Tricks Of The Trade

by Ben Tyler

  “So you must’ve gotten to the part…” Rod began to speak.

  “What is this?” Bart said without preamble, indicating the manuscript. “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “Pretty amazing shit, eh? Jim wrote it, I think. But he couldn’t have done it just over the past few months,” Rod said. “I get the impression that he’s been working on it for years.”

  “Okay. Let me get my bearings straight. Bottom line.”

  “Bottom line,” Rod repeated.

  “Shari Draper…”

  Rod nonverbally coaxed Bart, as if playing a game of twenty questions.

  “Someone named Larry Burton…”

  Rod prodded.

  “A jail cell in Alaska with…?” Bart’s eyes widened

  “dead, fucked-up producer…”

  Bart smiled.

  “Comprenez-vous?” Rod asked snidely.

  “Just about.” Bart was still attempting to fathom the scenario he had read and now found reiterated by Rod. “Is this the old ‘Mrs. Madrigal’ switcheroo routine?”

  “Wait’ll you read the rest.”

  When Bart returned to the studio from the observatory, he heard right away that Owen Lucas had been fired.

  According to the rumors, Owen was terminated for two reasons: sexual harassment and poor job performance. The gossip further claimed that two unnamed guys from the marketing staff had filed a lawsuit stating that Owen had tried to have sex with them. The rumormongers set out like truffles pigs sniffing about to discover who the plaintiffs were. Bart was a prime suspect.

  “You told too many people you thought he was cute,” Cheets explained when Bart told her he’d overheard a couple of secretaries in the stairwell whispering about him. “What else are they going to think at a time like this?”

  “But it’s not true,” Bart protested. “I’m going to talk to Shari.”

  He hurried down the hall, passing the judgmental eyes and shaking heads of several colleagues. When he reached Shari’s outer office, Mitch looked up at him with an expression that asked, “You didn’t, did you?”

  Bart responded before Mitch could utter a word. “Of course it’s not me,” he insisted. “Trust me, Mitch. I’m completely innocent. I would never do anything to hurt Owen.”

  Mitch nodded to indicate his agreement that it was impossible for Bart to have made any kind of noise about Owen. Even if Owen had come to Bart and had been rejected, Bart was the type who would have said, “I’m flattered, Owen, but you know the old saying ‘Don’t get your meat where you get your bread.’”

  Mitch gave Bart a smile and cocked his head toward Shari’s office. “She’s in there with Cy. I’ll call you when she’s free.”

  But before Mitch could jump up and shield the door with his body, Bart rushed for the handle. As he slammed the tall, solid wooden door behind him, the muted sound of Mitch crying, “No! Wait!” could be heard. But Bart was already inside and locked the door.

  A startled Shari looked up from her desk. Cy, who was seated on the Mies van der Rohe chair, turned around and glared at Bart.

  “What’s this rumor that I’m suing Owen Lucas for sexual harassment,” Bart declared.

  “You can’t fucking just waltz in here, you little cocksucker,” Shari cried.

  “You guys said you just wanted some ammo in case Owen tried to screw you.”

  “And, like a good boy, that’s exactly what you gave us,” Shari sneered.

  “How did I…? What did I…? What’s he done to deserve this?”

  “You don’t know the depth of what’s going on, so don’t jump to conclusions,” Cy said calmly. “You’re way over your head, son, and I do mean the one on your shoulders.”

  Shari laughed at Cy’s intentionally sexist remark.

  Bart said, “All I know is, I’m suddenly a pariah around the office. Everybody thinks I’m one of two guys responsible for Owen being fired. They think I’m filing a sexual-harassment lawsuit. Which I’m not.”

  “But you’ve made so many complaints about him. I have proof,” Shari said.

  “You haven’t seemed to care before that the whole studio knows you’re a faggot,” Cy said. “So why do you give a shit what else they have to say now?”

  Bart blanched at the word faggot. He felt as if he were back in grammar school, being taunted by bullies on the playground. “I’m not ashamed of being a fucking queer faggot pansy cocksucker or anything you want to call me, Cy. However, I am ashamed of possibly being responsible for a brilliant, creative, and innocent man getting the ax.”

