Tune in Tomorrow, page 5
Starr glanced down the nondescript hallway, back in the direction they had come. She wondered where the exit was. What had seemed weird and fun a moment ago had turned weird all the way through. But she had few options. She had no job and no prospects, unless you counted finding another diner to bind up utensils in. Practically no money in the bank. Rent was due. And beyond all those mundane elements, she was going to be twenty-seven later this year and was spending her life pounding on the door of an industry that didn’t seem to want to let her in. Lately, she’d begun her wine-ding down time after a long diner shift earlier and earlier. It wouldn’t be long until the off-ramp reading ‘Mama’s Life’ would come up to greet her.
You need this, she thought, the image of a red-feathered dragon handing her water jumping to mind. Behind that, a plant speaking. She unclenched her fists and glanced up to find a sweet, if slightly off-kilter guy in glasses telling her he was a fan of her work.
“Why me?” she asked in a small voice.
“Oh, Starr Weatherby,” said Jason. “You are an incredible performer! You are going to help us save this show!”
She thought for a moment. “That’s not the same as calling me a great actor.”
“Well,” he admitted. “Nobody’s perfect.”
Chapter 6
Reach for the Starrs
Being Fiona Ballantine was no easy task.
Fortunately, she had a great deal of assistance.
Reclining in her zero-gravity chair—rendered as such because five silent brownie helpers were holding it aloft—Fiona focused on her first, most difficult task of any morning: complete relaxation. It took concentration to summon the energy of one Lady Valéncia Marlborough, and she required absolute serenity.
Come, Valéncia, she urged in her mind. Let us be one again.
Valéncia, the bitch, was being elusive.
One of the five brownies—Fiona thought of them as Who, What, Where, Why and I Don’t Know—twitched its nose and stifled a sneeze.
“Do that again, Who, and I’ll volunteer you to be my tea this afternoon,” Fiona hissed.
The brownie stood bolt upright. ‘Who’ wasn’t its name, of course; Fiona rarely kept track of the brownies’ absurd names. That was a job for her beloved Bookender Riverbend.
Speaking of which: “Bookender! Bookender!”
Another brownie, perched on a stack of books piled on an office chair, hopped away from the Underwood typewriter on Fiona’s roll top desk. He was nattily attired in a tweed vest that discreetly covered the gentle mound of his belly, short flannel trousers and a white dress shirt with French cuffs.
“Morning, Ms. Fiona.” Bookender slid a pair of reading glasses to the top of his nearly hairless head. “Do you wish tea?”
“I wish to hear my schedule. I feel a headache coming on and I must understand how to best make use of it.”
“Astute planning, Ms. Fiona,” he nodded. “You were due to block scenes sixteen minutes ago.”
“Let me guess: blocking hasn’t actually started.” Walking through scenes before shooting was expected in traditional productions, but Fiona found it a colossal waste of time. So many aspects of this show were creaky and old-fashioned. This was a reality show. Spontaneity was critical. Bad enough that they had to follow scripts. Besides, the cameradryads were trained to stay on the action no matter what happened, so why was blocking still part of the routine?
“No, indeed,” Bookender was assuring her. “Mr. Cris has not yet appeared in his directing chair.”
Bookender was always well-informed, which was one reason Fiona was always on top of things. But she didn’t need Bookender to understand what was delaying their director; it came with a pair of long, gazelle-like legs, shining auburn hair and was called Dakota Gardener: the human reporter assigned to cover Tune in Tomorrow for WaterWorlds magazine. As a pombero, Cris was naturally incorrigible with the ladies, and he and Dakota had been an item for several months. It was against Seelie executive policy, but the Seelie never visited the set, so they carried on as if it wasn’t a firing (in Dakota’s case), exiling (in Cris’) offense. The whole matter was something of an open secret around set, but no one discussed it. No one wanted to risk the wrath of a pombero.
In any case, Fiona knew to be fashionably late on the days Cris directed. She closed her eyes and opened her mind to Valéncia as another brownie—Because, she’d named it—applied cucumber slices marinated in the tearful remains of dissolved squonk to her lids. The brownie then hurried to the opposite end of Fiona’s lean body and lotioned up his hands for her daily foot massage. Meanwhile, a seventh brownie—I Don’t Give A Darn—put the finishing touches of Nightshade Purple polish on her extended, pointed nails. Once dry, the color would swirl and shift like a living Van Gogh painting.
