Borderline (11 page)

18

Reason Mind told me I should give the shallow cuts on my thigh more time to air out before I put my AK prosthetic back on, especially since I hadn't showered the night before, but Emotion Mind didn't want David Berenbaum to see me in a wheelchair. Cleverly masquerading as Reason Mind, it argued that I wouldn't be wearing the AK for very long and that time was of the essence. I took it as an encouraging sign that the cuts didn't hurt too badly once my thigh was nestled firmly in the socket.

I put on my third-nicest outfit and some fresh deodorant and decided that would have to do. I considered telling Teo that I was going out for a while, but after last night I was afraid he'd get too nosy about it, so I just left.

I had enough cash for a cab there and back, but after that I was going to need to visit an ATM. Little details like this drove me nuts; life seemed too full of speed bumps when I just wanted to Get Things Done. This was why I made a better director than a production assistant.

The trouble with taking a taxi to the Warner lot was that because I wasn't driving through a security booth, I had to
limp my way down the sidewalk to the place where people from the parking garage checked in. That normally meant extras or tourists, so when I told the freckled white guy at the turnstile that I was here to see Berenbaum, he looked at me like he was fitting me for a tinfoil hat.

“He knows I'm coming,” I said, but my voice sounded uncertain even to me. “Can someone contact him?”

“Ma'am, you'll want to get a pass for your dashboard and drive through the main entrance.”

“I don't have a car,” I said, feeling my cheeks go hot. In L.A., that's like admitting you don't have a place to sleep.

“How did you get here?”

“Taxi.”

“What's your name?”

“Millie.”

“Millie what?”

“He doesn't know my last name. Millie from the Arcadia Project.”

“I don't know what that is.”

“Mr. Berenbaum will know, if someone can get hold of him.”

“Can you stand over there a minute?”

I got out of the way of the tourists and “background ­talent” and stood against a hedge, feeling the sun beat down on my hair. I suppose my lack of outrage wasn't helping my case for being Someone Important, but I had too many humiliating memories associated with the Warner lot to cop an attitude.

Anyone who does background work more than twice is either a starry-eyed wannabe, an out-of-work actor slumming to keep his SAG card, or someone unemployable at any other job besides taking up space. Generally speaking, extras are an
unruly mob with a variety of unpleasant attitude problems, and sometimes in desperation they try crazy stuff like, oh I don't know, claiming they have an appointment to see the most famous person on the lot.

I stood there long enough that it was beginning to seem like the guy was hoping I'd get bored and go away. Finally I approached him again. “Hi,” I began, but he cut me off.

“I can't get through to Mr. Berenbaum right now,” he said. “When that changes, you'll be the first to know.”

“He invited me here,” I said. But even as I spoke, I could feel a Borderline paradigm shift. Without a stable sense of identity—something most people have mastered by the age of four—it becomes very easy for other people to tell you who you are just by the way they treat you. As I stood there, in my own mind I was becoming what he saw: a crazy and slightly scary woman with delusions of importance.

I frantically did a mental replay of the conversation I'd had with Berenbaum earlier, trying to reinterpret. I wasn't really supposed to have his number in the first place; I shouldn't have called him. His delight in hearing from me could easily have been faked. But he had specifically said that I should come to his office. I was right and the security guy was wrong. Right?

I pulled out my phone—painfully aware of how cheap and obsolete it looked—and dialed Berenbaum's number myself. His assistant answered.

“Hi, Araceli,” I said, feeling a moment's delight that my slippery brain had held on to her name. In Hollywood, knowing the assistant's name is crucial. “This is Millie with the Arcadia Project again.”

“One moment please,” she said politely.

I turned to give the security guard a glare, but he wasn't paying me the least attention.

After a few moments, Araceli came back on the line. “He doesn't seem to be available right now. Can I give him a message?”

I stood there, disoriented, starting to dissociate a little. Dissociative episodes are a Borderline thing that happens under maximum stress; you just kind of check out, leave yourself. My brain damage didn't help matters. In that moment if she had asked me my name, I couldn't have given it. I didn't understand what was happening, why I had taken a taxi to the Warner Bros. lot, why I was now going to have to take a taxi right back home. I chewed my bottom lip, furious at myself for losing it now of all moments.

