Chapter 8
EIGHT
“I’m glad we’re just craft services,” Eldridge said as Marc walked away. “I don’t think there’s a single thing I could say about myself that Donald would be okay with.”
“Did you ever see the show?”
It had been for kids younger than I was but only by a few years. He was probably?—
“Oh yeah, I watched it all the time when I was like… eight, maybe? It was syndicated to one of the independent stations.”
I would have been just going off to college. Though why that mattered, I couldn’t have said. “What did you think of it?”
“I liked it. I actually had kind of a crush on Marc.”
“Really? I thought people had crushes on Finn or Wes.”
“Oh yeah, they were cute. But I’ve always had different tastes.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to take that. He wanted to go out with me . Was I part of ‘different tastes’? Did I want to be part of different tastes?
Marc was making himself comfortable on the stool, as Wendy called out, “Louis! Could you make Marc an O.J. Sumptuous.” Immediately, she added to anyone standing nearby, “We’re probably going to be changing that name.”
“Actually, Wendy, I’m not thirsty,” Marc said.
The look on her face was like a window shutting. “You can just hold the cup, that’s okay.”
“I’m not selling your drinks for you. You’re not paying me for that.”
“Marc, you’re not a celebrity. There’s no reason to pay you for holding a cup. Plus, I’m trying to give you a free drink. They’re four ninety-five in our store. Some people have one every day.”
That made me wonder if they were paying Finn Henderson to hold the cup. Is that where all the money went? Were they paying Kathleen too? Or, more likely, making a donation to her church so she wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it.
“You’re right, I’m not a celebrity,” Marc said. “So it shouldn’t matter that I don’t want to hold your slushie, should it?”
“It’s not a—What do you want?” Wendy asked, her voice as hard and bitter as a stone.
“I want to be able to talk about myself. I’m gay, in case you hadn’t figured that out. I want to talk about my partner, Louis. I want to say that we’re very, very happy. Because we are.”
“Yeah, but this is a show for kids,” Donald said.
“I was a kid once. All gay people start out as kids. You do know that, don’t you? We don’t just show up out of nowhere, fully grown and ready to go clubbing. Do you have any idea what it would mean to all the gay kids who saw this if I talked about who I am and the simple fact of being happy in a relationship with another man?”
Louis applauded. Eldridge joined him. I felt I had to start applauding too. I mean, I wanted to—and also, they’d probably kill me if I didn’t. Grace was applauding, so were Meg and Keely. It was turning into a Spartacus moment. Ricky was pointedly not applauding, nor was Ed—which did suggest Louis was wrong about the whole sunburn thing. Of course, Donald and Wendy did not applaud. In fact, they were looking pretty angry. Or angrier.
“All right, all right,” Donald said. “Look, you’re absolutely right. You should get to say whatever you want about yourself. You all should. The problem is, OTN is not going to put that on the air. And so I’d have to edit it. If you say nothing they’ll allow, I’ll have nothing to work with.”
“Why is this such a problem? There was a gay guy on The Real World two years ago,” Marc said. He and Louis had actually gotten cable installed just so they could watch.
“Yeah, that’s MTV,” Donald said. “This is OTN owned by BTN.”
“What’s OTN?” Meg asked.
“Old Time Network,” I said.
“And BTN?”
“Believe Television Network.”
BTN also had a line of videos I didn’t stock, but I had seen them in the trade publications. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized this before. I was pretty sure BTN was the network Kathleen and her husband were on. Which, now that I was thinking about it, must be the reason she was there. And, now that I was thinking about it some more, it would also be the whole reason OTN bought the broadcast rights to Kapowie! in the first place. Because Kathleen was on it. She was the big star there, not Finn.
Speaking of Finn, he was suddenly standing there with Amber. He was still wearing his sunglasses. In one hand he held the Juicy Juice with his name on it. Looking down, he said in a deep, gravelly, knee-weakening voice, “I’m ready, Donald. Let’s do this.”
“Louis!” Wendy nearly screamed. “Could you get Mr. Henderson his Giant Green Monster.”
“We already got it,” Amber said. “It was in the craft room. His name was on it.”
“Yeah, but… I, like, finished it. May I have another?” He sounded a bit like a well-behaved little boy.
“Of course, you can have another,” Wendy said. “I’m so glad you liked it.”
Louis left the stage to go make the drink. Donald hurried over to lead Finn over to the stool, practically pushing us out of the way—well, not practically, actually pushing us out of the way. I nearly fell down.
As they got close to the stool, Amber said, “No, no… that’s not going to work. We need to use the blue curtain. Finn is never shot in front of anything red, orange or brown. It’s simply wrong for his coloring.”
Ed quickly moved the camera and tripod approximately fifty feet so that it sat in front of the sparkly blue curtain on the other side of the stage. Donald followed with the stool. Finn and Amber stayed where they were while Donald and Ed re-focused the camera.
Marc said, “I need a cigarette.”
Nearby, Grace said, “Me too.”
Ricky and Keely had taken seats in the front of row of the audience section—not together; several seats apart. They looked completely uninterested in each other. She was definitely not his ‘sista’.
Meg had come over to the table with Eldridge and me. On the surface, at least, I was checking the table to see what might need refilling. Really though, I was deciding if I wanted a snack. Lowly Helper One was entitled to eat.
