Swim

find my star, build the sets, shoot my show. Instead of competing against dozens of scripts, I was up against maybe twenty-four . . . and even if the show never made it on the air, I’d have a lovely souvenir, a DVD of my dream made real.
    I got to my feet, the same person I’d been ten minutes ago: average height and average weight (which made me practically obese in Hollywood), with thick, shoulder-length hair that could be coaxed to hang, sleek and glossy, when I spent the time or money to have it straightened. I had brown eyes, my Grandma’s full, pink lips, features that might have been almost pretty before the accident, broad shoulders and curvy hips, a solid torso thanks to years of swimming, and olive skin that tanned easily and stayed that way, even in what passed for winter out here. Except for the scars, which my clothes covered, and my face, which my clothes did not, I was normal—even, from certain angles, pretty. It was a problem. Sometimes, people would react to me after they’d seen me from behind, or from my good side. Hey, baby, lookin’ good! construction workers would shout when I was walking with my gym bag over my shoulder and a baseball cap’s brim shadowing my face . . . or, if I was meeting my grandmother at a restaurant, a man would approach from my left side at the bar and start chatting me up. I’d turn as quickly as I could, pulling off my hat, pulling back my hair. I would show them the truth, who I really was. The catcalls would stop abruptly, and the man at the bar would suck in his breath, then scowl as if it were my fault, as if I was somehow playing a joke on him. Once, a homeless man had asked me for change, ignoring my muttered “sorry” and chasing me down Sunset, until I’d turned. His eyes had gotten big as he’d taken in my face. Then he’d pulled a dollar out of his pocket. And handed it to me.
    I had learned to dress to deflect attention, to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, even though my grandmother was always encouraging me to show off. “You have such a pretty figure!” she’d say, and I’d smile at her old-fashioned compliment and pull on a boxy button-down a size too big, and loose-fitting jeans, and clogs, with my hair pulled into a ponytail or tucked up underneath a hat.
    I started to punch the button that would connect me to Gary. Then I stopped. Should I tell Dave first? I certainly could, now that I’d gotten the Call. He’d want to know. Maybe he’d even want to celebrate. Or maybe I should sneak out of the house, head to the airport, and buy myself a ticket to Hawaii, where he was vacationing, to tell him in person. I knew where he was staying, which flights he’d taken, where he was eating dinner the nights he’d asked me to make reservations. Whether I’d be a good showrunner remained to be seen, but I had been an excellent assistant. The hard part would be getting past Grandma. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” she’d say, and point out that I had already had my heart broken once by a Hollywood writer and that I should endeavor to make new and interesting mistakes rather than repeating the ones I’d made before.
    She was right, I thought, and picked up the phone and called Gary. “Good news?” he asked, and I bounced on the bed, smiling as I said, “The best.”
    Chapter Two
    My love affair with television began when I was eight years old. It started—as so many things do—with The Golden Girls.
    When I was three, my parents were driving on the Massachusetts Pike, on their way from their house in Framingham to dinner with friends in Worcester, when their station wagon hit a patch of black ice. The car skidded over the guardrail, flipped over twice, and then burst into flames. My mom and dad died, and my car seat broke free of its straps and went flying through the windshield. I broke the arm and leg and most of my ribs on the right side of my body—the side I’d landed on—but most of the damage had been caused by going face-first through all that glass.
    My mother’s mother, Rae, had spent her life in Boston but was living in Coral Gables when the accident happened. She came north for the funeral and never left, arranging the sale of her condominium over the phone, having her furniture and clothes and dishes shipped up, moving into my parents’ house, and taking over the business of raising her granddaughter.
    I’d spent chunks of my childhood in hospitals, undergoing and then recovering