Sandy felt herself cringing in her massage chair as the woman’s voice got louder and louder. Those were the words she had
written about that particular author, yes. But somehow they sounded much uglier coming out of this woman’s mouth than they
had when Sandy was typing them.
On either side of them, customers and nail techs alike were turning to see what was going on. This, Sandy thought, was one
crazy fan. She glanced nervously at the nearest technicians, who were beckoning to the salon’s manager.
“Listen, ma’am,” Sandy said in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “I understand that not everyone is going to agree with
my opinions—”
“Lucia San Lucas is my sister-in-law!” the woman yelled. She was now trembling with passion and had pulled both feet out of
her pedicurist’s reach. “She may not be the best writer in the world, but she’s a good person. She worked hard to get those
books published, and she deserves all the success she’s gotten with them!”
“I’m sure she does,” Sandy began again, but to no avail.
“What have
you
ever written, besides a bunch of hateful words about people you’ve never met? My sister-in-law gets hundreds of letters from
people whose lives were changed by her books! She’s a role model for young Hispanic and plus-sized girls. Can
you
say that? What do you do, besides criticize women who are more successful than you?”
“Well…”
What could Sandy say at that point? She did plenty. Maybe she wasn’t a role model, but she did inspire her readers, in certain
ways. At the very least, she entertained them.
But even if she’d had a good answer to the question, this woman was obviously not in the mood to hear it.
The manager had come over and was now trying to soothe Lucia San Lucas’s sister-in-law back into her seat. Although the staff
obviously didn’t understand why the woman was angry, they clustered around her and coaxingly murmured, “You get discount,
okay? You get discount,” until her breathing had slowed back to normal. Finally she thanked them and handed over her credit
card. Two technicians kneeled and gently eased her feet into disposable flip-flops. Then, with one last glare at Sandy, the
woman got up and marched imperiously out of the salon.
Sandy couldn’t help noticing that her left pinky toe was still unpainted.
“You okay?” the manager asked her.
“Yes. Thank you,” Sandy said.
“You know that lady?”
“Um… kind of,” Sandy replied. She couldn’t think of a way to explain that would make sense to people who weren’t native English
speakers. She imagined herself trying with “I write ugly words. She saw my words and got mad.” But there was no need. The
manager was already moving on. “You get discount, okay? You pick color? That’s pretty color.”
Sandy sat soaking in discomfort and awkwardness for the rest of her pedicure. Around her, the other patrons kept glancing
her way. The technicians below her seat spoke a steady stream of Vietnamese. Whereas normally she’d brush off suspicions that
they were talking about her brittle nails or lopsided calluses, Sandy knew for sure this time that they
were
talking about her. Conjecturing about what she’d done to enrage the other customer. Or who knew? Maybe they, too, knew who
Sandy S. was and what kind of words she wrote for a living.
A
s Sandy drove from the salon to the office, her mind overflowed with the snappy replies she should have made.
Yeah, I bet your sister-in-law cried all the way to the bank. Her last advance could’ve funded ten scholarships for kids who
want to write real literature!
Or:
I may criticize people for a living, but at least I know where to put my prepositions!
Or:
You say her writing changed people? Into what, vampire bats?
She wished she’d said any of these. Or anything at all.
The truth was, Sandy told herself, she’d been caught off guard. She hadn’t expected to get yelled at for criticizing celebrities
because—hello!—they were
celebrities
. They didn’t need protection. Now that Sandy was removed from the situation and thinking about it with a clear head, she
realized that there was no way Lucia San Lucas had ever read Sandy’s Nacho Papi posts about her crappy writing. Or if she
had read them, there was no way she’d cared. Why would she?
Ms. Lucas had hit the big time and was going to rake it in, no matter what someone like Sandy said. She undoubtedly got way
more flak on a daily basis from critics who were way meaner than Sandy. What difference did one more voice in the fray make?
Especially when the critics would never outweigh the adoring fans who were perfectly happy to spend their money on overwrought
Latino plus-size vampire romance. So there was no use getting upset about anything that crazy woman had said, was there?
