Read Jaine Austen 2 - Last Writes for Free Online

business. It was one of those steak-and-salad-bar steak houses. The chef was a crazy drunk. He used to squeeze the steaks under his armpit before he tossed them on the grill.”
    “Euuuu!” we all shrieked.
    “That’s nothing,” said Marco. “I once worked on a show where the leading lady was such a bitch, she demanded a kosher pickle at every lunch. But it had to be a special pickle, from a deli all the way out in Tarzana. The propmaster hated her so much that every day before handing her the pickle, he used to piss on it.”
    Before long everyone was swapping Breaking Into Showbiz stories.
    “When I worked as a waiter,” Dale said, “we used to put phony names down on the reservations list. Names like ‘Seymour Butt’ and ‘Tayka Leak.’ The poor hostess would run around calling out, ‘Tayka Leak! Is anyone here from the Tayka Leak party?’”
    Quinn told about how, when he used to work as a valet parker in a swanky Malibu restaurant, he’d leave crazy things in the customers’ glove compartments. One time he put a pair of black lace panties in a married couple’s car. Another time, a snake. And another time, a week-old chili dog. Kandi told about her adventures writing one-liners for a sleazy comedian who tried to pay her off in postage stamps. And Wells told about the time he accidentally gave Lady Macbeth a wedgie.
    The stories were great, and the laughter was contagious. No wonder people were always trying to claw their way into show business. It was so much damn fun.
    Yet underneath all the hilarity, there was an unspoken competition to be the funniest. It was a contest, all right—subtle but undeniable.
    And the winner was Quinn Kirkland. Just as at yesterday’s read-through, Quinn was getting the biggest laughs. The interesting thing was that his stories weren’t any funnier than anybody else’s. But he had a way of telling them that made them seem hilarious. I don’t know what it was—his timing, his expressiveness, or maybe just his amazing teeth. But whatever it was, it worked.
    I looked around the room as everyone whooped with laughter at one of his adventures.
    Everyone except Dale, who sat smiling stiffly, his jaws clenched like a vise.

    “Yikes,” Kandi said, looking at her watch. “It’s after two.”
    We’d totally lost track of the time. Which is what happens, I guess, when you have beer for dessert.
    The guys hurried off to the stage, and Kandi and I made our way back to the Writers’ Building. I have to confess, I was feeling tres virtuous. I’d barely touched my rubber sandwich, which meant all I’d had for lunch was a 150-calorie beer. If you don’t count the teeny-tiny bag of potato chips that I snagged on my way out of the commissary.
    Yes, I was feeling pounds lighter already, only faintly aware of my thighs flapping together as we hurried across the lot.
    We grabbed our copies of “Muffy’s Revenge” and dashed into Stan and Audrey’s office, only to find the two of them in deep discussion with what looked like a college kid in a three-piece suit.
    “Are you sure you want to do this?” Stan was saying, as we burst in the room.
    “I’m sure,” the kid said.
    Audrey looked up at us, irritated. We’d obviously shown up at a crucial moment in the conversation.
    “Sorry to interrupt,” Kandi said.
    “We’ll call you when we’re ready for you,” Audrey snapped.
    We backed out the door, like geishas in a tearoom.
    “Who was the kid in the suit?” I asked when we were back in our office.
    “Jim Samuels. Programming exec at the network.”
    “That kid is a network executive?” I asked, gazing out the window at the transvestites on Santa Monica Boulevard. “He looks like he still needs somebody to cut his meat for him.”
    “In television, the kids are in control,” Kandi said. “The logic is that only kids understand what other kids want to watch. And since the target age for most network shows is eighteen to thirty-four-year-olds, there are an awful