LitGG1982 – While your review was a compliment of the highest sort…sweetheart, you need to go to work! Even it's just an internship!
petitos grasshoppertje – Woot for Milo-look-alike boyfriends!
xxxLotxxx – I feel bloody brilliant after reading the French part of your review, because I understood it ALL. I'm giving my French teacher a hug the next time I see her, even though she thinks I'm a lost cause because I can't pronounce for beans.
blank82 – You are oh so amusing, luv. (See that? That was so totally British.)
So…excuse time, huh? Well…1. Studying for AP US History test (which I missed six chapters of the class for, had to learn those on my own)…2. Trying to finish 600 pages of The Fountainhead to try and win the superlotsamoney scholarship with an amazing, kickass essay postmarked by April 25…3. A 7 page written, giant poster visual, tennish minute oral report on Metatropic Dysplasia for Genetics. 4. Life! School, family, struggling in French class, bare minimum socializing, keeping in contact with people, teen romance issues (Ug. I tried to kill Jess off out of spite for the male species…changed the chappie, though!), and a million other things. Forgive me for taking so long to update?
"...revealed to Popularity Magazine on the 14th that Jess Mariano was cheating on his wife, Rory Gilmore-Mariano, with the woman hired to baby-sit their two children. When asked to comment, the Mariano camp had nothing to say, remarking only that Jess and his wife were out of the country at the moment. But Popularity knows better. Struggling actress Mina Saunders came forth on the 14th to tell her incredible, true story of her time in the Mariano household. From Jess's infatuation with herself to his wife's cold indifference to the two's activities, it's a side we've never seen of Roriano." Paul Merton slammed the graypaper down on the table in front of his two young clients. "How the H-E-double hockey stick do you expect me to come up with an answer to those calls? You didn't even leave a contact number!"
"Dude, calm down," Jess said, running a hand through his dark hair. This wasn't the first time he'd done this in the past ten minutes, and consequently, his hair was starting to look quite oily. "The three of us will figure something out." Rory didn't look up from her place next to him at the couple's dining room table, where her head rested on her hands, and she stared vacantly at the paper in front of them. "You haven't put an answer on the table yet. We'll think of something." Merton had became the couple's publicist after Jersey Girls ended, when Lorelai and Rory went their separate ways professionally, and Jess opted to fork over the cash to pay for his own guy, no longer being able to rely on Max's cheap throng of squabbling show publicists. Max had recommended Merton to both actors, having briefly worked with him on a previous small screen venture, and they'd become his priority clients. When they joined in holy matrimony, and consolidated their assets, Merton transitioned from working for each of them, to working for the both of them. He'd had some other clients in previous years, but at the moment, he solely represented the Marianos. Good thing too, because their "camp" was going to be working overtime from this point out.
"Merton, sit down. You're making this even more stressful," Rory spoke meekly from her seat. Sinking exasperatedly into a chair across from them, he took a deep breath.
"Okay. First of all, what's going on you two?" Jess's eyes flicked to his wife's, and she nodded silently. Merton was a good man. They could trust him, no matter what he ended up releasing to the public.
"While the skank was working for us, she and I had an extramarital relationship, which we kept hidden from the kids, obviously. Rory found out, dismissed her from our services, and the girl went public with her story." Merton took a deep breath again. And again. And once more for good measure. Being an old-fashioned family man, he tried to contain the daggers he longed to shoot out of his eyes at the young man in front of him. The guy had a gorgeous, amazingly sweet wife, and all he could think about was sex with other girls. Merton did not respect this.
But he had to work with it.
"Okay. Is this the first time this has happened?"
"Uh, no. Third." Jaw gritting from the other side of the table.
"Are we in danger of the other two leaks?"
"We didn't think we were in danger of this one."
"Who else knows about any of these relationships?"
"Our housekeeper, Rory's mother and step-father, and Marty Winters."
"Would any of them go public? And what about your new nanny; does she know?"
"We trust these people with our lives. And Tana doesn't really follow news like this."
"Is she yet another name on your list?"
"God, no. She's married!"
"So are you, honey," Rory said in a non-interested voice, now picking at her nails.
