Bleak

by Lynn Messina

  Simon sighs loudly and puts a hand on my shoulder. He doesn’t knows how hard I have to work to not listen to him, but he’s sympathetic anyway. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so angry when I think of them taking advantage of you. Lester should know better.”

  I nod but keep my eyes on the screen. Lester is also a touchy subject. I haven’t told him yet that I’m meeting with another agent tomorrow. I know he wouldn’t approve. Whatever he says about Lester, he respects his experience and trusts his judgment. If he thinks Tad Johnson needs another twenty-seven revisions, then Tad Johnson needs another twenty-seven revisions.

  Plus, he’d just get on his high horse if he knew Harry had anything to do with it.

  Simon is silent as he watches Heather chew through the ropes around her wrists. When she finally escapes and climbs over the asylum wall, he says, “What other things?”

  I stare at him, confused.

  “You said you had other things. What are they?”

  It’s just like him to be relentless. “I’m sorry but I don’t want your stupid job,” I say sulkily.

  “I’m over the stupid job,” he says with a smile, making it clear that indeed he is. No doubt he has someone else in line to offer it to. Maybe Wren. “Now I’m just curious.”

  Despite my resolution to come up with a new screenplay idea, all I’ve done for the past seven weeks is go to the park. I went the first day hoping the fresh air would inspire me and returned every day after to soak of the peace and quiet and sunshine. I bring my notebook with me but never open it. There’s little inspiration in owners chasing their dogs and nannies playing with their charges.

  “I’m working on a new novel,” I say after a moment. If I’m going to lie, I might as well make myself sound good.

  Simon nods approvingly. “What’s it about?”

  “A girl and her dog. It’s really too soon to tell.”

  This sounds like the height of evasiveness to me, but he accepts it. “Good,” he says, turning his head toward the television. Heather is now swimming across the English Channel in a bikini. “How is that possible? Wasn’t she just in Georgia?”

  “It’s supposed to represent the geographical disconnectness of her mind,” I say, making it up on the fly. “She has no boundaries, literal or metaphorical. Watch, at the end we’ll find out the entire story took place in her head and that’s she’s still sitting in the same rocking chair where the sheriff shot at her.”

  “Old Kev was never a creative genius but he had enough sense not fall back on that tired cliché.”

  But Simon overestimates old Kev, and in the end we learn it’s a thousand times worse than we imagined. The rocking chair itself is pure fantasy. Poor Heather never even got out of the ravine her abusive husband threw her in after bashing her on the skull with a cast-iron frying pan.

  Oh, yeah, I think as the credits roll, that’s the realest real possible.

  Day 1,158

  I meet Howard Tulkinghorn at the Griddle Café on Sunset Boulevard next to the Director’s Guild. The space is simple and small, with maroon booths and a cool glossy red counter. I don’t see a lone male sitting by himself among the crowd of young hipsters, so I take a stool at the counter and order black coffee. He arrives ten minutes later in a disorganized rush of folders and envelopes. When we shake hands, a notebook slides out of his grasp onto the linoleum floor.

  We both lean down to pick it up.

  “Please, let me,” he says. “I know I look like an old man but I’m pretty spry for my age.”

  According to his website, Tulk, as he prefers to be called, is seventy-eight and has been in the business for fifty-six years. He started as a recent NYU grad in the mailroom of William Morris and worked his way up until he struck out on his own in 1986. His long list of clients include twelve Emmy winners, five Golden Globe winners and one and a half Oscar winners. At this point in his career, he takes on very few new clients and only read Tad Johnson as a favor to Harry.

  “All set, then,” he says, straightening his shoulders as he stands. Tulk is short and round, with thick bifocals, a Colonel Sanders goatee and bushy gray eyebrows. He speaks with a faint Brooklyn accent. “Ready to eat? I’m starving.”

  There’s a thirty-five minute wait for a table, so we settle in at the counter. The waitress refills my coffee as she hands us the menus.

