“If you want to go to Pole Kisses with Tilly and Layna, we’ll watch that adorable little nugget,” Oat Willimena said.
“Ooh, yes!” Emmylou chimed in. “You’d be a dream on the pole.”
Miranda’s eyes lit up at the encouraging words.
“Salma Hayek is letting us into the studio an hour early tonight so Layna can film me for some funny social media reels,” I said. “I have a new Vagina Monster bit I want to debut.” I’d used construction paper to make a big toothy open mouth and googly eyes. The mouth would go on my crotch, the googly eyes on the soles of my feet so that when I did the Vagina Monster I’d reallylooklike a monster.
“Ooh! Spicy!” Oat Willimena said.
“I have big news too,” I said. “I turned in my two weeks’ notice at the Capitol Grill.” Jaws dropped around the room and I rushed to explain. “My new Substack,Make It Funny, is up to five thousand paid subscribers. Each one of those people is shelling out two bucks a month.”
Miranda clapped her hand over her mouth. Layna shrieked: “Way to bury the lede!” Oat Willimena whooped, and Emmylou said, “I like that math.”
“I’ve decided to say ‘Eff you’ to the comedy gatekeepers,” I said. “‘No manager, no gigs, no problem’ is my new artistic philosophy. I’m funny as hell and I’ve got something to say. So watch out, world!” My old manager had been calling and emailing, but I wasn’t taking those calls. Not ever again.
“Glad you figured out how to monetize the millions of views those festival videos racked up,” Layna said. “What do you have, like a hundred thousand Insta followers now? It must help. I mean, your jokes will never again be going out into a void.”
“On all my platforms combined, I’m up to 250K,” I said. “And yes, it absolutely does help.”
Fifty-Four
Three Days Later
There is no worse sensation than taking a step to reach for the laundry detergent and feeling your bare toes sink into a fresh pile of dog shit.
“Little Sister!” I yelled. Coming home from the Capitol Grill on my break to do a couple quick chores, I’d made the mistake of kicking off my shoes and socks at the door.
Now as I hopped around on one foot, cursing, my phone began to ring. A midday phone call had a fifty-fifty chance of being spam or the school nurse. A Los Angeles area code. Spam. Still, I was done sending every call to voicemail. I picked up.
“Hello?” I said, jumping toward the sliding glass kitchen door on my one unsullied foot.
“Lauren McClain’s office calling for Tilly Turner,” a young woman said in the bored tone all viciously competitive assistants in the entertainment industry employ.
I put my dookie-smeared foot down on the back porch to steady myself. “Is it April Fool’s?” I said. “Tell me it’s not April Fool’s.”
“It’s still March,” the bored-sounding assistant said. “Can you hold while I get Lauren on the line?”
“Okay,” I managed. I hobbled to the hose, turned the water on full blast, and sprayed the bottom of my foot. Irrationally, I believed that I could not, should not, speak to one of the most legendary comedy producers in the world with dog poop between my toes.
“Hello?” a calm voice said.
“Lauren?” I said. “It’s Tilly Turner.”
“Are you in the shower?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me. You’ve hiked to the base of a Montana waterfall.” Thanks to theYellowstoneTV franchise, people in LA thought the only thing between Utah and Canada was Montana.
Suddenly I understood that if I was going to do this, I needed to be one hundredpercent authentically myself at every second. I was not going to pretend to be anything but a mother of twins with a not-quite-house-trained dog living in a state that rang no Hollywood bells. “I’m in my backyard in Idaho hosing dogshit off my bare foot,” I admitted.
Lauren McClain let out a belly laugh. “Did you get a puppy? When I got my labradoodle, I had the puppy blues for a goddamn year.”
“How could I not have the blues when this thing has chewed up all my power cords?”
“Did you have to go to the Apple Store to replace them?” Lauren said.
“The Apple Store is a soul crusher,” I said. At the exact same time she said, “The Apple Store is hell on earth.”
We both laughed. There was an awkward silence while I waited to see if she’d keep chatting as if she was an old friend or if she planned to actually explain why she was calling.
“So usually I’d reach out to your manager or agent, but my assistant said she couldn’t tell if you have one,” Lauren said.