“Do you have a message for him?” she prompted again.

“I . . .” I struggled to assemble words. “I'm outside. At security. They won't let me in. He said for me to come.”

“Can you put me on with the security guard, please? Tell him Araceli wants to talk to him.”

I approached the guard again and held the phone out to him. “It's Araceli,” I said.

The beginnings of an
I'm in trouble
look came into his eyes and gave me a flutter of hope. He looked at the phone as though it were a rotary-dial antique, then took it from me and grunted a few monosyllables into it. Glancing at my prosthetics, he said, “Yes,” in a tone of deep chagrin. Then, crisply, “I'm on it.” He hung up the phone and handed it back to me.

“Well?” I said, still too shaken to be smug.

“Go on through,” he said.

I was so relieved that I forgot how very far away Berenbaum's office was, and that I didn't quite remember the way there, until
I was all the way at the intersection of four enormous soundstages. I knew the general area of the lot where his office was located, so I kept hobbling along in the right direction until I spotted another security guard, a black guy with a sprinkling of white hair. Once he spotted me approaching, he moved to meet me halfway.

“I'm supposed to meet David Berenbaum,” I told him, “but I can't remember exactly where I'm going.”

“Let's see if we can get you a lift,” he said. He called in his location on the radio. “Got a young lady here with a cane, en route to DSB on foot.”

I couldn't hear the response, but he laughed out loud and said, “I'll bet!” He put his radio back on his belt. “Just sit tight a minute,” he said to me.

“I could kiss you,” I said.

“That won't be necessary.”

“What's your name?” I asked him. “I want to tell Mr. Berenbaum how helpful you were.”

“I think he can see for himself,” he said with a smile. He pointed over my shoulder, and I turned; a golf cart was approaching. Its driver had an unmistakable head of white hair. The sight of him was like daylight pouring through clouds.

“Millie!” said Berenbaum as he stopped the cart by the curb and got out. “I'm so sorry. Minor crisis in editing. Please tell me you didn't have to walk far.” He took my hand and held it solemnly for a moment. His grip was firm, his hand soft in that old-man kind of way.

“It's fine,” I said. “Exercise is good for me.” I didn't mention the cuts under my silicone prosthetic socket, which were starting to smart a little.

He moved to help me into the cart, then stopped, suddenly boyish. “You want to drive?”

“Is it . . . I mean, do you think I can, with my . . .”

“It's just a gas pedal and a brake, nothing fancy. A kid could drive it. Go on.”

He seemed so delighted by the idea, I couldn't refuse him. I limped around to the driver's side and eased my way into the seat. I hesitated, looking for somewhere to put my cane, but Berenbaum just took it and laid it across his lap as though he were always holding women's canes for them, no big deal. I grabbed the wheel, and after Berenbaum released the parking brake, I used the muscles of my right thigh and knee to push my BK prosthetic against the accelerator. The cart puttered forward.

“Straight on, then make a left at soundstage twenty. Also, feel free to go faster than this.”

I pressed down harder. It felt odd without direct contact between me and the accelerator. Also I hadn't been behind the wheel of anything in over a year, and now here I was, driving David Berenbaum around in a golf cart.

“We're headed to the editing suite,” he said. “We're behind schedule, so I want to stay nearby. Is that all right with you?”

“That's fine,” I said. “As long as it's safe to talk freely there.”

“I'll kick everyone out of the room for a few. You know, you can really floor it if you want, it's okay.”

I looked dubiously down at the golf cart, which was starting to vibrate and whine like a frightened dog. “Honestly, I'm afraid this thing is going to fall apart under me.”

“Don't talk about Bessie that way,” said Berenbaum. “She's a good soldier. Pedal to the metal, come on.”

