The star glared at the producer. The producer glared at the star. Then a woman spoke up softly. Her name was Claire Segal and her job title was line producer. What this meant, in effect, was that she was the person all sides bitched to. All problems — budgets, scheduling, nervous breakdowns--eventually became her problem. She was a cross between the school nurse and the Secretary of State. For this complex role she received decent but not fabulous pay and no glory whatsoever. In a soothing voice that played no favorites, she said, “I have an idea, kids. Why don’t we take a little break and all calm down?”
3.
Just then Jake Benson’s puddle-jumper was landing in Key West.
He’d left behind a fresh wet snow in New York, and, his tireless ambivalence aside, he had to admit he was feeling pretty good. Traveling on a gig and with a purpose. After vague and logy months of fiddling with houseplants and wondering if he would ever actually try the saxophone, he was once again alert, focused, engaged with the wider world as it trundled along its screwball course.
The dinky plane taxied to the dinky terminal, the propellers stopped, the door was opened. Jake moved to the top of the stairway, squinted toward the flame-white sky, and was immediately hit under the chin by the first warm blast of Key West air. The air was weighty, almost liquid, and it had a complicated and ancient smell. It smelled of salt and iodine and toasted seashells, and underneath these tangy aromas was a darker, low-tide whiff of slight decay, not fetid, not cloying, but carrying an oddly comforting suggestion of rot, of things calmly and slowly breaking down, of life returning to its original goo. The sunshine didn’t seem to slice straight through this viscous air; it seemed somehow to mix with it, to stir it, to lift it in folds and curls like a spoon in batter. The breeze came in scraps, moments of hot stillness in between. By the time he reached the pavement, that very morning’s slush seemed to belong to a different geologic era.
He walked toward the terminal, a small suitcase in one hand, his laptop slung over the opposite shoulder. Feeling jaunty, carefree, he was whistling. His arrangements had been made for him. A driver was supposed to meet him. This was one of the small but pleasant amenities of being on a job: The driver deferentially holding up a card with Mr. Benson written on it.
Except when the writer reached the terminal, there was no driver with a card.
There were drivers with cards for other passengers but not for him. He scanned the quickly thinning crowd and tried not to look like he’d been stood up.
Then, after a couple of long minutes he heard quick footsteps tapping sharply along the floor. He looked up to see someone rushing toward him — a wiry fellow, maybe just smaller than average, the tan face looking forty or so, but with a forward, avid lean to his gait that suggested someone younger. The man had thick black hair and wore rather large sunglasses with dark blue lenses. From a step or two away, he said, “Jeez, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. My greeter flaked out on me today. Conflict with an estrogen injection or something. Happens around here. It’s the Keys. What can you do? Mr. Burton, right?”
“Benson.”
“Benson. Sorry. With the television people, yes?”
Absurdly, the writer felt the need to make a fine distinction. “With them, no. Working for them. I do books.”
“Ah. Books about TV?”
“Not exactly. Sometimes. It depends.”
“Well, anyway, good to meet you.” Extending a hand, the other man said, “Name’s Goldman. Joey Goldman. Come on, I’ll bring you to your place. Lemme have that bag.”
At curbside, parked illegally, they found a white ’70s vintage El Dorado convertible, lovingly waxed against the salt and the rust. The top was down, the hot red upholstery gleamed in the sun. “Nice ride,” said Benson, climbing in. His irritation at being kept waiting had somehow evaporated in the sunshine. This was surprising. In New York, when he got annoyed, it lasted longer, sometimes years.
“Lemme tell ya something about this car, Mr. Benson —”
“Jake.”
“Lemme tell ya something about this car, Jake. It’s wider than the streets and burns gas like a fighter jet. But I’ll never part with it. You know why? This is the car that brought me here. From Queens to the promised land, almost twenty years ago. You from New York too?”
“Born and bred,” said Jake. Actually, he’d lived in New Jersey until going off to college, but why admit it if you didn’t have to?
