Live from New York, It's Lena Sharpe Read online

  Live from New York, It’s Lena Sharpe

  Courtney Litz

  Live from New York, It’s Lena Sharpe

  For Mom, Dad and Paige

  Special thanks to:

  My parents, Edward and Mary Litz,

  and my sister, Paige Litz.

  And:

  Josh Horowitz, Alexandra Bresnan,

  Charlotte Morgan, Renee Kaplan, Jennifer Cohan

  and Sarah Jones.

  Also:

  My sincere thanks to Isabel Swift, Margaret Marbury

  and Farrin Jacobs for their encouragement

  and invaluable editorial guidance.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  chapter 1

  Do you ever have those moments when you wonder how the many twists and turns in your life have brought you to a particular (usually disappointing) juncture? This was one of those moments.

  5,4,3,2,1…Rolling

  Cue Music—

  Kelly Karaway, Host: Hello and welcome to Face to Face. I’m your host, Kelly Karaway. Each week for our special segment, “Reinventions,” we spotlight a different celebrity as you’ve never seen them before. Last week, we saddled up our horse and joined your favorite heartthrob and mine, Harrison Ford, as he gave us a private peek at his other starring role—as a Montana cattle rancher. Boy, that was worth suffering a few saddle sores for, wasn’t it, ladies! And this week, we’ve got a special treat for all you guys out there! You know her as the breakout WB star and four-time Maxim cover girl, but tonight on “Reinventions,” we’ll show you how actress Sienna Skye has reinvented her spirituality. Hello and welcome, Ms. Sienna Skye!

  Sienna Skye: Thanks, Kelly. It’s so great to be here.

  Kelly Karaway: This past year has been a crazy one for you, hasn’t it? Tell us, if you can, what is it like to be Sienna Skye?

  Sienna Skye: Well, it’s very, very difficult. I’ll be honest with you, Kelly, when I’m working, I’m just giving and giving, and sometimes I just feel like I don’t have anything left, you know? Like when I was playing Cassidy—

  Kelly Karaway: Excuse me, Sienna, I just need to explain to the audience in case they’ve been in a coma for the last six months—Cassidy was your character in the WB movie of the week, Cassidy’s Crisis and she was both a stripper and a single mom.

  Sienna Skye: That’s right. And you know, Kelly, sometimes I would come home from the set and I would be so immersed in the character that I would just feel like I was a stripper, you know…

  Kelly Karaway: Mmm, that’s fascinating, Sienna.

  Sienna Skye: And so when Rafe asked me to chant with him…

  Kelly Karaway: And Rafe would be…

  Sienna Skye: He’s my colorist, but he’s also just so much more to me, Kelly. Anyway, Rafe introduced me to Buddhism and that has made all the difference.

  Kelly Karaway: That’s just fascinating Sienna, really. So what is it about Buddhism that works for you? Can you explain it?

  Sienna Skye: I feel like, well, I feel like I can breathe again. Buddha, he’s just my number one guy right now.

  Kelly Karaway: Oh, that’s so beautiful I can’t even stand it. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Sienna, really. And today, we’ve got a special treat for all our viewers because Sienna’s going to show us her extensive and exquisite collection of Buddha figures!

  Sienna Skye: That’s right.

  [Wide shot as camera pans across Buddha display.]

  Kelly Karaway: Now, I absolutely adore this one. Look at those shiny eyes!

  [Close-up on Buddha.]

  Sienna Skye: Well, that’s a very sentimental one, actually. The eyes are made from sequins taken from my stripper costume in Cassidy’s Crisis.

  Kelly Karaway: That is fascinating, Sienna. Sal, could you just move in for a close-up on this one, please… Oh, for Christ sake, Cut! Who put this glass of water here? Lena! Who the hell’s in charge here?

  CUT

  “Lena! Lena! Stop daydreaming!”

