Reality Jane Read Online Free PDF Page B

at a surf camp in Sayulita, Mexico. About halfway through our respective vacations, she gave up on catching waves and opted for mid-morning Yogalates on the beach, with a post-stretch margarita.
    “The lime is very cleansing,” she’d say convincingly.
    “And the tequila?” I’d retort with a smile.
    After a long day on the beach and in the water, we would grab dinner, laugh a lot, and go back to the resort, where she would read cards for whoever was interested.
    “Oh, I see here you have the five of spades,” she’d say to me, posturing.
    “What does that mean?” I’d say warily.
    “It means you’ll meet the man of your dreams by your next birthday.” As if it was that simple.
    She oozed big-city charm with a hint of hippy eccentricity. I didn’t doubt her for a minute when she casually mentioned her Hollywood production company, home of two of America’s most popular reality shows. Watching her haggle freebies was proof enough she was a Hollywood shaker. Naomi had been comped two extra days at the resort, meals and massages included, all because a booking mix-up had forced her to spend her first night in a nearby (and “dreadfully inferior”) two-star hotel.
    But it was her expect-the-unexpected vibe that intrigued me most. She could let it all go in an instant. One night, after boozing at a Puerto Vallarta disco, proved she had a little crazy in her.
    “Let’s hit the slots,” she slurred to the taxi driver.
    “Qué?” the driver said, unable to understand her.
    I was barely paying attention, busy rifling through the contents of my purse for a tube of Rolaids. Mixing sangria, cervesa, and tequila with a giant after-bar burrito ain’t pretty.
    “The slots!” Naomi slurred loudly to our Mexican driver. Apparently, she liked to gamble, too.
    Next thing you know, the cabby pulled over at a dank street corner in the middle of nowhere and three barely dressed, chain-smoking hookers peered into our window with curious grins. We giggled about that for days.
    Before my vacation ended, I thought of subtly hitting Naomi up for a job. After all, I was in television, she did own a production company in the choicest place on earth to make television, and her ten years on me made her the perfect mentor. But that plan was quickly kiboshed when two surfettes from Colorado beat me to the punch. On the last night, they fed Naomi coconut drinks and put the hard sell on her to “hook them up.”
    “They’re waitresses,” Naomi crowed the next morning. “Can you believe it? It’s fine for actors to schlep drinks pre-career-breakthrough, but producers? Yeeesh.”
    After that, I decided to keep it strictly a friendship, which was fine, because as far as friends went, Naomi was damn cool. I also decided never to mention the fact that I waitressed in the evenings for extra cash—necessary when your “glamorous” reporting job is only part-time.
    Before I knew it, the vacation ended and I was on an airplane back to Canada. With the exception of a postcard from Prague, I heard nothing from Naomi for ten months. Then I got a call.
    “Jane, I have a position here. You’re perfect for it.”
    I was over the moon, until reality struck. “What about a work visa?” I said.
    “Work what ? Canadians don’t need a visa.”
    She didn’t quite get the whole “Canada’s a foreign country; there’s a great big border between us” thing. She figured she could just sign me up and have me at work the next day.
    Though the offer excited me, I had a hard time seeing me accept it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the job: the reportingand five-minute news segments I did for the 6 p.m. newscast were much like being a producer, and I had been cranking them out for years. The problem was deeper than that. Things like having my dream job drop out of the sky never happened to me—at least they didn’t happen when I tried to make them happen. Maybe that was the point. Maybe I’d been trying too hard. This gig just fell in