Valéncia was still not responding. This was doubly irritating because Fiona knew Valéncia wasn’t real. The character she had been playing for so many decades had become an alter ego, then her primary ego, and now she had a hard time distinguishing between Fiona, the idealistic ‘it’ girl model from over a century ago, and the high-handed, diamond-hard snob she’d been playing all this time. Perhaps they simply had become one another and summoning her was no longer necessary.
But Fiona wanted to think there was still some divide between them. In any case, her alter ego behaved like a muse who had to be coaxed awake for Fiona to do her best work. Giving up for the moment, she waved a not-yet-dry hand. “Continue, Bookender.”
“Yes, miss.”
Fiona didn’t care for many of the mythics on the show, but she treasured Bookender. He kept her in line and organized. He held her secrets. He’d been indispensable for nearly a century, one of her earliest and best Endless Awards. In a moment of weakness thirteen years ago she’d sworn to release him from his position when they reached their centennial together. Now that it was nearing, Fiona had regrets.
“The schedule has been re-adjusted as such, due to delays,” he continued in a scratchy, officious tone. “Hairies and makeup fairies at eight. Breakfast at half past eight. Blocking immediately afterward. Filming, theoretically, from eleven to one. Lunch, then further filming—”
“Ach!” Fiona twitched, lifting a cucumber from one eye. “Your hands are freezing, Because!”
The brownie released Fiona’s bare foot and stared at the floor. Fiona rolled her eyes. Brownies were so much effort sometimes. They were the biggest fans of the show, which made them so easily pushed around. For God’s sake, they accepted wages in glitter. They’d probably have accepted wages in leftover table scraps, but crafting glitter was one of Fiona’s award talents, so glitter it was. Alas, few had two brain cells to rub together. But Fiona had a hard time holding a grudge with creatures who had mastered the use of puppy-dog eyes. “I forgive you,” she said at last. “Try again when you are prepared.”
She leaned back and replaced the cucumbers.
“Filming will continue until suppertime, and the Gate is expected at 7:03 this evening,” Bookender continued.
Bookender always informed Fiona about this last bit, though she never needed reminding of Gate times. F. Ballantine, LLC, had owned an apartment on East 65th Street and Lexington for half a century, but its owner had spent only two nights there. She would, as per usual, be sleeping on her dressing room’s grey Chesterfield couch. It was the only place she could get quality sleep these days.
The Chesterfield was the most magnificent piece in Fiona’s dressing room, a space that expanded two square feet with each additional year she appeared on the show. Sixty-five years ago, she had received the additional Endless prize of a room glamour, and with the flip of a switch her drab windowless box could transform into a proper Gilded Age lady’s parlor. But she liked having real items that required no glamour. Along with the Chesterfield the room had a permanent cherrywood rolltop desk with the typewriter—largely employed for Bookender’s transcriptions—balloon-backed chairs, deep cushioned seats and a round glass coffee table. The showpiece, however, stood against the far wall: an illuminated awards case, containing all one hundred and twenty-eight of her Endless Statues.
Warmed, lotioned hands kneaded the balls of her feet and she sighed deeply. At last, she could return to finding Valéncia. It should have been easy: she’d been playing Lady Marlborough for going on one hundred and eighteen years, ever since she’d been hired at Tune in Tomorrow. She knew Valéncia like a twin—or rather, a twin that had consumed its weaker sister while in utero. Nobody understood Valéncia like she did, including that logorrheic wordcat Emma, and anyone who suggested otherwise got the blunt end of Fiona’s lion’s head cane.
Valéncia, thought Fiona, but nothing came. She was swimming in her empty mind, a hole in which there was no light, as the character who was essentially herself receded. What would happen if she didn’t come back? Who was Fiona then? Would she be as adrift as poor Nico? As sour and secretive as Nora? Only Charlie seemed to have mastered the tightrope of both being, and not becoming, his own character.
