Deep Dish (4 page)

T
he morning sun shone brightly off the burnished aluminum skin of the travel trailer set up at the farthest edge of the asphalt parking lot abutting the Morningstar Studios complex. A bright blue awning stretched from the back end of the trailer, bringing blessed shade for the woman who sat under it in a plastic lawn chair. Only nine o’clock in the morning and it was already ninety degrees.

Valerie Foster put down her third cigarette of the day, sipped her second cup of coffee, and sighed loudly. She thumbed her BlackBerry, ignoring the thirty-seven unread e-mails and checking, as she did every morning, the temperature in Maine. Sixty degrees. Val didn’t actually know anybody in Maine, had never actually even been to Maine, despite the fact that she’d spent two years as a floor director at the actual Fox news affiliate in Boston. Still, it gave her comfort to know that somebody, somewhere, wasn’t already stewing in their own juices as she was in this beastly Atlanta weather.

She sighed again, loudly, for the talent’s benefit.

But her talent didn’t hear her. Or if he did, Tate Moody, the host of
Vittles
, an outdoor cooking/lifestyles show on the Southern Outdoors Network, was ignoring her, as usual.

He stood a few yards away, tossing a bright yellow disc up into the air, again and again, as he did every morning. And this morning, like every other morning, Tate’s English setter tore off after the disc, feathery tail flying, nimbly catching the Frisbee in midair.

“Good boy!” Tate called encouragingly. The dog dashed to the
far edge of the parking lot with the Frisbee, then circled back briskly, coming to stand six feet from Tate.

“Good, Moonpie,” Tate said. Then, sharply, “Bring!”

The dog crouched down, the Frisbee clamped between his teeth, and looked at Tate, his head cocked sideways, as though taunting his owner, Valerie thought. She could almost see one of those little cartoon bubbles above the dog’s grinning face.

“As if,” the bubble would say.

“Moonpie! Bring!” Tate called.

“Tate, come,” Valerie said.

The dog inched closer, but Tate ignored her.

“Goood,” Tate said cautiously, holding out his hand for the Frisbee.

The dog wagged its tail furiously, stood up, and trotted away toward the line of scrubby pines that grew up at the edge of the parking lot. Once there, the dog plunked himself down and began happily gnawing the edge of the Frisbee.

“Tate,” Val pleaded. “Enough with the dog. He’s too stupid to fetch. He’s like a dog version of a bimbo. Gorgeous, but dumb as a damn rock. Come on now. Let’s get to work. The crew will be here any minute, and you know Barry Adelman is coming today.”

Tate Moody crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring his producer’s entreaties.

“Moonpie is not dumb. His daddy was a two-time grand master at the national field trials. He’s hardheaded, yeah, but he’s only ten months old. He’s still just a puppy. That’s why I’ve gotta work with him every day. So he’ll be ready for the quail-hunting show we’re gonna shoot down in Tallahassee come fall.”

“That’s months away,” Val pointed out. “Right now we’ve got today’s show to worry about. Adelman and his guys are supposed to get in sometime this afternoon. They’ll want to see the footage we shot out at the lake yesterday, and then watch you as we shoot. Luckily, the film from the lake is spectacular.”

Tate’s deeply tanned face broke into a wide smile. “Wasn’t that the prettiest mess of shellcrackers you ever saw?”

“Terrific. But you know all those fish look the same to me. I can’t tell a shellcracker from a salmon.”

Tate laughed. “Remind me again why I hired you to produce this show?”

She took a deep drag from her ultra-slim filtered cigarette. “Because I’m the best in the business, and you know it.”

“And?”

She narrowed her eyes as the smoke plumed upward. “And because I’m the one who’s going to get you off this piece-of-crap Southern Outdoors Network and into the big time. The Cooking Channel, Tate, that’s where we’re headed. New York, baby.”

“You can go to New York,” Tate said affably. “I’m staying put.”

Val shook her head. Tate had seemed excited when she’d given him the news that The Cooking Channel was interested in
Vittles
, but he had been quite clear that he had no intention of ever living anywhere outside the South.

He reached into the pocket of his baggy green cargo shorts and pulled out one of the liver treats the trainer had suggested he use when working with the dog.

He turned away from Val and held the treat out so the dog could see and smell it.

“C’mere, Moonpie,” he called. “Come, boy.”

At the sight of the delicacy, Moonpie dropped the Frisbee, pricked up his ears, and came trotting obligingly over to his putative master.

“Sit,” Tate commanded, holding the treat just above the dog’s head.

Moonpie sat, his tail thumping the ground in anticipation.

“Sit pretty,” Tate said.

The English setter sat regally erect, head up, brown eyes shining, perfectly still.

“Tell me this is not the most beautiful dog you ever saw in your life,” Tate said softly, scratching the dog’s chin.

