The Trouble Boy, page 10
He embraces her and gives her a kiss. Two POLICE OFFICERS pull up in a black squad car. They are dressed in military-style uniforms and speak through a megaphone.
POLICE OFFICER
You! Breeders, stop!
The police officers jump out of the car and pin the two against a wall.
OPENING CREDITS ROLL as the two are beaten senseless.
I had made it to page sixty, and I resolved to finish by the end of the weekend. I worked all day Saturday, stopping only to run to the Korean deli for Tab and cigarette refueling. By that evening, I had a workable first draft. I spent all Sunday editing, and by Monday morning, I had a finished screenplay to send to Elizabeth. The process was exhilarating and exhausting. It was the first weekend I could remember during which I hadn’t gone drinking. The phone had rung half a dozen times, and I had let every call go to voice mail. Messages from Jamie, Donovan, David, my parents. Plus two from Decorator Guy.
“When do I get to fuck you again?” said the first message. Gross. Delete.
“What do I have to do to get you to call me back?” said the second one. I didn’t have an answer, so I deleted that one, too.
I decided I wouldn’t give my number to anyone sketchy from now on. I would just get theirs. The ball would be in my court.
But I had more important things to consider than my career in bed. I thought about sending the screenplay over to Cameron’s office, but I was annoyed he had never called me back. He could bid for my work if he wanted it. Anyway, it was just a first draft, and probably had massive problems that Elizabeth, a comp lit major who was brilliant at dissecting screenplays, would illuminate.
I arrived at work on Monday morning after dropping the screenplay off at Fed Ex. Donovan, as usual, was sitting at his terminal. “Where were you all weekend?” he asked.
“I told you: I had to work. I finished it, though. It’s done and off to California.”
Before Donovan could answer, Sonia came into our office. The dark rings under her eyes were only made worse by her eyeliner habit.
“I need to speak with you two,” she said. “We’ve been asked to cut back our editorial budget.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Donovan asked, turning around.
“A few things. I can only let you expense two restaurant reviews per week, instead of the usual five. You’ll still be able to do five; some of them will just have to be comps.”
“Comps?” Donovan said. “You know I can’t do real restaurant reviews with comps. It totally ruins the integrity of the piece if the restaurant is giving you a free meal. Can’t you cut in other areas?”
“Actually, we are. We won’t be having Friday staff lunches anymore. We’re going to do our freelance payroll on a net thirty days basis to conserve cash. And we’re not buying photographs anymore; we’re going to get images from the venues, or you guys can shoot them with the digital.”
“I’m sure we can handle this for now,” I said. “But what does this mean long term?”
“This is just a temporary solution to conserve our resources,” Sonia said. “I’m meeting with investors almost every day, and they want to see that we can keep our burn rate low. Once we get additional financing, things will go back to normal.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I wanted to.
Elizabeth called me at the office on Wednesday. “Toby, I just finished reading it. I really like it. I have some notes for you, and there are some parts that need work, but I think you should plan to come out here and meet some people.”
I took a deep breath. I had finally finished something, and it was getting a positive response. Why had I been so afraid of this in the past?
I asked Sonia if I could have a few days off before Thanksgiving, which she said would be fine, as long as I filed my reviews ahead of time.
I spent the next two weeks preparing for my trip to Los Angeles. I continued to revise my screenplay, showing drafts to several friends, and I went shopping for a few LA-friendly items for my wardrobe. I arranged for Gus to be boarded. I read up on meeting etiquette, stuff like “Always go to the restroom before your meeting begins” and “Don’t sit in the most comfortable chair.” I rented every movie I could find on Hollywood culture, even the ones I had already seen: The Player, Swimming with Sharks, Sunset Blvd. I just hoped I wouldn’t meet my end floating face down in a swimming pool.
I stopped by Sonia’s office the day before I left for LA.
“Look, Toby,” she said, “I think it’s really great that you’re doing this, and I’m sure your work is fabulous, but don’t get your hopes up. It takes a long time to sell a screenplay. Even if they take an option on something, it can be years before it ever sees the light of day. I don’t mean to be discouraging, but believe me, I’ve been there. A few years ago, I sold options on two pieces I wrote, and nothing ever happened with them. It made me some quick cash, but it’s not the same as getting your work produced.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t have any illusions about it. I just want to get out there and see what the business is all about.”
Of course, I wanted much more than that: recognition, fame, to tell a story.
I got up to leave.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said. “Are you stopping off in San Francisco?”
“I’ll be there for Thanksgiving,” I said.
Sonia closed the door to her office. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Do you think your parents would be interested in investing in the site?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What kind of money are you talking about?”
“Right now, we’re offering $200,000 minimum investments. Let me give you the PPM and you can show it to them. Seriously, even two hundred grand would allow the expansion we’re looking for. You know, a few other cities, beefing up this operation, a bigger editorial budget, the whole bit.”
