Tate was demonstrating his grandmother’s method for seasoning a cast-iron skillet.
“BoBo, pull the camera in as close as you can get on that,” Valerie instructed. “Tate, turn your wrist and look into the camera.”
“I’m not double-jointed, Val,” Tate griped.
Just then, a medium-size bundle of white-and-brown fur burst onto the set, propped his front paws on the kitchen counter, and snatched the basket of hush puppies that had just come out of the deep fryer.
“Son of a bitch,” BoBo hollered as the dog streaked past, spilling the boiling hot fritters all over the floor.
“Moonpie!” Tate yelled, dropping the skillet.
“Cut!” Val screamed. “Cut, damn it.”
Beside her at the editing table, she could swear she heard Zeke, the silent assistant, snigger.
“Tate, get that damned dog out of here,” Val ordered.
Having managed to corner the English setter beneath the set’s rustic kitchen table, Tate was holding out a bit of fried shellcracker, trying to lure the dog out.
“I didn’t let him in,” Tate said. “Last time I checked, he was locked up safe and sound in the trailer.”
“Well, somebody let him in,” the producer said waspishly. “And he’s just destroyed the swap-out for the hush puppies.”
“Get the girls to fix some more,” Tate said, just as waspishly. “It’s only cornmeal and buttermilk, for Pete’s sake.”
“Connie?” Val’s head swiveled in the direction of her prep cook. “How long will that take?”
The heavyset black woman wiped her face with the edge of her white apron. “It’ll take a while. We don’t have any more cornmeal. I’ll have to send somebody out to get some more.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Val snapped.
“Here, Moonpie,” Tate called softly, attempting to wedge his body under the table. “Come get the nice fish. You love fish. It goes great with hush puppies.”
The dog chewed happily on the basket that had contained the fritters and edged backward, away from his master.
“Do dogs like fried fish?” Zeke asked.
“I don’t know,” Adelman said. “Tate, does that dog of yours like fried fish?”
Tate groaned as he stood up. “Only if I fix it.”
Without warning, the dog chose that moment to dash out from under the table, where BoBo, who’d been backing away from the set and the dog, promptly tripped over him, sending his heavy camera clattering to the concrete floor. Moonpie yelped his outrage.
“Christ.” Val jumped up from the editing table.
BoBo cradled the camera in his arms like an ailing infant.
Tate’s face was ashen. “Is it broken?”
BoBo pointed to the smattering of glass on the floor from the smashed lens. “Kinda.”
The producer sat down again and banged her head on the editing table. “This just is not my day. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Can we…get another one?” Tate asked, looking from BoBo to the producer.
“BoBo?” Val gave him a pleading look.
The cameraman stared down at the floor. “It’s after six. The rental house we sometimes get equipment from is closed. There’s another place, in Nashville. I guess I could give them a call. But even if they’re open, and they have one, and they overnighted it to us, we still wouldn’t get it till tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Call ’em,” she said, her lips pressed together in a grim white line. “But in the meantime, get that fucking dog the fuck out of here!”
As if on cue, Moonpie, who was now cowering at Tate’s feet, looked up and whined.
“Come on, boy,” Tate said softly, grasping him by the collar. “Time to go home.”
Instead of trotting along obediently beside his master, as he would have done any other time, the setter decided to do what setters do. He sat, planting his haunches firmly on the concrete floor.
“Moonpie,” Tate said, his teeth clenched. “Heel!”
The dog sat.
“Dammit, Moonpie,” Tate whispered. Finally, he bent down and gathered the sixty-pound dog into his arms and staggered toward the studio’s rear door. He opened it, stepped outside into the dying sunlight, and ran directly into Regina Foxton.
Her face was pink with embarrassment. “Oh!” she said, taking a step backward. “You caught the dog. Good. I was afraid—”
She stopped, seeing the look on Tate’s face.
“You did this?” he asked. “You let him out of the trailer? Why would you do something like that?”
“He was howling,” she said, taking another step backward. “Scratching at the door to your trailer. He was frantic. I was just going to let him go to the bathroom. But he got away from me. He ran, and I couldn’t catch him. And then somebody opened the door from inside the studio and let him in. And it was locked. So I couldn’t go after him—”
“You just shut down my show,” Tate said, interrupting her. “Big coincidence, huh? The guys from the network are down, taking a look at both our shows. Yours goes just fine. Wonderful. Then they step over to watch Vittles, and all of a sudden, my dog gets let into the studio, and all hell breaks loose.”
“I didn’t intentionally let him in,” Gina protested. “I told you, it was an accident.”
Tate was crossing the asphalt parking lot in the direction of his trailer at a rapid clip, with Regina trailing behind.
“Oh,” he said, abruptly turning around to face her. “Oh, it was an accident,” he said, his voice mocking. “That makes it all right that my cameraman tripped over him and dropped and smashed a camera that can’t be replaced. All with Barry Adelman and his sidekick sitting there watching.”
“Hey!” she said sharply. She ran up beside him and tugged at his arm. “What are you implying? That I deliberately let the dog out to sabotage your show? To make you look bad and me look good?”
He didn’t turn and he didn’t look at her, he just kept stalking toward his trailer. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
She stopped and planted her aching feet on the still-hot asphalt. “Just a minute, mister,” she hollered. “You wait just one dadgummed minute.”