Squirrel Eyes

by Scott S. Phillips

  "Foolishly," she added.

  Our food arrived and I immediately cut my lip on the crispy focaccia bread that defended the meat of my sandwich. As I blotted at the gore speckling my mouth, Kelli plucked the anchovy from her Caesar salad and flung it onto my plate.

  "So what about you?" Kelli asked, eyeing me in a way that made me feel she already knew the answer to whatever was coming. "I'm guessing you don't have any kids."

  I had wreaked vengeance upon my sandwich and was masticating a struggling mouthful. "Why do you say that?" I mumbled.

  "I dunno," she said. "You don't seem very ... fatherly."

  "I gave myself a vasectomy," I explained. Chewing slowly, I wondered why Kelli's observation made me bristle the way it did. "Why do you say that?" I stupidly asked once again, sounding like a defective parrot.

  "You're still bleeding there." She pointed at my wounded lip. "It's just that you still seem so much like a kid yourself."

  It had taken her all of about seventeen minutes to see through me.

  "That's just residual image because you haven't seen me for so long," I bluffed. "I'm all man, baby."

  "I don't mean anything by it," she said, no doubt lying through her lovely teeth. "I think it's great that you've managed to maintain that ..." (insert painfully long pause here) "... enthusiasm."

  "Enthusiasm?" I scoffed. Her Leonard Nimoy-esque search for the word wasn't lost on me. "As opposed to growing up, settling down, and finding gainful employment?"

  "You've had a movie made from one of your scripts – that's something you've always dreamed of," she said with a certain enthusiasm of her own.

  I'd sort of glossed over the details of my Hollywood career when we were on the phone, and I really didn't want to talk about it now – for instance, I hadn't told her I'd only been paid $2000 for that script, and the resulting movie was not only unwatchable, but I felt certain that no one had ever attempted to watch it. Fortunately for the world at large, it seemed my filmmaking abilities would never darken its collective doorstep again.

  "Terror Town," I murmured, invoking the movie's title as if it were the name of a dread demon. "I'm sure you remember its unprecedented Oscar sweep."

  Kelli laughed. "C'mon, it can't be that bad," she said, ever the optimist.

  "Don't make me prove it," I warned.

  That outstanding grin of hers smacked me in the chops again. "Maybe it's because you didn't direct it."

  "Yeah, that must be it."

  "Well, I'd like to see it."

  "Uh-uh, not a chance." This wasn't an attempt at self-deprecating, shy flirtatiousness; much like Doctor Frankenstein relentlessly trying to destroy his monster, I felt it was my sacred duty to protect innocents from falling prey to the misery of Terror Town.

  "Aw," Kelli griped.

  "So you've got no curfew tonight, huh?" I asked, deftly changing the subject in an attempt to better assess my potential for landing in some flesh.

  "Well, I've gotta work tomorrow, so it would be nice to get home with enough time to take a shower before I get in the car," Kelli said.

  Was that a signal? I was pretty sure it was, but being the sort of guy who needs a woman to lie on her back and point at her crotch before I knew if the coast was clear enough to make my move, I felt it best to proceed with caution.

  We continued to make pleasant small talk; Kelli wanted to know how Taylor was doing, and in the course of explaining his situation I let slip that he was the scoundrel who had left the dog turd in the swimming pool during a late-night commando raid on Gina's house. Fortunately, Kelli thought it was funny as hell but made me tell her why we had been on that raid in the first place (I mean, what did she think?). When I said we had hoped to steal a glimpse of her and Gina in their skivvies, she cackled hysterically for several moments, leaving me nervously glancing around at our fellow diners as if to assure them that my date was not in need of the Heimlich maneuver.

  "Hell, all you guys had to do was ask," she said.

  I just stared at her, stunned. If that was the case, then how much other great stuff had we missed out on by simply not asking? What a thing to tell a guy.

