Alison stifled laughter as she watched Danny fall apart. The guy was an annoying prick and always had been – if he hadn’t been tight with Johnny since college, she’d never book him. Probably would have prevented him from having a career, too. He was funny, no doubt, but the few times he’d gone on one of the other late night shows he’d been shown as the asshole he was, rather than the relatable guy that Johnny sold him as.
The little bit of fight in Rafe was a shocker, she thought. On a normal night, he’d have moved in a heartbeat, although on a normal night he probably wouldn’t have been on the couch in the first place. She caught the hesitant touch from Rita, and wondered where things would have gone if they hadn’t both somehow found the bit of courage needed to push back against the realities of Hollywood.
With the guests all on stage, Alison had a few moments with nothing to do. She glanced at her clipboard, looking for an island of normalcy to help get her through this. She should be prepping Rita for her cue to go onstage right now, before moving on to ensuring the Johnnyball game for Johnny and Danny was ready, then picking out people for the Crowd Quiz segment. Rita was already there, and no games were forthcoming. For the first time since she started this job, she had nothing to do but watch the show.
As soon as she had the realization, a crew member walked up behind her and placed a director’s chair as close to the stage as possible while staying out of the camera’s eye. She sat without thinking, making herself as comfortable as possible supported by a strip of canvas. She had a perfect vantage, able to clearly see both Johnny and Anastasia equally. She smiled at their banter, and her impression of Anastasia began to soften. She’s quite charming, Alison thought, and has a great presence. She could work with the soon to be Supreme Being, get her to tone down the crazy, show her how to truly make the smile and the legs do the work for her. She already had her own unique fashion sense going, and Alison could easily make her into an icon.
A loud crash shattered the sense of peace that had settled over her – the crafty who had brought a tray laden with drinks ended up dropping the whole thing. She snapped her head in that direction, and saw the crafty was still standing there, holding the tray, over the shattered glass and spilled liquid. Alison realized the man was completely entranced by Anastasia, which made her see that she had been in the same state until the breaking glass woke her.
She got up from the chair and moved back behind the cameras. She’d had this job for eight years, now, and over that time had built the best crew in the business. Most had been with her from the beginning, and she made sure that no one who was good enough to get the job done wanted to leave. She always expected professionalism from them, and she got it, until today. Today, she had a crew of people abandoning their jobs to watch the show. The videographers were doing their jobs, but it was as much a better way to keep their eyes on the woman as anything. Other than that, it looked like the entire crew had decided to simply stop.
Other than the videographers, the closest person to her was a young production assistant – her mental catalog of employees said it was Carrie, a UCLA grad that started there last fall. Well, Carrie, she thought, looks like you’re the winner of ‘who gets to help Alison today’.
She stood in front of the young woman to block her line of sight to Anastasia. The woman simply stepped a full step to the side and continued watching. No acknowledgment that her boss had just effectively called her out for not doing her job, which would have been unacceptable on any other day. Since today was not just any other day, it was time for something that the company’s lawyers would scream was unacceptable on any other day as well. She stepped back in front of Carrie, and before she could move, Alison grabbed her by the shoulders. Carrie tried to lean to one side and stretch up so she could still see, so Alison took it a step farther and gave her a solid shake. One became two, and a few more, until finally it was enough.
“Ow, what –” she said, before her eyes focused on Alison, and she swallowed whatever she had been about to say. She looked around and saw that everyone but her and Alison were still focused on the stage, but she couldn’t see Anastasia any longer and was able to stay with her boss. “Um, Ms. Price? What’s going on?”
“It’s Alison, Carrie, and I have no idea.” She paused to think for herself whether that was true or not – she did have an idea, but it was that the woman was telling the absolute truth and all she could do was attempt to hang on. But while the small voice inside of her kept saying, ‘but what if…’, she couldn’t quite get herself to accept it. She had been born and raised Episcopalian, and while she was fairly confident that better than three fourths of her fellow attendees didn’t really believe, she had enough of it drilled into her as a kid that the idea that it had both never been true and there really was a supreme being was a touch too far.
Carrie was still trying to get a glimpse over Alison’s shoulder, and Alison was tired of the dance to keep blocking her view. She spun the woman around, and began to usher her away from the set, up to the production control room. Hopefully, she thought, the gallery will be safe from the madness, and the team could work with her to figure out what to do. She had very little faith in this, having seen everyone else, but it was all she had to cling to.
