Fishing With RayAnne (3 page)

The producer leans in. “Those before and after shots?”

“We’re a no,” says the director.

RayAnne slumps. “But she’s so . . .
Morticia
!”

“Sorry, Ray,” Cassi says, chipping black polish from her thumbnail. “Even I have to agree on this one.”

RayAnne doesn’t claim all her choices are brilliant. She looks around the room knowing she must choose her battles and lets it go, which is easier than arguing with them—they are the sorts of women who have been thin all their lives.

One of the new staffers looks uncertainly from RayAnne to the producer. “Is it necessary guests know how to fish?”

“No,” RayAnne sighs. “I’d only end up in an empty boat for lack of guests who can kill a minnow.” She immediately regrets her choice of words, hoping they don’t trigger another PETA discussion, quickly adding, “I teach the basics before we tape, you know, casting, reeling . . .”

Thankfully, the producers seem eager to move on. They’re so optimistic about the second season that they’ve come up with their own line-up of “bigger” guests. The producer takes Cassi’s place at the AV podium to bring up a series of headshots. RayAnne cocks her head this way and that, unconsciously mirroring the various poses of Elizabeth Warren, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Weiner, Reese Witherspoon—women she would love to interview. But.
Good luck with those,
she thinks as those around the conference table coo and honk.
Aim high,
as Gran says.

It’s their second meeting to discuss issues that were not issues last season. She scans the new notes passed to her, and upon reaching the second line, presses the nub of her pen right through to dent the table.

“Fisher
persons
?” She taps the pen hard. “You want me to say
fisherpersons
?”

The producer leans in. “Well . . . you can see why fisher
men
or fisher
man
might pose an issue.”

Issue. She doesn’t refer to the guests as
fisher
-anything, so it should be a nonissue. She’s been learning lots of corporate-speak from management and marketing—terms like “solutioning” and “incentivize.” “Way-making.” She was thrilled to learn that there are no such things as “problems” anymore, only “way-blockings.”

Fisherman.
She recalls Gran Dot’s argument that we are all man: hu-
man
, wo-
man
. Dot, in her odd brand of reasoning, had offered, “Woman comes from
womb
, you see, so given that, isn’t it obvious? When it came time to name the penis-wielding version of the species, the Greeks just weren’t that inspired, I mean, given what they had to work with.”

Fingering the dent, RayAnne quickly covers it. “How about fisher
humans
?”

Cassi clears nothing from her throat until RayAnne looks up to see the producer is actually thinking about it, smoothing her imaginary goatee.

The PR person so fond of Post-it notes holds one up with the word
FISHERS
written on it. RayAnne raises her hand and pulls it down in one motion. “Um, a fisher is a mammal, but I don’t think they actually fish.”

Cassi adds, “Right, but they do hunt porcupines.”

RayAnne turns. “They do?”

“Uh-huh.” Cassi taps her pencil. “Also, Fisher is the name of a band.”

The producer looks concerned. “What sort of band? The sort
you
would listen to?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, well. You’re not in our demographic.”

RayAnne and Cassi blink at each other as if in code. “Fishers,” Cassi says, turning back to the producer. “We can live with that.” To RayAnne she whispers, “Nothing says you actually have to
say
it.”

“Trust me,” RayAnne mumbles, “I won’t.”

The producer ahems again. “Do you have something to add?” Both look up like deer and shake their heads, Cassi saying, “No.” RayAnne adding, “Ma’am.”

After more way-blockings are tabled, solutioned, and swept off like crumbs, the meeting abruptly ends with everyone clamming closed their laptops. RayAnne tentatively rises—there’s been no mention of a replacement host, or about the search for one, yet in just a few weeks they are to embark on a new taping season. No one has asked, “Oh, by the way, you up for another season?” Is she to assume it’s assumed? When the producer stands, everyone else rises in her wake. Usually RayAnne is amused by this and would give anything for the woman to plunk back down just to see if the others might follow, stadium-style—but she’s teetering on the precipice of the question about hosting. It’s about to tumble from her mouth when Cassi pulls her sleeve and motions for her to hurry. Just as they approach the door, a rap sounds on the table.