  I was deep into a conversation with Martin Scorsese and Joan Didion, so I didn’t hear Sal yelling at me. Marty was after me to see his newest film and Joan just couldn’t stop raving about my latest think piece for the Sunday Times. Such a sweetheart, that Joan.

  “Hey, Lena, you gotta clean this crap up. I don’t got all day here,” Sal, and I don’t mean Salman Rushdie, barked at me between bites of his pastrami sandwich.

  And that’s when I started wondering: How did I get here? To this moment? How had all the events in my life added up to this? In theory, I was a television producer working on a location shoot in downtown Manhattan. In reality, I had been rearranging a TV starlet’s glittering Buddhas for the past four hours. This schism between “what should be” and “what is” has proven to be, shall we say, a major theme in my life so far.

  “Here, hold this cable, Lena. We’re gonna do some close-ups on Sienna. I want to get a good shot of her stomach.” Sal eagerly hoisted a tangle of wires onto my lap and went in for his shot. The stomach in question, which by all accounts did not look wide enough to actually contain vital organs, belonged to up-and-coming actress/model/singer/spokesperson and all around “it” girl, Sienna Skye.

  At this particular moment, Ms. Sienna Skye was doing her very best to fan the flame of her generally agreed upon fabulousness. I watched her now as she preened for the camera to the delight and amazement of the crew. Of course, anything that she might think to do right now would very likely be deemed exquisite/otherworldly/magical, and just absolutely right. You see, this was Sienna Skye’s moment.

  “Guys, I’m going to go make a quick change. This tube top would look better in pink, don’t you think?” Sienna chirped as Sal and the rest of the crew looked at her slack-jawed, their line of vision matching up exactly with the tube top in question. “Okay, I’ll be right back.” She hopped down from her perch and scampered off to her dressing room.

  “All right,” Sal tried to collect himself, “Nina, where are you? Nina?”

  “Lena?” I asked.

  “Uh, yeah, of course that’s what I meant.” Sal looked annoyed. “Listen, you’re about Sienna’s size. Get up there and stand in her place so we can fix the lighting.”

  “Sure,” I said, noting the crew’s palpable disappointment. “She’s coming right back, you guys.” They didn’t seem comforted. It was true—I was about Sienna’s size—only my chest was a few inches flatter, my skin was a few shades paler, and my hair was a few tones darker than her platinum locks. Essentially, I could be Sienna’s “before” picture in a makeover story.

  Sienna and I did have at least one thing in common, I thought to myself as I did my best impression of a hot young ingénue—Arch back! Suck in stomach! No, I didn’t dream of a Playboy pictorial or my own line of lingerie, but just like Sienna, I had come to New York looking for something bigger than what I had left behind.

  Mine was a tale as old as Dreiser and as new as Felicity: Small town girl moves to the big city to grab her slice of the pie and a little bit of glamour on the side. Her parents fear for her safety, she fears for her bank account, but most of all, she waits for her turn to come.

  My life, I figured, could be divided into three rather distinct phases—BC, DC, and PC. Let me elaborate:

  BC: As the letters imply, BC (Before college) w
as a dark, desolate time in my life’s history. It encompassed a period of small-town ennui mixed with a difficult blend of adolescent angst and general alienation from my fellow peer group, a perplexing herd who expressed a troubling contentment with pep rallies and jobs at the mall. Overall impression—melancholic.

  DC: During college. Known to some close friends as the “Greg” years in honor of my omnipresent boyfriend of the time, this period was marked by a perceived sense of liberation and freedom, which, upon reflection, was neither. The smell of boiling ramen and patchouli incense are key indicators of the DC era. Overall impression—naively happy.

  PC: Post-college years. Otherwise known as the Breakfast at Tiffany’s years or, more simply, as the present. PC is the time I’ve dreamed of my entire life, the moment when my life became my own, when everything was supposed to make sense. Yet somehow everything seemed more complicated than it ever had before. Overall impression—equal parts exciting and confusing with a sprinkle of adult-size fear for good measure.