Sandy told herself all of those things, over and over, until she felt better.
S
HE MADE IT
to the office only five minutes late for the meeting. “Sorry, sorry,” she called, waving at everyone around the table—Angelica;
Lori; Francisco, Marco, the new tech assistant; and Michelle and Jasmine, the new interns; plus the phone in the middle of
the table that represented Philippe, who was in Miami at the moment—before taking her seat.
“Let’s get started,” Angelica said. “We have a lot on the agenda today.”
Sandy pulled out her notebook, eager to distract herself from the drama that had just gone down. And she was especially eager
to hear this week’s page-view count and see if she’d won the weekly bonus again. She was sure she had; her posts on Heather
Santiago’s rehab stint had done very well, and her last “Ask the Chupacabra” had been pure gold.
“Contract amendments,” Angelica said. She put her hand on the stack of papers in front of her on the table, then passed it
to Lori. “We have a new salary structure. From now on, you’ll get fewer credits from page views and more credits for your
TV segment ideas.”
“For our ideas? How do you credit those?” Sandy asked.
“The ideas that are good enough to make it to the air get the credit,” Angelica replied. “You pitch your best ideas, and I
decide which make it on. For our regular news segments, you’ll take equal turns anchoring. Unless, of course, viewer feedback
shows a preference for any of you. If that happens, we’ll make adjustments as necessary.”
There was a moment of silence while the staffers absorbed this information. Then the student named Marco piped up. “Do assistants
and interns get credits for their ideas too?”
Angelica favored the boy with a smile. “That’s a good idea. Why don’t you come see me after the meeting and tell me what you
have in mind.”
Marco and his fellow interns practically bounced with excitement. Francisco, Sandy noticed, looked a little sick.
“I need you to sign these clauses and return them to me before you can proceed with this week’s recordings,” Angelica prompted
them.
Sandy looked down at the contract amendment that’d been passed to her. It was five pages long and looked just like all the
others they’d given her since she’d started working for Levy Media. With a sigh, she took out her pen and signed away.
T
WO HOURS LATER
, Sandy was down the hall, on the set. The “interview set,” to be precise, which looked a little like a college-dorm common
room. It had three cheap loveseats flanked by potted plastic trees, and there were framed posters on the two fake-brick walls.
One of them was actually Oscar’s old Frida Kahlo print, the one that used to hang in what was now Angelica’s office. The only
other item of interest in the room was the giant monitor parked on a rolling TV stand between two of the loveseats. Its screen
showed the Nacho Papi logo.
The room reminded Sandy of the sets you always saw on the cable music stations where the hosts sat around introducing music
videos or interviewing small-time bands. And now she knew why those sets were so common: they were cheap and easy to make,
and much smaller than they appeared on TV. This one had taken less than a week for Levy Media to create, and it was one of
three other sets in the same building as the Nacho Papi offices. So, Sandy knew, the rent couldn’t have been much.
She was about to record a segment on this set, interviewing small-time reality-show contestants. Two of them waited for her
on the loveseats, young and nervous-looking in the light of the blazing lamps that the Nacho Papi lighting technician intern
kept readjusting. Next to him, in the business corner of the room, camera technician interns adjusted their cameras. Angelica
had even found a couple of intern directors—graduate students who worked for less than minimum wage and were grateful for
the film credits, if you could call them that. The real director, of course, was Angelica herself. She supervised everything,
either on the set as they taped, or after the fact from the editing room.
Sandy took her place on the loveseat farthest to the right, giving the two young women an encouraging smile that only one
of them returned. She knew exactly how they felt. She’d been at least that nervous the first time she’d come to this set to
film her first segment. She still was that nervous, in fact. But, unlike these girls, who were barely out of high school,
she knew how to hide it.
The crew was ready within a few minutes. Unlike everything about TV Sandy had ever seen on the movies, this crew worked quickly
and quietly. There was no clapper thing, no one yelling “Take one!” Instead, Angelica herself said, “Quiet, everyone,” and
then “Okay, go.”
