Double Header

by Lee Goldberg

  universe, of the need to preserve and protect it. He embodied the character of Captain Pierce the same way she embodied the universe. The way Conrad Stipe no longer did. He would have to answer for that.

  They had to be stopped.

  "Captain, what are your orders," Melvah asked.

  "I took a vow when I put on this uniform, to protect the Confederation of Aligned Planets and everything it stands for. I can't let the Endeavor launch with a crew of evil doubles," Captain Pierce settled into his command chair. "Kill them. Kill every one of those miserable fuckers."

  * * * * * *

  The Queen Kaahumanu highway cut through a desolate plain of pa'hoehoe lava, its smooth, swirly, surface making Charlie feel like he was driving a Mustang convertible across a giant brownie. The bleak, lifeless expanse was a vivid, lasting testament to the violent forces that were still shaping the island paradise.

  It was also a massive blackboard for environmentally conscious graffiti artists, who carried piles of white coral from the coastline to fashion messages within view of the road. Someone had written "Hollywood" in coral against the side of a decades-old lava bubble. Soon, every place to be any place would have to have a Hollywood sign. Or, at least a Planet Hollywood within a 20 mile radius.

  "I noticed you used my bathroom this morning," Nick picked his nose in the passenger seat. "Did you take a dump?"

  Charlie gave him a look.

  Nick said, "That's the problem with the world today."

  "I don't follow." Charlie sped up to pass a slow-moving white van, a satellite dish on its roof. Against the craggy terrain, it looked like a moon buggy.

  "I bet you didn't think twice about it. You ate a meal in North America and shit in the South Pacific," Nick twisted in his seat to face Charlie. "Go one step further. With modern air travel, it's possible for someone in Africa to eat a yak and, the same day, take a dump in Paris."

  "They don't have yaks in Africa."

  "My point is, you then have digested yak flesh, which is not, in any way, indigenous to France, entering the ecosystem," Nick said, looking grim. "You always hear people complain about nuclear waste, global warming, carbon monoxide, but no one ever talks about travel shit. Why? Because they can't face the enormity of the problem. It's bigger than all of us."

  "Shit, you mean."

  "Exactly," Nick turned his gaze back to the road. "I think there's a movie in it."

  As far as Charlie was concerned, Nick had already written shit movies.

  Suddenly, Charlie regretted not buying Advil while they were at the market in Waikoloa village. Then again, with Hawaii's inflated prices for everything, the Advil would probably have blown his entire expense account. He was still stinging from the 43 cent-per-gallon gasoline tax.

  He turned off the highway onto the road leading to Grand Royal Kona resort. The lush green grass and vibrant pink bougainvillea that line both sides of the road blazed like neon against the black lava on which they inexplicably survived.

  "You didn't have to come with me," Nick said. "I could've bought my own condoms."

  "I'm not about to let you go out alone," Charlie replied, "Or leave you by yourself while I run your errands."

  "Are you planning on being in the bedroom while we fuck?"

  "No," Charlie said. "But I'll be right outside the door."

  As Charlie pulled up under the grand portico of the Grand Royal Kona Resort, Nick had the grand realization that the Variety ad was a mistake.

  * * * * * *

  The message light was blinking on the telephone when Nick and Charlie came into the suite. Nick called the operator, listened to his messages, then called Susie Glot's room and invited her up to "go over the script."

  Nick hung up and dug the condoms out of his pocket. He examined the packets. "Which do you think she'll like, Charlie, macadamian nut or pineapple?"

  "Since you aren't doing the production polish," Charlie said. "Shouldn't she be giving her notes to Javier Grillo?"

  "Forget it, I'm gonna need them both." Nick shoved the condoms back in his pocket and marched out of the living room.

  Charlie shrugged and went out on the lanai to look at the view. The sun was setting on the water. Lovers strolled on the beach and cuddled in hammocks, watching the embers of the day burn out. And out on the road, Charlie could see the white van with its satellite dish raised into the air on a telescoping base. It was probably a TV station catching a live beauty shot for the weather report.

