Bleak

by Lynn Messina

  “Do you know who they’re thinking of to replace her?”

  Another question I didn’t think to ask. “No, all I know is Lloyd’s one week away from twenty-four million dollars. Although that was two days ago so he’s five days away from it now,” I say.

  Harry twists open a bottle of Coke and pours it into a cup of ice. “Five days away from twenty-four million dollars is the most beautiful phrase in the English language, surpassed only by four days away from twenty-four million.”

  “Yes, yes it is,” I say softly. “I wonder who his investors are.”

  “Producers are very tight-lipped about their financiers because they don’t want other people to tap them, but you’ll find out in the contract. When do you expect to get the paperwork?”

  I shrug and bite into a goat cheese crouton. It’s as delicious as it looks. “I have no idea. Everything’s still up in the air. Things seem like they’re in a good place right now but who knows what will happen. It could still fall through,” I say, as much as a reminder to myself as to him. This time around I want to keep my expectations in check. But it’s hard. All I can think is Lloyd Chancellor didn’t abandon me. On the contrary, he’s as invested as I am in the dream of J&J. He’ll make it happen. He’s a bulldog.

  “Don’t be so tense. You’re already passed the fall-through stage and are now on your way to the big-money stage. I told you this is how it would be, didn’t I?” he says, with an assured smile. “I said everyone’s option lapses at least once. This business is as predictable as L.A. weather.”

  I look at him—his confident grin, his bright eyes, his self-assurance—and I feel the last remaining knot in my stomach unwind. Simon’s attitude has been so different. When I told him about the pending money, he’d smiled at me sadly and said, “Honey, he’s a producer. He’s always one week away from twenty-four million dollars.” His tone was gentle and soft and made me feel like an idiot child who doesn’t know how to cross the street.

  It’s a feeling I can’t quite shake. Sometimes I suspect I’m just a pawn in a game so huge I can’t even see the board.

  But then I talk to Harry and everything inside me calms down. He’s always so certain. He never doubts himself or the circumstances. From his perspective my pulling the article was a no-brainer. With so much possibility looming, it was the only reasonable choice.

  Harry makes me believe that it’s OK to believe.

  “Well, now that that’s back on track, what’s going on with your script?” he asks.

  I sigh loudly. “Nothing. Lester thinks I should turn it into a novel. Black comedies don’t sell to the studios and there’s point in pitching an independent because there’s no money in that.”

  “But it’s not all about the money.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I know. It’s about building a career, investing in your future, creating a name for yourself. I mean, sure, I’d love to make some dough. It kills me to take from my savings each month. But it’s bigger than that.”

  “You’re lucky you have a little something put away to get you through a rough patch. Most people don’t.”

  “My grandparents left me some money. I’m supposed to buy an apartment or something with it, not pay my rent.”

  “It must be a nice chunk if you can swing an apartment.”

  He sounds so impressed, I have to laugh. “Please, in New York City fifty thousand is barely the down payment on a studio.”

  “I’m not sure Lester’s the right agent for you,” he says breaking off a piece of bread and buttering it.

  Surprised, I put down my fork and look at him. “But last year you said he’s the best in the business.”

  “One of the best. And he is. He’s a legend. However, that doesn’t mean he’s the best one for you. He’s too mainstream, too big. You need someone who’s willing to take risks,” he says.

  As much sense as his argument makes, I find the thought of getting a new agent completely terrifying. Maybe if I believed more in my screenplay, I’d have some confidence about my chances but as it stands now, I can’t imagine a stranger taking me on without the potential compensation of J&J. “I don’t know. Lester strikes me as fair.”

  “Was it fair not to tell you that Chancery is still trying to make your book?” he asks with disgust. “Was it fair to let you write that crazy article, which caused you so much grief?”

  He leaves the questions hanging and I repeat them in my head now as I have for days. No, it wasn’t fair of him not to tell me, especially when he made such a convincing argument for why it would never happen. Would knowing have changed anything? I think of my darkened living room, the scattered books, the hundreds of pounds of popcorn. Yes, it would have changed everything.

  Harry sees me wavering. “Look, why don’t I show your script to a few people to get their opinion. It’s not a commitment or anything. Just, you know, another perspective. If everyone agrees with Lester, then you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing his take was right. And if everyone doesn’t, then you’ll know you have options. It’s win-win.”

  I consider it for only a moment, looking for the obvious down side and not finding it. “All right, sure. I’ll e-mail you the most recent draft as soon as I get home.”

  “Cool, and I’ll pull together a list of names immediately. I think you’re going to be surprised how many people love it. You better be prepared to show them something else. Are you working on a new idea?”

  Biting into the last of my crouton, I sigh. Suddenly screenwriting seems very similar to novel writing. People always want you to have more. But I think of the amount of work I put into J&J versus Tad Johnson and there’s no comparison. I could write twelve Tad Johnsons in the same amount of time. “Nothing in particular.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t put pressure on yourself. A new idea will come to you.” Harry finishes his salad and gestures to the buffet table. “Ready for round two?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I make a beeline for the soup tureens while Harry heads straight for the cured meats. All three options—lobster bisque, French onion and split pea—look delicious and I take a bowl of each. I’m not sure how I’m doing in the pace-yourself department but I’m excelling in Gorging Yourself 101.

