Beautiful Ruins (23 page)

She looks up at Shane, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her. She looks back down at Danny’s e-mail.
Has to look gd . . .
Why would it
look
good and not
be
good? And storyboards to make it look like they’re further down the road?
Straight faces?
Then she recalls Michael’s boast yesterday:
I’m going to pitch an eighty-million-dollar movie about frontier cannibalism
.

“Ah, shit,” she says.

“Another text from your boyfriend?”

Would they really do this? She recalls Danny and Michael talking about the lawyers looking for a way out of Michael’s contract with Universal. What a stupid question: of course they would do this. They would never
not
do this. This is what they do. Claire’s hand comes to her temple.

“What?” Shane stands and she looks over at him, his big doe eyes and those bushy sideburns framing his face. “Are you okay?”

Claire considers not telling him, letting him have his weekend of triumph. She could just put on blinders and finish out the weekend, help Michael with his doomed pitch and his missing actress, then on Monday accept the cult museum job . . . start stocking up on cat food. But Shane is staring at her with those moon-eyes, and she realizes that she likes him and that if she’s ever going to break away it has to be now.

“Shane, Michael has no intention of making your movie.”

“What?” He laughs a little. “What are you talking about?”

She sits on the bed next to him and explains the whole thing, as she sees it now, starting with the deal Michael made with the studio—how, at the low point of his career, the studio took on some of Michael’s debt in exchange for the rights to some of his old films. “There were two other parts to the deal,” she says. “Michael got an office on the lot. And the studio got a first-look deal, meaning that Michael had to show them all of his ideas and he could only go to other studios if they passed. Well, the first-look was a joke. For five years the studio rejected every script Michael brought in. And when he took those scripts and treatments and books out to other studios—if you already know that Universal has rejected an idea, why would you ever want it?

“Then came
Hookbook
. When Michael started developing that idea, he figured a reality show and Web site was beyond the scope of his contract, which he assumed was for
film
development
only. But it turned out the contract stipulated the studio got the first shot at all material ‘developed in any media.’ Here was Michael, with this potentially huge unscripted TV business, and it turned out the studio basically owned it.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with—”

Claire holds up her hand. “Ever since then, Michael’s lawyers have been looking for a way out of the contract. A few weeks ago they found it. The studio put an escape clause in the contract to protect itself in case Michael wasn’t just in a slump, but was totally played out. If Michael brings a certain number of bad ideas over a certain period of time—say, the studio doesn’t develop ten straight projects over five years—then either side can opt out. But where the contract stipulates
all material
, the escape clause mentions only
films
. So even though the studio made
Hookbook
, if Michael options and develops ten film ideas in five years and the studio passes on all ten—then either side can walk away with no obligation.”

Shane catches up quickly, his brow furrowing. “So you’re saying I am—”

“—the tenth pass,” Claire says. “An eighty-million-dollar cannibal Western—a movie so dark, expensive, and noncommercial that the studio could never say yes to it. Michael will option your idea for nothing, then send you off to write a spec script he has no intention of making. When the studio passes, he’ll be free to sell his TV shows to the highest bidder—for, I don’t know, tens of millions.”

Shane stares at her. Claire feels awful for telling him, for puncturing the kid’s confidence. She puts a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Shane,” she says.

Then her phone rings. Daryl. Shit. She squeezes Shane’s arm, stands, and walks across the room, answering without looking at the screen. “Hey,” she says to Daryl.

But it’s not Daryl.

It’s Michael Deane. “Claire, good, you’re up. Where are you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Did you drop the Italian and his translator off at the hotel last night?”

She looks over at Shane. “Uh, sort of,” she says.

“How soon can you meet me at the hotel?”

“Pretty quickly.” She’s never heard Michael’s voice like this. “Listen, Michael,” she says, “we need to talk about Shane’s pitch—”

But he interrupts her. “We found her,” Michael says.

“Who?”

“Dee Moray! Only her name wasn’t Dee Moray. It was
Debra
Moore
. She was a high school drama and Italian teacher all these years in Seattle. Can you fucking believe it?” Michael sounds hopped up, high. “And her kid—have you ever heard of a band called the Reticents?” Again, he doesn’t wait for her to answer. “Yeah, me neither. Anyway, the investigator worked overnight preparing a file. I’ll fill you in on the way to the airport.”

