“Yeah, exactly.”
“That’s perfectly normal. Fortunately, the show isn’t live, so we can just keep doing it until we have a take you’re happy with.”
“Right.”
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Taking me gently by the hand, a thrill ran through me as our skin again touched in real time. Tobias lead me over to the monologue chair, escorting me up onto the beautifully upholstered seat.
“It’s going to be fine,” Tobias said, taking me gently by the shoulders.
It really was surprisingly encouraging. I closed my eyes and did my best to just relax and be myself.
Two. That’s how many takes it took to get the monologue. It was actually an interview. Tobias asked me the questions in his naturally relaxing tones. Only I was wearing a microphone, so my answers were the only thing picked up by the audio track.
It was a pretty neat trick, really. The second take was done just to be sure, but Tobias swore up and down that the first was perfect and would most likely be used. It was just always good to have a backup.
The preliminaries finished in record time; it was time to get ready for the main event. Tobias stayed by my side the entire time, making me almost wish I was going on a date with him. Catching onto the idea, that was exactly what I planned to do right up until the moment of truth.
“Gino’s, please, Clementine,” Tobias said, getting into the back seat beside me.
“Right away, sir!”
“I thought the date was at the Blue Room.”
“Oh, it is. I didn’t mean to assume, I just figured it has been a while since you’d eaten.”
“It has,” I confessed. How he knew that was anyone’s guess.
“Very good then. To Gino’s for a slice so you don’t faint in the meantime and then on to the Blue Room to set up for the main event.”
“Great.”
Of all my demonstrable skills, fortune-telling had never been one of them, yet it turned out that I was indeed correct. It was great. There were few places I could think of that I would rather be than at one of the three small tables in an authentic New York pizza shop with Tobias Ford.
“Oh, wait minute,”
“What?” I asked, my mouth still full.
“Hold still.”
Obeying him at his every word, Tobias tilted my head back and wiped a bit of cheese grease from my chin before it was able to threaten the perfection of my outfit. Perhaps I should have been embarrassed at the fact that he was wiping me off like a dribbling child.
I didn’t feel it at the time, though. I was just so thrilled that he was touching me. I was like a giddy schoolgirl. It was something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Even so, I kind of liked it.
“Ready?” he asked, dropping the napkin into the triangular cardboard tray we had been given to hold our sloppy feasts.
“Okay,” I said.
My response would have likely been very much the same had he told me to drop my panties and bend over.
Letting me get in first, Tobias slid into the back seat, which suddenly seemed a lot smaller. Sweet Clementine closed the door behind him and soon enough we were off again into the gathering night. I was on my way to meet my destiny.
Chapter Five
Tobias
It was like riding a bike. Been on one active off-site television set, been on them all. Just another day at the office. I was trying my best to broadcast a calm attitude to Addie, hoping some of my good vibes might resonate. I could almost feel her tension. The wonder of the newbie. I almost envied her in a way.
“We ready?”
“Almost, we’re just waiting for the guy to show up,” Samantha said.
“Rather a large detail,” I pointed out.
“I am well aware. He should be here soon.”
“Show me his file.”
“His what?”
“Pretty please?”
“You know I can’t resist you when you talk like a nine-year-old girl,” Samantha said, handing over the clipboard.
Everything looked good. There were no immediate or obvious warning signs. Except that he was a corporate lawyer, which I tended to trust as far as I could comfortably spit them. I tried to take people as they came. Not even the Nazis were all bad as project Valkyrie clearly demonstrated.
“Everything looks in order,” I said, returning the clipboard.
I took a position behind the camera, so I was close to the table but didn’t get in the way of the shot.
Everything was set. Camera was ready, lights were angled, and Addie looked absolutely scrumptious. As if waiting for exactly the right moment, the man of the hour, Addie’s first date of the run, ‘the chiseler’ as I had already come to think of him in the Gangs of New York sense, came breezing in.
“Am I fashionably late?” he inquired, removing the designer shades that he thought made him look cool but actually made him look like even more of a twonk.