  A bit melodramatic? Perhaps. But then I’m convinced that just about everyone living in New York City feels they are currently starring in the movie of their own life, just a small step away from their own much-deserved “moment.”

  My cell phone rang. Sal rolled his eyes.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hey, it’s Nick.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “Relax, darling. I’m finally getting around to picking up my canvases from your apartment and I can’t find a few of my things.”

  Nick the painter. Long story short—we met at a gallery opening the previous summer. He wasn’t textbook good-looking, but he had a certain way about him that made the whole greater than its parts—does that make sense? Olive skin, crooked nose and the fullest, ripest lips. Plus, he spoke Italian and could whip up a pencil sketch of my likeness (only prettier!) in a matter of moments. What else could a girl want?

  And it was summer, when life sort of slips into that hazy mode of possibility and the idea of skipping work to frolic in the park with your smoky artist boyfriend seems romantic, not irresponsible.

  Of course, winter came, the haze evaporated, and, alas, Nick’s lips became horribly chapped. Love’s languor was definitely lost. I had gone from being the enchanted muse to the broke patron. That phase lasted several painful more months until we had broken up officially. Now it was summer again, and I was single once more.

  “So, do you know where my bottle of gin is?” he asked.

  “I bought that gin.”

  “But you don’t drink gin, love.”

  “Nick, I don’t intend to drink it. I intend to use it to ignite the fire I will set if you’re still in my apartment when I return. Cheers, darling.” I snapped my phone shut.

  “Jesus, Lena, you don’t beat around the bush.” Sal grinned at me through a mouth full of Doritos.

  Okay, where was I before Nick so rudely interrupted me? Speaking of men, I should make one thing very clear—I’m most certainly not some vapid princess waiting for my handsome Prince Charming to save me. Please. I’m fully aware that the only way I’m going to get my ruby slippers any time soon is with an AmEx card and a couple weeks of overtime. Five years on my own in this city has toughened my shell and significantly toned down any lingering Pollyanna reflexes. But a girl’s gotta dream, right?

  Some days I imagine myself a boyish Annie Hall with my tweed pants and quirky hats, coyly befuddling and effortlessly stylish. Other days, I am the spunky young professional, the bright-eyed Mary Richards chasing her dream with a wink and a smile. And then, as you know, there are the parties with Marty, Joan and the rest.

  “I hope you’re getting all this down on the shot list…between phone calls, I mean,” Nadine said to me in her distinctive half-joking-but-all-too-serious way that still manages to unnerve me after more than a year under her reign. Nadine (my “superior”) and I, we just didn’t quite “gel,” to use one of her favorite terms.

  She had the unfortunate habit of viewing her job (and thus mine) as something on par with the pioneering work of Edward R. Murrow. “Do not underestimate the power of journalism, Lena. It’s our duty to tell the story, the whole story.” She would say these aphorisms with a hushed, reverent tone. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that our particular “news” program, an hour-long fluff parade called Face to Face, leaned more toward Entertainment Tonight than World News Tonight.

  “You did finish asking her the preliminary questions, correct?” Nadine continued her inquisition. “You know we’ve got to prepare for the shopping segment.” She said this in a way that managed to simultaneously convey both doubt that I had finished as well as disregard for any work that I might have actually done. If I wasn’t so consumed by my unhealthy hatred of her, I might have marveled at the effort.

  “Don’t worry, Nadine. I grilled her while she was getting waxed this morning,” I said as dryly as possible while hoping not to swerve accidentally over the line of contempt. Hiding my disgust had become a full-time job.

  “That reminds me. Sienna’s in the tanning booth right now for a touch-up. Remember to make sure she’s out in ten minutes. Got it?” Nadine said, glancing down at her clipboard.

  “Of course. We certainly wouldn’t want a burnt Sienna!”

  Nadine looked at me, expressionless. “Whatever, Sharpe,” she said, and moved on to her next victim.