They’d turned out of the airport and were driving along the seafront now. There was a broad promenade between the ocean and the road. People zigged and zagged along it on a dozen different kinds of boards and skates and bicycles with whitewall tires. Women who shouldn’t have been were jogging in bikinis. The water was green but not a see-through green; it was milky from the coral dust that mixed in from the bottom.
“First time down here?” Joey asked.
“Florida, no. The Keys, yeah.”
“Two completely different places. Florida, that’s golf and prunes. The Keys … they’re not exactly peace and quiet. Maybe more like peace and mayhem.”
“You wouldn’t think those things would go together,” Jake observed.
“Right. You wouldn’t. Except that sometimes down here they do. And another strange thing. It’s funny, what happens to New Yorkers down here.”
“What happens, other than that they get a sunburn and act undignified?”
Joey laughed. “Well, those things for sure. And most people, they come down for a week, ten days, they go home, they peel, it’s over. But the New Yorkers who really get the feel of the place …” He tailed off, pulled both hands from the steering wheel, and shrugged.
“What?” said Jake. “What happens to them?”
“I dunno,” said Joey. “I’m not that good at explaining things. But this town gets to people. Things start looking different. What matters, what doesn’t. What’s allowed, what isn’t. What’s real, what’s bullshit. People surprise themselves here. They change. You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t, I dunno. I guess it’s like catching a cold. Some people get it and some people don’t. Who the hell knows why?”
---
In the baking metal shed that served as her on-set office, Claire Segal was sipping hot green tea as Quentin Dole poured himself a tonic water.
“I just don’t see how you do it,” the producer said.
“Hard to believe, but I enjoy young actors.”
“No, I meant the tea. How can you drink hot tea when it’s a hundred degrees in here?”
“A hot drink actually cools you off. Try it sometime. But about the actors, you know, they’re growing up in public. Can’t be easy. Look at the bright side, no one’s totally snapped so far.”
“Don’t even say that kidding around.”
“Who said I was kidding?” At that Claire flashed one of her characteristic expressions — a widening of the eyes coupled with a quick raise of the eyebrows and a small lift of the chin. Her eyes were a surprising light green. Her hair was reddish brown, now sharply highlighted by sunshine; on set, she wore it tightly pulled back, out of the way, almost invisible. That, and the fact that she was over thirty, prevented most people from noticing that Claire was actually more beautiful than many of the tall and skinny actresses around her. Her skin, even underneath a surface coat of suntan, had a peachy cast, a glow. She was fit and toned and yet she had some flesh on her--an actual woman of brains and sinews rather than a stretched and air-brushed fantasy of one.
Quentin put his tonic water down. It instantly sweated a wet ring onto the cheap plastic table. “So who’s our leading candidate?”
“For snapping?”
“You think it’s Candace?”
Claire didn’t need long to think it over. “No, not Candace. She’s a bitch but she won’t flip out. She’s got that knack of blaming everyone else for everything. So who else? A couple of the guys seem pretty fragile. But the one I worry more about is Donna.”
The producer hesitated just slightly. “Donna? Who t
he hell is Donna?”
“Maybe you haven’t even met her. She was hired out of Miami. The stunt girl, the body double. Donna Alvarez.”
“Oh, right,” said Quentin. “I guess I’ve seen her head-shot. Not so pretty in the face.”
“Pretty enough for most things. But I agree, not a stunner. Her only flaw. Other than that, she’s amazing. An uncanny match for Candace. The height, the figure. Plus she can really act, not that she gets a chance to. But she’s wound very tight and she has an awful lot of time to sit around feeling left out. It’s a concern. We’ll see.”
Quentin finished off the last of his drink. “Well, I head back to L.A. tomorrow. It’s your zoo after that.”
“While you get to work with that famously sane and reasonable group, the writers.”
The producer blew some air between his lips. “Yeah, they’re a handful, too. At least some of them know George Orwell from Abe Lincoln. Oh, and I meet this other writer for a drink tonight. The one who’s doing the tie-in book.”
“Right. Yeah. What’s-his-name.”
