West & Vega: The Untold Jori

The Exchange

Very few people I know love food as much as Samantha Puckett. I don't know how she eats so much and still keeps that amazing figure. It probably had something to do with dating Cat. I loved Cat like a sister—more than a sister once, but that's a whole other story—and I knew it could be exhausting and occasionally a little nauseating trying to keep up with her. She's a sweetheart, but people like me can only handle sweet in small doses.

But when Sam throws her endorsement behind something food-related, you know it's gospel. And one of her favorite haunts in LA was Bots, with good reason.

It's not a classy place. Probably not the kind of place you'd take an executive from a film studio. But something told me my new pal Liz—she insisted I call her that—would be into it. Turns out, I was right. She was like a kid at Christmas, ordering from a PearPad, picking appetizers from a little Roomba-looking thing with a tray, and flipping out over the human-sized robots that brought out your meal. It was all clearly beyond her, but she enjoyed her state of disbelief.

"Those have to be costumes," she said as the big red robot rolled by. "Or maybe someone's in the back with a remote control or something."

"Maybe," I said before downing a slider. Sam was right, those things were damn good. "The first time I was here, my friend and I broke that red one. The blue one had to wheel it to the back."

Liz shook her head as the blue robot in question cleaned off the table next to us. "I love living in the future," she said with a chuckle. Then she turned her attention to me. "So, tell me about yourself. How'd you end up taking coffee orders for that windbag?"

My shoulders tightened a bit. I hated sharing backstory, especially with someone I just met. I felt like I could trust her with it, but it still raised my blood pressure to have to share anything about myself. "Eh, you know. Couldn't really cut it in the 'real' world. Figured the movie business sounded like fun."

She arched an eyebrow at me like she knew something. Which, of course, she did. I wasn't surprised in the least, I'd seen her tapping away on her PearPhone while I was driving us to Bots and figured she was checking up on me. "I see," she said. "So this isn't you?"

Liz flipped her phone around and showed me a small write-up about a play I'd done in high school, Clowns Don't Bounce. Not my best work, I admit, but it definitely got some attention.

"So you Googled me?"

Liz smiled. "You Googled me too. As soon as we sat down."

She wasn't wrong. "Busted. I'm just not a fan of backstory. Sometimes the wrong people get ahold of it and...well, unfortunate things happen."

"Do you think I'm the wrong people?"

"No, I really don't. Just a reflex at this point. But yeah, that play was mine. Not one of my best, but it got plenty of attention, as you can see."

Liz nodded as she nibbled on a fry. "Yeah. Maybe it was the real blood."

"That was a weird hiccup," I said. "I relied on my friend's brother to get me the fake stuff but apparently she didn't clarify the part about it being fake. It was all I had, so I just went with it."

"Understandable." There was an awkward pause. "What's your goal in the industry? What are your plans?"

Well, that one caught me off guard. I hate being caught off guard. "I guess I'd like to make movies," I said.

"Oh, come on, I asked for your goals, not a line on a resume. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What makes you think slumming with that creep is worth your time and energy? You don't strike me as someone who would put herself through that without a solid reason."