Fame Game 03: Infamous

  Kate’s eyes widened. “You kissed Leonardo DiCaprio?” There was awe in her voice.

  And Carmen started laughing. Hard. And then harder, to the point where she was almost gasping for air. “I tried,” she gasped. “Oh my God, I’d forgotten all about that. He looked at me like he thought maybe he should call security.”

  Madison clapped her hands. “I’m sure you seemed like such a threat in your glitter eye shadow and training bra.”

  Carmen glanced down at her sizable chest, then made a wry face. “Uh, these girls haven’t been in a training bra since I was in sixth grade.”

  Then Kate started snickering, too, and pretty soon the tension in the room was completely gone, and they were all laughing. Madison was looking at Carmen with new respect; it took guts to laugh that hard at yourself.

  “The point is,” Madison said, when everyone had calmed down, “not that many people out there understand what we’re going through, being on a show like ours. We have to stick up for each other. Be there for each other.”

  Carmen gazed at her thoughtfully. “You are really not the Madison Parker you played on L.A. Candy.”

  Madison glanced at Kate. “It’s like I said to Kate: You have to play a role. But also, people change. Whatever. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  But Carmen was right. She wasn’t the same Madison Parker, it was true. She was as ambitious as old Madison, but she felt different. Madison remembered vowing, as the season’s filming began, that she was going to be cold—but it hadn’t really worked out that way.

  “I am really, really sorry I kissed Drew,” Carmen said, looking to Kate. “It was a moment of complete and total stupidity. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

  Kate nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “I forgive you. And I’m sorry I told the crew that you had excessive gas.”

  Carmen’s mouth fell open. “You did not!”

  “No, I didn’t. But I’m going to if you kiss another one of my boyfriends.” Then Kate smiled. “And hey, by the way? Lay off those chips, Curtis. Too much sodium isn’t good for a growing baby.” Then she started cackling.

  Carmen threw up her hands in defeat. “My ‘baby bump’!” she cried. “How could I have forgotten?” She shook her head. “God, the things people write about me. Did you know that Lily fed a story to D-Lish? I’m so glad I’m not hanging out with her anymore.”

  Kate’s eyes widened. “Lily? But she seemed so nice.”

  “Yeah, and Gaby’s boobs seem real,” Madison said. “Well, sort of. The point is, you can never know about people.”

  “Did you confront her?” Kate asked.

  Carmen shook her head. “No, I just can’t deal right now. I’m pretty sure she also told that I kissed Drew.”

  For a moment, Madison wished she’d seen the kiss. It would have been such good currency! But she said, “It’s all part of the deal you signed on for. Truth or lies—what does it matter to a blogger, when all he cares about is page views? And what do you care, when all you really need is to stay in the spotlight?” She paused. “Although next time you really ought to wear something under a bias-cut dress. Everyone does. It’s called Spanx.”

  “Duly noted,” Carmen said.

  Pretty soon they were chatting like nothing had ever come between them, and Madison was giving herself a nice mental pat on the back. It was good when people worked things out.

  Madison had some things to work out, too. Last week’s meeting with Jack Stanbro over at Gallery had been promising, but Jack was looking for a more detailed pitch. He wasn’t going to sign her on simply because she was Madison Parker. On the one hand, she was slightly annoyed by this—did anyone ask a Kardashian for a scripted pilot?—but on the other, she appreciated that he took her seriously enough to ask her to flesh out her ideas.

  And then there was the Ryan situation. He’d called her several times since their lunch (exactly as she’d wanted him to), and she was holding him at arm’s length (exactly as she’d planned to). Things were going fine on that front. But he kept bringing up Charlie. Ryan said that he didn’t think Madison was capable of committing to a relationship until she repaired the one she had with her father.

  To which Madison had replied: “Good luck finding that jerk.”

  Her feelings about the situation were more complicated than that, but she didn’t want to go into them. She kind of wished they would go away. She wished her love for her father could have vanished right along with him. That would make everything so much simpler.

  “Hey.” Kate was poking Madison in the ribs. “Did you see that other thing on D-Lish the other day—the one that said Carmen was dealing with a spray-tan addiction?”

