by Davis Bunn
“What if I’m right?”
“Then you can have the pleasure of firing her.” Menzes returned to his desk. “But I’m not wrong.”
14
Shari arrived home that evening just after nine. Most of the young aides she knew lived jammed together in sardine conditions. Either they took a cramped room overlooking a West Hollywood freeway, or they found a partner higher up the food chain and pretended at love. But Shari’s grandmother lived in one of the apartment towers lining Santa Monica Boulevard in Brentwood. As far as the movers and shakers were concerned, Brentwood held all the appeal of a Kansas City suburb. Brentwood was staid. Brentwood was old money. Brentwood was a haven of Republicanism in the sea of West Coast Democrats. Shari couldn’t care less about politics, except of course for the vital affairs of state that ruled the studio system.
What Brentwood was for Shari was safe. And safety in the midst of the carnivores trolling the Hollywood waters was a rare commodity.
“Gran, I’m home.”
“Hello, darling.”
Shari set her keys in the ceramic bowl and her purse on the hook in the foyer closet. Shari was not a guest. She was home here. Her grandmother had a six-day-per-week housekeeper and expected Shari to live by her rules. As in, the public rooms were to be kept hotel-lobby immaculate.
Shari leaned on the wall and pried off her heels. She padded down the hallway to her room. If the military had designed a grenade that could totally blow order out the window without damaging anything, the result would look like Shari’s room. The maid refused to even glance inside. Shari hung up her work clothes, pulled a SoCal sweatshirt and stylishly torn jeans from their respective piles, and padded barefoot back to the living room.
She bent over and kissed her grandmother’s offered cheek. Lizu Khan was as flawless as her apartment. She was not going out. She was expecting no visitors. Yet her makeup was ready for a closeup, her nails manicured, her hair as perfectly coiffed as her twice-weekly beautician could make it. She wore pearls and a diamond-studded bracelet, nylons, and a Dior suit knit from pashmina clouds.
Her grandmother smiled at the exposed knee and asked, “How was your day?”
Shari’s normal response was, so-so. She usually plopped into the sofa by the rear window, scrubbed her scalp hard enough to erase the day’s frustrations, and opened the chest where she kept her nightly reads—scripts, corporate doggerel, various trades. If it was a particularly awful day, Shari took a drink and a pile of what she called her flip-throughs out onto the balcony. The apartment faced away from the traffic and was high enough to watch the sun set over Santa Monica. Shari would sit and dream that her ship had finally arrived in the smog-ridden glint of water on the horizon. Her grandmother was neither one to pry nor cling. If Shari wanted to talk, her grandmother was available. Otherwise, they were comfortable with silences that often lasted from hello to good-night.
Friends.
Tonight, however, Shari replied, “Today was actually great.”
“Well, finally.” Shari’s grandmother set aside her book. “Maria left your dinner in the oven. Go have your dinner and then we’ll talk.”
Instead, Shari fixed herself a tray and brought it back into the living room. She appreciated her grandmother’s interest in her job, especially since her own mother was mortally ashamed of her daughter working in Hollywood. Between bites, she told her grandmother what had happened over the past few weeks. The skiing accident that had claimed her boss. The maneuvering. The news she’d learned from a friend about the new Nashville-based production company. How she’d phoned the detective agency her boss used and claimed authority to set up surveillance. She took it through today’s meeting with Sam Menzes and Derek Steen.
Her grandmother’s only response was to toy with her pearls. She was truly a queen, this woman. A dowager who had been preserved in the essence of power. Her sofa was a makeshift ivory throne, the apartment her only kingdom. But she emanated the heartless wisdom of one who had once ruled a fiefdom with a velvet voice and absolute authority.
