Soapsuds: A Novel - Hardcover

9780345470829: Soapsuds: A Novel
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Passion, power, sex, betrayal, and seduction–it’s all in a day’s work.

Having escaped to Hollywood after catching her boyfriend in bed with her best friend, London stage actress Kate McPhee is offered a gig on the popular daytime television series Live for Tomorrow. As Devon Merrick–police detective, car crash victim, and love interest for at least two men–she knows all the secrets and sins pulsating in fictional Hope Canyon. But the real drama is off the set, where the soap is indeed slippery.

Enter Meredith Contini, the show’s power-wielding diva. Meredith has two rules: Know your place and Stay in it. Kate broke both on day one, which is why she suddenly found her character switching sexual orientation. That brilliant solution came from Daphne del Valle, the show’s barking-mad obsessive/compulsive producer, who drives herself and her actors to enthrall the audience. (“Sell the hurt. Sell the rage. Sell the hunger. Sell the looooooove.”)

As gay detective Devon Merrick, Kate is a smash. The show is a hit. Kate’s private life seems to be becoming something of a drama itself. Especially since everybody thinks she really is gay, which is a problem since she thinks the best cure for her real-life broken heart is to get a man into her bed. But who? Kirk, her sexy, tan, and talented leading man, is boffing Meredith. There’s Matt, the magician who makes her tea, but will her fourteen-hour days keep them from the promise of tangled sheets? And there’s Wyatt, her handsome new co-star, who Kate believes is the great love of her life. Except that he’s married, and his
wife, Christine, is Kate’s new makeup artist and the one sane friend she has made in Los Angeles.

As the line between television and reality blurs with increasing speed, tension tightens and passions surge. Does Wyatt want Kate as much as she wants him? Will Christine find out? Will Kate lose her new friend? Will Meredith finally have Kate fired? Will Kate ever get to “come out” as heterosexual on the set? Are her steamy kiss scenes fated to be only with beautiful women?

Emmy Award—winning actress Finola Hughes whips up a frothy, scathingly funny novel worthy of any afternoon time slot in this delicious romp that takes readers through the twists, turns, and dish that drive the madness that is daytime television.

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About the Author:
FINOLA HUGHES was born and educated in London. She originated the role of Victoria in the West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, and made her American film debut in Staying Alive. Perhaps best known for her role as Anna Devane on General Hospital–a role she played for seven years, winning an Emmy in 1991–Hughes resurrected the character on All My Children. Now the host of How Do I Look? for the Style Network, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, artist Russell Young, and their sons, Dylan and Cash.

DIGBY DIEHL is the bestselling co-author of The Million Dollar Mermaid and Angel on My Shoulder. A noted book critic, he is working with Coretta Scott King on her memoirs. He lives with his wife, Kay, in Los Angeles.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
A Monday in October

You’re a very fortunate woman, Ms. Merrick,” the petite blonde nurse with the bouncing boobs tells me as she pushes my wheelchair down the corridor. “They did a heroic, even a miraculous job after your accident. You were touch and go for a while there.”

With my entire cranium swathed in gauze like some latter-day mummy, I nod. Not just because I understand what little Miss Perky Tits, RN, has said, but because there’s nothing else I can do. I’m wrapped so tight that there is no way to do much more than grunt or hum.

“You lucked out. When a woman goes through the windshield like you did, she is often scarred for the rest of her life. Of course, with all your broken bones, there was no way to rebuild your face exactly the way it was before.” She pushes me through the door into a tiny examining room. “Nevertheless, when Dr. Schroeder comes in to remove your bandages, I think you’ll be pleased,” she says in a tone that’s a bit too bloody cheerful for me. “I’m gonna leave you for just a moment while I go get him. I’ll be back real quick,” she adds over her shoulder with a wink and a jiggle as she’s halfway out into the corridor. “I’m sure you’re dying to see ‘the new you.’ ”

Alone for a moment, I go back over what happened. Cruising in the vintage Mercedes convertible that had been so lovingly restored . . . Laughing and carefree, enjoying the balmy summer night, the full moon, and the sound of the Pacific lapping at the shoreline. Burke at the wheel of his pride and joy . . . No seatbelts—“it’s more ‘authentic’ that way,” he said.

He’d been doing such a great impersonation of a sober person that I hadn’t realized how much he’d been drinking until he suddenly slammed on the brakes, even though the traffic signal was still a quarter mile up ahead. The SUV behind us couldn’t stop until it was somewhere in the back seat. By that time, however, I had been turned into a human projectile launched through the windshield.

Lying in a crumpled heap on the highway, I became aware of sirens and flashing lights, the squawk of walkie-talkies . . . and many faces hovering overhead. “Devon . . . Devon . . . Devon . . . Devon Merrick. Don’t try to move. Blink twice if you can hear me. I’m a paramedic. First we’re going to stabilize you, and then we’ll take you to the hospital. They’ll take good care of you there.”

What followed is still a blur: the frenzied trip to the ER . . . the urgent voices of doctors and nurses. “On my count . . . one . . . two . . .”

Then it all goes blank for a while. Waking up numb and cold with my lips wrapped around a plastic tube . . . I must be underwater, but how the hell do they expect me to scuba dive in this headgear? And where’s my mask and flippers?

I hear muffled bustling sounds around me. “She’s regained consciousness.”

Okay, so I got a bump on the head and I’m a little disoriented, but I really must get this huge radiator hose out of my throat. It’s not as if I’m a ’55 Buick. “Please don’t try to remove your breathing tube, Ms. Merrick. A nurse will help you shortly.”

