UpHill

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

CHOOSE LOCATION. Lary punches in SELECT ALL. She scrolls down to JOB CATAGORY and highlights ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT & MEDIA. In the slot for ENTER KEY WORDS she fills in TELEVISION PRODUCER.

It’s New Year’s Eve afternoon, two days after the shopping spree with Becks. She’s sprawled on her sofa in her flannel pajamas, her laptop appropriately on her lap. Pizza nibbles on a half-eaten slice of his namesake on the floor. A cigarette burns in a half-empty bowl of corn flakes.

So far thirty-one jobs have shown up. She starts picking through them, feeling a little lighter. There’s bound to be a producer one in there just for her. Let’s see, one in Toronto, three in Chicago, five in New York, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, and Atlanta.

She’s glad she has kept up her Green Card compliments of Randy, her American ex-husband. With renewed enthusiasm, she starts to fill in her resume for a job in California.

Might as well live in a warm climate, she muses. Maybe she could end up working on Gilmore Girls, or one of those CSI shows. Name the killer through a microscopic hair sample found on the inside of the collar of the victim’s cat, the one the murderer had stroked on the way out of the crime scene in a perverse animal lover, woman hater psychological twist.

2005 is looking up. She might even settle for a smaller town, working on a kids’ show, or maybe a Soap. Heaven knows she loves The Young and the Restless. Vic and Nic and their offspring, Vic and Nick, and the other invisible son Vic, name changed to Adam, son of Hope the Blind.

“I wonder if Victor Newman actually is aware he has two children with the same first name,” she says as she sips on her shot glass of Irish Cream.

Should she fill in her name as Hillary or Lary?

“Lary sounds very hip. Very I’m-in-Media, don’t you know? ‘Good morning, Lary. Ready for, like, the Emmys tomorrow, Lary?’ Yeah, that’s like, so amazing. I’m up for, like, two Emmy’s on two different shows.”

She tells the cat, “I must remember once I’m on staff that Under Forties slip in a ‘like’ every chance they get.”

Pizza will be upset by the move. He hates traveling. Maybe the network will pay for a charter. That would be nice. She loves to travel on charters or First Class like she was used to on her show Cooking for Couples. She and Henriette, sipping on their vodka marts, lots of ice, please.

That was, what, three years ago? Gawd, they had some fun. No, four. Four and a half years, actually. It’s been that long since she had any fun. How depressing.

“Maybe I can cheat the time thing a little.”

Lary pours herself some more of the thick, sweet liqueur. In WORK EXPERIENCE she pastes her resume, changing the dates to show that Cooking for Couples was a year ago.

“Hell, it’s going to the States anyway. They’ll never know.”

She starts to fill in EDUCATION. What year did she graduate high school? Nineteen … nineteen … seventy-nine. No, nineteen sixty-nine. That was…

Quickly she takes out a pen and scribbles. Thirty-six years ago! She left high school almost forty freaking years ago and some Under Forty is going to hire her?

Oh, bug off!

An hour later she stands naked in front of her freestanding oval mirror, left over from when she was forty-five and had an amazing body. When she used to run three days a week and do a workout in her loft every other morning.

Lary-in-the-mirror props up her boobs with her palms, sucking in her belly. Eventually reality gets the better of her, and she lets out her breath. Her stomach fills up like a half-empty birthday balloon. Twisting around, she looks at her rear. Might as well do the whole tour de farce.

Oh popcorn, it’s worse than she fears. Two dimpled, sagging vanilla puddings stare at her, what twenty pounds each? When did that happen? She tries to drag them up with her hands. Maybe she could have all that fat sucked out and injected into her face. Don’t they do that nowadays?

She faces the mirror full front again, dropping her arms to her sides. Her boobs bounce like basketballs.

“I don’t need a new bra. I need a shelf.”