First Stop, New York (10 page)

“Uh…yeah, Trent. That’s it. I—I—I want to be with you. So much. Like a whole lot. Like this much,” she said, swinging her arms wide and knocking a driftwood candelabra off the glass coffee table. “Sorry. Ha! I have a total lack of coordination.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Trent said, moving closer.

His nose is so perfect!

“But here’s the thing, Corliss.”

Corliss gulped. “Yes?”

“While you have achieved a level of babe-dom from, like, out of the blue…”

“Yes,” said Corliss, who could now see inside Trent’s persistently open mouth.

“…my heart belongs to Tanya.”

“It does?” Corliss answered, not hearing what he was saying.

“She makes me, like, a decent dude, Corliss. Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“Tanya’s, like, a total virgin. I respect that in a girl—that she doesn’t want to have sex until Jesus says so. And we promised each other not to get serious until the time is right.”

“You did?” Corliss couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Yeah. And then when the time is right we will, like, you know—do it. I used to be this total player, Corliss, and now all I want to do is sit by the fire and cuddle with Tanya.”

“This fire?” said Corliss, dreamily looking into Trent’s crystalline eyes.

“Yup. So I hate to turn you down, Corliss. Because I’m totally flattered to be hit on by a babe who was, like, not at all a babe and now almost is.”

“Wow, Trent,” said Corliss, snapping out of it and standing up. “You really impress me. You
are
a decent dude.”

Trent smiled his crooked smile and a big lock of wet blond hair fell in his eyes. “You are too, Corliss.”

God, if he only knew what a slimy secret agent I truly am! That does it. Tomorrow I march up to Max on set, find the courage I have in my new dead-skin-cell-free body, and tell him to take this job and…well…put it somewhere that doesn’t hurt too much.

Somewhere in Malibu Canyon—1:30
A.M.

: The
’Bu-Hoo

MBK here, kiddies. Did ya miss me?

Welcome back to
The ‘Bu-Hoo
! I’ve got more inside skinny on those delightful
’Bu
tykes. Goes a little sumthin like this…

That adorable geek JB was seen being escorted back to his beach condo tonight by none other than…M2 assistant Calamity Corliss!! Dork and newly made-over dork were lookin’ mighty cozy (was it dork love???) until former dork peeled off toward…Trent Owen Michaels’s love lair! Twenty minutes later, our girl (looking mighty rumpled) was heading back to JB’s! Exactly the kind of behavior you couldn’t get away with back in the Midwest, girl…

SEE KEYWORDS: moonlight, curfew, Tofurkey breath

And what about that twiggy talent Tanya Ventura? Can the Baby Jesus keep her virgo intactica? Better say another Hail Mary just to be safe…

Meanwhile, back in the Woods of Holly…

Anushka “Let’s Order Another Round” Peters plots her competition’s demise! She doesn’t know how she’ll take Tanya down, all she knows is she’s going down hard!

If that weren’t enough intrigue…last standing writer Petey Newsome is shadowing Calamity Corliss! Everything she says or does goes into his little book. Can you say stalker?

And look what’s in the UBC garbage! An American Express receipt with M2’s name on it. It’s charged to the Beverly Center Godiva store in the amount of $6,397, but it’s got a signature that looks nothing like M2’s! Who’s the lying diabetic? And what will M2 say when the bill lands on his desk…?

CUE: bloody screams!

AND FILE THE FOLLOWING UNDER: TRAIN WRECK

JB, aka Secret Boy, plays it dangerously close to the online edge. Just what exactly is he doing when
JEEBSTER@TMAIL
hits cyberspace? He’s fronting to his friends about it, but that secret ain’t safe fer long…

I am burrowing deeper and deeper inside
The ’Bu
for the pleasure of you, dear readers. CAN’T YOU FEEL THE LOVE?

Yours’ Bu-liciously,

MBK

Malibu Beach—8:33
A.M.,
the Next Morning

Max Marx, wearing peach Prada board shorts and a melon Marc Jacobs tank tee, was looming over Petey Newsome. Petey, of course, was dressed head to toe in black.

“You call this a climax?” Max howled in disbelief, shaking the latest script revision in front of Petey. There was fire in Max’s eyes and his famed whisper was inexplicably gone. His assistants—many of whom were dressed similarly to Max in board shorts and tank tees in an effort to establish what Max called “
’Bu
solidarity”—glowered at Petey.

