At any rate, the party had stopped being fun, and I had plans to make myself famous again. I had one last drink and then got in the Mini.
I didn’t need the overproof rum—by the time I left the party I was far too drunk to drive safely even if I’d wanted to. I zoomed down the canyon until I found what to my sozzled mind seemed an ideal place for the crash, a sharp left turn with a guardrail to keep drunken drivers like me from going over the cliff. I could scrape the side of my car against the guardrail and end up perfectly safe.
As for the car, it was insured.
I stopped the car, backed, and aimed the Mini at my target. I put the car in first gear and punched the accelerator, and I had shifted into second and got up to thirty or forty miles per hour when suddenly I was blinded by the single headlight of Timmi’s Black Lightning.
I never actually hit her. I sawed the wheel back and forth trying to evade the bike that was rushing at me, and she was likewise trying to avoid me and lost control. She missed the Mini by a hair, missed the guardrail as well, and went right off the cliff.
The whole accident took maybe three seconds. I found myself in my stopped car in the middle of the curve. My heart thrashed in my chest, louder than the fading echo of the Black Lightning’s engine. I seemed to be entirely alone.
I didn’t know where the bike had come from or where it had gone. I didn’t know it was Timmi on board. I only knew that I was in horrible, horrible trouble, and that I had to get away as fast as I could.
Panic had me by the throat. I put the car in gear, and though every nerve was screaming at me to run down the canyon road at top speed, I left the scene at a very sedate pace. Farther down the canyon I chucked the bottle of rum out the window. When I got home I checked the car for damage, anyway as far as I could do in the dark, and then I went to my condo and took a shower and brushed my teeth and went to bed.
By the time I fell asleep I’d convinced myself that nothing had actually happened.
I didn’t know it was Timmi till late the next afternoon, when I got a call from Jaydee telling me she’d died after a crash. I put down the phone and stared at the wall for a long time, my heart lurching with terror. It wasn’t until later that I heard that Timmi had lived for several hours after the crash, and that if I’d called for an ambulance right then, at the scene of the accident, she might have lived.
I was still panicked, too frightened to feel any guilt. I expected to be arrested at any second. I jotted down the name and phone number of a criminal attorney and put it in my pocket. I kept checking the windows to see if police, or paparazzi, or reporters were lurking. I couldn’t bring myself to call Joey, though he called me late one night. He was a wreck, slurring words through pills or booze or both. He alternated weeping with furious threats against whoever was responsible. I don’t know what I said—probably the usual pointless things you say to someone whose grief is fresh. Every threat Joey made felt like a knife to my throat.
I don’t know how they knew there was another vehicle involved. I don’t know how, if they knew there was someone else, they didn’t know it was me. I’ve never tried to clear this up. If I start asking questions, it just might point the finger at me.
I didn’t leave my condo till the funeral. I made a point of driving the Mini, just in case anyone wondered whether the car had been damaged in an accident. The memorial was a media circus, with Joey a sobbing wreck who pulled himself together just long enough to punch a cameraman.
After a while the fear faded, and gradually I began to realize that I’d lost a friend. I began to mourn—a little late, maybe, but the mourning was genuine.
Turning myself in was never something I considered. I couldn’t imagine whom it would benefit. If it would have brought Timmi back, I’d probably have walked into the police station and confessed; but as things were, I didn’t see that my being in jail would do the world any good.
Instead I resolved that I’d try to be worthy of Timmi’s memory. I’d work hard and make brilliant films and make a success of myself.
But first, I had to regain the fame I’d had when I was younger. So, a couple of months later than intended, I smashed up the Mini and got myself arrested.
The headlines appeared, then faded. The world still awaits my brilliant films. Fame has not returned. My resolution to somehow justify Timmi’s death went nowhere, along with my career, along with Joey’s success. All that’s left is a desperation so substantial that I can almost reach out and touch it.
I was there once. I had it. It went away, and I need it again the way a junkie needs his heroin.
And when the success doesn’t return, the need only grows. I can understand why Dickie went in for porn, and why Jack Wild stayed drunk for a couple decades, why Rusty Hamer put the .357 to his head, and even why stupid Melody Chastain kicked the stupid dog.
After Timmi’s death Joey kept making movies, but without his wife the magic had gone. She understood story and structure, she could chart the arcs of the characters. Without her gift the story fell apart. Joey would come up with some idea for a brilliant visual sequence, and he’d jettison part of the structure to insert it, or he wouldn’t realize that it would contradict an earlier part of the movie. Exposition was almost nonexistent, and character moments were dull and clumsy. His visual talent foundered in formlessness. Individually brilliant scenes were thrown almost randomly at the audience, without even a semblance of plot or consistency, like pearls falling from a broken string.
But that’s just the average summer blockbuster, I hear you say. No, Joey’s pictures were far worse than that. I had minor roles in a couple of them, and I saw the frantic way he worked, making decisions impulsively, tossing out lines that we’d rehearsed to replace them with chaotic improvisation. Even Allison, with all her skill, hadn’t been able to edit the mess together into anything coherent.
