The morning sun shone brightly off the burnished aluminum skin of the travel trailer set up at the farthest edge of the asphalt parking lot abutting the Morningstar Studios complex. A bright blue awning stretched from the back end of the trailer, bringing blessed shade for the woman who sat under it in a plastic lawn chair. Only nine o’clock in the morning and it was already ninety degrees.
Valerie Foster put down her third cigarette of the day, sipped her second cup of coffee, and sighed loudly. She thumbed her BlackBerry, ignoring the thirty-seven unread e-mails and checking, as she did every morning, the temperature in Maine. Sixty degrees. Val didn’t actually know anybody in Maine, had never actually even been to Maine, despite the fact that she’d spent two years as a floor director at the actual Fox news affiliate in Boston. Still, it gave her comfort to know that somebody, somewhere, wasn’t already stewing in their own juices as she was in this beastly Atlanta weather.
She sighed again, loudly, for the talent’s benefit.
But her talent didn’t hear her. Or if he did, Tate Moody, the host of Vittles, an outdoor cooking/lifestyles show on the Southern Outdoors Network, was ignoring her, as usual.
He stood a few yards away, tossing a bright yellow disc up into the air, again and again, as he did every morning. And this morning, like every other morning, Tate’s English setter tore off after the disc, feathery tail flying, nimbly catching the Frisbee in midair.
“Good boy!” Tate called encouragingly. The dog dashed to the far edge of the parking lot with the Frisbee, then circled back briskly, coming to stand six feet from Tate.
“Good, Moonpie,” Tate said. Then, sharply, “Bring!”
The dog crouched down, the Frisbee clamped between his teeth, and looked at Tate, his head cocked sideways, as though taunting his owner, Valerie thought. She could almost see one of those little cartoon bubbles above the dog’s grinning face.
“As if,” the bubble would say.
“Moonpie! Bring!” Tate called.
“Tate, come,” Valerie said.
The dog inched closer, but Tate ignored her.
“Goood,” Tate said cautiously, holding out his hand for the Frisbee.
The dog wagged its tail furiously, stood up, and trotted away toward the line of scrubby pines that grew up at the edge of the parking lot. Once there, the dog plunked himself down and began happily gnawing the edge of the Frisbee.
“Tate,” Val pleaded. “Enough with the dog. He’s too stupid to fetch. He’s like a dog version of a bimbo. Gorgeous, but dumb as a damn rock. Come on now. Let’s get to work. The crew will be here any minute, and you know Barry Adelman is coming today.”
Tate Moody crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring his producer’s entreaties.
“Moonpie is not dumb. His daddy was a two-time grand master at the national field trials. He’s hardheaded, yeah, but he’s only ten months old. He’s still just a puppy. That’s why I’ve gotta work with him every day. So he’ll be ready for the quail-hunting show we’re gonna shoot down in Tallahassee come fall.”
“That’s months away,” Val pointed out. “Right now we’ve got today’s show to worry about. Adelman and his guys are supposed to get in sometime this afternoon. They’ll want to see the footage we shot out at the lake yesterday, and then watch you as we shoot. Luckily, the film from the lake is spectacular.”
Tate’s deeply tanned face broke into a wide smile. “Wasn’t that the prettiest mess of shellcrackers you ever saw?”
“Terrific. But you know all those fish look the same to me. I can’t tell a shellcracker from a salmon.”
Tate laughed. “Remind me again why I hired you to produce this show?”
She took a deep drag from her ultra-slim filtered cigarette. “Because I’m the best in the business, and you know it.”
“And?”
She narrowed her eyes as the smoke plumed upward. “And because I’m the one who’s going to get you off this piece-of-crap Southern Outdoors Network and into the big time. The Cooking Channel, Tate, that’s where we’re headed. New York, baby.”
“You can go to New York,” Tate said affably. “I’m staying put.”
Val shook her head. Tate had seemed excited when she’d given him the news that The Cooking Channel was interested in Vittles, but he had been quite clear that he had no intention of ever living anywhere outside the South.
He reached into the pocket of his baggy green cargo shorts and pulled out one of the liver treats the trainer had suggested he use when working with the dog.
He turned away from Val and held the treat out so the dog could see and smell it.
“C’mere, Moonpie,” he called. “Come, boy.”
At the sight of the delicacy, Moonpie dropped the Frisbee, pricked up his ears, and came trotting obligingly over to his putative master.
“Sit,” Tate commanded, holding the treat just above the dog’s head.
Moonpie sat, his tail thumping the ground in anticipation.
“Sit pretty,” Tate said.
The English setter sat regally erect, head up, brown eyes shining, perfectly still.
“Tell me this is not the most beautiful dog you ever saw in your life,” Tate said softly, scratching the dog’s chin.
“Oh, he’s beautiful, all right,” Val agreed. “And your viewers are going to go crazy for him when this new season starts to air. I mean, a dog sidekick. It’s brilliant television.”
“And so original, too,” Tate said dryly.
“It hasn’t been done on a cooking show before, so as far as I’m concerned, it is original,” Val insisted. “Anyway, you know, your demographics skew amazingly female for Southern Outdoors. Something like forty-five percent. And thirty percent of those are women under thirty-five. That’s one reason TCC is so hot to take a look at our show. They know you not only deliver the NASCAR guys their other shows don’t draw, but the women too. And that’s golden.”
“The NASCAR guys I understand. Every man who lives in the South likes to think he’s some kind of rugged outdoorsman, even if his idea of roughing it is a night without a remote control in his hand,” Tate said. “It’s the women part I don’t get. I mean, what’s that all about? Why are all these chicks under thirty watching a show about hunting, fishing, and cooking? And on the Southern Outdoor Network, of all places? You know, I was at Bargain Mart this morning, buying a spool of monofilament line, and when I looked up, there were half a dozen girls—none of ’em could have been drinking age—following me to the cash register. Honest to God, Val, one of ’em asked me to autograph her tattoo. And it wasn’t on her arm, either.”
He bent over and wrapped his arms around Moonpie, who responded by lavishly licking his hero’s chin. “It’s crazy, isn’t it, little buddy?”
Valerie took another deep drag on her cigarette, admiring, as she did always, the view of her star’s backside.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It all depends on how you look at things.”