We finished dinner and skipped the movie so I could rest. This is what it takes to be excellent, I reminded myself. Chumming up to ass-kissing colleagues like Danny, or chasing Kittens around the mansion, felt like a century ago. At 29, my clock was most definitely ticking, and not the biological one—the career clock, which was the important one to me now.
Grant rubbed my back softly. It comforted me, like a bed of rose petals or a kitten cuddling into my neck. Then I thought briefly of Alex and our date a few weeks earlier. My comfort level dropped a notch—first to uneasiness, then to guilt. Alex had called a few times since. Each time his charm practically oozed through the voicemail into my head.
Things have finally come together for me. Grant is enough. He should be enough. Look at him. He’s fabulous. So why am I thinking about Alex? What’s this compulsion I have? What’s wrong with me?
“You’re cheating whenever it feels like you’re cheating,” I heard my mother’s voice say.
Grant kissed my neck as I drifted off to sleep.
In just two months with Ricky Dean, I’d boarded 62 airplanes, traveled to 31 cities, and slept in 20 different hotels. The production coordinator always tried to schedule me in and out on the same day, but sometimes it was impossible. The shoots took ten-to-twelve hours—plus long cab rides to locations, tedious airport check-ins, and the occasional strip search that left me standing in the security line-up barefoot, pants slipping past my butt crack while my soy latté went from extra hot to dish-water warm.
Over these 60 or so days, I’d missed countless meals, hadn’t enjoyed a single day of rest, unintentionally lost ten pounds, and churned out 38 two-minute video vignettes from the edit suite, complete with back-story, intrigue and, most importantly, oodles of human suffering. All of them ended with a similar plea: “Mr. Dean, can you help me?”
People at work began to take notice. The other show producers wanted me to do their interviews. I overheard comments like: “Jane’s stories are solid!” “She gets it every time!” And “I want her doing my field pieces!”
As for my social life, it had devolved into phone calls and the occasional meal. I’d become expert at leaving enticing three-minute updates just before Grant’s voicemail cut me off. Whenever he could, Grant met me for lunch, and we made a point of having dinner once a week—usually out of a box, and totally unglamorous. He would ask me how long I was willing to put up with the hours and I’d say: “It’s a start-up. This is how it goes.” Meanwhile, I was buckling from fatigue, but I refused to complain for fear of sounding un-excellent.
Alex called too. We were friends. He made me laugh and always encouraged me to flourish. “Fix Your Life is your ticket,” he would say, before launching into a story about some mishap from his day. He’d picked up a month-long gig in Florida hosting a fishing show, and was due back any day. I still didn’t know what to tell him about Grant, or what to tell Grant about Alex. It was as if time had stopped in that matrix of my life. Everything but work was frozen, stuck exactly as it had been two months ago. Nothing progressed, just this monolith of a show that had become me.
Even Toni was begging for attention. We never had the heart-to-heart we needed. I wasn’t sure if I was still pissed at her for the party mishap or, worse, had outgrown her. Somehow, I knew she regretted that night, but it was shoved under the carpet like a dead cockroach. All that was clear was the distance between us. She was partying more than ever, and I wasn’t. My new schedule was not what she’d expected when we became roomies and BFF’s.
I justified my life, or lack thereof, on Machiavellian grounds— namely, the end would justify the means. It was all about my career. No time to contemplate feelings or whether I even enjoyed what I did. My nose was alarmingly near the grindstone, too close to see anything but the wheel swiftly churning and my ultimate dream—executive producer—increasingly within my reach.
On the lot, staff members were dropping like flies, often sick with the flu, yet spreading their germs in the big Petri dish that had become our world. Supervisor Gib looked to be on the verge of collapse. He