Semi-Scripted: A Wanderlove Novel Read online

  “We need to replace the Facts of Life parody.” Her short brown hair stood up in fourteen different directions, and the circles under her eyes said she hadn’t slept in days. “Couldn’t get it past the network with James dropping the f-bomb every ten seconds.”

  “What do you need?” Evan asked.

  “Another audience piece. Did Betty make it in today?”

  “Yep.” The snarky old woman was there every day, with her crinkled BIRTHDAY GIRL! balloon tied to her walker.

  “Good. Grab her and one more. Not the giant baby this time. Please.”

  “Got it.”

  “I mean it, Evan. Not the baby.”

  “Don’t worry,” Evan told her. “I don’t think that guy has washed his diaper in a month. Not going near him.” But as he jogged out of the green room, he knew exactly where he was going. To the girl who’d cussed out the peacock on the front lawn. She was one of the only people in the audience not wearing a costume. And it was her birthday.

  And she was hot.

  He wound through the audience, stepping over outstretched legs and ignoring the smell of people who’d spent hours waiting—in hot costumes—in the late afternoon sun. Onstage, James threw the show to a commercial break. On a well-run, highly rated talk show, it would have been impossible to find the girl among the tightly packed house. But So Late was only 70 percent full, and half the audience looked like rejects from a furry convention.

  The girl sat in the second row, eyes narrowed on the set. “They were coming to this show, yes? They must have been coming to this show,” she said to the man beside her.

  “Who?” Evan asked.

  She jolted, sitting up tall with a light crease between her brows. “The ninjas. Are they next?”

  “No. You are.”

  “What?”

  “We need an audience member to play a game, and you’re our lucky contestant. But we have to hurry. The show’s going to start back up in a few minutes.”

  Her face fell into a frown.

  She was going to say no. Maybe the guy beside her would do it. Or worst case scenario, one of those over-excited choir parents near the back. Their shirts would make for eye-gouging TV, but it had to be a better option than Ted the Man Baby.

  “What do I need to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s, uh, kind of last-minute.” Everything they did was last-minute. “But you’ll get to go backstage. That’s where the ninjas are.”

  She sprang from her seat as the lights dimmed. From across the room, he waved to Betty and the twins. By now, they knew their cue to shuffle their grandma backstage. The old woman had been a participant in every audience game the show had done in the last month. At first, she’d seemed reluctant and even a bit disgusted by James’s onscreen persona. But with time and charm, the host wore her down. Now, Betty never missed a chance to flirt with James onstage.

  Evan led the peacock fighter backstage and left her a few feet outside the green room. “I have to go help the other contestant. She’s, uh, not exactly a spring chicken. Someone will be by to tell you what to do. Her name is Julia. She’s about this tall.” He held a hand to shoulder height. “Short brown hair. Kind of flops in her eyes all the time. Got it?”

  No response.

  He knew this must seem insane and confusing to anyone stepping onto their first television set, but it would take more time than he had to sort it all out. “So you’re good?” he asked.

  “Gracias a dios,” she whispered.

  Evan followed her gaze through the open door of the green room, where Tim and Tony were engaged in some sort of one-handed push-up competition. “Okay, good luck then.”

  Several minutes later, he found himself in a darkened hall, standing in front of one of the backstage monitors. There were a hundred things left to do before the taping was done, but he couldn’t resist a quick peek at the screens. The girl stood on James’s left side and Betty—with her birthday balloon—stood on the right. Both were dressed as Uncle Sam.

  Uncle Sam from the early 1970s.

  Onscreen, James put on his pipe-and-smoking-jacket accent. “Betty, I swear you’re getting younger every day.”

  “It’s my birthday, you know.” She slowly lifted one hand from the walker and straightened her long white beard.

  “You don’t say.” James looked directly at the camera, sharing the secret of Betty’s daily birthdays with the home audience.

  At this point, Evan suspected the home audience equaled the three people watching the show live and the other two recording it on their DVRs.

