Wendy Markham - Mike, Mike and Me

The day of his arrival from California plodded along. The taping seemed to take forever, and when it was over, Gaile caught me looking impatiently at my Swatch.

“You’ve still got an hour to go before we’re off work,” she pointed out as we carried tubs of dirty dishes and utensils from a cooking segment to the kitchenette backstage.

“I know, but I thought I could cut out early and get a head start on a cab to the airport.”

“What are you going to do when you get there and have a couple of hours to kill?”

“I don’t know…read?” I was in the middle of a Danielle Steel novel the hopelessly sappy Valerie had forced on me.

“You could read,” Gaile agrees. “Or get drunk in the bar. That’s what I always do in airports.”

I laugh.

“I’m serious. Then I don’t have to worry about plane crashes.”

“Why did you have to bring that up?”

“Sorry. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.”

I scowled at her. “That’s easy for you to say. Why did I have to go and rent La Bamba last weekend?”

“La Bamba?”

“You know, that movie with Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie Valens. You know…the day the music died.” I sing a few bars of “American Pie” for her.

Apparently, Gaile has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Never mind,” I say, giving up. “So, will you cover for me?”

“You’re going to stick me with all these greasy pans?”

“I promise I’ll clean the whole stage on my own the next time Janelle has that animal guy on the show.”

Gaile tilted her cornrow-and-turban covered head, considering it. “I’ll take grease over piles of monkey shit any day,” she concluded. “Deal.”

“Thank you!” I squealed, giving her a hug.

She laughed. “You knew I’d do it, Beau.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sure, you did. You always get people to do what you want.”

I bristled at that until I saw the twinkle in her brown eyes. Still, I asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing bad. Just that you’re a little bit spoiled, girlfriend.”

“Spoiled? Me?” I feigned shock, but I’ll admit it: This wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard that. People were always saying it when I was growing up.

I guess, when you’re the youngest child of four—and the only girl—you grow accustomed to people doting on you. Back home, I was the princess.

Here in New York, I sometimes had to remind myself that not everyone was going to drop everything to cater to my needs.

Then again, people often did. Especially men.

“I’m going to go change my clothes,” I told Gaile.

“What did you decide on? The red or the black?”

“The red,” I told her. “What do you think?”

“I think that it’s the least blah out of two blah choices.”

I rolled my eyes and grinned. When it came to fashion, Gaile was anything but blah. She’d jumped wholeheartedly on the currently hot Afrocentric-garb bandwagon, decking herself out daily in exotic headdresses and flowing robes. The contrast of bright-colored native fabrics against her ebony skin was dazzling, but if you asked me—which she never did—her jewelry, invariably made of bones, tusks and teeth, made her resemble a one-woman archaeological dig.

And if I asked her—which I frequently did—my jewelry and my wardrobe were in desperate need of pizzazz. But whenever I tried to follow Gaile’s fashion advice, I wound up feeling as if I belonged on MTV with an all-male, eye-liner-wearing backup band.

“Let’s face it,” I told her now. “I’m a blah girl, Gaile.”

“You’re gorgeous and you know it.”

“Well, I have blah clothes. What can I say?”

“You don’t have to be blah.”

“Yes, I do. I have to be blah. Blah is my style.”

We deposited the tubs of dishes on an already cluttered countertop, next to a basket of bagels that had been sitting out since this morning, and half a dozen red-lipstick-stained, half-filled coffee mugs. Janelle was a caffeine hound, and she refused to drink out of the foam coffee-service cups. Only real porcelain—and just-brewed, steaming hot coffee—would do. As soon as the contents of her mug grew lukewarm, she pushed it aside and had an assistant—often, me—bring her a fresh cup.

But for today, I was finished with catering to Janelle’s every whim and cleaning up after her. Thanks to Gaile, I was free.

“Good luck, Beau,” she said as I headed for the door.

“Luck?” I stopped short. That struck me as an odd thing to say. “Good luck with what?”

“You know…”

“Not really.” I waited.

She looked me in the eye, as Gaile likes to do. “Your plans,” she said simply. “For you and Mike. I hope they work out.”

“They will.”

She ran water into the sink.

“They will,” I said again.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said good luck.”

She shrugged.

“You don’t think Mike’s going to want to move here after all?”

“I don’t know what Mike’s going to want to do, Beau.” She squirted Palmolive into a pan.

“He’ll want to be with me,” I assured her with confidence.

But what if he didn’t?

What if, for the first time in my charmed life, things didn’t go my way?

In the ladies’ room, I slipped out of my blah black leggings and tunic and into my red dress. Being blessed with a good complexion and nice features, I rarely wore much makeup. But this was a special occasion.

I stood in front of the mirror and outlined my green eyes in dark liner, coated my lashes with black mascara and painted my lips the same color as my dress. When I was finished, I sprayed Obsession in the hollows behind each ear and each knee, and Aqua Net all over my head. I teased my bangs a little higher, sprayed again, and surveyed my reflection.

Perfect.

Okay, not perfect, perfect. I mean, I still looked like Elvis’s Priscilla, but by then Elvis was long gone and his ex-wife had faded from the spotlight. And I wasn’t really a dead ringer for bombshell model Cindy Crawford, despite frequent assurances that I was, from Ramon, one of the show’s security guards.

For one thing, I was almost a head shorter than Cindy. I knew that because Gordy and I spotted her in the Scrap Bar one night when she wasn’t famous enough to be recognized by anyone other than my celeb-crazed friend.

Nor did I have Cindy’s mole, nor Cindy’s voluptuous build.

My figure back then was straight and flat as the Long Island Expressway out East: no boobs, but no pesky hip, gut or thigh padding, either. Sometimes, I fantasized about cleavage, blissfully unaware that it would one day be in store for me—or that it would be bestowed only with cracked, sore, milk-spurting nipples and a baby attached to them 24/7.

Satisfied with my reflection, I snuck out of the studio and into the subway station. Too broke to pay cab fare all the way from Manhattan, I took the jam-packed, un-air-conditioned number seven train out to Queensborough Plaza, descended the elevated platform down to Queens Boulevard, and spent almost fifteen minutes trying to hail a taxi.

By the time I sank into a disconcertingly sticky back seat, my hair had wilted. Luckily, I’d tucked the can of Aqua Net into my oversize black bag, and I’d have plenty of time at the airport to repouf.

Fifteen minutes—and almost fifteen dollars—later, I did just that in a ladies’ room down by the gate.

Unfortunately, the lyrics to “American Pie” were still running through my head. I hoped it wasn’t an omen.

According to the monitors, Mike’s plane was on schedule, but I still had a couple of hours to kill.

Sometimes, even now, I look back and wonder what might have happened that night if I hadn’t forgotten my Danielle Steel novel back at the office.