from Mr. Dean’s tirade in the studio to the suggestion that the staff was being grossly overworked, mistreated, and bullied.
I shut myself off for the rest of Meg’s rant. I needed that miracle shower. It was time. Time to clean up my act and take a stand. Justice for Brenda! Make things right. I just had to figure out what that was going to look like.
The phone rang. It was 7:30 p.m. I’d just arrived home from work—my first night home at a decent hour in nearly three months. I thought I might actually watch fluff TV for the first time in ages. I’d been missing all my shows; in fact, I no longer had any favorite shows. Then Nancy called. She was in charge of scheduling. I could hear her kids yelling in the background.
“Where are you?” I said.
“At my uncle’s funeral in Kansas,” Nancy replied.
“They’re making you work while at a funeral?”
“No sense fighting it.” She cut to the chase, too tired to get into it. “Listen, I’ve booked you on a flight tomorrow at 6:30 a.m.”
“What?! Production is on a two-week hiatus. We’re not taping new shows right now. I just busted ass for three months. Let them find someone else!”
“There is no one else.”
“Come on, there’s got to be,” I moaned.
“Look, don’t say a word to anyone,” she said quietly into the phone, another employee suffering from Mr. Dean paranoia, “but it’s only you left. Gib has been relegated to pushing papers. They’re not putting him in the field anymore. I think he might get fired. That’s all I know. You have to pick up the slack.”
“I thought that’s what I was doing,” I said, unfazed by her Gib comment, and completely wrapped up in the fact that I now had a 4:30 a.m. call-time for a flight at LAX.
“You’ve been working harder than anyone,” Nancy said. “But I have no choice.”
“All right,” I said, reluctantly. “But I won’t last with these hours. One day, I’ll just collapse in some airport and that’ll be it. They’ll wheel me away in a gurney, and then bury me!”
“I know,” she said.
“And please don’t put me on Southwest again. I end up in the middle seats between pimply kids with Game Boys.”
“Okay.”
“And no more connections. Mr. Dean can come up with some coin for a direct flight. I’m putting my foot down. If he can afford a chopper, he can afford to fly me direct!”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“That reminds me: What about my expenses? I’ve received one check for two hundred bucks. They owe me close to six thousand dollars. And they better cover meals for the crew.”
“They don’t. Only your meals are covered, and only when you’re on the road.”
“I’m always on the road! And I always buy the crew and the guests lunch!”
“Uh-oh. Not good. You’ve been doing that all this time?”
“Yeah. Do you mean to tell me they actually expect me to order a meal for myself and not get anything for the crew and the people sacrificing days of their lives for us?” It suddenly dawned on me that a few thousand dollars’ worth of meals had been on me.
“Seriously, watch your money. I don’t want you to get screwed.”
“Mommy!” I heard Nancy’s son call in the background. “I need you.”
“I gotta go. Jake needs me.”
She forced an apology, but it wasn’t her fault. We were all in the same boat. I fell backwards onto the couch and stared up at the ceiling, regretting any prickliness I’d shown Nancy. Ticking off demands to someone at a funeral was beyond tacky. Must have been all the radiation that had soaked into my body during countless plane rides.
The house was dark. As I stared at my hipbones, which were jutting out like two shark fins in a pool of jean fabric, I didn’t bother turning on the lamps. My mind wandered back to my bus ride in France, meeting Grant, traveling the vineyard, surfing Malibu, eating his fabulous culinary creations, his smile, the way he held my hand, as if he never wanted to let go. . . Why did I let him go?
Too wired to sleep and too confused to continue my train of thought, I flipped on the television. Glancing at the Tivo box, I was reminded that it contained an hour of Craig and a bunch of bikini-clad space cadets begging for my attention.
Why not? I figured. I’m already depressed.
“He’s daring. He’s hot. He’s over the top,” the announcer’s voice boomed over