Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(76)

“Take your time, no rush,” the waiter says, clearing a couple of plates.

I laugh awkwardly. Divine has not shown a great sense of humor up until this point, but there’s a first time for everything.

Divine smiles and crosses his legs.

Okay, he’s going to play out the gag. All right. This is a very stressful joke, but fine, I’ll play along. A little hazing, Hollywood style. Good clean fun.

I open the bill and look at the total.

I feel like I’ve been impaled on a spear of burning ice.

$764.26.

I have to read it twice to make sure there isn’t a decimal in the wrong place. Don’t get me wrong, $76.42 would still be a hell of an expensive dinner for me, but it wouldn’t be about eighty percent of my total net worth, including all the blood plasma in my body. Time for the joke to be over. I’m not laughing anymore.

I look up again at Divine. He smiles serenely, beatifically, his face betraying no hint of the joke.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” I say. It’s finally sinking in: this might be real. I want to pass out. I’m frozen. I don’t know what to do. For as big a turd as Divine is, he could still be our show’s only hope. I think about Delia confronting her dad right now. I can’t sell us out over $764. I can always get a job and make back the money, but I might not have another opportunity like this. I never want Delia to think I wouldn’t pay $764 (plus tip…oh dear lord, I forgot about the tip) to help keep our show.

“Is something the matter?” Divine asks.

“Nooooo, it’s just…wow.”

“Welcome to showbiz, my dear. Wining and dining the people who can make things happen for you is as important as anything. If you learn nothing else, let it be that. And I am well pleased with how I’ve been wined and dined.”

“Uhhhhh.”

“And trust me,” Divine says with a salacious eyebrow shimmy and speaking out of the corner of his mouth, “there are people whose wining and dining needs go far beyond mine, if you catch my drift.”

I have a sensation like a cockroach crawled up my spine.

Lawson, whom I can feel seething next to me, starts to go for his wallet. “Here—”

I pinch his thigh so forcefully, I feel guilty. This is my mess. I’ve got this. He takes the hint and backs down.

I swallow hard. “What if we go halfsies?”

Divine chortles and claps. “I like your moxie, young lady. I do. But no, I mustn’t. You have to know your value.”

“You pay,” Yuri says gruntily and more-to-the-pointily.

The waiter walks by. “Excuse me,” I squeak. “Is the tip included in the bill?”

He looks at me like I’ve just told him I’ve never been to a restaurant. “No, miss. A recommended gratuity of eighteen percent is not included.”

I get out my debit card and run the numbers on my phone. A tip of $137. Total: $901.26. When last I checked, I had a little over $1,200 saved up, which included my birthday money and graduation money from my grandma.

Think of it as an investment. Think of it as an investment. Think of it as an investment. Maybe he’ll make you so rich you’ll sneeze at thousand-dollar dinners.

“We should really do this again sometime,” Divine says.

“Oh, for sure,” I say, almost puking a little in my mouth.

We rise to leave, with Divine leading the way and Yuri bringing up the rear. Lawson hands the snooty host back his loaner blazer.

“Reba,” Yuri grunts as Lawson holds the door for him.

“I don’t know what that means,” I say. “I don’t know what it means when you do that.”

???

We pile in the Escalade. Divine turns back to us from the middle row. “And now it’s brass tacks time! Rubber meeting the road time! Let’s go get a television program made! Yuri?”

Yuri grunts and puts the car in gear.

Could this really be happening? Did I just pay almost a thousand dollars to get our show made? Could this night have been worth it? Is this going to be an amazing story someday? I’m far too distracted by these visions and reflections on my recent financial ruin to pay attention through the limousine-dark windows to where we’re going. We wind through streets and highways for about twenty minutes until we get to a nondescript, decidedly unglamorous part of town. We pull into a strip mall anchored by a Dollar Tree and a payday loan servicer. We park in front of a storefront that says Disme Entertainment in Comic Sans font. A vape shop and a dry cleaner flank it. This does not look great.

The tide of anxiety rolls in again. But a tiny ember of possibility still glows in my mind. Maybe this is how shows really get made. Maybe it’ll be a step forward for us.

Yuri gets out and opens Divine’s door, and the two stroll quickly toward the entrance. Lawson and I stumble out.

“If this is a porn studio…,” Lawson says under his breath.

I laugh, but not because the notion is at all implausible.

Divine rings a bell and mugs for the security camera. Someone buzzes us in. The air-conditioning is screaming, and it smells like moldy carpet. It’s as humid as outside, but (conservatively) thirty degrees cooler. Every surface feels slightly damp, like a layer of condensation and/or despair covers everything.

This place is so unpromising, it feels like a mass grave for promises.