  “And I understand we have another birthday girl in the studio. What’s your name and how old are you today?” James asked.

  The girl grinned and bounced on her toes. She was gorgeous, even in those ridiculous red and white striped bell-bottoms. “Marisol. I’m twenty-three.”

  “She’s practically a baby,” Betty said. The thin skin on her cheeks pinked and her blue eyes narrowed.

  “Now, Betty. You’re still my number one girl. Don’t worry.” James patted her arm. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Our guests tonight are from the not-quite-a-hit television show Patriot Ninja Fighter.”

  Marisol squealed. The studio audience laughed.

  Maybe for the first time all night. A burst of self-congratulatory hot air filled Evan’s chest.

  “I take it you’re a fan?” James asked.

  She nodded.

  “Well, you’re in luck.” Even the host couldn’t keep a straight face in the midst of her excitement. “Because they’re going to help us play a game we call ‘Uncle Sam’. That’s it?” he asked to someone offscreen. “We couldn’t come up with a better title? Fine then. Welcome Tim and Tony.”

  The muscle men strutted onstage, and the shorter of the two stood next to Marisol. She wasted no time in running her fingers up his arm. A ripple of laughter ran through the audience, growing louder and louder as she hammed it up. First, the petite Uncle Sam squeezed the guy’s right bicep. Then the left, letting her mouth fall wide open.

  “All right, all right,” James said. “Any more of that and I’m going to have to charge you.”

  The audience rippled again. Their laughter echoed from the studio half a second before Evan heard it through the monitors.

  “So what we’re going to do is…” James’s voice rolled on, explaining the rules.

  Marisol and Betty would run to the other side of the stage, down a glass of “whiskey”—which was actually iced tea—run back, and concoct a replica of the Statue of Liberty out of all the grape-flavored bubblegum they could cram in their mouths. All in under three minutes. At the end, the wannabe ninjas would pick a winning sculpture.

  Evan sighed. He’d seen this idea when he’d cleaned up the writers’ room that morning. Someone—he suspected Julia—had crossed it off a list of ideas and scrawled a giant NO across the top.

  On the monitor, Betty slammed her walker against the faux-hardwood, like a horse pawing at the ground before a race. But Marisol’s smile slid from her face as she looked back and forth between James and the woman.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” James said. “How unfair it is to put you up against someone like Betty, with all her age and experience and grit.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “She’s got a liver like Fort Knox, and she won’t hesitate to knock you down with her walker.”

  More laughter. Not the fake “ha-ha-has” the warm-up comedian forced out of the audience with threats and promises of candy. Real laughter.

  Betty took off, not bothering to wait for a start.

  “Well, go on.” James pushed Marisol forward. “Someone in the audience has got a stopwatch, right?”

  Evan chuckled as Marisol jogged toward the end of the stage. A muzak version of “American Pie” played over the PA system while she ran.

  “Bet-ty. Bet-ty. Bet-ty.” The woman slammed her walker against the stage as the crowd roared their usual chant. Not only did Betty appear in every conceivable audi
ence game, but she won them all too. Who was going to take on an eighty-something woman who genuinely believed every day was her birthday?

  “Mar-i-sol. Mar-i-sol. Mar-i-sol.” A few voices rang out in the crowd.

  That split-second decision to offer her tickets was paying off in spades. Super funny, really attractive spades.

  “Evan?” A buzz of static followed the voice in his earpiece. “Someone puked in the holding area. Clean it up before we let the audience out.”

  • • •

  The sugary, purple gum kept getting stuck in her beard, and eventually Marisol tugged the scratchy fake hair down around her neck like a tie. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but this definitely qualified as her weirdest birthday to date.

  “Time. Time,” James January called out. “I don’t know how long it’s been, but I’m going to say long enough. When we get back, we’ll see which one of these fine young women has created a true fucking masterpiece. Sorry, I mean, bleeping masterpiece. If I just say bleeping, will you still put the bleeps over the audio?” The host deadpanned into the camera, and the lights went dim.

