The Ayatollah's Money

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 56 - The Show is Made

  The next morning at ten o’clock the team met at The Hall for a brainstorming session on storylines. The Iranians slept in, never having experienced American hookers before with their arsenal of tricks designed to soak both their client’s wallets and their bodies. Laleh stood up and presented the central concept, saying, “The Middle East is not a homogeneous culture, with all one religion and one history and one set of customs. It’s a quilt of these with a thousand colors and patterns. But there are some things that are common almost everywhere. First, there aren’t many atheists over there. At last count there were six, and they all lived in holes in the ground like the one they found Saddam hiding in. Another thing common everywhere is the second class status of women. In some countries like Saudi Arabia, it’s horrendous. In others like Iran, it’s better. But everywhere it’s bad, in my opinion. And that’s the basis for my idea of what this filmy play is about. It’s about a young woman who gets tired of her status and her life, and decides to get even by sticking it to one of the big shots over there, one of the religious rulers. She’s not political, and she doesn’t do this as some cultural or sociological statement, she makes it personal between her and this guy. She doesn’t know what the results are going to be, and she doesn’t do it to make things better for all the other women over there. She’s not trying to be a hero. She just wants to get out of there, live a different life in a different place, and STICK IT TO THIS FUCKER.” Laleh emphasized the last statement by broadcasting an intense and grim expression on her beautiful face. The expression came suddenly, and went suddenly, but everyone sitting around her got the message. That is what the filmy play is about.

  She continued, “This women is good with computers, and good with financial matters, and knows a lot about monetary markets around the world. She spends a couple of years tracking the paths of certain banking operations in her country until one day she discovers what she’s been looking for: the private bank account of the religious ruler she despises. She studies it, finding tentacles that bring money into it and tentacles that carry money out. It’s not all that complex, and soon she knows everything she needs to know to do what she wants to do, which is to steal it. One thing she knows about the account is that it’s hidden from everyone else, and that the money in it has come from government operations, including, of course, oil. It’s clear the big rat has stolen this money and stashed it for a rainy day.”

  Questions formed in the minds of the other team members, but Laleh’s presence and presentation were so dramatic they held them inside. At the same time Laleh’s subconscious realized these questions were forming, and so she built the answers to them into her presentation. She said, “Look, this woman is not a saint and she’s not altruistic and, basically, she’s a thief. A big time thief. She’s not a Robin Hood figure who steals the money from the bad guy and gives it back to the People from whom he’s stolen it. She just wants out of her life, and she wants to leave a mark on a guy who represents everything she dislikes about her culture: religious fundamentalism, disparity between the sexes, and a hatred of modernism. That’s why she does what she does, which is, one day, to transfer all the money out of the guy’s account and into her account. When that’s done she packs up her computer, throws some clothes into a backpack, takes a bus to the airport, and gets her ass out of Dodge. She leaves her country and her family and her culture, and makes a new life for herself.” And here Laleh’s face changed from serious to a smile. She goes to the low table in the center of the circle of chairs, pours herself a cup of coffee from the silver service, and sits down in her chair. She sips and says, “That’s all I have. That’s all Shim and I have. What happens next, no idea.”