“Yes, Max, I call it a climax. It cost me two nights’ sleep and my Adderall prescription for the year. I haven’t eaten since Tuesday, my back is completely locked, and my hair’s falling out in clumps.”

Max huffed. “Is this the face of a person with empathy?”

“Doesn’t look like it, Max, no.”

“The climax of the pilot episode of
The ’Bu
has to be
unlike
anything
anyone has ever seen on network television!”

“But I tried to do what you said, Max,” said Petey, without a lot of conviction.

“Tried, maybe. Failed—certainly.”

“Max, with all due respect,” Petey said without a lot of sincerity, “I’m not contracted to write for forty-eight-hour stretches. I thought I’d do you a favor and—”

Max’s eyes flashed, his nostrils flared. His assistants flashed their eyes and flared their nostrils, too. “
No one
does Max Marx any favors,” said Max, his whisper returning. “Least of all a
writer
.” He spat out the word like poison. “Now you’d better call your agent. You’re going to need another job by sunrise tomorrow.” With that, Max threw the script in the sand.

“You can’t fire me, Max, I keep reminding you. And you haven’t hired any other writers, so who will do your rewrites?”

“Hi, Max.” It was Corliss. Max whipped around. Something about her seemed completely different, but Max didn’t have time to figure out what it was. “What do you want, Corliss? I’m in the middle of expressing my severe dissatisfaction with an overpaid staff member I can’t fire.”

“I’m sorry, Max.”

Petey moved closer and looked Corliss up and down thoughtfully.

“I realize you’re under a lot of pressure, but I thought we could have a chat. So I checked your personal snack file and took the liberty of picking up your morning snack.” She held up a small tub of Pinkberry frozen yogurt covered in mango chunks.

Max just stared. “Pinkberry frozen yogurt with mango chunks is my
mid-morning
snack, Corliss. Last time I checked it
was
morning
-morning. My
morning
-morning snack is two Chai LUNA bars, fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, and a dollop of Whole Foods almond butter.”

Corliss immediately tossed the yogurt into a nearby trashcan.

“You just threw frozen yogurt into the recycling, Corliss.”

“My bad.”

“And there’s something different about you today.”

Petey nodded in agreement. “It’s her hair and clothes!” He waved at Corliss and smiled his coffee-stained smile. Corliss waved back.

Max didn’t know what Petey was babbling about—he was too busy trying to figure out what was different about Corliss. “Did you have Restylane injections last night?” he whispered to her out of the corner of his mouth.

“No, Max,” Corliss said, tugging self-consciously at her new gear. “I just got a haircut and spa treatment and then picked up this adorable little sundress from Helen Wang. Oh, and I’m wearing a smidgen of blush from MAC.”

Petey was quickly jotting down notes in his pad.

“What are you doing?” asked Max contemptuously.

“Making notes for the next impossible revision you’ll no doubt request of me by sundown.”

“Excellent. Do it somewhere I can’t see you. Or smell you. When’s the last time you took a shower, Writer?”

Petey sighed and picked up the script out of the sand. “I have a name…” he sighed as he trundled toward his trailer.

“He doesn’t look so good, Max.”

“He’s not supposed to look good, Corliss, he’s a
writer
.
Where’s my cast?” Max glared toward the beach. Several of his assistants peeled off to gather the cast. The technicians stood by with bored looks.

“Um, before they get here, Max, I really do think we need to have a serious talk about a couple of things.”

“Fine, but make it quick, Corliss. The day might be young, but my patience is already very old. The network is all over my case to deliver some footage, and so far I have, basically, nada.”

“That must be anxiety-producing. And I certainly don’t want to do anything to add to that, but first—and potentially most important—someone’s blogging about our show. For everyone to read. I heard about it through the grapevine and then I checked it out last night. Saw it with my own two eyes.”

“Why does this concern me?”

“Because it says a lot of things that maybe you don’t want out in public?”

Max waved his hand in her face. “Don’t bother me with the sophomoric Web browsing you do, Corliss.”

“All right, but you might want to take a look and—”

“Next topic,” said Max, on his last good nerve. “You said there were a couple things?”

Corliss hopped from one foot to the other. She made a strange face. Max looked to the sky to express his aggravation. Corliss finally spat it out. “It’s the job, Max. The stuff I’ve been doing for you. The Trent and Tanya business—or TNT, as I like to refer to it.”