  Believe me, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wanted to be Murphy Brown, not Mary Hart, dammit. But here I was, laboring at the task of crafting the story of Ms. Sienna Skye, attempting to inject heroic purpose into her work as…well, as whatever it is that she does.

  Of course, telling the “story” of Sienna Skye is a mind-numbing affair to be sure, but despite her endless references to the powers of yogilates and her colonic therapist, there is a story there, nonetheless.

  You see, everyone has a story. This I know for certain. The trick is to weed out all of the standard, boring parts that muddle up the narrative. Of course, you might find it all very interesting—the childhood crushes, the “hilarious” high-school pranks, the first car and the last deadbeat boyfriend. It’s your life, after all. Frankly, and I speak with some authority on the matter, no one else cares. Really. Better you realize that now, then on the winding-up side of a long-ass explanation of your last blind-date fiasco.

  The trick is to find “the hook,” that little kernel of experience where your life and other people caring about it intersect. I suppose you could call me a “hooker,” which is actually a fitting alternate title for a TV producer, if I’ve ever heard one.

  So, what’s my story then? That’s a question I don’t find so easy to answer. Of course, I could easily do the In Style version. That’s my job after all:

  One might suspect the striking young woman seated before me to be an aspiring young model or perhaps the pretty young thing of some high-powered television executive. In fact, she’s Lena Sharpe and she is fast becoming a power player in the world of television all on her own. At this moment, however, she’s sitting with me in a charming café just down the street from her new Tribeca loft trying to decide between the egg-white omelette and the granola fruit plate. She looks glamorous, yet casual in slim Katayone Adeli pants and a crisp white Prada shirt (see how you can get Lena Sharpe’s look on here!), and I can’t help but notice the steady stream of gentlemen heading for the pay phone to sneak a look. She wears not a trace of makeup, but her skin appears virtually devoid of pores. (“Just a little soap and water. Nothing fancy. You can’t worry too much about your beauty regime when you’re field reporting in the Balkans!” she insisted earlier with a laugh.) “So, what would you like to know?” As Lena looks up from her menu and smiles brightly it becomes all too clear how this talented young reporter has won over an unprecedented Internet fan following as well as a coveted spot on People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list….

  But what about the 60 Minutes version? The
Mike-Wallace-in-a-trench-coat-with-a-roving-camera-crew-and-a-running-litany-of-hard-hitting-questions version? Well, that was tougher. That required the truth and a lot of independent sources. What, in the end, would my story be? I kept turning the pages, past the twists and the turns and the disappointing moments, but I couldn’t even find where my real story began.

  chapter 2

  “Hey, Lena, your phone’s ringing,” I heard Sal shouting at me.

  Dammit, Nick, I thought, but then immediately relaxed when I saw the number.

  “Lena. Meet me at the corner of Tenth and C at ten o’clock.”

  I could feel a wide smile spread across my face. It was Jake. And that meant that my night had taken a sudden U-turn for the better. You see what I mean? It can be as simple as that. Just one phone call, and everything changes. The city opens its arms and lets you play its secret games. Your moment could be just around the corner.

  Of course, when I got to the corner, Jake wasn’t there—not that I had really expected him to be. He wasn’t the type to loiter for anyone.

  I noticed a wobbly couple stumbling down the stairs of an unmarked brownstone and I had a hunch that that was my intended destination. Once inside, I followed the echoes of a throbbing bass up a spiral staircase. The building was abandoned and police caution tape lay tangled in a mess of cinderblocks in the corner. If I didn’t know Jake as well as I do (or if I hadn’t lived in a building with a similar aesthetic for several years), I might have been more than a little afraid.

  At the top of the stairs, a guy with hooded eyes and a vintage Gucci fedora leaned against the door.

  “Who do you know?” He squinted at me critically. I appreciated his ability to remain haughty and suspicious of my cool factor despite his obvious stupor—quite a talent.