“Airport? Michael, what’s going on—”

“I have something for you to read on the plane. It will explain it all. Now go get Mr. Tursi and the translator and tell them to get ready. We fly out at noon.”

“But Michael—”

He’s already hung up, though, before Claire can say, “Wait—fly out where?” She clicks off the call and looks over at Shane, still sitting on the bed, a distant look on his face. “Michael found his actress,” she says. “He wants us all to fly off to see her.”

Shane doesn’t appear to have heard her. He is staring at some point on the wall behind her. She should never have said anything, should have allowed him to go on living in his little bubble.

“Look, I’m sorry, Shane,” she says. “You don’t have to go. I can find another translator. This business, it’s—”

But he interrupts her. “So you’re saying he pays me ten thousand dollars to get out of his contract . . .” Shane has the strangest look on his face; it’s oddly familiar to Claire. “And then he goes out and makes ten million?”

And now she knows where she recognizes that look from. It’s a look she sees every day, the look of someone doing the math, of someone seeing the angles.

“Then maybe my movie is worth more than ten thousand.”

Holy shit. The kid’s a natural.

“I mean, who wants to go pitch a dead movie idea for ten grand? But for fifty? Or
eighty
?” Shane breaks into a sly smile. “Sign me up.”

13

Dee Sees a Movie

April 1978

Seattle, Washington

S
he called him P.E. Steve, and he was at that very moment driving across town to pick her up for a date. Debra Moore-Bender had grown adept at deflecting the advances of her fellow teachers, but an attractive young widow was apparently too much for the sturdy Steve to abide, and for weeks he circled until he finally made his move—while they sat together at a desk outside a school dance, checking ASB cards beneath a banner that read:
EVERLASTING LOVE. SPRING INTO ’78!

Debra gave him the usual excuse—she didn’t date other teachers—but Steve laughed this off. “What is that, like a lawyer-client thing? Because you know I teach phys ed, right? I’m not a real teacher, Debra.”

Her friend Mona had been urging Debra to date Steve ever since word of his divorce reached the teachers’ lounge—sweet Mona, whose own romantic life was a series of disasters but who somehow knew what was best for Debra. But what really convinced her was that P.E. Steve asked her to
a movie
. There was this movie she wanted to see—

And now, minutes before he was to pick her up, Debra stood in the bathroom staring into the mirror and running a brush through her feathered blond hair, which ruffled and settled like water in a boat’s wake (
Miss Farrah
, some of the students called her, a name she pretended to dislike). She turned to the side. This new hair color was a mistake. She’d spent a decade fighting the awful vanity of her youth and she’d really hoped, at thirty-eight, to be one of those women who were comfortable with middle age, but she just wasn’t there yet. Each gray hair still seemed like a weevil in a flower bed.

She glanced at the hairbrush. How many millions of strokes through her hair, how many face washings and sit-ups, how much work had she done—all to hear those words:
beautiful, pretty, foxy.
At one time, Debra accepted her looks without self-consciousness; she didn’t need affirmation—no “Miss Farrah” or leering P.E. Steve or even awkward, sweet Mona (“If I looked like you, Debra, I’d masturbate all the time”). But now? Dee set the hairbrush down, staring at it like some kind of talisman. She remembered singing into a brush like that when she was a kid; she still felt like a kid, like a nervous, needy fifteen-year-old getting ready for a date.

Maybe nerves were natural. Her last relationship had ended a year ago: her son Pat’s guitar teacher, Bald Marv (Pat nicknamed the men in her life). She’d liked Bald Marv, thought he stood a chance. He was older, in his late forties, had two older daughters from a failed marriage and was keen on “blending the families”—although he was decidedly less keen after he and Debra returned home one night to find Pat already blending, in bed with Marv’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Janet.

During Marv’s eruption she’d thought about defending Pat—
Why do boys always get blamed in these situations?
After all, Marv’s daughter was two years older than him. But this was Pat, and he proudly confessed his elaborate plans like a cornered Bond villain. It had been all his idea, his vodka, his condom. Debra wasn’t surprised that Bald Marv ended it. And while she hated breakups—the disingenuous abstractions,
this is just not where I want to be right now
, as if the other person had nothing to do with it—at least Bald Marv stated the case plainly: “I love you, Dee, but I do
not
have the energy to deal with this shit between you and Pat.”

