Infamous

She flounced back into the dining room where the cameras had been set up. Kate was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of Froot Loops. She went through two or three boxes of it a week; she had the appetite of a twelve-year-old boy. Lucky for her, she seemed to have the metabolism of one, too.

“Cameras roll as soon as I finish this,” Kate said. Trevor’s aversion to filming them eating was well known. “I was starving.”

“No rush. I was kind of hoping to get my lipstick. . . .”

“You look beautiful, as always,” Laurel called.

Carmen laughed as she sat down at her designated seat at the table. “Like I can trust you,” she said. “You just want to get started.”

Laurel shrugged. “What can I say? Time is money.”

In another few moments, Kate was done, and Bret the camera guy had taken his usual place behind his Sony Hi Def, but Drew had still not emerged. Carmen was annoyed she hadn’t been able to get to her lipstick. Now she’d look washed out, which was fine when they were filming early-morning scenes, but less fine when it was 11 a.m. and she was otherwise ready to face the world. Her floral silk button-down practically demanded a coat of NARS’s Funny Face.

Kate brushed a Froot Loop crumb from her shirt and offered Carmen a small smile.

Carmen smiled back, though she was still annoyed, and then took a sip of her tea. (Drinking on camera was totally fine, of course.) “So, do you think Gaby’ll be different?” she asked Kate, exactly as she was supposed to.

“I think she’ll be in a better place,” Kate said.

Carmen laughed. “‘A better place’? I thought that was what you said when someone died.”

Kate looked mildly affronted. “You know what I mean. Like, emotionally.”

“Sorry,” Carmen said. “I was kidding.” Then she bit her lip and gazed down into her mug.

She’d been excited to move in with Kate for a couple of reasons—(a) she had no other place to live at the moment; and (b) she thought they might finally fully make up—but so far it’d been harder than she’d hoped. They kept offending each other in the little ways. Carmen, for example, had invited a few friends over without telling Kate. Then Kate had eaten all of Carmen’s leftover lo mein. Carmen had shrunk one of Kate’s two decent sweaters in the dryer, and then Kate had made some snide comment about Hollywood royalty not knowing how the real world worked. . . .

They still liked each other, they really did. But for some reason they were having a hard time showing it.

Carmen wondered if things would ever go back to the way they had been before Luke Kelly walked into their lives. Of course, Carmen was really glad that he had, but he definitely complicated things. Pre-Luke, Kate and Carmen had been great friends, and Carmen was realizing more and more how hard those were to come by.

She looked up again. Time to get on the ball and give the camera something. “Gaby sent me a letter a couple of weeks ago,” Carmen said. “She said she was learning how to let go of unhealthy influences and finding her inner strength. She said her mantra was ‘Healthy Choices.’” Then she giggled; she couldn’t help it. “I think that’s a brand of soup.”

“Well, if it works for her, I’m all for it,” Kate said. “But I bet she’s embarrassed at all this. I mean, wouldn’t you be?”

Carmen shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like she’s the first person to get confused about the right dosage of her medication.”

She shot Kate a look. Surely Kate hadn’t forgotten that she’d taken too much Xanax and turned into a walking zombie on national television. (Trevor would cut that line, no doubt, but Carmen hadn’t been able to resist.)

Kate only blinked at her, as if she really had forgotten.

“I’m actually really happy for her,” Carmen went on. “I think being at Hope was just what she needed. A break. Time to clear her head.”

Carmen wished she could have a break, too. Not at rehab, obviously, but say . . . a week at Miravel Resort & Spa? Having a few weeks off from filming had been great, but it wasn’t as if she’d been able to take a break from the rest of her life. From the tabloids, which continued to print lies about her, as well as some private truths. From Sophia, who had taken to calling her daily to talk about how cute their new producer was. And from Krew (or Date—they both worked), who were usually stuck together like Siamese twins.

Speak of the devil (or one half of it), Drew emerged from the bathroom. In a short pink towel.

Granted, he was out of the shot, but still—hadn’t he learned to take clothes into the bathroom? Wasn’t that one of the first rules of unofficial cohabitation?

He gave Carmen a small, apologetic wave. Kate hadn’t seen him, thankfully, so she was still focused on the scene. “I wonder if Madison will be there with us,” Kate said.

“Yeah. I wonder if Trevor’s going to be able to woo her back.”

