Hello Hollywood

by Suzanne Corso

  “Since you won’t go out with me, I figure that if I bring lunch to you, it’s not an official date. We’re just two hungry people sharing the best pizza in Hollywood.”

  So we sat out on the balcony like a couple of old friends, exchanging stories about Hollywood’s weirdness. He had more of those stories than I did—he’d been here for decades. One of my favorites was about the valet at one of the plush hotels who was eventually busted for stealing parts from Jaguars and BMWs, which he sold for a tidy profit on the black market. Then there was a woman who cleaned houses for the rich and famous and went on to write a tell-all book about the dysfunctional lifestyles of the people for whom she worked. Ordinary people, really, whose lives were corrupted by Hollywood and fame.

  This sort of corruption, though, was even more prevalent among the children of Hollywood’s movers and shakers, Paul had said, and told me about his son’s addiction to a video game. Luke was now in rehab. Luke’s friend Jake, whose father was the CEO of a major studio, had a sexual addiction that resulted in his being treated for a host of STDs that had nearly killed him. Stories like these made me appreciate just how normal Isabella was.

  We enjoyed a couple more impromptu pizzas after that, and I really started looking forward to seeing Paul, laughing with him, just getting to know him as a person rather than as a producer. So six weeks ago, when he asked me out for the second time on a real date, I accepted. The man exuded such charm and was so much fun to be with that we started sleeping together within a few weeks.

  In these past six weeks, there hadn’t been a single incident with him that set off any alarms in my head. I wasn’t in love with him—yet—but I suspected he was falling in love with me.

  “So Clara says you’d like to join Liza and me for lunch?”

  “If it’s okay.”

  I liked that he asked. Most of the men I’ve known would have just barged in on the lunch as if they had every right to do so. “I don’t see why not. Any particular reason?”

  “News.”

  He was being cagey. “Good news, I hope?”

  “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t bring bad news to lunch with you two.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “Nope. You’ve got to wait till lunch.”

  “Oh, c’mon. That’s not fair.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Principal photography on Brooklyn Story starts next month, on the Gallery Studios lot. I just got the heads-up a little while ago.”

  No one except my grandmother could possibly understand how I felt in that instant. For as long as I can remember, she was my supporter, my cheerleader, the one who encouraged me to write my way out of Brooklyn and into a better story. Gratitude nearly overwhelmed me for everything she’d given me throughout my childhood. Her support had brought me to this moment. As that Smith Corona she gave me when I was seventeen to write it.

  “That’s fantastic. But what happened? A month ago they didn’t even have a full cast.”

  “What happened is that Jenean Conte has agreed to play you.”

  Conte had been nominated for an Oscar last year for a Spielberg film. She was only in her mid-twenties, a beautiful young woman loaded with talent. “She’s perfect for the part, Paul.”

  “And we’re going to celebrate tonight. I’m taking you out for a romantic dinner, for—”

  “I can’t do it tonight, not during the week, when Isabella is home. This weekend would be better. She’ll be spending the night with friends.”

  He hesitated. Paul didn’t really have any concept of what it was like to be a single mother to a teenager. His son was twenty-four, but even if Luke were a toddler, his ex-wife would be tending to him. Maybe that was why Luke was in rehab for his addiction to Mystery Manor. Weird, but there you had it. Nothing out here—even addictions—was like anywhere else. “Okay, let’s shoot for the weekend.”

  Maybe he felt Isabella was old enough to stay by herself—and at sixteen, she definitely was. But for me, this was about the past, about how I hadn’t always been there for her when she needed me. “Great.” It was tricky enough stealing time on weekends to spend the night with Paul. I didn’t want to sneak around on weeknights. “I’ll see you at lunch. Larchmont, twelve-thirty.”

  “I’ll be there, beautiful.”

  I remembered how in the weeks and months after 9/11, Alec’s relentless drive to reach the top had meant he was rarely home. And when he had been home, he’d issued orders about everything from having dinner ready to getting Isabella to and from school on time. It wore me down and left me resentful.