She handed me a spiral-bound book of a hundred pages or so, CityStyle’s private placement memorandum. I wasn’t sure what to think. I knew $200,000 was a lot of money, but I had no idea how that would figure in my parents’ world. Perhaps foolishly, they believed it wasn’t a good idea for me to be privy to their financial matters. While it meant that—unlike many of my peers in grade school—I never went around the schoolyard telling people how much money my parents had, I was also woefully uninformed when it came to matters of finance.
After thinking about it, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask my parents about CityStyle, though I did feel a bit put upon by Sonia’s asking me to solicit an investment. Mostly, though, I couldn’t believe she and the company were so desperate for cash.
When I arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, Elizabeth met me at the airport in her Range Rover. As soon she stepped out of her car to help me with my bags, I tried to figure out what had happened to her. In the past year, she must have gained about fifteen pounds. While previously she had been stick-thin, she had now reached a more normal weight.
She started in on the topic after pulling away from LAX and lighting a cigarette.
“You noticed,” she said. “I gained weight. I got sick of being thin but not enjoying myself.”
“You look great,” I said. “But how did you do it?”
“Started eating more regularly. Stopped going to the gym like a maniac. Now it’s just yoga twice a week. I know that compared to some of these girls, I look like a heifer, but I don’t care. I’m at my ideal body weight now.”
We came to a stoplight. She looked at me.
“You’re looking a little skinny yourself, you know.”
“If I get fat, I’ll never find a boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter for me, since I have Chad.”
Elizabeth had told me briefly about her new boyfriend, a twenty-five-year-old personal trainer with model-actor ambitions whose claim to fame was appearing in Playgirl several months earlier. I was surprised that Elizabeth, who had been Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, was dating someone like Chad, but I tried not to judge. Maybe this was what people did in Los Angeles, more so than in New York: dating as arm candy. Maybe people picked out boyfriends like they would a new handbag. A girl wouldn’t judge her accessories for their intelligence, would she?
Elizabeth had made a dinner reservation that night at the Avalon, a mid-century-styled hotel with a restaurant and cabanas surrounding its figure-eight-shaped swimming pool. Chad was at the white vinyl bar finishing a call on his cell phone. We were introduced and the three of us sat down.
“How are you all doing?” asked the waitress, a strawberry blonde in her early thirties.
“Great. How are you?” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, whatever,” the waitress said, sighing and waving the question away.
“Welcome to LA,” Elizabeth said to me with a smile.
When the waitress had left, Chad asked me about my screenplay.
“That is so cool,” he said after I finished telling him about it. “Maybe there will be a role in it for me once you sell it.”
“Of course there will be!” Elizabeth said. “I’ve introduced Chad to a friend who does casting for the soaps and he just loves his work.”
I asked Elizabeth and Chad how they met.
“At the gym,” Chad said. He worked at the Crunch on Sunset.
“Were you Elizabeth’s trainer?” I asked.
“I haven’t actually gotten my training certification yet. I’ve been working at the shake bar. I was talking about my modeling portfolio with one of the trainers, and, uh, uh ...”
“Elizabeth?” I said helpfully.
“Yeah, Elizabeth—she said she knew a casting director.”
“Chad is studying to be a Level I trainer.”
From my gym in New York, I knew that was the entry level. “That’s fantastic,” I said, feeling obligated to praise the most meager of accomplishments.
“I spend so much time at the gym anyway, that I figured, why not be a trainer?” He shrugged and grinned.
“What were you doing before?” I asked.
“Test screenings for films, you know, where you invite people to watch and then they fill out surveys.”
“Really?” I asked. “What kind of films?”
“Oh, the big ones, mostly. Biggest flick I did was Titanic. Man, that was so good. I saw the four-hour rough cut and I cried and cried.”
Elizabeth patted him on the shoulder affectionately. What was she doing with this meathead?
When it came time for the check, I put down my debit card.
“Toby, you don’t have to do that,” Elizabeth said.
“No, really,” I said. “It’s my treat.” I felt it was the least I could do for her.
“That’s so sweet of you, man,” Chad said.
Five minutes later, the waitress came back, saying my card had been declined. I was sure I had enough money in my account; my latest check from CityStyle should have been automatically deposited two days ago. I fumbled with my wallet and gave her a credit card, the one I had sworn I would stop using.
“What do you think of him?” Elizabeth asked me as soon as the two of us were safely ensconced in her Range Rover. Chad was following us home in his own car.
“He’s adorable,” I said. What was I supposed to say? That he wasn’t the brightest bulb on Hollywood Boulevard, but he had the body of a god?
“It’s like, all those years I dated guys who were such smarties, they were into playing so many head games, and then this guy comes along, and he’s just simple, you know? He says what he’s thinking, he just wants a good solid relationship. I know he’s not exactly a rocket scientist, but who needs that anyway?”
Maybe Elizabeth was right. Perhaps I had been setting the bar too high. If I could just find someone who was simple, honest—did it really matter what school someone went to?
“What do you guys talk about when you’re alone?”
“Mostly movies,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get him to read more, but he’s not a big reader.”
