Bleak (21 page)

Simon offers me a job in his office.

“You don’t have to know HTML, although if you do, I can get you another three dollars an hour,” he says during a commercial break for
The Wet Season,
a Lifetime TV original movie written by Kevin Drake, a guy he went to film school with. We’re pretending to watch the show, but really we’re just tearing it apart. Poor Kevin’s idea of drama is convoluted plotting, familiar dialogue you’ve heard a million times before and endless shrieking. So far we’ve counted eight blood-curdling screams and we’re only thirty-eight minutes in. “Mainly we’re looking for a proofreader. It’s only twenty hours a week but if you work out, I can probably push that up to thirty. It’s pretty straightforward. We just need you to read for sense, style and grammar. The content editors are good, so the copy won’t need a lot of work. The previous freelancer recently became full time, which is always a possibility if you’re into that. What do you think?”

It’s been seven weeks and three days since I accepted Chancery’s offer and I still haven’t seen a contract. I e-mail Lester every Monday morning for an update but he always says it’s with Lloyd’s lawyers and not to worry. The memo is a mere formality.

Still, I find the lack of action unbearable. The eight-week option feels so ephemeral that the only thing I have to hold on to is the promise of a signed document, incontrovertible proof that it really does exist. Without it, I sometimes suspect I dreamed up the whole thing and then rush to reread Lester’s e-mails to make sure it’s not all in my head. If it is a delusion, then at the very least it’s a collective one.

I shift a pillow and pull my feet onto the couch. “I don’t know,” I say in response to the job offer.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” His tone is wheedling and cajoling. “You get the cube next to mine, and I’ll tell you everyone’s dirty little secrets. Like who’s sleeping with who. Plus, Lucy in marketing keeps a jar of Hershey’s Kisses on her desk, so you can have all the free chocolate you want. How’s that for a sweet deal?”

As tempting as he makes it sound and as much as I could use the income, I can’t bring myself to agree. The thought of office work—any at all, not just the paralegal kind—makes me cringe. I can’t stand the idea of being at someone’s beck and call. I’m all out of “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs” and polite smiles that nobody notices. Josiah and Barton seems to have burned them out of me, leaving a charred husk.

It will probably take years to undo the Symphony Brodsky damage.

“It sounds great,” I say, trying to soften the rejection. I know he just wants to help. “But the timing’s off. I’ve got some stuff going on.”

He looks at me cynically, suspecting evasion. “What stuff?”

I shrug. “You know, things.” On the TV screen, the image of a woman in a padded cell flashes. “Hey, it’s back on.”

“Like fake option things?” he asks.

Simon calls my eight-week deal with Chancery a fake option. He thinks Lloyd did it to keep me in line because I’ve proven myself to be dangerous. “It’s classic appeasement,” he said deflatingly when I announced my big news. “They’re afraid of what you’ll do next. Now really terrify them and publish the article. It’s not too late.”

I shake my head, trying to erase his words, which replay in my mind all the time. They’re the reason I e-mail Lester weekly and obsess compulsively about the contract. The longer it takes to sort out, the more I second guess my decision.

Do I think about running the article?

All the time.

“No, I have other things too.” The protest sounds hallow and overly defensive to my own ears so I make something up. “I’m working on a new project. Writing. And,” I add with some temerity, “it’s
not
a fake option, so please stop saying that.”

Simon doesn’t listen. He’s too much of a know-it-all to consider the possibility that this time he’s wrong. “If it were real, you would have signed the contract by now. But you haven’t because Chancery doesn’t want to waste its money paying lawyers to read it. In a week the option’s going to fade away like it never existed in the first place and you know why? Because it never existed in the first place. It’s a figment, an illusion created to make sure you don’t change you mind about the article.”

He isn’t saying anything I haven’t said to myself a dozen times during the last few weeks, but it doesn’t help matters for me to hear it. Once the doubt creeps in, it’s all over for me. I lose the ability to eat, sleep, function. I sit on my couch and stare across the room at the voodoo dolls lined up on the windowsill. I can’t even swing the passive productivity of reading.

For this reason, I simply shrug and say OK. To argue would be to expose myself to more logic.

I turn back to the television, where Heather Locklear is being fitted for a straitjacket. Her cheeks are unnaturally puffy but I can’t tell if that’s from too much Botox or the steroids the doctors have her character on.

Simon sighs loudly and puts a hand on my shoulder. He doesn’t knows how hard I have to work to not listen to him, but he’s sympathetic anyway. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so angry when I think of them taking advantage of you. Lester should know better.”

