Page 12 of How To Plot a Payback

Makeup: Brenna Bailey

Wardrobe: Fay Silverman, 555.588.8192

PA: Dave Wahlquist, 555.112.4234 Maggie Goodwin, 555.777.2384

Chapter 2

Lavender

Monday, Film Day, Stage 2

One of the most underrated joys in life is watching someone’s existence become just a little bit better on account of your efforts.

Writing an anonymous check to pay for the surprise medical bill of an employee at the juice bar you frequent? Lovely.

Surprising the prop designer’s wife with a private audition with the casting director who owed you a little favor? Wondrous.

Setting up two lovebirds on a blind date and having the honor of giving the speech at their wedding two years later? Priceless.

There is truly nothing quite so beautiful as not only knowing just what can help someone better their life, but also being the bearer of those things.

“But I don’t want a puppy!” Sonya cries.

“Yes, but that’s the thing. Yes, you do!” I say enthusiastically, holding firm to the leashes despite the monumental tug of ten dogs pulling me in every direction.

Sonya, a horrified expression on her face, as though expecting the dogs to draw and quarter me like medieval executioners at any moment, pulls her robe tighter around her body.

It’s Monday morning, twenty minutes to nine. Filming day. The day a week’s worth of running lines and meticulously crawling through every second of what will become twenty-two minutes of laughs and sighs comes to fruition. I’m supposed to be en route to the makeup chair, and given how I look right now, probably running, not walking.

Instead, I’m standing in the hallway in front of Sonya’s dressing room. A clattering of what sounds like a thousand dishes falling to the floor resounds in the distance and all the dogs pause as one to look toward the noise. (Chef’s Kitchen shoots on Monday mornings, too, and the walls aren’t as thick as you would think.)

Sonya’s hair is in giant rollers.

A bronzy blush runs up one-half of her face, the makeup brush in her left hand ready to swipe the other side.

It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but I believe Sonya holds the world record for running off makeup artists. So many, in fact, that the show stopped hiring them and now she does it on her own.

She was thrilled about this because, according to her, Amely was heavy-handed on the concealer, Gideon got her face confused with a blank canvas and thought he was Michelangelo, Hattie used winter colors, and one-day stay Presley kept forgetting she wasn’t a “blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbie . . . No offense, Lavender.”

None was taken.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that Sonya applies her own makeup better than them all, though. Whenever Sonya decides to do something, it’s as good as done (so everyone get out of the way), and it’s done in award-winning fashion.

A moplike dog with strings of gray completely obscuring both eyes rushes towards Sonya, strings bouncing, and she grabs the door and holds it in front her like a shield.

I bend down to pull him back—an immediate mistake, as they’ve all learned in the past thirty hours where I hold my stash of treats.

Which is why, moments later, I’m flat on the ground beneath the pile of them, pushing them off as they sniff around my pockets. Sonya doesn’t look convinced as I say, “You’re going to adore him. He’s my favorite.”

I attempt to reach over for the puppy I handpicked for her. He’s currently ripping at the hem of my silk skirt. (Which is just fine. Skirts are things. And puppies are lives.) Once I manage to elbow off the others and get his teeth out of my skirt, I hold him up.

“Isn’t he adorable?”

She doesn’t speak.

But she doesn’t have to.

We all know he is.