Deep Dish(7)

“Little girls who can’t diagram compound sentences don’t grow up to become writers,” Mrs. Teasley had told her, after she’d stood before the blackboard, flummoxed by gerunds and participles and all the rest.

Damn Iona Teasley, Gina thought. Her caustic predictions of a dead-end future had filled a fifth-grade Regina Foxton with a steely determination to succeed no matter what. To prove Mrs. Teasley wrong. Middle school, high school, college, the years were a blur. Back in Odum, Birdelle had turned her old bedroom into a shrine of plaques, trophies, and framed certificates, all of them attesting to Gina’s superlative abilities.

Mama. Oh, Lord, what would Mama and everybody else back home think when they found out their hometown star was a dud—a has-been at thirty. Maybe that’s where she would end up—back home in Odum, after her condo was repossessed and the Honda gave out.

It was only when she parked the car in front of the renovated brick midrise in Virginia Highlands that she had a clear idea of her destination for the evening.

Normally, a visitor had to call up and be buzzed into the slate-floored lobby. But Gina knew the key code, and she punched the four numbers in with a fury that surprised her.

She didn’t wait for the elevator, which was slow anyway. She climbed the three flights of stairs, and wasn’t even winded by the time she was ringing the doorbell at Unit 3C.

She didn’t actually ring it, as much as lean on it.

Scott opened the door. Music boomed from the ceiling-mounted stereo speakers. His theme song: “Eye of the Tiger” from one of the Rocky movies. He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of loose nylon shorts and sparkling white athletic shoes. He was glistening with sweat, and clutched a plastic water bottle in his right, gloved hand.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello, Eugene,” she said, sailing uninvited into the condo.

His rowing machine was set up in the middle of the wood-floored living room. His racing bike hung from hooks on the wall, and his T-shirt was draped across his treadmill. Aside from the weight bench, set up in front of a wall of mirrors, the only other furniture in the room consisted of a tan leather sofa, a glass-and-chrome coffee table, and a huge, wall-mounted, sixty-inch flat-screen television.

“Don’t call me that,” he said. He picked up the remote control and shut off the stereo.

“Why not? It’s your name.”

“Now what?”

“You slept with Danitra Bickerstaff. And that, dear Eugene, is why Wiley shut down my show.”

His face was suddenly alive with emotion. “Who told you that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Gina said. “And don’t bother to deny it, because I know it’s true.”

“Christ,” he muttered, picking up a towel and mopping his chest with it. He pulled the T-shirt over his head and took a drink of water from his bottle. “What do you want me to say? You’ve already got everything worked out in your head. But it’s not all black-and-white like you want it to be.”

“It seems pretty black-and-white to me,” Gina retorted, perching on the back of the sofa. “First you screwed me. Then you screwed Wiley Bickerstaff’s wife. Wiley found out. He canceled my show. Seems to me I got screwed twice. But I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much this last time, Eugene.”

“Yeah, this is all about you, Gina,” Scott said, suddenly animated. “Your show got canceled. You’re out of a job. You got screwed. You, you, you. How about me? Did you ever think about good old Scotty? Hell, I’ve got two years of my life invested in this show. When I met you, you were just a wannabe foodie. No sense of style, no talent. You were a fuckin’ joke! With your goofy-ass glasses and home-ec lady turtleneck sweater. I’m the only reason you ever got on television,” he said, poking her in the chest with his index finger.

“Don’t do that,” she said, her voice low.

“I saw something in you,” he continued, poking her in the chest again.

“Don’t—”

“I packaged you, I pitched you to Tastee-Town, and I won us two regional Emmys. When Wiley started making noises about cutting back the ad dollars, I went to Danitra, because she was such a big fan of the show, to see if she could talk Wiley into renewing our contract. So yeah, maybe I got a little too chummy with her, maybe I made a mistake. But don’t fool yourself into thinking this is all my fault, Gina.”

His face was pink with anger. He jabbed her again.

“Scott, stop!” she said.

But he was wound tight as a tick.

“I went—”

poke

“—to the wall—”

poke

“—for you—