On the eve of World War II, there were sixty-four daytime serials broadcast each week.

BORN TO BE WILD

Monday

“Clear! Candy, fix Mary Lisa’s hair. Lou Lou, touch up her lipstick. Jeff, Mr. Dillard wants to speak to you for a minute in the booth.”

Mary Lisa nodded automatically toward the stage manager, a new guy named Todd Bickly who’d been on As the World Turns for ten years and had come over to Born to Be Wild because he’d wanted to see some new faces. He was fortyish, slim, and liked to smile a lot, showing a space between his front teeth that marked him as definitely not an actor. She’d told Detective Vasquez about him, since he was so new, to have him checked out. Mary Lisa really had no clue what to look for, but she didn’t think Todd fit the bill of being some kind of obsessed maniac. He looked more like a friendly computer geek, with his shoulders hunched forward. Not someone you’d meet in a gym.

While Candy was fiddling with Mary Lisa’s hair-it was done up in a high knot on top of her head with a thick rooster tail of hair fanning out of it-Todd said, “Mary Lisa, Mr. Dillard asked me to suggest you try to lighten up your reactions to Jeff in your scenes with him. He wants the audience to really wonder if Sunday is going to jump Damian’s bones, and he’d prefer you not hit the audience over the head with how revolting you think this all is. He said everyone understands revenge, and the audience loves Sunday so much she could kill the entire cast off and they’d be content to watch you play monologues.”

It was clever of Clyde to throw that in, but it didn’t help. She said, “I’m sorry, Todd, that Clyde set you up to give that little speech. The thing is, they’re not going to forgive me, but that isn’t your problem. Tell Clyde I’ll be talking this over with Bernie.” Unless she managed to change it, Sunday was going to have to roll around in bed with Damian within a couple of weeks-probably beginning on a Thursday, the deed well under way by the end of the show on Friday.

Candy patted her shoulder and said, “Good to go again, Mary Lisa, the rooster tail is outrageous.” With a polite nod, Mary Lisa said, “Thank you,” and dashed off the floor over to Bernie Barlow, the head writer. She had to give it one more try.

Bernie looked up, saw her, and rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, you’re here to beg and whine about Sunday not doing the foul deed with Susan’s husband.” He raised his hand. “Stop. You can save it all, Mary Lisa. We decided you’re right. Yeah, we thought it over, but don’t gloat and brag to everyone else, and don’t think this sets some sort of precedent. You should assume it will never happen again on this planet. In fact, in a couple of days you won’t even remember all your whining angst because we’ve come up with an idea so Titanic it turns the show on its head.” He beamed at her. “You’re going off the revenge/sex hook altogether.”

The burst of excitement she felt quickly turned to suspicion. “Hold on here a second, my world is spinning. There’s got to be a catch here. What’s this all about, Bernie? What is this Titanic plan? Are you putting me in a Survivor-type show? Maybe set in Siberia? Having me seduce one of my mother’s lovers instead? Or have you got my pool guy waiting in the wings? Hmm, well, at least he’s cute and tells a good joke.”

“There isn’t a Survivor show. Forget the pool guy, it’s been overdone.”

“But Bernie-”

“Pay attention here, Mary Lisa. This is all on the up-and-up. And don’t worry about Clyde. We’re having a meeting over lunch, we’ll tell him then. But it’s a done deal.” He waved a script in her face. “You’ll know when it’s your time to know. But I like it. Everyone likes it. Clyde will too although he was looking forward to showing off some of your nice skin. You’ll have your script soon. We launch the Titanic on Thursday.” He beamed at her, like Father Christmas taking lumps of coal out of her shoes. Mary Lisa felt the lead cloud flash bright silver over her head, and a grin split her face. She grabbed Bernie’s hand and pumped it up and down, yelling “Yippee! Thank you, Bernie!” And she wasn’t done. She leaped on him. Bernie was a big guy, a good six foot six, a former college basketball player, still pretty fast and agile at forty-five, but he dropped the script when she wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him on both cheeks.

“You’re the best, Bernie, the very best!”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what my wife told me before she dragged me into that pink chapel in Las Vegas.” A camera flashed. “Hey, which one of you clowns took that photo?”

From the corner of her eye Mary Lisa saw a man moving fast toward the big red Exit sign. She recognized Puker Hodges as he slithered out the door. She leaped off Bernie, furious. “I’m going to kill that little worm. You watch me, I’m going to roast him over nice hot coals on my neighbor’s barbeque grill.”

“Was that the paparazzo who’s been tailing you?”

“Yeah.”

Bernie patted her arm, then screamed loud enough to set the chandelier jangling in Sunday Cavendish’s living room set. “Where’s security? Frank, go catch that creep and stomp his camera into the asphalt! Mother Mary and Father Joseph, is anybody minding the fricking store here?”

Mary Lisa said, “Give me Gloria’s cell number. I’m going to call her so she won’t cut your feet off.”

“It wouldn’t be my feet she’d go after,” Bernie said, and sighed. “Well, at least it’s never boring around here. Frank, you yahoo, where are you?”

LOU Lou came over a couple of hours later to fetch her for lunch. Lunch pickings were light in this section of Burbank so both of them usually brought sack lunches. Today Lou Lou had a cold, thick steak sandwich stuffed inside a baguette, smothered in mayonnaise, a super-sized bag of potato chips, and a big plastic bottle of Diet Dr Pepper on the side.

The truly nauseating thing was, Lou Lou wasn’t even a single pound overweight. The good fairy had gifted her with a freak metabolism that burned food even faster than Mary Lisa’s. Not satisfied with that, Lou Lou topped it off with a sincere enjoyment of aerobics, the sweatier the better. Mary Lisa was usually with her, watching Lou Lou smile her way through spin classes as her own eyebrows fell, hair by hair, into the sweat running down her face. On top of that, Mary Lisa had to stay ten pounds below weight, a must since the camera put it right back on. Why, she’d wondered, in this digital age, couldn’t they come up with a camera that took off ten pounds instead of adding it on? It was a male conspiracy, she’d decided, to keep women impossibly skinny and therefore, since they were deprived of the pleasure of eating real live food, tempted to have sex with them instead. Sometimes, Mary Lisa rebelled and ate real food, like a super-sized bag of potato chips, knowing she’d have to run five miles and sweat guilt. She tried not to whine aloud as she opened her plastic carton of salad-half a dozen small beef cubes mixed with lettuce and tomatoes, a single whiff of fat-free Caesar dressing on top-and tried to ignore the delicious aroma wafting toward her from Lou Lou’s baguette.

“Ah, come on, Mary Lisa, don’t be pitiful. Here, take a bite-a small one. No, it’s okay, I cleared it with the director-of-the-day, trust me. So splurge.”

Mary Lisa wanted a whole lot more than a small bite of that cold, thick, medium-rare steak sandwich, but she suspected Lou Lou would cut her off at the knees if she took more than a nip, so she controlled herself. She chewed slowly and sat back against the park bench they were sharing in their favorite little green spot next to the studio, closed her eyes, and chewed some more. The sun was bright, as it was every day in Southern California, and blessed be, there was next to no smog today, and the air was soft and warm. Traffic was thick and horns were honking. Everything was as it should be.