by Lynn Messina
Still, it’s disconcerting to watch her poke through my stuff with shameless abandon.
Bob asks me about my neighbors and noise pollution while Janine disappears into the bedroom. I don’t know what she’s looking for but I know she won’t find it in there. The only important document I keep in there is my passport in my underwear drawer. All financial documents are in a folder in the hall closet. She’d have to be pretty bold to start going through my coats right in front of me.
“The construction seems sturdy,” Bob says, pounding on the wall, “solid. Brick. I bet not much gets through. When was the building built?”
I don’t have a clue but Bob wants facts so I say 1954 because the flat stucco lines of the apartments look midcentury to me.
The answer works for him as well and he nods solemnly. An awkward silence follows as he taps the baseboards with his foot. It’s unusual for the two of us to be alone together without Janine.
“What kind of building does Charlene live in?” I ask, pouring myself a glass of wine. I have no idea how much longer we’re going to be here. I guess it depends on what Janine finds under my bed.
“Pre-pre-pre-war,” he says in the vernacular of New York real estate. “It was built in 1834. When you go into the basement, you can see the original stone walls laid by masons almost two centuries ago. Talk about solid construction.”
Janine reemerges after a brief stop in the bathroom. I hear her rattle the bottles in the medicine cabinet: Tylenol, Advil, multivitamins. Since I rarely remember to take the One-a-Days, the container is almost full, and I can see Janine marking that off on her checklist to report back to Mom, who bought me the tablets in the first place. She’s worried that neither Carrie nor I get enough calcium. Osteoporosis runs in the family.
By the time we leave for Mortons, the evening already feels endless and I focus on the thought of a rare, eighteen-ounce porterhouse steak to get me through the car ride, a gentle inquisition of what I’ve been up to since they saw me on New Year’s Eve. Vague answers don’t satisfy them and the pair grow increasingly determined as the night wears on.
At the restaurant, they ply me with excellent wine and mouth-watering beef, hoping the mind-numbing effects of both will lull me into honesty. But cream spinach is not a truth serum, and I cling doggedly to my story that I work as a temp for a variety of law firms. When pressed, I give up a few names, the same ones I gave my mother two weeks earlier after she called every major law firm in Los Angeles to find out where I work. Thinking on the fly, I explained the reason I’m not on the books is I’m a freelance temp at different places. The freedom is nice and the pay is better.
She seemed to accept the story.
But as Bob talks about his first job as a talent booker’s assistant—the realization that the music industry wasn’t the right place for him, however reluctant he was to tell his parents (hint, hint)—I realize Mom didn’t accept anything at all. She was simply biding her time until she thought of another plan of attack.
Poor Janine and Bob.
Determined to put me into a complete food coma, they order three desserts: New York cheesecake, upside-down apple pie and the self-proclaimed legendary hot chocolate cake. Having licked the bone of my steak clean, I can’t possibly eat another bite.
The Pirellis insist with such force that I’m almost prepared to tell them everything just to get them to relent. The only thing stopping me is the thought of Mom calling at five the next morning and screeching in a tone that could curdle milk, “What do you mean you’ve spent Grandma’s money?”
The memory of Mom’s milk-curdling anger is all I need to fortify myself and I take a tiny taste of the cheesecake. It’s sweet and rich and at any other time no doubt delicious; tonight it sticks in my throat. The apple pie goes down marginally better, and the chocolate cake is an effort from beginning to end. The Pirellis alternate between watching in delight as I struggle and bombarding me with questions. Bob asks about various people at the law firms I claim to work at, then sits back and waits for my response. I can’t tell if he’s made up the names or actually knows the people, but, gambling, I go with the former. As an insurance salesman in Encino, he probably doesn’t mingle much with L.A.’s powerhouse legal force.
When I can no longer stand it, I hijack the conversation and launch into a twenty-minute diatribe against the inhumane practices of the American meat industry. I rail against antibiotics and tiny pens and the way cows are strung up by their hooves, cut in the throat and left to hang until they bleed to death. I know it seems hypocritical after devouring an entire porterhouse, but I suddenly feel an unexpected kinship with veal.
The Pirellis are so taken aback they listen quietly. In a somber mood, Bob signs the credit card slip and tucks it into his wallet. We are all silent during the walk to the car, and I feel awful about my ungracious behavior. These people have been kind to me. They took me in when I had nowhere to go and treated me like family. I had no right to ruin a perfectly lovely dinner, however inquisitional.
The guilt I feel is terrible.
But then Mom wakes me up the next morning hounding me about the animal-rights cult I’ve fallen in with, and I get over it.
Day 1,199
Lester calls in the middle of Love & Valor to tell me Lloyd has Millie Sherwood, Moxie’s arch nemesis, lined up to star. I’m so engrossed in Marita and Avery’s wedding ceremony, I don’t bother to answer the phone, only picking up belatedly as Lester is signing off.
