Television Romance

Suprise Savior

INT. WRITING ROOM FOUR - NIGHT

"I saw it coming! I knew it! What do I always say?" Bill said triumphantly. He shed his dark grey zip-up jacket and deposited it on the armrest next to him.

"Bill? A little respect for the dying girl?" Juliet returned. The two of them were sitting on the couch in Four, Jerry in his pitiful excuse for a seat, Vian sitting on top of Juliet's desk. Standard position. It was Friday night so they were officially in the pre-show marathon. Usually, they'd all be jumping from room to room, taking orders and giving more, but the last twenty minutes were so harrowing that the mystical spirit of the show had given everyone a few seconds to breathe before their next challenge.

"First of all, Reese isn't dying-" Bill said.

"No thanks to us." Juliet kicked her white sneakers out in front of her, staggering them so they bounced back against the couch in a rhythmic ba-bum, ba-bum. She was wearing a pretty floral dress with a scoop neckline. Pink and green print on white fabric. Bill regarded her with both confusion and fondness, the way an old man might watch his wife once all his marbles had rolled into the gutter. That was an interesting image, actually, he thought. He pictured glass marbles, the kind his father kept in a locked drawer when Bill was a kid. He saw them rolling down an empty sidewalk, past the gutters, and into the sewer through its metal grate. Heard the clacking of glass bouncing against metal and the plop of a marble landing in the water underneath. That plop brought him back the second half of his question. That kind of roundabout thinking was the only path to a coherent sentence this time of the week.

"Second, do you have any water?"

"Here," Jerry said. He pulled open one of the cabinets of his desk, again reminding Bill of the marbles, and grasped a silver water bottle. Juliet shielded herself as Jerry tossed it to Bill, having little confidence in the hand-eye coordination of the former. Jerry's lanky limbs always made him move a bit like a teenager who just had a growth spurt and now didn't understand how far his arms extended. It was an unnatural complement to his self-assured manner of speaking.

"Thanks," Bill said and cranked the cap off the water bottle.

"I feel so bad," Vian said. She ran her palms over her raven hair.

"Why, about Reese? She'll be fine," Bill dismissed and lifted the cool metal lip of the water bottle to his lips.

"No, the host."

"Yeah, maybe we had him all wrong," Juliet said thoughtfully. In the background, a muffled voice sang loudly in a foreign language. That was Hugo doing his reenactment of some opera. It was the reason Vian was in Four now; Hugo's reenactments did not pause for anything and thus lasted at least two hours. It was a little much to take.

"Who would have thought?" Jerry said.

"I almost feel bad about only giving him two lines in my sketch."

"Almost," Jerry emphasized.

"Almost," she agreed. Vian felt something building in her chest like a bubble about to explode. She tapped on the desk with her ring finger, listening to the dull clank produced by metal colliding with plastic.

"I called him an idiot on Tuesday," Vian said finally, "To his face."

Bill narrowly managed to avoid spitting up all the water in his mouth. He swallowed. Unfortunately, he brought the water bottle down from his lips with too much enthusiasm. The result was this: water splashed in a picturesque ribbon across his shirt and the top of Juliet's dress.

"Hey!"

"To his face?" Bill repeated, eyes wide. Then he burst out laughing.

"I wouldn't have done it if I knew what he was going to do!" Vian said. She hadn't been there to see it but Juliet and Jerry had been and they had described it to her, each in their own flavor of reality.

They had both been standing in front of the stage watching Reese, Eli, Nick, and the host rehearse a sketch. It was a sketch about an overly enthusiastic personal trainer that Jerry and Juliet had written, so they observed the scene with a careful eye, looking for lulls in the sketch or jokes that needed fixing. It was just a dry run so one was in costume. The stage was set, but not properly lit. Instead of the professional lights and softboxes they'd use for show, the stage was illuminated from above with thick rectangular ceiling lights, big as a dining room table. They cast a slightly ghoulish light on the actors as Eli and Nick recited their lines on a treadmill and bike machine, respectively.

The way Jerry told it, it all happened at a snail's pace, the lethargy of time in an exciting moment. Nick, who had been running comically fast on his treadmill, slowed to a gentle jog. A phantom breeze blew through the fourteenth floor. One of the lights titled slowly, the wires from which it was suspended squeaking like a worn brake pad. Then half of the wires snapped and one side swung low, like a broom across a floor. Or like on ESPN, how they sometimes showed a golf swing at a tenth of the speed. That was how Jerry saw it. The light falling like a door hinged at its bottom. The host lunging like Captain America, slow motion, one arm reaching out in front of him.

According to Juliet, it was over before she knew it had begun. She blinked and the light, hanging vertically, swinging slightly, was in the place where Reese had been only seconds before. It hadn't scraped the stage, its arc so that the light ended about a foot above it. The host, shielding Reese with his arms, stage right, asking if she was alright. Nick kept running. He hadn't even noticed, and didn't until Reese failed to say the next line.

"He's a  hero," Jerry said solemnly. They all sat in contemplative silence. This time it was Bill, not Juliet, who jumped at the sound of the door opening. He spilled more water in the process, this time sending a splashdown on Juliet's right leg.

"Jesus, Culver, you could've told me to wear a swimsuit," she groaned. She tried to scrape the water off her dress with the side of her hand.

"I'd like to see that," said the nasal voice of the host. He was at the door. Vian saw a look in Bill's eyes that read clearly: "I'd like to see you try." Lacking Bill's bravado, she focused her eyes on the worn wooden leg of Four's baby-vomit-green couch.

"Um, hello," Juliet said. She looked even more unimpressed than Bill. She caught the way the host flicked his eyes from her face to her breasts, as if the speed would disguise the act.

"How are you guys doing?" the host asked, "Did you hear about what happened with the light?"

"We heard," Bill said. Any charm the host might have gained from swiping Reese from peril was fading fast.

"Guess you shouldn't always go into the light, huh?"--he paused for effect--"Crazy right?" No response came except for a spiritless half-nod by Jerry.

"Hey, I was just looking for Jeff. Sam said he might be in one of the writers' rooms." Juliet held her laughter expertly at the realization that Sam had not only recognized the (rather rude) prank she had pulled, but been so tired of the host that he'd played along.

"Who's--" Bill started.

"You know what? I think Jeff might be in the table read room."

"Really?" Jerry interjected without hesitation, "I just saw him on the tenth floor."

"I'll check both places," the host assured them like a child proud of his problem-solving skills.

"Great idea," Juliet said.

"Unless you want to come with me?" The host smirked. She'd looked up in disgust, half-hoping she'd see it was just a joke. But there was no trace of humor in the host's gaze. There was something akin to fear, though, which clouded his eyes as Bill, towering over the host like a tree beside a shrub, stood up and stepped closer.

"I'll come with you if you want," Bill offered.

"No, thanks," the host said with an awkward laugh, "I'm good after all." He stepped back and Bill closed the door in front of him. Then Bill grabbed his jacket off the arm of the couch and handed it to Juliet, landing beside her in a cushiony bounce.