I absorbed everything she said, as Liza was busy typing away on her iPhone, and churned it through my tired brain, and said, “Not. Forget it. Vito isn’t a part of this story, except on film.”
She looked at me then, and I saw only relief in her expression.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Always.”
“Besides the money, what’s in this for you?”
She burst out laughing. “Are you kidding? You know how many women are in the position that I’m in? I can count them on one hand: Kathryn Bigelow. Debra Granicks’s Winter’s Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence before she was huge. Granicks’s star rose when Lawrence was nominated for that part and went on to become the beloved Katniss of The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins wasn’t just the author of the books; she was an executive producer. Then there’s Amy Pascal, who actually heads a major studio. But none of them do what I do, Sam. I’m a connector, a networker, a thread that unites a lot of people in various areas of the industry.”
“At what personal cost, Liza?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She gazed out her window, her lip quivering, and when she looked back at me, her eyes welled with tears. “My marriage has collapsed. Tom’s having an affair with a woman twenty years younger and thinks I’m clueless. It’s a mess.”
I put my arms around her, letting her cry. “What’re you going to do?”
She pulled back, dabbing at her eyes with some Kleenex, and shook her head. “Nothing. Not yet. But I’ve been stashing money away in my own accounts so he can’t touch it. Not that he needs my money, he earns plenty. But since the spouse is entitled to fifty percent in California, I’m being careful. I’ve worked too long and too hard to have some bimbo twenty years younger than me sweep in and enjoy the fruits of my labor.”
I suspected there was a lesson in all this for me, too. “Look, however the whole thing shakes out, Liza, you’ll land on your feet. You will always land on your feet—it’s how you are.”
“Damn straight, I will.” She smoothed her hands over her clothes, then slipped out her iPhone. “You’ve got an interview with Entertainment Weekly next Wednesday, and they’d like to do it in your home or in your office. People wants to do a photo shoot with you and Jenean Conte. And, honey, you with that gorgeous raven-black hair, those sultry eyes . . . You’d be perfect for a cover shot. They’ve already spoken with Jenean’s publicist, and she’s on board. We just need a firm date.”
Her abrupt transition from the personal to the professional startled me. “You need to teach me how to do that, Liza.”
She winked; she knew exactly what I meant. “Sistah, if we stick together, no men are going to screw us over.”
Amen to that.
“So, you good with these two interviews?”
“Absolutely.”
“And there are more in the pipeline. Onward, my friend. Ever onward.”
With that, she put the Mercedes back in gear, exited the parking lot, and pulled back into traffic.
FOUR
I didn’t hear anything from Paul for the next few weeks and didn’t miss the drama or the negativity he had so recently stirred up in me. I hoped he’d gotten the hint that my feelings toward him had changed so we could avoid a confrontation. I didn’t want to be in a relationship with him, I didn’t want to sleep with him, and I knew that at some point I would have to say these things to his face. But not today. So for now, I let it be. Besides, I suddenly had a lot of other stuff on my plate.
The interview with Entertainment Weekly went well. It was held at our office, with Liza, Marvin, and Clara there, too. I talked to the interviewer for more than two hours—mostly about Brooklyn and how I’d written the novel. They were going to feature the novel and get quotes from King, Prince, and Paul, and the article was supposed to run next week. As Liza said, “Prepare yourself, Sam. Once this piece and the People article are published, folks from your past are going to be popping out of the woodwork.”
Great, as long as those people didn’t include Vito, Tony, and any of the Brooklyn Boys.
The day before the EW article was published, Jenean Conte and I met at my house, with a writer and photographer from People. She arrived early, which gave us a chance to chat over coffee.
In person, she was strikingly pretty in an offbeat sort of way. Everything about her physical appearance seemed excessive—she probably didn’t weigh even a hundred pounds, her eyes were a bit too large, her mouth a bit too seductive, her nose a bit too long. But somehow it all worked. I had the distinct impression that she didn’t spend a lot of time primping, getting manicures, or having botox injections. Well, she was too young for the latter, her flawless skin the kind that every woman over thirty-five envied. She seemed completely comfortable in her own skin, something I’d never mastered.
Even the way she dressed was about comfort—black cotton slacks with a beautiful blue top that matched the color of her eyes, sandals, gold peace-symbol earrings. I liked her immediately.
We sat out on the back deck, in the cool morning air, the rust-colored canyon wall rising behind us like a monolith from some ancient past. “So, Sam, besides your daughter and writing, what are your passions?”
“Finding true love.”
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. It sounded absurd, like something a woman in a nineteenth-century romance novel would say or Rapunzel herself in the tower—and, hey, the woman in the novel would say it more poetically. But Jenean got it immediately. “Well, hell, isn’t that what we all want? The perfect guy. Great sense of humor. He’s madly in love with you, loyal, he’d never cheat on you. He’s hot, passionate, great in bed. He’s kind, loves your pets and your kids, isn’t a freeloader, and how about if he’s a great cook to boot? Did I leave anything out?”
