Page 13 of The Favorite Sister

But then Lauren clucks, “Your friend must be so disappointed,” and I realize she meant I’m probably pissed that my hire was passed over, and that a small part of her is pleased by that.

There are precisely two seasons in aGoal Digger’s life: shooting season and killing season. Not even a week after we wrap, months before we film the reunion, it’s customary for producers to approach eachDiggerand ask if we have any friends we would like to nominate for the next season of the show. We have no idea who is coming back and who is on the chopping block, though the position on the couch at the reunion some weeks later is normally a clue. The closer you are seated to Jesse, the better your odds. At this most recent reunion, filmed a month before my memoir came out and put me back in the game, I was on the end of the couch for the first time ever. The last book in my fiction series had flopped and I was growing long in the tooth. I nearly accepted my fate. The onlyDiggerwho has ever been where I was at and asked to return is Lauren, and I’m not willing to have my vagina steamed on camera or pose naked in a valiant effort to save the minks, high jinks Lauren has gotten up to in a single episode.

But. There is another option besides humiliating yourself for laughs. The producers are always looking to shake up the troupe, which is why the casting process starts anew the moment the mic packs come off. It’s an unwritten rule that if you bring a woman to prod’s attention and they like her and they cast her, you can buy yourself a stay of execution. The producers are not going to introduce a newDiggerunless she has some sort of connection to the group. This isn’tBig Brother, throw a bunch of strangers together and hope for pregnancy scares and cold-cocks. The show runs best when the group has history, allegiances,grudges. The moment filming ends, aDiggeris campaigning for her hire for the next season,nary a modicum of concern that it may be at a current castmate’s expense. If you’re lucky enough to see your person cast, you enjoy one more benefit, which is that she provides you with her eternal loyalty. You never betray theDiggerwho brought you in.

Lauren was Jen’s hire, in season two, and so for as long as she and Jen are on the show together, she will have to like who Jen likes and feud with who she doesn’t. She’s tiring of it, and I know she was pushing for her fellow Yalie, inventress of period-proof underwear, to replace Hayley so that she could boss someone around for a change. Better luck next season, Lauren.

The server reappears to ask us if we are ready to order.

Lauren and I sit in supportive silence as Jen explains to him that she’s a friend of the chef’s and she’s called ahead about some dairy-free butternut squash soup.

“God, no.” Lauren laughs, when the server asks us if we also have any dietary restrictions. “Let’s do the fluke, the hamachi, the mushrooms, and the bucatini.”

“Two orders of mushrooms,” I say.

The server smiles, pleased with us and with himself. “My all-time favorite dish on the menu.”

“She’s married,” Lauren growls, saucily.

“And you?” the server asks her.

Lauren waves her naked finger at him.

“Jesus God,” Jen mutters. However long it’s been since Jen has had sex, it’s in dog years.

The waiter picks up the bottle to refill my glass and realizes it’s empty. “Did we want to stick to this bottle?” Lauren circles her finger in the air, pantomiming a mini tornado:another round. Jen pokes me under the table.Now, before she gets too drunk to remember.

I reach for another piece of bread. “So, Laur, I’m not trying to blow your fuse here but there’s more.”

“Don’t tell me,” she says, pushing her plate away. “Brett is skinnier than me now.”

Jen endorses the bon mot with a guffaw. She’s always bristled at being grouped into the “wellness industry” with a woman who considers baked goods one of the major food groups. Likewise, Brett has taken Jen to task for her narrow and elitist definition of health, which contains but a single word—“thin.” There is nothing healthy about a woman weighing the same as she did in the fifth grade, about a woman who rarely eats solid foods and who is so malnourished she cannot grow her hair past her ears. These are Brett’s words, not mine, though I do wonder what she would say if she could see Jen now, with her shiny new lob and lusher-looking figure.There is nothing healthy about a woman who changes her appearance to please a man, probably.

“It’s about the trip,” I say to Lauren.