I nod but keep my eyes on the screen. Lester is also a touchy subject. I haven’t told him yet that I’m meeting with another agent tomorrow. I know he wouldn’t approve. Whatever he says about Lester, he respects his experience and trusts his judgment. If he thinks
Tad Johnson
needs another twenty-seven revisions, then
Tad Johnson
needs another twenty-seven revisions.

Plus, he’d just get on his high horse if he knew Harry had anything to do with it.

Simon is silent as he watches Heather chew through the ropes around her wrists. When she finally escapes and climbs over the asylum wall, he says, “What other things?”

I stare at him, confused.

“You said you had other things. What are they?”

It’s just like him to be relentless. “I’m sorry but I don’t want your stupid job,” I say sulkily.

“I’m over the stupid job,” he says with a smile, making it clear that indeed he is. No doubt he has someone else in line to offer it to. Maybe Wren. “Now I’m just curious.”

Despite my resolution to come up with a new screenplay idea, all I’ve done for the past seven weeks is go to the park. I went the first day hoping the fresh air would inspire me and returned every day after to soak of the peace and quiet and sunshine. I bring my notebook with me but never open it. There’s little inspiration in owners chasing their dogs and nannies playing with their charges.

“I’m working on a new novel,” I say after a moment. If I’m going to lie, I might as well make myself sound good.

Simon nods approvingly. “What’s it about?”

“A girl and her dog. It’s really too soon to tell.”

This sounds like the height of evasiveness to me, but he accepts it. “Good,” he says, turning his head toward the television. Heather is now swimming across the English Channel in a bikini. “How is that possible? Wasn’t she just in Georgia?”

“It’s supposed to represent the geographical disconnectness of her mind,” I say, making it up on the fly. “She has no boundaries, literal or metaphorical. Watch, at the end we’ll find out the entire story took place in her head and that’s she’s still sitting in the same rocking chair where the sheriff shot at her.”

“Old Kev was never a creative genius but he had enough sense not fall back on that tired cliché.”

But Simon overestimates old Kev, and in the end we learn it’s a thousand times worse than we imagined. The rocking chair itself is pure fantasy. Poor Heather never even got out of the ravine her abusive husband threw her in after bashing her on the skull with a cast-iron frying pan.

Oh, yeah, I think as the credits roll, that’s the realest real possible.

I meet Howard Tulkinghorn at the Griddle Café on Sunset Boulevard next to the Director’s Guild. The space is simple and small, with maroon booths and a cool glossy red counter. I don’t see a lone male sitting by himself among the crowd of young hipsters, so I take a stool at the counter and order black coffee. He arrives ten minutes later in a disorganized rush of folders and envelopes. When we shake hands, a notebook slides out of his grasp onto the linoleum floor.

We both lean down to pick it up.

“Please, let me,” he says. “I know I look like an old man but I’m pretty spry for my age.”

According to his website, Tulk, as he prefers to be called, is seventy-eight and has been in the business for fifty-six years. He started as a recent NYU grad in the mailroom of William Morris and worked his way up until he struck out on his own in 1986. His long list of clients include twelve Emmy winners, five Golden Globe winners and one and a half Oscar winners. At this point in his career, he takes on very few new clients and only read
Tad Johnson
as a favor to Harry.

“All set, then,” he says, straightening his shoulders as he stands. Tulk is short and round, with thick bifocals, a Colonel Sanders goatee and bushy gray eyebrows. He speaks with a faint Brooklyn accent. “Ready to eat? I’m starving.”

There’s a thirty-five minute wait for a table, so we settle in at the counter. The waitress refills my coffee as she hands us the menus.

“Everything’s huge here,” he says. “The pancakes are as big as your head, so watch out if you’re on a diet. People rave about the apple cobbler French toast but I stick with the eggs. The ham and cheese omelet is an exquisite balance of ham and cheese. Sometimes you get too much of one element and the whole dish is off. What do you want?”

I’ve barely had time to look over the menu, which has too many different types of pancakes to choose from: Oreo, banana, raspberry-lemon, pumpkin, streusel, chocolate. Overwhelmed, I order plain old scrambled eggs and bacon.

Tulk launches right into why he liked my script. “It’s dark. I like dark. So many movies these days end on a false high note. Studio execs like to force happiness down our throats whether it fits the story or not. But that’s what I love about your script. It’s gritty and edgy. That edge is what makes it real. It’s the kind of story you could see leading the evening news. I can hear the teaser during a
CSI
commercial on a Monday night: Suburban teen goes on shooting spree to get into college. Film at eleven. It’s great indie material. The studios would never go for it. They’d worry about the kind of message it sends. Is it endorsing cutthroat competition in high school? But it’s perfect for an independent director looking to make his mark with something fresh and original. You’ve got it, kid. You’ve certainly got it. Now you give it to me and I’ll take it to the next level.”