  Carmen’s face was in her hands. She looked up a moment later, her cheeks flushed. “This one’s not true! I swear, it is so insane. It’s like this one blogger totally has it in for me. He’s always the one to print the crazy stuff.”

  Madison held up a hand. “Wait. Everything we’re talking about is posted by the same person?”

  Carmen nodded. “My sworn enemy,” she said. “Jimmy Landis.”

  “No, he’s not your enemy,” Madison said. “He’s someone’s contact.”

  Carmen looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone is calling him with information about you. True, false, it doesn’t matter. There’s a source in your circle—probably Lily—and they are feeding stories to the writer. I used to do that all the time.” (Often for stories about herself—but that would remain her secret.)

  Carmen began biting one of her fingernails. “You think Lily did that?” she asked.

  Madison shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past anyone.”

  “But why? What’s in it for her?”

  “Sometimes people pay for info,” Madison suggested. “Or maybe Lily’s looking to get mentioned as a makeup artist to the stars? Who knows why people do what they do?”

  “It wasn’t you, was it?” Carmen asked suddenly.

  Madison began to laugh. “No. But I’m sure there were moments I would have enjoyed it.”

  Carmen threw up her hands. “Oh, whatever, I don’t want to think about it anymore. Not right now. I’m too tired.”

  “Fair enough,” Madison said. “But you should take care of it. And if you don’t want to, find someone who will.”

  “Like you?” Carmen asked hopefully.

  Madison laughed. “I’d love to help, but I’ve changed. The new Madison is a lover, not a fighter,” she said. And even if it wasn’t entirely true, she liked the way it sounded.

  Later, when she left Kate and Carmen’s apartment, with the two of them curled on the couch and catching up on their latest news, Madison went upstairs and called Ryan. She’d had a change of heart. She was tired of playing games. Hadn’t he proven that he really did care, and that he wasn’t going to disappear? For once in her life she felt like she could trust someone—maybe she could let herself trust him again. She couldn’t exactly say that to him, though, so instead she said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should talk to Charlie. Not that I know how to find him.”

  “That’s the brave thing to do,” Ryan told her. “To be open to talking to him.”

  She laughed. No, the brave thing to do had been to run away from home and make her way to Los Angeles, the city of dreams. The brave thing had been working as hard as she did to make those dreams come true. Some of them had, too. But she knew she still had a long way to go.

  24

  DON’T CALL US, WE’LL CALL YOU

  INT. COFFEE SHOP; DAY

  LEORA sits at a corner table. Her head is bent low as she stares intently at a textbook.

  At a nearby table, NOAH is staring intently at LEORA. We see him take in her long, tangled hair, her pale, nervous hands. There is interest in his eyes—and already, perhaps, the spark of desire.

  NOAH

  Um, excuse me—but is that Elements of Moral Philosophy?

  LEORA

  (Looking up sharply) What’s
it to you? (Looking back down and then mumbling) Why don’t you drink your pumpkin chai latte and mind your own business?

  Carmen bit her lip as she paged through the script. She’d already read it through twice, and while it didn’t thrill her, it also wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever read. (That was the thriller about the college student who discovers that the kid she’s babysitting is in fact a state-of-the-art robot. And it’s carrying highly classified information that, in the wrong hands, could bring down the world’s financial markets. Talk about dumb with a capital D.)

  So Carmen was keeping an open mind about Hearts on Fire. She knew that Trevor was anxious for her to sign on to a new project, and she was getting a little restless herself. Restless in a larger, existential sense—there were only so many afternoons she could spend hanging with Fawn—and also right in this moment. She’d been waiting in the small, nondescript room of the casting agent’s office for ten minutes, and neither the agent nor the leading man was anywhere in sight.

  “What’s it to you?” she whispered. “Why don’t you drink your pumpkin chai latte and mind your own business?”

  Then Noah—already being played by indie darling Matt Benson—would stutter, blush, and ask her who pissed in her decaf soy skinny half-caf.