“Oh, he’s beautiful, all right,” Val agreed. “And your viewers are going to go crazy for him when this new season starts to air. I mean, a dog sidekick. It’s brilliant television.”

“And so original, too,” Tate said dryly.

“It hasn’t been done on a cooking show before, so as far as I’m concerned, it
is
original,” Val insisted. “Anyway, you know, your demographics skew amazingly female for Southern Outdoors. Something like forty-five percent. And thirty percent of those are women under thirty-five. That’s one reason TCC is so hot to take a look at our show. They know you not only deliver the NASCAR guys their other shows don’t draw, but the women too. And that’s golden.”

“The NASCAR guys I understand. Every man who lives in the South likes to think he’s some kind of rugged outdoorsman, even if his idea of roughing it is a night without a remote control in his hand,” Tate said. “It’s the women part I don’t get. I mean, what’s that all about? Why are all these chicks under thirty watching a show about hunting, fishing, and cooking? And on the Southern Outdoor Network, of all places? You know, I was at Bargain Mart this morning, buying a spool of monofilament line, and when I looked up, there were half a dozen girls—none of ’em could have been drinking age—following me to the cash register. Honest to God, Val, one of ’em asked me to autograph her tattoo. And it wasn’t on her arm, either.”

He bent over and wrapped his arms around Moonpie, who responded by lavishly licking his hero’s chin. “It’s crazy, isn’t it, little buddy?”

Valerie took another deep drag on her cigarette, admiring, as she did always, the view of her star’s backside.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It all depends on how you look at things.”

H
er cell phone started to chirp at six o’clock. After a night of much angst but little sleep, Gina was already mostly awake. She looked at the caller ID screen on the phone. Scott.

“Pig,” she muttered, burying her head in the pillow.

Five minutes later he called again, this time on her house phone. And five minutes after that he tried her cell. The chirping and ringing kept up, intermittently, all morning. When she emerged from the shower, dripping wet, she saw that he’d left three messages on the answering machine. She erased them all without listening, grinning sadistically as she stabbed the machine’s delete button over and over again.

Let him call, she thought as she blew her hair dry. He could rationalize, apologize, strategize. He could cry, he could grovel. She and Scott were over. But somehow, she had to get through these last shows as best she could, head held high. Dignity intact.

“I will survive,” she vowed, remembering the single girl’s disco anthem. She might be jobless, washed up at thirty. She might end up living in a double-wide in the Piney Grove trailer court back home, but she would survive. And she would do it without Scott Zaleski. The pig.

At seven o’clock, Regina stumbled into the studio’s makeup room, a coffee mug clutched in one hand and her shooting script in the other.

“Uh-oh,” said the six-foot-seven man with skin the color of cinnamon. He got up from the makeup chair and put down the issue of
Allure
he’d been reading. His head, which had been shaven clean,
gleamed in the bright overhead light, and his immaculate starched white dress shirt and tight white jeans gave him the appearance of an African-American Mr. Clean, an effect he was not unaware of.

“Did we have a bad night last night?” he asked, gingerly touching her face. “Girl, the size of the circles under your eyes, we gonna need some industrial-strength concealer today!”

“Just do what you have to do,” Gina said, settling into the chair with a sigh. She managed one more gulp of coffee before he took the mug from her hands, frowning.

“Caffeine? Have we not discussed that caffeine is not your friend?”

Regina reached for the mug, but he held it behind his back.

“Don’t start,” she warned. “Caffeine is my best friend. My
only
friend. I swear, D’John, I’ll take my vitamin E, I’ll drink five gallons of water a day. I’ll use SPF 200 sunblock. Just don’t ask me to give up coffee. It’s my absolute last vice. I need my coffee. Especially today.”

“Fine,” he said, returning the mug and then fastening a plastic cape around her neck. “Drink your coffee. But don’t blame me when you wake up one day and realize your pores are the size of manhole covers.”

“I won’t,” Gina said, taking another sip of coffee. She picked up the magazine he’d just put down. “Anyway, I don’t believe caffeine hurts your skin.”

“Whatever,” D’John said. He took a bottle of water and began to spritz her hair with it. “Two years of esthetician school. Two years working with the top, and I mean, the
top
dermatologist in Miami, six years doing makeup and hair for every print or television shoot of any importance done in South Beach. Not to mention my own six years on the runway in Paris, New York, and Milan. But no, don’t take D’John’s word for it that caffeine is ruinous to your skin.”

“Um-hmm,” Gina said, closing her eyes and pretending not to hear.

“Scott’s been in here twice looking for you this morning,” he said.

“Um-hmm,” she said, playing not interested.

“Something up with you two?” he asked.

She shrugged.

He waved his comb in front of her face. “Hello? Miss Foxton? Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know the real deal? ’Cuz DJ can act if he has to. Poor baby,” he said, massaging her shoulders.