“I—”

Without further ado, Berenbaum simply bumped my right leg with his left, knocking my prosthetic foot off the accelerator and stomping down on the pedal himself. The high-pitched shriek of alarm I made as I clung to the steering wheel made him laugh out loud. I'm sure the average grandmother could still have outrun the thing on foot, but to me it was exhilarating, steering while he accelerated, trusting him to brake in time to keep us from hitting anyone.

“Remind me to never get behind you on the freeway,” he said.

Soon we came to the northeastern edge of the lot, to a larger bungalow than the one where his office was located. I guided the golf cart into a parking space; he put on the brake and helped me out of the driver's seat. He also held open the door to the building for me, and while that sort of thing would have driven me nuts a year ago, I had recently stopped resenting people for making my life easier.

The editing suite itself looked more like a living room than an office. A large flat-screen TV hung on a wall opposite a comfy-­looking caramel couch, and a skinny college-aged kid sat at a computer desk with an older man leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen. Nearby a young woman was writing on a spiral pad, looking stressed out and sleep deprived. Three of the four walls were decorated with framed movie posters and photographs of people shaking hands; the fourth was almost entirely covered in stills from
Black Powder
.

“Can we have the room for a few?” said Berenbaum to the other three. They were gone almost before he finished his sentence, and Berenbaum looked back at me, gesturing to the couch.

I sat at one end, he sat at the other, and he glanced to make sure the door was shut before letting out a long exhale and turning to the subject at hand. All his boyish good humor vanished.

“Vivian Chandler is probably planning to kill you,” he said. “In fact, I'm worried that she may have killed you already.”

19

“What do you mean, she might have killed me already?” I couldn't decide whether to laugh or have a panic attack.

“Did she ever touch you, even briefly?”

“No. Caryl warned me about that the minute we went into her room.”

“Oh, Caryl was with you?” He gave a deep sigh. “Thank God. If Vivian had cursed you, Caryl would have known right away and would probably have executed her on the spot. Vivian's on thin ice with the Project as it is.”

“Why would she want to curse me?”

“Why do cats chase birds? If someone is no use to her, it's just . . . a thing she does.”

“And she's never been caught?”

“There's never anything to investigate. She shakes a guy's hand and a week later his aorta ruptures, or he has a stroke, or something else perfectly plausible. It's her specialty. Did you know Martin?”

“Who?”

“The guy who used to be in charge over at the Project. He was a real sweetheart. Drowned in his own blood because he
was dumb enough to grab Vivian's arm one day to keep her from tripping over a split in the sidewalk.”

“My God.”

“Generally she tries not to curse people who are obvious obstacles; she's too smart for that.”

“Do you ever worry she'll do something to you?”

“The studio would tank without me, and she knows it.”

I figured it might be rude to ask him how Warner Bros. had managed to make
Th
e Jazz Singer
and
Casablanca
without him, so instead I asked, “Why would Vivian care?”

“Hell if I know. But she does, enough to give me her word. Someone like you, though? Teo? Perfectly safe to do whatever she likes with.”

“Actually, I'm not sure she
could
kill me that way,” I realized aloud. “Because of the nails and screws and stuff holding me together, I cancel out fey magic when I touch it.”

“Seriously?” Berenbaum looked floored. “Millie. This could help us. A lot.” He got up from the couch and began to pace; I could almost hear his mental gears turning.

“Why do you think the viscount gave
her
a free spa room, of all people?” I asked him.

“Those two are definitely not friendly,” Berenbaum said. “He knows exactly what she is, better than any human would.”

“Maybe that was the point,” I said, trying to use my story­teller's brain to unravel cause and effect. “He was obviously ­trying to lead someone astray, someone unfriendly who would be looking for him pretty hard. So why
wouldn't
he set the equivalent of a bear trap in the room?”

Berenbaum turned to me abruptly, his eyes sparkling. “You clever girl!” he said in surprise.

I felt my cheeks warm. “Uh, thanks?”

“That makes total sense,” he said. “Let's run with it.” Then just as quickly, he looked stricken again. “You don't think he set that trap for the two of
you
, surely. He and I have been huge supporters of the Arcadia Project from way back. We owe you guys everything.”

