The Last Word Read Free Page B

blond-haired twenty-four-year-old didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. She was even reluctant to take Advil for a headache, preferring massage, meditation, or a bracing cup of herbal tea as a way of relieving her pain.
    She ran for thirty minutes each day on her treadmill, which was strategically placed in front of the TV in her one-bedroom apartment. She watched House Hunters while she exercised, dreaming of what she would buy when she finally sold one of her screenplays and gave up secretarial work forever.
    She was a vegetarian and brushed her teeth after every low-cal, low-fat, organic meal. She was the thinnest, healthiest member of her obese family, none of whom had ever stood on a scale and seen the needle point to anything below two hundred pounds.
    One night four years ago, when Corinne still lived at home in Woodland Hills, the whole family went out to dinner at Home Sweet Home Buffet. It was seafood night. Her mother, Noreen, was going back for thirds when she dropped dead of a massive heart attack. The other diners paused, confused, in their lemming-like march to the fried shrimp, until management stepped in and ushered everyone to the opposite side of the restaurant.
    The tragedy at Home Sweet Home Buffet had a profound effect on Corinne. She moved out of the house, went on a strict diet, began exercising regularly, and earnestly pursued her dream of becoming a screenwriter. All of her scripts, regardless of their plots, were titled “Home Sweet Home Buffet,” which made it difficult, even for her, to tell her screenplays apart without reading the first few pages.
    The scripts, which were either family dramas or romantic comedies, had nothing to do with her mother’s death. Corinne just thought “Home Sweet Home Buffet” sounded clever, and she liked all the meanings that could be read into the title.
    She’d written all of her screenplays with Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, or Sandra Bullock in mind, because they played characters who were just like her: spunky, adorable, independent, and desirable.
    A big part of her desirability came from her new breasts. She’d had to work three jobs for two years to save up enough to get them. It wasn’t an issue of vanity, but rather a matter of basic survival. In LA, having a nice rack meant she would get better jobs, better pay, better health benefits, and better men.
    But so far the only men she seemed to date were her miserable screenwriting instructors at UCLA’s extension school. They were hack writers who never got the money or recognition they knew they deserved, so now, for a measly $1,500 a quarter and a healthy serving of irony, they taught other people how to compete against them. Corinne couldn’t help wondering if her instructors were taking her money and intentionally sabotaging her scripts with bad advice.
    Even so, that didn’t stop her from sleeping with her instructors, who, in the absence of recent screen credits, measured their self-worth by how many students they could seduce.
    She didn’t mind that. The part she didn’t like was sitting in the classroom with nineteen other wannabes, their desperation to break into the Industry as palpable as body odor. Ben Bovian, the instructor on this particular night, was no less desperate, though his aspirations were focused on breaking into Corinne’s pants.
    That wasn’t going to happen, partly because Corinne was bored with his fumbling foreplay, which consisted of sticking his tongue in her ear while they watched his unforgettable episodes of Sue Thomas F.B.Eye , and his postcoital whining six minutes later about all the less talented, but more successful, screenwriters who were getting all the work.
    But mostly Ben wouldn’t be going to bed with her tonight because Corinne would never sleep with anyone again, though she didn’t know that at the time.
    The first hour of class was spent giving notes to Jeremy Glatz, a thirty-four-year-old travel agent, on his 257-page, handwritten, epic