Blind Ambitions Read online

  She waited for an answer.

  “I wanted to see if you got home okay.”

  “From when? Friday night after the Martini Bar? That was two nights ago. I sure would hate to have to depend on you to be worried about me!”

  “Alright, alright, I just wanted an excuse to call. I really just wanted to tell you again how excited I am that we’re going to get to do this project together.”

  She smiled.

  “Thank you. I’m excited, too. I’m anxious to get back into a really good role.”

  “Great!” he replied.

  She waited to see if he had anything else to say. There was a moment of silence as they lingered on the phone.

  “Well,” he finally said.

  “Well,” she said in return.

  Desi rubbed her eyes and yawned.

  “Oh,” Randall exclaimed, “I knew there was something else I wanted to talk to you about!”

  “I would hope so. The thought that you’d call me up first thing in the morning and have nothing to say is kind of disturbing.”

  “I was feeling a little awkward just now,” he said in defense. “Sorry about the dead air. I’m still trying to become familiar with being in your presence.”

  “Spare me the grandiose treatment, Randall. I thought you considered me down-to-earth.”

  “I do, but you are still Desi Sheridan.”

  “What was the other thing?” she asked.

  “You must be pretty happy about the big news.”

  “And what big news is that?”

  Randall was sitting in front of his PowerMac in his office at home. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on his glass-and-aluminum work desk.

  “Desi, come on … I know you guys talk. I figure you were probably the first person she called.”

  “Who?”

  He realized that she didn’t know.

  “Sharon didn’t call you?” Randall asked.

  Desi reached for the remote beside the bed and clicked on the TV.

  “Exactly what would she be calling to tell me?”

  “She’s going to be working with us. She and Jet had a meeting yesterday and made it official.”

  “She’s what?!”

  “Yep,” he replied proudly. “Sharon Lane is the new vice president of Entertainment for Vast Horizons.”

  “Hmmm” was the only response that Desi gave.

  “It’s perfect timing, too,” he continued. “Tomorrow we’ve got a few meetings to tie up things. We’re talking with some network executives to hammer out our position for next year’s season.”

  “Oh, really? So by tomorrow you should know what network we’ll be on?”

  Randall scratched his ear as a nervous reflex, realizing that he was now moving in dangerous waters, especially since Sharon and Desi were friends. Sharon would be at the meetings. It was possible she might talk about what went on. There was also the possibility she might not, though, seeing as she hadn’t even called Desi and told her about being hired by the company.

  “I don’t think we’ll have the answer by tomorrow,” he said. “But at least we’ll have a better idea about which network feels like the best fit.”

  “Do you have a preference?”

  “Ahhh. Yes, and no. I’d rather not say.”

  Desi found his response a bit strange.

  “Has my contract been put together yet?”

  “Yes, it has. It’ll be sent over to your agent’s office first thing tomorrow morning, unless you want it sent somewhere else.”

  “No, that’s fine. He’ll get it over to me. I’m really anxious to get started on things.”

  “So am I,” he said.

  Desi clicked off the TV. Nothing was on but religious programming and national news shows. Her thoughts were turning.

  “Well, Randall,” she began, “I appreciate you calling to check on me and tell me about Sharon. I’m excited about it. I trust her. Your company will be in safe hands.”

  “I know it will. She’s my homegirl, and she really knows her stuff.”

  His mind was turning as well.

  “I’m going to get up and get my day started,” Desi said, about to make her exit.

  “Great. I’m going to get back to writing,” he replied, just as eager to hang up. “Remember, Desi, if there’s anything you need, for any reason, feel free to give me a call. You have all my numbers, right?”

  “I’ve got them all right here.”

  “Terrific. Alright then, have a good one.”

  “Thanks, Randall. You have a good one, too.”

  The cordless phone rang twice.

  Sharon was sitting on the floor of her living room, between the sofa and the coffee table. She picked up the phone and clicked it on.

  “Hello?”

  “Sharon?”

  “Yeah. What’s up, Randall?”

  Randall’s legs were no longer propped on his desk. Now he was in serious mode, upright in his office chair, his legs perpendicular to the floor.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No, but it is kind of early.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, doodling nervously on his desk calendar. “I apologize about that.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Look, I wanted to talk to you about …”

  “Hold on, Randall,” she said. “This is crazy. My other line just beeped.”

  Randall knew who it was before she clicked over.

  “Hello?”

  “Sharon?”

  “Yo, Dez, what’s up? I got Randall on the other line.”

  “Oh, really?” Desi asked, her brows raised. “What’s he want?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Sharon replied. “He called right before you did.”

  Desi smirked.

  “Do me a favor, Sharon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Call me as soon as you get off the phone with him. Something strange is going on. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.”

  “Strange like what?” Sharon asked.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you to call me back, now would I?”

  “Yeah … well. Alright, I’ll call you back.”

  “Bye.”

  Sharon clicked back over.

  “Yo.”