You and Pat
. Was it really that bad? Maybe. Three boyfriends ago, Coverall Carl, the contractor who worked on her house, had pushed her to get married, but wanted Debra to put Pat in a military school first. “Jesus, Carl,” she’d said, “he’s nine years old.”

And now, up to bat, P.E. Steve. At least his kids lived with their mother; maybe this time no civilians would get hurt.

She walked down the narrow hallway past Pat’s school picture—God, that smirk, in every picture, that same cleft-chin, wet-eyed,
see-me
smirk. The only thing that ever changed in his school pictures was his hair (floppy, permed, Zeppelin, spiked); the expression was always there—the dark charisma.

Pat’s bedroom door was closed. She knocked lightly, but he must have had headphones on, because he didn’t answer. Pat was fifteen now, old enough that she should be able to leave him home alone without some big speech every time she went out, but she couldn’t help herself.

Debra knocked again, then opened his bedroom door and saw Pat sitting cross-legged with his guitar across his lap, beneath a Pink Floyd poster of light going through a prism. He was leaning forward, his hand outstretched toward the top drawer of his nightstand, as if he’d just shoved something inside. She pressed into the room, pushing a pile of clothes out of the way. Pat took off the headphones. “Hey, Mom,” he said.

“What’d you put in the drawer?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Pat said too quickly.

“Pat. Are you going to make me look in there?”

“No one’s making you do anything.”

On the bottom shelf of his nightstand she saw the rat-eared, loose pages of Alvis’s book, at least the one chapter he’d written. She’d given it to Pat a year ago, after a big fight, during which he’d said he wished he had a father to go live with. “This was your father,” she said that night, hoping there was something in the yellowed pages to anchor the boy.
Your father
. She’d nearly come to believe it herself. Alvis had always insisted they tell Pat the truth once he got older, when he could understand, but as the years went on Debra had no idea how to do that.

She crossed her arms, like some picture from a parenting guide. “So are you going to open that drawer or am I?”

“Seriously, Mom . . . It’s nothing. Trust me.”

She moved toward the nightstand and he sighed, set his guitar down, and opened the drawer. He moved some things around and finally removed a small marijuana pipe. “I wasn’t smoking. I swear.” She felt the pipe, which was cool. No dope in it.

She searched the drawer; there was no marijuana. It was just a drawer full of junk—a couple of wristwatches, some guitar picks, his music composition books, pens and pencils. “I’m keeping the pipe,” she said.

“Sure.” He nodded as if that were obvious. “I shouldn’t have had it in there.” When he got in trouble, he always became strangely calm and reasonable. He’d break into this
we’re-in-this-together
mode that had always disarmed her; it was as if he were helping her deal with a particularly difficult child. He’d had the same quality at six. One time she’d stepped outside to get the mail, talked to her neighbor, and came back in to find Pat pouring a pan of water on the smoldering couch. “Wow,” he said, as if he’d just discovered the fire rather than set it. “Thank God I got to it early.”

Now he held up the headphones. Subject change: “You’d like this song.”

She looked down at the pipe in her hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t go out.”

“Come on, Mom. I’m sorry. Sometimes I fiddle around with things when I’m writing. But I haven’t gotten high in a month—I swear. Now go on your date.”

She stared at him, looking for some sign that he was lying, but his eye contact was as unwavering as ever.

“Maybe you’re just looking for an excuse to not go out,” Pat said.

That was like him, too, to turn it around on her, and to peg it on some real insight; it was true, she probably
was
looking for an excuse to not go out.

“Loosen up,” he said. “Go have fun. I’ll tell you what: you can borrow my P.E. clothes. Steve especially likes tight gray shorts.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I think I’ll just go with what I’m wearing, thanks.”

“He’s gonna make you shower afterward, you know.”

“You think?”

“Yep: roll call, stretching, floor hockey, shower. That’s P.E. Steve’s dream date.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. The guy’s fatuous.”

“Fatuous?” That was Pat, too, showing off his vocabulary while calling her date a moron.