Carmen knew that line wouldn’t make it to air, either, but it didn’t matter. Laurel had already informed them that they were going to shoot this segment several times. “So we have the right lead-in,” she’d explained. Since Gaby was getting out in two days and no one knew whether Madison would show up or not, they needed to cover their bases.

According to the reality of The Fame Game, Madison had taken a long vacation after finishing her community service. Some kind of Eat, Pray, Love thing, where she was finding herself and rededicating her life to . . . something or other. This explanation was buying Trevor time until he could get her back on the show. If he could.

For the first take, Kate and Carmen talked a bit about Madison’s vacation, and how she was still “in Mexico.” (This was awkward, because Madison had already been photographed at the airport last week returning from Mexico, and Gaby’s release date would be written about—so the timing wouldn’t work. But Carmen had her directions, so she followed them.) Next they shot a conversation in which they suggested that Madison, while back in L.A., was still too upset by Gaby’s overdose to face her. Finally, there was the cliff-hanger scene: Madison had told Kate she’d be there and had told Carmen that she wouldn’t. Which would it be? The world holds its breath!

That was the winner, Carmen thought, no question. Trevor could never resist a cliffhanger.

Drew passed by again, this time fully clothed and in view of the cameras. And Kate. Her eyes followed him into the kitchen, and there was a love-struck look on her face. “I wish Madison—and Gaby—could find a good guy,” she said.

Carmen put her head in her hands. Was it possible to die of annoyance? Because she felt like she might.

Then she looked up. “We could lend them Drew,” she said, smiling.

“We?” Kate asked.

Carmen shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Kate asked, a slight edge coming into her voice.

God, what was her problem? Carmen stood up. “Well, anyway,” she said, pointing to her watch. “I’ve gotta go meet with my agent.”

“Yeah, that’s a wrap on this scene,” Laurel called, stepping out from behind Bret. “You are both free until the day after tomorrow, when we welcome Ms. Garcia back into reality.”

Carmen hurried into the bathroom to fetch her lipstick, thinking how those words were probably the last ones that would apply to whatever was going to happen to Gaby.

(#ulink_74d2f0a7-40ea-5f9a-8bbf-a1797359e932)

Trevor sucked grimly on an ice cube as he sat in the editing bay at PopTV Studios. Before him were half a dozen computer screens, and each displayed raw footage from the past few weeks of season-two shooting. Kate and Carmen shopping. Sophia trying to bend Kate into pigeon pose. Carmen on a phone call with her publicist. Kate and Drew curled up on her couch, recapping her most recent performance. Each clip made him want to—well, depending on his mood, either fall asleep . . . or jump out a window.

He spun around in his swivel chair, and Laurel eyed him nervously. He’d already thrown one fit today, and she was probably bracing herself for round two. He’d promoted her to executive producer, but the old listen-to-Trevor-when-he-freaks-out part of her job description remained.

“That Kate and Drew scene could be intercut with shots of Carmen looking wistful,” she suggested.

“Oh really?” he said facetiously. “I never would have thought of that.”

Trevor crunched the ice cube from his latte and fished another one from his cup. With Gaby in rehab and Madison AWOL, he was trying to make a show with half his regular cast. He’d managed to patch together the final few episodes of season one, using old footage of the main girls and some new footage featuring Sophia more prominently. What a nightmare that had been. He’d used an army of interns to comb through unused scenes, and there were too many continuity problems to count. Gaby had had a Restylane mishap (for a couple of days it looked as if she’d been punched in the mouth), Madison had put on a few pounds during the Ryan weeks (though it looked great on her), and Kate had taken a weekend trip to Palm Springs, but she might as well have taken a nap in a tanning bed (she came back looking more like a Jersey Shore reject than an up-and-coming musician).

Then the ratings came in, which showed a troubling dip; in particular, audiences did not respond well to Sophia’s bigger role. They liked her in the background well enough, but the moment she stepped into the spotlight, people starting changing the channel.

At least Gaby’s OD, while unfortunate for all sorts of reasons, had played out well on screen. He’d found footage of Madison and Gaby at a café, in which Madison looked worried about her friend, so he’d used that. He’d even been able to fall back on the footage of her storming out of the massage room that day, cleverly editing it so it looked like Gaby’s drug problem was what had made Madison so upset.

Yes, he had managed to create an excellent season finale, if he did say so himself. The shots of the girls in the waiting room, their eyes brimming with tears—well, that had been some seriously moving television.

There was a knock on the door, and Trevor barked out, “Who is it?”