When Orla got off the elevator at home, she could hear high, messy crying coming from her apartment. She paused just ahead of the door and put her ear to the wall.
Inside, she heard Mason, sounding like he was saying something he’d said a thousand times. “She’s all anyone talked about from the first episode. I’m confused—do we not want a show? Do we not want to get paid?”
Then Craig: “All right, Mason, but I’m sure—I’m sure—you still feel that Floss and Aston are the stars of this show. Don’t you, Mason?” Craig exhaled. He rapped on something. “Melissa, will you...deal with her?”
Melissa’s voice, dull and obligated: “There, there, Floss.” Orla had a sudden memory of Melissa the night they celebrated getting green-lit. It was the only time she had ever seen Melissa drunk. She had beaten Craig in arm wrestling, flattening his forearm against the sticky table. Afterward, she growled to no one in particular, “I’m never having a baby!”
Floss let out a sob that barely arranged itself into words: “AstonSTOPwiththefuckingBALL!”
A bouncing in the background stopped. “My bad,” Aston chirped.
“Floss, I’m sorry,” Mason said. “But I’m not here to pimp your ego. I’m here to see that Flosston gets a full-season pickup. You want that producer credit? Yeah? Then you should be calling Orla right now to say how great she was.”
There was a long, sniffly period where no one spoke. “Fine,” Orla heard Floss say. “But she has to be clear on her role.”
“For sure,” Mason agreed. “You’ll see, it’ll be funny, kind of like a Three’s Company vibe that will really endear—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Orla heard the deliberate click of Floss’s heels on the wood, moving closer to the door. “I mean we all know who I’m supposed to be, and we all know who she’s supposed to be. Right?”
All of them went around, echoing: “Right.”
Except for Aston, who made a lip-trumpet sound and said, “Wha? I’m not following this toxic convo. Who’s Orla supposed to be, now?”
There was silence. Orla could picture them, waiting on the talent.
“You know,” Floss said finally. “A secondary character.”
* * *
That night, Floss opened Orla’s bedroom door. Her eyes were still red from crying. “Let’s go out,” she said. “Just you and me. We’ll do karaoke. We’ll celebrate our ratings.” The “our” came out, to Orla’s ear, like a piece of glass Floss had to gag up.
They went to a place in Koreatown. It was the early side of evening and the bar was bleeding people when they got there, happy hour holdouts stumbling on to search for pizza. The drinkers who were staying, trying to bridge the gap into the real night, blinked and pulled out their phones when they saw the girls walk in.
“They’re tweeting that we’re here,” Floss whispered in Orla’s ear. But Orla saw a girl with silver bangles up her arm thrust her phone at her friend. Its screen was glaring white and lined with search results. “See, look,” Bangles said triumphantly. “Told you she was someone.” She and the friend clutched each other’s forearms and moved toward Floss. “Can we get a picture?” Bangles said.
Floss smiled and nodded. She stretched her face forward politely, like a zoo animal accepting food through a fence. Bangles looked at Orla.
“Aren’t you—” she began brightly. But then Floss interrupted.
“Orla,” she said loudly, “would you mind taking the picture?”
Bangles held the phone out. Orla took the phone and backed away from them, counted “one, two, three.” By the time she was finished, a guy in a polo oxford, soaked through with sweat from singing, was jamming his greasy phone at her and sidling up to Floss, eyes unabashedly on her breasts.
It went on like that for several minutes—Floss in front of the camera, Orla behind it. By now, by word of mouth or search engine, everyone in the club seemed to know who Floss was. “Where’s Aston?” someone shouted. “Where’s the bitchy girl?” somebody else said, and Orla thought, For fuck’s sake, I’m right here.
When there was no one left who wanted her, Floss took Orla’s hand and tugged her toward the stairs to the basement. A second earlier, Orla had been annoyed, close to walking out of the bar. But now she looked down at Floss’s fingers clamped over hers, pulling her through the bodies. She had seen girls do this before in packed bars—hold hands to keep the mob from separating them—and she had always, always, always wanted someone to do that