  Shari groaned. “Oh, cut the bullshit, Bart. We know you wanted to sleep with him. Although ‘sleep’ is hardly the right word.”

  Turning to his boss, Bart countered, “All those lies you had me rehearse about Owen coming on to me. You were setting me up, weren’t you? Oh, it’s so clear now. Well, you can fire me if you want, but I’m not suing Owen. Instead, I’ll have both of you and Sterling up on charges for harassing me into going along with this charade!”

  “Oh, aren’t you the high-and-mighty one.” Shari’s voice dripped sarcasm. “We’re way ahead of you.” She stood up and walked over to him. “You’re threatening the wrong people, sweetheart,” she said, jabbing her index finger into Bart’s chest. “The shit we’ve got on you stinks like Chris Farley’s asshole.”

  “Leave it to you to denigrate even the dead,” Bart retorted. “God knows you probably think yours smells like Chanel No. 5.”

  Shari snarled at him. “As a matter of fact, I’m calling security now and have you escorted off the lot. You won’t even have time to drag that screensaver of your naked Latin lover–friend into the trash-can icon—where you both belong! Oh, yeah. We know all about him. That’s merely a fraction of the evidence we’ve gathered against you. It wasn’t very wise to download all that porno, Bart. You know the studio’s network saves everything. Not only are you a cocksucking pervert; we’ve got you on so many other charges, from padding your expense account to making personal calls to Paris and London using company time to make sex dates on AOL.”

  “You’ll never eat lunch in this town again,” Cy said. “No other studio will ever have you. You’re washed up.”

  “Can’t you come up with anything better than an old Julia Philips book title?” Bart mocked, but he was really completely floored. He couldn’t be more shocked. Then he paused, pretending to backtrack. “I can’t lose my job. What if I did decide to help you? What about that?”

  “Too late.” Shari smiled evilly.

  “What about when this all comes out and I testify and tell the court everything that’s happened here?”

  “Who the fuck’s going to believe some disgruntled employee?” Shari scoffed. “We’ve got a file on you that’s as thick as the girth of your boyfriend’s dick, complete with complaints and write-ups and poor evaluations. Even got a few critical letters from celebrities in there! That lovely director Barbet Schroeder offered a good one. So did Mare Dickerson. She said, and I quote, ‘I find Bart Cain to have a lot of anger in him.’ It has only been out of the goodness of our hearts that we kept you here as long as we did. You’re a disgrace, Bart! You’re a sick, perverted, lazy excuse for a staff writer, and nobody’s going to argue with that assessment.”

  Shari picked up the telephone and pushed Mitch’s extension number on the keypad. “Get security up here now,” she said.

  “You’re seriously having me thrown off the lot?” Bart said, incredulous in the face of the whole situation.

  “You bet your cock-fucked ass, you little creep. I’ve got a new writer starting tomorrow.”

  Within moments, there was a knock on the door. A master key opened the lock, and two security guards stepped inside the room.

  “Gentlemen, this is Bart Cain,” Shari said. “He’s just been terminated. One of you please go lock his office. Then collect his studio ID and escort him off the lot.”

  Mitch stood in the doorway, shocked at what he was witnessing. Then, furtively, he left qu
ickly and ran to Bart’s office. He began to drag Bart’s personal files—the porno Bart had shared with him—into the computer’s trash can.

  “Let me at least get my wallet and jacket,” Bart demanded. The security men looked up at Shari, who waved them off as if to say, “I suppose that’s okay.”

  As the two security men, one of whom was Rod’s fucker Rich, tried to lead Bart away by the arms, Bart shrugged them off. He turned around and spoke one last time to Shari. “Like the lady in the lottery commercial says to her boss after she’s won the jackpot, ‘I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been working for you. Really. I can’t.’”

  “So long, fuckup!” Shari said, then blew him a kiss.

  As pissed off as Bart was, he made a quick decision not to mention what he now knew—or at least had read in Jim’s memoir about Don Simpson, the prison in Alaska, and someone named Larry Burton.

  Bart passed Mitch in the hallway and smiled sheepishly. Mitch gave him a wink, in solidarity. Bart led the security team down to his office, where they watched as he picked up his briefcase and grabbed his jacket.