“I know how much you've given to the Project,” I said. “That's why this is a huge priority for us. Who
would
Johnny want to set a trap for? And,” I continued on a sudden inspiration, “who would he do something so bad to that the cops might get involved?”

Berenbaum began to pace again. I would have liked to do the same; that kind of casual, spontaneous movement was something I missed, a lot.

“I can't imagine,” he said. “Johnny keeps a low profile, so he doesn't have any enemies.”

“Do you?”

A light seemed to go on over his head; he snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Susman,” he said.

“What?”

“Aaron Susman.”

“The Aaron Susman who's produced everything of yours since
Red Cotton
? He's your enemy now?”

Berenbaum gave a mirthless laugh. “Well, he's livid about the studio, of course, but I didn't think he'd go this far.”

“What about the studio?”

Berenbaum hesitated, then flexed his hands and grimaced. “Look. If you want the facts, you might be better off hearing his side. I don't want him yelling to the tabloids that I've slandered him.
Again.
”

“Well, I'd be happy to talk to him.”

“I don't mind giving you his number, but be careful. He doesn't know about fey or the Project. Think you can manage that minefield?”

“I'm sure of it.”

Berenbaum moved to the computer desk and scribbled on a sticky note, then handed it to me.

I felt a private satisfaction at having ferreted out a new lead on my own (not to mention scored the phone number of a major movie producer), but I wasn't about to let it rest there. “Have you been in touch with Inaya yet?”

“I haven't; I'm sorry.”

“Has Vivian said anything to you that might give you the slightest clue what Johnny's up to?”

Berenbaum shook his head slowly, looking thoughtful. “He has to be staying
somewhere
, though. I wish I had time to call around.”

“I'm not sure anyone has time to call every hotel in Southern California.” I thought for a moment. “You and Johnny are close, right? Do you share any bank accounts or anything?”

Berenbaum did his little snap-and-point gesture again. “At home, I have all his passwords written somewhere. Online banking, credit cards, everything. Linda will know where. Can I call you later tonight?”

“Sure.”

“It might be really late.”

“Anytime, I mean it. Three a.m., that's fine.” Assuming I wasn't fired by then.

I gave him my new number, and I felt absurdly gleeful as he programmed it into his phone.

“Hey,” he said as he punched it in, “what do you think about keeping all this just between us for a while?”

“You mean the investigation?”

“Just until we know more. Vivian and your boss have history I'm not privy to, and it makes me uneasy. Not sure what I'm walking into there.”

As much as I loved the idea of having a secret with David Berenbaum, I had good reason to be suspicious of the words “Just Between Us.” Professor Scott had used them, a lot.

I gave him an apologetic grimace. “I have to tell Teo and Caryl about anything I work on. Especially since I'm sort of on a trial period right now.”

“Of course,” Berenbaum said immediately, looking abashed. “I keep forgetting you're a newbie. I'll trust you to know who to trust. Let's talk tonight, all right? And we'll see what we can patch together from his transactions.”

I carefully rose from the couch, ignoring the disturbing crescendo of pain in the skin of my left thigh, and held my hand out for him to shake. He reached for my shoulders, catching me off guard. Just as I was about to freak out, he turned me toward the wall, so that I was facing the collection of
Black Powder
stills.

“Speaking of confidential information,” he said, “what do you think?”

I looked at the images.
Black Powder
appeared to be a Western with a tight color palette and a lot of wide shots. A quick scan showed me four instances of the exact same composition in different settings. Was it a motif, or had he simply not noticed the redundancy? It bothered me that I wasn't sure. Was I not as sharp as I'd been before my injuries, or was he the one who was losing his touch?

I knew I should be impressing him with my knowledge of cinematography. If I wanted to hitch a ride on his coattails, he had just given me a gold-embossed invitation. But something about the idea felt tasteless. We'd managed to connect on some level without me mentioning my aspirations, and I didn't want to trade that in for something every other director wannabe in the city would be trying.

“Looks great!” I said, and left it at that.

As he walked me back to the golf cart, I saw him eyeing my prosthetics, which he'd never done before.

