“Do you feel nothing, Loren?” my own mother would howl while she grabbed her own throat with theatrical gusto. “Is there even blood beneath that pallid skin of yours?”

There’s no point in answering such questions.  I always knew that.

“She likes to see me cry.

She’ll tell you that’s a terrible lie.” 

Those words once found their way into a fourth grade poetry assignment for Mother’s Day.  I swear I have memories of being pinched by her when I was too small to tell anyone about it.  As soon as the tears showed up Lita Savage would always back off, a perverse smile lighting up her lips.   She was, and is, a person who thrives off the agony of others.  A person like that should never ever be a parent.

By now, Lita has nothing to do with me.  Or with Ava or Brigitte for that matter.

The three of us, the Savage sisters, are like points of a triangle, all independent and lonely in our separate corners.  Bouncing around somewhere in our orbit are my two brothers – rugged Spencer and arrogant Montgomery.  They circle us as warily as they do one another.

Montgomery. Loren. Spencer. Ava. Brigitte.

Write all our names in one sentence and it’ll look like a grand mash up of an old silver screen marquee.  That was probably what Lita had in mind to begin with when she married August Savage.  She wasted no time delivering her first genetic insurance policy and kept them coming in quick order.  Monty was born exactly nine months after the diamond landed on her finger and I came along exactly ten months after him.  The twins, Ava and Spence, joined the crazy Savage cast a year later and the youngest, the one who has destroyed my peaceful night, came screaming into her own spotlight twelve months after that.   I don’t know the specifics but Brigitte’s birth must have taken the gynecological cake for Lita because there were no more siblings afterwards.

In fact, ever since I could remember my parents had occupied separate bedrooms and barely spoke.  There was never any question about any of us being Savages though.  All five of us, in our distinct ways, manage to resemble dead movie stars.

  I’m still half listening to my sister yammer on about production schedules and publicity shoots and other things that don’t interest me at all.  I’m putting off the moment that I tell her I can’t do it.  She thinks I don’t understand but I understand very well.  It’s a tasteless reality television carnival that has nothing to do with reality.   There are dozens just like it these days. I wouldn’t be on board even if they weren’t planning on filming down in the dusty hellhole that’s the last sad relic of the glittering Savage fortune.

“Ren, are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

My god, I can see it like it’s all already been filmed, already been broadcast, already the subject of ten thousand clumsily written blogs. It makes me a little sick that the producers are likely banking on that poignancy, on the ‘Look how far they’ve fallen!’ vibe of despair as they film the remnants of a glamorous family bickering over water usage and shuffling around in the derelict mess.

Who the hell would agree to that?

Then something Brigitte says catches my attention and it all makes sense.  Now I know why my own sisters have shoved their dignity into a sock drawer.

Spencer too, apparently.  My younger brother must be more desperate than I thought.

“How much?” I ask.

“Five grand.  Each.  Per episode, Ren.  So that’s five grand times ten.  Quick, do the math.”  Her tone is jubilant.  She knows she’s won.  I never realized it was possible to hear someone smirk.  “Think you can beat that as a cocktail waitress out there on the Vegas strip?”

Her words have a sharp edge.  They taunt. They are supposed to.

I answer back just as sharply.  “I’m not a cocktail waitress.”

“You’re not far off.”

“I deal blackjack to frat boys, party girls and sad sacks with deep pockets who sometimes get the mistaken impression that I’m for sale too.  And you know damn well I can’t beat that take in six months.”

I pause and swallow, wishing I had something fiery at hand, something on the high end of the alcohol proof scale.   I could use some fire right now.  Whatever fight I had seems to be evaporating.  Maybe a different tactic would work.  I clear my throat and put on my best voice of reason.

“Bree, I can’t help but feel that you’re diving right into the dark water without any idea how deep it is.  You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Stop,” she scoffs.  “I’m not asking for anything I’m not willing to do myself.”

I picture her waving a petite hand in the air and rolling her eyes.  No one needs to tell Brigitte what is best. Complaints are unwelcome here. She’s never liked her nickname, Bree, and is in the habit of demanding that everyone draw out the second syllable of her full name with a chic, foreign-sounding lilt.

“This is a great opportunity,” insists Brijeeeet and she suddenly sounds whiny, agitated. Goddamn her, she’s probably thinking.  Selfish jerk.

She really does need me to cooperate.  The deal for the show only stands if all five of us sign on.

When I don’t answer she sighs with exasperation and her pitch escalates.  Brigitte only has so much patience for playing nice.

“Dammit Ren!  Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke?  A punch line?  An ‘Oh god, look what happened to those Savages!’ kind of sneering sympathy which isn’t really sympathy at all.  They gloat. They laugh.  We’re fucking funny to them.  You know it’s true.”

I soften.  Only a little.  The permanent dent in our status hurts her the most.  I’ve gotten used to it.  A long time ago I figured out that no matter the circumstances I wouldn’t have chosen that insane life.  It was never my fate.  But Brigitte isn’t over it.  She never will be.

“Bree,” I start to say but she’s on a roll.  She hasn’t made her point yet.

“Down the rabbit hole we went,” she howls.  “The Savages, in one sad scandalous lump.  Took us only a generation to go from America’s sweethearts to American baggage.  And I’m not talking about the boutique shit.  I’m talking about a low end department store kind of baggage made of dog hide and imported from some part of the world where people are forced to live in six foot tin kennels and work in the goddamn baggage factory twenty-two hours a day.”

I’ve stopped listening somewhere in the middle of that garbled monologue.  I don’t know where she comes up with this crap.  It was probably vomited from the mines of some focus group stuffed with Armani suits.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke?”

“Hmm,” I grunt when she pauses for breath.  I’m startled to find myself actually considering it.  Mostly I’m considering how much I’d like to tell my florid-faced overseer at the casino that he’s rubbed his knobby hard-on across my ass for the last time.

Not that I’m destitute.  Living in Vegas can be done cheaply and my single bedroom is comfortable enough for me and a semi-annual guest or two, which is about all I can brag about besides faceless bronzed muscle dreams.  Any extra money I come across I immediately send Ava’s way, no matter how much she tries to argue that I shouldn’t.

The thing is, the world has largely forgotten about me and I’ve blended into the scenery here.  Anonymity is comfortable.  If you’ve never been attached to celebrities you wouldn’t understand. My sister’s demands would destroy that comfort.  I know how it works.  Even if the show is only marginally successful we’ll be stalked.  We’ll be wild prey on the loose in America.  They would find us as we tiptoe out of a steakhouse, slither into traffic court, and stumble from the dentist. The weapons would be anything capable of basic photography. We would return to being the curious oddities that the world would like to own.