  When I had tried to talk to him about what I felt concerning our marriage, he had blown me off at every chance he had. The few times we’d gone out socially, he hardly acknowledged me except to remark to one of his cronies about how hot I was. I constantly asked myself whether the price of staying in my marriage was greater than the cost of breaking free, or the price of being so rich that it almost made me want to be poor again.

  And now, ironically, thanks to Alec’s insurance policy, we were okay. No man was ever going to put me in that kind of situation again. And I would teach my daughter that very motto.

  • • •

  The Larchmont was one of those restaurants on Melrose that looked like someone’s private home. Liza usually reserved a table in the garden, and that was where the hostess took Marvin and me.

  Liza was already seated, and, as usual, she was texting or emailing someone. She had every A-list actor, director, musician, and writer on speed dial. I used to be pretty far down on the list, but that changed the day Paul optioned Brooklyn Story. Now Liza was like a big sister to me.

  “My favorite people,” she exclaimed as she spotted us, and got up to hug us both hello. “You’ve just got to try the scallops. They are to die for.”

  She talked fast, like the Jewish New Yorker she was, but she was pure Hollywood now. Her long black hair cascaded over the shoulders of her sleeveless Armani dress, as orange as a Popsicle; her Armani sandals matched her Armani handbag; and the diamond studs in her ears were as lovely and perfect as the rock on her finger. Her husband, an entertainment attorney, worshipped the ground she walked on, but Liza had forged her own way in Hollywood.

  “Hey,” Marvin said quietly, and tilted his head to the right.

  I glanced in that direction. Al Pacino was having lunch with an attractive blonde. Half the fun of eating here was watching celebrities. I had no idea who the woman was. “Who’s he with, Liza?”

  “A TV writer. I heard that one of the cable channels is trying to interest him in a series, something epic, like Game of Thrones.” Liza glanced at her watch. “Where’s Paul, anyway?”

  Right on cue, Paul Jannis made his way through the gathering crowd, pausing at one table after another to greet people hello, shake hands. He seemed to know just about everyone and was now working the restaurant. I had seen him do this countless times, working a room at a party, at a dinner, at any social event, and doing it with one intention in mind: to network. Out here, networking was how you landed jobs, made headway. Friends hired friends. He even paused at Pacino’s table.

  He wore California casual—khaki pants, a blue cotton shirt that matched the color of his eyes, leather sandals. He smiled broadly as he approached the table, and the moment his eyes caught mine, I could tell he was undressing me.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, joining us at the table. “Traffic’s a bitch.”

  “Traffic’s always a bitch—it’s L.A.,” Liza said. “But we forgive you, especially if you have good news.”

  “I hope Sam didn’t let the cat outta the bag,” he said.

  Liza laughed and pointed a carefully manicured finger at him. “And which cat would that be?”

  “The one called Brooklyn Story,” Marvin remarked.

  I had told Marvin the news, of course, and strangely enough, Paul seemed to resent it, li
ke I’d robbed him of his moment in the sun or something.

  “Do tell,” Liza said, leaning forward, her wildly intense eyes glinting with curiosity.

  So he did, spilling all the details with great relish and enthusiasm, as though Brooklyn Story were his story, as though he had lived through the dark days of my Brooklyn childhood and teen years with Tony Kroon, one of the Brooklyn mafia boys. Paul couldn’t know what it was like to be treated like chattel and given impossible demands delivered over a clenched fist. That world was as far from him as Pluto was from the sun. Yet he sounded as if he had lived in Brooklyn, in my neighborhood, and had hung out with the mafia boys.

  And right then I suddenly began to doubt the man I’d thought Paul was. Maybe what I hoped might unfold eventually between us was illusion, the stuff of which ­Hollywood was made. My doubt, coming on the heels of Paul’s news about the production schedule, struck me as a grotesque irony, some sort of cosmic joke. And it brought back that age-old question: Who’s orchestrating this stuff ?

