Page 11 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
Cherry: Whatever. LMK if you need shopping help. I’ll find someone
Marlowe: Thanks. I’ll update later
Cherry: Good luck
Marlowe: You too
Marlowe checked her shopping route and headed to her car. As she neared her rotting but lovable hatchback, she spotted Angus on the opposite side of the lot, signing autographs for a trio of shrieking fangirls while a security guard looked on from a few yards away. One girl held out a photo. Another bared her forearm. The thirdunbuttoned her shirt and indicated he should sign her cleavage. He graciously complied before encouraging a group selfie. The girls gathered in while he soaked up their adoration and held out the phone like someone well practiced in getting the anglejust right.
With a roll of her eyes, Marlowe got into her car and drove off. She wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with Babs for the last six weeks of her contract, but one thing was certain: she wasnotgoing to play Jake Hatchet’s next relationship victim, no matter how much they offered to pay her.
Chapter Five
“A thousand dollars per episode?” Marlowe choked out.
On the other side of a long table covered in scripts and assorted papers, the showrunner leaned forward from his seat between two producers, resting his stubbled chin on his steepled fingers. Wes Quinlan was a tall, broad man of about forty, with sandy-blond hair that winged out from beneath his ever-present Oakland A’s baseball cap. With his faded jeans, dingy T-shirts, flannel button-downs, and camel-colored work boots, he looked like he’d be more at home in a hardware store than on a film set, butHeart’s Dinerwas his baby. He was responsible for the concept and characters, and he was still the lead writer, six years into filming. Now he was addressing Marlowe from a meeting room/workspace at headquarters, catching her up on his thinking over the weekend.
“We like the idea of three appearances,” he said. “Episodes twenty to twenty-two. A little sparring, a little flirting, a moment of redemption. It’ll make a good season ender for Jake’s character arc, so people wonder if he’ll start season seven as a nicer guy.”
“If we have a season seven,” the producer on his left added. Greg was one of the only people Marlowe had seen wearing a tiearound set or HQ. She assumed that meant he was in charge of financial rather than creative decisions, but maybe he just liked ties.
“She also needs to pass a screen test,” said Alejandra, the producer on the right, a serious-faced woman in hip green glasses and casual, layered linens. “I’m not supporting this plan if she goes flat once you put words in her mouth, no matter how many people have replayed that clip.” She folded her arms and regarded her colleagues with a distinct air of skepticism.
The three of them debated the matter amongst themselves. Marlowe barely heard a word they said. She was still imagining earning three thousand dollars for only a few days of work. She could pay off her credit card and start in on her student loans. If she told her parents, maybe they’d stop asking if she needed money. She always needed money, but telling her parents that meant admitting she wasn’t “living up to her earning potential.” The admission led to lectures about frivolous career choices and ill-considered graduate degrees, lectures that toppled whatever self-confidence she’d managed to build up lately.
“What does Angus think?” Alejandra asked.
“Does it matter?” Greg blew a dismissive laugh through his nose. “Jake sleeps with four or five girls every season. What’s one more?”
Marlowe went rigid. Alejandra caught the panic in her eyes.
“Don’t worry. We wouldn’t throw you into a sex scene. I’ll make sure of that.”
Marlowe blew out a breath, grateful that among the upper ranks—which were notably dominated by men—at least one woman held a position of power.
The trio continued tossing out ideas while Marlowe half-listened, her thoughts still hammering away. All weekend she’dtried to ignore the #IShipTheWaitress fiasco, but it was really hard to ignore. Not only did it go viral on Twitter, it also spread across other platforms. Soon talk show hosts were playing the clip, debating the meaning behind The Look. One invented an elaborate story about a dine-and-ditch episode that sent the waitress on a murderous revenge spree. A second turned it into a meme about the divided state of the current political system. Many speculated that Marlowe must be Angus’s latest fling because “that kind of electricity couldn’t possibly be fake.” The statement was easily refuted but alotof people were eager to support it, repeating the phraseeye sexuntil Marlowe wanted to track down the person who coined it and throttle them.
No matter the theory, everyone was talking about those few heated seconds, and by Sunday night, Marlowe wasn’t surprised to get the call Cherry had warned her to anticipate. She’d arrived this morning fully prepared to shut down any conversation about a waitress reprise with a firmno, but three thousand dollars was hard to walk away from. She could handle alittleflirting, as long as it was fake. And as long as Angus didn’t offer to sign her boob.
After much debate among the higher-ups and a lot of wary silence on Marlowe’s part, they put her in front of a camera and gave her a script sample to read. It was a short monologue from a recent episode, noting all the little, unseen sacrifices a woman had made to maintain her relationship, all the times she’d put her husband first while he failed to give their relationship the same attention. For the woman in the scene, the relationship was a product of hard work and constant nurturing. For the man, it was an assumption. Marlowe started off rocky, her voice trembling, but as the words began to feel all too real and the emotion behind them all too familiar, she stopped worrying about what she wasdoing with her hands or how she was standing or what inflection to use. She simply read.
Wes gave her a bit of direction and she read again, repeating the process twice more. Then Greg asked her to wait in a small seating area outside the meeting room so the higher-ups could confer amongst themselves. Unarmed with anything else to do, she got out her phone and opened Kelvin’s latest message, sent Saturday, as yet unanswered.
Kelvin: Are you sure this is what you want?
She slid the bar over to reveal the reddeleteoption. Then she slid it back again. Forward. Back. Forward. Back. Five months they’d been apart now. Chances were high he’d seen something about her TV appearance and the ensuing media chatter. One of their friends would’ve pointed it out if he didn’t stumble into it on his own. She wanted to believe his question was about that, about getting caught up in Hollywood gossip, but she knew it wasn’t true. He was asking if she was sure she wanted to be without him.
She toyed with thedeletebutton again, unable to complete the gesture. Too many memories flooded her every time she tried to take that final step. Sharing pints of ice cream while snuggling close under blankets and watching scary movies. Kelvin showing up for her opening nights, flowers in hand, or stopping by her studio with takeout when she was at her busiest. He never had to ask what she wanted. He knew all of her favorites. He knewher. She missed being known. Five months of going home to an empty, beige-infused apartment had opened up a pit of longing that widened by the day. Marlowe wasn’t entirely happy with Kelvin, but she wasn’t entirely happy without him, either.
Delete? Reply? Delete? Reply?
Someone swept past, drawing her attention up from her screen.
“You guys arenotserious,” Angus said as he flung open the door of the meeting room and stormed out of view. The reply was out of earshot, though the tone was level and placating. Angus’s tone was the opposite. “Christ, Greg, she’s not even an actress. What’s next? YouTube star? Local librarian? Costco’s employee of the month?”
Marlowe sank in on herself, wondering if she should leave now or wait for further instructions/humiliation. A rumble of overlapping voices reached her, still too indistinct for her to make out any clear words. A moment later, Greg appeared in the doorway. He eked out a whispered apology and asked Marlowe to wait another minute. Then he shut the door, leaving her alone with her phone and her growing feelings of inadequacy.
Lacking sufficient fortitude to let an old wound fester while a new one began to bleed, Marlowe reread Kelvin’s text one last time before punching away at her phone.