“One more thing,” says the assistant producer with oddly set eyes, whose real name is Amy but who Cassi calls the Grouper.

Here we go.

“Ah, a small item . . .”

“RayAnne. Wardrobe wants to know if you’ll be able to wear a size six by the next taping.”

All eyes race to RayAnne’s hips like those joke-eyeballs on springs. She blinks and opens her mouth but no answer forms. Cassi saves the moment by nodding for her. “Sure thing, boss, size six she will be.”

Amy’s boss, who defines bossy, pretends to hate being called boss, though her little eyes glint more greenly when Cassi does.

Well then, there’s her answer. RayAnne will indeed be the sub,
again
—one that will no longer be a size eight, however they expect
that
will happen. As far as she knows, there is no diet for big bones and is about to say so when Cassi pulls her out the door.

It would be nice just once to leave a meeting without feeling less-than, or in this case, more-than with her extra five pounds—the extra-stubborn extra five pounds that look like fifteen on camera. In a previous meeting, the concern had been her general lack of experience in front of the camera, discussed as if she hadn’t been in the room: “Should we hire a coach for a few sessions with RayAnne?” The time before that—the only meeting she’d ever walked out on—had been a discussion of the gap in her front teeth: “Should she be fitted for a cosmetic cap?” Cassi reported that it had taken ten minutes before anyone even noticed RayAnne had left.

In the eyes of her employers, these are just a few of her shortcomings.

She’d rather not attract too much attention to herself, because while none of her inadequacies are serious enough on their own to be a threat, they do stack up, and by now someone has probably discovered the fib on her résumé—that she wasn’t officially
employed
on the Alabama cable show
Big Fish
, was instead only a frequent presence in their demonstration videos. Her time on
Big Fish
had been short-lived, in any case, thanks to Sweaty Eddie. Eddie was handsome, like the Baldwin brother she could never name, and sweaty. Married as well, though Eddie seemingly had forgotten that small detail in his bid to engineer some
thing
with RayAnne. He would rush in at each wrap to pat her down, ostensibly to help undo the wireless microphone, fixated on RayAnne’s fishing vest and its multitude of pockets as if it were an Advent calendar in which he might discover a gift—perhaps a breast. She always beat him to the mic, unclipping and dropping it into his glistening palm while smiling, blinking, and thinking,
In hell, mister.

Sometimes she wonders if she was offered the consulting job with WYOY because Sweaty Eddie felt guilty, maybe pulling some strings in hopes she wouldn’t make a fuss, or sue, which she had every right to do and probably should have. She’s just not interested in revisiting their one incident of physical slapstick, which ensued after he pulled her into the boathouse and tried sticking his tongue into her mouth as if the goal was to have it exit her ear. She’d never actually felt threatened or harassed by him; he was too puppy-doggish. Besides, after Eddie had grabbed her, it was only a matter of seconds before she evicted his tongue and shoved him, arms windmilling comically, into the water. She was out the boathouse door and wiping her mouth, so embarrassed for both of them that the moment hadn’t properly registered.

The furthest thing from her mind would have been to make a stink about it. So what if Sweaty Eddie got her the consultant gig with WYOW? Thinking of him sends a shudder up her spine that goes on extra long until she realizes it’s the iPhone vibrating in her pocket.

She may never get used to the phone’s raw buzz, reminiscent of her sixteenth birthday gift from Gran, an electric Lady Schick that left her with such razor rash she couldn’t lower her arms for days. She fishes for the phone, sees her father’s number glow for a beat, then powers it off and deposits it in another pocket.

By taking the stairs, RayAnne and Cassi avoid riding the elevator with the others. They thump down the two flights and make their way out of the building without slowing until halfway across the sunny parking lot.

RayAnne stops. “Size
six
?”

Cassi holds up a finger. “No problem. The really expensive clothes lie; they’re always labeled a size or two smaller than they really are. Rinata has a list of brands we could never afford on our pay.” Cassi shades her pale eyes. “Don’t let them get to you.”

“I don’t really. It’s more the attitude, you know? That default
I work for public television so I am better than you
.”

“
You
work for public television.”

“Not like they do.”

“True.” Cassi squints. “But you fished the pro circuit, right? I hear those guys can be brutal.”