  Soderberg didn’t hesitate even a few seconds. His mind had processed Laleh’s central concept as she described it and immediately began creating storylines stretching outwards from it. He stood up and began pacing around inside the circle of chairs, looking down at the pine board floor, and starts a stream of consciousness rant, “I got it, I like it, it’s not sentimental, it’s about something most American’s don’t worry about or think about, it’s got a serious base but also room for lots of action and humor, and of course she goes to a new culture, of course she ends up in the place that’s most different from her culture, America, of course she meets a guy and falls for him, and she’s got all this money, and we can have fun with that, and she’s good looking, and Wegs and George can do their hot and fun couples thing, I’ll squeeze stuff out of them they didn’t know they had in them...” (he’s still pacing around the circle, faster and faster, not looking at anyone, the directorial wheels are spinning fast, the other team members are checking out, wondering what to have for lunch, seeing that Sody is doing his thing, filling the holes in the story, fabricating the story lines, imagining the sets and scenes and dialogue and camera shots and all that stuff, taking on the tough tasks, Gwen and Roger seeing what’s happening and are happy, George also happy knowing he can spend most of his time chasing the women and taking them out to lunch, Shim feeling good about the raw material he will have from which to write the screenplay, Gale forgetting about Sody and conspiring to get George in the sack as soon as possible, Laleh wondering what she has started, never having been part of an entertainment production, Jinny wondering what tricks Gale was going to play in order to bed George, Jinny knowing it was his duty to prevent her draining every last drop of energy from the poor boy leaving him vapid, voiding, empty for his acting responsibilities, Monique taking a nail file out of her purse, not concerned about much, having seen Sody and George work together before, an old hand at this creativity business, wondering what it would be like with Jinny in bed, herself five foot eleven and himself five foot four and build like one of the blocks of marble from which Michelangelo had carved a bust of David, the dog in dog heaven perhaps never having experienced a back massage as wonderful as the one Monique had bestowed on him with that stupendously sexy foot of her out of the emerald pump, my god) Sody is still pacing and talking, “....and, oh, shit, yes, of course, what happens, what happens is that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was in stealing the money, and the religious rat guy puts his security force on it even though he stole the money from the People, and they find a clue about her, and they track her, track her across the Middle East and then across Europe, Germany maybe, and then they track her here, somehow, to wherever this place The Hall is supposed to be, since it’s weird cause we’re filming the whole movie in this building which we don’t know, yet, where or what it is or how we’re going to do that, but I can figure that out, that’s my job, right, no problem, but she comes here to this weird place and meets George and they fall in love and spend her money….” he takes a deep breath…. “and then the bad guys show up here in the weird place, The Hall place, and they want her and the money, not to give back to the rat guy or the People, but they turn bad and want the money for themselves to live a life of luxury in the Caribbean, drinking dark rum and chasing native girls, and these are bad men, violent, assassins maybe, professional assassins, and they infiltrate themselves into the weird place somehow, and then they try snatch the woman and get her to give them the money, but of course Big George is smarter than them and he protects her and she’s smart too and helps him and they are so cool together as a team and all this action happens here in this little building in Charleston and how am I going to do all those action scenes and then this strange idea that came from Woody Allen and his wonderful movie The Purple Rose of Cairo and now I have to figure out how to make a thing that is half movie and half play and the actors are going to be on the screen in film and then they’ll come out of the screen onto this stage around which I am pacing and they will act here and follow Shim’s dialogue and then they will jump back into the screen and the story will continue with people watching that, sitting out in the seats out there....” and he briefly looks up from the pine floor and out to the seats in the theater, waving
at them, and then looks back at the floor and goes on, “....and we have to have music that is great and we have to get David Holmes to do the score and I have to keep Wegs under control and make her and George the hottest couple in the world like they were in Leatherheads, and then we have all this weird editing to do to the film to coordinate it with live acting on the stage and maybe Wegs and BG can’t do that, oh my god, yes, they can, I hope, if there’s a problem I will turn it over to Gwen who can do her magic thing on them and make them get it right she can do anything, and maybe if we work on this for ten years we’ll get it right but I don’t think Gwen will allow that....” and here Sody stops again and looks up, and turns around to face Gwen, and asks her how long they have to produce the show, and she tells him eight weeks, after that she and Roger are going to the wine festival in Burgundy, in France, and he says oh my god, and then he continues his rant, “....eight weeks, no way, eight weeks, ok, that’s what I have, eight weeks, ok, I can do it, that’s just another challenge, I have good people here, Monique can kick butt when she needs to, and no one’s ever done this before but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it, I’m pretty good at this job, and....” and then Sody gets a strange vibration, a telepathic buzz enters his consciousness, he doesn’t know what it is, but there’s a voice in his head that says, ‘Don’t worry, you can do it, you’re great, and I can help out when you need it,' and he looks around the stage for the source of the buzz, for the voice, looks around the circle of chairs at everyone, something tells him it’s not coming from any of them, so where the hell is it coming from, and then he looks at Monique’s long languorous leg, sans shoe, running up and down the back of the dog, with the dog looking very content, almost like he’s in heaven, and the dog is looking right at him, looking him in the eyes, and there’s an encouraging smile on the dog’s face, and then Sody realizes the voice is coming from THE DOG, and he says what’s going on here, but he gets it under control, and feels comforted by the voice even though this is a new experience, and he says to himself, go with the flow, and he starts talking again after nodding at the dog, thanking him for the encouragement and the offer of assistance, “....and there’s not much time and no one’s ever done this and it’s a small building….but, but, I can do it. We can do it. We will do it. Ok? Everyone ok with this? We got the concept and we have the main story line, and we have the money and the actors and the place….we got everything we need, so let’s do it.” And he stopped pacing and looked up and went to his chair and sat down and closed his eyes, briefly opening one for two seconds to look at the dog whose own eyes were closed again in the blissful luxuriating sensation of Monique’s massage.

  No one said anything for quite some time. First they had to absorb this bizarre but fascinating behavior by Soderberg which really could best be described as a performance in itself, and then they had to absorb the import of his newly created storyline of the assassins identifying the woman as the thief of the rat’s money and then tracking her halfway around the world. And then they had to imagine what would happen when they find her in The Hall, whatever sort of venue Sody would make that into, find her in love with Big George, and try to snatch her, first to get the money out of her, and second to kill her. And George to the rescue and him protecting her. All that was a lot to absorb, and each of the team members did it in their own private way.

  As usual, it was Gale the Mouth that spoke up first, saying, “Gwenny, isn’t that enough work for one day. He just figured it all out, nothing to it, we’re on track, and the actress, such as she is, ain’t even showed up yet. It’s five o’clock in Paris. How 'bout we order in some champagne, celebrate our first day on the job?”

  Roger held up his hand, said, “I second the motion.”

  Jinny said, “Third.”

  Monique said, “Can we do that McCrady’s thing again? That was great food.”

  Laleh needed a drink after listening to Sody create the story line of the assassins.

  Shim wondered if he was over his head in this. He’d never experienced a display of creativity like he’d just seen from Soderberg.

  George was loose. Whatever. Champagne sounded good to him.

  Which left the dog, who thought, ‘This is one weird bunch of critters I’m hanging out with.’