  When we finished eating, Kelli and I went for a walk along Central Avenue. That's when I realized how late it was; most of the stores were already closed. Suddenly, I became obsessed with learning the time. I didn't wear a watch because I usually had no reason to be anywhere at a specific time, but I was surprised that Kelli didn't wear one – a mom, after all, with a real job and real life, should have some sort of schedule to keep. Even more aggravating was the apparent lack of timepieces owned by the citizens of Albuquerque, since no one passing on the street could help out. To be honest, I was concerned only with the idea that my valuable pants-getting-into time was slipping away, and desperately wanted some notion of my remaining window of opportunity.

  "What should we do with ourselves now?" Kelli asked.

  "Maybe one of us should buy a watch," I suggested, knowing exactly what we should do with ourselves. When I tried to think of some sort of decorous activity we could partake of (only so that I could ease Kelli into the debauchery that would follow), I found myself at a loss. Going for coffee didn't hold much appeal, considering we had just gorged ourselves on Italian food. A movie held even less; it would eat up too much time, and I could already feel the minutes ticking away like a death-row inmate waiting for his last walk. What did people do on dates? And did this even count as a date?

  "I've got a watch at home," Kelli said, "If you want to come look at it. There's nothing I can think of to do except go to a bar or something, and at least at my place we can hear each other talk."

  She was making this way too easy.

  12

  I was surprised that she suggested going to her place, really; being cooped up with some kid all day, no matter how much I loved the little yard ape, would've made me grab any opportunity to sit in a bar and yell to be heard.

  We set out in our respective cars and Kelli led me to a tiny house in the north valley. I pulled into the driveway after her, then thought better of it and backed my mother's gigantic automobile out into the street, parking at the curb in case Kendra came home.

  A battered old Big Wheel sat in the front yard, one fat rear tire resting atop a stuffed animal. The yard itself was mostly dirt with a few scruffy patches of grass, and a circular rut had been cut around the perimeter by the endless Big Wheel laps ridden by Lydia. Kelli was already unlocking the front door as I reached the step.

  "The place is a little messy," she said, as all people must before allowing someone into their home for the first time. I gave the expected reply and we went inside.

  Messy didn't do it justice. If I hadn't known otherwise, I would've assumed at least seven or eight people were crammed together like hamsters in the little house. It wasn't a disgusting sort of filth, like one might associate with the Manson Family or Guns N' Roses, but the level of clutter was truly impressive – kids' toys scattered in an even layer across the floor, laundry (status unknown) strewn atop the furniture, fashion magazines and children's books littering anything the laundry and toys didn't already. The only visible area of actual living room was a narrow pathway leading from the door to the hall, forking off toward the kitchen, and even this bore the occasional obstacle.

  "God, it's worse than I remembered," Kelli said, embarrassed.

  I yammered something about how it wasn't that bad, I'd seen worse – but I was honestly flabbergasted. What really struck me was the girliness of it all – as a friend of Taylor Merritt's, I had seen some horrific devastation lain upon various dwellings, but those rubbled nightmares were all man: pizza boxes, condom wrappers, girlie magazines, chunks of uneaten food; nothing approaching a welcoming environment. But this ... the disorder here was almost cute, even comforting in some inexplicable manner.

  "So where's that watch?" I asked.

  "Trust me, we haven't got time to mount an expedition," Kelli said, grabbing a handful of panties and other intrigu
ing bits of laundry from the couch and tossing them somewhere down the hall. Following the path, she disappeared into the kitchen.

  I found myself unsure of what to do next. Stand? Sit in the place she had cleared? Take my pants off? I chose to stand, awkwardly assuming what I hoped might be mistaken for a casual posture.

  Kelli returned from the kitchen, carrying two large glasses of red wine. That's when I knew it was going to happen.

  "Sit," she said, indicating the couch with one of the glasses.

  I sat and she handed me a glass, taking a seat next to me. I lifted my drink but couldn't think of a toast that didn't sound lame, so I just grinned stupidly. Kelli clinked her glass against mine and we drank to it. Instantly, every taste bud in my mouth leapt to its feet and made a mad dash for the exit.