RayAnne shrugs. “Some. Most were just horny good ol’ boys. At least I had methods of dealing with them.”

“What? Like mace?” Cassi kicks the air at crotch height. “Karate?”

“You know the trick of imagining the person who’s intimidating you is naked when you’re not?” RayAnne holds up a curled pinky. “I just imagined a lot of erectile dysfunction.”

Cassi nods toward the upper windows. “Too bad that won’t work on them.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d swear that redhead is a man.”

“Dawn?”

“Or is it
Don
?”

“Anyway.” Cassi inhales. “It looks like we’re on again. Whew, huh?”

“Sure, but why couldn’t anyone just—”

“
Say
something? Maybe ask if you want to keep hosting? Listen, if they
say
it, they will have to offer you a contract. As it is, with you being freelance, they’re saving assloads on you, Ray. You cost a fraction of what Mandy did. And right now finance is having one eppie after another.”

“Still?”

“Same old. Teabaggers wanna slash any federal funding again, what with shows like NOVA spewing scientific fact and Bert and Ernie being so gay.”

“Right.” RayAnne has no clear idea of what goes on in finance or any of the other administrative offices above the third floor, never actually having been invited. She aims her key-fob at the nondescript silver hatchback in front of her. “This is me.” When it doesn’t bleep she frowns and walks two cars ahead. “Or
this
.” When she opens the hatch, a number of books fall to the pavement. She dips to grab them, mumbling, “Damn, I’m gonna have fines again.”

Cassi stoops to help. “Who goes to the library anymore?”

“
I
do.” She glances at the book Cassi’s picked up. “Oh, that’s a favorite. I wouldn’t mind actually owning that one.”

Cassi watches her stack it atop the rest. “So, why not
buy
it?”

RayAnne shrugs. “Well, then I’d buy another, and before you know it I’d need a bookcase.”

“To own a copy of
The Wayward Bus
?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really. Just get a Kindle.”

RayAnne hugs the books to her chest. “Not there yet.”

Cassi scans the book titles. “You were like, something else once? Before fishing?”

“Almost. I majored in journalism, then worked at a crummy weekly, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I was kind of terrible at it. I’d be assigned these human interest stories and wind up sort of . . .
enhancing
.”

“What, like fabricating? Like that
New Republic
guy?”

“More like what my gran calls spit-shining. Giving people’s stories slightly better spins and angles.”

“But in journalism?” Cassi squints.

“I know. It wasn’t for me. Facts aren’t nearly as compelling as people, and people have so few facts.”

“Maybe you should have considered fiction.”

“Tell me. Hey, should you even be out here?”

“I’m wearing SPF 90. Wait’ll you see my getup for Location—like a beekeeper. You know they make sunproof fabric?” Cassi slings her bag and heads toward a red Ford Fiesta that looks as though it might have been painted with a brush. RayAnne opens her mouth to ask if it has air bags, thinks better of it, and waves her off, saying, “Drive safe.” Which she hopes is heeded as
don’t text
.

Once in her own car, she juggles her phone uncertainly, then, assuming he won’t be answering, since he rarely does, speed dials Big Rick. She expects to leave a message, but is startled when he picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, Baby Ray.”

“Dad. You knew it was me?”

“I got this caller ID gizmo. Gotta love that—now I only talk to your grandmother when I feel like a lecture.”

“C’mon, Dad, she only nags when you . . . never mind. I should call her myself.”

“How’s it going up there in TV land?”

“It’s okay. Mostly.” She can hear the glug of liquid over ice and looks at her watch. It isn’t even eleven a.m. yet in Arizona where Big Rick has recently retired with his latest wife.

“What’s that noise?”

“Ice. For
lemonade
.”

“Only asking.” Unable to keep the names straight, she asks, “How’s the bride?”

“She’s working out okay. At her golf lesson right now. So, you get another season?”

“I’m on again, it seems—with a few conditions. Let’s see—they want a pink cancer ribbon on my trolling motor, forget that they’re already embroidered on every life vest. I get to ride a fiberglass trout in some parade, and they want me to call guests ‘girlfriend’ like Oprah does. Oh, and I have to stand around at the Rod & Gun Expo for two days doing promo.”