“He’s your other half.”
“Well, yeah. There’s that.” She twisted her long brown hair behind her head and sat back, her expression contemplative. “Your soul mate.”
“Right.”
She let her hair fall back to her shoulders, a thick, shiny cascade. “You finish each other’s sentences.”
I nodded.
“There’s hardly any need to talk because you understand each other so completely.”
“Yes.”
“Are you also business and creative partners?”
“That would be awesome, an extra bonus. But he’s not my clone.” I thought immediately of John Steeling. “He’s different enough so that we complement each other.” He seemed to drift in and out of my mind lately, ever since our last encounter.
Her head bobbed, and she pulled out an iPad mini and stylus and made some notes. “You think our soul mates actually exist?”
“I sure hope so.”
She laughed. “Yeah, me, too. But you know what?” She leaned forward slightly, and in a hushed, confidential tone, said, “You and I, talking about soul mates . . . you know how many people would say we’re hopeless romantics?”
“Most people.”
“I’d rather be a romantic than a cynic.”
“Same here. You dating anyone special?”
She rocked her hand from side to side. “Sometimes.” She mentioned an actor whose name wasn’t familiar to me. “But in this town, it’s hard to meet guys with substance.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“I like this thing you do with your hands, Sam.”
I wasn’t aware that I did anything with my hands. “What thing?”
“Your hands are expressive, always moving.”
Not surprising. I’m half Italian. But I suddenly felt so self-conscious about them, I nearly tucked my hands under my thighs to still them. “I don’t even notice it anymore.”
“Your grandmother. Tell me about her.”
“She was my support system, my cheerleader. She told me to write myself ou
t of this story and into a better one. So I did.”
“My God, I love that line. I just love it.” She tapped furiously on her iPad, then looked up and glanced around slowly. “I’d say you’ve written yourself way out of Brooklyn and into an American dream.”
“Did you read The Suite Life?”
“Finished it last night.”
“Well, I’m here in this American dream because my husband took out a large life insurance policy that I didn’t know about. He died nearly two years ago.”
She’d probably made millions during the course of her short career. Just the same, her eyes widened. “Wow,” she breathed. “Incredible. Do you think he had some sort of precognitive feeling that he would die young?”
When you lived as hard as Alec had—driving yourself relentlessly, robbing yourself of good meals, enough sleep, and a peaceful lifestyle and hitting yourself hard with HGH, so you could keep up with it all, you probably didn’t need precognition to know your days were numbered. When I said all that, she stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“That’s sad,” she said finally. “People burn themselves out for all the wrong reasons. Every time I finish a movie, I treat myself to a trip to some remote place where I don’t know the language or the customs. It forces me to be fully present, to be really aware of what’s important. Do you have something like that?”
“Yeah, my daughter.”
“Just so you know. I heard that Brooklyn Story is true. I don’t care one way or another. To me, it’s just a terrific story. But if that comes up in the interview, you’d better know what you want to say.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Speculation abounded on the Internet about all sorts of things, but the question about whether the Brooklyn Story was memoir or fiction seemed as if it should be pretty far down on anyone’s list. And it was mostly fear of reprisal from the Brooklyn Boys that prompted me to write the book as fiction. Sure, I cared about what people might think—people out here in L.A.—but fear was at the root of my reluctance to call it a memoir.
The sliding-glass doors opened, and Marvin stepped out. “Hey, Sam, Jenean. The writer and photographer from People are at the gate. If you two are ready for them, I’ll let them in.”
“We ready, Jenean?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let them in, Marvin,” I said, as though they were a pack of wolves.
“Done.” He slipped back inside the house.
“Have you been interviewed by People before, Sam?”
I shook my head.
“Then there’re a couple of things you should keep in mind. If we get on the cover, it’ll be fantastic for your novel and for the movie. It means the article will be a couple of pages instead of a few paragraphs that you read in the bathtub. This magazine makes bestsellers and puts people on the map, okay?” Her thumb popped up. “That’s number one. Number two . . .” Her index finger joined her thumb. “We engage them, we play to them, we give them some juicy quotes, we tease them. Got it?”
“Got it,” I replied, and hoped that I did.
“Otherwise, they’re in control and may start asking questions that we don’t feel like answering.”
The reporter was male and the photographer female, both in their early thirties, I guessed. Rick and Ria, an ambitious duo. He was all smiles, a public relations marvel who made you feel like you two had been best buds your entire life. Tell me your secrets, his smile whispered. You can trust me. And he almost won me over until he asked, “So tell me, did your dad really hit your pregnant mother with that car jack?”
“It’s a novel, Rick. That means it’s fiction.”
“Well, yeah, but I hear it’s all true.”