  Just as we’re about to make a hot-plate sweep, a mob of extras enters the tent in torn clothes and bloody cheeks. They’re victims of the bomb explosion, and as hungry as Harry predicted they’d be. Within minutes, the goat cheese croutons and most of the pâté is gone. I haven’t even tried the latter.

  Harry sees the panic in my eyes. “Don’t worry. As soon as they’re gone, they’ll bring out more.”

  Sure enough, the caters restock the tables ten minutes after the extras leave to reassume their positions on the hoods of cars and under lamp posts. Not willing to take chances, I fill up two plates at once, making sure I get one of everything. Harry laughs at my preemptive strike but compliments me on how neatly I’ve separated my steak au poivre from lamb au jus. I tell him it’s a gift.

  The afternoon passes quickly as actors and crew members breeze through the tent. Some stay, but most pick up their food and go. At one point, we spot the hot young actress playing the love interest over by the coffee bar but her name eludes us both. I think it’s Cynthia something. Harry says it sounds like Sienna.

  Will Smith never comes through.

  At four, we take our trays up for the last time and thoughtfully select an assortment of cookies and cakes to take on the road. We wrap them in napkins and stick them in our pockets, which is very different, Harry assures me, than using Tupperware, which implies intent. Our actions are spontaneous.

  Hardly in the mood to disagree, I follow him out of the tent and down the street. I s
tay a few steps behind because I don’t have the energy to catch up. I’m stuffed beyond Christmas and Thanksgiving combined and can’t imagine ever eating again. Even my pinky finger feels distended, and when I bend to get into the car, I wonder for a moment if I’m going to through up.

  Still, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the rebirth of my movie career than this.

  Day 1,105

  Lester is right. By the end of the month, Jarndyce and Jarndyce is back under option with Chancery Productions. But it’s not the same as last time.

  “They’re offering you a dollar,” he says right off the bat. “A dollar for eight weeks. If, at the end of that time, they have their financing in place, you’ll get ten thousand dollars for a one-year option. That’s an improvement over last time, when you got ten thousand dollars for an eighteen-month option. When the money drops, you’ll get a $35,000 bonus, which is ten more than last time. They’re still offering you two point five percent of the budget, only this time the floor is $300,000 and the ceiling is $550,000. That’s a fifty thousand dollar bump on both ends. There’s no renewal clause because Lloyd doesn’t think he’ll need it. They’ll be in production by the end of the twelve months.”

  As Lester runs through the numbers, I jot them down on a pad so I’ll have all the details straight when I e-mail people with the good news. I can already see the subject line: Back in business.

  It’s not until I start mentally composing the message—realizing not only the intense relief I feel but the validation—that I understand how much of my identify is tied up in the option. Suddenly I am someone again.

  “They’re offering you full reversion of rights, which is another improvement over last time,” he continues.

  Full reversion is a coup. Arcadia refused to budge on that issue, stubbornly insisting that even if they don’t make the movie, they have the right to keep the rights. They would rather J&J spent eternity buried in a dark little filing cabinet in a smelly dank basement than give it back to me after an interval. The only hope for J&J would be if some curious producer happened to stumble across it, see the potential and revive interest. This is called turnaround, and it is, as far as I can tell, a fable writers tell each other to give comfort on dark and stormy nights.

  “What happens if they don’t have their financing?” I ask. Reversion doesn’t mean a thing if they never buy the rights in the first place.

  “The option will lapse,” he says succinctly. “But in the meantime, we retain the right to shop Jarndyce and Jarndyce to other producers. If someone makes an offer, we take it to Lloyd, who will either pick up the one-year option or release you from your obligation. They’re being very fair in this provision. They could close us off to other negotiations, in which case I’d advise you to turn down the deal. As it is, I think it’s a decent offer and advise you to accept.”

  “All right,” I say without hesitation. I’ve been prepared for this moment for three weeks and every day it didn’t happen, I became a little bit more convinced Lloyd Chancellor had been fucking with me with his one-week-away-from-twenty-four-million dollar claim. I began to believe Simon was right.

  But here, finally, is proof that he’s sincere. He’s in as deep as I am and will do everything in his power to get the movie made.

  The relief I feel is stunning.

  “Good, I’ll draw up a deal memo right away and e-mail it to Lloyd.”

  The mention of paperwork sobers me immediately. “Last time it took nine months to negotiate the contract,” I remind him. “What if that happens again?”

  “It’s not possible. The situation is entirely different. For one, the contract won’t be nearly as complicated. It’s basically a one-page memo repeating what we just discussed. It should take three days at the most. But we don’t need the contract. The eight weeks begin tomorrow morning.”

  “Really?” I ask, running to the bedroom to look at a calendar. I count eight weeks and circle the date: July 22 (day 1,161). I make cheerful little stars around the number. At long last, I have something solid and finite to pin my hopes to. The miasmic, interminable, neither-here-nor-there Hollywood system is finally being held to a real number. Either we commit to making a movie on July 22 or we give it up for good. Either I get ten thousand dollars or closure.