  Today was a chemistry read: Carmen and Matt would be videotaped reading a handful of scenes to see whether or not they’d be believable enemies, then lovers. She looked up in relief as the doorknob turned. Finally, something was going to happen around here.

  “Hey, Carmen,” Matt said, striding in and leaning down to give her a hug. “How’s tricks?”

  Carmen almost didn’t recognize him. She’d met Matt at a party less than a year ago, when he was new in town, nervous and starstruck. Now he was tanned, toned, and more confident. Why did Hollywood do that to everyone?

  “Oh, things are great,” Carmen said, tapping the script on her lap and feeling suddenly nervous. “Congratulations on getting the part of Noah.”

  “Thanks, man,” Matt said. “I, like, petitioned so hard it was totally embarrassing. I even sent Andrew Flynn a variegated agave cactus.”

  “A cactus?”

  Matt nodded. “Yeah, he collects really rare ones. I read about it in Vanity Fair.”

  Carmen was pondering this when Wendy Liston, the casting agent, and Andrew Flynn, the director, entered the room. Suddenly there was a lot of handshaking and earnest smiling (on Carmen’s part, anyway—Wendy offered her a tight-lipped semi-grimace and Andrew wasn’t smiling at all. Maybe his cactus had died).

  Carmen had been hoping for a bit of small talk, to break the ice, but Andrew apparently had a doctor’s appointment across town. (“He’s a little under the weather,” Wendy whispered.) So there was barely enough time for the tech guy to turn on the video camera before Carmen and Matt became Leora and Nate: strangers, then friends, then lovers, and then strangers again, all while drinking an absurd amount of expensive coffee. (It was an indie movie, after all, so it couldn’t have a happy ending or anything.)

  Carmen easily inhabited the prickly Leora character, and Matt was charming as sweet, sincere Noah. Things were going well, Carmen thought as she flipped to her fourth scene. She still wasn’t in love with the script, but she was an actress: She could pretend to be.

  But then came the scene that mattered most. She and Matt (or Leora and Noah, rather) have a fight, and then they kiss. The fighting part—that was no problem. But when it came time to make up, and to kiss, Carmen and Matt knocked their teeth together. Which hurt. They straightened that out quickly enough, but then Matt’s tongue felt giant and clumsy and much too wet. Their noses kept getting in the way of things. And Carmen couldn’t forget that Andrew was only three feet away, either, breathing loudly through a stuffed-up nose.

  Suddenly the whole audition seemed completely insane to her. Why would anyone sit that close to two people who were making out? Why was Matt such a bad kisser? Had he even remembered to brush his teeth that morning? Why did the script have so much coffee in it? Was it some kind of product placement deal with Starbucks?

  She broke the kiss off too early, and after that, Andrew ended the audition. He seemed to be trying to hide his disappointment. But it was definitely a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you (not) sort of farewell. Wendy told Carmen she’d done just fine, but Carmen knew better.

  She also knew that if they actually did call, she wouldn’t pick up the phone. She wasn’t going to kiss Matt Benson again for all the booties in Barneys.

  The one bright spot of the whole disaster? At least the Fame Game cameras hadn’t been around to capture it.

  Fawn met her outside the office. “So?” she demanded, jumping up from the bottom step. “How was it?”

  “Oh my God,” Carmen gasped. “It started out fine but then it got awful. I was terrible—but Matt Benson has the worst breath in the world. I’m ninety-nine percent sure he had an onion bagel for breakfast.” Carmen did a face-palm, and then began to laugh.

  Fawn nudged her with a bony elbow. “Oh, poor you! Kissing hot guys!”

  “Yeah, but one who’s in desperate need of a breath mint,” Carmen said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a box of Tic Tacs. “Why didn’t I hand him these?” She paused as a young girl, a casting intern most likely, passed by on her way out, probably to fetch one of the fancy coffees that Andrew Flynn was clearly obsessed with. Carmen tipped a few Tic Tacs into her palm, then held out the box to Fawn. “And Andrew Flynn does not understand personal space. He was practically sitting on my lap. Whoever is going to have to work with that bunch—well, I feel sorry for her.”