My eyes come to half mast and I become increasingly aware of my surroundings. “Too soon to tell how much permanent damage there will be.”

Clearly I wasn’t supposed to hear that—my eyes bulge in alarm. The recovery room nurse answers the questions I’m unable to ask. “You were in an automobile accident. When you were ejected from the vehicle, your cheekbone and your eye socket were shattered. Your jaw was broken in four places and your nose was smashed. You were rather a mess. Since then you’ve had surgery to rebuild the bone structure of your face. You’re all held together with plates and screws—right now you’d set off metal detectors in every airport in the country. Miraculously enough, your companion walked away without a scratch. At least we think so—he seems to have disappeared. If he ever shows up, the cops would like to have a little Q&A with him about what happened.”

That conversation seems like ancient history as the peppy little nurse returns with Dr. Schroeder, who gives me a faux-cheery “And how are we this morning?”

I glower at him. I try to manage a “Fuck you” through my bandages, but “Mmmmph” is all that comes out.

Officious toad. Wait, that makes me sound like an ingrate. Okay, surgically proficient officious toad . . . but how condescending of him to refer to me in the first- person plural—unless of course he really does see two of me.

“You must be dying to see what you look like. We’re going to get those bandages off you right away now.”

Dr. Schroeder and the nurse begin snipping at the gauze and unwinding my shroud. “There’s never a good time for an accident like yours, Devon, but if you had to have it, you’re lucky that it happened when it did. You are truly a miracle of laser microsurgery. Even two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to give you nearly the result that you have.”

Snip. Snip. “That’s the last of it.” Schroeder steps back and looks at my face with a critical eye. “Yesssssssss!” I bet he says the same thing when he sinks a twenty-foot putt. “Devon, you’re wearing some of my very best work!” The smug, self-satisfied look on his face should be reassuring. It isn’t.

Schroeder nods to the nurse and pats her on the ass, even as she pats my face with a moist cloth, then holds a mirror up to my face. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” I gasp.

···

“Cut!” The disembodied voice booms over the set. “Very nice, all of you. Way to get your feet wet, Kate—you give great gasp. Welcome aboard as the new Devon Merrick. . . . Now mooooveit, people! Some of us would like to go home tonight before we have to come back tomorrow. I don’t give a shit about seeing my wife, but I have to walk my dog.”

The lights snap out in the hospital, and like giant R2-D2s the cameras roll onto the next set. A cameraman gives me an encouraging wink and says, “Welcome to Hope Canyon.” Makeup and Hair pick up their massive beauty kits and lumber wearily toward their next heart-stopping dramatic venue, dragging their chairs like spectators on a golf course.

I extricate myself from the hospital bed, peel back another layer of sticky bandage to be able to locate the exit, and make my escape. Prop guys and stagehands go about the business of tearing down parts of the set until someone bellows, “Shutthefuckup. We’re taping here!”

I feel deflated—plagued by the usual overexposed, vulnerable, nagging doubt that inhabits every moment of every job I’ve ever had. Ever. I stagger toward the exit sign, holding my hospital gown shut, so that my dimpled, cellulite-riddled ass doesn’t put in an uncredited cameo appearance.

As I peer blinking into the dimly lit hallway, I make out several people apparently lined up to welcome the new guy—moi. As my myopia struggles to focus, I begin to discern that these people are . . . girls. Actresses. Hollywood girl actresses. A species that strikes fear in my soul.

A searing hot poker of anxiety shoots through my gut, spreading out into my limbs and sending a tremor of terror into my brain as I recognize the gaggle of women for what they are . . . perfection. They are each and every one of them perfect—perfect specimens of youthful femaleness, caught in fleeting moments of prime, succulent ripeness. It’s disgusting and wildly mesmerizing—thick golden flesh covering miles and miles of divine bone; skin so taut it seems ready to spill its luscious contents onto the hallway carpet. What a waste.

They grin—in unison. Their size 2 bodies sway precariously in the air conditioning. I shudder. It is a Victoria’s Secret catalogue tableau come to life. They each have a (to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” all together now—)

Fiiive-yeeear con-traaact,

Fo-ur goll-den limmmbs,

Three-car-rat die-mondz,

Two-oo purr-fect breasts

and a boy-freh-end in a T-V show.

My fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in, and I choose flight.

To the dressing room—save yourself, Kate, before you’re revealed as the fraud that you are. There will be time enough for greetings and small talk when you don’t look quite so much like a woman who’s survived a car wreck.

Too late.

I’ll never get through that thicket of women without saying something.

As full-blown panic sets in, the thunder noise that I hear inside my head whenever I yawn gets louder and louder. The voices in the corridor sound like they’re coming from the bottom of a soup tureen—or a toilet bowl.

Worst of all, a dreadfully familiar pneumatic sensation comes over me as I feel myself start to inflate. Suddenly I am Alice in Wonderland, and I have nibbled off the wrong corner of the cookie. Growing, growing . . .

I’m feeling unmistakably warm, and surprise, surprise—my thighs have become immense. I’ve also become aware of my pubic hairs lying darkly beneath the hos- pital gown. They too have begun to grow, germinating menacingly beneath the low-rise Cosabella teal mesh thong in which I secreted them earlier this morning. Their tendrils have already escaped the confines of the thong and are threatening to curl out into the world, like time-lapse footage of an overgrown forest in Blair Witch III.

My pubic hairs mock the system, and they’re going to betray me. “She’s d...

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  • PublisherBallantine Books
  • Publication date2005
  • ISBN 10 0345470826
  • ISBN 13 9780345470829
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages384
  • Rating

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