The Charm Offensive(13)
But no. He catches himself mid-spiral.
These are not appropriate morning-yoga thoughts. He tries to refocus on things that calm him: Excel spreadsheets, quiet libraries, one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles, 90-degree angles.
Deep breath. He bends forward and presses his nose to his knees, palms flat on either side of his feet.
Deep breath. He’s halfway between plank and downward dog when the meditation app is interrupted by the chirp of FaceTime. He swipes to accept the call without losing his balance. “Good morning.”
“Oh. My. God. Is that Charlie Winshaw?” his publicist squeals, and there is nothing calming about it. “The hunk? The dreamboat? The object of my masturbatory fantasies?”
He swings into a cross-legged position on the bedroom floor. “Please stop.”
Parisa Khadim never stops once she commits to a comedic bit, and her faux-fangirling crescendos when she cups her hand around her mouth and shouts, “Take your shirt off, Hot-Ass!”
“I will not tolerate being objectified in this manner,” he responds primly. He can see from the view of the bay out her window she’s in her San Francisco office. “Is this the reason you’re calling? To sexually harass me in your workplace?”
“I didn’t know I needed a reason to call my sugar daddy.”
He snorts. “Sugar daddy” is an absurd way to describe their dynamic. Parisa earns every dollar he pays her ten times over by dealing with the nonstop PR clusterfuck that is his life. “I just wanted to check in and see—wait a minute.” She slams her open palm onto the desk. “What happened to your face?”
“It’s fine.” He picks up the phone and disconnects his Bluetooth headphones so that her voice now fills the entire bedroom, competing with the sound of Dev’s music. Usually, the star of Ever After is not allowed to keep his phone, but Parisa negotiated it into his contract. He can’t be cut off from her.
“It does not look fine. Tell me who I need to sue!”
“There is no one to sue, because you forced me to sign a contract making it nearly impossible for me to bring litigation against anyone affiliated with Ever After.”
She does some elaborate pantomime of innocence. “Did I? Hmm…” And then she promptly changes the subject away from his two black eyes. “So how was it? It would seem you survived the first night. Mostly.”
“It was…” Exhausting? Demoralizing? Briefly painful and consistently confusing? “Fine.”
“Use your words, Charlie.”
“I don’t know. It was…”
She sighs dramatically. “What are you doing today, then?”
“Something called a Group Quest. It’s this thing where they divide the remaining contestants into two teams, and—”
She interrupts. “Charles, I’m a human woman. I’ve seen Ever After before. I know about the vaguely fairy-tale-themed Group Quest challenges and the Courting Dates and the Crowning Ceremonies.”
The phrase Crowning Ceremony is mildly triggering. That was the name of the awful process that didn’t end until eight Sunday morning after a twelve-hour shoot. He called the names of contestants one at a time, placed a cheap tiara on their heads, and asked the dramatic question, “Are you interested in becoming my princess?”
They all said yes. Obviously.
“Parisa, how can you describe the concept of this show with a straight face?”
She points accusingly at him. “Don’t you dare infantilize the show simply because it’s made for women, by women, and is about women.”
“Most of the people who work here are definitely male—”
“And do not act dismissive toward the women on the show, do you understand me? You are not better than them because you went to Stanford and care about fracking.”
“Jesus, Parisa, I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
He thinks about Megan and her exercise videos. He kind of was.
“You’re the one who told me these women aren’t really here to find love.” He bristles. Then he thinks about Dev, his crooked grin at four in the morning. I know I can make you fall in love.
Charlie shakes off the dread of that thought. “You said that’s why it’s morally justifiable to use the show. Because the women are all here for shameless self-promotion, too.”
“I’m sure most of them are,” Parisa concedes, “but that doesn’t give you permission to condescend them like a sexist a-hole. Also, are you listening to Leland Barlow right now?”
“It’s not me. It’s my new handler. Dev.”
“Dev?” Parisa smooths out her perfectly smooth ponytail and pushes her round face close to the screen. “Is your new handler cute?”
“Why… why would it matter if he was cute?”
“Because I’m thirty-four and single and these things matter to me.”
He sighs. “You can’t date my handler, Parisa.”
“Because you’d be jealous?”
“What? No. Why the heck would I—jealous?”
She preens in front of her camera. “Because you’re secretly in love with me. That’s why you’re blushing right now.”
“Yes, you caught me,” he says, the strange tension easing from his shoulders. “I have spent the last four years secretly pining for you, and I’ve only rejected your drunken proposals of marriage because I’m playing hard to get.”