  "Is this Kool-Aid?" I asked, smacking my lips at the appallingly sweet liquid.

  "It's all I've got," she laughed. "Sorry. Lydia loves the stuff."

  I'm sure, in that alternate universe I might've lived in had I wriggled my way into Kelli's pants back when I was a teenager, that the rest of the evening would've gone swimmingly. The set-up was perfect, after all, and Kelli certainly seemed like she was interested in taking care of unfinished business. So how did I manage to screw it up so tremendously?

  I started off smoothly enough – we talked about Kool-Aid, and at what age one becomes aware that the stuff is nothing but colorful liquefied sugar, which somehow led Kelli to the time she let me adorn her nipples with Reddi-Whip (the delicious canned whipped-cream-like substance powered by the goodness of nitrous oxide) and lick it off.

  Definitely on the right track, yes?

  So I thought. Impressively (and incomprehensibly, I might add), she then leapt directly from nipple licking to this:

  "So tell me some Hollywood stories."

  My back teeth ground together as my libido did a Wile E. Coyote backpedal before plummeting off the cliff. I knew it would come to this.

  "You don't want to hear that stuff," I said. "It's all awful."

  "Awful?" Kelli said, leaning forward with a trying-not-to-pee-her-pants look of expectation. "C'mon, now you have to tell me."

  Crap. Everybody loves to hear the I-saw-Ben-Stiller-buying-donuts stories, so I trotted out a few of those (hell, I actually fell over Ben Stiller outside a bar one night and looked up to find Vince Vaughn standing over me looking like he might kick my ass; luckily he chose not to, but in any case, the chicks always dig that one).

  Unfortunately, as much as she enjoyed hearing about my nervous inability to approach Joel Hodgson at a DVD store so I could gush over Mystery Science Theater 3000, what Kelli really wanted was to know how the old writing-and-directing thing was going for me.

  "You haven't told me anything about the stuff you've done out there," she prodded. "And after I suffered through all your movie antics when we were kids, I think you owe me."

  I tried, I swear I did, but as much as I wracked my brain, I couldn't come up with anything that wasn't disheartening somehow.

  I finally settled on the story of The Drop – far from the worst, but my favorite because it perfectly illustrated the fuck-you-you're-just-the-screenwriter attitude that pervades every aspect of the Hollywood machine.

  Whenever my agent would send a spec script out, I'd usually wind up doing a shitload of meetings (this was before the move to LA, of course, since the agent gave me the heave-ho once I was a resident). They all followed a standard pattern: I'd drive to LA, sleeping on the floor at a friend's house for a couple weeks, then get up each day and drive to the studio (this took as much as an hour, depending on which studio the meeting was at), check in at the reception desk, meet the development exec's assistant and accept their offer of a Coke, wait around for anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes, accept the assistant's apologies, then finally be ushered into the development exec's office, where he or she would tell me how much they loved my script but unfortunately it wasn't right for the company (or even better, they had "something similar in development"). Usually, they'd root out some other script that was mired in development hell, asking for my take on the material. Most of the time they have no intention of hiring Joe Nobody Screenwriter for the project no matter how brilliant his take might be, because what they really want is an A-list screenwriter – but they do want to keep you on the hook just in case another company buys your script and turns you into an A-list screenwriter. That way some other exec takes the risk, but they can happily announce they've got your next project. The actual time spent in the exec's office usually lasts no more than fifteen minutes, but when you add on the drive home (not to mention to and from LA) – and figure as many as six or eight meetings a week when you've got a spec script making the rounds – you can see how much this stuff eats into the time you could have spent actually writing. When I first started doing them, I enjoyed the meetings – how could you not, when movies are your whole goddamned life and it meant getting to wander around the lot at Paramount or Warner Brothers or Fox – but after a couple dozen of them, you begin to feel like a little kid who can't quite learn to keep his hand off the stove.

