Death of a Movie Star

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Death of a Movie Star Page 7

by Timothy Patrick


  When Cass flinched like she’d been hit with a spit wad, Micah knew the organic appeal of his invitation had certain deficiencies, an impression that Cass quickly confirmed.

  “Uh…no! Why would you even ask that?”

  “Because you’re not what you’re supposed to be…you’re not what I expected…and I find that very interesting,” said Micah.

  “Uh…OK, that was creep-out number two, but I’m going to let it pass because you are obviously a little challenged in that department.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Micah, you and I are as different as two people could ever be. I mean, really, it’s scary to even think how different we are.”

  “So, you don’t have dinner with people who are different? That sounds very…homogenized…and boring.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I’m sure I’ll survive. Now if that’s all…”

  “Not quite. I also owe you an apology, and since I won’t be doing it over the best barbecue in California, I’ll do it now. I stepped over the line the other night with that whole Brandi thing, and I’m sorry. I should’ve tried to give you a fair footing, but I hammed it up instead. That’s what this show does to me sometimes and…anyway…” He stood up and stepped over to the door.

  “Thank you, Micah, that means a lot to me.” She stood up. “It upset me, too, but now that you’ve explained, it makes sense. It’s the pressure of the cameras and the need to perform. The same thing has happened to me. Thank you.” She extended her hand. He started to reach for it, but she withdrew it. He withdrew his hand. She gave him a quick, awkward hug. And then he started to leave. Before Cass closed the door, he turned and said, “What did you want anyway? When you went to the workshop?”

  “You know, I can’t remember. I guess it couldn’t have been that important.”

  ***

  Before the question had even popped out of his mouth, Cass knew the answer had to be no. Her career had already taken a beating. The last thing it needed was rumors of a romance with Micah Bailey. Despite his part in the legend of Lenora Danmore and despite their many successes, Micah Bailey had now become the face of StarBash, and Hollywood hated StarBash. She didn’t need to be attached to that kind of stigma. It didn’t make business sense. So she’d made up a quick excuse. It had been mostly true but maybe a little incomplete.

  Later that night, after the unnerving trauma of his invitation had worn off, Cass thought about the assessment she had made of Micah before she had barely met him. It had been convenient for her to peg him as a simpleton and put him in the enemy camp, but now she knew that it hadn’t been entirely accurate. He clearly possessed a sharp, well-spoken wit. And he put it on display week after week. You didn’t have to be a fan to admit that much. Even the enemy tag didn’t seem to be a perfect fit. He bashed Hollywood, no doubt about that, but he did it with Hollywood actors, a Hollywood crew, and on a show that ran once a week for seventeen straight weeks on Hollywood network TV. The guy had a lot of Hollywood in and around him. Maybe enemy hadn’t been the right word. Maybe he was just a different cog in the big Hollywood wheel. Or maybe she was just looking for excuses because when he dropped the TV shtick, she found him to be genuinely likable. Sure, he sometimes took a narrow view of things, but Cass also found him to be funny, sincere, and not too narrow-minded to admit when he’d made a mistake.

  Overall there was an attraction—Cass felt it—but it had more to do with her sad state of affairs than anything about Micah personally. He just happened to fit into a particular mold, a kind of prototype. In fact, if someone rounded up a dozen more just like him, decent men who didn’t know her, who hadn’t seen any of her movies, and who didn’t particularly like her, Cass would gladly pay top dollar for the lot and then sort through them until she found the man of her dreams. As crude as this sounded, it also showed how difficult the dating scene could be for someone in the public spotlight. Every man she met thought they knew her. After all, they’d seen every one of her movies—ten times each. In this type of relationship, Cass the movie star reigned queen, and Cass the person amounted to an unwanted guest. The good times lasted until Cass the person poked her head in once too often.

  If you fall in love and marry a man who you’ve known since college, you can sidestep this kind of problem, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems, like an affair with a network meteorologist. Cass had learned about her husband’s infidelity from Freddie, her agent, who had learned about it when one of the tabloids called just before running a front-page picture of her husband frolicking at the beach with the bombshell weathergirl. When Cass found out the affair had been going on for the entire five-year marriage, she filed for divorce. She had now been divorced for three years. During that time her career had continued to flourish, and she had achieved the success that she had always dreamed about. In her personal life, though, she felt like anything but a success.

