“Don’t you worry about getting so involved with someone on the show?” Callie asked if this were Lisa’s first costar fling, even though she knew perfectly well that it was just her most recent. “What if things go sour? Won’t it be a little awkward? How’s Randall going to feel about you going out with Hank?” Left unasked was who would be left to date by the time she turned thirty.
Lisa shrugged. “Why should working together be a problem? We’re all professionals. Besides, it’s not as if we’re really serious, you know. It’s just something to make the day go by a little faster.”
Callie’s head was spinning at the logic. “You don’t actually date, then?”
“Oh, heavens, no. Randall’s way too old for me, almost as old as Paul.”
Callie decided then and there that she had lived far too sheltered a life.
“Then jealousy’s not a problem?” she asked.
“Not usually. I mean, we all know the rules.”
“And what rules are those?” Callie asked.
“That our private lives are just that, private. At the end of the day, we go home to whomever.”
Callie nodded. “I see. Whom does Randall go home to?”
“His wife, of course.”
Of course, Callie thought drily. “And you?”
“No one special, if that’s what you mean. I share an apartment with a couple of other actresses. We’ve been so busy trying to make it, we haven’t had a lot of time for serious relationship stuff.”
“So you just get your physical kicks on the set,” Callie said, trying to be sure she’d grasped the concept.
“In the dressing rooms, actually, but that’s the idea,” Lisa confirmed, wolfing down her pasta as if it were the only meal she’d had in weeks.
Dear heaven, what had she gotten Hank into? Callie wondered, feeling almost sorry for the amorous cop. Still, he was a big boy. She wondered if there were others who hadn’t known the rules.
“Doesn’t it get complicated?” she asked again, trying once more to get a handle on whether jealousy was ever a problem. Surely these men were no less competitive or possessive than others in the universe.
“Just once,” Lisa confessed. “There was one guy who thought he owned me just because we’d gotten it on a couple of times. He was almost, you know, like stalking me.”
“What happened?”
“I set him straight. He ended up leaving the show. I felt bad about that, too. He was a real good actor. He’s over on CBS now.” Her expression suddenly turned nostalgic. “We had some really hot scenes together. It took a long time for them to find someone to replace him. My story line went to hell in the meantime. I had my agent on the phone to the producers twice a day, sometimes more, threatening to pull me if they didn’t beef up my part again.”
She beamed, the man and the troubles apparently forgotten. “It worked, too. They turned me into a real homewrecker. You should see the hate mail I get. It’s fantastic.”
To each his own, Callie thought. “Speaking of hate mail, does any of it ever scare you?”
“You mean, like, do I take it seriously?”
Callie nodded.
“Don’t be silly. It just shows I’m doing my job.”
“Then you don’t get actual threats.”
“Sure I do. All the time. But, come on, these people aren’t going to act on it. They know this stuff is make-believe.”
Callie wasn’t nearly as convinced of that as Lisa appeared to be, but it did put another slant on those notes Terry was getting. Maybe someone was threatening his character, not him. Of course, if the sender was a nut, that could be just as dangerous. Despite Lisa’s conviction to the contrary, this person might not know the difference between reality and make-believe.
But even as she considered the possibility of a misguided fan, Callie dismissed it. These notes weren’t coming through the mail as a deranged viewer’s would. Logic indicated that they were being hand-delivered by someone with much closer ties to the show.
“How about anyone else on the show? Has anyone ever gotten mail they thought was over the edge, maybe a little too scary to dismiss?”
Lisa’s eyes widened as she considered that. “Oh, wow, you mean like threats on their lives or something?”
“Maybe,” Callie confirmed. “Or not even something that direct, just weird.”
Lisa tilted her head and studied Callie intently. “You know, you sound just like a cop. You’re not a plant or something, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like, working undercover because somebody on the show really is being stalked.”
Callie felt her cheeks turning pink. “No. I’m just curious. This is all so new to me. It’s like a whole other world. I was just wondering if people ever get spooked by their mail.”
“I suppose it’s happened once or twice,” Lisa said, looking bored with the topic.
Callie persisted. “Who would they tell about it? Would they go to the police?”
“I wouldn’t. I’d tell the producers and let them handle it.”
“Good idea.” Callie resolved to talk to the producers first thing in the morning and see if there had been other threats reported. In the meantime, she had one more avenue to explore with Lisa. Getting into it, though, was going to be tricky.
“You know,” she began casually, “I’ve been wondering about Terry.”
“Oh, gosh,” Lisa said at once, her wide eyes sparkling. “Haven’t we all? He’s a hunk, all right. There was a time when I thought he and I—well, you know what I mean.”
“It didn’t work out?”
“No, he made it real clear he wasn’t interested. He was sweet about it, though. It wasn’t like some big, embarrassing rejection or something. He just told me he was, like, really involved and not into messing around. You have to respect a guy for being honest, you know.” She sighed wistfully. “I hope someday I meet a guy like that, one who won’t fool around on me.”
She seemed thoroughly sincere, and if she’d guessed the real reason for Terry’s rejection, she certainly wasn’t letting on. She didn’t