  “Stay here for a minute.” James disappeared behind a scarlet curtain.

  “Commercials,” Betty added. “That’s when he goes off and yells at everybody backstage.”

  “Good to know,” Marisol said.

  “Now I’m just going to warn you, I’ve got this thing in the bag. They bring me up on my birthday every year. And every year I win a prize. I think the birthday gods must be smiling on me.”

  Marisol bit her lip, trying—and mostly failing—to keep a straight face. “I appreciate the warning.”

  A girl dressed in head-to-toe black appeared behind Betty with a chair. On the other edge of the stage, the guy who’d given her the wristband took both of the purple, slobbery blobs to James’s desk. A man with giant headphones ran toward a camera. Someone else rushed the stage to refill a mug of water on the desk.

  This is what happens during commercial breaks?

  James reappeared beside her, and the lights came up another degree. “Welcome back. Now let’s bring out our celebrity judges. Tim and Tony from Patriot Ninja Fighter!”

  They strode out on stage, more shiny and oily than before. For a brief moment, Marisol wondered what she’d have to do to get a job as an official ninja greaser. She knew she’d never leave nursing behind, but a second occupation wasn’t out of the question.

  “Tim and Tony, why don’t you take a look at our replicas?” James asked. He pointed to the desk. Beside Marisol’s sticky mess was a perfect replica of the Statute of Liberty. It stood nearly three feet high, and an embossed card below it said “Betty” in flowing script.

  Clearly, someone had purchased a statue and spray-painted it purple. And it wasn’t Betty.

  This is why she always wins.

  “Wait a minute.” Betty clomped her walker against the floor. “What’s the prize? You didn’t tell us the prize.”

  “Hey, Betty. Let’s not get greedy here,” James said. “Who’s to say you’re going to win? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you know.”

  Marisol couldn’t hold in her laughter any more. How was this happening? How was she standing on the stage of a show she’d never heard of, between an elderly woman and an Englishman, while they judged her ability to recreate the Statue of Liberty out of bubblegum? Suddenly, her face appeared on the overhead screen, and the entire audience laughed along with her.

  “The winner gets dinner for two at a restaurant of her choice.” James fell back into the stage whisper. “As long as it’s Wonton Queen or the food court across the street at the farmer’s market. And the loser has to grease down these two before the next segment.” He jerked his head toward the celebrity judges.

  “I forfeit. I forfeit.” Betty hoisted herself up. “I want to grease those fellas. You got plenty of time to sow your Quaker Oats, honey.” She hefted the walker toward Tim and Tony.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  The audience stared in stunned silence. Across the stage, the ninjas wore identical expressions of mildly contained horror.

  “Looks like we have a winner, folks.” Even James was having a hard time keeping a straight face, and he lifted Marisol’s arm in victory. “I think we could all use a commercial break.”

  The theme music played over the speakers, and the lights dimmed once again. The girl in black scurried onstage and carted away the sculptures. The twins wrestled their grandmother away from Tim and Tony. The wristband guy reappeared with a stack of papers for James.

  “Do I go back to my seat now?” Marisol asked.

  “Just a second,” Wristband Guy said. “Good job, by the way.”

  “This’ll work,” James said. “Keep her backstage, okay?” He vanished behind the curtain.

  “Me?” she asked. “Keep me backstage?”

  Wristband Guy brushed a blond curl from his forehead. “Yeah.” He pulled back the curtain and she followed. “James wants to bring you back on. Take off your clothes though. I mean, the costume. The costume. Shit.” He pressed a button on his earpiece. “Nobody throw away the gum. We need the gum.”

  Then he was gone.

  Marisol pretended not to be completely lost as the prop girl stripped off her costume. Onstage, James explained to the audience that he was about to tape a segment for tomorrow night’s show. “I know, I know,” he said. “You want to think the magic of late-night television happens in real time. Sorry, folks.”