The Trip. Every season, the producers carve out a benchmark week to bring all the women together, no matter where we are in our cycle of loving and loathing each other. First season was quiet and cost effective: Jen’s Hamptons house, to celebrate the opening of her pop-up juice truck in the parking lot of Ditch Plains. Second season, we were a bona fide sleeper hit thanks to the network’s incessant Sunday afternoon marathons, and we could afford to go bigger: Paris, for the launch of the third book in my fiction series. (The Parisians have never called my books smut.) Last season, it was Los Angeles for the GLAAD awards. The show was up for Outstanding Reality Program—which we all understood to be Brett’s nomination—and there was also a nomination in the Outstanding Talk Show category, for the episode of60 Minutesfeaturing Brett and all she was doing to help pave the way for other young, gay entrepreneurs.

As it’s gone, theDiggerwho is at the heart of the trip is theDiggerwho gets the most flattering pass by the editor’s hand and the most screen time for her product. And as it’s gone, every woman gets her turn. Lauren isn’t an original like Jen, Brett, and me, she doesn’t wear the signet ring inscribedSS, but she’s been with us since season two. This season we all assumed it would be her turn.

With as much compassion as I can muster, I say, “Lisa told me they want to calendar Morocco for some time in June.”

“Morocco?” Lauren whispers in quiet defeat.

“Apparently SPOKE is releasing a line of electric bikes,” Jen says. Her elfin face pinches in disgust. “Because what women like Brett need is a piece of exercise equipment toreducethe amount of movement in their day.”

In all fairness, the e-bikes aren’t forwomen like Brett. They’re for women who have too much movement in their day to attend school and to earn a living. I hate that even a silent part of me is still sticking up for Brett, after what happened between us. “The good news is that they haven’t booked the travel yet,” I say, putting the devastating memory out of my mind. “If we make our concerns known, we can sway them. But we have to move fast and we have to show a united front. Lisa said Jesse feels very strongly that in the first season since the election we present women as magnanimously as possible.”

“I see,” Lauren sniffs, “and reversing sexist dating roles isn’t magnanimous?”

“Not as magnanimous as keeping twelve-year-old African girls from getting raped,” Jen replies.

“Who are these twelve-year-old African girls Brett is keeping from getting raped?” Lauren wants to know. “Honestly, does she have any hard data to prove this? Have we even talked to a single one of them? How do we even know it’s true?”

I nod, animatedly. I want her riled up before I get to the point.

“So the show is nowThe Brett Show,” Lauren says, her aggrieved voice crowd-surfing the din of the restaurant. “Or the SPOKE show or whatever it is. It’s her whole fucking family and her business and she gets the trip two years in a row.”

“It pays to play on the same team as your boss,” Jen says, which was a claim I used to defend Brett against before I realized that Brett has absolutely benefited from being the same kind of different as Jesse. In our ecosystem, Brett is undoubtedly the most privileged of the bunch, and her advantages extend beyond the good edit. Jesse has made it abundantly clear that the show functions as a by-product of our already existing success. It is wonderful if it can enhance whatwe have already built for ourselves, but it is not there to lay the groundwork. In other words, we attract the show; the show does not attract us. For that reason,Diggerstake home the same paltry salary of five thousand dollars a year for roughly one hundred twenty days of labor—and that’s before taxes. We are not meant to need the money, and most of us don’t, but ever since Jesse banished me to the end of the couch, I can no longer stomach the hypocrisy of my boss lambasting the wage gap in theNew York Timeswhile paying her own less than minimum wage. Jesse moves up the corporate ladder at the network as the show grows in popularity, getting richer off our backs while we are expected to just be grateful for the continued exposure. Hayley finally had enough of it, especially once one of the production coordinators suggested that Brett took Jesse’s advice, asked for more money, and got it. I admired Hayley for going to bat for herself, but I also knew it was a suicide mission. Jesse would only see the attempt at a salary negotiation as ungrateful, and it would only end in her dismissal, which, of course, it did. Unless you are Brett Courtney, the show does not reward difficult women.