“Millie wants to meet with the director personally before she commits fully,” Lester explains after my breathy hello. “If she’s satisfied, she’ll write a letter attaching herself, at which point the backers will come on board officially and you’ll get a proper option contract and payment.”
Although I always love hearing about hot young starlets who want to make my movie, the news of a director is also interesting. This is the first time anyone has mentioned one.
Lester explains that his name is Blake Alden and the last thing he directed was a comedy with Selena Gomez. “He’s also a screenwriter and has lots of ideas for the script,” he says, “which is why Millie wants to meet with him before she signs on.”
While he talks, I pull up Blake Alden’s entry on IMDB and peruse his credits. His history is pretty decent. Aside from recent directorial blunders—a series of teeny-bopper features for which he was obviously unsuited—he’s had a solid writing career. He even won an Oscar for a psychological thriller with Al Pacino.
“When’s the meeting?” I ask.
“In a few weeks,” he says, as frustratingly vague as always. After all this time, he still doesn’t understand my need for facts and figures. He has no idea what my calendar looks like, with its days numbered like the ticking clock in an increasingly dire hostage situation.
Or maybe he does get me and doesn’t care. In thirty years, I can’t be the first pain-in-the-ass client he’s ever had. Maybe we’ll all alike in our constant need for hard facts.
I thank him for the update and immediately turn my attention back to the television, where Marita’s daughter is walking down the aisle with a basket of flowers. Thanks to a well-timed commercial, I haven’t missed much.
As exciting as the Millie news is, I wait until the show is over before I start Googling her.
Sadly, there isn’t much to find.
Millie Sherwood lives a relatively quiet life with her mom in Malibu in a modest house on a three-acre estate near the ocean. Her wild exploits include building houses for Habitat for Humanity, cofounding a charity called Kids Helping Kids to introduce youngsters to philanthropy and visiting sick children in hospitals. Most recently she created a perfume called Heart Song; on her website she describes the process of working with French experts at the famous Gallimard perfumery in Provence. “I knew I wanted a simple fragrance wit
h hints of musk and earthy wood tones, but working under the guidance of a professional nose taught me the intricate complexities of even the most simple-seeming scent.”
Currently she’s in the studio recording her new album, Allusions to Summer, to be released in September. The planned world tour will take her from Patagonia to Perth. She’s very excited to meet her many international fans.
Her next movie is a romantic comedy called Upward and Homeward, about a type-A college student who learns there’s more to life than perfect grades when she finds herself homeless over the Christmas holidays. Logan Lerman plays her slacker frat-boy love interest. The film hits theaters next week.
It looks pretty bad but I decide to reserve judgment until the critics actually pan it. Not that it matters what I or Manohla Dargis thinks. Millie’s target audience is tween girls, who’ll buy anything with her name on it, including Lolly Dolly videos by the truckloads. Based on preorders at Target and Walmart, her perfume is expected to break sales records.
In the two hours I spend researching Millie, I can’t find a single black mark against her. She subscribes to a healthy lifestyle; advises girls against premarital sex; recommends plenty of fruits and vegetables to keep your energy up; goes to church on Sunday; is kind to animals; and publicizes causes she believes in.
Her image is squeaky-clean.
Worst of all, it seems to be sincere.
There’s not a single hint from even the most salacious gossip site that it’s all an act and that inside the placid twenty-year-old is an uncontrollable wild child struggling to break free.
She’s the anti-Moxie.
I know this is good. A sane, reliable tween-queen movie star won’t keep me up nights worrying about when she’s going to enter rehab or crash her car into a tree. There won’t be any stripping sagas or fey-gay boogies. My days won’t be consumed with the minutia of her exploits. Millie doesn’t create press. She could stand at a gas pump in stained sweats and no makeup eating pork rinds and still the tabloids wouldn’t care.
No doubt the lack of hysterical paparazzi peeping over your backyard fence makes for a comfortable life but what about me? How’s my movie going to generate buzz if its star isn’t out there doing something shocking every other day? When will J&J be mentioned if Millie keeps her underwear on and her knees together? What hope do we have of becoming a sensation with such a staid, responsible adult at the helm? Lloyd might as well have cast Minnie Mouse for all the excitement it will generate.
Still, I try not be disappointed. The important thing is J&J is moving forward. Despite the lapsed fake option, the elves are hard at work, keeping to a schedule of hope and promise. Today Millie, tomorrow the costar, next Thursday the twenty-four million dollars. It will happen eventually.
I simply need to believe.
Day 1,228
Upward and Homeward bombs. It opens on fifteen hundred screens and makes four point six million dollars during its first weekend. The following weekend’s gross drops more than fifty percent, coming in at an embarrassing two point two million. From there, the numbers get dismal: $900,000 on 1,100 screens, then $400,000 on six hundred.
It is an unqualified failure.
This strikes me as potentially positive because it means Chancery Productions could get Millie to sign on to J&J at a drastically reduced rate. Everyone loves a bargain.