  “Everything’s huge here,” he says. “The pancakes are as big as your head, so watch out if you’re on a diet. People rave about the apple cobbler French toast but I stick with the eggs. The ham and cheese omelet is an exquisite balance of ham and cheese. Sometimes you get too much of one element and the whole dish is off. What do you want?”

  I’ve barely had time to look over the menu, which has too many different types of pancakes to choose from: Oreo, banana, raspberry-lemon, pumpkin, streusel, chocolate. Overwhelmed, I order plain old scrambled eggs and bacon.

  Tulk launches right into why he liked my script. “It’s dark. I like dark. So many movies these days end on a false high note. Studio execs like to force happiness down our throats whether it fits the story or not. But that’s what I love about your script. It’s gritty and edgy. That edge is what makes it real. It’s the kind of story you could see leading the evening news. I can hear the teaser during a CSI commercial on a Monday night: Suburban teen goes on shooting spree to get into college. Film at eleven. It’s great indie material. The studios would never go for it. They’d worry about the kind of message it sends. Is it endorsing cutthroat competition in high school? But it’s perfect for an independent director looking to make his mark with something fresh and original. You’ve got it, kid. You’ve certainly got it. Now you give it to me and I’ll take it to the next level.”

  The last thing I expected from this meeting is an aggressive pitch. I assumed he took the meeting as a favor to Harry, but it seems as though Harry’s the one who did him a favor.

  “You really think you can sell it?” I ask, hoping to hear more praise. His attitude is so different from my agent’s. Everything he likes about it Lester despises.

  “Absolutely. I can think of six people off the top of my head to send it to.”

  The waitress brings our food, and I see immediately what he means about the portions being huge. It looks like an entire carton of eggs was scrambled for my dish. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is to hear. The last agent I submitted it to didn’t like it at all. He thought it had too many coincidences and wasn’t lifelike.” “What is life but coincidence? Picture this: 1998, I’m in a little bookstore in a tiny town in Bhutan and who should walk in but my old neighbor from Astoria. That’s real. But that’s the nature of the business. One man’s gold is another man’s dross. Everyone has a story of how they turned down Titanic. It’s like that apartment on Fifth Avenue that your aunt Marge sold for thirty thousand dollars in the 1978. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” He shrugs and pours some syrup on his omelet, smothering the exquisite balance of ham and cheese in maple flavor.

  I take a bite of my eggs and reach for the salt. “We have one of those stories in my family, only it was a duplex on Fifty-second.”

  “It’s a human universal. How are the eggs?”

  “Delicious,” I say, although they’re actually a little rubbery. But the bacon is perfect, crispy and greasy and melting in my mouth in a scrumptious pool of fat.

  “Now, keep in mind, it’s the independents, so there’s not a lot of money in it, and in fact it might even cost you a small something. But you’re just starting out and need to build a foundation. That’s my byword: build. You’re building a foundation. You’re building a résumé. You’re building a career. Nobody starts at the top. You have to build the staircase to get you to the next level. And that’s where I come in. I’m here to nurture you career, to take it through all the steps, not
just the ones that pay out the big bucks. We’ll get to the blockbusters eventually but for now we start on the bottom rung and build the ladder. See how I work in my byword? I really believe there’s only one way to do it. And it’s worked for me for fifty-six years. Even when I was sorting envelopes in the mailroom at William Morris, I knew what my philosophy would be, and I’ve remained true to it. That’s the real secret to my success, and to yours.”

  Every word he says is exactly what I want to hear. Some of it I said myself to Harry during an anti-Lester rant.

  “That sounds great,” I observe, relieved to discover that my outlook isn’t as skewed as Lester led me to believe. Obviously he has the right to run his business the way he sees fit, but just because it works for him doesn’t mean it works for me. Right now, he’s all about making J&J happen, which I respect and appreciate. I’ve put too much on the line for the film to simply fall through. But I am more than my one novel; I’m an entire oeuvre as yet unwritten. Lester isn’t willing to invest in that. He has his own priorities that are far different from mine.