By the time they made it to the gallery, Carrie had mostly broken free. She still glanced over her shoulder from time to time, but she was at least able to walk without being herded. She opened the gallery door, but immediately ducked back. “It’s not good, boss,” she said, and Alison peeked past her. Every member of the crew was huddled around the central monitor, staring at the screen. Every screen in the place was showing Johnny and Anastasia bantering, although she noticed that they were not the exact same. Every camera out there had to be trained on them right now to get what she was seeing, which annoyed her until she was able to focus and remember that none of this was her people’s fault.
”It’s Alison, Carrie, and come on.” She turned away from the booth and set off to her office, Carrie trailing behind. The lack of anyone walking through the halls was unnerving, as she had never seen it outside of once when she didn’t get out of here until 6 am. She stopped her teeth from grinding and opened her office door.
Before she opened it, she had heard nothing from inside the room, but as soon as the door cracked, she could hear the show continuing. She heard Anastasia’s laugh, which was getting more musical and enchanting every time, and grabbed for the remote that sat on the desk. She hit the power button, then the mute button, with neither having an effect. The channel button worked – she kept hitting up and saw the numbers shift, and she should have seen a couple of infomercials then that idiot Jamie’s show, but everything was Anastasia and Johnny. What was going on here?
Carrie was watching the TV, no longer paying attention to Alison. Recognizing this, and what happened to her when she was down on the floor, Alison carefully kept her eyes averted from the TV. She swung it away from the wall to reveal the plug and reached out to remove its power. Before she could even grab the plug, electricity arced from the socket, delivering a painful burn to her hand. She froze, remembering the feeling when she got too close to the cameras before, and thought she may have just gotten a final warning. She backed away, then swung the TV back into place. Carrie was at least watching her as she did this, although she kept going back to the screen. Alison guessed that she had looked at Alison when the TV was out of the way, and grabbed a blanket off the couch. She quickly tossed it over the TV, tucking it in around the sides. The volume was greatly reduced, and the image cut off entirely, leaving Carrie to slowly shake her head and look up at Alison. “I lost it again, didn’t I, boss?”
Stifling annoyance at being called boss, but realizing now was not the time to deal with it, she said, “It’s OK, Carrie. You’re more with it at the moment than anyone else on the crew, so stay that way and we’ll be fine.” She looked at her chair, wanting to sit and think, then decided that she’d be better off not drawing a boss employee line right now. She took the corner of the couch that gave her the best view of the TV and had one of her tablets in an arm hanger. She gestured for Carrie to take the other end, which would make her more comfortable and keep her facing away from the TV. Carrie sat, and Alison told her, “We’re going to have to work together here, Carrie. First, don’t look at a TV. I may need to as I try to see what’s going on, and if I seem to drift away, I need you to bring me back. Can you do that?”
Carrie looked thrilled, like this had all been a cosmic plan to get her big break in the industry. “Absolutely! Anything you need,” she said.
“For now, just shake me if I won’t respond,” Alison said. She grabbed the tablet from its slot in the hanger and powered it up. She pulled up the video chat and went to her industry contacts. Even though Jamie was a twit, his show runner Dave was a decent guy. He showed as being online and available, which she expected, and she hit the button to start a call. The familiar tone sounded over and over, until it timed out as unanswered. She had a couple of contacts over at The Daily Dish, including with the host who had tried to get her to jump ship a couple of times. They all showed online but unavailable, normal for them during a show, but she tried anyway. As the tones ended with nothing to show for it, she let out a sigh.
Carrie raised her hand slightly, the kid in the back of the class who has no self confidence but finally knows an answer. Alison stared at her, bemused that the woman had somehow secured this job with so little ability to step up for herself. When Carrie didn’t say anything after several moments of being stared at, she said, “Carrie, you don’t need to raise your hand. There’s only the two of us here, speak out if you have something.”
“OK, boss,” she said, oblivious to Alison cringing at the term. “I saw you trying to contact Barbara over at DD, and I’m guessing the others are all people at the other shows.” Her voice grew quieter as she continued. “Well, a few of us new PAs at the various shows in the city have been having kind of a group text thing going on. Just, y’know, a place to kind of vent about the job and trying to get noticed and that.” She trailed off at the end, barely audible, before coming back stronger. “I don’t need to vent, Ms. Price, everything’s great, and I’d never talk about things that go on at the show.” She stopped there, looking up at Alison with a touch of fear, as though sure she had just written herself a pink slip.
