Chapter 15
I sat on the bench by the fountain for at least twenty-five minutes, watching it spew water California could not afford to waste for the sake of the neighborhood aesthetic. Maggie had killed Sally Ann. What was I going to do? It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
I didn’t believe the Gabe stuff. It made no sense.
I might not have been the world’s best judge of character, but I knew I wasn’t dating Patrick Bateman.
Gabe wasn’t so obsessed with Maggie that he’d kill Jason’s girlfriend, especially not after the guilt trip he’d sent Maggie on with Jason’s hit-and-run.
I did, however, see Maggie as the type who’d point her finger at Gabe if I went public with any of this, regardless of his actual involvement. Maggie was ruthless.
She’d been a snotty kid, but not sociopathic. Blame Jason for making her this way. Blame the record label or the network. Blame the way our culture liked to tie a girl in knots until the struggle to undo them only locked her in tighter. Maggie was running low on options.
At summer camp, there’d been this legend of a kid who wrapped a hair tie really tight around her finger until all the blood separated and it made a truly gnarly white line.
She fell asleep like that, and then in the morning, when she popped the hair tie off, that blood bubble went straight to her brain and she was dead.
This was Maggie. Maggie couldn’t take the hair tie off, or else it would kill her.
I hated them all. Jason and Maggie and the people who’d made them.
Gabe, for letting himself get caught up in her, for forcing me in further.
The people who’d put Maggie on a pedestal so that they could look up her skirt.
The ones who’d granted immunity to famous people’s terrible behavior because it served as entertainment for the rest of us.
I was out. I was finished. If this was what it meant to see the whole game board, I would rather be a pawn. I was ready to call time of death on Reality TV.
But first, I had to do something about Maggie.
For a second I thought about driving straight to a police station and dumping the whole thing on their doorstep.
But Maggie was a white girl most famous for being famous; she had money and lawyers, and I still didn’t have proof.
Likely they’d laugh at me. Likely they’d dig up some unpaid parking ticket and turn the whole thing back around on me.
And if they did take Maggie in, if for some reason they decided to believe me, mine would be the final heel stomping on the face of the little girl I’d known in Youngstown.
Also, there was Gabe. I wasn’t going to get back together with him, but I didn’t want to make his life harder.
Maggie knew that, and that’s why she had told me she’d blame him.
Even if it was all bullshit, the accusation that he’d killed his girlfriend’s husband’s mistress wouldn’t cast Gabe as a lovesick Romeo; it would ruin him for life.
Certain things men could get away with, if they were famous and good looking and they had enough money.
Domestic abuse. Throwing things at waitstaff.
Walking out on their children. But premeditated murder was across the line, and Gabe wasn’t that rich or that famous.
I couldn’t walk him into the middle of the street and let Maggie hit him with a bus.
He didn’t deserve to be caught up in Maggie’s drama any more than he already was.
I could call him. Instead, I called Lauren. She picked up from set—I could hear Eli yelling at the new camera assistant in the background.
“Cassidy. What’s going on? You got something for me?” Chipper, terse. Reliable old Lauren. She could take on this mess. She’d know how to spin things, get Gabe out of the equation. I’d leave it all at her feet, and then Gabe and I could freely go our separate ways.
“Can you meet me at the office? Or is there somewhere more private? Somewhere better?”
“Diner off Topanga and Burbank,” Lauren said. “Twenty minutes.” If I had been at the office, there’s no way I could have made it in that time, but from where I was stalled on the freeway, I could do it.
“Okay,” I said, and pulled off to turn my car back around, heading toward Calabasas for what I knew would be the very last time.
Lauren’s diner was a dive, the kind of place where you’d be equally likely to eat the best burger of your life or find a sliver of glass in your french fries.
Burnt-orange vinyl seating and patterned carpet from the ’70s.
Even midday, the overhead lighting made it feel like it was one in the morning.
I got there first and picked a booth toward the back.
“Pie,” said Lauren when she sat down across from me. “Pie and very black coffee.”
“Are you supposed to drink very black coffee?” I gestured toward her stomach, which was now clearly full of child. Lauren rolled her eyes and flagged the server, who came with a steaming pot.
“What do you have?” Lauren asked, adding Splenda. I held my tongue about the loose definition of black.
“It’s juicy,” I said. “But you have to be careful.” Lauren’s eyes lit up like those of the cartoon cat spotting the anthropomorphic mice.
Maybe this was a bad idea. I might be pitching Honeymoon Stage: Prison.
But I had to tell somebody. Besides, Lauren cared too much about the success of her show to do anything drastic.
I knew she wouldn’t call the law to punish Maggie, but there’d at least be some consequences.
Maybe they’d renegotiate the terms of filming in the bedroom and bathroom; maybe Lauren would plant a mole and get Maggie to confess. She would do something.