“What’s-his-name,” Quentin Dole echoed with a shake of his head. “There you have it. A-list ghostwriter, half a dozen bestsellers on his resume, and he’s still a what’s-his-name. Must be very shy. Or maybe just clueless about what it takes to make it big.”
4.
The El Dorado had turned inland and was lumbering through a quiet neighborhood. Jake blinked and considered an odd impression: Everything except the car he was riding in seemed suddenly miniature.
Tiny vehicles, scooters mostly, were parked at the curb. Tiny dogs patrolled miniscule front yards. Here and there, in front of tiny shops dispensing Cuban coffee, little men sat on low stools playing dominoes. The neat pastel houses were narrow and close together, their porches barely deep enough for dollhouse rocking chairs; even the palms that hung over the roofs seemed toylike. Sometimes two homes shared shade from a single tree, like lovers huddled under the same umbrella.
So this was Key West, Jake thought. Famous Key West. Legendary Key West. He’d expected it to be bigger. Without really thinking about it, he’d figured it had to be bigger to accommodate the folklore. But in fact the island was a mere speck, a broken off nodule of a ruined reef, a sandbox for kids pretending to be grownups or for grownups trying to steal a little of the goofy joy of being kids again.
Jake became aware of Joey’s voice and realized that he hadn’t been listening for a while. He said, “Sorry, what’s that?”
Joey said, “I was saying that this place you’re gonna be staying, I think you’ll like it. I used to live there myself. First place I ever had down here.” Joey smiled at the reminiscence. Even through the blue sunglasses Jake could see his eyes go soft and wider. “Came down as a short-term renter and a real putz. Now I own the place. The whole compound. God bless America.”
Jake didn’t exactly know what a Key West compound was, but it sounded substantial and he tried to look impressed.
As it turned out, the compound was a sort of postage-stamp Club Med. Inside a rustic fence made of plants that grew so close together that not even light came through, there was a pathway of white gravel leading to a small but beckoning free-form pool and a sunken hot tub ringed with an apron of blue tile. Shaded by spreading Poincianas and quivering palms, a cluster of cottages was arrayed around the common area. The cottages were exuberantly mismatched, a yellow one, a turquoise one, one that had a fake thatch roof with the real roof showing through. There was a communal gas grill and a rack of unlocked bicycles, the beach-cruiser kind.
Joey pointed over toward them. “Take one whenever you like. Best way to get around town.”
Jake nodded, took it all in, and a simple, boyish exclamation escaped him. “Man, this is nice!”
Joey beamed, then looked down modestly as he led the way toward the yellow cottage. “Kind of a funny story how I got the place,” he said. “The former owner, my landlord, was a nice guy, a little odd. Used to just stand naked in the pool all day.”
“Naked?”
“Yeah. It’s clothing optional. They didn’t tell you that?”
“They didn’t tell me anything.”
“Well, anyway,” Joey went on blithely, “few years ago this guy calls me up. ‘Joey,’ he says, ‘I got big problems. The vacation market is in the shits, I can’t pay my mortgage. What should I do?’ I say, ‘How about you put some fucking pants on and get a job?’ He says, ‘I have no pants.’ I say, ‘I’ll buy you some.’ ‘No,’ he says. ‘Fuck pants. How about you buy the place?’ So I bail him out, he disappears one day, and here we are.”
Joey finished the story just as they reached the cottage door, and, with a bit of a flourish, he threw it open. Inside, there was a vacuum cleaner standing in the middle of the living room, its cord snaked across the floor, its plug connected to nothing. A young fellow in a faded red sarong was sleeping on the sofa, his cheek resting angelically on his hands.
“Oh Christ,” said Joey. “Bryce!”
With no great urgency the man in the sarong bestirred himself and opened one eye. “Oh, hi Joey.”
“Hi Joey my ass. Get up off the couch.”
Bryce scratched his head. His feelings seemed hurt. “You don’t have to yell at me. The place is clean. I just got sleepy.”