Her eyes met his in the mirror. “So you know the whole story? About why we got canceled?”

“Mmm-hmm,” he said. “Danitra Bickerstaff! That heifer! She ain’t nothin’ but a hank of overprocessed hair held together with Botox and silicon. You know, I thought Scott had better taste than that.”

“Not to mention better judgment,” Gina said.

D’John held up a strand of her hair and examined it. “And speaking of hair? Scott thinks we need to take you blonder. And I have to concur.”

“Why? So I’ll look like a hottie in the unemployment line?”

“Hello?” D’John said, arching one eyebrow. “The ash blond you’re at now is fine for regional television.” He reached for the rack of hot rollers near the mirror. “But if you’re going to go national, you need to look more polished.” He began wrapping her shoulder-length hair in the jumbo rollers.

“What are you talking about?” Gina asked, swiveling the chair around so that they were face to face. “What have you been hearing?”

“Sweetie,” D’John said. “Cut the act. That don’t play with DJ. I know all about these boys from TCC. I mean, how often does a black stretch limo pull up to Morningstar Studios? And we are all thrilled to pieces for you.”

“What boys from TCC?” Gina asked. “What are you talking about?”

D’John put both hands on his hips. “Are you telling me you didn’t know Barry Adelman, Mr. Big Shot from The Cooking Channel, and his cute little-boy assistant flew down here from New York this morning to check you out?”

“D’John,” Gina said. “I am dead serious. I have no idea what you are talking about. Why would this Adelman guy be here in Atlanta, at Morningstar Studios?”

“Maybe because he helps run a network devoted to cooking—and you happen to have a television cooking show?” D’John said, raising one eyebrow.

“My hand on my mama’s bible,” Gina said. “I’m completely in the dark. As usual.”

“Well,” D’John said, “all I know is, I saw them huddled on the set with Scottie when I came in this morning. And then this Adelman guy asked Jess to send out for espresso for him. And she came running in here, about to hyperventilate because the man handed her a hundred-dollar bill. For espresso!”

Gina pulled her cell phone out of her pocketbook and stared at the call log. A total of six missed calls from Scott. She scrolled down to the last message, which had been left less than half an hour earlier, and pressed the play button.

“Gina,” Scott said, his voice near a whisper. “Stop screwing around and get in here. Barry Adelman, the vice president of programming at The Cooking Channel, is here. And I mean right here, at Morningstar Studios. I sent him your tapes last week. He’s in town today to take a look at another cooking show, and he decided to come by and check us out. The show, I mean. Dammit, Gina, pick up the phone. Talk to me.”

Slowly, Gina put the phone down on the counter. “You’re right,” she told D’John. “I thought Scott was calling to apologize. But he was trying to tell me about The Cooking Channel guys.”

“And?” D’John coaxed.

“Scott sent them tapes of the show, without telling me. He never said a word! Now these guys are in town to see somebody else, and they came by to see us. Me, I mean. That is, the show.”

“See?”

“I’m screwed,” Gina said glumly. “You said it yourself. I look like crap. My face is all splotchy, my eyes are swollen from crying—”

“Don’t worry,” D’John said, patting her shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Better than fine. You’ll kill. Just put yourself in D’John’s hands now. We don’t have time for your color this morning. I’ve got somebody coming in as soon as I’m done with you. But tonight, when you’re through shooting, I want you to come over to my place. I’ll mix
up your new color, and we’ll send out for Chinese and play beauty parlor.”

“Nothing too radical, right?” Gina said. “You know how my fans are. They never want me to change anything. I got two dozen e-mails after last season’s first show, just because I got my ears pierced.”

“Screw the viewers,” D’John said airily. “You were born to be a blonde. And I’m the man who’s going to take you there. Think Jean Harlow. Carole Lombard. Think bombshell, baby!”

“You’re making me nervous,” Gina told him, smoothing moisturizer over her face.

“Scott says we have to take your whole presentation up a notch if you’re going national,” D’John said. He bent down and looked at her face, clucking in disapproval. “And you have got to start getting more sleep. There’s only so much concealer can do, you know.”

“I’ll try,” Gina agreed. She closed her eyes and tried to relax as D’John began applying her makeup.

He hummed as he worked, and the featherlike strokes of sponge, brush, and powder puff made her sleepy. She had nearly dozed off when she heard the door of the room open.

“Oh,” a male voice said. “Sorry.”

Regina opened her eyes. The intruder was tall, but not as tall as D’John. Maybe a shade over six feet. His brown hair was wavy and needed combing. He was deeply tanned, with a nose that was too big for his face, and starting to peel. Intense blue eyes under bushy eyebrows a shade darker than his hair. He wore faded blue jeans, a short-sleeved turquoise golf shirt, and scuffed-up boat shoes with no socks.