Alison took a deep breath before responding. “OK, Carrie, I need you to focus here for a minute. First, and I cannot stress this enough, you have to stop with the Ms. Price and ‘boss’ business. I’m not a big fan of things that separate people that much on a normal day, and today is a long goddamned way from normal, so just call me Alison, all right?” Carrie gave a tiny nod, which Alison figured was the best she could expect at the moment. “Next, I do not care that you vent to people at the same job level as you in this industry. Everyone does – the only thing that has changed over the years is the medium you do it in. When I was your age, we had an email chain going, and my mentor probably did the same in the back room of a gentlemen’s club.” Carrie’s eyes flashed at the word mentor, and Alison regretted saying it already. She wasn’t in the market for a mentee and probably wouldn’t have picked Carrie if she was. “You brought this up for a reason, so stop worrying that anything you say will be held against you and spit it out.”
So many emotions crossed Carries face in the next few seconds Alison gave up trying to track them. She just waited for the girl to find her courage again and get to the point. Finally, Carrie was able to function and said, “OK, so the text group has people from every network show. Well, when the show was starting up, Daniel from Jamie sent out a text complaining about people being incompetent. Something about how the engineers screwed up, and couldn’t broadcast anything? Then he said he got stuck with finding someone to fix it. He sent a dozen or so texts over the next 15 minutes complaining about how no one was working while he was trying to get the things fixed, then just stopped. He’s usually kind of a whiner, though, so I just kind of blew it off until I saw you trying to reach them. Should I text them?”
She’s new, just out of college, cut her some slack, Alison thought. “Yes, Carrie, you should text them,” she said when she could talk without screaming. Maybe I should go find Alan and see if I can wake him up, she thought, before discarding the idea. Knowing him, he’d be interested in Anastasia even without the weirdness. “Find out anything you can about what is happening on their shows.”
Carrie nodded, her head bobbing up and down like a woodpecker in her eagerness. She started sliding her finger across the screen quickly, and Alison had a brief flashback to the people who could text on a phone keypad ridiculously fast back when she was Carrie’s age. It seemed like such an important skill to them at the time, but the march of technology reduced it to a curiosity at best. She finished going through her contact list, trying everyone she knew at the other shows, then moving on to people who had retired or otherwise left the industry. She finally admitted defeat and looked up to see Carrie staring at her phone, defeat defining her look as well.
“I’m sorry, boss – Alison,” she said, clearly pained at having to call her by her first name. “No one is responding. I don’t think they’re even checking their phones because everything is showing unread.” Alison nodded, expecting the result, and taking it as a confirmation of what she was thinking.
“No need to apologize, Carrie. If you want to get any traction in this business, you’d better drive that instinct out of you as soon as you can. Apologizing for things you aren’t at fault for is a good way to volunteer to be the scapegoat.” Carrie nodded, and Alison could almost see her swallow down the apology she wanted to give for apologizing. Alison mentally credited Carrie’s ability to adjust – she had thought with the name thing that the woman would be hard to train, but that needed reevaluation. Maybe as we get farther away from being entranced, she’ll show why we would have hired her in the first place, she thought.
“It seems like it is going to be just us able to do anything today, and we’ve got to take some control back here. I have a few ideas, but one of them is going to rely entirely on you.” Alison ignored the panic she saw on Carrie’s face and went on. “We’re going to do Crowd Quiz tonight, whether she likes it or not. What I want you to do is to break the cardinal rule of Crowd Quiz – I want you to find the people who we sit up in the back and never bring a mic to, and I want you to get a mic in front of every last one of them. If Duckman came tonight, he needs to be first. And while that is going on, you need to somehow stay focused and not fall under her sway again. Can you do it?”
Carrie swallowed a lump in her throat before she was able to answer. “I think so? No, I can, I can.” She nodded and pulled a pair of earbuds out, popping them in her ears. She immediately took them out and said under her breath as she walked out, “How? They aren’t even on.”
Alison moved behind her desk and unlocked her computer. The social media world should have started chattering about this already – time to see what the world thought.