“Ms. Fiona?”
“What is it now, Bookender?”
“There is one more thing.”
Fiona did not answer.
“I am most abjectly sorry to inform you that we will be having a visitor.”
“Yes, yes,” she sighed. “Over breakfast.”
“Er,” said Bookender.
Fiona had brought this situation on herself, but that did not make her any less cranky about it. She’d been invited to an audition yesterday, but Fiona Ballantine did not attend auditions. Certainly, she did not attend them on the other side of the Veil. Those who desired entry on Tune in Tomorrow would come to her—and she had a proud record of sending them scampering. The best time she had achieved between greeting and their terrified departure was six minutes, forty-two seconds.
For thirty years, she’d held new hires at bay in this fashion. It was the only way to avoid admitting another… thief. Yet Jason felt it necessary to keep trying. He’d dropped by her dressing room yesterday, peering over his glasses. “You are going to have to carve out time to meet this new one,” he’d said. “Furthermore, you must give her your OK.”
“I beg your pardon?” Fiona had gestured with her hairbrush. “Last I checked, I still have the right to say ‘no.’”
His horns had grown an inch and his tail had twitched. “That you do. But you might learn that we do, too.”
Fiona had gulped air like a fish thrown on land. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” She’d never seen Jason so severe. He was almost worth listening to. “One stomp of these hooves and you lose brownie privileges.”
“Hmph. Even you don’t have the power to take away my Bookender.”
Jason had shaken his head. “No, I suppose not. But we can reassign all the others. And the extras you enjoy that have nothing to do with your prizes can be… withheld.” His fine features had drooped with unhappiness. “I adore you, darling, but we are out of options. I have curated this one especially. We must expand our ranks. You cannot hold a grudge forever.”
Fiona’s chin had wobbled and her eyes filled but did not spill over. In her most imperious, Valéncia-sized voice, she had nodded. “I will try. For you, my funny faun.”
Jason had rocked back and forth on his oversized heels, embarrassed. “There’s a good mortal. I knew we could come to an accommodation.”
As soon as the door had closed behind him, Fiona summoned Nico. “Wicked creatures,” she’d spat. “Look at what they’re making me do!”
“There, there.” He’d patted her shoulder. “We’ll find another way.”
“Er,” said Bookender again now. Fiona had her eyes closed beneath the squonk-soaked cucumbers, but she knew he was tugging at the collar of his crisp white shirt.
“Spit it out, Bookender.”
“That timetable has… shifted, I have only now learned.”
“To when?” A rumble began in the back of Fiona’s throat like warning vibrations before an earthquake.
“To now, Ms. Fiona.”
Fiona sat up so fast her cucumber slices went flying. They smacked wetly against the wall and hung there a moment, then slid to the ground. “Now?”
Someone knocked at the door.
Fiona turned her Expression of Deepest Ire on Bookender for the first time in eight years and two months, and the brownie gulped. “Crimson alert!” he shouted, panicking.
Chaos ensued.
Spurred by the emergency cry, Because and I Don’t Give A Darn fled. Who, What, Where, Why and I Don’t Know released the chair they’d been holding up, which landed hard on the ground and dumped Fiona out onto the tiled floor. They scuttled through the brownie door at the back of the room.
Furious, Fiona tried righting herself, slipping on her lotioned feet, and careened toward the Chesterfield couch with an outraged screech. She nearly arrested her fall by latching on to a glowing arc lamp—but it wobbled, then bowed beneath her weight. Fiona flailed with the lamp in an awkward tango for a full second before it resisted and clocked her in the side of her head. Then she was falling for real this time, expecting to break her neck on the floor. It was all this newcomer’s fault. And Jason’s, that pointy-headed, feral—
She jerked in mid-air, inches from the floor. Bookender was standing on her Chesterfield, holding her aloft by the stretchy waistband of her pants, which now pinched abominably in her posterior. Bookender always knew the right thing to do. And like all brownies, he was much stronger than he looked.
She could never let him go.
“Set me down!” she glared. He released her into the cushions. “Get me a towel. Delay the intruders. And get your shoes off my Chesterfield!”