To Jake, Joey said, “I’m really sorry. It usually isn’t like this … No, let’s not bullshit, it’s like this a lot of the time. Look, I manage other houses. Plus we have hotels here. If you think you’d be happier …”
Jake was looking around the living room. It had louvered windows through which the rustling of palm fronds could be heard. The furniture was old rattan, scuffed and scarred in places, with faded floral upholstery. A lazily turning ceiling fan dangled overhead; its oversized blades spread a faintly narcotic aroma of jasmine.
“No,” he said. “I’ll take it. It’s fine. Just what I would’ve pictured if I’d had time to picture anything.”
Joey Goldman seemed not just relieved but genuinely pleased. “That’s how I felt too. Saw the place, saw naked people, guys in skirts. My first thought: What the fuck? Then it was like something just let go and suddenly it all seemed fine. What a place down here should be. Well, here’s my card. You need anything, just call. Come on, Bryce, grab the vacuum cleaner and let’s let Mr. Benson settle in.”
5.
Jake put his suitcase on the bed and began looking for ways to make the place his own. The first priority, of course, was settling on where he would write; he chose a small desk in an alcove near a bedroom window. Then he propped his shaving kit behind the faucet of the bathroom sink. He checked out the kitchen and found a wineglass and a coffee cup that were good enough. It was while he was in the kitchen that he heard the altercation by the pool.
It was a terse and basic altercation. He heard the compound gate whoosh open and slam shut, then Bryce said to someone, “I really don’t think you should be here.” The tone was languid and mild but held a firm note of moral certainty.
The answer came back quick and nasty. “Mind your business, faggot.”
There was a brief pause, then Bryce, still mild, unshaken, said, “You shouldn’t go in there. She isn’t home.”
The other man, apparently of limited vocabulary, said, “I told you mind your business. I got a key. You don’t think I got a key?”
There was the click of a door opening, then another pause, a slightly longer one, then the door clicked shut again. Bryce said, “Hey, you shouldn’t take that. It isn’t yours.”
This time the answer didn’t come in words. There was a momentary scuffle, so one-sided that it barely made a sound. Just a single low grunt and a quick small whimper. Then there was a splash.
Jake got to the window just in time to see Bryce righting himself in the pool, his sarong floating up around his legs like a dying tulip or a dirndl skirt. A large man in tight black shorts was leaving through the yanked open compound gate, kicking out a thick leg to clear the fabric from his butt crack. Th
e gate slammed closed behind him, quaking on its hinges for a second or two, then all was quiet once again.
Peace and mayhem, Joey had said. Maybe there was something to it. Jake gave a private little shrug and went back to his unpacking.
---
A little while later, in the glorified shed back behind the pool pump and filter where he lived rent-free in exchange for chores, Bryce was sulking in his damp sarong. This wasn’t because he’d been called names and tossed into the pool; that really didn’t bother him at all. He was sulking because Joey was mad at him.
He felt he’d let Joey down and that this was fated to happen again and again because Joey didn’t really understand him. Joey thought he was just a slacker. Which, admittedly, he was. But the part that Joey didn’t quite get — what hardly anyone really got — was what his slacking was about. It’s not that he was lazy. True, he spent an awful lot of time lying in his bed or on any convenient couch. But when he did so he wasn’t just lying there; he was doing something else as well. He was waiting. Waiting for something worth getting out of bed or off the couch to do. This waiting wasn’t passive; it was active and suspenseful. In fact it was exhausting, the more so because he had no idea what it was he was waiting for, or if it would ever come, or even if he’d recognize it soon enough if it appeared right there in front of him.
So he had to stay ready and he needed to be alert, if only drowsily alert, poised to identify his moment and to pounce on it. It was this dull but constant buzz of anticipation that was fatiguing, that made him need a nap after skimming half the pool or testing the pH in the hot tub or vacuuming the new guy’s living room. That’s the part he badly wished he could get Joey, or anyone, to understand. The waiting part. The staying ready. The numb suspense that gave a secret drama to his entirely uneventful life.
6.
At twenty of six, showered and changed, Jake was ready to head to the Flagler House hotel for his meeting with the producer of Adrift.
KW 09:Shot on Location Page 2