  So there you had it, the current state of Cassandra Moreaux’s love life, the long and short of it being that her ex-husband knew the weather report better than a sea captain, the last three years had been shitty, and Micah Bailey took home the prize for being the best romantic prototype of the batch…and an undeniable career killer.

  Chapter seven

  “And here’s your StarBash host, the Tinseltown terminator himself, Micah Bailey!”

  “Hello, America, and welcome to StarBash 2020! Last week we threw the party of the year, and our movie stars dazzled all night long, even letting loose with some unexpected fireworks at the end. To reward them for a job well done, we let the actors choose this week’s activity, and they unanimously voted to take a vacation. So we stocked the limo, loaded up our little troupe of plastic pretenders, and we hit the road. And then disaster struck. The limo broke down. And it didn’t break down in a convenient place like Manhattan or Scarsdale or Old Greenwich. It broke down right here, on good ol’ Main Street USA.

  “I’m standing in front of Joe’s Jingletown Tavern. Jingletown is a factory bar in a factory town that has lost all of its factories. At one time, the factories on this street alone provided jobs to over ten thousand workers. If you drive it today, you will find five miles of boarded-up buildings and a street that employs less than three hundred workers. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Joe’s Jingletown is still here, and our beloved actors have a place to rest while their limo gets repaired. Let’s go inside and see how they’re coping with this tragic ordeal.”

  ***

  Bakersfield in the middle of the night, that’s how far Cass had fallen, and it didn’t seem possible that her foul mood could turn any more rancid. Then she saw the inside of the bar. If Joe’s Jingletown Tavern sounded even remotely like a pleasant destination, then it needed to be renamed. Immediately. A better name might’ve been Joe’s Black Mold Lounge or Joe’s Too Broke Too Buy Sanitizer. And the handful of customers who slouched at the bar didn’t do much to enhance the atmosphere. They wore dirty work clothes and, judging by the aroma, an alarming degree of hygienic neglect.

  Cass stood with the others in front of a small stage, waiting to shoot Micah’s challenge to them. Brandi stood off a few feet from the group, brewing in her perpetual persecution complex. At one point she’d said, “So how much are you offering this week, Cass? Hopefully the price has gone up after your big flop last week.”

  If she’d hoped to get a laugh out of the group, it didn’t work. Cass ignored her, as did everyone else.

  A microphone on a stand had been placed at the front of the scruffy-looking stage, and an old upright piano sat at the back, against the wall. The piano had been thoroughly pasted with old bumper stickers. One said, “I Shot J. R.” Another said, “Billy Beer & Pork Rinds, Breakfast of Fat Champions.” A sorry-looking guitar rested against the side of the piano. Opposite the stage, behind where the actors stood, the bartender had stacked chairs onto half a dozen small tables and was currently mopping the floor with dirty water. Overgrown red sideburns framed hi
s skinny face, and he grumbled with each stroke of the mop. No one in the bar had acknowledged the actors’ entrance earlier that evening. Tuxedos and evening gowns—their attire for the night—must be a common occurrence in this fine establishment, thought Cass. Or they’d been hired by StarBash and told exactly how to play it out. Or they really didn’t give a shit—which also described Cass’s attitude. She just wanted the cameras to roll and to get it over with, which finally started happening at a little past midnight. It was Micah time, every redneck’s favorite time of day.

  He boldly pushed through the swinging doors like he’d just made history at the O. K. Corral. After a brief, somber pose for the cameras, he moseyed to the microphone on the stage and addressed the actors.

  “Wow! Look how things have changed! Last week, my dear stranded thespians, your playground was a luxurious grand ballroom with an orchestra and flowing champagne. This week it’s a dive bar, a jukebox, and cheap beer. Isn’t it strange how life throws these curveballs at us?

