by Davis Bunn
Hilda turned to him and said, “The peon who calls himself an assistant director wants to know why you’ve kept everybody waiting.”
“Ma’am, all I can tell you is, the bus took a hit while I was fast asleep.”
The tall woman spoke through a mouthful of pins. “Sounds to me like you’re going to fit in around here just fine.”
Hilda said into the phone, “His bus was in an accident. No, I have no idea why he traveled by bus. You want details, you can get them yourself . . .” She cradled the phone a second time. “King Peon wants to know how long.”
Gladys replied, “I’ve got to take the pads out of the shoulders, else he’s going to look like a hairless ape. And take in six years of flab. He’s got a dancer’s waist.”
Hilda said into the phone, “Five minutes. Okay. Right. I’ll tell them.”
She hung up and said, “His Royal Pain in the Neck says to hurry.”
“Like we ever took it easy around here.” She patted JayJay’s arm. “Okay, hon. Let me have those clothes.”
“Ma’am, you got to excuse me, I don’t have nothing else on.”
“You hear that, Hilda? The cowboy here is shy. Just step behind that screen there, hon.”
JayJay did as he was told. As he handed his clothes around the corner, he said, “I was just wondering. I mean, is this heaven?”
Both women laughed at that. “Only if they offer you a contract, hon. Otherwise you’re just a sheet to tear off their clipboard. What size shoe do you wear?”
“Thirteen and a half, ma’am. But I was always partial to boots.”
“Thirteen and a half, you hear that, Gladys?”
“The one part of him that didn’t get shrunken or swollen.”
“Ma’am?”
“Never you mind, son. What’s your name?”
“JayJay Parsons, ma’am.”
The ladies laughed again, full-throated and long. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“Takes you back, doesn’t it?”
“Right out of my past, that boy.” A hand snaked around the screen, holding a pair of jeans. “Try these on.”
“Why, they fit like they was made for me.”
“Let’s hope you’re around long enough to claim them, sport.” A shirt came next, then boots. “You won’t need a hat. They’ll want to shoot you with your face exposed.”
“Shoot?”
“Hurry it up, sport. Let’s have a look at . . .” The voice trailed off as JayJay stepped into view. The two women moved in close together. Their eyes mirrored the same astonished expression.
“Is something wrong?”
The shorter woman nudged her neighbor. “Gladys.”
“What?”
“The kerchief.”
“Oh. Of course. Hang on, I just had it . . .”
“Right there by your machine.”
“Oh. Sure.” Gladys fumbled for it because she seemed unable to take her eyes off JayJay.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He rolled the kerchief cowboy-style, flipping the ends and then slipped it around his neck. He spied his Arapaho collar ring, the one Clara had given him for Christmas a while back. Which was as strange as anything this day, on account of having lost it down the well, oh, it must have been two years back. But JayJay didn’t say anything, the ladies were looking at him strange enough already. He slipped the ring up tight and set the kerchief’s edges front and back of his right shoulder. Lying there on the table was the blade he’d taken off the biker who’d been threatening the ladies in Simmons Gulch. He slipped it in the back of his belt, tilted so it wouldn’t ride up when he sat down. Like he’d been doing it all his life. His every motion made the ladies go more round-eyed.
He cleared his throat. “Y’all are making me right spooked.”
Hilda started like she was coming awake. She gripped his arm and spoke in a shaky purr. “Come on, sport. I got to see this.”
“You aren’t going anywhere without me,” Gladys declared, moving around to his other side.
Chapter 3
Okay. Here’s your choice for the day.” Martin Allerby addressed Peter in what the writer considered full studio-chief mode. “I’ll give you the version for public consumption, or reality. It’s your call.”
They were situated in the penthouse of Centurion Studios’ main office building. If an office building with only five floors could claim to have a penthouse. But Hollywood was all about status. Mythical or real mattered less than whether people believed it or not. Martin Allerby was the head of Centurion Studios. Naturally, his office would be located in the penthouse. Even if it was in the basement bomb shelter under the back-lot cafeteria, it would still be the penthouse. That was Hollywood.