Shari’s memories of her grandfather were hazy, mostly of a smiling old gentleman whose snow-white mustache she loved to pull. Her father had been born in Islamabad while her grandfather had been Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan. When they returned to Tehran, it had been for her grandfather to become a minister in the shah’s inner circle. The ministers controlled access. And to the multitude of companies that wanted to do business in Iran, access was everything. Money poured in a constant deluge. During those days of endless wealth, the Brentwood apartment had been the smallest of six family residences, purchased so her father would have someplace to live while he studied engineering at UCLA. Shari’s bedroom had once housed her father’s live-in butler.
Her grandfather had been one of the wise ones, or perhaps merely lucky. When Iran had descended into chaos, Shari’s grandfather had spirited his family away. He had promised he would either follow them if things grew worse or bring them back once order was restored. Instead, Shari’s grandfather had disappeared into the bedlam that followed the revolution. They never learned what had happened to him. Shari’s grandmother still tried.
The Brentwood apartment and a small annuity were all that remained from those fabled days of wealth and power almost beyond imagination. Even so, Shari knew just how lucky they were. Every now and then she returned home to find her grandmother hosting friends who greeted Shari almost slavishly. Shari’s grandmother would introduce them as a former general or prince. They would be carefully groomed in a manner that only heightened the strain of poverty. They spoke together in Farsi, which Shari had stubbornly refused to learn, but she did not need to understand the language to know her grandmother politely served tea to desperate beggars.
Her grandmother had learned English at an Oxfordshire boarding school that had also housed three of the Shah’s family. “I’m always telling you, whatever you decide to do in this life, go into it with your eyes wide open.”
“I’m fully aware of the risks.”
“Oh, piffle. You know nothing.” Lizu Khan even criticized with elegance. “Your adolescent blindness is so complete you take pride in ignorance.”
Shari flushed. “Stop talking down to me, old woman.”
Her grandmother’s eyes widened. “The tone you take with your elders.”
“Then show me a little respect.” Shari shifted her tray to the coffee table, setting it down hard enough to punctuate her anger with clatter. “I’ll tell you the risks I know. I know you’re not talking about this one chance but the whole Hollywood tribe. I know the women who make it to the top here have nothing except their job. They’re all divorced. They’re all lonely. They all live for nothing except making the next film.”
“This is the life you want?”
“Of course not. Stop asking silly questions. But that’s what you said, wasn’t it. Know the risks. I’m telling you, I want this job. I hope I can escape the other women’s fate. But I’m going in with my eyes wide open.”
“I’m sorry I upset you.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, no. Forgive me. Somehow your grandfather’s spirit skipped a generation, but you have it in full, I’m happy to say. Now tell me the rest.”
Shari recounted how today’s meeting had ended.
“He told you to write your own contract? This is normal?”
“Of course not.”
“One can never tell. So much is alien here. Very well. Then this gentleman has handed you a test. You see that, of course.”
“Yes.”
“He will expect you to concentrate on yourself. More money. More expenses. More travel. Perhaps a car. You will do none of this.”
“I’m tired of crumbs.”
“Listen to me, darling. I am not wrong. You will ask for power. You will ask for responsibility. You will ask for access.”
“I need the money too.”
“You will leave that blank, do you hear me? You will name the position, d
escribe it in careful detail. Then you will march in and ask him to pay you what you deserve.”
Shari mulled that over. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am. You think your grandfather rose to the top of the kingdom alone? I was a mistress of power.”
“You still are.”
“So. We remain friends. That is good.” The smile descended into worried creases. “But I am most concerned about this opposition you face.”
“What, the Nashville group? They’re nowhere. They don’t stand a chance.”
“Which is exactly what the shah and his advisors said about the rabble screaming in the souks. They are religious, this group, yes?”
“The man in charge is. I don’t know about the others.”
She wagged an arthritic finger. “I remember their missionaries. So quiet, so very polite. But they ate at the people’s minds. Suddenly there were secret churches everywhere. The imams were terrified over losing their authority. But the shah’s hands were tied; the American authorities ordered him to let the missionaries in. And his advisors, they sneered at these missionaries—they were just peasants from silly little towns in Texas. Phah. What did they know, these princes who never left Tehran except to ski in Gstaad or summer in St. Tropez? These missionaries talked the language of the people. They enraged the imams to the point that the imams threatened to take matters into their own hands. Which they did, inflaming the people who chafed under the shah. And down the house of cards fell. Costing us everything. Even your grandfather.”