  Nick stomped out onto the lanai, wearing a silk bathrobe and nothing else. There was so much chest hair fluffing out, it looked like an enormous squirrel dove into Nick's robe and got stuck. Something was on Nick's mind.

  "Grillo isn't a writer, he's a thief. He comes in, adds a stupid joke or idiotic car chase, then tries to fuck you out of your screen credit. Everyone knows that," Nick said. "The reason actresses come to me is because I'm the star-maker. I'm the guy with the vision."

  "I didn't mean to offend you," Charlie said. "I'm sorry."

  "Hey, Nick Alamogordo isn't offended," Nick said. "I'm just telling you this to educate you about how movies are made so you won't offend somebody else."

  Someone knocked at the door. Charlie went to the door and peered through the peephole. Susie Glot stood outside in a short, red sun dress, cut low to reveal her standard-issue synthetic bust. A script was tucked under one arm, and she held a tiny evening bag.

  So far, she'd made a career out of doing slasher movies, typecast as the first girl to take off her shirt and the first one to die. She still was, only this time, it was for top-billing as the stripper who befriends sex-addict undercover cop David Caruso, right before she takes off her shirt and dies.

  Charlie opened the door. "Good-evening, ma'am."

  Susie sashayed into the room past Charlie, fanning herself with the script. "This script is so hot, I get blisters on my fingers every time I pick it up."

  Nick smiled. "That's a good note."

  Charlie sat on the arm of a chair and watched the show.

  "All it needs is a stronger, final moment for Electra," she said.

  Nick folded his arms under his chest. Charlie expected to see the fur start to squirm. "What kind of moment?"

  Susie opened the script and leaned in close to Nick, so her breast brushed his arm. "In her final scene, Electra's doing the strip tease at the club and accidentally steps into the assassin's line of fire, taking a bullet meant for Trent Zane."

  "She falls off the stage into the cop's arms," Nick said. "Naked, dead, bloodsoaked, a powerful metaphor for his addiction and his guilt."

  "I think before she dies," Susie said, "she should say something."

  "Ouch?" Charlie suggested.

  Susie turned, noticing Charlie for the first time. "Who's he?"

  "The butler," Nick took the script and, pretending to study it, walked away from Charlie towards the bedroom. "You might be on to something, Susie. What sort of beat did you have in mind?"

  Susie rushed up behind him, pressing herself against his back on the pretense of peering at the script in his hands. "Before I die, I tell him that I'm carrying his baby."

  Nick shook his head. "Too melodramatic. But I know what you're going for."

  A close-up and one last chance to steal a scene, Charlie thought.

  "You want an emotional moment that resonates," Nick paced. "What if..." He tossed the script on the floor and whirled around to face Susie, as if spun by the sheer force of his mighty inspiration.

  "I got it. She takes the bullet while doing a lap dance for him. Intimate. Close. Grinding. They're both writhing in ecstasy, the tempo of the music going faster and faster. Jungle drums. Electric guitars. They're both about to climax and blammo. She's shot.

  "Yes," she panted.

  "Then, in a tight close up, with her dying breath she says: 'I came.' And she dies." Nick said. "We intertwine the intimacy of life and death in one remarkable, cinematic moment."

  "Wow," she said. "That resonates."

>   Nick's face suddenly soured. "I just don't see it yet. I think we need to work on the scene, act it out a few times, see if it really plays."

  She smiled coyly and glanced in Charlie's direction. "Here?"

  Nick motioned towards the bedroom. "Make yourself comfortable, find the soul of the scene, I'll be right with you."

  She went into the bedroom. Something occurred to Nick.

  "You like pineapples, don't you?" Nick called after her.

  "Sure," she replied.

  Nick turned to Charlie.

  "You better turn up the TV, it's going to be noisy," Nick winked and disappeared into the bedroom.

  The conversation Charlie just overheard was already too much to bear. He reached for the remote, turned on the television, and searched the airwaves for a good Adam-12 or Police Story rerun, but settled on the only show that wasn't an infomercial, something cheesy from the 1960s.

  The starship Endeavor left the orbit of the big, green planet and headed for deepest, darkest space.