  “Don’t touch anything else,” one of the security men advised. “Your personal stuff will be packed up and sent to you.”

  Just as the door was being closed and locked, Cheets appeared from wherever she always disappeared when her boss was away. She looked stunned. “What’s going on?”

  “Looks like you’ll have a new boss tomorrow,” Bart said. “He or she probably won’t be as understanding of you coming in so late each day and leaving early for rehearsals. Better play it safe for a while.”

  Bart had to wonder how much help Cheets had provided, if indeed there was any evidence of his padding his expense reports and downloading porn from the Internet. He didn’t abuse his expense accounts as badly as most of his colleagues did. Still, Cheets resented having to complete the forms and attach receipts for Bart, especially when he left a dozen bills from expensive restaurants on her desk. “You’re a cool liar, Bart,” she’d said on more than one occasion. “I can’t even afford Denny’s, and you’re taking friends out to the Ivy and Morton’s, all on Sterling’s dime. Just hope you never get audited by accounting.” He now wondered if that had been a threat.

  Bart would not have been surprised to find that his assistant had been a spy or even an outright traitor. She was jealous of his salary, his car allowance, and of course, the expense account.

  “Hey, everybody. Bart’s been fired. Come say g’bye,” she announced in her most theatrical voice.

  The call brought half the staff out of their respective offices and cubicles to watch as Bart was led to the elevator.

  Once inside the lift, Bart looked out at all the faces of the people he had worked with for so many years. Although he was fond of only a few of them, he felt a huge emptiness knowing that this was the end of the line for his career in the motion-picture industry. At least as a publicist for Sterling Studios.

  Chapter Twenty

  Months passed since Bart’s and Owen’s respective terminations. But they had bean holding strategy meetings to retaliate against Shari, Cy, and Sterling. A core group of conspirators had been assembled.

  Seated at opposite ends of the dining-room table at Rusty’s home were Rusty and Bart. Owen Lucas and Rod Dominguez and Jim Fallon and Mitch Wood occupied the seats on either side. Seated between Owen and Rod was the odd man in the group: Gus Fitterman, Hollywood’s most famous litigator since his triumph in Neal v. Waldman, the infamous high-stakes lawsuit in which sex and drug-addicted producer Grey Waldman was forced to pay several million dollars to twenty-seven uncredited and unpaid screenwriters who had worked on his hit films.

  Two tall gold-plated candelabras, aglow with multiple tapered candles, provided a gentle radiance. John Barry’s Movieola CD softly filtered through the air. Dinner of chicken paella was over. Gus patted the basketball that passed as his stomach. And the seven men were about to get down to the business that had brought them here in the first place.

  Bart was the designated leader. He could feel the ricochet of negative protons and electrons leaping around the room like Lords in a Christmas song. He took another sip of red wine before addressing the guests and looked to Mitch with the eyes of a nervous alien abductee being prepped for his first rectal examination.

  “I’m still angry with Rod for stealing my manuscript,” Jim fumed for the record, and at the same time draining the room of what little mirth there was.

  Now, after the sorbet had been served, the whole place seemed like a summit meeting between Tony Blair and leaders of Sinn Fein.

  “I didn’t steal it!” Rod snapped back at Jim. “I just printed out a copy and took it with me to read. Yours is still in the computer. And anyway, I’ve apologized about a gazillion times,” Rod said, fast melting like the candles. “Jeez, you know how to hold a grudge. If it hadn’t been for your fuckin’ lousy book that you thought would bring you millions, I’d have only guessed at what a real prick you are. You fucked me over for the rights to my script. Now you can add a new chapter about how Michael fucked you over when he formed an alliance with his assistant, Troy, to sell Rod’s screenplay and screw you out of the deal. Oh, I forgot—you let him fuck you while you were both fucking me. Anything to be a star again, eh?”

  “Again? I’m still a star! You ungrateful little thief and prick!” Jim bellowed in his best impersonation of Dixie Carter as an over-the-top Norma Desmond.

