Bleak (22 page)

I wake on the morning the eight-week option expires full of anticipation like it’s Christmas or my birthday. Nobody has told me what to expect next, but I have several ideas, namely that Lloyd calls with the signed contracts in hand or pitches a four-week extension to the tune of a fifteen-thousand-dollar option.

To keep busy, I turn on the television and watch
Good Morning, America,
then
Live with Kelly.
I boil an egg for breakfast and limit myself to refreshing my e-mail only during commercial breaks.

Despite these practical efforts, the morning drags.

While I wait, I mentally compose the e-mail response accepting the extension offer, a gracious missive with a hint of impatience. I mean, seriously, how long is this going to take?

At noon, I make myself a grilled cheese sandwich and sit on the couch, compulsively pressing the refresh button every five minutes. I can no longer force myself to wait until commercials.

My confidence begins to fade.

By two, I’ve come up with several unlikely but still entirely plausible explanations for the lack of communication. Lloyd is in a meeting with the money guys right now signing the contract. Lloyd is stuck in traffic on the 110 and can’t get reception on his cell phone. Lloyd is in the hospital having his appendix removed. Lloyd’s plane crashed in the San Bernardino Mountains.

I turn to CNN to see if there’s any breaking news but it’s all election coverage. The ticker on the bottom lists HMO reform and Moxie’s entry into rehab. I couldn’t care less about either and flip back to
Love & Valor.
It’s been a decade since I’ve caught a full episode of the soap but it’s remarkably easy to catch up. Ten years later and Jinx, Marcos and Marita are in the exact same place. They haven’t budged an inch: the same squabbles, the same betrayals, the same sweeping romantic gestures like flutes of champagne and single red roses.

Life is so depressing.

When it’s over, I put on Ellen DeGeneres. Her guest is an arachnologist who has just placed a tarantula on the host’s arm. The camera zooms in as Ellen jokes about the creepy, creeping crawler reminding her of an old boyfriend. “No wonder I’m gay.” The audience laughs; I stare, fascinated. Then she announces that every member of the studio audience will get a remote-controlled Mexican red-knee tarantula with realistic furry texture and everyone cheers enthusiastically.

I glare enviously at the happy studio audience.

My life sucks.

Of course I have the power to make it better. Every day I think about starting the new screenplay I discussed with Tulk. Some ideas have already come to me. The mischievous monkey is really a prince transformed by the evil monk who wants to rule his country. The girl has the power to undo the spell but she just has to believe in herself in order for her magic to work.

It’s Disney meets Miyazaki.

But despite my intentions, I never get myself to work. It’s like a kind of paralysis: I can think the action but I can’t make my muscles respond. Each day, I watch the clock wind down, constantly recalibrating how much time I have left. Noon: If I start now, I can finish the first act. Three: If I start now, I can finish the first scene. Five-thirty: If I start now, I can finish the first page.

And yet nothing happens.

It doesn’t seem like such a pressing matter as long as the option is a go. As unproductive as I personally may be, little elves are out there in the world assiduously settling my future. Sometimes it feels like I myself am hard at work, too.

As the day progresses, my fantasy scenarios desert me one by one, and by the end of
Access Hollywood,
I’m forced to admit that Lloyd isn’t trapped in an elevator or hammering out the final details of a twenty-four-million-dollar contract. Lester isn’t desperately trying to get in touch with me. He’s not seconds away from ringing my doorbell in an anxious flurry and frantically apologizing for his land line, cell phone, Internet and telegraph machine being down all at once.

The eight-week option ends, not with a whimper but with a sigh. It might as well never existed.

I hate Simon for being right.

Mom sends the Pirellis to spy on me. Two weeks after the fake option lapses, Janine and Bob invite me to dinner at Morton’s. The famous steakhouse is far too extravagant a place to take a slight acquaintance, but the Pirellis won’t listen to reason. It’s their favorite restaurant in the city, and they can’t wait to share it with me.

That alone sets off alarms, but when they insist on coming up to see my apartment, I realize something funny is definitely going on.

“It’s not at its best right now,” I say, unlocking the door. During the elevator ride up, I tried desperately to remember if I cleared my plate from lunch. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Don’t apologize, dear. We know what it’s like for you busy single gals. My daughter, Charlene, is exactly the same way.”

I turn on the light and quickly survey the damage. It’s not as extensive as I thought. I rush over to the couch, fold the fleece blanket and throw it over the arm of the sofa. “Please sit down. What can I get you? I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer. Some red wine, beer, vodka.” I open the fridge and see a week-old carton of orange juice. “I can do screwdrivers.”

“The red wine will be lovely,” Janine says.

Bob sits down. “I’ll take a beer.”

As I dig glasses out of the cabinet, Janine wanders around the living room. She picks up photos, looks through my magazine stack and peers out the terrace window. “You have a lovely place,” she says, examining the Lloyd voodoo doll with interest. “Very warm and homey, a nice size in a good neighborhood. If you don’t mind my asking, how much is the rent?”