  It’s no big deal. As Harry said, it happens every day.

  “I was hoping you’d say that. As soon as we finish here, I’ll make some calls. I should have some news for you by the end of the month.”

  The waitress comes by to refill my coffee but I pass. I’m buzzing already.

  “Now, as you know, I don’t get paid unless you get paid. That’s the gentleman’s code of honor as well as the AAR’s ethics policy. However, sometimes these independent films are more like partnerships. I’ll introduce you to a director who’s looking for material and you and he might decide to coproduce the project together. In those cases, an investment from you might help the process along. Again, I don’t get any money from that arrangement. But I’m happy to pass up a small free now in expectation of a greater one later. That’s part of the building process. Of course, I’m not saying we’ll go that route, but it is a possibility. It’s something I want you to think about. No decisions are being made today or tomorrow. We’ll go slowly.”

  “All right,” I say calmly, as if it’s a possibility. But of course it’s not. It’s one thing to chip away at my inheritance to cover the annoying but necessary expense of daily life. But to bet it all on the unlikely outcome of a single long shot—no, siree. Carstones aren’t made that way. Carrie gambled her savings on real estate—prime Manhattan real estate. Those are the kinds of odds we in my family take.

  But I don’t mention this to Tulk. It’s only our first meeting, and I want him to like me. Besides, there’s no point in making a big deal about something that will most likely never happen.

  “Good. Now that that’s settled, tell me what else you’re working on. I love when my clients are prolific.”

  I have no more to tell him than I did Simon, but I’m even more reluctant now to spill my unprolific guts, so I tell him about the girl and her dog. I expand on it on the fly, including a mischievous monkey and an evil Buddhist monk.

  I expect Tulk to call me on the nonsensical plot, but he loves my animated adventure and wonders if he should pitch Pixar.

  Part of me recognizes his enthusiasm for what it is—a Hollywood schmooze job—but the rest of me embraces it blindly. He wouldn’t make the effort if he didn’t think I had a future.

  Sundance, here I come.

  Day 1,161

  I wake on the morning the eight-week option expires full of anticipation like it’s Christmas or my birthday. Nobody has told me what to expect next, but I have several ideas, namely that Lloyd calls with the signed contracts in hand or pitches a four-week extension to the tune of a fifteen-thousand-dollar option.

  To keep busy, I turn on the television and watch Good Morning, America, then Live with Kelly. I boil an egg for breakfast and limit myself to refreshing my e-mail only during commercial breaks.

  Despite these practical efforts, the morning drags.

  While I wait, I mentally compose the e-mail response accepting the extension offer, a gracious missive with a hint of impatience. I mean, seriously, how long is this going to take?

  At noon, I make myself a grilled cheese sandwich and sit on the couch, compulsively pressing the refresh button every five minutes. I can no longer force myself to wait until commercials.

  My confidence begins to fade.

  By two, I’ve come up with several unlikely but still entirely plausible explanations for the lack of communication. Lloyd is in a meeting with the money guys right now signing the contract. Lloyd is stuck in traffic on the 110 and can’t get reception on his cell phone. Lloyd is in the hospital having his appendix removed. Lloyd’s plane crashed in the San Bernardino Mountains.

  I turn to CNN to see if there’s any breaking news but it’s all election coverage. The ticker on the bottom lists HMO reform and Moxie’s entry into rehab. I couldn’t care less about either and flip back to Love & Valor. It’s been a decade since I’ve caught a full episode of the soap but it’s remarkably easy to catch up. Ten years later and Jinx, Marcos and Marita are in the exact same place. They haven’t budged an inch: the same squabbles, the same betrayals, the same sweeping romantic gestures like flutes of champagne and single red roses.

  Life is so depressing.

