Page 2 of The Spirit of Love

Meet Aurora Apple, Zombie Hospital ’s leading lady and one of the most charismatic, incompetent snobs ever to strike a pose.

In Hollywood’s game of No Degrees of Separation, Aurora used to cohost Jake’s daytime talk show—pre-Olivia, back when Jake and Aurora both lived in New York.

Sometimes I think the entire entertainment industry is just one big show mixed together.

Aurora is a nightmare, but she’s our nightmare, so I do what I can to help her.

She doesn’t know how to refill a prescription, use a dryer sheet, or issue holiday bonuses to her numerous staff—she keeps both an erotic masseuse and koi-fish-whisperer on retainer.

But train a camera on Aurora’s face, and she’ll pause the earth’s orbit with her pitch-perfect line delivery.

“So,” Aurora says, “if someone were to leave their THC gummies in their scrubs, and someone else’s piece-of-shit dog got into them, should someone call a vet?

Also, for my scene today, is this right: I’m supporting the kid’s transition back to humanity, but also, from a medical perspective, I’m like, skeptical? ”

I take them in order of importance. “I’ll send Tank to urgent care,” I say, referring to Aurora’s on-set rival, Miguel Bernadeau’s Pomeranian. “As for your scene, yes, you’re right—that’s a very nuanced understanding of your character’s dynamic with Buster.”

“Thank you!” When Aurora beams, it’s so dazzling that you almost think the nightmare’s over. She takes my arm in hers, and the two of us, and my balloons, waft toward my trailer. “One more thing.”

I await her next inane demand, but Aurora surprises me. She holds out a small wrapped box.

“Good luck today!”

“What’s this?” I’m stunned. For the entire year she’s been on set, Aurora has treated me like the assistant I used to be six years ago, even though she joined the show well after I’d moved up to full writer.

When I lift the box’s lid, I find a Swarovski diamond director’s clapper board with my name etched on it.

“This is so nice. Thank you!” I hug Aurora, incredulous.

“You thought I wouldn’t remember. But I did.”

“Aurora?”

“Mmm?”

“I think I need to say this out loud to someone, to get it off my chest before the shoot. And you’re…here, so here goes—”

“You’re the one who put my silk bra in the microwave?” She points a finger at me.

“No—what? No. I met someone this weekend. His name is Sam.” Simply saying his name aloud makes me tingle. “And we had this—”

“Mind-blowing sex?”

“Yes!”

Aurora slaps me hard across the face.

“Ow! What the hell, Aurora?”

“Better?”

I touch my stinging cheek. As the pain fades, a new clarity emerges. “Yes. I think so.”

Aurora nods. “I’m glad you got boned. Your pores really needed it. But I need you focused today. Dialed fucking in. We all do. You read?”

I nod, wincing. “I read.”

“Good. Action, bitch!” she sings as she bounds away.

Rubbing my cheek, I approach the trailer of Buster Zamora, Zombie Hospital ’s ten-year-old child star, who can easily go toe-to-toe with Aurora on the diva-style demands.

But working closely with Buster last year, I stumbled upon a secret: All he needs to take the edge off is fifteen minutes of meditation first thing in the morning.

I see him now, eyes closed, sitting on a vintage Oushak rug spread on the fake grass of his trailer’s front yard.

His chest rises and falls with his breaths as his guru, Jane, handpicked by me and budgeted throughout this season, leads him through the low chanting of his mantra.

Jane gives me a thumbs-up, and I exhale.

If Buster is grounded, today will be much easier.

I invite myself to feel grounded, too. This weekend was a roller-coaster—a wild and gorgeous ride—but I’m here to work now, and I’m calm and collected.

Maybe it was Aurora’s slap. Or maybe I’m just the right person for this job.

I tell myself I’m ready to meet any challenge today with dignity and patience.

I dash up the steps to my trailer, decorated with Zombie Hospital posters and preschool portraits of my nephews. I have forty-two minutes until call, and after I check my teeth for raspberry seeds from the smoothie I inhaled in my car, I’ll take out today’s sides and review my plans for our scenes.

There’s a knock before I even make it to my mirror.

“What is it, Aurora?” I call.

The door flings open and our production assistant, Ivy Rinata, appears.

Her long brown braids are damp with sweat around her hairline, and she’s out of breath.