Sandy smiled at Angelica and the student behind the camera, still unable to bring herself to look into the actual lens. She
had index cards on her lap but didn’t refer to them as she began: “Hi, guys. Sandy S. here. I’m talking with Baby and Lola
from
Video Girl Wannabes
, the Musi-Caliente reality show. They’re going to give us the inside story on the show you’ve been loving to hate for the
past few weeks. But don’t worry—no spoilers. They won’t tell us who wins at the end.”
She turned to the young women. Again, one of them smiled—the one with orangey highlights and colored contact lenses who only
looked fourteen years old to Sandy even though everyone on that show was supposed to be eighteen or over. The other, who had
long black hair under a newsboy cap, didn’t smile. She glared at Sandy and said, “Yeah, uh—my name is Lisa. Lisa Quintanilla.
They just called us Lola and Baby for the show.”
“Oh.” Sandy was thrown off guard. No one had given her much background info on these people, and she’d only planned to ask
them a few questions about the show itself. From the few episodes she’d seen she knew that this Lola—Lisa—was supposed to
be something of a tough girl. But she looked to Sandy like a run-of-the-mill suburban poser. Sandy took the interruption in
stride, turning to the other girl and saying, “So your real name isn’t Baby?”
“No,” she simpered. “But you can go ahead and call me that.”
“Okay, Baby. Why don’t you start by telling us where you learned to dance.”
Above their heads, the monitor flickered into life, showing a clip from
Video Girl Wannabes
, in which “Baby” wore cut-off jean shorts and a wet tank top and danced as if she’d been stripping since birth.
Seeing herself on the screen, the girl laughed. “I don’t know. I just watched, like, a lot of videos.”
Baby wasn’t the brightest bulb on the show, Sandy knew. She’d frequently been made the butt of jokes on the show. If Sandy
wanted to, it’d be really easy to make fun of Baby now. But she didn’t want to, not really. She felt an odd affinity for her.
Maybe it was because she’d known quite a few girls who dressed and talked like Baby, back when she went to high school on
the east side of town. It had always seemed ironic to her that these girls who wore the skimpiest outfits also wore crucifixes
on their necks.
The monitor was now playing clips of Baby in a pillow fight with other contestants, Baby pretending to wash a car while dancing
in a wet mini dress, and Baby kissing another girl.
At this point, Sandy was supposed to ask about the same-sex kissing. Instead, though, she said, “Have your parents seen the
show?”
Baby laughed again. “Yeah.”
“What’d they think?”
The girl glanced up at the monitor thoughtfully, as if trying to remember. “Well, my mom liked it, but my dad got kind of
mad.”
“Did he?” Sandy was genuinely curious at this point. In her peripherals she saw the crew at their silent work. And Angelica,
watching with narrowed eyes. Sandy leaned forward a little. “What did he say?”
Baby’s smile became slightly awkward. “He, like, yelled at me and stuff. When they saw the one with me kissing Lil Ruby, he
got, like, super mad.”
“What’d he do?” Sandy had an idea already, but she had to ask.
“He, like, called me some names. In Spanish. And he kind of, like, pushed me a little bit. And then, you know… I had to move
to my friend’s house.” She stopped there and glanced at the crew, as if looking for approval.
All thoughts of making fun of this girl left Sandy’s mind at that point. She didn’t even want to ask the lesbian question.
But Angelica was there, waiting. Sandy decided to try to lighten the moment. She said, “Well, so, is there going to be any
more kissing on TV in your future?”
Baby shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, if they tell me to.”
“Do you have anything lined up? Any videos?” Sandy wanted to throw this girl a bone, if possible. She noticed Lisa/Lola getting
antsy next to Baby.
“Yeah. Big Daddy B, the rapper that was on the second episode with us? He liked my stuff and asked me to be on the video for
his next single.”
“What’s the name of it?” Sandy asked.
“It’s called ‘Why U Such a Ho,’ ” Baby replied proudly.
“Well, congratulations on that. We’ll keep an eye out for it.” With that, Sandy shifted attention to the other girl. “Lisa.
How about you? Any opportunities coming out of
Video Girl Wannabes
yet?”