  “A thief and a prick? My, I’ve moved up a notch.” Rod chuckled. “So I made a copy of your stupid book. Mr. TV hasn’t had a good zap from a cattle prod in a long time, I can tell. Why don’t you go gnaw on a frayed electrical cord or lick a fuse box, for Christ sake!”

  “Listen, you cocksucking jerk,” Jim retorted. “I’ll up and leave right now! The only reason I’m here in the first place is because Mitch and Bart convinced me they had a plan to retaliate against the people responsible for ending my series.”

  “Okay, guys. That’s all blood under the bridge, so to speak,” Bart said. “We’re soul mates now. We all have a common bond.”

  Mitch piped in: “Bart and Owen would just be two more victims of Shari’s abuse and her lack of conscience if it wasn’t for your book, Jim, which I for one am sleepless with desire to read. Hope you included me in one of your more torrid chapters. And you did spell my name right, yes? That’s Mitch, with a capital W-O-O-D!”

  For a moment, Jim was appeased, thinking of his one-nighter with Mitch and feeling like a real author with a real book and a real fan.

  “Are we forgetting I’m about to go to trial for sexual harassment,” Owen cut in.

  “And I’m being countersued by Sterling for my wrongful-termination suit against them,” Bart continued. “They’re determined to get away with their lunacy and larceny at our expense. Jim’s book could help immeasurably with our claims,” Bart said.

  Owen smiled. “If Bart’s tapes and Jim’s manuscript can prove my innocence, I’ll be taking you all on a cruise. And I don’t mean down Santa Monica Boulevard.”

  “I’m still pissed,” Jim pouted. “But I guess if I can help blow the whistle on everybody who’s done us all wrong, then my efforts won’t have been in vain.” He was playing the grand dame suffering for the common man.

  “And that’s what we’re here for,” Fitterman finally said.

  Throughout dinner the attorney had explained the complicated scenario of fighting Shari and the big Sterling corporation, which was known to be the hardest of legal hitters in town. Fitterman’s personality was as dry as Peekabo Street’s lips in a Chapstick commercial, and he’d nearly wearied Jim and Mitch with his too-technical dissertation about the law. But he knew precisely what he was talking about. During their appetizers of tamales wrapped in cornhusks, he had recited verbatim the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidelines for sexual harassment.

  “Just what is sexual harassment?” he asked the men rhetorically. “Well, it’s defined as sex discrimination that i
s a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

  “That was like a million years ago,” Mitch quipped. “The last century, as a matter of fact!”

  Fitterman looked over the rim of his bifocals, irritated by the interruption. He continued. “And there are two types, quid pro quo and hostile environment,” Fitterman said.

  “Ally McBeal says, ‘Quid pro quo’ a lot. What’s it really mean?” Rod asked.

  “Quid pro quo means ‘this for that’ or ‘something for something,’” Fitterman answered.

  “So, when I have sex for money, I’m just doing it quid pro quo?” Rod smiled a sincere question. “They get this,” (Rod made a jerk-off motion with his right hand), “and I get ker-ching!” He made the sound of a cash register ringing up a sale.

  Bart looked across the table at Rod, who shrugged and added, “A guy’s got to make the rent, Mr. Naïveté. You should have known I’d be back at it. No one else is keeping me. No one ever will again.” Rod stared at Jim.

  ‘’No,” Jim said, “that’s not quid pro quo. That’s simply being a fucking whore!”

  “It was good enough for you, Mr. Pimple Butt,” Rod countered before Rusty intervened and demanded they both cool it.

  “May I continue, gentlemen,” Fitterman said. “Thank you. Did you know that sex as a form of prohibitive discrimination was just tagged on at the end of the Civil Rights Act? The famous Civil Rights Act—yes, from the last century.” He looked over at Mitch. “It was originally a race-discrimination bill. But at the last minute someone added sex as a category of discrimination.”

  “That’ll come in handy when I’m down to my last lifeline on Who Wants to be a Fucking Zillionaire,” Mitch chirped.

  Fitterman, not quite getting the reference, eyed him with increasing annoyance. “Hmmm. Yes. Well, in sexual-harassment cases, it means unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature where submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment. Or, submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual.”