  A few chuckles from the audience. The theme song played again, and James brought back his show voice. “You may remember tonight’s first guest, well, from last night’s show.”

  The prop girl gave her a nudge. “That’s you.”

  Marisol stepped on stage. She caught a glimpse of herself in the monitor and saw the confusion written in her face. The audience laughed, and the sound wore away the last of the stress she’d been carrying. For the first time in weeks, Marisol felt like she could breathe.

  Might as well end this birthday with a bang.

  “Welcome back, Marisol.” James sat at his desk and gestured toward the beige armchair beside him.

  She sat and crossed her ankles. “Thank you.”

  “Now the seven of you who watched last night’s show saw what happened. But for the rest of you, well, I’ll let our guest tell you what happened.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded.

  “They made me dress up in this itchy beard and red, white, and blue hippie pants. And a big hat.” She held her hand a foot above her head.

  “Wait? Hippie pants?”

  She knew there was a better English word, but here among the lights and laughter and adrenaline, it wasn’t coming. “Like the hippies. You know, peace and love.”

  “Ah, of course. Hippie pants. I’m not always down with the American slang. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not American.” Stage whisper again.

  “Me either,” she whispered back.

  “Really? Why are you here then? Vacation? Visiting family? Taking a chance on the American dream?”

  “A conference.”

  “That’s no fun. Next time say you’re an international spy or something, yeah?” He winked at the camera. “Because nothing could go wrong with that plan, right?”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “So after you put on the outfit…”

  She did her best to explain the gum building and the ninjas and Betty’s eventual forfeit.

  “And where did you go for dinner?” James asked.

  “Dinner?”

  “With your gift certificate.” He gave her an exaggerated wink.

  “Oh.” She couldn’t quite remember the name of the place he’d mentioned. “To the Wobbly Queen?”

  It was clear he was trying not to laugh, and just watching him made Marisol lose it. “That’s not the name, is it?” she asked.

  “It is now. Who did you take with you to the Wobbly Queen?” He leaned in. Marisol could see the lines in h
is makeup, marked by sweat and laughter. Suddenly, she wanted to go along with everything he said. To see how far they could take this ridiculous bit. To see how many laughs they could get.

  “I wanted to take the ninja fighters, but”—now she mimicked the host’s stage whisper—“they were busy.” She lowered her voice a half octave. “Betty.”

  James grinned, and the audience cheered. A few whistles in the back. Marisol sat up taller.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you’re wearing the same clothes today as yesterday. Must have been some date.” He crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair.

  “No. It was terrible.”

  “Terrible? How? Does this person have a name? Was it so bad you want to call him out on national television?”

  For three infinite seconds, Marisol’s brain blanked. She’d had plenty of terrible dates in her life, but she couldn’t actually use those poor guys’ names. Instead, she scrambled for a solution, clawing at anything—or anyone—close by. And just when she thought she’d have to roll over and give up the game, her eyes landed on a shadow along the far wall, the dim lights reflecting off one yellow curl.

  “Him.” She pointed.

  The cameraman panned in the direction of her finger, stopping on the fat man in a baby diaper.

  “No!” Marisol laughed. “Him.”

  This time the camera and lights found the right guy. “Evan? Our intern?” James asked. “Let’s bring him out.”

  The audience clapped as cheesy porno music came in over the speakers and Evan lowered himself into the chair beside her. “You’re ridiculous,” he whispered.

  She sat up taller. “Thank you.”

  “Evan, if we’re being honest here, you look like the kind of guy who has no clue what he’s doing with women,” James said.

  Marisol leaned in. Wristband Guy had practically forced her into the audience, and then he’d tossed her onstage. Certainly he could handle a little payback. “Nada. He needs lessons, James.” She sat back in the lumpy armchair, grinning as the rumble of laughter echoed in her ears. “He needs an internship in dating.”