“Not really.”
“And so that’s what I was doing at your uncle’s place. No one had done any shows there yet.”
“That’s because he wouldn’t allow anyone,” I pointed out.
“Which is why I had to be sort of sneaky about it. Thank you, by the way, for not blowing my cover. I had thanked you already, hadn’t I?”
“No,” I said.
“Ah, well anyway, I thought I would get a leg up on these other shows, shoot some shit and show it to my boss, hoping he’d see some potential in all of it.”
Pause.
“And?” I prompted him. “Did he?”
“No,” he sighed. “He didn’t. However, he did like what you did.”
“What I did?”
“OK, he liked the idea of the two of us doing that. Together.”
A naughty idea flashed through my head. “And what is that, exactly?”
“You’re not secretly blonde are you?”
Now it was my turn to sigh. This phone call was confusing as hell and I could tell my mom had been listening to it for the last five minutes because the workout DVD had been turned off. I had an idea what Dex was hinting at, but his aggravating way of getting around to it was throwing my mind into a tizzy.
“Mr. Foray,” I said as professionally as possible, “you called me wanting to talk me about something. Get to the point.”
I have to point out that I am neither A) this ballsy on the phone with people I didn’t really know or B) this rude, but there was something about Dex, perhaps it was the way we met, that made me feel like I didn’t really care how I was coming across.
“Based on the footage I shot, based on the footage you shot—which, by the way, you wouldn’t have shot had I not told you to—and based on the way your writing so eloquently told the story when the images could not, I think we could actually have a real show here.”
“You think or your boss thinks?”
“Either or; it doesn’t matter.”
It did matter, but I didn’t want to question it anymore, lest I screw up my chances of whatever this was. I didn’t want to think too deeply into it, though with my mind that was more or less impossible. I could feel my subconscious jumping to a million fantastic conclusions. It was really hard to keep the voices at bay and concentrate on the cold, hard facts.
“What do you do again? Are you a host on this Shownet?” I asked.
“Fuck no. Excuse my language, but f**k no. I’m just the producer and cameraman. And composer. I’m entirely behind the scenes, which is why I need a person like you to be in front.”
“Me?”
“Yes. As I was saying, you’re real and you’re very personable. Charming, some might say. I wouldn’t because I don’t even know you, but we’ll find out. Your on-camera presence is bold; at least the stuff I have on my end is. And your writing doesn’t suck. Have you ever done acting before?”
Technically I hadn’t. Stuntwoman training didn’t involve any acting and I’m sure my homemade movies from my youth didn’t count either.
“No.”
“Good. That’s better. That means you aren’t a bullshitter. I hate bullshitters; you can never bullshit them. So you’re a natural, which is perfect because people want to see natural fear. They don’t want the Hollywood treatment. And your writing is the perfect companion. It shines some sort of clarity on a subject that most people don’t understand.”
“To be honest, I don’t understand it myself.”
“That’s OK. Honesty is good. Understanding is overrated. But this show won’t be overrated because it’s coming out of the dark and sneaking up on people until—”
Click.
Did the phone just go dead?
“Hello?” I asked. Silence. Did he just hang up on me?
I looked over and saw my mom hanging around the doorway to the kitchen with a quizzical look on her face. No denying now that she was totally listening.
“Hello, Dex?”
Click.
“Yeah, hi, sorry, someone on the other line,” his voice coming in low and husky. “Jimmy Kwan, you heard of him? Doesn’t matter, you haven’t. But he’s the one who started up Shownet back in 2004 and the first person to really take a chance on me. My boss. But now he’s on the other line and wants to know what Perry Palomino thinks of all this. What say you?”
I took a deep breath.
“I have to admit, I don’t really know what’s going on here,” I told him carefully. “I mean, you haven’t really come out and said anything. I just got a message to call you and, so, here I am.”
“Ohhhh,” he said slowly, “You want it in layman’s terms. Oh, come on, Perry, I thought you were smarter than that. Don’t you know how to jump to wild conclusions? That’s what your whole ghost thing is about. Let’s ignore the reality of the situation that we were in a shitstormed old lighthouse and jump to the conclusion that some beastly ghost was after us.”
“To be fair, I never thought there was a ghost.”
I heard a sigh of disgust on the other line and immediately feared I lost all chances with him.
“Honesty is good, but good is overrated,” Dex lectured. “I appreciate a straight shooter—fuck knows I don’t have enough of them around me— but don’t admit the thing is fake.”
“It’s not fake!’ I exclaimed. “You were there!”
“Anyway,” he said, ignoring me, “I, Declan Foray, and my boss, Jimmy Kwan, want to ask you if you would be interested in joining me in filming a demo for the website about our ghost-slash-weird encounter. Kind of like a TV show pilot. If it’s good and you look good, then I look good and Jimmy will want to pick it up as an actual show for our network…netsite. Web thing. But it’s all riding on you. I’m pushing for this show because to be honest here—and I mean let’s keep this between you and me—I can’t stand another day of shooting Wine Babes. I need something different and I just think this could be really, really cool. Now it’s your turn to say something.”
I was taken aback, to say the least.
Amazing. Awesome. Cool. Fantastic. Stupendous. Crazy. Too good to be true. I wanted to say all of those things. But I could only manage to squeak out: