Ana Takes Manhattan, page 3
I haven’t told Gia about my Landon dreams because the first time I asked her about him, she shut the whole thing down.
“Trust me. He’s not your type,” she said, and that was that.
But since when is “wonderful” not my type? If I told Gia how I felt about him now, she’d say something like, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
So instead, I’ve kept my feelings about Landon a secret. But soon he and I will be walking down the aisle together because in the luckiest break of all time, Landon is Matt’s best man.
“I could wear the leather pants and silk turtleneck you gave me.”
“No, wear the dress. You should show off your legs more.”
Thinking about finally meeting Landon has me forgetting about how I may get fired tomorrow for going over budget with no episode to show for it. Landon smiling in a tuxedo could heal the world.
* * *
“Early night? Nice dinner? Why are you barefoot?” My doorman fires questions at me as I power-walk across the lobby and I try to answer them all before the elevator doors shut.
“Yes, yes. Dutch. It was good. You know me and heels!”
Having a doorman in Manhattan was supposed to be a luxurious upgrade, but instead it’s like having a gynecologist appointment a few times a day. Felipe sees everything. He knows everything. I’m sure his face expands or contracts because he’s judging my shortage of suitors and surplus of takeout.
I moved in a few months ago, but he already knows everything there is to know about me. If I have a rare day off, he’ll say, “Taking the day off and going for a run?” If I have a later shoot and miss his shift, he’ll ask, “You had to work late on Tuesday, huh?” And when he hands me my dinner, he’ll feel the weight of it first and say, “Let me guess, dumplings? No, no, wait. Salmon teriyaki.”
On the flip side, the only thing I know about him is that the sleeves of his uniform are too short for his arms.
I open the door to my apartment and catch myself just before falling over a giant cardboard box in the hallway. I sigh and push the heavy thing into my kitchen.
Inside this box is the single most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased. In an effort to make my one-room studio seem grander, I ordered a state-of-the-art chandelier from Sweden. It’s big. It’s beautiful. It’s impossible to hang. And in the meantime, there’s no place for the thing to be that isn’t in the way.
I’d stuff it in the closet, but there’s no room in there since Gia’s wedding dress moved in. That thing is enormous. It’s $11,000 stuffed inside a bright white marshmallow garment bag with the words “Carolina Herrera” written in gold cursive letters. I can’t believe I agreed to keep it in my tiny apartment until the wedding so Matt wouldn’t see it. It’s like having a pompous new roommate that doesn’t pay any rent.
I open the closet and find my black dress with the small, slightly puffy sleeves. By this time tomorrow night, I will have met him. Just the idea of seeing him and suddenly I have an urge to try again to hang the chandelier. Sure, I have to go to work tomorrow, where I may potentially be fired and therefore lose this apartment, but the only thing that can calm me down right now is checking off “hang chandelier” from my DIY list.
I drag a chair into the middle of the room and pull the chandelier out of the box, sending Styrofoam balls spilling across the room. I step up onto the chair with the chandelier in my left hand, my pink wireless drill in the other, and a screw between my teeth. The chandelier is heavy, but I totally got this.
I live for taking on DIY projects. I’ve hung up shelves, leveled picture frames, painted walls, and even replaced the old moldings in this apartment.
My cell phone buzzes on the couch. I can see it’s Gia calling, probably demanding that photo of me in the dress. I almost lose my balance, causing the chandelier’s hanging glass crystals to softly tap against one another.
I carefully tuck the drill into my pants and grab the cable at the end of the chandelier. The drill is part of an all-pink toolbox my father gave me when I went away to college and, I have to say, it’s come in handy. The phone buzzes again, then stops.
While still holding the cable attached to the lamp, I use the same hand to grab the screw out of my mouth and the drill out of my pants. I’ve so got this.
It’s late, but I figure that a single, precisely drilled screw into the ceiling won’t bother my neighbors. From the very beginning, the trick with this chandelier has been that it’s Swedish. And apparently in Sweden, they don’t include the specific screw you will need to fit into the tiny cable thingy that attaches your new chandelier to the ceiling. But after trying every hardware store within a twenty-block radius, I think I finally found what I need.
I’ve got to hold the cable thingy just so and place the screw in just so, and then quickly drill the little sucker in. But I see now it’s a three-arm job because as soon as I place the screw in and let go, it drops onto the floor, but not before I’ve started drilling into the ceiling. The drill connects with the other holes I’ve been making for the past couple of months, and it sinks in deep.
I yank it out and take a chunk of ceiling with me.
The chandelier is still dangling in my hands unhung, but somehow I feel better. Patching up holes in the ceiling is my specialty. I’ll just put that on the list.
Chapter 4
Things I will miss about Manhattan when I get fired today and have to move back in with my dad and stepmom in New Jersey:
Homemade Pop-Tarts in Union Square
The truck in Bryant Park that sells truffle-flavored popcorn
Tap It Out! tap dance class on Thursdays at Lincoln Center
The Single Girls Can Hike Club every second Saturday
Parlez-You French Lessons on Sundays
Medieval Fight Club every other Wednesday at the Cloisters
Columbus Avenue
Park Avenue
Madison Avenue
The way the sun sometimes sets at the end of the block you’re walking on, making you feel like the whole world is yours and anything is possible
Each season of Marry Me, You Fool! has eighteen episodes. After eight successful seasons on the air, we’ve had 144 happily accepted proposals. One time a girl fainted when her fiancé proposed, whacking her head on a baby grand piano. But even she said yes when she woke up in the ambulance with her adoring boyfriend by her side—along with two cameramen, a sound operator, and me. Second-best-rated episode, thank you very much, fainting girl.
But you’re only as good as your last episode, and right now I don’t have a last episode. And yet I managed to spend a lot of the company’s money.
As I approach the conference room for our monthly pitch meeting and see most of the staff through the glass walls settling in, I consider fainting at just the right moment so my head will hit the copy machine.
Paper Cut Productions has multiple divisions spread over four floors in this building. Nuptials are on seven. We make shows about wedding cakes, celebrity weddings, big-budget weddings, and surprise proposals. I like to think of us as a love factory. Anything involving mud, trucks, and fried food is on floors eight and nine. Floor ten is our documentary division.
I sometimes feel like the folks on the tenth floor have a holier-than-thou attitude. I can feel it when we ride the elevator together. It’s as if “telling the truth” gives them a license to be pompous.
But I think if there were a hierarchy, our shows would be on top. True love should be valued way above documentaries. Though last year, they made a film called Life Is No Beach about the tense relationship between pelicans and egrets that I did find compelling.
The only possible downside to working on our floor is it could skew your expectations just a tad. You know, make you feel deflated when wildly romantic things don’t happen to you at the market.
Like in Episode #517, Dominic and Sarah. They were checking each other out while in line to check their luggage at JFK. He was hoping she would be on his flight but knew the odds were slim. She could’ve been going nearly anywhere in the world. He refused to let her get away. So he walked right up to her and handed her a note he’d written on the back of a baggage tag.
If you’re not on my flight, will you still be in my life?
Four months later, he was proposing to her on our show.
“What happened? Why didn’t that idiot say yes?” Bianca calls out as I walk in the door. Bianca was recently promoted to senior producer, though I’ve been here way longer than she has.
She always takes a seat right next to our boss, Edith, who’s thankfully distracted at the moment with her cell phone. Sitting around the hip, metallic table are the junior producers, editors, and coordinators. Standing along the walls like vultures waiting for someone to die (or call in sick) so they can nab a seat, are the production assistants and interns. Thankfully, my lead editor Nina always has my back, so I take the seat she’s been saving for me at the table.
Edith hadn’t sounded too upset when I called her from the park yesterday, but then again, I was strategically standing near the swans being loaded onto a pickup truck. There was so much hissing and honking, it drowned out most of my explanation.
“I have no idea” spills out before I have a chance to think.
Bianca looks confused. “What do you mean? Didn’t you ask her?”
Edith looks up from her phone.
“Why didn’t you just get her to fake it for the cameras? That’s what I would have done.” Bianca’s long red hair bounces in perfect waves as she speaks. “I would have lied to her and told her the contract she signed legally bound her to finish the taping. I would have forced her to just nod, put the ring on, and be done with it. Who cares if they don’t get married in real life? Why didn’t you just make her say yes for the show?”
I imagine Bianca dragging Maria back to the fountain and forcing her to say yes to Jorge against her will. Maria would have nodded and cried. Jorge would have cried too, and their emotions would have been real enough for the viewers at home. The orchestra would have played, the children would have sung, and the swans would have landed in the rosé-flowing fountain. And the season premiere episode would have been saved. I’m pretty sure Bianca sold her soul for the shiny Emmy on her desk.
I consider saying the truth. But then, “I let her run away because I felt bad and wanted to give them their privacy” sounds like the most non–reality show producer thing to say right now. Maybe they give Emmys for Most Spineless Producer?
“They won’t return my calls,” I say, sounding convincingly disappointed. Because I am disappointed. Through the years, there’ve been plenty of couples I thought should not be getting married, but Maria and Jorge were not one of them. And frankly, it’s annoying Maria would dismiss Jorge like that. I use my frustration to convey an angry vibe. “And ugh.” I slam my fist on the table. “I’m so upset about it.”
“Ana, we should…” Edith takes extra-long pauses in the middle of her sentences, so you never know if she’s going to say something good or bad until she’s done, causing you to stress out either way. Right now I’m filling in her pause with “fire you and get a real producer.”
“…find a way to use the material you shot.”
“Top Ten Most Embarrassing Proposals,” Bianca spits out coldly.
“Yes, perfect. Write up a pitch for that, Ana.”
I nod at Edith.
“All right, people, pitch time. We still haven’t heard if Marry Me [extra-long pause and critical look in my direction] will get another season. Who [mini pause] wants to go first?”
I’m ready to develop my own show. Something special like Marry Me but with more depth and meaning. Not that there’s anything wrong with a show that culminates in a surprise marriage proposal. I just want to create something a little more life-altering. Some people would say marriage should fit that bill, but the couples on our show would eventually get engaged anyway. Though, if you ask me, not all of them should.
I want to make moments that help change the path of someone’s life, not just throw a bunch of sopranos and swans at one that was going to happen with or without me.
I’ve been working on an idea I was planning to pitch today, but after Maria and Jorge’s failed proposal, I’m not feeling my best. My freshly washed jeans are extra tight, and my hair is looking like one big flyaway. Overall confidence is about negative 6%.
“I’ve got two proposals.” Bianca delivers pitches with gusto. Like she’s doing us all a favor by telling us about them.
Marry me, You Fool! was Edith’s creation, so for the past eight years I’ve worked on a hit show that wasn’t my idea while Bianca has created two successful series since she started here. Nothing would be more rewarding than seeing my name at the end of a show with a created by credit.
“Mobster Brides. Imagine the potential scenes. Shopping for the gaudiest wedding dress, family feuds over seating arrangements, the bride’s father is in prison so she has to walk down the aisle with her uncle, but wait, her uncle’s gone missing on the wedding day, so we have an exciting crosstown manhunt trying to find him as the clock is ticking at the church.”
“That is…”
…a ridiculously terrible idea.
“…fresh!”
Fresh? There is absolutely nothing fresh about mobsters or their wives. But I figure I should just keep that to myself right now because of my failed attempt to get two non-mobsters engaged.
“Great! My second idea is about women getting intensive plastic surgery before their wedding day. Nose, chin, boobs, complete makeovers to look the way they always wanted to look on their wedding day…like someone else! The goal is for the groom not to be able to recognize his bride as she walks down the aisle.”
“Oooh, I’d watch that!” my editor Nina shouts out. I give her a look that says, Et tu, Nina? But she only shrugs.
Bianca looks so satisfied with herself.
“Love it. Get me budgets for both shows, ASAP. Anyone [medium-size pause] else?” Edith looks around the room.
I consider my options. I could take these color printouts back to my office and save my pitch for next month or…I could redeem myself. So I sit up a little taller and slowly scan the room.
“Um, I’ve got something,” I say and begin to pass the documents around the room.
“Okay. So. This show would be called What We Did with Our Wedding Budget or maybe something…shorter. Um…the idea is that we take wealthy couples who are about to spend a lot of money on their wedding and put them in situations so they see what they could be doing with all that money instead. For example, bringing running water to an impoverished village in Ecuador or building a school for orphans in Myanmar.”
The room is silent.
“It’s like, um…a fish-out-of-water type show and they learn lessons and…” I can’t remember how I wanted to finish that sentence. My jeans are squeezing my midsection, and I’m parched.
“So…once they’ve spent time in those places…with the orphans and locals, they have to decide whether they still want to go ahead and have the big, expensive wedding or donate the money to that community instead. Obviously, they’d always choose to do the right thing. And when they get home, they have a quick, albeit extremely meaningful wedding at City Hall.”
I hear people shuffling around in their seats. I look up, and Bianca is admiring her nails.
“So let me get this straight.” Edith holds up my printout like it’s a dirty diaper. “This picture of a sweaty couple posing with shovels in what is clearly [long pause] the middle of nowhere, they’re engaged?”
“Yes.”
“And what are they doing?”
“Digging up toilets for a remote community in the Dominican Republic,” I say, losing some steam.
“Toilets?”
“Yes. Well, I think it’s actually more of an outhouse.”
“So instead of planning a gorgeous wedding and exchanging their vows in front of their family and friends [unsettlingly long pause] in some divine and exotic location, viewers at home get to watch this couple dig [mini yet still extremely insulting pause] toilets?”
On the outside you can’t tell, but emotionally, I sink deeper into my chair.
“Oh wait.” Thankfully, I’ve remembered my favorite part about the idea. “The best part is that the couple will be even closer after what they’ve experienced together. The difficult circumstances will push them past their comfort zones, and they’ll have to overcome any relationship issues they have with each other and—”
“They’ll end up breaking up,” Bianca cuts me off.
“Well, yes, I guess that’s possible. But I mean, that would be a good thing, right? If they weren’t meant to be together, that’s a happy ending too. Isn’t it?”
* * *
When the meeting is over I walk away quickly to avoid any further feedback on my show idea, but Edith calls out to me before I reach the door.
“Ana, since you no longer have a premiere episode [painfully long pause] to edit, Nina will be working with Bianca.” Oh crap. Bianca pops up out of nowhere.
“Aaaand, Ana, it would be best if Nina just stayed with me for the next couple of months and helped me finish the new pilots.”
“That’s a great idea, Bianca [mini pause], whatever you need,” Edith says, making Bianca smile.
I’m losing Nina? My favorite editor? We’re the dream team. We have a system. We have our own language. And we’re the perfect representation of our viewers because we’re both single women in our thirties.
“Wait, who will I work with?”
“We’ll sort it out. Once you [bitter, long pause] find a new premiere episode, we’ll move people around.”
I’ve lost the best editor in the world. I’ve lost the Maria and Jorge episode. And even I didn’t like my pitch.
An uplifting, romantic song spills out of one of the edit rooms as I walk down the long hallway. If I were editing this moment, I would replace it with a more appropriately depressing tune. Maybe some jazz. Deep, dark horns. As I step inside my edit room, Nina’s walking out.
