Chapter 10
The last time I walked these halls, I think I was thirteen or fourteen.
Mamá had landed the antagonist/villain role in a telenovela written by Leonardo Padrón.
She played a housewife whose husband fell in love with a much younger woman.
Tried to kill the protagonist a couple times throughout the show.
Ended up in a mental asylum with third-degree burns I don’t remember how she got.
I smile, remembering being with her on set, meeting the actors, doing my homework surrounded by cameras and lights.
VeneTV’s main building hasn’t changed in that time.
The walls are lined with posters from their productions, old and new.
My mother’s face is in some of them. She’s been a talk show host, she’s played both villains and protagonists in more than a dozen productions, and now, years later, she’s returned to host a singing competition.
Nostalgia builds in my chest, constricting it.
But I’m not sure it’s positive. Because it’s been over ten years and it looks the same.
The poster frames are dusty, like no one has bothered to clean them in years.
The carpet is in desperate need of cleaning, coated with white speckles of paint chipped off from the walls, and the lightbulbs keep twitching on and off.
The building is deserted. When I arrived, there were only three cars parked outside.
I decided to park a block away because my red sedan would be too recognizable if my mother happens to drive by.
I sit on a metal bench out in the hall, next to a glass door that has Mileidy Romero, Producer engraved on it, like the young woman at the information desk instructed me to.
“Wait there until they call your name,” she said. “La senora Mileidy hasn’t arrived yet, but when she does, you’re her first appointment.”
La senora Mileidy told me to come at nine. It’s seven minutes past nine. I don’t like having too much free time. Thoughts run rampant when I’m not doing something. This is why I need a job, for the structure, for something to do. That, and for the money.
My mother stares at me from a poster hanging on the wall directly across from my bench.
She offers the viewer a coy smile, lifting an eyebrow as she crosses her arms over her chest. The picture must be at least twenty years old.
There are no wrinkles on her face, her hair is covered in too-thick highlights, fashioned butterfly style.
Above her, in bright bold letters, the words “Más Por Menos” take up half the poster.
It was for a game show where people had to use very few words to explain a subject or answer a question.
The less words you used, the more points you won. It was canceled after one season.
Seconds tick by on the clock at the end of the hall. I’ve been staring at the poster for so long, I’m starting to hear my mother’s voice inside my head.
I sit up, sharpening my ear. Laughter follows the sound of the elevator doors shutting. Familiar laughter. It’s high-pitched, like the cries of the macaws that wake me up every morning. My mother never just laughs, she cackles; she throws her head back as her entire body shakes. It’s very unique.
I hear steps approaching and jump to my feet.
She’s not supposed to be here, she’s supposed to be shooting.
I can’t let her see me. At least not until I get the job.
If I’m going to work at Talento V, I want to work there on my terms. If she finds out, she’ll do everything in her power to make sure I get it, because despite everything, she’s the kind of woman who gets stuff done.
I don’t want her to intervene. I don’t want her to force the producer into letting her sit through my interview with me as she holds my hand.
I’ll tell her once I get it. If I get it.
Where do I go, where do I go, where do I go?
I start walking, my back to the voices, holding the folder I brought to my chest. I push my hair behind my ear, forcing myself not to look behind, as I rush to where I remember the bathroom is.
I turn a corner, only to be met with another giant poster of my mother.
I jump, thinking it’s her. I wait behind the corner for the voices to disappear, but they don’t. In fact, the opposite happens.
“Let me just use the bathroom,” my mother’s voice says.
No.
I’m at the end of the hallway. If I step out, she’ll see me.
If I walk into the bathroom, she’ll find me.
She’ll ask what I’m doing here. She’ll ask why I didn’t tell her, why I didn’t include her.
She’ll say she could’ve helped me, and I will have to explain that I didn’t want her to help me.
The thought of having that conversation is like a rock settling in my stomach. Her steps get closer and closer.
Like a movie, a flash of images crosses my mind depicting a little girl, eight or nine, running down these halls on a different floor—maybe the fifth or seventh—deciding the best possible place for a girl to hide was the boy’s bathroom.
I shut my eyes and take two steps toward the door across from me, ignoring the little black sticker on the door, which is definitely not wearing a dress.
I know it’s empty. I’ve been alone on this floor for nearly fifteen minutes and no one has come in or out.
I push the door open and shut it behind me, resting my back against it.
Not ten seconds later, I hear a different door open and shut on the other side.
“I need to go back to therapy,” I mutter to myself, because what the hell was that?
I try to keep calm. Unfortunately, my nervous system doesn’t know the difference between being chased by a lion and my mother walking down a hallway.
My eyes flutter shut. My mother is the kind of woman who goes to the bathroom after every meal and takes her time to make sure she doesn’t have to go again for at least five hours.
She’ll walk out of there pristine. I should be safe for at least ten minutes.
