Chapter 9

I loved being home, but I was glad to get back to my apartment. I realized as the endless blue waters of the Caribbean disappeared beneath the plane's wings that I'd changed enough that I was no longer the girl that had left Northwestern Georgia only a few months before. I had my own life, I had my own career, not the one I anticipated when I'd left home, and somehow that was very important to me.

Knowing where things were, and not having to keep the location of the island secret, it was just not mentioned, was a relief. I didn't have to fly through Houston on a specially chartered flight. The important thing, though, was that certain aspects of the company's operations were simply not mentioned. Instead we were to imply.

Dad asked me point blank where the show was shot. I knew he wanted to know if it was near the town we'd vacationed at. I didn't lie, but I didn't tell all of the truth. "It's not where people think," I said. "A lot of it is shot in Puerto Rico, and I', m told there are scenes shot in Miami. We pretty evenly divide the rest between two islands in the Leewards. Some of our support is on an island you know about."

Now if that statement was carefully parsed, I didn't say that we shot on the island with the town, though we did. I said support was on that island, and implied that we did our shooting elsewhere by that implication. I hated lying to my Dad, but it gave Dad some plausible deniability.

"I'm not sure if he picked up on that. He nodded, and changed the subject to other things. I maintained the same air, I had learned not to show relief at him changing the subject.

I was back to my celibate lifestyle. This wasn't by choice, but I was just not going out and looking for male companionship. I did some mild flirting in the few days I had to myself. There was nothing that would have gotten the scandal rags worked up. I was photographed in Miami at a Starbucks; I was eating a turnover and sipping a mocha. I was wearing a pair of white peddle pushers and a short-sleeved white blouse. The astute observer would see a pair of colored sandals on my feet. I had my sunglasses perched in my hair. Positively shocking. And if they'd asked, I'd bought everything at J.C. Penny.

I had money, though I didn't pay attention to how much. I didn't flash it around, though. That was unusual enough for a girl going on 19, but that was the way I was. I wore that "daring" outfit to Miami Beach, just checking out a place I'd heard so much about. Then I'd flown to San Juan, and then south. It didn't seem to take that long to get back to my apartment, air it out a little, and feel the warmth seeping back into my bones.

My casual flirting consisted of little more than putting on my bikini and sitting in a chair by the pool for a couple of days, and then doing some exploring of the island I now called home. Most of it was just like every other part of the island, but the beeches were a bit of an eye-opener. This place was a mix of US customs, and European ones. Basically that meant that in certain places, like where the US based cruise ships docked, you wore your top, and most of the rest of the places you didn't. I tended to wear my shorts over my bikini, and got asked about that by a reporter.

"I'm comfortable in shorts," I told her.

"But ... What about swimming?"

"Oh then I'll leave the shorts behind. It's just the way I am, small town girl and all that."

I did not appear in the Globe's spread on "most daring beachwear", something I later found out pleased management no end. My television persona was wholesome tending on the daring only a wee bit, but never to excess; I was someone a teenage girl could imitate without alarming their mothers.

When I learned that I had a secret laugh. Most mothers of teenagers would be horrified to see me at that new Year's Eve party.

Now it wasn't all just sitting around in the sun. I had some reading to do, and not all of it was recreational. I had to read story treatments and plot directions. These outlined the story direction for the coming season, and I was expected to give some input to the script writers. Kelly was to get a few love interests, usually for three or so episodes each, Mari was to get a casual boyfriend, but nothing serious. I was to be more help in solving the cases, providing gossip from the girls who were everywhere, and even showing some native smarts on all sorts of things. And Kelly was to save me at least once.

The usual formula would continue. He would casually flirt with me, I would tease him, and Mari and I were going to be the best of friends. Why mess with one of the things that had made us popular?

One thing that was different: I was to casually refer to some boyfriends. That meant that I was going to mention a date from time to time, and be seen at least once with a guy, though we weren't going to do anything too outrageous. I certainly wasn't going to be filmed with my ankles on his shoulders, my bare boobs wobbling back and forth as our bodies moved, and my skirt bunched around my waist as he put it to me, much as I might have liked it. We weren't after that demographic.

