Tracy

059:

               

*****059

Monday packed for Alaska, it was March and they'd be gone for at least three weeks. So she and Danny were coming with Tracy on location. Tracy checked everything, and then left for her final day of shooting it on the sound stage. It would her busiest day ever. She had an interview on The Tonight Show with none other than Johnny Carson, whom Richard had spent the majority of the night prepping her for and warning her about. Carson was professional, and succinct. He wasn't rude, but he didn't socialize, and never tried to make you comfortable. You held your own. Being on the Tonight Show had its benefits, seeing as it was the most popular Night time talk show in all of history and had already been running for close to twenty years, but it was also like facing the suicide squad.

"It's eight minutes." Tracy told him as he patted her butt on her way out the door to Rocks. She'd see him on set later. Even though he was gimping around and sometimes still on crutches, and more often than not exhibited signs of irritability and surliness, he'd stayed off drugs and alcohol for the whole time he'd been in recovery, and therefore had been eligible for baptism with his mother over the weekend.

Tracy had not been particularly happy that he and Louise couldn't wait to allow her to be there at this special event, but said she understood it was a spiritual moment between the two of them. No one else had been invited either.

"It can be a grueling eight minutes. It will seem like forever."

"I'm singing. We're watching a two-minute clip of the film. That will take up time." She slung her bag over her shoulder, and kissed his cheek. "Gee, thanks, Brother Mann, for taking such good care of me.

He winked at her, but her eyes did not smile back. She'd already moved on to the next phase of her day, and it was only six.

At Rocks, Michael had clocked time out for her exclusively, and they worked for four hours without stopping. A new album was being released soon, and it needed perfecting. At eleven there was a photo shoot for her album cover--- and she whisked herself away to another Rocks room and then the beach for that. Ten costume changes later, she was flying to Los Angeles, only a fifteen-minute hop, to be on stage. An hour later, completely in costume--- and makeup, she took the stage with Austin, inside the same Native American teepee they'd been in before, but this time dressed for battle. It was a gripping scene that defined the two character's feeling for each other, and his reluctance to allow her to defend herself and risk being killed in the process.

It was in the middle of this that her assistant called a halt rather unexpectedly, and everybody leaned in, wondering why. Tracy turned on her hands and knees to face Austin and scrunched up her lips. "I'm going to throw up."

Richard had gimped forward, being the Director on set, and ascertained the problem. Her assistant helped her up and a break was called. Instead of consulting, Richard followed her to her dressing room.

"What's wrong?"

"She's feeling unwell."

He cocked his head, watching her for signs of headache. She wasn't sparking. She slammed the bathroom door and the unmistakable signs of puking met their ears.

"Om.... No." He opened the bathroom door and leaned over to hold her hair back, offering a paper towel. She took it without looking at him.

"You're not on a build." He'd already touched the back of her neck.

She shook her head.

"Too much sex over the weekend?"

Her eyes slid up from the white basin, her lips smeared, a watery build up, not tears in her lashes. "Shut up."