Strange. I’ve made the mistake of taking a “Highway to Hell” Orangetheory class with Ivy before, and she never once got winded, so this a little alarming.

Where exactly did she run from, and why?

“Ivy, you good?”

“Did you lose your phone again?”

“No, why?”

“Didn’t you get Rich’s messages?”

I look down at my silenced phone, presently lit up with eight—no, nine—texts, all from my least favorite producer, and all sent within the last two minutes.

“What’s going on?” I ask, a lead anvil bouncing like a pinball in my gut.

“Follow me.”

As we jog across the set in silence, I wonder What the fuck?

on repeat. Rich wasn’t always my least favorite producer.

Once upon a time, he hired me to be his assistant, fresh out of UCLA film school, and I actually liked working for him.

I never liked him , per se—my sixth sense always shouted Boundaries!

around Rich—but the job was just what I wanted. The ropes. Me learning them.

For two years, I drafted his emails, poked fun at his ridiculous coffee orders, watched every film he insisted was “canon,” and then galled him with my critiques.

In turn, he did a halfway good job of mentoring me and also gave me tons of free tickets to premieres and concerts and plays.

He spoke about the “Fenster Future,” when he said I’d be running this town.

But then, right around the time my fellow assistant pals on Zombie Hospital started either getting promoted or being recruited by other shows, I stayed right where I was—in line at Starbucks, waiting on a nitro stevia mocha with Rich’s name Sharpie’d on the sleeve.

I know I could have jumped up the ladder to another show myself.

I had lunches and Zooms during that time, offering me more money and creative freedom than I had in my current job.

But Zombie Hospital has always fit me in a way that felt personally significant, reflective of my life and passions.

Plus, I’d already put in two years of hard, driven, quality work.

I didn’t want to schedule that meeting with Rich to press him for a promotion, but it was well past time when I finally did.

“Fenster,” he’d assured me. “I put in for that months ago. But you know, the budget was completely fucked last year, so the network was like—” He mimed a jerking-off motion. “Your raise is literally the first thing I’m splurging on after the new fiscal—”

“It’s not just the raise, Rich. You know I want to direct.”

“Fenster Future. I’m all about it.” He put up his hands as if he had willed this into reality on the spot. “Let’s just chill for a beat, okay? It’s all happening. Everything will come.”

I chilled for several beats. But nothing happened.

Nothing came. Not until three months later, when I went over Rich’s head and set up a meeting with HR.

I made my case with hard evidence in the form of two years’ worth of performance reviews, script notes written, and budgets drawn up.

Two weeks later, I got what I wanted. Or at least, it was a start.

I was moved to the lowest rung in the writers’ room—and squeezed into a corner of permanent annoyance in Rich’s tiny mind.

Since then, he’s only gotten worse. Smarmier, shallower, and so open about his suspicion that I have “just never liked him.” It’s unusual for Rich to call me to his office first thing in the morning.

It certainly doesn’t bode well. I try to prepare for a few unfortunate eventualities—is one of the cast members sick?

In legal trouble? Is an advertiser nervous about something in an episode? Is CBS canceling us?

Hah. No way.

Still, the thought is unnerving. I can’t imagine not working on Zombie Hospital . People love to hate our show because its melodrama can veer off the charts, but for me, Zombie Hospital is really about what’s worth living—and dying—for. For me, this show is personal.

I don’t talk about it often, but when I was ten years old, I almost died. I glimpsed the other side…and then I made a choice to come back. A choice that forever changed me.

Edie and I had spent the first days of January that year on the ice of Barton Pond, near where we grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

She was on her skates, and I was testing out the new camcorder I’d gotten for my birthday.

We were obsessed with our mom’s DVD of Beaches , and Edie would skate circles around me, off-key belting out “Glory of Love” from Mayim Bialik’s audition scene.

We stayed out too long on a day too cold, and we both caught the flu. The illness glanced off Edie, and after a few days she was back at school. But I got bronchitis, and then pneumonia, and then on a rainy Wednesday morning, my mom couldn’t wake me.

An ambulance was called, paramedics deployed, an ER room burst into. And although I was unconscious, I saw it all.

I watched it from beyond myself. I was floating ten feet above my body, free from the flesh and bones that I had, until that moment, taken for granted was me. I had no idea there was more.

More not just to me, but to everything.