One of the things I discovered was that there was a TV in the lounge of the apartment building that could get every TV channel you could imagine, and that included all of the ones the company produced. Two days before we had to report, I got a chance to sample it.

First, the anime series I'd liked was still going strong, featuring graphic sex with every episode. If you believed the cartoon, every Japanese girl was voluptuous, wore micro-mini flip skirts, and had absolutely no inhibitions whatsoever. This was how a certain segment of the Japanese population viewed the ideal woman.

The new one that I kind of liked was a daytime soap opera, but the sex wasn't implied, it was specific. For example, little Kari was reputed to be sleeping with her math teacher. Well, she wasn't. The two of them were far too busy in bed to sleep. Kari liked it doggy style or bent over the desk. Her mother was on good terms with the Principal, very good terms. She always made it a point to suck him off whenever she went to school for a conference, and she had a lot of conferences. Kari's mother also liked the Head of the School Board It was a good thing the latter liked short A-line skirts because otherwise Kari's mom never would have been able to get her head under them.

One line, one stood out. Kari was asked if she'd seen the teacher's cock, and she replied no. "I never get a chance to look at it, it's always stuck up inside me."

I figured that the writers for that show were still in the minors compared to those on ours. Of course in that show you just needed a convenient way to get the characters clothes off.

The show was educational in one respect. Couples did it on the table, the floor, the couch, the kitchen counter, the workbench, the bench at the bus stop (with cars and buses passing by) or any other surface where you could do it. A washing machine in a spin cycle, with an optional dildo attachment should be in every home. A lot more laundry would get done. They also had something like one of our neighbors back home, a semi-hard saddle that just fit a girl's anatomy that went on the back of a motorcycle. I don't know if the guy would enjoy himself, but most girls would love going for a ride on that thing.

About the time I began to watch to see if I could pick up any pointers, though I wasn't going to be using them any time soon, we started shooting. Suddenly I was far too busy to have either a love life or a sex life.

Winter had morphed into Spring, which was becoming early Summer by the time I surfaced. Suddenly I had a life again. It was a feeling that took some time to get my head around. Everything was in the can, and we could do other things.

I think all of us spent a couple of days just sleeping late. It felt so good not to have 5:30 calls, or getting the last shot in the can at 11:30.

I was just getting used to that when we had a meeting where we got to discuss who would do what for publicity. All of us drew the Tonight Show, and two of us drew Rachael Ray.

The flights were long, the guest appearances were fun, and it was my first time in New York City. Big place, far too big for me. LA was the same, but spread out rather than up. After Jay Leno (and a tour of the TV studios in Burbank), the others flew to Houston. I did too, but went by way of Colorado Springs.

Liz actually had an evening off. There was some sort of college track meet that weekend and she was entered, so I sat in the stands and cheered for her. Afterward (she placed third in each of her two events) we went back to where she was living. I got to meet several of her fellow-cadets, and they reacted like a lot of people did: eyes-wide as they realized who I was and that Liz and I were twins. The show was very popular, and I got pressed several times to describe what it was like working with the others.

There are some very nice places to eat in Colorado Springs. At the airport I'd spent some time looking up places like that, and I insisted on one of them. I don't know how much cadets get paid (I'm assuming they do), but I could afford it.

WE talked, and the evening just flew past. We talked more than just a little the next afternoon. There were a lot of relatives around, and there were tours all over the place. It was crowded, but the military has always been about family.

I felt a little sad as I got on the plane to fly to Houston. I really wanted to see her more often; I liked how we'd been together in school, but now we were launched on different paths in life.

Work became ... work. You get into a routine, and as we hit the fourth season I think we all had to reach down and find the motivation to make everything fresh and entertaining. A lot of series shut down along about then as people get tired. We continued to have good ratings, though, and I understood the fan chat on the internet was very positive. We got some nominations in the action-adventure category for an Emmy, but didn't win. That was all right, the people who won really deserved it.

I was feeling the lack of a love life You need emotional balance, and I certainly didn't have it. I had a few friends whom I met at the pool, but nothing serious. I did have a sex life, but it was every four months or so when I'd visit Mom and Dad and join in the parties. But two days of wild sex every few months certainly wasn't satisfying, no matter how I felt the morning after.