The last thing I expected from this meeting is an aggressive pitch. I assumed he took the meeting as a favor to Harry, but it seems as though Harry’s the one who did him a favor.

“You really think you can sell it?” I ask, hoping to hear more praise. His attitude is so different from my agent’s. Everything he likes about it Lester despises.

“Absolutely. I can think of six people off the top of my head to send it to.”

The waitress brings our food, and I see immediately what he means about the portions being huge. It looks like an entire carton of eggs was scrambled for my dish. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is to hear. The last agent I submitted it to didn’t like it at all. He thought it had too many coincidences and wasn’t lifelike.” “What is life but coincidence? Picture this: 1998, I’m in a little bookstore in a tiny town in Bhutan and who should walk in but my old neighbor from Astoria. That’s real. But that’s the nature of the business. One man’s gold is another man’s dross. Everyone has a story of how they turned down
Titanic.
It’s like that apartment on Fifth Avenue that your aunt Marge sold for thirty thousand dollars in the 1978. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” He shrugs and pours some syrup on his omelet, smothering the exquisite balance of ham and cheese in maple flavor.

I take a bite of my eggs and reach for the salt. “We have one of those stories in my family, only it was a duplex on Fifty-second.”

“It’s a human universal. How are the eggs?”

“Delicious,” I say, although they’re actually a little rubbery. But the bacon is perfect, crispy and greasy and melting in my mouth in a scrumptious pool of fat.

“Now, keep in mind, it’s the independents, so there’s not a lot of money in it, and in fact it might even cost you a small something. But you’re just starting out and need to build a foundation. That’s my byword: build. You’re building a foundation. You’re building a résumé. You’re building a career. Nobody starts at the top. You have to build the staircase to get you to the next level. And that’s where I come in. I’m here to nurture you career, to take it through all the steps, not just the ones that pay out the big bucks. We’ll get to the blockbusters eventually but for now we start on the bottom rung and build the ladder. See how I work in my byword? I really believe there’s only one way to do it. And it’s worked for me for fifty-six years. Even when I was sorting envelopes in the mailroom at William Morris, I knew what my philosophy would be, and I’ve remained true to it. That’s the real secret to my success, and to yours.”

Every word he says is exactly what I want to hear. Some of it I said myself to Harry during an anti-Lester rant.

“That sounds great,” I observe, relieved to discover that my outlook isn’t as skewed as Lester led me to believe. Obviously he has the right to run his business the way he sees fit, but just because it works for him doesn’t mean it works for me. Right now, he’s all about making
J&J
happen, which I respect and appreciate. I’ve put too much on the line for the film to simply fall through. But I am more than my one novel; I’m an entire oeuvre as yet unwritten. Lester isn’t willing to invest in that. He has his own priorities that are far different from mine.

It’s no big deal. As Harry said, it happens every day.

“I was hoping you’d say that. As soon as we finish here, I’ll make some calls. I should have some news for you by the end of the month.”

The waitress comes by to refill my coffee but I pass. I’m buzzing already.

“Now, as you know, I don’t get paid unless you get paid. That’s the gentleman’s code of honor as well as the AAR’s ethics policy. However, sometimes these independent films are more like partnerships. I’ll introduce you to a director who’s looking for material and you and he might decide to coproduce the project together. In those cases, an investment from you might help the process along. Again, I don’t get any money from that arrangement. But I’m happy to pass up a small free now in expectation of a greater one later. That’s part of the building process. Of course, I’m not saying we’ll go that route, but it is a possibility. It’s something I want you to think about. No decisions are being made today or tomorrow. We’ll go slowly.”

“All right,” I say calmly, as if it’s a possibility. But of course it’s not. It’s one thing to chip away at my inheritance to cover the annoying but necessary expense of daily life. But to bet it all on the unlikely outcome of a single long shot—no, siree. Carstones aren’t made that way. Carrie gambled her savings on real estate—prime Manhattan real estate. Those are the kinds of odds we in my family take.

But I don’t mention this to Tulk. It’s only our first meeting, and I want him to like me. Besides, there’s no point in making a big deal about something that will most likely never happen.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, tell me what else you’re working on. I love when my clients are prolific.”

I have no more to tell him than I did Simon, but I’m even more reluctant now to spill my unprolific guts, so I tell him about the girl and her dog. I expand on it on the fly, including a mischievous monkey and an evil Buddhist monk.

I expect Tulk to call me on the nonsensical plot, but he loves my animated adventure and wonders if he should pitch Pixar.

Part of me recognizes his enthusiasm for what it is—a Hollywood schmooze job—but the rest of me embraces it blindly. He wouldn’t make the effort if he didn’t think I had a future.

Sundance, here I come.