Book Five, Chapter 3: A Call with Sal

“Knock, knock,” I said as I walked to Ramona’s nook. She didn’t have her own room but had cordoned off the end of a hallway and put a sleeping mat there. It would do for her. It even had a window.

She was sleeping when I showed up. She looked up at me, her eyes still pleading, I thought.

“Go away,” she said.

“I will, just came to check on you,” I said.

She rolled back over. This woman was in her late twenties. She must have been depressed to still be in bed.

“Everyone’s on the roof,” I said. “It’s a nice place to hang out. You should consider it.”

I was met with silence. She pulled a blanket over her head. I was struck with jealousy that she got a full-sized blanket, while I got something half as big. That didn’t matter right then.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re going through. I really don’t. Just know we’re here if you need us.”

No answer.

I turned to leave, but then I thought better of it and added, “When it comes time for you to run a storyline, we will force you. Just a heads up. Better wrap your head around that now. We don’t have a choice.”

Adeline had said that to us back at Camp Dyer. You can’t let new players start to believe they can sit the game out.

“You have a choice,” she said.

She didn’t elaborate.

I left. We had a run to plan. She needed more time.

“Hello,” Kimberly said tentatively. “I’m looking for a Sal? I don’t know the last na—”

“Kimberly, babe!” a voice called from the other end of the line. “Don’t you know your agent when you hear his pipes?” Whoever this Sal guy was, he was a heavily animated character.

“I have been waiting for you to call me for ages. We have so much to talk about. Are you still in that dingy loft in the downtown area? Well, I know of a gig that pays pretty well and it’s a five-minute walk. Can you believe that? A five-minute walk. It’s a nice, actiony, sexy summer flick with zombies at a health spa. Isn’t that a riot? Best yet, I think I can talk them out of making you do the nude scenes. Of course, you’d have to get a body double, but that’s a small price to pay for your modesty, right?”

Kimberly sat slack-jawed as she listened to her fictional agent talking a hundred miles a minute, but then she got herself together and responded, “No, Sal, I’m not here about that. I actually have questions about a different job. Do you remember The Final Straw?”

We had no idea how her trope worked. It was all part of the experiment.

“The Final Straw, The Final Straw, let me see. Oh my gosh, The Final Straw. You see, I knew, I knew that you would love The Final Straw. It is perfect. It’s what they call a career maker. I’m looking at a script here that could get you an Academy Award. Do you understand that? It is excellent.”

Kimberly looked at Antoine and me incredulously.

“All right, just let me get my notes, dear. It’ll take me just one more moment, just one more moment… oh, here they are, right on top. Because if you take this role, Kimberly sweetheart, you’re going to be right on top.”

“You say that about every role,” Kimberly said, trying to play along with the gimmick of the trope.

“And have I steered you wrong yet? This one though, this one is going to set you apart because, get this, my dear, you will be the main character. Your face will be on the poster of The Final Straw. Picture this: a young, eager detective hell-bent on saving a missing girl in some hick town out east. Huh? You like that? Well, of course, you won’t actually be a detective; you’re actually a reporter. But I think that’s just as good.”

The energy and enthusiasm… was funny. It felt like a person playing a character. It took everything not to laugh even when we were talking about a murder game.

“Tell me more about my character,” Kimberly said, holding back a laugh. “I just want to see if it’s something that I could picture myself doing.”

“What do you need to know? She’s brave, she’s beautiful. If I were 10 years younger and a woman, I would play this role in a heartbeat. She’s inquisitive, but it’s not her hard qualities that make her so special; it’s her soft-heartedness, it’s her compassion. Oh my God, this character, Kimberly, this character…”

“What’s the pay like?” Kimberly said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Standard pay. The real pay is in exposure. This is going to tell the world that Kimberly Madison is a player in cinema, that she’s not just some pretty face stripping down in the showers, that she has something to say, that she can carry an entire film on her shoulders.”

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“When have I ever played a character that’s stripped down in the showers?” Kimberly asked.

“Oh, it’s an expression, honey. I would never say something like that about you. It’s just people, they talk. You know how it is; this business is ruthless, ruthless.”

Kimberly shot a glance at me because I would know whether or not Carousel had snuck in any nude scenes involving her. I shook my head. This Sal person was just being a character. I had never seen a player portrayed as nude. NPCs, on the other hand…