Page 38 of Cuts like a Knife
Claire: Well, I’m sure you’ll will. And again, be nice. And work hard.
Lex: I will. (I actually am working you know. This is a job.)
Claire: Yeah yeah. A job in the Bahamas for the week. Sounds like real drudgery. I can’t barely believe it. My sister, my best friend, and even Foxy Drew. All there in the sunshine while I’m stuck here in the cold, big as an elephant.
Lex: Sorry.
Claire: Only kidding. This baby is worth it. Plus, travel sounds exhausting right now. I’m pretty anxious about the actual birth, tbh. After everything that happened before138.
Lex: I have to go. Junket starting.
Maybe that was mean, skating past her opening about her miscarriage like that. I know it was traumatic and all, but I really do have to go.
I watch my phone screen as bubbles appear and disappear, then appear again, but when Claire’s next text comes through, it’s only one word.
Claire: Bye.
Lex: Bye.
She can’t resist, though. She can’t resist getting the last word in.
Claire: Have fun. Work hard. AND BE NICE.
If only she knew139. Be nice. Ha. No one in media is actually nice. She and Adam are freaks in this world. Her show is popular, but it’s on a niche network that actually seems to care about talent. Her viewership base is mostly women 30+, and super-light on trolls.
Her set is usually her house, she gets to work with her husband, and Diana is her lawyer and has looked over every word of her contract. In other words, it’s a gig that has almost nothing in common with typical reality TV.
Which is good. I mean, I wouldn’t want her to be exploited or anything, but she has no clue.
People have stopped arriving and I settle myself against a column near the back wall of the room as the event finally begins.
A sizzle reel of the season’s participants introducing themselves plays on a projector screen, intercut with suggestive cooking and food footage140.
My research has taught me that Hot Slice is a fairly classic competitive reality show with a twist. It’s like Top Chef meets Dancing with the Stars meets Temptation Island. The contestants are regular low-rent celebrities — mainly filler-ridden actresses who were once ingenues, and now only play MILFs in bad procedurals — paired with so-called celebrity chefs. The chefs are mostly bad-boy types, often tattooed, with scruffy facial hair and smoker’s coughs. There are one or two flips — I think this cycle has one female chef working with Petar Timber — but it’s all very formulaic.
Each pair participates in a series of timed cooking challenges by day, but also, all those same contestants are filmed participating in frolics by night, and sent on “dates”. The show’s producers clearly ply everyone non-stop with alcohol in the hopes of eliciting random kisses, hook ups, and related alliances and sabotage.
It is absurd, shameful, and wildly popular141.
Nonetheless, as the event goes on and they start answering questions and bantering, I make a half-hearted attempt to pay attention. I listen for the quotes I need, at any rate.
After half an hour, I give up on note taking. The conference is banal, but perfectly effective. I’ve got plenty of verbal tidbits to slot into the pieces I’ve already planned, and I already know what I’ll be predicting in terms of who might hook up with whom, and have taken note of an appropriate number of suggestive smiles and longing glances.
Savannah Jack, who I believe is YouTube “famous” seems keen on Petar, and not very keen on her chef partner. I might corner her later for a one-on-one. I bet she has like, a recipe to share or something. I can get a few stories out of her. Rhiannon Maltane, “Daytime Emmy winner142” which they announced in her introduction, looks out-of-it, but she’s had so much plastic surgery, it’s hard to tell. Her expressions come slow and she seemed confused by even the simplest questions. Maybe she’s drunk? If so, that could be great. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for bad behavior from her.
Petar, who’s already announced that everyone should call him Pete, is strangely compelling. Clearly a charmer, but I still have no firm idea what he is famous for. There’s something about him, certainly. He oozes confidence up on the dais, and he seemed engaged and engaging, even from behind the pair of sunglasses he is idiotically wearing inside.
I Googled him. He’s all over social media. Many millions of followers. Shiny, professional looking pics. He seems to attend a lot of events and premieres, but I couldn’t figure out what he actually does. Something, I suppose. I’ve seen him called a nepo baby and a trust fund baby, so he must be the entitled princeling child of some horrid celebrity couple from the past, or some low-level European royal. He’s clearly a billionaire. Maybe that’s all there is to it. His claim to fame could be nothing more than being rich and famous. I resolve to text Claire about it later. She’ll know143.
I’m also strangely drawn to Maylee Wise, former child star. She doesn’t say much, but unlike the rest of them up there on the dias, she reads as normal which is compelling. She might be an easy mark for a lesser feature.
From my spot at the back of the room, I let my recorder run and half-listen to the rest of my greasy journalist brethren pelt their stupid questions at the even more stupid folks on the dais, and I slowly begin to relax about the week. Getting content is going to be easy. I could probably go home right now and have more than enough to keep Lars happy. Maybe I’ll pound out a bunch of briefs over the first few days, and then skip out on bunch of stuff and make the rest of the trip into a real vacation?
With that in mind, I try to recalibrate my thinking. Maybe once I get enough work in, I could slip away to the beach for a swim? I’m a strong swimmer and I can’t remember the last time my toes touched the ocean. I sort of wish Bex was here. Or any of my sisters, actually. If they were, we could have a sort of … girly time together. That’s what women do, right? They have girl time? I can’t remember what it’s like to have friends like that. To trust other women. Besides my sisters, I mean.
Even with the threat of the email looming over me, it feels like what I’ve been brought here to do is just so … unbelievably easy. So silly. At the level that Citidaze works at, I will come away from this ridiculous trip with enough material for countless stories. Lars is predictable. I know what he likes. I’m way ahead of the game and I’ve only been on the ground a few hours.
And there’s Drew, of course. Here’s here. I could do all sorts of things with Drew while I’m here. Beach things. Vacation things. Things I shouldn’t144.