  “Sam. Hey, Sam.” Liza waved her hand in front of my face. “You with us?”

  “Sure.”

  “So what do you think about Jenean Conte playing Samantha Bonti?”

  “I’m totally into it. She’s perfect.”

  “And she’d like to meet you as soon as possible,” Paul said. “Just to talk and get a sense of you as a person.”

  “Who’s going to play Tony?” asked Marvin.

  “A relative newcomer,” Paul said. “He’s done a dozen films but isn’t really well known. We figured it was best to cast a new face for this part, just like they did for the part of Peeta in The Hunger Games.”

  “Smart, very smart,” Liza said. “Who’s directing?”

  “Carl Davidson.”

  Davidson had directed two blockbusters in the last five years, and in a town where you were only as good as your last movie, that boded well for Brooklyn Story. I’d heard he could be difficult to work with, but since I’d never met him, I would have to wait and see.

  Liza nodded. “Davidson has a good track record.”

  “He has a great grasp of story,” Paul said.

  The waitress came over and we ordered. Liza was zipping through the calendar on her iPhone, and when the waitress left, she said, “Sam, now that we’ve got a production date, I’d like to schedule you for some publicity—Entertainment Weekly, People, that kind of thing. Not only will it create some early buzz about the movie, but it’ll get DeMarco Productions out there. We could do it when you and Jenean meet to chat.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Paul agreed.

  “Wonderful,” Liza said. “I’ll get that set up this afternoon.”

  “Well, you’d better keep in mind that Sam isn’t available on weekday evenings,” Paul remarked.

  Huh? Had he really said that? Was it what he’d wanted to say on the phone earlier? Liza glanced up from her phone. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Just that I like to be home in the evenings with Isabella,” I said.

  “Of course you do. And it won’t be a problem. These interviews are scheduled during regular work hours.”

  Her eyes darted to Paul and lingered on him. I could tell she had a good idea what his remark was really about. Sometimes, Liza wasn’t just a “tad psychic,” as she’d once put it, but could peer down into your soul.

  Later, as we left the restaurant, Paul drew me aside and spoke quietly, as though he didn’t want Liza and Marvin to hear him. “I shouldn’t have said that, Sam.”

  It was his way of apologizing. But Paul, like the other men who had been in my life, had never been able to say the actual words I’m sorry. “Yeah, you shouldn’t have. But whatever.” I turned away from him to catch up to Marvin and Liza, but he grabbed my upper arm.

  “Hey, hold on.”

  I looked down at his fingers, digging into my skin, his nails perfectly cut and professionally manicured, then looked up at him and wrenched my arm free. “Don’t ever do that,” I snapped.

  He held up his hands and sort of laughed. “Shit, Sam. What’s your problem? You PMSing or what?”

  “Fuck off, Paul,” I spat, and spun around and hurried away from him. It seemed inconceivable that on the very day when I heard Brooklyn Story was actually going to become a movie, I had this weird spat with the same man who’d made that possible. I was grateful to him, but gratitude wasn’t love. Then again, I hadn’t reached the point where I loved Paul.

  I remembered how overjoyed I was when I realized Alec, this big Wall Street guy, was interested in me. My self-esteem had been so low that I suddenly began to see myself in a different light, like maybe there was hope for me. Gratitude toward Alec for his interest in me quickly followed.

  Patterns, so much of my life had been about inner patterns that seemed to attract these kinds of experiences with men. I needed to work on that. I needed to figure myself out in that regard.

  Even though I knew I had to trust that there was an underlying order to all this, some grand plan that I couldn’t see, it was difficult to do right now.

  • • •

  As I pulled into the driveway, Marvin pressed the remote, and the gate slowly slid open. The driveway angled steeply uphill, and to either side of it, the grounds were lushly landscaped with hedges and red and blue flowers, and the grass was so green I could almost smell the color. Palm trees rustled in an evening breeze.

