Lisa had a nice body, but that smile . . . smiles like that gave Arthur ulcers. He forced himself to smile back, but he knew it came out wrong, a pained, cut-the-crap expression that he quickly wiped off his face.
Lisa stopped smiling, too. Arthur waited, but she just stood there, not smiling.
The ones who stripped naked without being asked were bad enough, the ones who thought that seeing another naked, young body could be any sort of bribe at all for Arthur. The ones Arthur had to ask were worse. But it was his job and he did it.
Arthur made his gesture again, knowing already that he wouldn’t use Lisa, knowing that Kreuger would laugh if he sent him any woman who didn’t have the body of a teenager. Laugh, hell, Kreuger would find another casting director. But Arthur made his gesture and waited for Lisa to pull down her swimsuit, let him see what he’d be casting if he’d cast her, which he wouldn’t. Though he’d have liked to, Arthur realized suddenly, since personally he found her more attractive than the twenty-year-olds who had been in and out of his office all morning.
Lisa hesitated. “Do I have to? If you think it’s likely that I’ll get the role, fine, but if not I’d rather not.” She had her thumbs hooked under the straps at her hips.
Arthur’s stomach burned. “You don’t have to do it,” he said. “I don’t care. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t have to be in the movie. No one’s going to force you.” Lisa stood uncertainly while Arthur stared at her.
Here’s a woman who’s done commercials and soaps, Arthur said to himself, and she’s dying inside but she’s letting you get away with this because she’s desperate for a break, which you’re not going to give her anyway. For God’s sake, let her go.
“Listen—” Arthur started, but Lisa had made her mind up and was bending over, stepping out of her bikini, standing up naked in a stranger’s office to get a role where she’d have to do more or less the same thing in front of a million moviegoers.
“Get dressed,” Arthur said, disgusted with himself.
Lisa stared at him. “Is something wrong?”
“Please.”
“Is there something wrong with me?”
“Just get dressed.” She was frozen. “Christ, there’s no part for you, okay?”
She didn’t say anything, just picked up her wrap from the arm of the chair, wound it around her waist, tied it, and quickly pulled the sweatshirt over her head. She grabbed her photo and her bikini.
He turned his chair to face the window and heard the door slam.
The next girl he saw was a nineteen-year-old from Toronto, a bottle blonde whose headshot mentioned parts in Hollywood Hookers and Hollywood Hookers in Bermuda. He stopped her before she could unbutton her shirt and told her she had the part and asked her to leave. She blushed tremendously and thanked him.
Bill Fitch didn’t return his calls all afternoon.
ARTHUR TOOK LISA’S headshot home with him, hidden between two pages of budget projections for Goin’ West. Some time after midnight, he got out of bed and carried his briefcase into the living room. He turned on the lamp next to the TV set and angled its shade so that no light shone toward the bedroom. Then he took Lisa’s photograph out and looked at it for a long time. He lit a cigarette, but it burned most of the way down untouched on the rim of the ashtray.
He had no idea whether Lisa Brennan had talent. But hell, what was talent anyway? Didn’t plenty of successful movie actresses come up short in the talent department?
Arthur dug through his briefcase until he found his Filofax, and through his Filofax until he found Bill Fitch’s home number. Bill had written it in there himself, back when he was still taking Arthur’s calls. Next to the number, Bill had written, “Call any time.”
A groggy voice answered the phone on the fourth ring.
“Bill? Arthur. Arthur French.”
There was silence on the other end, for perhaps half a minute. “Hey, Art. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back. I was in meetings most of the day.”
“That’s what I figured,” Arthur said. But to himself he said: Sure you were, you lying son of a bitch. You knew I was trying to land someone for Goin’ West and you didn’t have the balls to tell me no to my face.
“What can I do for you?”
“Listen, I’ve got a—”
“Hold on one second. Sorry to interrupt. Just hold on.” Arthur held on. He heard Bill put the phone down, get out of bed, pad softly away. In the distance, a little while later, a toilet flushed. The footsteps returned. “I’m back. Sorry about that. Twice a night these days, rain or shine. Shoot.”