We were in the kitchen when he said this. Rick was sitting at the table, his iPad in front of him, and I was slicing up some strawberries and cheese for a platter of snacks. For all I knew, he was looking at porn on his iPad. Ria was out on the deck with Jenean. “Heard from whom?”
“Paul Jannis, who else?”
“He optioned a novel, not a memoir.” And why had Paul taken it upon himself to tell the media?
Rick shrugged. “Hey, novel or memoir, it’s all the same. Writers write what they experience. Did you know that Cormac McCarthy lived under a bridge for a while? I mean, honestly, this guy won the Pulitzer, and he’s living under a bridge?”
Another bridge, another story.
“You know who he is, right?” Rick asked when I didn’t say anything.
“The Road,” I replied. “One of the most depressing dystopian novels I’ve ever read. But I couldn’t put it down.”
“Me, neither.”
I walked over to the table with the platter of snacks and sat down. I leaned close enough his way to hear him sucking at a strawberry. “So tell me, Rick. If something is true, how does that change your reporting?”
He laughed nervously and drew back. “Are you kidding? It’s the difference between five hundred words and fifteen hundred, between an article and a cover story.”
“Really.”
The light streaming through the windows danced in his eyes. I had seized his attention. “Well, here’s the thing, Rick. If I told you it was all true, I might find myself with broken kneecaps, a broken jaw, a severed spinal cord. I might find myself in a wheelchair. So it’s fiction. Got it?”
And there it would stay, I thought, unless I heard from Father Rinaldi that the Brooklyn Boys were thrilled they would hit the big screen. He’d always had his ear to the ground, and he had known everything about everyone. But fat chance of that. I didn’t even know if the priest was still alive.
“Uh, yeah. For sure.”
“And please don’t quote me on that.”
“You’d better talk to Paul. He’s been telling people all over town that the story is true.”
Interesting. No wonder I hadn’t heard from him. He’d been too busy getting even because I hadn’t allowed him to speak for me. He wouldn’t call it getting even, of course. He would tell me that a movie based on a true story had greater box office appeal. Maybe it did. But I couldn’t risk it. For all I knew, the Brooklyn Boys were alive and well, and if and when they saw the movie, they might decide to get even. Everyone was busy getting even.
“Thanks for the tip, Rick.”
Jenean and Ria joined us then, and Ria took some photos of Jenean and me together out on the deck, in the kitchen, then walking together down the driveway, two women deep in conversation. As we walked, Jenean asked, “How’d it go?”
“Great. Except that Paul Jannis has apparently been telling everyone that Brooklyn Story is a memoir.”
“That’s what Paul told my agent last week when they spoke. He said he thought it might help me really get into the part in a more profound way.” She laughed. “He obviously doesn’t know much about how actors immerse themselves in their parts. Like I said before, it doesn’t make any difference to me whether the story is true or not. I’m captivated by the character.”
So had Paul called up the agents and managers of everyone who had been cast in the film to let them in on the big fucking secret? Had he let John in on the real scoop, too?
“Hey, have you met John Steeling?” Jenean asked.
“At lunch the other day. Why?”
“He’s nuts about your book.”
“How do you know him?”
“I just met him several days ago. Apparently, he’s investing a chunk of change in the film, and King and Prince have given him considerable say about things.”
“Is that normal?”
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never paid too much attention to the financial workings of studios. I always figured that when they have big-name directors and stars on board—Spielberg, Lucas, Streep, De Niro, DiCaprio, Willis, Lawrence—they’ve got banks lining up, eager to loan what they need. If stu
dios are anything like producers, then they’re loath to use their own money.”
It sounded cynical but was probably realistic. As a fledgling production company with limited funds, we weren’t exactly leaping at the chance to put out a quarter of a million for a script—even when we loved it—if we didn’t already have interest from a studio, network, or cable station. And we hadn’t been approached by any banks eager to extend loans.
“So when you met John, what did you talk about?”
“The character of Samantha. He wanted to know how I perceived her, flaws and strengths, her inner world, really specific questions. He said he had studied my films—not seen them, but studied them, like some AFI student, right? Or like a critic. And he said that after studying my films, he felt I’m the perfect actress for the character. I had the distinct impression that if he’d felt otherwise, I would’ve lost this role.”
“Really? You think he has that much clout at Gallery?”
“It sure seems that way to me.”
We stopped at the end of the driveway, and Ria asked us to walk back uphill for some additional shots. “I want a couple of profile shots,” she called. “Of the two of you conversing.”
Well, that was easy, as long as Ria was out of range. Jenean and I turned, facing each other. She whispered, “John wants De Niro in the film. Did he tell you that? Maybe as one of the priests.”
“Which priest?”
“Probably Rinaldi.”
“His part’s not very big.”
“I think that’s the point. De Niro in a small part. I don’t know, they’ll figure it out. He has also approached Susan Sarandon about playing the grandmother. Even if we only get one of these people, this movie is going to be off the charts.”
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