“I never knew that was what happened.”
“And now you do.” The jewels on her wrist winked a warning glimmer. “Mark my words. This is not rabble. Never mistake them for smoke. They are the enemy. They must be dealt with mercilessly.”
15
Shari Khan stood to the right of the studio limos, hidden behind her oversized Max Mara shades. She glanced down at the concrete, just making sure her feet were still in contact with the ground.
The studio PR brass clustered between the limos and the runway. A hot Santa Ana wind blew her dark hair across her face. Shari tossed her head to clear her eyes, and caught sight of the studio brass glancing her way. They had no idea who she was, and it bothered them. She smiled, ever so slightly. Let them wonder.
Six o’clock in the morning, the day after her meeting with Sam Menzes, she had been the first to arrive in the studio’s central offices. As ordered, she had left her new contract on Derek Steen’s desk.
When Steen ordered her to appear, Shari was so drenched in adrenaline sweat she felt like she squished with each step. “You wanted to see me?”
“Shut the door and come sit down.” Steen’s office was directly opposite Sam Menzes’ suite. It was marginally smaller than Menzes’, and his desk was executive standard. But the air of power was the same.
Sam Menzes was an anomaly within the Hollywood trade. He had come up through the ranks of distributors. He started off in the late sixties, inheriting a chain of New England movie theaters. Menzes built the first megaplexes outside the major metropolitan centers, predicting that if the public was offered highquality digital sound and huge screens and rocking-chair seats, the ongoing decline in ticket sales could be reversed. Menzes was proved spectacularly correct. In twelve years, Menzes built a chain of a hundred and fifty theaters. When a Hollywood distributor tried to buy him out, Menzes arranged a hostile takeover of the Los Angeles company. The trades called it a real-life case of the minnow swallowing the whale.
Menzes continued to grow and to acquire. When Galaxy’s former owner, the largest distiller in North America, put the studio up for sale, Menzes acquired both the production company and the studio’s impressive library of films. He then purchased a cable company, which granted him a means of paying himself rent for airing old movies.
Menzes ran his conglomerate like the film giants of old. He hired good people but never gave them free reign. Derek Steen was the power behind the throne. When Sam Menzes ordered an execution, Derek Steen wielded the knife.
Steen said, “You cost me a thousand dollars.”
“Excuse me?”
“I bet Sam you’d come back with a list of demands big enough to choke an agent.”
Shari heard herself speak from a disembodied distance. “I’m sorry you opted to wager against me, Mr. Steen.”
He lifted her contract by thumb and forefinger. “This has also cost me the pleasure of firing you. I am very good at that particular portion of my job, Ms. Khan. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. Steen.”
He flipped the contract to page two. “You want a managerial position in Admin. Are you sure you have what it takes?”
“It’s the chance I’ve been dreaming of,” she replied.
Sam Menzes and his executive team occupied the top two floors of the Galaxy administrative building, which anchored the northeast corner of the vast lot fronting Pico Boulevard. The next three floors were given over to producers and directors under contract to Galaxy. Directly below them were Accounts and Legal. Menzes liked to say it was his way of sandwiching in the talent. The floor below was Sales. Then came Film Editing and Archives. Ground floor and the two above that housed Galaxy’s massive PR complex, considered by many to be the best in the business. Shari’s former boss was one of Galaxy’s four vice-presidents of Public Relations. Like all Hollywood studios, Galaxy sprouted more VPs than LA grew oranges.
Between PR and the film library was the mystery floor. It housed what was officially known simply as Admin. Galaxy’s stable of talent knew the building’s fourth floor by a different name. They called it the snake pit.