"So we're fairly confident that the Saunders story is the only version that will make it on the market?"
"Mina is kind of a pussy compared to Jenna and Shane. Neither of them seem like girls to go to the papers the way she did. Too strong. Too stubborn."
"Alright. So is the Saunders story correct?" He'd read aloud each girlish quote and hollow-written paragraph upon converging in the dining room. And shown both the picture enlarged to many times it's small size, printed on the front of that and every other edition of Popularity on news racks at the time. A naked Jess slept soundly, covered only by a pepto-bismol pink sheet on the equally colored bed he reclined on. Taken at the height of Mina's crush, she'd never told him about this photo, but it had been a treasure she often traced with her fingertips on those nights when he didn't come to her because he was busy or with Rory. This little piece of photogenic infatuation, however, had been turned into a weapon against its subject.
"Yes. She's a ditz, but she got a full account. I didn't hear anything that I couldn't remember truly happening." The three thought back over the article, remembering the sob story about two star-crossed lovers, separated by a bitter wife and a husband's confusion. "Well, some parts may have been overdramatized. But the time periods, the events, the basic outline isn't a lie."
"But...it could be," Rory spoke up from beside her husband, solemnly. Merton nodded, sitting back in his seat.
"She wants to be an actress, correct? It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a fame-seeker to resort to measures such as making up stories about her past bosses. Maybe she even had a disagreement with the two of you over her paycheck, and decided to get even."
"She did ask for more money a few times," Rory nodded, supplying more information to pad the story they were weaving. Merton took out a palm pilot and began to take notes on it.
"What about the picture? It's quite obvious as to who the subject is."
"She stole it from me," Rory answered with a wry smile.
"And her claims about the deterioration of your marriage?"
"We're having a baby; we just went to France. We'll do some talk shows to demonstrate that everything is peachy keen with us." Merton's cell phone rang, and with an apologetic remark, he left for the adjoining room. Jess kept his eyes on the modernist print on the wall opposite his chair, but spoke for the first time since Rory and Merton had began to conspire.
"So...we're denying it?" Rory shrugged breezily.
"You want a scarlet letter?"
"Uh, no. But you just jumped into story-telling mode without consulting me. I thought...never mind."
"What did you think?"
"I said never mind."
"Jess, just tell me." They were facing each other by this point, frustrated.
"Look, I know France didn't end as well as it started, but I still thought we were trying the whole cooperating, common good, partnership thing. Isn't that why I had to call that overpriced, head-shrinking, professional?"
"That appointment's Tuesday, right?"
"Yea; but if you want that to work, you have to-what, ladies and gentlemen?- work with me. Stop leaving me out of the decision-making process." She held up her hands in mock-surrender at his raising tone.
"You have an alternative? Be my guest; lay it out for me." He was silent. "See, you can't think of one. I wasn't trying to exclude you, I just knew you wouldn't want out in an open arena A. what you'd done, and B. that you weren't sorry for it."
"Hey, wait just a minute, of course I'm sorry." If Rory had been eating something, she would have choked.
"Excuse me? It's less than a month after your last liaison! You weren't sorry then, you're not sorry now."
"Of course I am."
"NO, you're not. You even said you weren't going to apologize when we were coming back from Mom and Luke's."
"I said I knew apologizing couldn't make up for what I did, and that it would haunt me."
"Once again, this thing with Mina is barely ended. You don't just acquire guilt for something like that over night!"
"I regretted it while I was still screwing her, Rory. If you focused on someone's feelings other than your own, you'd know that." Smack, went Rory's palm as it connected with her husband's face.
"Shut up! How can you talk about what you did with her like it had nothing to do with her, with you, but everything to do with me?" Her face began to contort in such a way as to betray her attempt at holding back tears. Jess, too, struggled to keep a calm visage.
"Because it did. If you weren't so Goddamn selfish-"
"No, no, no, no, no! This is YOUR mistake, YOUR sin, YOUR betrayal. Not mine. I didn't play matchmaker; I didn't assign sleeping arrangements."
"Indirectly, you did."
"Stop it, Jess! What you did hurts, but not as much as your trying to pin the blame on me."