The directness of the question takes me aback, and I pause in uncorking the wine for a brief moment, then regain my balance. “Surprisingly reasonable,” I say, mimicking the answer I gave Mom eight months ago. It’s sufficiently vague and has the side benefit of being true: My Bleak apartment is remarkably affordable for its size and location, although it’s still more than I can afford.

But that’s none of Janine’s business. Or my mom’s.

I hand them their drinks, then pull together a sad plate of hors d’oeuvres from the meager offerings in my kitchen. Bob dives into the Triscuits with cheddar while Janine sorts through the mail on the dining room table. She doesn’t bother to be subtle about it, holding each piece up and flipping it over. Luckily, it’s all credit card offers, Planned Parenthood solicitations and coupons from local businesses. There’s nothing revealing in the pack.

Still, it’s disconcerting to watch her poke through my stuff with shameless abandon.

Bob asks me about my neighbors and noise pollution while Janine disappears into the bedroom. I don’t know what she’s looking for but I know she won’t find it in there. The only important document I keep in there is my passport in my underwear drawer. All financial documents are in a folder in the hall closet. She’d have to be pretty bold to start going through my coats right in front of me.

“The construction seems sturdy,” Bob says, pounding on the wall, “solid. Brick. I bet not much gets through. When was the building built?”

I don’t have a clue but Bob wants facts so I say 1954 because the flat stucco lines of the apartments look midcentury to me.

The answer works for him as well and he nods solemnly. An awkward silence follows as he taps the baseboards with his foot. It’s unusual for the two of us to be alone together without Janine.

“What kind of building does Charlene live in?” I ask, pouring myself a glass of wine. I have no idea how much longer we’re going to be here. I guess it depends on what Janine finds under my bed.

“Pre-pre-pre-war,” he says in the vernacular of New York real estate. “It was built in 1834. When you go into the basement, you can see the original stone walls laid by masons almost two centuries ago. Talk about solid construction.”

Janine reemerges after a brief stop in the bathroom. I hear her rattle the bottles in the medicine cabinet: Tylenol, Advil, multivitamins. Since I rarely remember to take the One-a-Days, the container is almost full, and I can see Janine marking that off on her checklist to report back to Mom, who bought me the tablets in the first place. She’s worried that neither Carrie nor I get enough calcium. Osteoporosis runs in the family.

By the time we leave for Mortons, the evening already feels endless and I focus on the thought of a rare, eighteen-ounce porterhouse steak to get me through the car ride, a gentle inquisition of what I’ve been up to since they saw me on New Year’s Eve. Vague answers don’t satisfy them and the pair grow increasingly determined as the night wears on.

At the restaurant, they ply me with excellent wine and mouth-watering beef, hoping the mind-numbing effects of both will lull me into honesty. But cream spinach is not a truth serum, and I cling doggedly to my story that I work as a temp for a variety of law firms. When pressed, I give up a few names, the same ones I gave my mother two weeks earlier after she called every major law firm in Los Angeles to find out where I work. Thinking on the fly, I explained the reason I’m not on the books is I’m a freelance temp at different places. The freedom is nice and the pay is better.

She seemed to accept the story.

But as Bob talks about his first job as a talent booker’s assistant—the realization that the music industry wasn’t the right place for him, however reluctant he was to tell his parents (hint, hint)—I realize Mom didn’t accept anything at all. She was simply biding her time until she thought of another plan of attack.

Poor Janine and Bob.

Determined to put me into a complete food coma, they order three desserts: New York cheesecake, upside-down apple pie and the self-proclaimed legendary hot chocolate cake. Having licked the bone of my steak clean, I can’t possibly eat another bite.

The Pirellis insist with such force that I’m almost prepared to tell them everything just to get them to relent. The only thing stopping me is the thought of Mom calling at five the next morning and screeching in a tone that could curdle milk, “What do you
mean
you’ve spent Grandma’s money?”

The memory of Mom’s milk-curdling anger is all I need to fortify myself and I take a tiny taste of the cheesecake. It’s sweet and rich and at any other time no doubt delicious; tonight it sticks in my throat. The apple pie goes down marginally better, and the chocolate cake is an effort from beginning to end. The Pirellis alternate between watching in delight as I struggle and bombarding me with questions. Bob asks about various people at the law firms I claim to work at, then sits back and waits for my response. I can’t tell if he’s made up the names or actually knows the people, but, gambling, I go with the former. As an insurance salesman in Encino, he probably doesn’t mingle much with L.A.’s powerhouse legal force.

When I can no longer stand it, I hijack the conversation and launch into a twenty-minute diatribe against the inhumane practices of the American meat industry. I rail against antibiotics and tiny pens and the way cows are strung up by their hooves, cut in the throat and left to hang until they bleed to death. I know it seems hypocritical after devouring an entire porterhouse, but I suddenly feel an unexpected kinship with veal.

The Pirellis are so taken aback they listen quietly. In a somber mood, Bob signs the credit card slip and tucks it into his wallet. We are all silent during the walk to the car, and I feel awful about my ungracious behavior. These people have been kind to me. They took me in when I had nowhere to go and treated me like family. I had no right to ruin a perfectly lovely dinner, however inquisitional.