  On the bridge, Mr. Snork and Dr. Kelvin stood on either side of Captain Pierce's command chair.

  "I'd like to come back here in a few light years and see how everything turned out," Captain Pierce said.

  Dr. Kelvin stared at the main view screen as the planet receded from view. "Imagine, an entire planet modeling its society on an ancient Playboy magazine."

  "Fascinating, indeed," Mr. Snork agreed, scratching his elephant nose. "The females even evolved with staples across their waists. Think what might have happened if the merchant ship had crash-landed with a cargo of those ancient Three Stooges movies instead."

  "One discarded cultural artifact can reshape a species, a planet, an entire galaxy," Dr. Kelvin's breasts heaved, computing the possibilities.

  "Oh no," Captain Pierce slowly rose from his seat.

  "What is it, sir?" Mr. Snork snortled.

  "I left a pair of bikini briefs in the Queen's boudoir.."

  "Your herculite briefs?" Dr. Kelvin asked, suddenly very concerned. The Captain nodded gravely. "Herculite is the basic material from which Argulon is formulated..."

  "And Argulon is the basic component of our Totonian warp drive," Captain Pierce said.

  Dr. Snork stared at his Captain. "Are you saying because you left your underwear on the planet, the aliens could develop warp drive and colonize the cosmos?"

  Captain Pierce looked grim. "I'm saying in a hundred light years, they may be wearing the pants in this universe."

  And on Captain Pierce's laughter, Mr. Snork's consternation, and Dr. Kelvin's puzzlement...

  The scene abruptly freeze-framed. The music swelled and the words "Executive Producer Conrad Stipe" flashed across the screen.

  Charlie groaned and switched to an infomercial. Tom Bosley sat on a couch, listening intently to three men extolling the virtues of R-788, a creme that cured impotence.

  "Now I have the zest and vigor of a 16-year-old," one man proclaimed.

  Tom turned to the camera. "And that's not all — it's a great for dandruff and those pesky insect bites, too!"

  Chapter Seven

  There were no customers for R-788 in Nick Alamogordo's bedroom. Nick sat on the edge of the bed, while Susie Glot took an enthusiastic spin on his lucky barstool. Nick was pretty certain the scene would work. It worked for him.

  He thought it worked for her, too, but if he was a better student of her oeuvre, he would have recognized her shrieking, writhing, grab-your-chest-hair-with-both-fists-and-hold-on-for-dear-life orgasm from her performance in the erotic thriller Cheek To Cheek.

  He was still catching his breath from his own simpering, whimpering, huffing orgasm, and only beginning to notice the stinging sensation from his yanked out chest hair, when the phone rang. Nick instinctively reached for it, forgetting for the moment that a vital part of his anatomy was still wearing an actress.

  "Was it as good for you as it was for us?" Clive Odett asked him.

  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  "You're much better at writing sex scenes than performing them. You grunt like a pig. Not very erotic."

  "You don't know shit, Odett." Nick said.

  "You're holding the phone in your right hand," Odett said, "and clutching Susie's ass with the other."

  Nick immediately let go of Susie's buttock.

  "Now you've let go of her ass and your jaw is hanging open," Odett said.

  Nick closed his mouth, his eyes darting around the room.

  "There's a camera in Susie's evening bag, which is transmitting to a truck outside the hotel, which is beaming it via satellite into my office, where we recorded your little method acting session."

  Nick looked at Susie, who climbed off his collapsing barstool with an apologetic shrug. "He's my agent."

  She smiled and waved at the evening bag on the dresser. "Hi, Mr. Odett. How's the weather in LA?"

  "You can tell her it's a bit windy," Odett said.

  "Fuck you," Nick pulled his bathrobe self-consciously over his lap and glared at the evening bag. "What's the matter, the burning fish drink not getting it up for you?"

  "A copy of this tape will be messengered to your wife within the hour."

  Nick glanced at Susie, who was examining her rock-solid breasts in the mirror.

  "Go ahead," Nick said, trying to sound casual, or at least as casual as someone can sound sitting naked on his bed, talking to an evening bag.