“Uh,” he said, looking from Regina to D’John. “Sorry. I didn’t know anybody else was in here. I’ll come back.”

“Wait!” D’John said sharply. “Who were you looking for?”

“Uh, D’John?”

“You found him,” D’John said crisply. “And you are?”

“Tate Moody. My producer, Val Foster, said you’d be expecting me.”

“Oh yes,” D’John said. “You’re the fisher boy, right?”

Moody laughed. “Sorta.”

D’John waved toward the other seat in the makeup room.

“Never mind. Sit. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done here.”

“You sure?” the visitor asked, squirming in the chair and glancing down at his watch. “I’ve gotta be on set pretty soon. Some dudes from New York are coming in, and Val said—”

A few notes of banjo music filled the air. He glanced down at his lap, rolled to one side, and took a cell phone from his right hip pocket.

“Hey,” he said abruptly.

Gina glanced at D’John and raised one eyebrow. D’John shook his head.

Her own cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen and saw that it was Scott calling again. Quickly, she shut the phone off.

D’John busied himself with her hair, removing the hot rollers, fluffing, teasing, spraying. They both worked hard at pretending not to listen to Tate Moody’s telephone conversation.

“So what’s the word?” Moody demanded. “I thought you were gonna call yesterday. You said we’d hear something by five o’clock, no later.”

He listened but didn’t like what he was hearing. He frowned and rubbed his forehead.

“No. No! That’s impossible. I don’t have that kind of money. I thought you understood that.”

He listened, then interrupted. “Wait, dammit! No, you listen. There is no way. Okay? That’s not even close to what I can afford. Anyway, I happen to know another parcel, just down the road, sold six weeks ago, for fifty thousand less than they’re asking. And that piece has deep-water access. Yeah. That’s right. I am watching all the local transactions. You tell them that. This ain’t some dumb hillbilly they’re dealing with.”

He shook his head violently. “No. I’m through. I mean it. Tell them I’m walking away from the deal. Yeah. Well, you tell ’em what you want. I’m done.”

Tate Moody snapped his phone shut. He inhaled deeply. “Shit.”

Glancing over at D’John, his mood seemed to worsen. “Look, man, I gotta go.”

“Wait,” the stylist said. He gave Regina’s hair a final touch. “We’re done.”

He stepped over to Tate Moody’s chair and whisked another plastic cape out of the drawer in the makeup table.

When Regina made no attempt to leave, D’John gave her a questioning look.

She held up the magazine she’d been pretending to read. “Don’t worry about me. I just want to finish this article about sunscreens. Go ahead with him.” She turned and smiled sweetly at Tate Moody, who gave her a sour look. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“How long’s this gonna take?” Tate asked, turning toward the stylist.

Instead of answering, D’John spun Tate around in the chair. He bent low at the waist and peered into his subject’s face. He lightly touched Moody’s face, lifted a lock of his hair, sighed, clucked his tongue in disapproval.

“Hmmm,” D’John said. “Yes. Your producer is absolutely right. You do need me.”

Tate’s face flushed. “Now, uh, listen. I don’t really want—”

“What
have
you been doing to this skin of yours?” D’John asked.

“My skin?” Tate leaned in toward the mirror. “Nothing. I mean, I wash it. And I shaved this morning—”

“With what?” D’John asked. “A dull butter knife?”

“A razor, of course,” Tate said. “Shaving cream. Barbasol. Like that.”

D’John turned to Regina. “Will you listen to that? Barbasol? Who knew they still made that mess?”

“What’s wrong with Barbasol?” Tate demanded.

“What’s wrong with Barbasol?” D’John’s voice was mocking. “Why not just wipe a piece of sandpaper across your jaw? Why not throw rubbing alcohol on your face while you’re at it?”

“Huh?” Tate rubbed his hand across his chin.

Regina stifled a laugh. “I think maybe what D’John is trying to say is that he doesn’t think Barbasol is an appropriate product for you to use.”

“Appropriate?” D’John cried. He grabbed Tate’s hand and dragged it across his own smooth brown cheek.

“Do you feel that?” D’John asked. “That’s what a well-groomed man’s face should feel like. Moist. Firm. Healthy.”

“Healthy?” Tate seemed unconvinced.

“Now. Feel that skin of yours,” D’John ordered.

Tate shrugged and did as he was told.

“And?” D’John asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Feels fine to me.”

“Fine?” D’John shrieked. “You think it’s fine that your face has the same texture as some nasty old work boot that’s been left out in the sun for about ninety years? You think it’s fine that a man with your looks has never properly cared for his own skin?”

“Hey, man,” Tate said, his face darkening. He started up from the chair. “I thought I was just coming in here to get my sideburns evened out a little. Val never said anything about—”

“Stop!” D’John said dramatically. He pushed Tate back into the chair. “Tell me,” he said, pausing for effect. “About your skin-care regimen.”