The leather chair squeaked as Peter shifted uncomfortably. An offer of this much truth at nine in the morning could only mean bad news. “Whichever will let me keep my job.”
“A survivor. Good. I like that in my employees.” Martin Allerby reached for one of the five cigarettes he permitted himself each day. Allerby was a spare man. He lived the high life, but in moderation. Martin Allerby was a survivor in a world that generally ate its own young. He did so by keeping his vices in check. He did not care what others did unless it affected the studio’s bottom line. He had produced a stream of television shows that made money for the networks that bought them. He was not cold so much as utterly disconnected.
Allerby smoked Cuban cigarettes that came in a hard box with gold foil. The cigarettes were an odd ivory color. The smoke smelled like cigars. Rich and pungent. It was of course against California law to smoke in a public office. Six months back, an actress being interviewed for a role had complained. As a result, she had been barred from ever entering the studio. Not publicly. But it happened. That was Martin Allerby. He was not a man to cross.
“Okay, here’s the straight deal.” Allerby smiled across his desk. “And if you ever breathe a word of this to the press, you’ll never have lunch in this town again.”
Peter gulped audibly. “Maybe I don’t want to hear it that bad.”
“Too late, Peter.” He released a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “Townsend is a basket case.”
Neil Townsend was the actor who played JayJay Parsons. “I’ve heard the rumors.”
“Sure you have. You saw how he was at the end of last season. We closed the set and made everybody understand their jobs depended on keeping the secret. Which is why we managed to keep the lid on. But nothing and nobody could control Townsend when he was off duty. I’m surprised the secret has been kept this long.”
Allerby made a process of dumping his ash. “I’m telling you this so we can both save some time. My guess is, you arrived today with your spiel all worked out. You were going to remind me there’s nothing like this on television today. Our rankings come and go, but there is a core audience that sticks with us through thick and thin. We generate more fan mail, our advertisers are happy, yada yada. How am I doing?”
The balloon Peter had been carrying since waking abruptly deflated. “I can write around him.”
“No you can’t. JayJay Parsons is the show. And Townsend knows it.”
“So the news I’ve been reading about the show having run its course—”
“Rubbish. Total hogwash. But the public we’re aiming at wouldn’t swallow the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Townsend is finished.” Allerby pronounced the sentence with no emotion whatsoever. “He’s a boozer, a druggy, a sex fiend. We’ve put him into rehab four times at studio expense. He switches addictions for the time he’s inside, going for sugar when he can’t get any other drug. His weight explodes.”
Peter felt the sweat trickle down the length of his spine, cold as an iced dagger. Ready to plunge in and cripple his career. He had held the job of Heartland’s scriptwriter for the last season. The original writer was an old dog named Ben Picksley, who’d worked the Hollywood trenches for thirty-seven years. Picksley knew the players and the wars and the locations of
too many corpses. He’d gotten his start on a Texas series where an old man and his three sons fought off the bad guys every Thursday night at nine. Ben had given Peter his first chance because Peter came cheap. Ben had also liked the fact that Peter didn’t carry any film school habits, like smoking French unfiltered black-tobacco stink bombs or using terms like erudite or predilection in every sentence. Ben’s formula for Heartland had been simple: one moral drama and one tornado per episode. The moral drama could have no more weight than a wet puppy, and the tornado had to come cheap. When Picksley had retired, Peter had gotten the tap. His fate and Townsend’s were inextricably united.
Peter said, “He can lose the weight.”
“He could do a lot of things,” Allerby agreed. “He could shape up. He could rein back the bad habits. He could stop hitting on every female extra that comes within radar range. He could learn his lines. He—”
A roar from the outer office silenced them. Allerby’s only sign of displeasure was the way he thumped out his cigarillo. “Speak of the devil.”
The noise did not sound human at all. “That’s him?”
