Hollywood Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

Bix was reading the second note. She allowed her face to go blank and she took a few breaths before she looked up. “How about a studio tour, Tim?”

  If Jane had known she had a firm lunch date with Jeb, she might have opted for open-toed shoes to show off her fresh pedicure, a fitted blouse to show that she had a waist, and a flirtier skirt that would showcase her still-slim legs. That morning, however, when she was dressing for the meeting she did not want to take, she had decided to dress down, show she could be casual and unimpressed by an interested producer. She had assumed she’d have a chance to change and prepare herself more for a meeting with Jeb. Her jeans were not expensively torn, but they did fit well. She had paired it with a loose-fitting pale yellow shirt and wound a rope of amber Bakelite beads around her wrist, passing Tim’s wardrobe scrutiny with only a sniff at her insistence on sticking with the old hippie riffraff look. Tim had selected the earrings she wore, a tangle of loopy gold chains that hung from a small rough-cut citrine. And Jane herself had chosen to wear her old faithful rusty orange clogs, for comfort and luck.

  Now, waiting for Jeb at a sidewalk table, she checked her lipstick and hair and thought just for a moment that perhaps she, Jane Wheel, a happy enough wife and mother, shouldn’t be thinking about whether or not her pedicure was showing. Why was her heart racing at the thought of seeing Jeb Gleason again?

  Jane quickly calculated the time difference between Los Angeles and the site where Charley and Nick were digging and sifting and cataloging. Charley’s cell phone did not work there, but once a week they drove into a small town nearby and called Jane with an update. As accustomed as she was to Charley’s absences when he was in the field, she needed to hear his voice now.

  “I still haven’t forgiven you for breaking my heart.”

  Jeb’s voice was as deep and self-amused as she remembered. She had rehearsed what she would say to Jeb, but none of her well-thought-out witty words came to mind.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Touché,” said Jeb. He kissed her cheek and pulled up a chair. Within two minutes he had charmed the waitress, who looked vaguely familiar to Jane, into switching the flowers on the table, a tall vase of carnations for a low basket of violets—all the better to see you with, he had explained to Jane—and also secured an off-the-menu list of specials that the chef would make up for regular customers who knew enough to ask.

  “May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the menu, and Jane nodded.

  He ordered shrimp bisque for both of them, a basket of artisan breads, and a cheese plate, then asked for one lamb curry and a wild mushroom ragout with extra plates for sharing. “And a bottle of the Sancerre,” he added.

  “Isn’t that too sweet?” Jane asked.

  Jeb shook his head. “Not this one. Doesn’t really go with the lamb, but it’s too delicious to pass up. Might be trite to ask about the last twenty years, so I’ll start with today. How was your meeting?”

  Jane shrugged. “You first. You’re not acting anymore, are you?”

  Jane knew Jeb had begun writing as soon as he hit Los Angeles, but she didn’t want to admit she had followed his career and his credits, if not the actual programs he wrote, for years. Parker’s Playground, Mr. Meek and Polly—those were his early shows. Then the megahit—Southpaw and Lefty. Everyone watched on Thursday nights and quoted it to each other the next day. Viewers claimed withdrawal headaches when it left the air. After Southpaw, Jeb was executive producer of a badly reviewed comedy drama that limped along for one and a half seasons—Merle’s Place. It had been off the air for two years.

  “I better not be, since you don’t recognize me from anything.”

  Jeb told Jane that he was writing a screenplay and working off a development deal. “I was a writer on a hit show, so I’ve still got some…and have an idea that will blow…” Jeb reached for the cell phone that was quietly vibrating in his pocket. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

  While Jeb answered questions and laughed at his apparently witty caller, Jane sized up her first love. He had aged well. Damn men. They all did. Tim, with his crinkly eyes, all Redford-and Newman-like, and Charley with his boyish grin and hair forever tumbling over his forehead. Now she had to add Jeb to the handsome-boys-to-handsome-men list—still tall, still lean, no loss of confidence in his smile, no fading of those intense dark eyes. Just enough gray to signal experience and wisdom, but not enough to make any girl half his age lose interest. Damn those men.

