BoBo looked up from the cell phone he’d been hunched over for the past thirty minutes, furiously speed-dialing every professional contact in the phone’s memory.
“Uh, Val?”
She looked up from the laptop, hands pressed together as if in prayer.
He shook his head sadly. “Sorry. No go for today. Nothing’s available. Not here, or Nashville, not even in New York, until Monday evening at the earliest. You want me to go ahead and have them ship a replacement camera?”
Valerie fumbled desperately on the tabletop for her leather cigarette case. She was down to a pack a day now—and that was with a nicotine patch firmly affixed to each of her upper arms. She shook out one of her ultra-slim menthols, lit up, and inhaled so deeply she seemed to suck all the oxygen from the set.
Exhaling slowly, she nodded through the cloud of smoke wreathed around her head.
Sitting two chairs away, Zeke fanned the air furiously with both hands, making extravagant choking noises. “Really!” he said, pushing his chair away from the table.
Val’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and she drew deeply from the cigarette again. “Fuck,” she said, exhaling at the same time.
BoBo held the phone up, questioning. “So—should I go ahead and tell ’em to ship it? It’s the last one they’ve got.”
She reached for her Day Runner, slid out her personal Visa card, and handed it over to her cameraman. “There goes my budget.”
She stood up and rubbed the small of her back.
“Okay, everybody,” she called loudly. The cameramen, the lighting tech, the sound man, the prep cooks, and the food stylist all stopped and looked expectantly in her direction.
“We’re shut down till Monday night. I need everybody back here at four o’clock, no later. Everybody got that?”
The crew gave a collective groan and immediately started to clear the set of food and equipment.
“And, Connie,” Val said, her voice rising.
“I know, I know,” Connie said, stacking a tray with the mixing bowls and pans Tate had been using. “Cornmeal. Lots of cornmeal. I’ll put it at the top of my shopping list.”
“What about the fish?” Val asked. “Can it keep till Monday?”
Connie rolled her dark eyes in answer. “Sure. If you want to stink up the whole studio cooking nasty three-day-old fish, be my guest. But don’t ask me to cook that mess.”
Zeke sniggered.
Val shot him a look. She put her hands on her hips now, mirroring her prep chef’s defensive stance.
“Well, what do you suggest? Do we have any more fillets in the freezer?”
“Nuh-uh,” Connie said. “Tate fried up everything he caught. Guess you’ll just have to send him back out to that pond to catch another mess of fish.”
Val frowned. She knew her star’s weekend plans, and was well aware that he wasn’t planning another fishing trip.
“We can’t use another kind of fish as a stand-in?”
Connie frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “Tate’ll be able to tell. And you know how he is about that kind of shit. I’m not gonna be the one to hand him a plate of trout or bass fillets when the recipe clearly says we’re cooking shellcracker.”
“You leave Tate to me,” Val said. “Just do me a favor. Call all your seafood dealers and see what they can come up with that looks like shellcracker. We can use the earlier footage of Tate dipping it in the breading, and nobody will see a thing. Just call me at home tonight, and let me know what you found.”
Connie pursed her lips, picked up the tray, and stomped off the set, muttering as she went. “I’m not callin’ Atlantic Seafood and askin’ them if they got what I know they ain’t got….”
Val turned and gave Barry Adelman and his assistant a weak smile.
“Food divas,” she said, adding an expressive shrug. “I’m sure you deal with this kind of thing all the time in New York.”
Adelman nodded without saying anything, his pen busy jotting something on a yellow Post-it note, which he promptly pressed to the sleeve of his assistant’s shirt.
In fact, now that she was standing right in front of him, she could see that Zeke’s shirt seemed to be generously papered with a small forest of yellow stickies.
“I’m really sorry about today,” Val said, trying not to stare at Zeke. “I hope you won’t think your trip was wasted. This was just one of those days. And about the dog…what can I say?”
She flicked a long ash onto the floor. “It was inexcusable. I’m going to have a talk with Tate. I myself am a huge animal lover. But, well, Moonpie—let’s just say he’s uncontrollable. I told Tate—”
Barry Adelman leaned over and plucked a Post-it note from a spot directly under Zeke’s Adam’s apple, and handed it to her.
She read it aloud. “Dog = awesome.”
Adelman nodded. “That dog is a natural.”
He paused and looked around to see if anyone else was listening. Everyone else, of course, was rushing around trying to make their escape for the weekend.
Lowering his voice, Adelman went on. “I’m not really in a position to tell you this. I mean, it’d be very premature…”
Val batted her eyelashes and moved closer to the executive. “Anything you tell me would be totally confidential, Barry.”
“Zeke!” he said, snapping his fingers.
His assistant sprang to his feet.
Adelman scanned Zeke’s chest, finally picking a slip of paper from the assistant’s right shoulder. He smiled coyly and handed it to Valerie.
“Sponsorship tie-in?” she read.
“Exactly,” Adelman said.
Valerie wondered what she should gather from this cryptic exchange. Should she hazard a guess? But if she guessed wrong, would Adelman think her some kind of mental defective?
“Ahh,” she said finally.
“Dog food,” Zeke said, in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Riiight,” Val said, grinning. “Of course. It’s funny you should mention that. Because I happen to know that the ChowHound folks are looking to launch a whole new ad campaign in the fall. They’re crazy to have Tate endorse their premium dog-food line. There’s even talk of using Moonpie in some of the ads.”
This, of course, was a blatant lie. There was no such talk that Val knew of. ChowHound’s corporate offices were located in Atlanta, it was true. Like everybody else in town, she’d stopped and stared at the eight-story headquarters building in Midtown that was shaped like a giant red fire hydrant. But she’d never even met anybody from ChowHound. Still, that could all change. It would change, she vowed to herself.
“Pet-care products,” Zeke added knowledgeably, plucking a Post-it from directly above his left nipple. He read aloud from it. “Thirty-eight billion dollars last year.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Val said, almost purring. “And that’s only one of the sponsorship opportunities we see for Tate and Moonpie. Once they’re in a national venue. That’s why I was hoping we could have dinner this evening. I know Tate is dying to have some one-on-one time with you.”
“Hmmm,” Adelman said. He looked at his watch, and then at Zeke.
“Can’t,” Zeke said, handing his boss a yellow Post-it clinging near his left wrist. “Flight’s at eight.”
“Next time,” Adelman said.
Zeke packed up his bulging leather messenger bag and Adelman’s laptop case.
“But what about the show?” Val sputtered. “You really didn’t get to see what Tate can do.”
“We saw,” Adelman said. “I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, send me that footage of the dog stealing the food, would you?”
“Sure,” Val said. As she watched the men walk off, she flung her cigarette to the floor and stubbed it out.
Adelman turned, and Val visibly brightened.
“Just what kind of dog is he?” he called. She could see Zeke’s pen poised above the pad of Post-its.
Val had to think fast. “He’s a setter,” she said. “A Landrover setter. Very rare breed. Tate has the only one in the state.”