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It was clear she felt bad about this, and she didn’t even know how bad it really was.
She wasn’t a social media kind of person.
For a moment, I struggled between rage and compassion. Yes, this was partially her fault for not telling me anything about this guy or giving me any knowledge about how to handle a first contact situation, information she clearly had. Yes, she was responsible given that this was her job and her responsibility was to make sure that these meetups were safe and comfortable for everyone involved.
At the same time, this was Caley.
This was my gentle, loving, quiet friend who let everyone in her life walk all over her like she was a welcome mat at a brewery in a tourist destination. This was a woman who had been my friend through thick and thin, never judging me for any aspect of me, always accepting me for exactly who I was.
She just wasn’t good at some things.
Like reading people or stopping people from taking advantage of her. She had never been in a place where that mattered to others, just herself. She had been put in bad situations because of her unwillingness to confront others for causing her harm. She was here in this business because of me, because I tried to help her. But now, because of me, because of my connection with an old acquaintance who messaged me out of nowhere and left out some pertinent details, I hooked her up with an alien roommate who swept her off her feet. It was one of the best things that ever happened to her, but now she had taken on a role in an upstart dating agency that was well beyond her capabilities.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know this about herself.
She had asked me to be the first person to try out her dating agency workflow because even she was smart enough to listen to people who would tell her straight how to do better.
I glanced back down at the image of the gargantuan double decker dick on my phone.
I opened my mouth, not sure what I was going to say.
My phone rang.
“Don’t do anything,” I said, holding up one finger to my friend as I swiped the call on and held the phone up next to my ear. I took a breath in, making sure I was breathing in on a smile so that the tone that came out of my mouth was full of warmth and affection. “Joseph, hiiiiiiiiiii!”
“Listen, I have bad news, so I’m just going to break it to you straight.” Joseph’s tone was brusk and harsh. “You’re being written off the show. Your character is going to have a car accident off screen. The writers are reworking the script for next week’s shoot so you’re not even coming back on set. You’re done.”
“What?” I asked. “What are you even saying?”
“You’re fired, Jessica,” Joseph said. “You’re blacklisted. No one is going to hire you.”
“You can’t do that,” I gasped. “What are you even saying?”
I felt empty, like there was supposed to be an emotion there but I couldn’t quite feel it because this wasn’t real. This had to be some sort of bad joke. I had spent my life working towards getting this job. This job was my big break. I had put up with so much shit, smiling and kissing ass. I had done the groundwork, and finally, I had landed the role on this soap opera. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. It paid the bills, which was something I couldn’t say about any other acting job I’d gotten.
I hadn’t gotten into the big leagues, but I was in the minor leagues, and most of the waiters in Los Angeles couldn’t say that they did that.
“It’s not me, I’m just the messenger,” Joseph’s voice cut back in, snapping me back to the reality of this horrible moment. “You know I love you, babe, but I cannot save you from this. You fucked the pooch hard this time.”
“What did I even do?” I asked.
“You can’t just put anything online, you know that, right? You say one thing wrong and the mob comes to rip down your straw house and burn it to the ground.” Joseph’s voice took on a softer tone. “You have to toe the line, and you didn’t do that and the studios don’t want to deal with the guillotine parade.”
“What line?” I demanded. “You gotta give me something, Josie boy, I don’t know what is going on.”
“There is a photo of you with an alien,” Joseph hissed.
For a moment, it seemed as if the world around me went grey, the color sucked out of it as the only noise was the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening.
I could salvage this, couldn’t I?
“You have to be kidding me?” I said. “I’m being fired and blacklisted from the industry because of something that wasn’t my fault and wasn’t in my control? What if that picture was AI generated? Did they even consider that?”
“I’m just the messenger, babe,” Joseph said. “I’m just giving it to you straight. The timing of this was shit and they made their decision. You’re too much of a liability.”
“This isn’t right.” I could feel my lower lip trembling and I sucked in a breath. I couldn’t cry. I had to be strong. I had to find a way through this.
“This is show business,” Joseph said. “Listen, I'll let you know. I’ll call you later, okay? Maybe we can get coffee and talk about what is going down.”