  Jane watched Jeb drum his fingers while he listened to his caller. That was new. Jane had always considered Jeb’s hands to be his most startling feature. He was tall and thin, with huge hands that he would lace in front of him on his lap. He always held them still. To Jane, loopily in love with him, his quiet hands had emphasized how capable and strong he was. The last thing you’d say about the Jeb Gleason she knew was that he was a fidgeter.

  Jane heard angels sing and looked up. Down. Her purse was vibrating in celestial celebration. She’d ask Tim to change this ring—a lively mambo, perhaps? She sure didn’t feel like she deserved a heavenly choir. She wouldn’t have answered her cell phone while out to lunch with a friend, but what the hell? Jeb was so engaged in his conversation that he didn’t even look up when she answered her phone.

  “Yeah?”

  Angels must have a sense of humor if they deigned to announce her mother.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jane spoke softly. People in L.A. got important calls on their cell phones. She looked around at the other tables. Half the people were talking not to their lunch companions, but into their hands or to the tiny wires hanging out of their ears. She doubted that any of the carefully downdressed, artfully made-up to look non-made-up, surgically enhanced women and men sitting around her were talking to their mothers.

  “Your dad said you went to California even though I told you not to. You back?”

  “Still here in L.A.,” said Jane.

  “I need those pictures.”

  “What pictures, Mom?”

  “The ones in the sewing box you took. Your Aunt Veronica says we didn’t wear hats for Bernice’s wedding and I say we did. What? Get the ketchup from the other table. Yeah, you can get up off your behind and get it yourself. Jeez, what am I? Your maid?”

  Technically, Jane thought, Nellie was the server of food and drink at the EZ Way Inn, the tavern she and her husband had run for thirty years in Kankakee, Illinois, and strictly speaking, since the person she was yelling at was a patron trying to eat his lunch, he was a paying customer, and if one subscribed to the customer-always-being-right theory of business, Nellie was, sort of, for the time being, his maid. Jane did not point this out to her mother.

  “And the photographs?”

  “There’s some picture in there with all of us in big hats. Had to be Bernice’s wedding…here’s mustard, ketchup, what else you want? Egg in your beer? You still got those pictures?”

  Jane smiled. Yes, she had those pictures. Upstairs hall, oak flat file, third drawer. She had recently placed all the wedding pictures of people she didn’t know, the rescued photos from estate sales, flea markets, and rummage sales, into the top two drawers, and labeled them with a big N for Not ours, Nick, not to

  worry. The third drawer, the narrowest, the one that could hold the least amount, was reserved for O, Our family, for better and/or worse.

  “Yup, I’ll check it out for you when I get home.”

  “When’s that? Tell Don you had a tomato slice on that. I’m charging you extra.”

  Jane could hear her dad laughing in the background. They didn’t have a regular lunch crowd now that Roper Stove and all the factories were gone, but old regulars still stopped in around lunchtime and Nellie, if she was in the mood, would make sandwiches and yell at everybody for old times’ sake.

  “Better get home. Earthquake’ll get you there in California,” said Nellie before hanging up.

  To some daughters, that would be an abrupt and unkind good-bye, but Jane felt warm and loved. Nellie had connected an actual place w
ith an actual disaster and predicted it would happen to Jane. That was as concerned and protective as Nellie got. She must have been in a good mood.

  Jeb finished his call at the same time and caught Jane smiling at her phone.

  “The husband?”

  “The mother. Charley’s in South America. I only hear from him and Nick every four or five days, when they get into a town.”

  “He’s digging for something, right?” asked Jeb. “Fossils? Dinosaurs? Something old and academic?”

  Jane nodded. Jeb answered the question she started to ask. “I’ve kept track of you, you know. Married to Charley, a geology professor. A son. You are an antiques picker who has solved several murders—a regular Nancy Drew—and before that you were a hotshot ad executive with—”

  “How?”

  “I’m still in touch with a few people from college. You’d be surprised how many people want to keep in touch with someone who might be able to get them tickets to The Tonight Show when they bring the family out to Disneyland.”

