The Spirit of Love

Chapter One

"There she is," my favorite security guard says Monday morning as I pull up to the gate at CBS's Radford Studios. "Ms. Fenny Fein, director. Look out."

"Big day," I tell Rockwell, reaching through my car's open window to fist-bump him, like I do every morning. Only this morning, nothing feels ordinary. Everything feels new.

It's a plumeria-scented, turquoise-skyed, warm September day in Los Angeles, an auspicious forecast to kick off the next phase of my career.

Rockwell leans forward, scrutinizing me. He gestures at my air-dried, wavy, above-the-shoulder blond bob, then at my unglossed, still-a-little-sunburned-from-last-weekend lips. "Did you do something different with your . . . ?"

"Indeed I did, Rockwell," I say. "I did something very different."

"You've got that boss glow, Fenny. Go in there and get what's yours!"

He opens the gate, and I wave as I drive through.

Rockwell is partly right: I am here this morning to get what's mine, to finally fulfill my long-held dream of directing my very first episode of Zombie Hospital, the TV show whose rungs I've been climbing for the past seven years.

Today's the day I officially move out of the writers' room and into the director's chair. I've loved writing on Zombie Hospital, but once a script is complete, a writer must let go of all she's done, surrendering her pages' destiny to the actual shoot-which can change everything about a scene. To direct is to be the show's vision, to make its destiny, to call the shots that add up to its soul.

Is Zombie Hospital campy and absurd? Hell yes, and that's why we love it. Is it also hilarious and arch and occasionally resonant with the big question of why we're all here on Earth? It is, and that's what gets me up in the morning. That's what makes Zombie Hospital my home.

After seven years, one hundred fifty-four episodes, three agents, much schmoozing, and a lot of late-night prayer, I finally get to direct. I feel a little apprehensive, a lot validated, and three hundred percent ready to step into my new role. But the glow that Rockwell mentioned back at the studio gate? I believe that comes from somewhere else. . . .

Have you ever had an orgasm so powerful it rattled the marrow of your bones?

It's one of those if-you-know-you-know experiences, and seventy-two hours ago, I had no idea. I would have face-palmed at such hyperbolic language, because I take language seriously.

Cut to now, when I'm attempting to operate a vehicle with actual rattled bone marrow. As I wind my way through Radford's forty-acre lot, my mind slips back in time to this past weekend. I know that, technically, I'm here in Studio City, driving this familiar route to my familiar trailer . . . but inside? A part of me is also still there.

In a cabin at the edge of the world. Draped in magic. Fireside. With Sam.

Sam. Who I met this weekend at the beach. A giddy smile lights me up as I slam on the brakes in the middle of the lot. I can't remember the last time it was this much fun to think about a guy. I bust out my phone and open a new browser window to see when I can catch the next ferry back to Catalina Island. Back to his cabin, his arms. If I leave after work tonight . . . There's no ferry that could get me back in time for call tomorrow. But then, what even is time in the face of that crinkly thing Sam's eyes do when he smiles?

A car horn honks.

"Hey, lady!" a male voice calls from the car I've trapped behind me. "Important people back here, trying to get to important places!"

In my rearview mirror, I see that my car is blocking Jake Glasswell's Lucid Air and I laugh. Jake is the host of The Jake Night Show and engaged to one of my best friends, Olivia Dusk. And he is clearly fucking with me.

"Sorry, Glasswell!" I call out my window, putting my Kia EV9 back in Drive, shelving my erotic wanderlust for another time. "I'm moving."

"Fenny. Hold up, I was on my way to find you." Jake climbs out of his driver's side door, opens his trunk, and pulls out a bouquet of zombie-shaped silver helium balloons. "These are from Liv and me."

I put a hand to my heart, touched, as he helps me stuff the unwieldy balloons into my passenger seat. "Thank you, Jake."

"Least we could do to celebrate the new Scorsese in town." He winks.

"You do know Liv and I despise Scorsese, right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jake beams his dazzling, ratings-reaping smile. "I still think you'd like his early work-"

"I'm more focused on my early work at the moment."

"Of course," Jake says. "Hey, how was your trip to Catalina? Did you get that rainstorm you were after?"

I did get that storm . . . and then some. And although the mere mention of Catalina sets my bone marrow rattling again, I can't dish to my friend's fiancé about my naughty weekend.

