Page 27 of My Unscripted Life
“Could you get some paper towels?” Rob snaps from his position at the head of the table. He rises from his chair and gestures to an empty one next to Leigh. “We can’t have our star covered in someone’s lunch. Everybody, I assume you know Lydia Kane.”
Idon’t know what Rob means byYou know Lydia Kane.I mean, I know Lydia Kane is famous. I know she’s got one of those naturally husky voices that makes her sound like she’s been carrying on a conversation at a Metallica concert for the past six months. I know she’s the kind of person who’s frequently photographed in the front row of fashion shows or exiting shiny black cars, sometimes sans underpants.
And I know that her ex-boyfriend is perhaps the best kisser this side of the Mason-Dixon line.
But Lydia Kane and I have never, you know,been introduced.
“You, with the food. Get paper towels,” Rob says, waving a finger in my direction and then shooing me toward the door. I bend down and retrieve the crumpled, dripping box from the floor.
“And wardrobe,please,” Lydia groans, just barely masking the bite in her tone. “I smell like a fish counter.”
And then, in front of me and her director and her fellow costars, Lydia Kane peels off her white (and now also red) top to reveal a tanned and taut abdomen and one of those lacy white bras with just enough fabric so as not to be completely see-through. She tosses the tank at me, and it lands in a gauzyheap on top of the crumpled box of dripping food, one of the straps hooked around the plastic ID card attached to my lanyard.
I want to look at Milo to see what his reaction is to this. His ex-girlfriend? Onto whom I just dumped his lunch? Who is now standing in front of him and me and everyone elsewith no shirt on? Of course I want to know. But I also don’t, because what if his eyes are on that lacy bra? Or the bit of black scrollwork coming out the top of hervery-low-rise jeans? I’m pretty sure that, despite my best intentions, I’d burst into tears. Or maybe flames. Either way, it would not be good for him or me or the current state of my employment.
Instead I mutter a few words that I think come out sounding like “I’ll go right now,” and then dart for the door without a single glance over my shoulder.
I hear the door click shut behind me as I’m dumping the mangled box of food into a trash can at the end of the hall. I toss Lydia’s shirt over my shoulder like a hand towel and stop myself from using it as one, opting instead to fling the excess tuna off my fingers into the garbage can and then give my hands a good rubdown on the thighs of my jeans. I guessI’llsmell like a fish counter all day now.
Carly, who was flying around the corner ready to barrel down the hall, skids to a stop in front of me. Her nose wrinkles as the scent of tuna salad wafts into her nostrils, her eyes running over the streaks of beet juice on my hands and shirt and probably other places I can’t think about right now. “Do I even want to know?” she asks.
“No, you don’t,” I reply. “I need paper towels and wardrobe.”
“If you think they’re going to loan you a shirt because you couldn’t manage to feed yourself, you’re high,” Carly says.
“Not for me. For Lydia,” I say. I see her brow wrinkle, and I realize I’m a step ahead of her. If Milo and the cast are only just now finding out, the crew must still be in the dark. “Lydia Kane.”
Carly’s eyes go wide, her mouth dropping open a fraction of an inch before clamping shut again. Then I notice her shoulders shaking with poorly suppressed laughter.
“Oh, girl,” she says. “I donotenvy you.”
Notallthe crew members are in the dark, apparently.
I follow Carly’s directions to a large room at the back of the main offices that looks like a clothing store’s stockroom. Rows and rows of racks fill the space, holding plastic garment bags with large white tags dangling from every piece. There’s a long white table in the corner filled with jewelry and other small accessories, and underneath are mountains of shoe boxes with Polaroids taped to the front. The whole room smells like a combination of musty attic and permanent markers.
At the front of the room, two women are working frantically on a half-empty rack that has Lydia Kane’s head shot taped to the front of it. Below it is a card with a series of sizes and measurements on it, a bunch of numbers I have to force myself to look away from. I don’t know my own measurements, but I’m fairly certain to find them you’d need to add at least five inches to all her numbers except the height, from which you’d subtract…well…a lot.
A short black woman with a close-cropped pixie and orange reading glasses sliding down her nose glances up at me.
“Extra?” she asks, her tone clipped and urgent.
“Um, actually—” I say.
“Where’s your voucher?”
“I don’t have a voucher, um, I’m—”
She turns to the girl next to her, who is on her knees next to a box full of shoes, matching up mates and securing them together with giant rubber bands. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, how hard is it to give out vouchers? How many times have I told them,Don’t send the extras back here without vouchers? How many times do I have to send them back before that silly girl gets it?”
The girl with the shoes shakes her head and rolls her eyes as she writes a size number on a manila tag with a very fragrant permanent marker.
“I’m supposed to be—” I try again.
“A pedestrian, yes, yes, we know,” the woman says. Her eyes roam over my clothes. “What you’re wearing just won’t work. Didn’t casting tell you not to wear anything with logos? And that shirt has a stain on it”—she gestures to Lydia’s top that I have clutched to my chest—“so I don’t know why you even brought that. We’re not laundresses down here.”
“Speak for yourself,” the girl on the floor mutters, and blows a wisp of hair that’s escaped from her messy bun out of her face.
The brusque woman turns her back to me as she rifles through a rack. She glances over her shoulder at me, her eyes roaming from head to toe. “What are you, an eight? I’ve got plenty of tops, but no pants for you. You’re short, and I don’t have time to hem anything. We’ll just have to cuff and pin.” She whips through the wire hangers so fast they sound like firecrackers popping in quick succession. About midway through she pulls a garment bag from the rack and hands it to me. “Here. You be my dress girl. Eloise will get you some combat boots. Really punky. Change and come back and let me look at you.”
