Page 35 of The Summer Show
Across the room, Nick nodded to me. I nodded back and hoped he was actually nodding to me and not someone standing behind me. I wasn’t sure I could handle the humiliation.
A woman with a tablet clutched in one hand bustled in. Tapping on the screen with a long talon, she spoke in a rapid stream of words, and not a single one matched up with anything in my data banks. For all I knew, she was giving us her drink order at Starbucks. But when she gestured at us and everyone else thundered to the door, I followed the context clues and realized she expected us to go somewhere.
Nick cut through the crowd to fall alongside me. “Soundproof room,” he explained. “We wait there until it’s our turn.”
“Aren’t we all fighting together? That’s how the first episode goes, right?”
“Not tonight. Don’t know why.”
“Rats. I was hoping you had the inside track, seeing as how you speak the language.”
“I’m in the same dark as you, Kathleen.”
Given that my name was my name, I’d heard it a million times or more since I first became aware that I was my own distinct person with a moniker of my own. But nobody had ever uttered my name the way Nick Merrick did. The way he spoke each syllable was like he was drawing words and pictures on my skin with his fingertips. Suddenly it wasn’t a weeknight. More like a Sunday morning in late spring when the sun hadn’t developed its bite. The windows were open and a cool breeze was drifting through the room, touching things gently like it was window shopping and hadn’t yet committed to buying. We were naked under the covers, Nick and I, existing in that liminal space between sex and sleep, and his fingers were making promises and plans on my back.
A rash of goosebumps broke out across my chest and arms.
His eyebrows went up. “Cold?”
“Concerned.”
“Never give up, never surrender.”
“Did you just quote Galaxy Quest at me?”
Tablet Woman was back, and her mouth was moving even faster now. I wasn’t sure she was speaking actual words so much as she was smacking them out of her mouth with a Serena Williams’ intensity.
“Is it surprising that I like movies?”
“No. Just that one.”
The door opened, cutting off his retort.
Tonight we were filming the big event that audiences would see in the first episode of the season. The set was closed. Security everywhere, keeping away the lookie-loos with their (as Ana described them) big Greek mouths. The locals wouldn’t be able to help themselves, she said. Gossip was currency on Nera. Tablet Woman ushered us all into an apparently soundproof luxury lounge, complete with plush couches, glass water dispensers with chopped fruit infusing the water and televisions silently playing a news channel. We had snacks, magazines, game consoles. What we did not have were our phones. Those had been collected before we were allowed to put a foot on the set. Our only connection to the outside world was Tablet Woman and a small, enthusiastic college-aged kid who reminded me of a Jack Russell terrier.
The terrier glanced around the room then hurried over to my side and rained kisses on my cheeks. I was too bewildered to do anything but blink and worry about whether all this makeup on my face would poison him.
Was it toxic? Did it have lead? Who knew? Not me because I couldn’t read the ingredients on the bottles and tubes.
“Hi! I am your interpreter.” If he had a tail it would be creating its own air stream from all the wagging.
“I get an interpreter?”
“Of course! I will be interpreting everything for you, yes? Sometimes I will be standing next to you like this, and sometimes I will be talking inside your ear.”
The knots in my shoulders unclenched some as he shoved an earpiece into my ear. “Thanks!”
“What Pavlina is saying right now is that she—how you say—made a mess and you are all supposed to go to the set right now so that they can introduce you all and film your reactions when you hear about the first task tonight.”
“That seems reasonable.” My eyes found Nick. Okay, truthfully I was hyperaware of his location at every moment. He was a life raft of sorts. Someone familiar in this whole strange world in a foreign country. As long as he was within my eye line, I felt grounded and more than a little flustered. Which was a problem for a million reasons.
We piled out of what I supposed could be called the green room, only nobody had called it that so I just gave it that name in my head. My interpreter, whose name was Memo—pronounced Mee-mow—was right at my elbow, bouncing in his Gucci sneakers. Nick was ahead of me. He had his own personal pup, but she wasn’t an interpreter. She was one of the other contestants and was more of an afghan hound than a terrier. Long, sleek hair. Thin arms. Long legs, which was surprising for someone so tiny. She barely came up to Nick’s shoulder. Her mouth was moving and Nick didn’t seem to be responding in any way. She just chattered on and on as she found excuses to touch him and pick lice off his fur.
Wait.
No.
That was monkeys. She was a pretty, overly affectionate monkey.