"It was . . . unforgettable."

"Sounds like a good story," Jake says, with a look that tells me he'll hear it thirdhand from Liv later. "Well, knock 'em undead today-whoops, Liv says I'm not allowed to use that joke anymore."

"You're really not," I confirm.

Jake walks back to his car gives me a wave as he drives off to his side of the lot and I drive off to mine.

Radford Studios is a labyrinthine lot of eighteen soundstages, where dozens of shows are filming at any given moment. Jake's talk show films on Soundstage 9, Zombie Hospital is across the lot on Soundstage 2, and my sister Edie films the weather for KCAL-9's evening news over on Soundstage 18. Sometimes, when Jake, Edie, and I are all at Carla's Café at the same time, the studio commissary feels as tight-knit as a high school cafeteria. I cruise past New York Street, where the exterior scenes of Seinfeld were filmed. I pass Steve Harvey, fastening a cuff link on his way to shoot Celebrity Family Feud. Then at last, I wind around to the enormous soundstage where Zombie Hospital happens.

The first scene I'm shooting today takes place on the Hospital Roof stage. Shot before a green screen, our team of CGI artists will make it look like a bullet-ridden high-rise in a postapocalyptic downtown. The crew has been here for hours, installing lighting, testing sound, and troubleshooting everything that could go wrong once cameras roll. Even after seven years on this show, it amazes me how many people Zombie Hospital employs, how many hands cash its paychecks, how many families rely on its continued success. Whenever I feel annoyed about changes to my scripts, I remember my big, weird family. And today, more than any day before, they're depending on me.

I pull into my parking spot and take in the new white rectangular sign proclaiming in gothic Zombie Hospital font:

Fenny Fein, Director

I close my eyes, not because I don't want to stare at that sign for hours, but because closing my eyes lets me feel my sister with me. Edie and I are so close sometimes my brother-in-law calls us symbiotic. Right now Edie's at her Silver Lake home on the other side of town. She's probably wearing our mom's old pink bathrobe, strewn with half a dozen burp cloths, navigating the daily mayhem of three kids under three. But she's thinking of me, too. I can feel it. And she's proud.

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Edie. Hard to say exactly where I'd be. When I doubt myself, Edie assures me that I know every Zombie Hospital character's backstory, side story, and future story, having been a part of the show since showrunner Rich Stark took a chance on me out of film school. I've worked my way up from production assistant to script coordinator to capital-W Writer to Director. I've studied the geniuses-Barbra Streisand, Maya Deren, and Agnès Varda-and watched Mira Nair's and Jodie Foster's MasterClasses. I've absorbed all media available by, on, and adjacent to Greta Gerwig. I've prepped and re-prepped, storyboarded and un-storyboarded every inch and instant of the scenes I'll be shooting today. If there's an angle I haven't considered, it doesn't exist. I've interviewed six intimacy consultants, all of whom I'd like to bring with me on future dates. Now all that's left for me to do is kick off my new career direction with that single, thrilling word:

Action!

Taking out my phone to text Liv, I manage to get myself completely tangled in the balloon bouquet I'm wrestling out of my car.

Me: Best balloons, thank you love!

Olivia: This is Lorena. I'm on Liv's phone. Screw the balloons, tell us about your orgasms . . .

I tap the exclamation mark response. Lorena is Olivia's mother, and cohost of their advice podcast Call Your Mother, which saw a sudden surge in popularity last year when Liv proposed to Jake during one of their recording sessions. What had been a cult favorite among a couple dozen fans turned into a subscribership much wider and more proportionate to Liv and Lo's gifts.

For some reason, Lorena follows her text with a GIF of Jeff Goldblum smirking from his seat at an award show. Like I won Most Orgasms on a Beach.

Of course, she's referring to the vibrator Olivia gave me on Friday before I left for Catalina Island, back when everyone, including me, assumed I was embarking on a simple solo camping trip to center myself before this week's shoot. I haven't yet told my friends what really happened at the remote campsite called Two Harbors. Sam simply cannot be summed up in a text. That story will have to wait until tonight, when I meet Olivia, Lorena, and our friend Masha at the bridal shop for champagne and Olivia's final wedding dress fitting.

A hand reaches into the balloon bouquet and pulls me out.

"I need you."

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?