But my thinking it all wrong.
“She’s lost fifty percent of her value,” Lester explains after I harass him sufficiently into calling me back. It’s been six weeks since I’ve heard anything. My repeated requests to find out how the meeting between Millie and the director went have been met with stony silence. Lester doesn’t think this is the sort of information he has to provide. When there’s something meaningful to tell me he’ll tell me. In the meantime, I should sit quietly and mind my own business.
I’m so tired of this. Suddenly my life has become one endless attempt to extract information from unwilling sources. Every day I beat my head against another wall. Just once I’d like him to tell me something without my haranguing him into it.
I suppose this is what my mother feels like all the time.
In my frustration, I write several long, involved e-mails to Lloyd begging him to tell me what’s going on. I spend hours obsessing over the wording, striving for that perfect mix of demanding and self-deprecating: Tell me but don’t mind telling me because I’m adorable and funny. In every letter, I find myself explaining how hard it is not to regret pulling the New York Times article. It might not be fair, it might not even be his fault, but it’s impossible for me not to resent him. The only reason I pulled it was he said he was one week away from twenty-four million dollars.
One week.
That was nineteen weeks ago.
I think constantly about calling Angela Deering up and giving her the OK to publish it. There are still things to peg it to, like the DVD release of The Hanging Judge, which is slated for Valentine’s Day. I watch the date approach and wonder if I’ll have the guts to do it.
I know I won’t. I don’t even have the guts to send my e-mails to Lloyd Chancellor. I stick them in a folder buried deep in my hard drive, so I won’t have to look at them whenever I boot up my computer.
I am a moral coward.
But no. The only reason I wrote that article was I had nothing left to lose. Now there are things at stake. Playing it safe isn’t moral cowardice. It’s smart business sense.
“What does losing fifty percent of her value mean?” I ask Lester.
“That she’s not big enough to carry a movie anymore. Her built-in audience can’t be relied on to support her films. And that’s just the effect on the American market. Oversees, she’s a nonentity. The foreign returns were terrible. Somewhere in the low three million. A backer counts on foreign box office to get a significant return on his investment. Millie Sherwood can’t be relied on for that,” he says.
“So what happens now?”
“They rewrite the script, punching up the male lead so they can cast that role bigger than Millie to anchor the film. The investors are demanding it.”
Another thing I’m tired of: these investors, whoever they are. More and more, they seem like Mafioso toughs trying to break into the movie business for the glamour of it. They belong in a Woody Allen film. “Who’s rewriting the script?” I ask, exhausted. It’s only one in the afternoon, but it feels like the dark of the morning. I want the oblivion of sleep.
“Tipston and Field.”
“What? But I thought they were done. No more rewrites without another payment.”
“They’re doing it in exchange for an executive producer credit. It’s a very nice deal for guys like them.”
I sigh, surprised yet again—and yet somehow surprised that I could be surprised—at what a backward place Hollywood is. It’s the only spot in the world where two talentless hacks can get paid half a million dollars to write a script nobody likes, then get a cushy screen credit to ruin it further.
Where’s my exec-prod credit for seraphic patience and Herculean self-control? Acts of self-abnegation are never rewarded.
Life so isn’t fair.
“When will the new script be in?” I ask.
Of course Lester doesn’t know. “They said early November, but they’re not getting paid and have other projects, so it will probably take longer. Think mid-December.”
I make a mental note of the first date and decide I’ll start e-mailing Lester on the fifteenth. The only time he bugs Lloyd is when I bug him. It’s a round robin of annoyance.
“All right,” I say, trying to come up with more questions while I’ve got him on the line. There must be other things I want to know. When can I see the script? Which male character do they consider the lead? But I know it’s not
worth the bother. The details don’t interest Lester; nothing does except the payday.
Another call comes in and he rushes off the phone to get it. I hang up, lean back against the couch and close my eyes. I was supposed to start my new screenplay today come hell or high water but suddenly that seems like a terrible idea. I need some time to get over this fresh blow.
If I don’t give myself a break, who else will?
I log onto Fandango and check the local theaters until I find what I’m looking for. Then I get dressed, brush my hair, grab my keys and head to the galleria for the two o’clock showing of Upward and Homeward.
It’s pure masochism, but I can’t help myself.
Day 1,298
While Simon digs his mail key out of his front pocket, I press my back against the tile wall and peer at him from behind the green fronds of the lobby’s fern. The leafy plant hasn’t been dusted in months, and my nose immediately begins to tingle in response. Somehow I manage to hold back the sneeze while he sorts through his mail, puts away the key and waits for the elevator.
As soon as the door closes on his furrowed brow, I let out a huge achoo, dig a worn tissue out of my bag and resolve to call the super to complain about the poor plant maintenance. What does rent cover if not basic cleanliness?
Blowing my nose, I extricate myself from my hiding place and get my own mail, pausing to look through a West Elm catalog to make extra sure I don’t bump into him in the hallway upstairs.