  “But maybe it’s not strange at all. Maybe it’s divine intervention. After all, the only way to win StarBash is to successfully travel from the very top of society all the way down to the very bottom. Maybe Joe’s Jingletown Tavern is meant to be part of that journey? Maybe this is where you will prove to America that you are more than just actors. What do you say, team? Do you want to give it a try?”

  The group clapped compliantly.

  “Actors, please say hello to Walter.” Micah pointed to the bartender with the mop and then said, “Walter has agreed to judge our competition. Isn’t that right, Walter?”

  “Like I told the lady with the clipboard and the spike in her nose, I got a bar to close. I’ll judge your contest, but I got a bar to close, and that comes first.”

  “Absolutely, Walter, you close your bar, and whatever you have left for our fearless players will be fine.” Micah turned to a different camera. “And, just in case there’s a tie or Walter gets too busy scraping gum off the floor, over here at the bar we have six of Jingletown’s best customers, and they have graciously volunteered to be our alternate judges. Gentlemen, please say hello to our audience by waving to the cameras.”

  The men at the bar stayed hunched over their drinks with their backs to the world. They displayed an impressive assortment of plumber’s cracks but didn’t wave to anybody.

  “As you can see,” continued Micah, “our alternate judges are men of extreme focus.” He turned back to the group. “Actors! Do you know that all of you have something special in common? That’s right, all of you have won at least one competition that required you to make a speech. Between the nine of you, we have winners of beauty pageants, Daytime Emmys, Emmys, and even an Oscar. And tonight it is my privilege to announce that StarBash, in cooperation with Joe’s Jingletown Tavern, will be transporting each of you back to that very moment when the historic envelope got torn open and the presenter proclaimed your name to the world. You are going to experience the ecstasy all over again, including the tearful gasp, the walk of fame, and the immortal speech that you shared with the world. And let me tell you this right now. Some of you are going shine extra bright tonight. I can just feel it. Your movie-star magnetism is going to zap that mop right out of Walter’s hands and magically whisk him out of Joe’s Jingletown Tavern and straight to the glittery world of a genuine Hollywood production! Are you ready to do that?”

  The actors clapped eagerly and hugged one another with excitement. Cass felt her brain cells dying a billion at a time.

  “Now, actors,” continued Micah, “we have your original speeches all printed up, and your challenge is to recreate the magic as it actually happened. Walter will judge the content of your speech as well as the quality of delivery. Are you ready, Walter?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Walter, without bothering to look up from his mopping.

  And Cass was ready, too, because she completely understood the game at hand. StarBash planned to make them look like complete idiots. Come one, come all, come see the self-absorbed rich actress stand in a stinking shithole while dressed in a sequined evening gown and diamond tiara. Watch her gush about all the “little people” to a bored man with a mop. Watch the world-famous butt-crack brothers turn their backs on her. The only thing missing from this freak show was a flashing sign that said, Genuine Hollywood Narcissist Now on Display. Cass saw it all very clearly and intended to have nothing to do with it. She’d read her speech—since she saw no reasonable way out of it—but she’d read it like a brain-dead zombie. With any luck she would stink it up enough to get fired.

  The actors took their seats around the rickety round tables where Walter had just mopped. He kept mopping in another section of the room. The lights dimmed, a spotlight illuminated the microphone, and the StarBash announcer’s voice reverberated through the little bar. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the award for outstanding supporting actor in a daytime drama series, please welcome Micah Bailey!”

  A few of the actors clapped, but Micah bounced into the spotlight like it had been a standing ovation. He wore a big smile, and Cass knew he had to be enjoying this shit. He dramatically tore open a big black envelope and said, “And the winner is…Calvin Robbs!” Calvin, who sat at the table next to Cass, jumped to his feet. But then Micah said, “Unfortunately, Calvin is currently in rehab and is unable to join us this evening. Here to accept the award on behalf of Calvin Robbs is his mother, Golde Silverman.”