Allerby’s smile was rapier thin. A slit of humorless, bloodless flesh. “Don’t you recognize our leading man?”
The door slammed back. Peter was so astounded by the sight he could not even rise from his seat.
The voice of Allerby’s secretary emerged from behind the mountainous flesh. “I’m sorry, sir. He just would not listen.”
“That’s all right, Gloria.”
“Off the show? Off the show?” The words were so slurred Peter could hardly make them out. “You cretin! I am the show.”
“Sit down, Neil, or I’ll call Security and have you tossed from the lot. How would that look to the tabloids, I wonder. Leading man sprawled on the pavement outside the Centurion studios. Again.”
It was doubtful Neil Townsend understood what Allerby said. His eyes did a glazed trackless wander around the room. But the chief’s frigid calm subdued the actor. Townsend grunted something unintelligible and started toward the chair next to Peter.
“No, not there. We’ll need a crowbar to lever you out. Take the sofa. Gloria, give our star a hand, will you. That’s it. Now then. What will you have, Neil? Coffee? A week at a fat farm?”
The man could have played a caricature of himself. His features were bloated, his skin splotchy, his eyes almost blind from whatever coursed through his veins. He spoke, but the words dribbled from his lips like crumbs.
“Yes, well, whatever it is you’re telling us would be fascinating, I’m sure. If only I had time to find a translator well versed in Drug-eese. Which I don’t.” Allerby turned to Peter. “I assume I don’t need to say anything further.”
“I-I had no idea.”
“No, no one did.” Allerby fished out another cigarillo and poked it toward Townsend. “After last season’s final episode I gave our star there an ultimatum. Sober up or else. So off he went to rehab. Five weeks later I got a call. Townsend had vanished. That was the last anybody heard from him until this weekend, when his agent phoned to say our Neil was home. The agent was less than pleased when I insisted on going by.”
Allerby lit his cigarette with a slim Dunhill lighter. He snapped the lid shut, blew out his smoke, and said, “I was right to fear the worst.”
“So it’s over.” Peter stared, not at the mound of flesh but rather the end of his own career. One season of writing for a show that got the ax was nothing to light up his résumé. His body felt numb from the blow.
“Brace up, Peter. Your work is solid enough. Which is why I wanted to see you this morning.”
Peter knew what was coming. Hollywood was a very small town. People talked. Centurion had a prime-time drama that was in trouble. Peter had read several of the scripts. It was typical evening soap. A medical drama including incest, greed, murder, and too much wealth gone bad. But it was work. And regular work was hard to find. He had nothing else on offer. He’d be a fool to turn it down.
“We are looking for a writer with your savvy to help turn around—” Allerby was halted by a knock on his door. “What is this, LAX?”
But the head that poked in belonged to Britt Turner, director of Heartland. “Martin, hey, Gloria said you were busy but this can’t wait. Hey, Peter.” Then he saw the man on the sofa. “Oh, wow.”
“Shut the door, Britt.”
“Sure. Right. But it won’t do any good. This will be all over the lot in ninety seconds flat.” Britt moved toward the sofa. “Poor Neil.”
“He’s not dead and buried yet, Britt.”
“Might as well be.” But the news did not seem to bother him. The director turned back to his boss. “You guys have got to come with me.”
“As you can see, we’re busy with—”
“Martin, you’ve got to come now.” Britt was normally one of the most quietly contained men Peter had ever known. He directed his shows with a voice like a silken lash. Today, however, he was bouncing from one foot to the other. “We’ve found our new JayJay.”
Allerby’s second cigarette of the day was pounded into the ashtray. “We’ve been through all that. The public won’t go—”
“The public is going to eat this guy up, Martin. Forget a side order of fries. They’re going to take him raw.”
Martin was already shaking his head. The studio chief knew hype when he smelled it. “I’m not buying. How many screen tests did we sit through?”
“Too many. So many I didn’t even bother to come in for this one.”