“But don’t ask him if he’s fatuous, ’cause he’ll say, ‘Boy I hope so. I paid a lot for this vasectomy.’ ”

She laughed again in spite of herself—and wished, as always, that she hadn’t. How much trouble had Pat squirmed out of at school this way? Female teachers were especially helpless. He got As without books, talked other kids into doing his work, convinced principals to waive rules for him, ditched school and invented fabulist reasons for his absence. Debra would cringe during school conferences when the teacher asked about her diagnosis, or about Pat’s trip to South America, or about the death of his sister—
Oh, and his poor father
: murdered, disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, dead of exposure on Everest. Every year, poor Alvis died all over again, of some new cause. Then, around his fourteenth birthday, Pat seemed to realize that he didn’t need to lie to get things, that it was more effective, and more fun, to simply look people in the eye and tell them exactly what he wanted.

She wondered sometimes if having a father around would have balanced her indulgence of him; she’d been overly charmed by his precociousness when he was little, and probably too lonely, especially in those dark years.

Pat set his guitar down and stood up. “Hey. I’m kidding about Steve. He seems nice.” He walked over. “Go. Have fun. Be happy.”

He really had grown in this last year. Anyone could see it. He’d gotten in less trouble at school, hadn’t snuck out of the house, had gotten better grades. Yet she was still discomfited by those eyes, not by their structure or color, but some quality in his stare—what people called a glimmer, a spark, a thrilling
watch-this
danger.

“Do you really want to make me happy?” Debra said. “Be here when I get home.”

“Deal,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “Okay if Benny comes over to practice?”

“Sure.” She shook his hand. Benny was the guitar player Pat had recruited for his band. This was the thing turning Pat around: his band, the Garys. She had to admit (after a couple of school events and a battle of the bands in Seattle Center), the Garys weren’t bad. In fact they were pretty good—not as punk as she’d feared, but kind of grubby and straightforward (when she’d likened them to
Let It Bleed–
era Stones, Pat rolled his eyes). And her son onstage was a revelation. He sang, preened, growled, joked; he exuded something up there that shouldn’t have surprised her but did: an effortless charm. Power. And ever since the band got together, Pat had been the picture of calm. What does it say about a kid that joining a rock band
settles him down
? But it was undeniable: he was focused and engaged. His motivation still worried her—he talked a lot about
hitting it big
, about
becoming famous
—and so she’d tried to explain the dangers of fame, but she couldn’t really be specific, could only make flat, bland speeches about the purity of art and the trappings of success. So she worried that her talk was all a waste of time, like warning a starving person about the dangers of obesity.

“I’ll be home in three hours,” Debra said now. It would be five or six hours, but this was a habit; cutting the time in half so he might get in only half the trouble. “Until then, don’t . . . um . . . don’t . . . uh . . .”

As she looked for the proper scale of warning, Pat’s face broke into a smile, eyes tipping before the corners of his mouth began their slow climb. “Don’t do
anything
?”

“Yes. Don’t do anything.”

He saluted, smiled, put his headphones back on, grabbed his guitar, and plopped back on the bed. “Hey,” he said when she turned away. “Don’t let Steve talk you into jumping jacks. He likes to watch the jiggly parts.”

She eased the door closed and had just started down the hallway when she looked down at the pipe in her hands.
Now, why would he take a pipe out of its hiding place
if he didn’t have pot for it?
And when she’d asked what he’d been doing, Pat had to dig around in the drawer for the pipe. Wouldn’t it be on top if he’d
just
thrown it in there? She turned in the hallway, went back, and threw the door open. Pat was sitting back on the bed with his guitar, the nightstand dresser open again. Now, though, he had open on the bed the thing he’d actually been hiding from her: his songwriting book. He was bent over it with a pencil. He sat up quickly, red-faced and furious: “What the hell, Mom?”

She stalked over and grabbed the notebook from his bed, not really sure what she was looking for, her mind going to that place parents’ minds went: Worst-case-scenario-land.
He’s writing songs about suicide!
About dealing drugs!
She flipped to a random page: song lyrics, a few notations about melody—Pat had only a rudimentary understanding of music—fragments of sweet, pained lyrics, like any fifteen-year-old might write, a love song, “Hot Tanya” (awkwardly rhymed with
I want
ya
), some faux-meaningful tripe about
the sun and moon
and
eternity’s womb
.