And it would be something that did not implicate Gabe. If I was out of the picture, Maggie had no reason to drag Gabe’s name into this mess. I’d let her win; I’d let her have him. The space I’d asked for would go on indefinitely until we were far enough away to be completely different people.
I swallowed. “Maggie and Jason killed Sally Ann.” Lauren’s face stayed blank. “Sally Ann?” I said. “The dead makeup artist? Maggie McKee killed her.”
Lauren didn’t respond, just kept sipping her coffee. It was a clear producer tactic, the sort of thing they taught teachers and cops and anyone else trying to get answers out of unwilling subjects. Sit long enough in silence, and people get uncomfortable enough that they can’t help but talk.
“Also,” I said. “I quit.”
My patty melt arrived, greasy and covered in Swiss. I removed the top piece of bread. I could wait Lauren out.
She was thinking, making calculations. I envied the way she sat so still, her body never betraying her mind. “Okay,” she said finally. “You’re quitting. Why?”
“You heard the part I said first, right? About Maggie?” My mouth was still partially full.
“You want me to help move you back on set? Is that it? You’re sick of logging.”
“No,” I said, dabbing my lips with a napkin. “No, I mean it. I’m totally done. But I’m leaving you this present.”
What I saw as a morally clear but personally complicated shit show, I thought Lauren would see as a beribboned package of Reality television gold.
“Yeah, that’s a no go,” she said.
“What?” The bite I’d swallowed rested heavy in my chest.
“That doesn’t help me. Too dark. We’re not making that kind of show.” Lauren put a hand on her belly. “Oof, this baby is kicking.”
I’d thought nothing could surprise me, not after Maggie, and now here came Lauren.
Not that I’d considered her the pinnacle of ethics, but it had seemed to me that her goals with the network were aligned with the goal of getting some justice for poor Sally Ann.
Even if she didn’t care about Sally Ann, Lauren cared about being a top show on television.
For my entire time working with her, Lauren had encouraged me to look for the drama.
What could be more compelling than this?
Besides, we compromised Maggie constantly, from filming her workouts to paying off her housekeeper.
“You said you wanted good story,” I said. “This is as good as it gets.” Hysteria quavered in my voice, but Lauren stayed calm.
“For one of those shows about good girls rebelling or a women’s prison or something. Our show is about being in love. Once this series wraps, maybe there’s something we could do with it, but right now, I don’t see it. Where is that pie?”
It took everything in me not to stand up on the ripped vinyl booth cushion and scream.
“Okay, whatever,” I said softly. “I’m out.”
Lauren made eye contact with the server, who remembered her undelivered order and mouthed an apology. Then she looked back at me. “Can I ask why?”
Because this business was corrupt and stretched the bounds of my morality? Because none of these people cared about anything but ratings and story and professional success at the expense of all else?
“You know that weird space between the garage and the pool house?” I said. “That, like, strip of weeds and rocks? There’s a camera there. Just thought you should know.”
Lauren raised a single eyebrow, a skill I hadn’t known she had but wasn’t overly surprised to discover.
“Cassidy,” she said. “Don’t leave the show. I can promote you.”
“I know it’s Dan’s,” I said. “The baby.”
True to form, Lauren remained outwardly unfazed. Her cherry pie arrived, and she thanked the guy dropping it off. Her fork cracked the latticed top, plunging straight to the gooey center. “Let me promote you,” she said. “You see things. You’re patient. You’ve got what it takes.”
This was because I had caught her on camera. Or else because she needed an ally against Dan. Whatever her motive, I knew it was less about me than about what I could do for her.
“I don’t want it.” I shook my head. “I don’t want a promotion. I’m actually out.”
“You’re throwing away a huge opportunity,” said Lauren. “If you leave, Dan’s going to be pissed. He’ll give you all the blame for anything that comes in from legal about Sally Ann’s accident. It’ll be hard to get the next job, without references.”
Fine with me. I wanted far away from all of it; even scripted TV suddenly felt tainted.
I had to shed the parts of my life that did not serve me.
Recuse myself from this job. Renounce Honeymoon Stage and all its baggage.
Sally Ann’s death was Lauren’s problem now—it wasn’t my fault that she didn’t want to deal with it. It wasn’t Gabe’s.
“You’ll regret this.” Lauren took another bite.
“I really don’t think I will.” I put down cash for my coffee and patty melt, paying for my own lunch the final severance of my servitude.
The diner doorbell clanged on my way out, and I could see Lauren watching me through the window by our booth as I walked out to my car.
On my drive over, I’d imagined this moment as the iconic scene of action-hero Cassidy walking away from the ground-shattering explosion.
Instead, the fuse was sputtering out. I tried not to look back.