Martin frowned. “I didn’t authorize another test.”
“I know. But I was in my office when my AD phoned and said they had this guy. Look, just take a walk with me, okay?”
“You did a test this morning and you’ve got the film ready to show?”
“We didn’t shoot anything yet. I stopped by the set and came straight here. This guy, Martin, don’t look at me like that. I’ve never steered you wrong. I’m telling you, this guy is JayJay Parsons.”
The glutinous mound on the sofa shocked them with a sudden roar. Peter could smell the foul breath from across the room. The star thrashed about so hard he broke one of the sofa legs. He poured onto the carpet. It was a struggle, but he finally managed to make it to his feet. Only then did he emit his first intelligible words since his entrance.
“That role is mine!”
Neil Townsend staggered across the office and slammed the door open so hard it broke the top hinge. Somebody in the outer office screamed.
Martin called through the open doorway, “Gloria, have Security send a couple of men over to the Heartland set.”
His unflappable secretary asked, “Shall I say they have permission to shoot to kill?”
Britt gaped at the empty space as their star thundered down the Centurion hall. “Was it something I said?”
“Look at it this way.” The Centurion CEO reached for his phone, already on to the next deal. “All we need is a decent slasher-horror script and we’re ready to roll.”
Chapter 4
JayJay Parsons leaned against the warehouse’s interior wall. He turned his back to the impossible and focused on what was right there in front of his face. This was real. This metal. This bolt. This paint. This faint smell of dust and disinfectant. He was not dreaming, and this was not a mirage.
“Okay, where’s the hick? No, Claire honey. Not you. The other one. Can somebody kick-start the guy?” The fellow talking was a human gnat. Just buzzing around, stinging whoever was closest. JayJay sighed and swung about. He knew gnats. They’d just keep pestering. They were also attracted to the smell of sweat. Well, JayJay was giving the gnat a ton to work off of.
“You. Male hick. You realize you’re the reason we’re all here, right? Good. Okay, so why don’t we finally shoot this thing so we can let you go back to holding up that wall.”
The gnat had introduced himself as Kip Denderhoff, the assistant director, and then waited like the words were supposed to mean something. And they migh
t have, if JayJay hadn’t just spotted what was there at the other end of the building.
The two ladies had walked him across a huge concrete square, something they called a lot. Gladys and Hilda had led him into this building big as an indoor rodeo, big as outdoors with that afternoon sky painted across the back wall. Then at a snap of a switch the sun had risen inside the building, the lights were that bright. When JayJay’s eyes had adjusted, his legs almost gave way.
Which was how he came to be standing by the side wall, picking at a fleck of loose paint.
“No, no, this won’t do. The hick has sweated through his shirt. Where do they find these clowns?” Kip Denderhoff hefted his clipboard and did an angry pirouette. “Gladys, go get the hick another shirt.”
“I’ll have to sew one up.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Kip wore a loose red shirt that had to be silk. When he waved his arms like he was doing now, the sleeves looked like sails caught in a nervous wind. “We’ve already wasted half a day on this idiot, and you’re telling me we can’t shoot a single lousy take?”
“Maybe if you stopped shouting at the guy he’d loosen up,” a voice muttered from JayJay’s other side.
“I heard that. You want to reacquaint your shoes with the pavement, keep it up.” The assistant director looked at his watch and reeked exasperation. “All right. Twenty minutes, everybody. Gladys, do up two shirts so we don’t have to go through this another time. And Makeup, where’s Peggy?”
“Right beside you.”
“Look, Peggy, darling. His face is running. He might as well be wearing tan lava. Do something.”
“I can use the outdoor cake. It’s guaranteed not to melt under desert sunlight.”
“Any reason why we didn’t do this the first time?”
“It’s a bear to get off and a lot of people are allergic—”
“If I want a diagram, Peggy, I’ll bring in a real artist.” Kip raised his voice another notch. “Off the lights! And turn the a/c up a notch, I’m roasting!”