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The EA heads down the hall toward me. “She’s not there.”
“Where is she?” I try not to let my panic seep into my voice.
“No idea.”
“Please call her. Get her back. Apparently, I need make-up.”
The young woman smiles, but rolls her eyes. “Yeah. You do.”
I stand by the door to wait, confident this person will be found in time. She arrives on the same elevator as Will and they appear to be arguing.
Once they reach me, he says, “Catherine, we go live in three minutes. I need you in that room now.” He points across the hall.
I ignore him. “Thank you,” I say to the young woman at his side. “I’m sorry I was being stubborn. Can you get this done in three minutes?”
She shakes her head. “Five. Minimum.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Let’s get it done.”
“Catherine, what part of ‘going live’ don’t you understand?”
“You do at least a three-minute intro before you read your guest’s bio. I’ll be there.”
The stylist has her door unlocked. She pushes it open and I go in with her, leaving a furious Will Power standing alone.
My adrenalin is pumping and my mind is unfocused. While my face is being covered in God-knows-what, I try to focus on my talking points but the words that have found their way onto repeat in my brain are from an old advertising slogan—Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.
I can’t make it stop. I try to remember if there was music with the words. And then I get an image of a painting and a sculpture. A new installation. The timing could not be worse for inspiration to strike. But I go with it, letting creative ideas ignite and burn out in rapid succession, like Whack-a-Mole with live dragons.
“Done!”
The young woman startles me back into the room.
She spins my chair so I can see myself in the mirror, but I don’t look. I don’t want to see and second-guess my decision.
“Thank you. I appreciate you.”
CHAPTER13
Eric
I’ve got The Will Power Hour streaming on the larger of my monitors. I texted Catherine four more times, but she didn’t reply. Hopefully, she was prepping with Will, not mad at my unsolicited advice.
Will’s talking about all the upcoming seminar cities he’ll be speaking in, dropping mini-success stories from entrepreneurs who’ve gone through his twenty-thousand-dollar coaching program. We’re five minutes into the episode and I feel like I’m watching an infomercial delivered by a TV evangelist … which, Will Power kind of is, preaching about the god of entrepreneurship. A god which has deemed him its one true savior.
I tune him out and a song from Jesus Christ Superstar bubbles up from some long-forgotten cave in my mind … the lyrics struggle to connect and all I can remember is something about him being just a man.
I’ve known off-stage, off-camera Will for over a decade and he most certainly is just a man. A nice guy, but the way he talks, preaches success, you’d think he believed it was available to anyone who had the drive to succeed. It’s as if he forgets the fact that his starter program costs two thousand dollars for a weekend in a room with a thousand other people.
Catherine is an entrepreneurial unicorn who made it on her own, without the benefit of a million dollars backing her trials and errors until she achieved success.
The mention of Catherine pulls me back to the show.
“Today’s special guest is Catherine Clay, an internationally renowned installation artist. You may not know her name, but you’ve almost certainly seen her work, from the anatomically correct—except for its size—ten-foot-tall clitoris that was briefly on display before it was banned to The American Girl Dolls dressed in camouflage and portraying a grisly scene from Apocalypse Now in Times Square.
The camera flips to Catherine. And she looks … wow.
“Catherine, it’s a pleasure to have you on The Will Power Hour.”
