7. Noa #3
I grin. Maybe this won’t be so torturous after all.
“Enough about me.” I nod at her desk. “Seems like I should be in that seat today, seeing as I’m interviewing you.”
I was trying to quip my way into easing us toward the whole ice cream flavor pitch, but as soon as I say it, I see her bristle all over again.
“Right,” she says tersely.
I flip to a fresh page in my notebook, attempting to glide past the awkwardness. Luckily, everyone around us is busy, not paying attention to this unintentionally twisted interrogation.
“So what makes you… you? ”
I know I could start by asking what she thinks of Stella’s Midnight Live -referential cherry ribbons, but just alluding to the b-word right now would nauseate me even more than I already am.
Aarti rolls her eyes. “I can see why this is my job and not yours.”
Ticket for one right back on the saucy train.
I try to regain my composure. What did Stella say in my crash course this morning?
Don’t go straight for preferences, that’s amateur hour.
Start with their home turf, where you’re meeting them.
The framed photo on the desk, the scent of their oil diffuser.
Get them comfortable talking about the objects around them so they don’t feel like the subject of a scientific study.
“The bus map.” I point behind us. “That’s proof there’s more than what we’re seeing on the surface of Aarti.”
She glances at the map and back at me, her eyes pitch black again.
“Yes, I have utilized the LA transit system. Next question.”
I jot down her answer, even though it’s useless–I just need to busy my hands.
“So does it mean something more to you? Like, do you care about the environment or…?”
She exchanges a look with Magenta who I can barely make out in the soundbooth. The producer gives a quick shake of her head, and I realize the entire stage is mic’d.
“Next question,” Aarti repeats.
“What’s the point of having it there if you can’t even talk about why? ” I mumble to myself, but Aarti’s eyes narrow.
“I grew up in an immigrant family who ran a restaurant. We didn’t have a lot of money, hence public transport.” She somehow sits even taller as I write that down. “Next. Question.”
Ooookay. I flip through pages of half-questions I scribbled on my steering wheel at stoplights, but why do you love your job? and what are you most excited to share with audiences? feel aggressively glib at this moment.
I rack my brain for Stella’s next morsel of advice: bypass media training with specificity. Don’t just ask what they like to eat, ask what they like to eat when something specific has happened.
“Um. What’s a comfort food for you? Like, what do you eat after…” I try to come up with a compelling scenario, but improv was never my specialty, so I just blurt out the first thing that pops into my dumb, curly head, “…you’ve just had a breakup?”
The speed at which Aarti’s face goes ashen is equivalent to the speed at which I realize just how poor of a choice that scenario was.
She thinks I’m trying to allude to last night at Velvet Tongue.
“No! I didn’t–I would never–” Out someone , I want to say. But despite my chronic foot-in-mouth disease, I have the wherewithal to hold that part in.
Yet I’m still met with a death glare icier than the industrial freezer in the BFI.
I avert my eyes, furiously studying my notepad, like the terrible questions I brainstormed will magically transform into brilliant, probing-yet-tactful interrogations. Aarti’s short, manicured nails land at the top of one of the pages, and I reluctantly look up.
“What are you–”
She snatches the notebook from my hands and leafs through it. “You’re asking questions that aren’t even in here. Why?”
I go to grab the pad but she holds it out of my reach.
“Answer. The question.”
“I’m improvising! I’m sorry! I’ve never done this before and you’re not exactly being the most forthcoming! Can I please have that back?”
She snorts. “Leave the improv to the pros. You don’t need this poor attempt at a dossier on me. Like you said, I’m not giving you much to work with anyway.”
I reach for it again and she yanks it away, looming above me like a schoolyard bully.
“There’s a lot in there other than our non-interview, okay? My brain can’t really hold onto a thought for longer than three seconds. You’re holding all of my thought soup right now!”
She flicks through more. “This page just says ‘camomeal pudding’ and chamomile is heinously misspelled.”
“I’m an ice cream scientist, not a literary genius!”
If only Stella had prepared me for what to do when a deranged celebrity is playing keepaway with the physical manifestation of the humiliating contents of my brain.
I decide to switch gears–what would my brother do at this moment?
We played our fair share of tug-o-war with twin birthday presents over the years.
I stop trying to snatch the notepad and settle back into my chair, folding my arms. Aarti sits, too, mirroring me aside from the journal tucked against her side. I watch as her eyes dart back over to Magenta, who’s giving Aarti a disapproving look.
“Magenta thinks you should give it back.”
“Luckily Madge works for me, not the other way around. But,” she scoots her chair out from the desk and stands, “I’m glad you feel some kinship there because she will be your point person going forward.
I think we’ve fully established that this will go a lot smoother without us having to liaise any further. ”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine. I’ll probably get more out of her than I ever would from you.”
I know we’re throwing barbs, but Aarti looks genuinely relieved at my acquiescence. She walks around the desk and heads toward the soundbooth, giving Madge a twinkly wave. I get out of my cushy seat and pick up my nitrogen canister from the floor before following Aarti across the stage.
When we’re about halfway there, a crew member stops Aarti to show her something on a clipboard, and the demon in my head gives me the signal: now .
With her distracted, I take the quietest steps I can manage to sneak up behind her. I can see my notebook peeking out between her torso and toned arm. With my free hand, I grip the corner of the pad and yank with all my might.
Remember when I said her arm was toned ? Would that I had realized just how toned. Yanking the notebook does nothing for my retrieval mission except alert its captor to my intentions.
Aarti turns on her heel, and in a flash, I’m nothing more than a twelve-year-old again, trying vehemently to stake my claim to the singular Gameboy gifted to Aiden and I on our shared birthday, similarly poorly matched to the strength of my opponent.
I go to grab the notebook from the front this time, and in spectacularly blustering Noa Hart fashion, manage to swipe her left boob instead. The crew member takes a horrified step back as Aarti’s eyes widen in shock.
“Seriously?!” she spits.
The crushing defeat should have me sprinting out of the studio at this point, probably fleeing the country, but instead, I get tunnel vision, perhaps because I have nothing left to lose.
Famous last words.
She’s gripping the notepad with both hands now as I attempt to brute force it away from her. Suddenly, the golden flecks in her eyes are twinkling again, and in slow motion, she lets go.
I fly backward into the elaborate LA transit diorama, crashing with all of my body weight into Beverly Hills, my precious journal clutched to my chest. I hear crew members heave a collective gasp.
Then I hear the hiss.
Through my daze, I turn my throbbing head to the side and spot my canister–now resting directly on a blazing stage light.
“Oh no, no–”
The valve hisses open. Nitrogen erupts in ghostly tendrils, creeping through the destroyed cityscape like fog in a disaster movie. The vapor engulfs Aarti, who towers over me like Godzilla’s extremely well-dressed nemesis.
True to Murphy’s Law, which should maybe get renamed after me, the nitrogen triggers the fire alarm, and at the exact moment my eyes meet hers, the studio sprinklers pour down upon us.
I look up at Aarti through the thick mist and torrential monsoon to give her two shaky thumbs up. But her expression is pure horror, and not just because I’ve destroyed 90210.
Something thicker than water runs into my eye. I swipe at it. Red streaks across my fingers.
Have I mentioned I’m very not good with blood?
“Hey...” I wave hazily at Magenta, the gathering crowd of crew members, and my definitely-now-sworn-enemy Aarti Nair. “This isn’t blood! This is marasch–”
I promptly pass out atop the ruins of Los Angeles and my own dreams.