watching.
My day would likely be a long one, tracking clouds making shadows and wind ruffling grass. I preferred couch.
I sighed and opened AOL Instant Messenger, keeping one eye on my buddy list, waiting for Gabe’s name.
A lizard darted across the dirt on my screen.
I cracked my neck. Considered taking up knitting.
Even if I did see something good here, what could the editors even do with it?
The angle was awful, and the lighting changed so often there was no way to account for continuity.
The sound was raw, not anything we could air.
Just as I was debating refilling my to-go cup with the break room’s awful coffee, I heard a shuffling sound coming through the speakers and watched a figure slide into view.
Vinnie. The camera was mounted on the pool house at an angle that showed me Vinnie from above as he dug into his pocket for a cigarette.
He leaned against the garage, lighting up with obvious relief.
I knew it. I’d never outright seen Vinnie smoking, but there were definitely times I caught a whiff of Camel Lights, despite the fact that I’d heard him swear to his wife he was quitting.
This must be his hiding spot, the sneak.
He stubbed the butt out on the siding and took it with him when he inched back off the screen.
I played the tape at triple the speed. More shadows. More wind. Vinnie, back again several hours later.
The footage was dated just after Thanksgiving, and I wondered if production actually wanted me to watch three whole months of it.
Gabe wasn’t on AIM. Since my multiday breakdown, we’d spent almost every night together.
I had a drawer in his dresser, my preferred yogurt sitting in his fridge.
But he must have been at work or running errands, so I was left with clouds and shadows.
Vinnie again. I’d run these out at 10x speed and blast through them by the end of the week.
I was just about to majorly fast-forward when something caught my eye. A movement that was neither a lizard nor Vinnie. I rewound. Sally Ann.
This wasn’t her ghost come to haunt me. It made sense that, like Vinnie, Sally Ann might find refuge in this seemingly camera-free part of the property.
Didn’t we all have moments we wanted to do something private like smoke a verboten cigarette or clear a stuffy nose?
Moments we wanted to exist without the pressures of another person watching us.
Working on the bustling set, I had occasionally locked myself in a bathroom just to breathe, and I wasn’t even in front of the camera.
But Sally Ann wasn’t looking for a rare moment of peace, because Sally Ann wasn’t alone.
I recognized him immediately. He stalked like a big cat, sleek and muscular, with purpose. Jason Dean was always in control of his body. Therefore, Jason Dean was in control of his body as he pressed Sally Ann up against the taupe garage siding and kissed her.
My breath caught. This was a development.
On-screen, Jason unhooked Sally Ann’s bra, and she batted his hands away, laughing.
“Not here!”
“Sorry.” He helped her refasten it. She stuck her leg between his thighs, and he said “Baby” in a tone that made it clear that this was not their first time being intimate.
Apparently Sally Ann wouldn’t go topless, but she wasn’t opposed to helping Jason get off.
I grimaced. This felt dangerously close to amateur porn.
How was I supposed to log this? CAMJ: Jason makes out with Sally Ann—I checked the date—about three months before her fatal accident.
Visuals blurry, bad sound. Good expressions.
I sped through the nonspeaking portion of their rendezvous, then ran the feed again in real time when they started making themselves presentable.
Jason left first, and Sally Ann messed with a fingernail while waiting for her own cue to exit.
Nothing about her expressed any remorse that she’d just done stuff with her mouth to her friend’s husband.
She looked around, her eyes momentarily meeting the camera.
I waited for her to wink, to grimace, to make some acknowledgment from the ether that told me she knew I was watching her, but she seemed as oblivious to the camera as the rest of them.
She left the screen, and I was back to the shadows, the wind stirring dust.
Oh my god. Jason and Sally Ann.
It made so much sense—she was a slightly younger, less confident version of Maggie. Both bottle blond, both skinny, but when, in real life, Maggie rolled her eyes, Sally Ann would look at Jason as if he’d just hung the moon. She was always around. Well, she had been around. She wasn’t any longer.
I felt the itch of something, a budding suspicion. A question I wasn’t sure I could allow myself to ask.
Just off-screen, someone was using the hose, and the residual spray dampened my patch of grass and gravel. I sped the playback up again.
If Lauren wanted drama, here was drama. If I gave her this footage, we both would be gold.
But did I want to hurt Jason, who had always been kind to me?
I wasn’t overly superstitious, but digging around for no good reason felt like inviting bad juju.
Sally Ann had just died for her job; I might as well let her be.
Maggie didn’t need to see her husband’s sex tape.
There were still weeks of tape to get through, so I went back to normal speed and left the roll running while I went to the break kitchen.
A few unrinsed mugs sat piled up next to the sink, which told me the meeting I had not been invited to that morning was probably over.
Muffled laughter came from down the hall, and despite my workplace loneliness, for once I felt no inclination to seek out camaraderie.
The coffee vat was empty, and I thought about my options while the next pot brewed.
If this was the only time Jason and Sally Ann had canoodled between the pool house and the garage, I could pretend I hadn’t seen them.
No one was breathing down my neck about security footage, and no one else was going to painstakingly go through that tape.
Letting it lie seemed like the respectful decision.
But making the respectful choice would never help me helm the yacht that was Reality TV.