  “Hey, Sharon,” Randall said. “Is everything alright?”

  “What makes you think there’s something wrong, Randall? All I did was click over the phone.”

  “You were gone for a while. I just thought that something might be up.”

  Sharon pushed herself up from the floor and began walking towards the kitchen.

  “Alright … talk to me,” she said. “What’s going on this morning? What is it that you really want?”

  Randall’s doodling was fierce. A large section of the calendar was black from where he had scribbled Sanskrit characters over and over as he waited for her to click back to him.

  “Jet talked to you about those meetings tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes, he did,” she replied as she walked into the kitchen. She opened one of the cabinets over the sink and reached for a juice glass.

  “Did he tell you what kind of meetings they were?” Randall’s voice was hesitant.

  “They’re pitch meetings, Randall,” she said, opening the refrigerator and taking out a carton of orange juice. “Cold pitch meetings, from what I understand.”

  “Yes,” he answered, “that’s exactly what they are.”

  Sharon poured the juice into her glass, drank all of it while standing at the counter, then refilled it again.

  “So why did you tell Desi that you guys practically had your show locked up in terms of network placement? She thinks you’re way beyond the pitch phase, and on the verge of committing to a network.”

  Caught, with nothing to say to refute it, he sighed.

  Sharon walked into the living room with the juice, leaving the carton on the kitchen counter.

  “Hello? Hello? Are you still on th
e line?”

  “I’m here, Sharon.”

  “You know it’s fucked up that you didn’t tell her the truth, right?” She sat on the edge of the couch. “There wasn’t any point in gassing her up. Dez is cool people, and she wants a chance to make it, just like you.”

  “She wouldn’t have been down if I didn’t massage things a little, and you know it.”

  “You guys are paying her a hundred g just to sign, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s free and clear money for her, regardless of whether you have a network or not, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why wouldn’t she have signed? You could have just said having her name and Jet’s name attached gave the project more selling power. That, and a hundred-thousand-dollar check, would have been all the gassing she needed.”

  Randall’s doodling was out of control. His pen had run dry. He reached for another.

  “Shit, Randall, you and Steve have Emmys. You’re tested as a writing team. You know you’re gonna get picked up by somebody. There was no need for you to tell the girl a lie.”

  He doodled on, trying to decide how to pose the question.

  Sharon drank her juice, waiting for him to ask it.

  “Do you think it’s possible,” he began, “friend to friend, old friends at that, for you to not let her know that I lied to her?”

  Sharon shook her head, disgusted with him and all men.

  “And you have the nerve to throw up the fact that you and I are old friends. How busted is that, Randall?”

  “Sharon … this is an excellent project. You know it. I know Jet told you all about it, and I know that Desi has, too. We believe in it. Steve and I are great writers, just as you say, and once the networks are put on to Ambitions, you know there’s going to be a fight over who’s going to get it.”

  “If you believed all that, then why did you lie?”

  Randall threw the pen down on his desk.

  “Dammit, Sharon, I’ll do anything to make sure this project has a chance!” he exclaimed. “I wanted Desi for it, and I was willing to do whatever I had to to make sure I got her. The role was written just for her. I know I should have stepped to her straight up about everything, but I didn’t. I wasn’t being sheisty. I was just making sure the show had a chance.”

  “I’m not gonna lie for you,” Sharon said. “I’ve had my fill of having the backs of men that have their own agendas going on.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie. And I’m not just some man, so save whatever beef it is you have with us as a species for the one you really mean it for. I’m an old friend. You know my intentions are good.”

  Sharon set the empty juice glass on the coffee table.

  “No I don’t, Randall. I don’t know whose intentions are what anymore.”

  Neither of them said anything. Sharon’s other line beeped.

  “Hold on,” she said, “I’ve gotta get that.”

  “Hello?”

  “Sharon, it’s me. Are you still on the phone?”

  “Yeah. Give me a minute. I’ll call you right back.”

  “Okay, but make sure you call me,” Desi insisted.

  “Yeah, yeah, I will.”

  Sharon clicked back over.

  “That was Desi, wasn’t it?” Randall asked.

  “You know, Randall,” she replied, “I do have a life, and the two of you are not in the center of it.”

  “So that wasn’t Desi?”

  Sharon didn’t answer.

  “Are you going to tell her the truth?” he asked. “Just do me this one nice, Sharon. I made a mistake. I’ll admit that to you. But it’s important to me to have Desi believe in me. If you tell her I lied, if you tell her that now, this early in the game, she’s never going to believe anything I ever say again.”

  “You should have thought about that, Randall.”

  “I am thinking about it,” he said with a sigh. “I want to prove to her that I can produce a vehicle that will put her on the top. I want her to know that she can trust me. My ends have good intentions, Sharon, even if the means seem a little fucked up.”

  Sharon picked up the glass again and drained it dry of the dregs.

  “I’ve gotta go,” she said.