They were scorned by even the most undiscriminating audiences. Joey’s movies lost his backers hundreds of millions of dollars. And he kept up his old habit of making enemies and feuding with anyone who pissed him off—except that before, success had made him immune. No one wanted to kill the king who was bringing in so many millions. But now Joey was vulnerable, and his enemies lined up to do him in. I’d seen his picture on the cover of a tabloid under the single word POISON?
He hasn’t worked in over a year. No one will finance his films, and though he’s worth a lot of money he isn’t yet crazy enough, or desperate enough, to finance them himself.
And now, if I’m lucky, Joey will be directing me in Dagmar Shaw’s movie.
I’m elated. Though if I had any sense I’d be hiding under the bed, sucking my thumb and staring out into the darkness, trembling at the knowledge that the monsters were just about to come crawling out of the closet.
TRACKING SHOTS
That evening, Dickie Marks leads the entertainment news. At his press conference, he tearfully confesses his unrequited love for Samantha Hollock.
The confession goes much better than I would have imagined, and it’s all down to Dickie’s talent. Instead of a pathetic has-been desperate for attention, he succeeds in appearing as a romantic loser. Still pathetic, but a higher class of pathetic.
Samantha Hollock, reached by phone, expresses surprise, and says she’s flattered.
The jokes on the late-night talk shows will practically write themselves. It’s about all Dickie could hope for.
He calls the next day to thank me. I wish him good luck. He’ll need it, now that he’s an unperson dancing in a bear suit in the darkest circle of Celebrity Hell.
A few days later, I report to the studio where they film the parts of Celebrity Pitfighter that don’t involve hitting other people—instead, they run various competitions between the contestants to see who can throw the most kicks in a ten-minute period, or who can hit a target the hardest, or who can chop the most targets with a samurai sword. Winners get money for their charities. I’m not particularly good at any of these, but neither are most of the other c
ontestants, and a couple weeks ago I was surprised to win a sit-up contest.
They put me in an office with a closed-circuit television. A couple of cameramen film me as I watch Jimmy Blogjoy being confronted with the evidence of his ketamine abuse. He breaks down and confesses, then makes his reluctant withdrawal from the competition.
It’s all scripted. I’ve even seen the script, because my lines are in there, too. I get to shake my head and say, “Poor guy” and “I hope he straightens himself out.”
What I really want to do is beat him with a crowbar till I hear his bones snap.
After Jimmy’s exit, I’m brought into the Thirty-Sixth Chamber, which is where the show’s judges sit on thrones and make pompous judgments about the contestants. I think of it as the Humiliation Salon. The set is half Chinese restaurant, half Deco Palace of Ming the Merciless. The judges are a sports announcer who got fired from ESPN2, a supermodel spokeswoman for the show’s principal sponsor, a couple actors who have made some undistinguished martial arts films, and a Bagua master from Taiwan given to making opaque remarks about chi in a thick accent.
The judges don’t really matter. If you look at the closing credits of the show, you’ll find the fine print that says that all judges’ decisions are made with the consultation of the network. Everything they say is more or less scripted.
If the network tells you it’s cheating, is it actually cheating? Apparently not.
Bagua Guy looks at me.
“Your last fight showed that you have a warrior heart,” he says. “Your opponent has proved unworthy, and now we offer you the opportunity to advance in the competition.”
His accent is so broad that I only understand him because I’ve read the script in advance.
“I am honored by the judges’ confidence,” I say. “I desire nothing so much as to get back in the ring and justify Master Pak’s faith in me.”
The words taste like sawdust in my mouth. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in any more fights.
Unfortunately, a review of my contract showed me that I have no choice.
The most annoying thing is that after my line, the director calls for another take. He feels I wasn’t sincere enough the first time.
It takes two more takes before I manage to counterfeit the correct amount of thickheadedness. Bagua Guy, who wants to go outside and smoke, gets more and more fidgety.
Later, when I’m sitting on my balcony drinking a beer and waiting for the coals to burn down on my hibachi so I can grill a chicken breast for dinner, I get a call from my agent to make sure I actually went through with it.
“Good,” Cleve tells me. “You’re getting good exposure on this show.”
I curl my lip. “It’s a piece of shit,” I say.
“Don’t count on that Dagmar cooze to boost your career,” Cleve says. “That hundred-sixty-million promotion budget is bullshit—I know everyone in that league, and she’s not dealing with any of them.”
“Oh yeah? You called them all up and asked?” Like any of them would talk to him.
“I wouldn’t buy anything until her check clears,” Cleve says.
“That’s true of everyone in this town.” Including you, old sport. “Don’t forget, Joey da Nova’s directing. He’s major.”
“Joey can’t get a picture made since The Permeable flopped.” He snorts. “You knew from the title that one was going to go into the toilet. What the hell does The Permeable mean, anyway?”
I’m not about to defend The Permeable, which reeked like a week-old fish, or perhaps a hundred-fifty-million-dollar action film with no script, an ingenue whose line readings were so bad that she had to be dubbed by a veteran voice actor, and a male lead fresh out of rehab with a post-heroin facial twitch so severe that he needed a face double for all his close-ups.