  “But I’m not in touch with anyone,” said Jane.

  “True. You’ve retained your loner status, but Chicago’s a small enough town for someone who knew someone to know a Jane Wheel who went to college with whatshisname and she used to work with whozit who married Phil who worked with…you know…on and on. Somebody always has some connection. Besides, I work with actors and you used to work with actors. A few of those beer-drinking types you cast in your producing days made their way here for pilot season….

  “Then I saw you on the morning news,” said Jeb. “Cute as can be, talking away about your family and your antique-picking and your crime-solving—”

  “Oh God,” said Jane. “You saw that? Wren said she saw it and mentioned it to you, but I hadn’t thought about you actually watching it.”

  “Saw it. TiVo’d it,” Jeb said, rearranging salad plates to accommodate the entrées being served. “I’ve watched it more than once,” he whispered.

  The first half of the meal, they played more catch-up.

  Jeb suggested that all people over forty should have cards printed up—not to inform others of their business address and fax numbers, but to answer the basics.

  “Married? Twice. First time, my fault; second time, hers. No children, but not opposed to having them. Income? More than I deserve. Health? Good. Faith? In a pinch. Major disappointments? Three…” Jeb pushed the bread plate toward Jane and picked up her hand. “Maybe four.”

  The sun was shining. It was, after all, L.A. Jeb was right about the wine…crisp and summery, not at all too sweet. Jane felt a flush of well-being. She was terrible at flirting, but it didn’t count as flirting if it was an ex-boyfriend. It was more like remembering. Jane loved remembering.

  Jane was about to ask some follow-up questions to Jeb’s canned answers when his phone rang again. A tasteful soft bleat. Clear to Jane that he didn’t have a smart-aleck son like Nick or a wise-ass friend like Tim who used her cell phone to make a fool of her every chance they got. He looked down at the number and some of the good humor left his face.

  “Business partner,” he said. “Sorry.” He shifted in his chair and faced away from Jane toward the street. After only a few words, he turned back to her, his eyes wide, looking for an an-swer. “If this is a joke…Okay. Yes. I’m bringing a friend.”

  Jeb signaled for the check, while dialing another number on his cell.

  “Marilyn, it’s Jeb. Yeah, just now. I’m on my way over to their office. Sure, we should call everybody.”

  Jane tried not to look obvious as she tried to get in as many bites of the mushroom ragout as she could. Looked like they wouldn’t be having dessert and the food here was incredible.

  “Sorry, babe. I owe you another meal. Bad news.” Jeb signed the check and stood, taking her elbow and standing her up with him. “Terrible bad news.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Wren Bixby,” said Jeb, as if he were questioning someone just out of sight,” is dead?”

  4

  Thou shalt not expect anything to happen in a meeting. People in L.A. take meetings like those in other parts of the world take breaths. If something is going to happen to your Hollywood project, it will happen after the meeting, and the results will be relayed to you by a third party. Or in a memo.

  —FROM Hollywood Diary BY BELINDA ST. GERMAINE

  “How?” Jane fastened her seat belt and stowed her bag under her feet on the inches allotted her in Jeb’s Mini Cooper. Why did everyone out here drive these toys? Didn’t they ever see abandoned furniture on the street? How would an oak schoolroom chair fit in this vehicle’s backseat? “What happened?” Jane asked, picturing Bix as she appeared just a few hours ago, un-derdressed in current Hollywood style, her long hair a confluence of braids. This movie producer was just a kid.

  “Something blew up in the prop shop. I couldn’t really hear. I think that’s what happened anyway.” Jeb aimed the car toward the studio and fired. “Shit.”

  “Prop shop? Prop warehouse?” Jane felt her cool questioning mode melt. “An explosion?” Jane felt panic rising. Tim. Tim was touring the prop warehouse with Bix. “Was anyone else hurt?”

  Jeb shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Gary only told me about Bix. It happened right after you left, though. A few hours ago. I don’t know what the hell took them so long to call me.”

  “A few hours?” said Jane. Tim could be hurt. For a few hours, he might have been calling her name from a hospital bed.