  “Alright, Sharon. But just do this for me … please. My lie didn’t hurt anybody. And I truly believe the show is going to be picked up.”

  “Like I said,” she replied, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Bet,” he said. “I’m not going to beg you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You’ll see me tomorrow. Peace.”

  She clicked off.

  Randall hung up the phone and stared ahead at the top of the tree outside his office window. The wind was unusually high for a late September Sunday morning, and the branches and leaves swayed and rustled before him.

  He wasn’t sure what was going to happen or what Sharon would decide to do. It was important to him to not have Desi mistrust him.

  Whatever he was going to do, he knew he had to do it soon.

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “In reference to what?” Sharon asked.

  Desi was in her paisley silk robe, sitting at her kitchen table, eating a piece of dry wheat toast.

  “What did Randall call you for? He was barely off the phone with me before he dialed you up.”

  “Oh,” Sharon replied, “he just had some concerns about tomorrow.”

  Desi sipped from a glass of pineapple juice.

  “Things don’t look good, do they?” she asked. “This show really isn’t going to be on next season. Come on, you can tell me. I should have known that this was too good to be true.”

  Sharon let out a short laugh.

  “I can’t believe this is coming from you,” she said. “What happened to all that confidence and faith you were just lecturing to me about the other day? Now here it is, Sunday morning … a day that I would imagine your faith would be at its strongest … and you’re saying things like ‘I should have known.’”

  Desi picked at her toast.

  “Well?” Sharon pressed. “What happened to that immaculate, immutable faith of yours?”

  “It’s just being tested,” Desi said in a small voice. “I never said I was perfect. I still have fear. I just do my best to try to overcome it.”

  Sharon was stretched out on the couch.

  “You don’t know from fear. Try living with it every day, having it sit on the back of your neck, constantly slapping you around, pulling your hair and shit, reminding you that it rules you, and not the other way around. I couldn’t take it anymore. I found a way to kill my fear. Faith wasn’t coming fast enough, so I helped it out a little.”

  “What are you talking about, Sharon?”

  “What do you think?”

  Desi stopped picking at her toast.

  “You didn’t have an abortion, did you?”

  “If you mean did I abort the baby? No. If you’re asking if I aborted Glen? Well, yes, I’ll have to say that’s true.”

  Desi gasped.

  “Sharon! What happened? Did he ask you to get rid of the baby?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he didn’t want anything to do with you?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Well,” she said, fishing for possibilities, “did he hit you?”

  “Now, come on,” Sharon replied. “Who do I look like?”

  “I just thought I’d ask,” Desi said. “So what happened? What did he do?”

  “Nothing,” Sharon replied, launching into a tirade. “He came over here with a stupid bouquet of flowers. As long as things are good and just the way he wants it, he shows me all kinds of affection. But the minute his little ecology is thrown slightly out of balance, that’s when brothers like him bail.”

  “So he said he couldn’t deal after you told him you were pregnant.”

  “No. I didn’t give him a chance to say anything. I showed him the test results, and then I threw him ou
t.”

  Desi stared into her pineapple juice, stunned by Sharon’s words. “Is that what you wanted?”

  “I don’t need him, Dez. I’m a little too ghetto for him in the first place.”

  “What?! Since when did you become ghetto? You’re about as ghetto as I am.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. Who needs him? Me and my baby will get along just fine.”

  Sharon kicked at a pillow on the sofa that was right near her feet.

  “So you are going to keep the baby?”

  “What else would I do with it?”

  Desi sipped her juice.

  “Glen hasn’t tried to call you?” she asked.

  “Call me for what? He’s not going to call. He’s not trying to deal with me anymore now that he knows I’m about to be a burden.”

  Sharon’s eyes misted over in anger.

  “Let’s stop talking about him,” she said. “He’s gone, that’s it. The end. Back to the lecture at hand.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Desi asked.

  “You wanted to know what was up with Randall and the show, am I right?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well,” Sharon replied, kicking the pillow off the couch, “everything is going to be fine. We have meetings scheduled for tomorrow, and we’re gonna make sure this thing gets done.”

  “You’re not just saying that to placate me, are you?”

  Tears were streaking down Sharon’s face.

  “Do I seem like I care about placating anybody right now?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Exactly. So leave me alone and concentrate on getting your faith back right. Stop being so quick to get scared again.”

  Desi smiled.

  “Thanks, Sharon. Hey, Sharon.”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you give Glen a chance to talk?”

  Sharon laughed bitterly.

  “Talk about what? He’s got nothing he can say to me. It’s over. And now so am I. Peace out, Dez.”

  “Okay … I’ll talk to you later.”

  Desi clicked her phone off, worried about Sharon.

  Sharon leaned down and grabbed the pillow she had kicked off the couch. She clutched it closely to her breast, and burst into tears.

  The ringing phone woke her up.

  She had been asleep on the couch, still clutching the pillow, for more than three hours.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello.”

  “Who is this?” she asked.