  It seems like a fair deal to me.

  “Yes. The clock starts ticking now,” he says.

  “That’s fabulous.”

  “Good. So I’ll contact Lloyd right now. Please don’t hesitate to call with questions,” he says.

  Lester hangs up and I stare contemplatingly at the Hello Kitty calendar, at the stars sparkling around the magical date, which seems so far away. Suddenly July feels like another century and I will have to pass through eons to get there. It’s frustrating but this is what my life has become.

  Moviemaking is all wishing and waiting.

  Day 1,157

  Simon offers me a job in his office.

  “You don’t have to know HTML, although if you do, I can get you another three dollars an hour,” he says during a commercial break for The Wet Season, a Lifetime TV original movie written by Kevin Drake, a guy he went to film school with. We’re pretending to watch the show, but really we’re just tearing it apart. Poor Kevin’s idea of drama is convoluted plotting, familiar dialogue you’ve heard a million times before and endless shrieking. So far we’ve counted eight blood-curdling screams and we’re only thirty-eight minutes in. “Mainly we’re looking for a proofreader. It’s only twenty hours a week but if you work out, I can probably push that up to thirty. It’s pretty straightforward. We just need you to read for sense, style and grammar. The content editors are good, so the copy won’t need a lot of work. The previous freelancer recently became full time, which is always a possibility if you’re into that. What do you think?”

  It’s been seven weeks and three days since I accepted Chancery’s offer and I still haven’t seen a contract. I e-mail Lester every Monday morning for an update but he always says it’s with Lloyd’s lawyers and not to worry. The memo is a mere formality.

  Still, I find the lack of action unbearable. The eight-week option feels so ephemeral that the only thing I have to hold on to is the promise of a signed document, incontrovertible proof that it really does exist. Without it, I sometimes suspect I dreamed up the whole thing and then rush to reread Lester’s e-mails to make sure it’s not all in my head. If it is a delusion, then at the very least it’s a collective one.

  I shift a pillow and pull my feet onto the couch. “I don’t know,” I say in response to the job offer.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun.” His tone is wheedling and cajoling. “You get the cube next to mine, and I’ll tell you everyone’s dirty little secrets. Like who’s sleeping with who. Plus, Lucy in marketing keeps a jar of Hershey’s Kisses on her desk, so you can have all the free chocolate you want. How’s that for a sweet deal?”

  As tempting as he makes it sound and as much as I could use the income, I can’t bring myself to agree. The thought of office work—any at all, not just the paralegal kind—makes me cringe. I can’t stand the idea of being at someone’s beck and call. I’m all out of “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs” and polite smiles that nobody notices. Josiah and Barton seems to have burned them out of me, leaving a charred husk.

  It will probably take years to undo the Symphony Brodsky damage.

  “It sounds great,” I say, trying to soften the rejection. I know he just wants to help. “But the timing’s off. I’ve got some stuff going on.”

  He looks at me cynically, suspecting evasion. “What stuff?”

  I shrug. “You know, things.” On the TV screen, the image of a woman in a padded cell flashes. “Hey, it’s back on.”

  “Like fake option things?” he asks.

  Simon calls my eight-
week deal with Chancery a fake option. He thinks Lloyd did it to keep me in line because I’ve proven myself to be dangerous. “It’s classic appeasement,” he said deflatingly when I announced my big news. “They’re afraid of what you’ll do next. Now really terrify them and publish the article. It’s not too late.”

  I shake my head, trying to erase his words, which replay in my mind all the time. They’re the reason I e-mail Lester weekly and obsess compulsively about the contract. The longer it takes to sort out, the more I second guess my decision.

  Do I think about running the article?

  All the time.

  “No, I have other things too.” The protest sounds hallow and overly defensive to my own ears so I make something up. “I’m working on a new project. Writing. And,” I add with some temerity, “it’s not a fake option, so please stop saying that.”

  Simon doesn’t listen. He’s too much of a know-it-all to consider the possibility that this time he’s wrong. “If it were real, you would have signed the contract by now. But you haven’t because Chancery doesn’t want to waste its money paying lawyers to read it. In a week the option’s going to fade away like it never existed in the first place and you know why? Because it never existed in the first place. It’s a figment, an illusion created to make sure you don’t change you mind about the article.”

  He isn’t saying anything I haven’t said to myself a dozen times during the last few weeks, but it doesn’t help matters for me to hear it. Once the doubt creeps in, it’s all over for me. I lose the ability to eat, sleep, function. I sit on my couch and stare across the room at the voodoo dolls lined up on the windowsill. I can’t even swing the passive productivity of reading.

  For this reason, I simply shrug and say OK. To argue would be to expose myself to more logic.

  I turn back to the television, where Heather Locklear is being fitted for a straitjacket. Her cheeks are unnaturally puffy but I can’t tell if that’s from too much Botox or the steroids the doctors have her character on.