The guilt I feel is terrible.

But then Mom wakes me up the next morning hounding me about the animal-rights cult I’ve fallen in with, and I get over it.

Lester calls in the middle of
Love & Valor
to tell me Lloyd has Millie Sherwood, Moxie’s arch nemesis, lined up to star. I’m so engrossed in Marita and Avery’s wedding ceremony, I don’t bother to answer the phone, only picking up belatedly as Lester is signing off.

“Millie wants to meet with the director personally before she commits fully,” Lester explains after my breathy hello. “If she’s satisfied, she’ll write a letter attaching herself, at which point the backers will come on board officially and you’ll get a proper option contract and payment.”

Although I always love hearing about hot young starlets who want to make my movie, the news of a director is also interesting. This is the first time anyone has mentioned one.

Lester explains that his name is Blake Alden and the last thing he directed was a comedy with Selena Gomez. “He’s also a screenwriter and has lots of ideas for the script,” he says, “which is why Millie wants to meet with him before she signs on.”

While he talks, I pull up Blake Alden’s entry on IMDB and peruse his credits. His history is pretty decent. Aside from recent directorial blunders—a series of teeny-bopper features for which he was obviously unsuited—he’s had a solid writing career. He even won an Oscar for a psychological thriller with Al Pacino.

“When’s the meeting?” I ask.

“In a few weeks,” he says, as frustratingly vague as always. After all this time, he still doesn’t understand my need for facts and figures. He has no idea what my calendar looks like, with its days numbered like the ticking clock in an increasingly dire hostage situation.

Or maybe he does get me and doesn’t care. In thirty years, I can’t be the first pain-in-the-ass client he’s ever had. Maybe we’ll all alike in our constant need for hard facts.

I thank him for the update and immediately turn my attention back to the television, where Marita’s daughter is walking down the aisle with a basket of flowers. Thanks to a well-timed commercial, I haven’t missed much.

As exciting as the Millie news is, I wait until the show is over before I start Googling her.

Sadly, there isn’t much to find.

Millie Sherwood lives a relatively quiet life with her mom in Malibu in a modest house on a three-acre estate near the ocean. Her wild exploits include building houses for Habitat for Humanity, cofounding a charity called Kids Helping Kids to introduce youngsters to philanthropy and visiting sick children in hospitals. Most recently she created a perfume called Heart Song; on her website she describes the process of working with French experts at the famous Gallimard perfumery in Provence. “I knew I wanted a simple fragrance with hints of musk and earthy wood tones, but working under the guidance of a professional nose taught me the intricate complexities of even the most simple-seeming scent.”

Currently she’s in the studio recording her new album,
Allusions to Summer,
to be released in September. The planned world tour will take her from Patagonia to Perth. She’s very excited to meet her many international fans.

Her next movie is a romantic comedy called
Upward and Homeward,
about a type-A college student who learns there’s more to life than perfect grades when she finds herself homeless over the Christmas holidays. Logan Lerman plays her slacker frat-boy love interest. The film hits theaters next week.

It looks pretty bad but I decide to reserve judgment until the critics actually pan it. Not that it matters what I or Manohla Dargis thinks. Millie’s target audience is tween girls, who’ll buy anything with her name on it, including
Lolly Dolly
videos by the truckloads. Based on preorders at Target and Walmart, her perfume is expected to break sales records.

In the two hours I spend researching Millie, I can’t find a single black mark against her. She subscribes to a healthy lifestyle; advises girls against premarital sex; recommends plenty of fruits and vegetables to keep your energy up; goes to church on Sunday; is kind to animals; and publicizes causes she believes in.

Her image is squeaky-clean.

Worst of all, it seems to be sincere.

There’s not a single hint from even the most salacious gossip site that it’s all an act and that inside the placid twenty-year-old is an uncontrollable wild child struggling to break free.

She’s the anti-Moxie.

I know this is good. A sane, reliable tween-queen movie star won’t keep me up nights worrying about when she’s going to enter rehab or crash her car into a tree. There won’t be any stripping sagas or fey-gay boogies. My days won’t be consumed with the minutia of her exploits. Millie doesn’t create press. She could stand at a gas pump in stained sweats and no makeup eating pork rinds and still the tabloids wouldn’t care.

No doubt the lack of hysterical paparazzi peeping over your backyard fence makes for a comfortable life but what about me? How’s my movie going to generate buzz if its star isn’t out there doing something shocking every other day? When will
J&J
be mentioned if Millie keeps her underwear on and her knees together? What hope do we have of becoming a sensation with such a staid, responsible adult at the helm? Lloyd might as well have cast Minnie Mouse for all the excitement it will generate.

Still, I try not be disappointed. The important thing is
J&J
is moving forward. Despite the lapsed fake option, the elves are hard at work, keeping to a schedule of hope and promise. Today Millie, tomorrow the costar, next Thursday the twenty-four million dollars. It will happen eventually.

I simply need to believe.