“What I wanted to say is, I saw a girl today. Her name’s Lisa Brennan. She was in Telling Lies, you remember that one?”
“No.”
“With Goldie Hawn . . . ?”
“No. I don’t. But I’ll take your word for it.”
“It was out, I don’t know, four years ago. She was Goldie’s sister.”
“Okay, fine. Go on.”
“She’s also done soaps, small things here and there, nothing big since Telling Lies.”
“And?”
“She’s good. She’s really good, Bill. I saw her today—” I saw her today, made her take her clothes off, told her I wasn’t going to hire her, and then she left. “I saw her and I had her read, and I’m telling you, this girl has got it. She could be—oh, I don’t know. Hillary Swank. Cate Blanchett. Any part they do, this girl could do. But she’s good looking, too, so it’s the best of both worlds.” Then, because there was only silence on the line, enough silence for Arthur to start asking himself, “Why are you doing this?” he added, “You’ve got to see her. I’m telling you, she’ll be a star. With you or with someone else, she’ll be a star. I’d rather it was you, Bill. You wait too long, she’ll be with CAA or ICM, making the fat cats fatter.”
“Who is she with now?”
“Jennifer Stein.”
More silence, and lots of it.
Finally: “You screwing her, Arthur?”
“I’m not screwing her. I never even touched her.”
“So what’s the real story?”
“I told you the real story.”
“Jennifer Stein rents bimbos out to Italian directors who want to remake Caligula, Arthur. Jennifer Stein supplied the cast for Caged Women. Don’t tell me Jennifer Stein has found herself a real actress. Jennifer Stein couldn’t sign a real actress to save her life.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Arthur said. “Did I say you’re wrong? No, you’re right. I agree completely—nine times out of ten.”
“Please—”
“Maybe ninety-nine out of a hundred. But this is the one time, Bill. I’m telling you this based on thirty years in the business: She’s got it like no one else I’ve ever seen.”
“Come on. You’re calling me at two in the morning to tell me about some girl you saw once in your life? Give me a break, Arthur.”
“Trust me,” Arthur said. “Write down her number. Give her a call. See her. You’re going to thank me.”
“I can’t believe you called me up in the middle of the night just to tell me about some girl.”
“Would I—tell me this, Bill, I’m serious—would I call you in the middle of the night if she were just some girl? Don’t I have better things to do in the middle of the night? I couldn’t sleep.”
“You couldn’t sleep.”
“Please. Write down her number.”
“Okay, fine,” Bill said. “Give me her number.”
Arthur heard a pencil scratching against paper as he read off Lisa’s phone number.
“Arthur, are you using her in Goin’ West?”
“No,” Arthur said. Then: “She’s too good for Goin’ West.”
“Well, listen,” Bill said. “If she’s as good as you say she is, which I still don’t believe, but if, I’ll see what I can do about getting Corey to do the film for you.”
“That’d be great, Bill.”
; “I’m not making any promises.”
“That’s fine,” Arthur said. “I know you’ll do your best. That’s all I can ask for.”
When Bill had hung up, Arthur dialed the number written on the back of Lisa’s headshot. An answering machine clicked on, spieled, and beeped.
“This is Arthur French calling,” Arthur said. He paused. “I’m sorry about what happened today. I passed your headshot to William Fitch at ASC and I think you’ll hear from him soon.” He paused again. “I told him I had you read for me today and that I was very impressed. So if he asks, go along with it.” This time he took a deep breath before proceeding. “If I could have cast you in Goin’ West, I want you to know I would have. But I’m just a hired hand. I have to do what they tell me.”
As an afterthought, Arthur left his phone number. “In case you need to reach me,” he said.
“THAT WAS BILL,” Arthur said as he replaced the receiver in its cradle. “He says hello.”
“Did he say if he’s made a decision?”
“It’s only been a week.”
“I know.” Lisa stood up, walked a lap around the office, and fell into the chair again. “I’m just anxious.”
