AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Take all the time you need,” he says, standing up. “Well, until the morning, that is. It’s a great script. It made me bawl like a baby. Well, it made Tanya cry. I haven’t read the whole thing yet. But she loved it.” He picks up his bag and starts toward the door. “And if you do take it—which you should—I can get you set up shadowing at a SETI research facility upstate. It’ll be the perfect publicity for the film and a chance to start showing the world a new, serious side of Hudson Finch at the same time. The guy who prepares for his roles instead of just showing up. The guy that can carry a film all the way to the Academy Awards.”
“And if I don’t?”
He stares at me for a second. “They’re looking for someone to play the dad in Diary of a Wimpy Kid Six.”
Instagram Reel: Hollywood Dish with Ferris Biltmore
The video starts up, showing a young man sitting behind a large glass desk wearing a black turtleneck sweater and a bright pink beret. He grins into the camera. “Hello, bitches! It’s me, Ferris. Yes, I’m back after my impromptu trip to Paris. France, not Texas, obviously, because eww!
“And I know some of my lambs were upset that I left without so much as a ‘see you next Tuesday,’ but fear not because I always come back. And hey, sometimes a man’s got a hankering for baguettes that simply cannot be cured by the stuff they’re trying to pass off here in L.A. No thank you! I need the original. Get over it already!”
The background changes to show a silhouette of a woman. “Guess which celeb, fresh out of her third marriage, is sporting a gigantic engagement ring? I’ll give you a hint. Her last husband just won the World Series.” He taps his lips, then adds, “I’ll tell you later. But first, huge, horrible, awful, makes-me-want-to-curl-up-in-a-ball news coming out of LaLa Land. You know that movie I’ve been dying, and I mean, dying, to see? With Hudson Finch and the beautiful Miss Barbie herself?”
He pauses dramatically and shakes his head with his eyes closed, then whispers, “Shelved.”
Nodding, he says, “Yes, bitches, you heard me right. My cousin’s barber’s best friend’s podiatrist heard the news straight from the dog walker of one of the execs at Tuxedo Studios who shelved the film. And this bit of shit news brings us to a little segment I like to call, ‘Suck My Left Nut,’ where I will speak directly to the inhumans responsible for this debacle.” A graphic reading “Suck My Left Nut” appears behind Ferris’s head and he raises his voice to a high-pitched squeal. “You shelved Hudson?! You shelved Hudson?! You shelved Hudson Fucking Finch, the sweetest piece of man candy to ever—and I mean ever—light up the big screen? You should be ashamed of yourselves, you horrible, awful excuses for people. You … you robots with teeth! You complete wastes of oxygen! How dare you?! You wouldn’t know talent if it bit you on the ass. I hope your dog gets infested with super-fleas, and the fleas have billions of baby super-fleas that you can never get rid of so you spend the rest of your life scratching incessantly until you finally go insane and have to live out your days in a mental hospital for shitty movie executives with fleas. You can suck my left nut. But not righty because righty is perfectly symmetrical. You can suck the one that looks like a meatball that fell off the counter before it was put in the oven. Suck. It.”
He lowers his voice and takes a deep breath, then mouths, “Suck it.”
Ferris closes his eyes and says, “Okay, now, I know you’re all as upset as me, so now it’s time for a new segment I like to call, ‘Don’t Worry Darling.’
He points above his left shoulder where the graphic appears. “This message is for Hudson Finch. Don’t worry, darling. You’re not going anywhere. I promise. Yes, for other lesser actors, one shelved movie would be a career-killer, but not for you. You’re too perfect for that. Too perfect. You’re ethereal. You’re the living representation of an actual Greek god come to life, with your chestnut locks that fall perfectly, even if you just escaped a massive underwater explosion, and your chiseled everything, and that jawline that could serve as a ruler at NASA, and those green eyes that look like a forest bathed in sunlight. You’re going to bounce back. You will. And you will bounce higher than any freaking ball has ever bounced because you, sir, are Hudson Fucking Finch—king of the big screen, lord of the ladies, master of the disaster movies. You, my darling, are just getting started in this biz. You’re going to own this town someday soon. Own it! You will. I know you will. At least you better, or I’m going to be forced to binge watch Beach Cops and Beach Cops II then cry myself to sleep every night for the rest of my life.”
A photo of Hudson in swim trunks appears behind Ferris as he sighs heavily. “You know what, bitches? I’m too upset to tell you who got engaged. My heart’s just not in it. Maybe tomorrow. For now, I’m going to sign off and go treat myself to a bubble bath and a bottle of Nyquil because there is no way I’m going to be able to sleep after what happened to my Hudson. No way in hell.”
2
Good Men Giving Bad News…
Allie Cammareri – Mountain View, California
There are two things I hate: spiders and liars. And not necessarily in that order. The first one is because of my cousin Emilio, who thought it would be hilarious to hide a sack of spider eggs in my sock drawer when I was eight. Yeah, what a little fucker, right? Not something you get over, to be honest. I’m thirty-five and I still break out in a cold sweat at the very mention of arachnids. Fun fact: I also gag whenever I see one—even just a photo. But enough about ‘those things’ because I’m feeling a little woozy just thinking about them.