  Fawn tucked her arm through Carmen’s. “Oh, to have your Champagne problems! Speaking of which, let’s go get cocktails and forget all about it,” she said.

  Carmen threw her head back and laughed. “That sounds like an excellent idea,” she said.

  “So you’re not going to audition for the robot baby film, I take it,” Cassandra said the next night, winking at Carmen. She was stirring a pot of red sauce on the stove and sipping wine from a goblet nearly as large as a fishbowl.

  Carmen shook her head as she chopped olives for the salad. “Nope. I also passed on the re-remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

  “And the one starring that guy from the kickboxing movies,” Fawn added. She’d invited herself along for dinner, and she was supposed to be peeling carrots, but she seemed to be incapable of operating a peeler.

  Carmen wondered if Fawn had ever done a moment’s housework. “Have you ever peeled a carrot before?” she finally asked.

  Fawn looked at her in surprise. “Of course not. What do you think cooks are for?”

  Cassandra raised her eyebrows at Carmen when Fawn wasn’t looking. Neither Cassandra nor Philip had ever forgiven Fawn for letting Carmen take the shoplifting fall. Philip, especially, thought Fawn was a spoiled Bel Air drama queen. Cassandra, though, found her amusing. Fawn could certainly be hilarious and charming when she felt like it.

  “I heard that Jordan Becker is going to start auditioning for a role in his next film,” Cassandra said, shaking a bit of salt into the pot. “It’s not a starring role, but it sounds amazing.” She glanced up at Carmen. “Actually, I’ve already spoken to him about it.” She paused. “About you, I mean,” she clarified.

  Carmen felt a tingle of excitement. “Jordan Becker? I love his movies. He’s, like, Wes Anderson for people who don’t do twee.”

  Cassandra tasted the sauce, frowned, then tossed in a handful of rosemary. “The role is for a troubled daughter . . . of Maryn Wright and Tom Wade.”

  Carmen couldn’t help it. Her jaw dropped. Maryn Wright and Tom Wade? They were only two of her favorite actors of all time. Carmen had grown up watching them, first as they starred in teen dramas, and then as they moved onto rom-coms as well as serious movies. Maryn and Tom turned up in art-house films and thrillers alike. They weren’t married in real life, but they’d played opposite each other in so many films that people often thought they w
ere. They’d been friends forever and seemed to have the perfect artistic relationship. (At the height of her obsession, Carmen had read one of those dime-store biographies that Walgreens stocked next to Tiger Beat magazine. So she knew kind of a lot about them.)

  “Mom, I have to audition,” Carmen said.

  “I thought you weren’t going to take any more supporting roles,” Fawn interjected.

  “Are you kidding? I would be an extra for these people,” Carmen said. “Girl at Laundromat. Supermarket Checker. Whatever.”

  Cassandra laughed. “I doubt you’ll have to take a part that small.” She gave the sauce one final taste and then nodded. “Time to eat,” she said.

  Carmen’s dad had set the table and was already sitting down and digging into the garlic bread.

  “Your mother already tell you about the movie?” he asked, wagging a finger at her. Philip kept saying that he wanted Carmen to enjoy her break, to experience a moment of real life (as much as that was possible when she appeared on a weekly TV show), but Carmen could tell he was excited about the role.

  Carmen nodded. “I’m calling my agent tomorrow.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Cassandra said. “I can call up—”

  Carmen held up a hand. “Mom, I’ll do it the official way,” she said. “But thank you.”

  Once again, her family connections were proving to be extremely helpful, and she could practically hear the nepotism gossip already. Well, as the saying went: Haters gonna hate.

  Beside her, Fawn speared a lettuce leaf pretty aggressively. “Must be nice,” she muttered.

  Carmen turned to her. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Fawn said, smiling brightly.

  “Even if it doesn’t work out,” Cassandra said, “the audition can’t be worse than the one you had for Hearts on Fire.”

  Carmen looked up, startled. “How do you know about that?”

  “Google Alert, darling. I need to keep up with my baby when she forgets to return my calls.” Cassandra smiled.