Watching the End of the World – 2
Nate Devereaux sat in a VIP lounge at Los Angeles International Airport and wondered if he���d killed his acting career before it ever really got started. He was a graduate of Julliard, a gifted actor with a promising future. He���d played Hamlet to a sold-out theater for two full weeks. Standing ovations every night. Granted, it was in Milwaukee ��� not exactly Broadway ��� but at least it was theater. He was a real actor, not some wannabe Kardashian willing to do anything to get his five minutes in the public eye.
So what was he doing here, about to board a jet to Madagascar to spend the next two months competing in a reality show called Reality Island? Was he really this desperate?
Two years in Los Angeles without a single real acting job did terrible things to a person���s mind, he thought. He looked around the lounge and groaned inwardly. Judging by what he saw here, this was going to be the cheesiest reality show ever. The others waiting with him were the shallowest, most stereotypical reality show contestants ever, straight out of central casting. If the show was meant as a satire, they���d be perfect.
One of the guys ��� a tall, blonde man with rippling muscles highlighted by the tank top he was wearing ��� was flexing his bicep for two of the female contestants.
Even worse, the women were eating it up. The tall, bleached-blonde with the clearly-fake boobs and the too-tight miniskirt actually clapped her hands and laughed when he did it. The woman on the other side of the blonde guy ��� a beautiful African-American woman with a faint resemblance to Beyonc�� ��� had one hand on his shoulder.
All three were standing at the lounge���s tiny bar, drinking complimentary shots of tequila, never mind that it was nine in the morning.
On the other side of the Beyonc�� lookalike was a brooding Latino guy dressed in sharp-toed cowboy boots worked with silver, tight black jeans and a long-sleeved, button-down shirt. He was drinking a beer and looking out the window at the tarmac.
Nate sank back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The best he could hope for now was that the show would quietly sink into the seething morass of American pop culture and disappear forever. Which he figured it had a pretty good chance of doing.