  The actors offered a smattering of confused applause, Calvin sat down, and an old lady with a gray bun on the top of her head stepped into the spotlight. She wore a sagging green sweater with bulging pockets over a nondescript knee-length print dress. Her nylon stockings had gathered just above the tops of her tan therapy shoes. The microphone towered two feet over her head. She stared at it like it had just insulted her. Micah lowered it. She spoke into the microphone and said, “So who is this Calvin Robbs, anyway? Such a big shot, making up fancy names and taking home shiny trophies. All his life he was Clarence Rothstein, a good boy who wanted to be a dentist, and then he went to live with his father in California, and this is what you get. But who am I? Just his mother, so I’ll do what he said. I wrote it down so I’ll do it. Just a second.” She rummaged through one of her sweater pockets, and then the other. Calvin groaned. She finally retrieved a folded piece of paper. She unfolded the paper and tried unsuccessfully to read it. She put on the reading glasses that hung on a chain around her neck and, after clearing her throat, read the speech, which said, “Thank you for this award and goodbye.” Then she left the stage. Calvin slumped in his seat like a man who’d just been convicted of murder.

  The regular lights came back up. Micah retook the stage, and his smile had grown. Cass knew that smile. She had personally experienced it. Micah smelled blood in the water. He said, “Wow, Calvin, so many things going on here. Let’s start with the way you jumped up when I called your name. Did you forget that your mom had to accept the award for you?”

  Calvin rubbed his eyes and didn’t answer.

  “Very good,” said Micah. “We’ll take that as a definitive ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Let’s move on to the speech…er…if you can call it that. It had a beginning and an ending but not much in the middle. But maybe that’s just me. Let’s see what our judge has to say. Walter?”

  Walter leaned against his mop like Moses leaning against his staff and said, “I liked it. From now on I think it should only be the moms and dads. It makes things more interesting. In ten seconds I figured out why he ran off to California, why he changed his name, and why he has to go to rehab. And I liked the speech, too. It was the perfect length. On the Budweiser six-pack scoring scale, I give it four out of six Budweisers.”

  “OK…wow…very good…that’s a bit of a surprise,” said Micah. “Let’s check in with our alternate judges to get their feedback.”

  The camera panned over to the men at the bar just in time to catch absolutely nothing.
/>   “Very good, gentlemen, keep up the good work,” said Micah. Then he turned to Calvin, who’s green complexion had improved somewhat. “Wow! Calvin Robbs! You just scored four Budweisers. What do you have say about that?”

  Calvin raised a timid fist into the air, and that was pretty much how the rest of the night unfolded. One by one StarBash portrayed the actors as self-indulgent idiots who didn’t even have enough sense to know they were idiots. Except for Brandi. Her blue-collar crassness sold well in Joe’s Jingletown Tavern. She got five Budweisers and blessed the world with another one of her honkytonk dances.

  Cass’s speech came from her best actress academy award, and she’d correctly guessed that StarBash would save it for last. She’d also assumed that since each of her colleagues had survived their ambush in the spotlight, more or less, she would, too. That had been a mistake, which she soon found out.

  “Presenting the award for best actress in a leading role, please welcome Micah Bailey.”

  Micah opened the envelope, called her name, and Cass walked to the stage—no smile, no emotion, and hopefully no satisfaction for StarBash. Let them eat zombie shit. Just to cause maximum aggravation, she held the printed speech high enough to keep the cameras from getting a clear shot of her face. And then she read it like a dyslexic first grader. She made it as painful as humanly possible.

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am so overwhelmed right now. I forgot everything I wanted to say. One thing I will never forget, though, is the day Harold Wasser handed me the script for Megabit and introduced me to a little hurricane named Sassie Manners. She changed my life that day, and she has not stopped yet. Thank you, Harold. Oh…so many others…thank you to Danny Myers and the rest of the gang at BFD Productions. Thank you to Joel Rooney and Rachel York and Rick Sprague and Karen Powell and Val Dedic and Ralph Maloof and Kim Laurela and Barn Hendricks and…Freddie Garcielo and…and…if I left you out, please forgive me. You know I love you. I love all of you. I never worked so hard on anything in my life. We literally slogged through eighteen-hour days for six straight exhausting weeks. And I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. That is how much I love this character. Thank you…thank you.” She left the stage like a robot, just as she’d entered it, and sat back in her chair.

 

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