"I just don't think you can handle knowing that you played a part what happened."
"I know I did; but you did too. And so did she."
"Don't involve Mina, all she did was be young and hot and accessible."
"So now you're defending her?" It was amazing how clear the attitude came across in Rory's tear-clogged voice.
"Of course not, I hate the girl!"
"I see that didn't stop you from getting a piece of ass from her, though."
"I didn't hate her until this happened."
"Okay, now we're back to the subject at hand. THIS. Your slut squealed, Jess. If you had to mess around with her, why couldn't you have at least been smart enough to make her keep her mouth shut?"
"Hey, this is the first time this has happened, keep in mind."
"YOU cheated on ME. You have nothing to be defensive about."
"As you keep reminding me," he muttered.
"Jess, I let this go on. Yes, I'm at fault for that, but what was happening was not my doing or at my provocation. Then I didn't give you a hard time after it ended. I could have thrown you out; I could have given you grief; I could have gone to the press myself. But I didn't."
"You made me sleep on the couch for a weekend," he pointed out. She charged ahead as if she hadn't heard his interjection, pathetic in the face of what she was saying she could have done.
"And now I'm willing to lie for you. I'm willing to swallow my pride, go on national television, and say that everything is alright so as not to harm your career or persona. You say everything you've done is BECAUSE of me? Everything I've done is FOR you. So get over your sob story, because I'm done talking about this. I'll be upstairs taking a nap; call me when Merton goes." She got up, wiped her running mascara with the back of her hand, and headed for the door.
"You want to tell the truth?" he called to her.
"Why bother? Nothing's real; everything is fake. Our fame, our lives, our relationship. Give Mina crap or kudos, I don't care. Just don't ask me anything else. Because I'm tired of altering my life to make yours more comfortable." She left the kitchen, almost colliding with Merton as he came back in.
"Where's she going?"
"To take a nap; she's not feeling well."
"Understandable, what with the baby and this added stress. Okay, so that was my office, and apparently there's another article coming out tomorrow, different tabloid though, and my secretary read to me what she'd been faxed by the magazine. Apparently they wanted my comments. Anyway, it was basically the same interview, I only noticed a few changes. The most blatant one, after having heard your side of the story, is her claim that she was the only woman you ever had relations with while married to Rory. Of course, we don't want to encourage the thread that she was not the only one, but we still need to discredit this."
"No." Jess stood up, pushing his chair in. "If we're done here, I have a rehearsal in an hour that I need to get ready for."
"'No'? I don't understand."
"No. No lies. Get me an interview lined up with anybody, I don't care who. I'll do my side. Make it the day after tomorrow; I'm busy tomorrow."
"Wait, what was just decided here?"
"We're not lying. I did something, I'm owning up to it."
"Jess, as your publicist, I can tell you that this is very much the wrong move. This is the Bay of Pigs of wrong moves."
"Whatever. Don't fight me on this, dude."
"Remember the bad decision you made that landed you in bed with this girl, not your wife? This one almost tops it. Career suicide."
"Nah, not really. Some people might decide they hate me, but Rory might give me a break. Some people; Rory. Some people; Rory." He pretended to weigh the two on his hands. The side representing Rory shot towards the ceiling.
"Jess! 'Roriano' is a good image to have for both you and her. The perfect, blissfully happy young love story! You met on one of the most popular rerun syndicated shows in America; you live the American dream with a big house and two kids; you're both young and attractive; you are what they want to be. Don't disillusion the people; it's not fair to them."
"Well, people have always thought we were too blissfully happy. Give 'em some controversy."
"Please be joking, Jess. Rory directs; she doesn't need the reputation either way, good or bad. So this is just you we're talking about, and me by extension." Jess shrugged.
"Get some other customers, man, because I'm going down."
"Why?"
"Because Rory's under the crazy impression that going along with what I do or say is 'altering her life,' I believe is the term she used. We're done here." He walked out, and a speechless Merton followed his path through the doorway a few minutes later. As he got into his car and drove off the premises, he saw Kathy, the Mariano's housekeeper, using a garden hose to drive reporters off the front lawn.
