There’s a moment of awkward silence.
“We’re a team,” Delia says. “We’re way better when we do the show together. I need you.”
“Okay, I told you. I’m going to UT Martin. Don’t freak out.” I’m pretty sure I’m not lying to Delia, but I’m not 100 percent sure. More like 95 percent. Or 94 percent. Or 94.7 percent.
“I’m not freaking out.”
She is unequivocally freaking out.
The light turns green. I give the driver next to me a curt nod before driving off. He stares straight ahead.
And now I’m kind of freaking out on top of my stressing over the PI. Thinking about even the slimmest possibility of Josie leaving is exactly the thing I don’t want to be doing right now. And…
“Oops.” I clap a palm to my heavily made-up forehead.
“What?”
“We gotta stop at Dixie Cafe and get some chicken livers for Buford’s segment.”
“DeeDee.”
“I forgot! I was preoccupied with the PI thing!” And more recently with the best friend possibly betraying me by leaving thing.
“That is in the opposite direction. If we’re late…”
“I have no idea if the twins’ friend’s dog will cooperate without the chicken livers.”
“You know Arliss.”
“I know Arliss.”
Josie hits the brakes and makes a U-turn, drawing a honk. “We need some energetic bongo music to play when we have to drive really fast because you’ve forgotten something.”
“I’ll text Arliss and tell him we’re running late.”
“Because he’s super good about checking texts.”
“I’ll tell him we’re bringing him dinner.”
“You’re paying,” Josie says.
We drive with the chicken livers like they’re going to be transplanted into several very important chickens, barreling up to the TV Six studio—Jackson, Tennessee’s only truly local television station.
Arliss Thacker stands outside the back door of the studio, smoking. He squints at us like we pulled up on a parade float celebrating the word moist, hitting your funny bone, phlegm, and leaning your seat back on airplanes. He consults his watch with conspicuous deliberation and concentration.
“He hates us so much,” I murmur.
“Do you blame him?”
“Oh, I one hundred percent do not.”
Josie fumbles with her sticky seat belt. “We’ve only brought him misery.”
“Probably.”
“No, I definitely know because he told me. He literally said to me once, verbatim: ‘You two have only ever brought me misery.’ ”
“Sounds right.”
Josie gathers the lacy black skirts of her gown and gets out, whistling for Buford to follow her, which he does with the resigned reluctance of a man going to a public colonoscopy, waddling behind her flappily. She carries the Styrofoam container of pulled pork, squash casserole, and fried okra that we got Arliss.
I go around to the back of Josie’s Kia, grab our plastic tub full of props, and heft it, starting toward the door on Josie’s heels. The tub begins to slip. “Hey, Arliss, could you—”
Arliss is a big guy—a honey-baked ham of a man who looks like a biker—but he never offers to help us haul stuff in. He actually reminds me of Buford. That spiritual kinship is probably why Buford is the only one of us he’s ever happy to see.
He squats to scratch Buford behind the ears, ignoring Josie even after she wordlessly hands him the dinner container. “What have I told y’all about load-ins?”
“That you’ve done enough for ten men’s lifetimes.” I recall Arliss saying he used to be a bass player for some country band in the nineties. He’s pretty tight-lipped about his past, which has led to rampant speculation on Josie’s and my part.
“I said that I’ve done enough for a hundred men’s lifetimes.” He stands to let Buford pass, takes one last long drag off his cigarette, flicks the butt to the ground, and grinds it out with his boot heel.
“Right,” I grunt, and the tub slips from my grasp and tumbles to the ground as I climb the concrete steps. The lid pops off, and puppets and plastic candelabras spill out.
Josie returns to help me.
“I was actually hoping y’all wouldn’t show. You had two more minutes,” Arliss says, leaning back against the open door.
“But then how would you spend your Friday night?” I ask.
“By not missing you at all and doing something more fun like eating a frozen chicken potpie and thinking of all the ways I’ve disappointed the people who love me.”
“What would TV Six show at eleven on Saturday night instead of Midnite Matinee?” Josie asks, tossing our Frankenstein puppet, Frankenstein W. Frankenstein, into the tub.
Arliss shrugs. “Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Hunting and Fishing West Tennessee with Odell Kirkham? Dead air? Who cares? I’d go with the dead air, personally.”
“What would they show in Topeka, Macon, Greenville, Des Moines, Spokane, Fargo, and Little Rock?” Josie asks.
“Whatever the people in those cities like to ignore or watch while they’re too high to operate Netflix.”
I pick up the tub and walk in. The studio is well insulated from the outside. It’s cool and dark and has the warm, metallic smell of electronics combined with the mustiness of a basement. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. Arliss has displayed rare initiative by already having our antique red velvet chairs set up in the corner where we film. I pull our faux-brick cloth backdrop out of the tub, unfold and unroll it, and start tacking it up. It gives a dungeon-like appearance. Oh, don’t worry, we’ve gotten letters from viewers about how this is unrealistic for the old New Orleans house where our characters supposedly live. People have a lot of free time, apparently. Especially the kind who pay for postage to “well, actually” a public access show.
Josie sets our plastic electric candelabra on the thrift-store table between our chairs and plugs it in, then sets a plastic skull next to it and clips a plastic raven to the back of her chair. She begins her vocal warm-ups. Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth. Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth. Topeka bodega Topeka bodega Topeka bodega. Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight, mighty nice.
I finish tacking up our backdrop and hang the nylon spiderweb with a rubber black widow that occupies the top right corner of our set. I accidentally put it up on the left side once. We got letters about that. Multiple letters.