Every Hollywood studio had such a group. Often it was kept at arm’s length, run through a trusted attorney’s office so deniability was an option. Menzes, however, had no intention of letting that much power remain outside his direct control.
Admin had one basic function; to ensure that every Galaxy film made as much money as possible, by whatever means necessary. The Admin sector contained a rogue’s gallery of former agents, forensic accountants, and courtroom-hardened attorneys. They were all ruthless. They were hungry. And they were utterly without scruples.
Steen said, “We don’t have managers in Admin.”
Shari nodded but did not speak. She knew it. But she could not bring herself to write in the alternative. She had gone back and forth over it, then finally gone to her grandmother, who had totally agreed. Use the insipid word, her grandmother had insisted. Let him bestow upon you the crown.
Which was exactly what Steen proceeded to do. He unscrewed his pen and scratched out the word manager. He then proceeded to scrawl in a dream come true. “Your official title will be Assistant Producer. Which means absolutely nothing unless you make it work. Are we clear on this?”
“Totally, Mr. Steen. I won’t let you down.”
“You’ll answer directly to me. Admin is my own personal domain.” He flipped to the back pages, the ones she had left blank, and scribbled busily. “Sam sees something in you, Ms. Khan. I personally have my doubts.”
Shari resisted the urge to scream, dance, race around the desk and hug this man who claimed to dislike her and want her gone.
“Hand this to Madeline on your way out.” He initialed the bottom of the last page and passed over the completed contract, then gave her a full two seconds of his lead-colored gaze. “If you want to have a job this time next month, Ms. Khan, you will continue to prove me wrong.”
The John Wayne Airport was on the wrong side of LA and in Shari’s opinion an odd place to land a private jet full of stars. Shari made no attempt to approach the studio’s PR group clustered on the tarmac. Her grandmother had given Shari only two bits of advice after reviewing Shari’s new contract. “You will remain hidden until you are certain both of the timing and the direction of your strike.”
“I’m not after drawing blood here. I’m after making a great film.”
“Phah.” A finely lacquered nail tapped the pages.
“You have been hired because you are a great filmmaker, yes? A woman with a reputation for creating great stories?”
Shari felt her face flush. “Of course not.”
“So don’t talk nonsense and listen. The people who are also not story makers, they will see you as a threat. Which you are. So you will remain silent and keep your dagger hidden. They will study you. They will ask around. They will receive nothing from you. Nobody was ever defeated by words they did not speak or actions they never took. Soon, they will begin to ignore you. Perhaps even forget. Then, when it is time.” Her grandmother slapped the papers. “You strike.”
Shari wanted to take back the contract trapped beneath her grandmother’s hands. But something told her that was exactly what her grandmother expected her to do. “You said there were two parts to your advice.”
Her grandmother leaned back in her chair, but her hands remained where they were on the contract. “You are listening. Excellent. So here is the second portion. Seek out others like you.”
Shari smiled. “This contract says there isn’t anybody like me.”
Her grandmother not only smiled but reached across and patted her hand. “You not only have your grandfather’s spirit but his conceit as well. Which is good. You will see. What I mean is this. Search for others with hidden strengths. People who are overlooked by the peons who cluster around the throne and scrabble for crumbs of power. Find them, and make them your allies. No. More than that.”
Her grandmother leaned across the dining room table, so close Shari could see the chandelier reflected in those coal-dark eyes. “You will make them your friends.”
Which was why, when she heard the male voice behind her say, “You’re missing all the excitement, standing over here with the outcasts,” Shari did not snub him by moving farther away.
Instead, she turned and saw a man with the muscular frame of a stunt guy leaning against the fender of the last limo. He wore his suit like other guys might dream of fitting into Speedos, bulging about the shoulders and neck, slimming down to narrow hips. His neck was large enough to demand a tailored dress shirt. The afternoon sun glinted off a gold Rolex and wraparound shades. His salt-and-pepper hair was LA perfect.