A face double. The mind simply boggles.
“When this project craters,” Cleve says, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You didn’t warn me about Celebrity Pitfighter.”
His exasperation is plain over the phone. “Millions of people enjoy that show. It puts your face in front of the public. People see you, you’ll get work.”
I gulp the last of the beer and contemplate the empty bottle in my hand. “A bunch of untrained fighters hacking each other under the influence of ketamine,” I say, “someone’s going to get killed. And I don’t want that person to be me.”
Plus, I think, the damn thing will go on for months. Normally a reality show is filmed very quickly: you pack all the contestants in one hotel, you shuffle them off to a new contest every day, and you keep them sleep-deprived until they get unstable, overemotional, and borderline homicidal. That’s good television.
Unfortunately for the producers, the athletic commission for the State of California wouldn’t let amateur fighters bash each other nonstop every day for a week or ten days or whatever, and insisted that we have a rest period of a minimum of two weeks between each bout. So—assuming that Dagmar hires me—I’ll have to schedule training and fights along with shooting the movie.
“It’s a piece of shit,” I tell Cleve again.
After the conversation is over, I realize that I’ve surprised myself. There’s something I won’t do to get on television. I hadn’t quite realized that before.
There are some brands of cottage cheese, I think, that I will not eat.
Cleve hangs up and I stand up to get another beer. I stretch and lean out over the iron rail. Charcoal scent drifts through the air. A middle-aged couple jog past in white eyeshades and Old Navy shorts. A kid on a skateboard sails past in the other direction, head bobbing to music from his earbuds.
I don’t pay any attention to the SUV until it starts, and then the engine rumble sounds familiar. I look in growing surprise at the black Ford Expedition parked across the street from me, at the dark silhouette of the driver behind the shaded window.
Tires give a little shriek as the SUV pulls away, accelerating rapidly. The kid on the skateboard looks over his shoulder at the big Ford coming after him, and smoothly moves his board from the road to the sidewalk. The SUV speeds past, brake lights flash, and then the Ford turns left and vanishes from my sight.
I wonder if that was the guy who tried to run me over on Rodeo Drive the other day.
Except that I don’t have any enemies that I know of. Through the beer swilling around in my head, I try to think of people who might hate me.
Jimmy Blogjoy? I have his place on Celebrity Pitfighter, and he’s been caught doing drugs on national television. Maybe he blames me for all that.
And he did wear a mouthpiece that said KILL YOU in big easy-to-read letters.
And then I think, well, Joey da Nova, because I killed his wife. But he doesn’t know that, and no one else does, either—and if anyone does know about it, why wait all these years to come after me?
It can’t be Joey, I think, because Joey isn’t trying to kill me, he is trying to give me the lead in his new movie.
For a half-second I think about digging my pistol out of the back of my T-shirt drawer. But then I decide against it. Who exactly am I supposed to shoot?
I decide to keep a lookout for black SUVs. And to be careful when crossing the street.
INT. WARDROBE—DAY
“I haven’t seen you since Mac’s funeral,” Jaydee says as she hugs me.
“Has it been that long?”
She releases me and looks at me with motherly blue eyes. Her hair is a shade of blond that does not occur in nature. Her breath is scented with the sweet vermouth she drank with, or possibly for, lunch. Her voice is as loud and brassy as her hair color. I love her to death.
I’ve known Jaydee Martin most of my life. She was costume supervisor on Family Tree, and we’ve kept in touch since the series was canceled.
“I hear I’m supposed to be an archetype,” I say. “How does an archetype dress?”
“Ordinary clothes, mostly. But there’s an early scene where you dress sort of like Dr.
Zaius from Planet of the Apes.”
Except for the chimpanzee face, I hope.
She reaches to a shelf by her desk for a loose-leaf notebook and flips through it, then turns the illustration to face me. I see a computer-generated image of a man in a long, fawn-colored knee-length jacket with wide sleeves and heavily embroidered cuffs and lapels. He also wears a collarless shirt, baggy Cossack trousers, and boots.
The features of the man are lightly sketched in and don’t resemble mine. The character’s name, Roheen, is written above the figure in pencil.
Jaydee touches the figure and moves him across the display paper. With little sweeps of her fingers and thumb she calls for him to walk, run, wave his arms, jump up and down. She rotates the figure so we see him from the front, the side, the rear, and above.
Jaydee removes her finger from the display, and the figure stands still, frozen in mid-step.
We are in the costume department that will be Jaydee’s domain for the entirety of the shoot. Near the front door is her office. Nearby are worktables, sewing machines, tailors’ dummies, and yards of fabric neatly labeled and stacked on shelves. Ironing boards are folded and hung on the wall. Filling the rest of the large room are portable racks, most of them holding nothing more than empty hangers waiting for completed costumes.
Jaydee looks down at the frozen figure of Roheen. “I wish you were wearing stuff like this all through the picture,” she says. “When you’re wearing contemporary, everyone has a damn opinion.”
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