  "Your wife will divorce you and get 50% of everything, and we'll help her find all the money she's entitled to," Odett said. "Then there's the alimony. Balance that loss against future earnings with another agency and ask yourself, is it really worth it not to be a Company client?"

  "I thought you wanted to kill me."

  "I don't want to kill you, I want to own you," Odett replied. "You're worth a lot more to us alive. I have an agent in the building with the papers. All you have to do is sign."

  Nick glanced again at Susie, bending over to pick up her dress, and came to a decision.

  "You want me back, you have to do something for me."

  "I thought we just did."

  Nick told him what he wanted, hung up the phone, then got up and tossed the evening bag into the trash can. He turned to Susie and smiled lasciviously.

  "Do you like macadamian nuts, Susie?"

  * * * * * *

  Kimberly Woodrell drove her jet black Jaguar convertible, which was leased to director Marcus Dolen until Gun Point tanked on opening weekend, up the Pacific Coast Highway that night to her Malibu beach house, which had belonged to producer Scott Devereaux before his wife caught him in bed with two of his development execs.

  It didn't bother Kim that everything she had once belonged to someone else. The business was just a bunch of hermit crabs scurrying around for cast-off shells to inhabit, and she was fine with that. More over, she was good at it.

  Long ago, she realized it was impossible to take a step in this town without going where someone else had been before, whether you were moving into a new office or a lover's pants.So she went after what other people had without remorse, it was how business was done. And it was why her new job, as president of the Big Network, was so important to her. It was the one thing in her life that had never belonged to anyone but her.

  She was the first person to run the Big Network, no one had warmed the seat before she put her perfect ass in it. She wasn't stuck with a schedule of rotten shows, wrong-headed series commitments, or a staff of idiots that would have to be broomed out.

  But more important than all of that, she was the first woman to run a major network. That would always be hers, and hers alone.

  Kim Woodrell lived in a strip of "custom homes" tucked snugly between the Pacific Coast Highway and the beach. The private street was a design gallery for architecture students. There was a hacienda, a villa, an English Tudor and then her place, which looked like an origami flamingo dropped onto the sand by a benevolent Japanese giant.

  She parked the car in her
garage, got out, and was surprised to see the alarm panel was deactivated. It had either been disconnected, or she forgot to set it before she left. Either way, there was nothing she could do about it now.

  Not that she cared. She bought the place furnished, so the decor reflected the previous inhabitant's fascination with chrome. If someone wanted to steal it all, they were welcome to it.

  The first thing she noticed when she stepped into the cavernous living room wasn't something missing, but something new. Empty Evian bottles were scattered everywhere, on the chrome-and-glass coffee table, on the chrome-and-leather chair, on the winding, chrome-and-metal staircase leading upstairs.

  At the same instant, she recoiled from the smell, a heavy, acrid stench that was at once repulsive and familiar.

  Piss.

  She took a few more steps into the room and saw the walls were streaked with urine, as if someone had sprayed them down with a hose. There wasn't a single wall that hadn't been pissed on.

  Kim shivered, feeling the intruder's presence as strongly as the odor, even though he was probably long gone.

  Some guy spent an entire day here, just pissing on everything, filling up on Evian whenever his bladder ran dry. And she had a pretty good idea who it was.

  He was marking his territory, the way a dog would.

  The message was clear: You're mine.

  * * * * * *

  Charlie woke up early the next morning, stiff and sore, and took a jog on the beach to loosen the jet lag from his joints, returning to Nick's suite 45 minutes later, drenched with sweat, his heart pounding like small beast trying to break out of his chest.

  He was spending way too much time sitting in airplanes having cocktails and not enough time sweating them off. He mopped off the sweat with a thick, Grand Royal Kona towel, dug his exercise gloves out of his suitcase and ambled into the suite's small gym.

  The gym was basically a converted bedroom with a weight set, treadmill, and a fully stocked wet bar, just in case a guest was worried to much time might pass between losing the pounds and putting them back on. Nothing like a handful of Cashews and a frothy mug of imported beer after rigorous exercise.