  The faster and more precisely Jeb drove, the more he mumbled and swore at other drivers. Twenty-five years ago Jeb had been too cool for the room, the guy who stood above it all. Jane had the feeling during lunch that he still maintained that persona, although it was getting harder. Being a hipster might work fairly easily in one’s twenties, but at fortysomething, it just took more to pull off. A few extra pounds, the softening of the chin, the thinning hair…something made it harder to stay forever young. Wasn’t it just an hour ago Jane was thinking that men escaped aging? Maybe they just didn’t show concern, anxiety as often as their female counterparts. Now, upset and driving like a maniac, Jeb could have been any middle-aged dad hurrying to get to his child’s soccer game.

  She dialed Tim’s cell, praying for him to answer. Message. She stared at the phone, willing it to deliver her friend instead of his canned voice explaining the many ways in which he might get back in touch with you if you left all your numbers for him.

  Jeb drove past the main entrance to the studio.

  “We’ll take a shortcut. Better to avoid the police and all the chaos at the front gate…if there is any. Right?”

  Jeb parked the Mini in a small private key-card lot around the corner and motioned for Jane to follow him to an almost grown-over passageway, covered in flowering bushes.

  “Legend has it that the studio head kept this hidden entrance to get certain starlets on and off the lot in a hurry. In fact,” said Jed, pulling out a small key and unlocking an ornate mechanism on the old gate,” it might still be used for—”

  “How do you have a key to a hidden entrance in this day and age of security and surveillance?” asked Jane. “Impossible….”

  “When Bix and Lou got this office, they thought they were lucky, but they didn’t know how lucky,” said Jeb.

  When Jane saw where they were, she understood. Once through the iron gate, they ducked through heavy hanging vines and foliage. She and Jeb were in what appeared to be a small backyard garden. It was the backyard of the Bix Pix Flix bungalow. Turning back, she noticed that the gate was invisible. If Jane hadn’t known it was there…actually she did know it was there, and she still could not see it.

  “Bix found it when they were assigned this office. There’s a built-in desk in the entryway with a few bookshelves over it—”

  “Yes, I saw this morning.”

  “She found four keys under the divider in the pencil drawer. There was an unsigned note that must have been thirty y
ears old that referred to a backyard gate, so she looked until she found it. It was all grown over and we put this stone bench back here to mask it even more. We’d see other cars parked in the side lot, maintenance staff mostly. Sometimes I’d wait and watch until a driver got out. Always walked out the driveway and down the block to Entrance Four around the corner. Nobody except us….”

  Jeb stopped. Jane had never seen him break down, but she thought he might be close to it right now.

  “Wren said you were old friends, but I didn’t know…”

  “ We weren’t lovers,” Jeb said, leading Jane up the back steps to the door to the Bix Pix Flix bungalow. “We were closer than that. We were writing partners.”

  The back door wasn’t locked. Jane saw the office she had sat in earlier. The door was open and the light was on. She could hear a woman’s voice in the front office. Sounded like a phone conversation. The door to what Jane assumed was Lou Piccolo’s office was closed, as it had been earlier. Jane moved ahead of Jeb, who had stopped to take out his cell phone and was punching in a number, and stepped into Bix’s office.

  No police, no crowds, no chaos.

  Behind Bix’s desk, perfectly at home, sat Tim. He was listening intently to someone on the phone, Bix’s phone, and waved Jane in to a chair, signaling at the same time for her to be quiet.

  “How dare you sit there?” said Jane, her relief at seeing him alive fueling the anger she now felt for Tim’s callous appropriation of Wren Bixby’s office.

  “Thanks so much,” said Tim. “I’ll pass it along.”

  “What…?”

  “You missed all the excitement,” said Tim. “And the prop warehouse is to die for. Aisle after aisle of candlesticks and silver tea services and furniture and statues…all tagged for future projects or sitting there, all spruced up and waiting to be chosen…just your kind of place, Janie—”

  “Have you lost your mind? Wren Bixby’s dead and you’re sitting there talking about goddamn movie props?”