17 year old Callie is at her lowest point. Alone and depressed most of the summer, she feels fat and ugly-and school starts Monday. Her mother Michelle is about to have a baby, and won't tell anyone who the father is. The reality TV show that Michel...
Filming the baby shower was the crew's last task for the weekend. Jock had promised to drive Donna to the airport so she could spend a day and a half at home with her new husband. He did it to help her out, but also because he had something he needed to tell her. While he waited for the right moment they made small talk instead.
"Don't worry, we've got plenty of time," she said.
"At least the traffic's not bad." Jock flicked the steering wheel, and his black 350Z eased over a lane. "Sometimes Phoenix seems almost empty."
Donna chuckled. "I miss those jam-ups on the 405."
Jock glanced at her. With the hair pulled back from those Italianate cheeks, she slightly resembled his first wife. "So we got all the releases?"
"Yeah," she said. "All the girls, and the Australian. But you said you didn't want one from the kid. Zam?"
A red light caught Jock at Campbell, and he pulled up well behind an idling city bus, thinking the diesel soot could not be good for his car's finish. "No. I've got to make a special arrangement with him. He's Terry Major."
"He's who?"
"A production assistant." Jock took a breath and plunged ahead. "I didn't want to tell you, and I apologize. I wanted to keep you ignorant, and innocent, in case I got caught. Uh... Terry Major is a phantom. It's me. I turned in his salary and used the money for production expenses I couldn't pay for any other way."
"Sure." She curved the word for effect. "Production expenses. Or was it cocaine?"
"Yeah, right." Jock checked to make sure she was kidding.
"I'm jerkin' you." She laughed. "But you deserve it. A phantom intern? I knew something was going on."
The bus pulled ahead in a fumey roar, and Jock followed at a respectful distance. "Sorry. I hated to lie to you. I've shuffled money around on every job I've ever had charge of. Usually no one cares, but Fat Chance is tight as a..." He left the sentence unfinished. "Just shifting funds from one pile to another. It's pocket change. Doesn't hurt anybody, and it was for the show."
"Or for your hookers!" Donna snickered, delighted at his embarrassment.
"All right, all right."
"Okay." She chortled. "No more. Yes, I know it was for the show."
"But Fletcher's on it like a cheap stink." Jock glanced at her as he drove. "I had to come up with a face, and I saw this kid hanging around, and he even got into some of the footage, always standing against the wall doing nothing. You know, like a real P.A."
He turned left, knowing he had to get to Twenty-Fourth Street to find the airport. "So I told Fletcher that was Terry Major."
"And then the kid comes to life this morning like Pinocchio and jumps right into the middle of a scene."
Jock had expected her to be angry or confused, but she seemed to be keeping up with him quite well. "And we have to have that scene. It's top ten out of a month's filming. But now the kid's going to have to disappear. I can't have him around anywhere Fletcher can find him."
"So what are you going to do? Kill him and dump the body?" She said it like a punch line, still having fun at his expense. Again, not unlike his ex-wife.
Jock saw the airport signs now. Southwest Airlines: Terminal Four. "I'll just pay him off. But not with money."
"Not with money, not with screen time. What're you going to give him?"
"A summer job as an intern. Next summer. You know..." Jock did his Sopranos voice. "You know, Tone. After dis whole t'ing blows ovah."
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