Onto liars, which are far more dangerous (and despicable) than the eight-legged among us. Spiders don’t mean to be creepy and awful, whereas liars know exactly what they’re doing, and that it’s wrong, but they do it anyway. And, yes, I know everybody hates it when people lie. I get that. I’m not special in that regard. But I hate being lied to with a deep, burning passion that burns inside me day and night. I don’t have to go to therapy to discover the cause because it’s pretty damn obvious.
Twice in my life, I’ve fallen head over heels for big, fat liars. My first love (or so I thought) was Ian Miller, a big dumb jock I went to high school with, who made me believe we were a couple so I would do all his homework. He was in danger of being kicked off the football team because of his crappy grades and I was too naive to realize I was just his tutor who he occasionally left hickeys on. Turns out, while I was writing Mrs. Allegra Miller in my notebook and dotting the ‘I’ with a heart, he had an actual girlfriend. She was the head cheerleader from another high school and he was with her the entire time he was pretending to be in love with me. In Ian’s case, you could say, he was just a stupid kid, and leave it at that. I’m not that charitable, however. I’m still mildly pleased at the fact that he never made a college team, never went pro, and now works for animal control. He and the cheerleader had two kids right out of high school, then got divorced and she married a successful realtor. Poor, poor Ian. I feel so bad for him.
My second hugely disappointing teller of non-truths was Lando Allegro. We studied astrophysics together in grad school, and I thought I’d found love—the real and everlasting kind. It was so different than with Ian, because not only did we have a lot in common, we were best friends, and we had a slamming sex life. As an added bonus, Lando comes from a nice Italian family, so he had my parents’ approval. Well, my mom’s anyway. I’m not sure there’s a man on this planet my dad would find acceptable for his little girl. I was one-hundred-percent sure we were going to get married (with me obviously keeping my last name to avoid becoming Allegra Allegro), have little smart babies together, and work side-by-side at NASA every day. I was so in love, I missed all the red flags, and believe me, there were some big ones, like the times he’d go straight to the bathroom when he’d come over and wash his penis in the sink. Yep, not a good sign. Long story short, not only was he cheating on me, but he also stole all my research, took credit for it, and dumped my ass.
Unlike with Ian (who I only think about a couple of times a year), I’m still filled with a level of indignant rage toward Lando that I can’t quite describe. It’s partly due to the fact that we work in the same field. He’s also a radio astronomer working for a rival SETI team, so I not only have to hear about the fabulous advancements he makes (all of which I’m sure he’s stealing from co-workers), but I also have to see him at every conference. Just the sight of his weaselly face causes me to seethe with anger. On my more petty days, I’ve googled ‘glitter bomb companies,’ and also may or may not have considered going down to the local dog park for ‘samples’ to ship to his house in Virginia. I haven’t done it though, because I have a much better way to get back at him—I’m going to out-astronomer him. It’s taken me ten long years to figure out how, but it’s about to happen. At least, I hope.
In exactly two minutes, I’m going to find out if my shot at taking down Lando the Liar is still a possibility. I’m currently walking upstairs to my boss’s third floor office, where he’s going to give me the good news. Or the bad news. My stomach is in knots as I stare at his name placard: Keenan Edward, Director.
It’s definitely going to be a yes. Keenan’s an amazing boss. He trusts his staff, and more than that, he believes in us. I’m sure he has every faith I’ll finish my project in time to present at the International SETI Forum. It takes place in two months in Zurich and is pretty much the SETI Olympics in that it only happens once every four years and only the best of the best get to speak. The rest of us peons have to sit there and listen. I’ve never been allowed to present, which is fine because I’ve never had anything cutting edge to share. Until now, that is. Well, almost. Not quite yet, but if I stay focused for another couple of days (okay, weeks), I’m going to have a presentation that will blow the roof off the auditorium.
But presenting at the conference isn’t the only reason I’ve been replacing sleep with caffeine and sugar for months. There’s another researcher working on the same thing—and it’s none other than Lando Allegro. Actually, he’s got a team of three people, whereas I’m working alone (which is my preferred way to work after getting screwed over by Lando, the Screwer-Over). We’re in a sprint to the finish and, as in all races, to the victor will go all the spoils. In this case, it’ll mean having your name in bold face in future astronomy textbooks the world over as the person responsible for advancing humanity’s knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligence by hundreds of years all in one shot. I intend to have my name in bold, and more importantly, I want Lando the Liar to go down in history as the nothing he is. I’m going to beat him for once. And it’s going to be glorious. Wonderful. Freeing. All my rage will instantly disappear. Poof. Gone. I’ll finally be able to evict him from my brain, where he’s been squatting for a pathetic twelve years.
I can just picture myself standing at the podium delivering my speech while he sits fuming in the audience, knowing I got the best of him. I can almost taste the justice of that moment now, and it is sweet. Suck on that, Lando, you hack. I am the better scientist. Mic drop.
Taking a deep breath, I knock at the door.
“Come in,” Keenan calls.
When I do, he gestures for me to have a seat across from his desk. His space heater is humming under his desk and piles of papers are stacked on every surface. His curly gray hair pokes out from behind a particularly tall stack, and he has to shift to the right so we can make eye contact. “Allegra, how’s your project coming?”
“I am so close, Keenan. So close,” I tell him.
“Really?” he asks with a bright smile. “So you’re ready for the validation phase?”