  The script everybody loved in this case was a romantic comedy; each development exec I met with said it was the first script that ever made them laugh out loud and that it was the funniest thing they'd read all year. Under these circumstances, it seemed odd to me that absolutely none of these execs showed even the slightest inkling towards purchasing that hilarious motherfucking script. But since these folks adored my work so much, they were all interested in my take on their respective lifeless projects. The Drop was one of these, but somehow it kept hanging on, despite my less than A-list status.

  The development exec in question (let's call him Fenton) thought I'd be perfect to flesh out The Drop, an idea he'd come up with after seeing a TV report on cloning (Cloning! That one wore out its welcome back in the seventies, for Christ's sake). The fact that he didn't really have an idea beyond the cloning part somehow eluded Fenton, but I humored him and tossed out a few random suggestions, which he responded to with great enthusiasm. He asked me to write a short treatment and get back to him.

  As a veteran of many of these meetings, I knew the chances of the project going anywhere were slim, but what the hell, it's all part of the game, right? So I wrote up a five-page treatment, coming up with a set of characters and some semblance of an action-packed storyline. Fenton thought it was great, but needed a few changes. Those "few changes" snowballed into nine fucking drafts of that treatment – with no guarantee I'd ever see a paycheck – over the course of the next year, until we finally had a seventeen-page skeleton for Fenton's action-comedy clonefest. Then, amazingly enough, after four months of dead silence from ol' Fenton, my agent called and told me the production company was going to hire me to write The Drop, and for a fairly stunning amount of money, at least in my limited experience – plus I'd be making the leap to the big studios.

  I received an advance, with another check on delivery of a first draft of the screenplay (by the time my agent, my lawyer and the IRS had taken their share, there wasn't much left, but it was enough for Alison and me to move to LA). According to my contract, I'd receive another healthy wad of dough when I did the second draft, and a little more if there was a third. All in all, a pretty decent deal after putting in a year's worth of Good Faith work on the project.

  I threw myself into the first draft, producing some of the best work I've ever done – cool dialogue, inventive action sequences, tender romance; it was all there (which surprised the hell out of me, to be honest). My agent loved the script and turned it in without asking for any changes.

  And Fenton loved it, too – he just wanted a few "minor tweaks." After assuring me these changes – which he asked me to do "as a favor," with no pay – didn't amount to very much work at all, he sent me his notes.

  Four pages of the goddamn things, in 10-point type, single-spaced.

  It amounted to starting over from scratch – as if Fenton had
changed his mind about what he wanted the script to be since last we spoke, his attention span drifting with the breeze blowing at the previous weekend's box-office. My agent and I both felt this should be considered a second draft, and that, under the terms of my contract, I should be paid for the work.

  Fenton – and I quote – was "appalled" that I would ask to be paid, especially considering the favor he did me by giving me the work when he could have hired an A-list screenwriter for his clone movie. So – after all the work I put in running on nothing but promises, and when I finally had a contract guaranteeing I'd be paid for my efforts – the son-of-a-bitch fired my ass.

  Because I wouldn't work for free.

  As expected, this particular Hollywood story had a less-than-uplifting effect on Kelli – and recounting it left me feeling unsettled, the sludge in my belly stirred up all over again.

  "Can they do that when you have a contract?" she asked, stunned.

  "They word it so they can dump you whenever they want." I wanted to get past this Hollywood talk, find some way to steer the subject back to nipples – or at least Kool-Aid.

  "But you own the script, right?"

  "No, they hired me to write it, so it's theirs. They can do anything they want with it – hire another writer, set the thing on fire, whatever."

  "That's terrible."

  "I told you," I said. "Y'know, I never thought breaking in would be easy – I mean, I'm smart enough to know better – but I feel like I've been cornholed so many times that if anybody else tried to stick their dick up my ass, it would be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway."

  Telling the tale had caused my hands to tremble. I was certain that even worse would follow unless I set things back on track, but for some damn reason I couldn't staunch the flow of words. "The whole business has just ... I swear, I don't even like going to the movies anymore. I want to chuck the whole fucking thing and get a day job, just forget I ever even tried to make it in Hollywood."