  When it’s over, I put on Ellen DeGeneres. Her guest is an arachnologist who has just placed a tarantula on the host’s arm. The camera zooms in as Ellen jokes about the creepy, creeping crawler reminding her of an old boyfriend. “No wonder I’m gay.” The audience laughs; I stare, fascinated. Then she announces that every member of the studio audience will get a remote-controlled Mexican red-knee tarantula with realistic furry texture and everyone cheers enthusiastically.

  I glare enviously at the happy studio audience.

  My life sucks.

  Of course I have the power to make it better. Every day I think about starting the new screenplay I discussed with Tulk. Some ideas have already come to me. The mischievous monkey is really a prince transformed by the evil monk who wants to rule his country. The girl has the power to undo the spell but she just has to believe in herself in order for her magic to work.

  It’s Disney meets Miyazaki.

  But despite my intentions, I never get myself to work. It’s like a kind of paralysis: I can think the action but I can’t make my muscles respond. Each day, I watch the clock wind down, constantly recalibrating how much time I have left. Noon: If I start now, I can finish the first act. Three: If I start now, I can finish the first scene. Five-thirty: If I start now, I can finish the first page.

  And yet nothing happens.

  It doesn’t seem like such a pressing matter as long as the option is a go. As unproductive as I personally may be, little elves are out there in the world assiduously settling my future. Sometimes it feels like I myself am hard at work, too.

  As the day progresses, my fantasy scenarios desert me one by one, and by the end of Access Hollywood, I’m forced to admit that Lloyd isn’t trapped in an elevator or hammering out the final details of a twenty-four-million-dollar contract. Lester isn’t desperately trying to get in touch with me. He’s not seconds away from ringing my doorbell in an anxious flurry and frantically apologizing for his land line, cell phone, Internet and telegraph machine being down all at once.

  The eight-week option ends, not with a whimper but with a sigh. It might as well never existed.

  I hate Simon for being right.

  Day 1,174

  Mom sends the Pirellis to spy on me. Two weeks after the fake option lapses, Janine and Bob invite me to dinner at Morton’s. The famous steakhouse is far too extravagant a place to take a slight acquaintance, but the Pirellis won’t listen to reason. It’s their favorite restaurant in the city, and they can’t wait to share it with me.

  That alone sets off alarms, but when they insist
on coming up to see my apartment, I realize something funny is definitely going on.

  “It’s not at its best right now,” I say, unlocking the door. During the elevator ride up, I tried desperately to remember if I cleared my plate from lunch. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “Don’t apologize, dear. We know what it’s like for you busy single gals. My daughter, Charlene, is exactly the same way.”

  I turn on the light and quickly survey the damage. It’s not as extensive as I thought. I rush over to the couch, fold the fleece blanket and throw it over the arm of the sofa. “Please sit down. What can I get you? I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer. Some red wine, beer, vodka.” I open the fridge and see a week-old carton of orange juice. “I can do screwdrivers.”

  “The red wine will be lovely,” Janine says.

  Bob sits down. “I’ll take a beer.”

  As I dig glasses out of the cabinet, Janine wanders around the living room. She picks up photos, looks through my magazine stack and peers out the terrace window. “You have a lovely place,” she says, examining the Lloyd voodoo doll with interest. “Very warm and homey, a nice size in a good neighborhood. If you don’t mind my asking, how much is the rent?”

  The directness of the question takes me aback, and I pause in uncorking the wine for a brief moment, then regain my balance. “Surprisingly reasonable,” I say, mimicking the answer I gave Mom eight months ago. It’s sufficiently vague and has the side benefit of being true: My Bleak apartment is remarkably affordable for its size and location, although it’s still more than I can afford.

  But that’s none of Janine’s business. Or my mom’s.

  I hand them their drinks, then pull together a sad plate of hors d’oeuvres from the meager offerings in my kitchen. Bob dives into the Triscuits with cheddar while Janine sorts through the mail on the dining room table. She doesn’t bother to be subtle about it, holding each piece up and flipping it over. Luckily, it’s all credit card offers, Planned Parenthood solicitations and coupons from local businesses. There’s nothing revealing in the pack.