  I drove into my two-acre slice of paradise and stopped the Prius in front of the bungalow. Three bedrooms, two baths, a huge family room—four thousand square feet of living space and windows everywhere that overlooked the property or the Pacific. The property backed up to a canyon the color of rust, and sometimes at night, I heard coyotes howling.

  The guesthouse where Marvin stayed was actually an apartment above the detached garage, and it stood off to the right, partially hidden by trees. As we got out, headlights suddenly shone through the gate at the bottom of the hill. “Is that Isabella?” Marvin asked.

  “No, she’s in the house. The driver’s probably lost.”

  “I’ll check it out.” Marvin, my protector.

  “That’s okay. I’ll go have a look.”

  “Okay, see you in the morn, Sam. It’s my turn to drive.”

  I continued on to the bungalow, parked, gathered up my stuff. As I trotted up the steps to the front door, I noticed that the headlights were still visible at the bottom of the driveway. I felt apprehensive without quite knowing why. I doubted it was Paul. He would have texted or called me first. In fact, most of the people I knew out here would text or call before dropping by.

  I unlocked the front door, set my stuff in the hallway, called for Isabella.

  “In the family room, Mom. Lauren’s here.”

  “Okay, love. I’ve got to check on something. Be right back.”

  I slipped the high heels off my aching feet and padded barefoot down the driveway to the gate. The car was a yellow cab, not something I’d seen frequently out here. A tall, thin man got out the back door.

  “Samantha?” he asked, his words heavily accented. “Samantha Bonti?”

  “I haven’t been a Bonti for years.”

  He wove his way toward the gate, like he was drunk or suffering from some neurological disorder, a bulging backpack slung over his shoulder. The cabbie hopped out, ran over to the man, and shouted. “Hey, dude, you owe me twenty-five bucks. I’m not leaving until I get paid. And if you don’t pay, I’m calling the cops.”

  The man shoved some bills at the cabbie, then came into the glare of the headlights so I saw him clearly—stubbled chin, disheveled clothes, a broken human being with eyes the color of grease.

  “You gonna open the gate?” he asked.

  “I don’t know you,” I said, backing away, suddenly terrified.

  “I have
no place to go. Only here.”

  “Excuse me, driver,” I called. “There’s been a mistake. I don’t know this man.”

  “Samantha. It is me. Vito. Your father.”

  TWO

  Vito Bonti. Shock waves tore through me.

  He was the Italian Catholic immigrant and Vietnam vet who had just called himself my father, but he had contributed zero to my life except DNA. In fact, when my mother had been eight months pregnant with me, he had hurled a car jack at her belly; the resulting hemorrhage had forced her into premature labor. The doctors had told her that when I was delivered, I would either have severe brain damage from the impact of the blow or I would be stillborn. But I had survived and Vito Bonti had taken off. And now I was supposed to open the gate, throw my arms around him, and welcome him into my home?

  As the cabbie backed out into the road, Vito said, “You done real good for yourself, Samantha.”

  “No thanks to you. What the hell are you doing here, Vito?”

  “I got nowhere else to go.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve got three ex-wives and two other children.”

  In my head, I kept seeing my mother, her spirit beaten down by this man, who had reminded her at every opportunity that she was just a poor Jewish girl from Brooklyn. And I kept seeing my younger self running to him that day and throwing my arms around his legs, and how he pulled away from me.

  “Don’t know where any of ’em are.”

  “Not my problem.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Now that the cabbie had left, it was my problem. “Besides, you tracked me down.”

  “Findin’ you was easy. Ran into Franco in the ol’ neighborhood.” Alec’s brother. “He tol’ me ’bout Alec’s death, your book, you runnin’ off to Hollywood.”

  “Franco is a plastic surgeon, Vito. And unless you’ve come way up in the world, you two sure don’t travel in the same circles.”

  “You got that right. He was doin’ pro bono work at the homeless shelter where I was stayin’. Recognized his name, DeMarco, and I asked him if he knew Samantha, said she’s my kid.”