On second thought, I didn’t know if I could bear it, no matter how beautiful the moron was.
“And he wants to have children! You know how much I want to have kids. I mean, I’m twenty-four years old, and I’m not getting any younger.”
“How long have you been together?” I asked.
“Almost two months,” she said.
“Does it bother you that he posed naked?” I asked, though the idea secretly turned me on.
“Wouldn’t you if you looked like that?” she said.
Once we were back at her bungalow in the Hollywood Hills, Elizabeth set me up on the pull-out couch in her living room. During the day, she had a view of the Hollywood sign; at night, the most prominent feature of the landscape was an enormous lighted cross perched high in the hills.
As I drifted off, I started to understand her relationship with Chad. From the direction of her bedroom, I heard the distinct sounds of sex. Either Elizabeth and Chad wanted me to hear every machination, or they had no idea how thin the bedroom door was. There were loud, heartfelt groans, bedsprings squeaking, the moving around and repositioning of sheets and pillows. Just when I thought I could no longer contain my combination of laughter and embarrassment, I heard her scream it: “Oh, shit!”
It wasn’t a bad “Oh, shit!” either. It wasn’t an it-slipped-out or the-condom-broke sort of “Oh, shit!” It was an ecstatic you-surprised-me-and-I’m-on-the-brink-of-orgasm “Oh, shit!” What new surprise would warrant that exclamation with someone Elizabeth had already had sex with dozens of times? What new technique could Chad have employed that she hadn’t already experienced in his tongue’s endless exploration of her body?
Whatever it was, it was something good, something my sex life was sorely missing.
On Monday morning, I called my bank. My CityStyle check had never been deposited. I had taken out a cash advance on my credit card to last me through the weekend, and Elizabeth had lent me some money. I left a voice mail for CityStyle’s financial guy so he could correct the problem.
Elizabeth was able to take a few hours off from work each day in order to accompany me to my various meetings.
“I wasn’t able to get meetings with everyone I sent it to, but we have plenty to start with,” she told me. “I’m being very careful about sending it out. People like to think they’re reading something no one else has seen.”
Unfortunately, the meetings were disappointing. A large studio told us the story was too gay; a small indie producer said audiences would think the message of Breeders was homophobic. A gay producer said the screenplay was not gay enough, while an agent said it was too cerebral. At a smaller company, a producer only a few years older than we were said they could consider it with some capital investment on our part. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and quickly brought that meeting to a close. At another large studio, when a smug producer sat behind his desk and said, “It’s very well written, but I really don’t think anyone would want to see this movie,” I had the urge to jump across his desk and throttle him.
On Monday, I got a call on my cell phone as we were leaving a studio lot. It was Jamie.
“I’ve got business in San Francisco tomorrow,” he said. “I can be routed back through LA and we can hang out. I probably should just head back to New York—I’ve been working twenty-hour days on this deal—but it would be really fun to see you in a different city.”
I asked Elizabeth where he should stay, and she said he should get a room at the Standard, a hip hotel in West Hollywood.
“I can’t wait to see you!” Jamie said, though I had just seen him four days ago. His phone clicked. “I gotta jump.”
“You’ll get to meet the famous Jamie. Maybe he can expense dinner for us,” I joked to Elizabeth. I hadn’t heard back from CityStyle about my check, and I had made another cash withdrawal from my credit card. I was starting to get worried.
“Don’t worry about it; I can cover it,” Elizabeth said. “Hell, I do it for Chad all the time. We have a deal: he pays for the little stuff—parking, movies, whatever—and I pay for the big stuff, like dinner.”
“Do you ever give him money?”
“I’ve lent him a few hundred dollars. I know he’ll pay it back, though.”
I didn’t want to say anything, for fear that she might not lend me any more money.
Our last meeting, on Tuesday, was with a short film Web site whose producers said they might be interested in serializing Breeders. The idea of my work appearing on a three-by-four-inch box on someone’s computer screen—on a site that would most likely be out of business before the end of the year—was not appealing. At the end of the meeting, we were given yo-yos advertising the site, probably as a consolation prize for being so desperate. We gave them to the parking attendant along with a tip. He looked like he had seen them before.
That night, Elizabeth and I met Jamie at the poolside bar at the Standard after he checked in. I immediately noticed there was something different about him. His usually animated face seemed placid and calm.
When Elizabeth was in the restroom, I asked him about it.
“You seem so mellow,” I said. “Are you on something?”
He shook his head.
“What, then?”
“You can’t tell anyone, okay? I got Botox injections in my forehead,” Jamie said. “My dad gave them to me over the weekend.”
“Why?”
“Wrinkles. Partly preventative, but I am aging at a faster than normal rate. My dad confirmed it.”
“Jamie, that’s absurd. You’re twenty-two!”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” he said. “You have it easy.”
“You looked fine before. You could end up hurting yourself with this stuff. No one knows the long-term effects, do they?”
We noticed Elizabeth heading across the lobby and back toward the bar.
“I’d rather not talk about it, okay? I can’t help it if I want to look good.”
