“The studio has okayed us to go on location a couple of days early and do a final weekend of team building on some of the best white water in the country. In other words, we’re going rafting.”
That was met with a lot of ooohs and aahs, and of course, one of the Serious Actresses (as they had begun to think of a few of them, as opposed to the young, eager, will-sleep-with-anyone Starlets) began applauding, because she applauded e-ver-y-thing. And naturally, once she started, everyone started applauding because no one wanted to be the lone non-applauder. Personally, Leah thought the constant applauding was way out of hand and only gave it a halfhearted effort.
“Okay, all right,” Eli said, signaling with his hands for everyone to quiet down. “Before we get to the gravy, we need you to focus,” he said, pointing at his head. “When we start shooting in a few weeks, you all need to be fit and ready to go. To get fit, you have to focus, and that means leaving your cell phones in the locker room.’
And that was, of course, the precise moment Leah’s cell phone started to ring. She frantically dug in her bag for it as the ringing got louder. She looked at the display—Frances! Unfortunately, the whole room had quieted—everyone was looking at her. Eli was looking at her so intently that she flinched a little. “Ah . . . I’ve really got to, ah . . . take this,” she muttered, and flipped it open, whirled around, and whispered, “Hey.”
“Bad news, sweetie.” Frances had never been one to beat around a bush. “You got passed over for the spot on Desperate Housewives.”
Leah’s heart sank. “Why? They said I was perfect for the part of the preacher’s wife.”
“I’ll put it to you straight. You’re too fat. If you lost ten pounds, maybe. But don’t worry—we’ve still got a couple of auditions outstanding.”
“But what if I lose the—”
“Ooooh, I really need to take this call,” Frances said, and clicked off.
Leah sighed, shut her phone, and turned around. The meeting had resumed. Eli was explaining what the next couple of weeks looked like.
“Ohmigod, he’s so cute,” Michele whispered to Leah as she stuffed the phone back into her bag.
“Question!” Tamara Contreras’s hand shot up, as if Eli and Cooper didn’t know who’d be asking a question after the two bazillion she’d asked every day. Tamara was an ex-soap-opera diva (killed off by her murderous twin disguised as her ex-husband on a remote island with an invisible and impenetrable barrier, which naturally meant she could not seek medical treatment) who had begun annoying Leah and Trudy on the second day, when she announced she had a problem with perfume. Not any particular perfume, but the amount of perfume that was being worn. It gave her a headache.
The entire cast spent an hour arguing about it. The stunt guys had been so agitated that they’d had to caucus. After fifteen minutes of shuffling feet and a lot of head scratching, they had come back with, “Use your best judgment.”
Trudy, Leah, Michele, and Jamie had howled about that over drinks after work. Men could be so stupid sometimes. But they decided that Tamara had so many things wrong with her—perfume sensitivity being the tip of the proverbial iceberg—that she wouldn’t last.
“I give her two weeks on set,” Jamie had said. Jamie was short and had red hair that in concert with her boob job, preceded the rest of her when she walked into a room. She was a great person, but all Leah could think was, character roles.
“I give her two weeks before someone kills her,” Michele had responded before wrapping her collagen-enhanced lips around a straw. Michele was really a beauty with long golden hair and big green eyes, plus the requisite fake boobs and lips.
At the moment, Tamara’s arm was about to come out of its socket as she tried to get Cooper or Eli to look at her.
“Yes, Tamara?” Cooper finally asked, exchanging a weary look with Eli.
“If the studio okayed the white-water rafting, are they going to okay the wet gear? The water can be pretty cold this time of year.”
“We’ll worry about wet gear later,” Cooper said.
“Okay, well, I just want to go on record as saying I’ll need full-body wet gear,” Tamara said, oblivious to the sighs and eye-rolling around her. “I have a low tolerance for cold.”
Cooper and Eli looked at one another. “I’ll tell you what, Tamara. Let’s just make sure we get to white-water rafting first,” Cooper said. “So all right, ladies, let’s start by breaking up into our armies. West team on that end, East team on this end. We start in five minutes.”
“You know what?” Trudy asked casually as the guys began to try, enthusiastically and in vain, to corral them into their respective armies, “I think I am going to have to change my vote for who is the hottest stunt trainer.”
It was a question they’d been debating for a few days.
“Don’t change your vote until we get a load of the fourth one,” Michele advised Trudy as they strolled to the team on the left.
“A fourth?” Jamie exclaimed. “A fourth what?”