I took an asparagus spear wrapped in ham and was trying to casually slip it into my mouth, when Eldridge edged next to me and said, “It seems like all the drama is happening off-screen. Is that normal?”
I withdrew the asparagus spear, and said, “I don’t know. I mean, I met my ex on a set. He was a production designer and I was a PA. I ran a lot of errands, so I wasn’t actually on set much. That was the only time I ever actually… Anyway, later on he used to come home and talk about the crazy things that happened, so maybe it is normal.”
I bit off half the spear and started chewing before he could ask me another question.
“It’s normal for this show,” Meg said. “It was nothing but drama the whole time we were shooting.”
On the Guessmate? set, Finn was now seated on the stool, and they’d begun the process of aiming the camera to frame Finn the way he wanted to be framed. Amber demanded to look through the viewfinder every minute or so. Then she’d stand back and bark directions. “Higher, lower, left, right.”
Louis was back with the new Giant Green Monster. He handed it to Finn, who immediately drank about a quarter of the drink. I noticed Wendy was tempted to jump in and tell him to wait, as she had with Meg, but she stopped herself. People like Finn got to do whatever they wanted.
Donald was standing close to Finn talking very quietly, as though he didn’t want the rest of us to hear, as though somehow Finn’s portion of the show would be different from everyone else’s. Well, it probably would be, I thought. It was very likely Donald would let him talk about his trouble with drugs and his time in rehab. It would be considered a good warning for kids. If Marc had gone to rehab for being gay, then Donald would probably agree to let him talk about it.
As Donald whispered, Finn continued drinking his drink. Louis was still nearby, so I stepped over and asked, “What’s in that drink? He seems to really like it.”
“Bananas and peaches, coconut milk, frozen yogurt, a secret powder, and green goop that looked like spinach, kale, collard green—and possibly some yard clippings. Probably mostly frozen spinach, though.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to try it,” Louis said. “The secret powder is ‘proprietary’. She made a point of telling me not to even try to figure out what’s in it.”
“Yeah? So, what’s in it?”
“As nearly as I can tell, protein powder made of whey—the kind body builders use, possibly some cheap powdered baby formula and a lot of confectionary sugar. And I mean a lot.”
“So, basically, they’re selling fruit flavored icing and calling it a healthy drink?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“No wonder people love it.”
Finn obviously loved it. He kept taking long sips. Donald stepped away and Finn took off his sunglasses. His eyes were a shocking pale blue. Under the lights, his pupils constricted so there was even more of that remarkable color. They were his most unique feature, and it was ironic that he wore sunglasses so often to cover them.
“Are you ready, Finn?”
“Can I get another one of these?” he said, sipping the last of his drink. Three? He was going to drink three of those disgusting drinks? Wendy looked across the stage at Louis and raised her eyebrows in command—causing her to look a bit like her husband. Louis got the message and hurried off.
Now Amber was intently whispering to Finn. I began to wonder: This was a where-are-they-now episode of a show that no longer existed. What could possibly be so important it needed to be whispered about? And for so long? By more than one person?
Marc and Grace were back, and Marc was saying, “Something’s weird. The door won’t open.”
“The door to your dressing room?”
“No, the outside door. The exit door. We went to have a cigarette and it wouldn’t open.”
“Well, that’s weird. That door has a panic bar.” After the quake, I had to have one installed on the backdoor of the store. The front door already had one. I turned to Eldridge, and said, “Maybe you should stay here. I’m going to go look at this door.”
Marc, Grace and I walked back to the door we’d come through less than two hours before. I walked up to it and pushed the panic bar. It behaved normally; it moved when I pushed it, but the door didn’t open. In fact, it didn’t budge. I pushed on the panic bar a couple more times.
“It’s supposed to open.”
“Do you think someone locked it from the outside?” Marc asked.
“You can’t do that,” I said. If you lock it from the outside, it prevents people from getting in but anyone inside can still get out. That’s the whole point of the door, that no one gets locked in.”
“Why can’t we open it, then?” Grace asked.
“There must be something stuck between the door and the doorjamb. Maybe a shim or something.”
I only knew what a shim was because the house Jeffer and I owned was built in the twenties and at one point we had to hire a carpenter to rehang a couple of doors that were threatening to never close again. He had to take off the molding and slip in some shims. An expensive education in carpentry.
“Why would someone do that?” Marc asked.
“Duh, they don’t want us to get out,” Grace said.
“There must be other doors,” I said. “Only having one exit wouldn’t be up to code. One of the other doors has to be open.”
We turned around and walked down the hallway, passed the dressing rooms. There was another exit just beyond the D.W. Griffith Memorial Office where I’d found the pen I didn’t have to use. I quickly walked up to that door and pushed its panic bar. The door didn’t open. It was also jammed shut.
Without any discussion, we turned and headed across the stage to the far corner. We walked behind the set to the third exit door. I pushed, no longer expecting much, and was absolutely right. It wouldn’t open.
“Something’s really wrong,” I said. Then we walked behind the Guessmate? set to the final corner. I hurried over to that last door and pushed the bar. Once again, nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Sweat broke out on my forehead, I turned to Marc and Grace, and said, “We’re trapped.”