“You should be anxious. Fitch is a dealmaker. If he decides that you’re going to be in a movie, you’re in it.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Yes,” Arthur said.
“Pale Moon?”
“I’d put money on it. If not Pale Moon, it’ll be something else. He’s already said he’ll handle you. It’s just a question of which project he places you in first.”
Lisa turned her chair, back and forth, back and forth.
“You want to know what I said to myself the last time I walked out that door?” she said.
“Probably not.”
“I said to myself, ‘If that little prick ever calls again, I’ll hang up in his face, I don’t care who he is.’ ”
“Well, I deserved that,” Arthur said.
She stopped turning. “Then you called. I was lying in bed listening to my machine, and when you said your name, I started crying.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you don’t understand. I was crying because in that instant I thought, ‘He’s calling to give you the part after all,’ and I was so goddamned grateful. And I hated myself for feeling that way. I hated you for making me feel that way. I wanted to kill myself. I didn’t even hear the rest of your message until later, when I played it back. I almost didn’t hear it at all. I almost pulled the tape out and threw it in the garbage.”
“Good thing you didn’t.”
Lisa paused. “I still don’t understand why you did this for me.”
“You mean, what’s in it for me? No, that’s a fair question.” Arthur took a file from the stack on his desk and from the file retrieved a photo of Corey Dunn. “He’s going to do Goin’ West, ninety-nine percent certain. Why? Because I sent you over to Bill Fitch and he liked you.”
“But you sent me over without knowing if I was any good. You sent me over blind.”
“So? What did I have to lose? Dunn wasn’t doing the picture. Fitch wasn’t returning my calls. So you go over there and bomb. Dunn’s still not doing the picture and Fitch still isn’t taking my calls. What could I have lost?”
“You told him I was good. You could have lost your credibility.”
“Don’t make me into a white knight,” Arthur said, thinking to himself, credibility? What credibility? “I took a shot and it paid off. If it hadn’t, I’d have tried something else.”
“You could have taken a different shot. The fact is, first you were a real asshole to me, and then later the same day you helped me out when you didn’t have to.”
Arthur shrugged. “I felt I owed you a good turn.”
“You’re a tough guy to figure,” Lisa said.
“It’s part of my charm.”
“Why me?” Lisa said. “No offense, but I’m sure you’re an asshole to lots of women.”
Arthur thought about it. Why? Because she looked like she needed help more than those other girls. Or maybe like she deserved it more than they did. Or maybe it was just that she was the first woman he’d seen that day who wasn’t young enough to be his daughter. “I don’t know,” Arthur said. “It was a feeling I had about you. And I had seen you in Telling Lies. I knew you were good.”
“I only had two lines in Telling Lies,” Lisa said.
Only one of which I’ve heard, Arthur said to himself, seeing as how I only caught the second half of the movie last night on HBO. “They were good lines,” he said. “A person knows talent when he sees it.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“Yes,” Arthur said, “I am. Want some lunch?”
She faced him dead on, arms crossed over her chest. “Let’s get one thing straight, okay? This feeling you had about me? No, listen to me. I don’t care what you did for me or why you did it, I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“What did I say?” Arthur said. “I said, ‘Want some lunch?’ I did not say, ‘Want to sleep with me?’ Lisa, I’m a married man, and though my wife wouldn’t believe it if I slapped my hand on a pile of Bibles and sang it soprano, I haven’t had sex with another woman since a few weeks before November 5, 1976, which is the day she and I got married. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Because that was the only thing I could figure,” Lisa said, going on as if he hadn’t said anything. “That you’d thought about me some more and decided you wanted to get me into bed. The only other thing I could figure was that you felt sorry for me, which would be even worse.”
Arthur took his coat off the hook on the back of the door and slung it over his arm. Why had he done it? Why had he taken her picture home and called Fitch and put himself on the line for her? He wasn’t sure. Lots of reasons. No reason. Oh, hell, what could he tell this woman that would make her understand?