Bookender leaped to the floor, straightening his shirt and adjusting the red-hair cufflinks. He bowed once and Fiona would have sworn he wore a small, satisfied smile on that wonderfully gruesome face. “Anything for Ms. Fiona.”
A second, firmer knock came a moment later. While Fiona ducked behind a privacy screen, Bookender opened the door.
“Gosh,” Fiona heard a bright, quavering voice. “I’d thought Fiona would be… taller.”
Behind the screen, Fiona rolled her eyes while toweling off her face and feet.
“I am not Herself,” said her assistant. “I am Bookender Riverbend. Ms. Fiona has been expecting you.”
“Go ahead,” Jason urged. “I’ll wait outside. She won’t bite.”
No promises, Fiona gritted her teeth.
The door closed.
Throughout the years, she had endured a parade of ingénues. Callow so-called adults who thought ‘stage left’ meant the theatrical troupe had left town. Whose training consisted of a high school musical about Peter Rabbit in which they had played Supporting Carrot. Who had amassed none of the experience needed to inhabit a character. Some newcomer being handed a spotlight she did not deserve left a metallic taste in Fiona’s mouth.
But since the thief’s abrupt exit, newcomers had become intolerable to Fiona. She had taken care of the potential scandalous mess uprooted by the thief and in return The Powers That Be rewarded her with the ability to control the acquisition of newcomers. Holding that line for thirty years had not been easy—though occasionally, it had been fun.
And, in the end, self-defeating. Fiona was not delusional: a small crumbling here, walls disappearing there, spells failing, infrastructure malfunctioning—the show was in decline. Tune in Tomorrow was literally buoyed by its viewers—‘eyeballs’ in mythic-speak—like a champion hoisted above a crowd. Without that crowd, the show would collapse. It might even be cancelled. If that happened, Fiona would truly be in dire straits.
Nevertheless, newcomers must match her exacting standards and she would not let the less-than-worthy through that Gate. Clearly, Jason had sent in another dummy. So how to mollify him while still keeping the show on course? Nico was already in play, but she couldn’t rely on a single-fronted attack.
“Entrez s’il vous plait, darling,” Fiona called out, still hidden. As intended, her voice sounded like a knife drawn across whetstone. “Are we just girls in here now?”
“Well—ah—” A pause.
“Speak up, child!” Fiona peered through a crack in the screen. The girl was gesturing at Bookender, who had returned to his paperwork at the desk. “He does not count.” Fiona fitted on a pair of wide-legged white silk pants and a flowing, kitsune-fur trimmed robe, knotting it at the waist. “Are we alone?”
“Yes, ma’am!” The voice was beautifully projected, an ideal blend of terror and assertiveness. “I’m honored to meet the Grand Dame of the show, ma’am!”
That was fit and proper. Perhaps there was hope for this one yet. Fiona swanned around the privacy screen and patted her jet-black hair. There wasn’t a hint of grey in it. She adored this hairstyle and had worn it since the 1970s: cropped at the nape, thickening toward the crown, a few gentle curls sent over her head like a wave.
“I am Fiona Ballantine.” She gave the girl a long, studied look. On the short side, plump. Top pulled tightly over her chest, skirt an unfortunate shade of maroon. Seemed like a teenager yet was likely in her twenties. They had no one on the show younger than age eighteen by design, but pinpointing age was a challenge for Fiona after all these years. “I believe you are honored to meet me.”
The young woman met Fiona’s gaze with a steady, unblinking blue-eyed reply and introduced herself. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.
“Oh?”
An awkward pause. “Just that—you’re the—” Starr was clearly choosing her words carefully, which told Fiona everything she needed to know about what others had been pouring in her ear. “The heart and soul of this production. And I’ve also heard you’re the greatest actor that ever lived.”
Fiona warmed a few degrees. “Ah, dear Nico. The best PR agent ever.” Fiona extended an arm, gold jewelry jangling. “Take a seat, girl. You seem both pale and flushed.”
Starr touched her cheeks as she sat on the Chesterfield and leaned back. She almost sank into its overstuffed depths, feet barely touching the floor. “I’m fine, Ms.—”