“Yes, your efforts seem to be working, but please—” Max rolled his fingers around each other for Corliss to talk faster. “Increase the speed, increase the speed.”

“Yes, and there has been some success there—FYI—although the situation is still touch and go—I put a file in your trailer, recording in military time whenever I averted a possible love connection.”

“A file recorded in military time? What an excellent idea. Was it mine?”

“Actually, no, it was mine, Max, but—”

“Huh. Well, good for you. Then again, it was my idea to make you my assistant, so good for me.”

“Yes, certainly a good decision on your part—and you are
loaded
with them—but about the job. My job. The thing is, Max—”

She was cut off by a screech so loud, a flock of seagulls took off into the sky.

“Maaaxxx!”

Max turned and tried to appear calm. “Hello, Anushka. You’ve scared off the seagulls once again, and I wanted to use them in a shot.”

“Listen, Max, screw those gulls. Now they have me in an outfit that would make an eighty-year-old Muslim woman feel overdressed.
A mustard-colored caftan
?!”

“What do you think of Anushka’s outfit, Corliss?”

“I—I think it’s cute?”

“Oh, come on, Corliss, even
you
wouldn’t be caught dead in this.”

“Well…” Corliss said cautiously. “Max has worked very hard with Petey to deepen your character, and this sleeping bag thing you’re wearing conveys that.”

“Thank you, Corliss,” said Max. “But who is this Petey you refer to?”

Anushka squinted over at Corliss, then looked her up and down approvingly. “Wait a second. Check out
Extreme Makeover
girl.”

“It’s just a little sundress I got from Helen Wang and—”

“Women of
The ’Bu
, please cease chattering!” Max thundered, forgetting his whisper. His voice was a little girly in the upper register and he immediately made a note in his BlackBerry: NEVER RAISE VOICE. “Where is Tanya?”

“Here I am,” came Tanya’s little-girl voice.

She looked luscious in yet another of the wispiest bikinis ever sewn together with two pieces of thread. This one was a dark chocolate color. It set off her eyes magnificently. “Very nice costume,” said Max.

“Thanks! I can’t really move too much in it. If I sit down it pops off like a broken rubber band.” She giggled. “Hi, Corliss. Cute sundress.”

“Thanks, Tanya.”

Anushka stomped her feet in the sand and looked at Tanya. “I am going to kill the wardrobe lady.”

“There’s no time for that, Anushka,” said Max. “We need to start shooting immediately.” He signaled the technicians, who prepared to shoot. “Tanya, are you ready?”

“Sure,” she said confidently. “I’ve got my good luck charm.” She pulled rosary beads from her bikini bottom. “I just said five Hail Marys so that the Baby Jesus would help me remember my lines.”

“Excellent,” said Max. He then pulled Corliss aside. “Corliss, I need you to go to the catering trailer where Trent is and tell him Tanya’s flirting with the entire crew.”

“What?! But Max, we still haven’t talked about—”

“Corliss, what do I like in an assistant?”

Corliss repeated back Max’s assistant mantra. “She doesn’t ask questions and always answers ‘Yes, Max.’”

“Exactly. Now toddle off.”

Corliss sighed and did as she was told. When Max turned back, the cameraman was ready to shoot, but Tanya was in tears.

“What now?”

Anushka couldn’t help grinning. “Apparently, Little Miss Butt Floss all of a sudden forgot all her lines—and the Baby Jesus seems to be on another call.”

A vein throbbed in Max’s forehead. He immediately put his finger over it to make it look like he was in serious thought. “Tanya, is this true about your lines?”

Tanya nodded and burst into more tears. Max put his head in his hands. “Tanya, I know you can do this. I remember how talented you are from your audition.”

“I know!” Tanya wailed.

“How
talented
she is?” said Anushka, as if stung.

“I’m soooooo talented!” Tanya wailed.

“Max, that’s what you used to say about me,” said Anushka, with more than a little sadness.

“We’re talking about Tanya, now, Anushka, please.”

“But we’re always talking about Tanya, Max! Never me! Anushka Peters! It’s always Tanya, Tanya, Tanya—” She stopped herself. “Oh, God, I’m really sorry, Max. That was ugly.”

“You’re forgiven, Anushka. Now please remain quiet in your caftan.”

“But Max,” said Anushka in a voice that could melt butter, “Tanya obviously lacks confidence—and I think I can help.”