“Totally honest?” he said, and she nodded. “Maybe I did feel a little sorry for you. Jesus, who wouldn’t? And maybe I wanted to get you into bed, too, just for a minute. I don’t any more, believe me.”
“Which?”
“What?”
“Feel sorry for me or want to get me into bed? Which don’t you any more?”
“Either,” Arthur said. “Listen, you say you felt like you wanted to kill yourself when I called. I don’t know if you meant that or not. But I could have said the same thing that very morning, and I would have meant it, every word of it. I was standing at that window—” he pointed “—and I was this close, this close, to opening it and saying sayonara to the whole goddamn shooting match.
“Why? You’re asking yourself why. Here’s a man, corner office on the thirtieth floor, casting for major Hollywood blockbusters, has beautiful women in his office at all hours showing him their tits, bigshot agents call him all day long begging him to let their stars be in his pictures, why would a man who’s got all this want to do a double gainer from his office window?” He ran his hand through his hair. His fingers itched for a cigarette.
“That’s what you’re asking yourself. Well. All I can say is, the agents aren’t calling, the stars aren’t begging, the thirtieth floor stinks as much as the third in this lousy city, my business is all on the West Coast, my wife’s sure I’m shtupping every girl who walks in here, and the girls—yourself excluded, God bless you—all look like they got inflated with the same bicycle pump. I walk out of here at five o’clock, I don’t want to see another pair of breasts as long as I live.
“Then you walk in here, deserving better than me, deserving better than this whole lousy business, and I treat you the same as the rest of them. And you let me do it to you.” Arthur shook his head. “I had to call you back. That, or come back here, open the window, and get it over with once and for all.”
II
The descent into LAX had left her with a headache, and though normally she could cure her headaches by promptly applying chocolate, the Snickers bar she’d bought from
a vending machine by the escalator was doing no good. It wasn’t hunger that had given her the headache this time, it was reading on the plane. It always did. But she had scenes to do in twelve hours—no, less, ten and a half—and, my God, this dialogue was not the sort to stick in your head on first reading.
Why couldn’t it have been Pale Moon? She’d really loved that script, not because it would make such a good movie, but because the part she’d have had was just a great part. Melanie Lyons had lots of screen time and a great arc—from docile wife to heroic rescuer of her family to drained and bitter widow after her plans went all to hell. She’d have gotten to play opposite Michael Keaton, who may not have had much of a career lately but had always struck Lisa as a generous actor, judging by his films. But now it was Michelle Glassberg playing the wife (Michelle Glassberg? What was she, fifteen?) and Lisa was struggling to learn page after page of pseudo-scientific gibberish.
Why did they even bother with dialogue? No one would come to the theater curious about the combination of tachyons and muons and pi-mesons it took to make a man invisible, they just wanted to see the results. They might as well hang a sign around her neck labeled “exposition” and let her keep her mouth shut. She’d get to carry a syringe, wear a lab coat over surgical greens, restrain the hero on a gurney, and explain breathlessly to Jon Farrell what had gone wrong. She couldn’t imagine a more generic part. Even the character’s name was generic: Carol Brown. Doctor Carol Brown, but so what? You want to talk invisible, you don’t need to mess with tachyons and muons, just name someone Carol Brown, stick her in a lab coat, give her a clipboard and a stethoscope, put her in a hospital hallway, and you’ve just made an invisible woman right there.
Checking in at the hotel was mercifully quick. Lisa dropped her suitcase heavily on one of the room’s twin beds and stretched out diagonally across the other. She couldn’t read, the words were swimming before her eyes as it was. The radio was on, playing classical music that was obviously supposed to relax her, but she turned it off as soon as she was able to locate the switch. Rest. That’s what she needed. Tomorrow she’d be a trooper: show up on time, know her lines, hit her marks, demonstrate that she was a pro. A job was a job, and she was glad to have it. God willing, there would be other jobs after this one. Sharon Stone got started in that horrible Wes Craven movie, after all, and Jamie Lee Curtis screamed her way through Halloween. Careers survived. Although it probably helped if you got your screaming roles out of the way while you were in your twenties.
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