My head falls back against the door, and I breathe in again, bracing myself to walk out, but the door swings open before I can. The knob jabs into my side, shooting a bolt of pain through my body as the impact sends me flying forward along with my folder and everything in it.
I land on my hands and knees, while sheets of paper scatter around me. Some of them land under a leaking sink and get soaked. Nooo, my portfolio!
“What—” a male voice says from above. “OH! I am so sorry—here, let me help you.”
“No, please!” My face blazes as I gather my documents, both wet and dry, and stuff them all back inside the folder. The man ignores me and drops to a knee in front of me, holding out some pages with one hand and offering to help me up with the other.
“I’m sorry, I thought this was the men’s—” He’s not from here, my brain immediately registers. The accent is off. He sounds Colombian. Or from Táchira, the state next to the Colombia-Venezuela border. “Do you know you’re in the men’s bathroom?”
God. Could this get any more embarrassing?
I take the documents without looking at him and push to my feet. He does the same. “Gracias.”
“Maria Antonieta Camacho?” a voice calls from the hall.
“Excuse me, I—” I gesture to the door he’s still blocking. He jumps out of the way. “Thank you.” And I run out of there.
Definitely need to go back to therapy.
As I step back into the hall, I notice a woman waiting for me by the metal bench I was sitting on less than five minutes ago, even though it feels like ten years.
She’s short and voluptuous, with a puff of white hair crowning her head.
She’s wearing a long dress that hangs on her body like a nightgown, and no makeup.
The contrast between this woman and Eugenia is monumental.
This is someone who thinks in numbers, not in words.
Practical and sterile, here to do her job and do it efficiently.
So is Eugenia, but Eugenia will do it while wearing stilettos, and this woman is wearing animal print flats.
I offer my hand as soon as we’re within touching distance. She takes it with a grunt.
“I’m Maria Antonieta, mucho gusto.”
“Mileidy Romero,” she replies. “Please, come in.”
Mileidy Romero’s office is old, like the rest of this building.
Binders are stacked up in towers behind her desk, labeled with different project names, dated twenty years back, some even older.
Her desk is wood and the leather in her chair is slightly cracked.
Meanwhile, the chair I sit on has barely any cushion left.
It breaks my heart a little and I gulp, trying not to let it show.
“So.” She places both hands flat on her desk as she sits. “Tell me why you want to leave your job at Ellas magazine to come work in a TV production with no budget for a social media manager.”
The question catches me off guard. Every hope I had of landing this job dissolves. I don’t want to lie, and she seems to know I’m full of shit before I even get a word out, so I decide to tell her the truth.
“Two reasons, mainly.” I clear my throat, fumbling with a chipped edge on my side of the desk.
“One, I’m between jobs and I figured a TV production that ends in twelve weeks would be a nice change of scenery, short-term, that would offer me a little cushion while I find something else.
Two, I noticed you desperately need engagement in your accounts.
It doesn’t look intentional, it doesn’t look organic, it doesn’t show people what the production is about or why it’s worth investing their time in it.
I can help you give it a fresh look, find what kind of message you want to tell the masses so you can start putting it out there, instead of waiting for the show to be on the air. ”
Mileidy watches me from her chair, her cloud of hair moving under the A/C. I make myself look her in the eye, not get distracted.
“I like how sharp you are,” she tells me, after what feels like an eternity. “You know what you want.”
I nod once. “That I do.”
“Sí.” She purses her lips, then sighs. “Which is why it’s a shame having to tell you I can’t offer you the job because the position has already been filled and the show can’t afford to hire another person.”
Whatever drop of hope I might have been harboring flickers.
“I hear you.” I square my shoulders the way I’ve seen Eugenia do when she wants to make sure her voice is heard.
“If I may, a successful social media strategy isn’t just about posting regularly.
It’s about resonating with your target audience, it’s about building relationships with them, taking people along for the ride. I know how to do that.”
Mileidy sits back and her chair groans. “You’re a romantic.”
“Maybe.” Maybe I believe in the power of human connection, or maybe I’m telling her the same words Eugenia has hammered into my brain for years.
It doesn’t matter. “This isn’t about how I feel.
From me, you will get a detailed content calendar and regular performance metrics analyses so we know what works and what doesn’t work.
It’s a data-driven approach. But it is about how you make your audience feel.
They’re not thinking about metrics, they’re just here for a good time.
Let’s try it, and if you’re not happy with the results, I’ll leave. ”
We stare at each other for what feels like ages, until Mileidy finally sighs and looks away. “I’m sorry.”
I want to ask her why she didn’t tell me the job was filled, why she had me come all the way here. But I know my place. It’s not professional and it’s not going to make her change her mind. So I nod and stand, back straight. I extend my hand out to her. She stands too, taking it.
“I understand.” I retreat with a step to the side, then one back. “Thank you for your time.”
I walk out of her office, holding my head high and never wavering until I’m out of the building, a whole block away, in the safety of my car, and driving to my apartment. Then, I cry the whole way home.