“What?” I said.

“You're walking funny today,” he said. “Something hurt?”

“Oh, I uh . . . just a skin irritation.”

“Is there something you need to do for it?”

I hesitated, but he seemed genuinely curious. “If it's bad,” I said, “I have to use the wheelchair for a bit, air it out. So in other words, I'm going to ignore it.”

“Hey,” he said firmly. “I'd rather have you on wheels than getting gangrene or something.”

“Jesus,” I said with a laugh, “your imagination is worse than mine.” I approached the cart and turned back to him with a grin. “Who's driving?”

•   •   •

During the cab ride home I tried to get through to Aaron Susman by giving my name and saying it was personal, but all that got me was voice mail, so I hung up and decided to call back when I had a better idea. After paying the driver, I had exactly fourteen dollars and eighteen cents left in cash.

A couple of blocks from Residence Four was a small cluster of shops providing such urgent necessities as brow waxing,
ice cream, and dry cleaning. It also boasted a staggeringly surcharged ATM, so after pausing to open the windows, close the shades, and otherwise try to make my room less like a sauna, I changed into some baggy knit shorts and took off my AK prosthetic to see if my wounds were going to allow me to walk.

I didn't like what I saw. The cuts were shallow, but the deepest of the bunch had gone red and puffy around the edges. I had been trained too well in the signs of a nascent infection, and the sight of it made me flash back to that first hospital: chills, fever, misery. It had taken three tries to find an anti­biotic that my infection wasn't resistant to, and at one point I had been sure that I was just going to finally get my wish and die.

Now, dying was not on the menu. I grabbed supplies and some crutches so I could make my one-legged way down the hall to the bathroom. I washed the cuts carefully, applied Neosporin, covered the area lightly with gauze, and then headed toward Teo's room for help getting my wheelchair down the stairs.

His door was shut and locked, and no one answered my knock, so I got to experience the fun of descending stairs on crutches without any feeling in my prosthetic right foot to tell me where the edges of the steps were. Falling off another roof would have been less scary. Halfway down, I noticed the man I'd seen restraining Gloria Wednesday afternoon. He was sitting on the couch, petting Monty and reading a battered paperback, utterly unmoved by my plight.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I noticed the smell of curry and heard some muffled cursing from the kitchen. Not
a good time to ask Teo for help. But I couldn't get the wheelchair on my own, and I wasn't comfortable rolling around by myself in South L.A. looking vulnerable anyway.

I looked back at the man on the sofa. He was dressed in a faded, mustard-yellow T-shirt and threadbare jeans. I felt intimidated, then guilty about being intimidated, torn between the white liberal fantasy of color-blindness and the stereotypes I'd been fed my whole sheltered life.
For God's sake, Millie. He's reading a book and petting a cat. How much less scary can a person be?

“Hi,” I said. “Do you think you could help me get my wheelchair down the stairs?”

He lowered the book and fixed me with a flat look. “What did you take it up the stairs for?”

I found myself momentarily floored by the question. “Well—that's where my room is,” I said lamely. “But I need to go to that ATM over by the ice cream place, and one of my legs is too messed up for a prosthetic today.”

He sighed, set aside the book, and headed for the stairs with an air of resignation. I wasn't sure of his age, but there was a world-weary quality to his annoyance. Monty moved to sit in the warm spot he'd left, and I tilted my head to read the title of the discarded book:
Which Lie Did I Tell?
by William Goldman.

Aspiring screenwriter, then. Now there was a stereotype I was comfortable with. They say in L.A. you can ask anyone on the street, “What's your screenplay about?” and get a polished sales pitch.

I called up the stairs after him. “I'm in the room that used to be—”

“I know where you are,” he called back. In a few minutes he came back down carrying the chair and even helped me unfold it.

“I don't suppose you'd walk with me to the ATM,” I said.

“In case you run into some black people?”

My mouth went dry. “No.”

He looked me over, one brow lifting. “Nobody's gonna bother you. Dressed like that, with that castoff-looking wheelchair, all you're missing is a cardboard sign.”

“I might look a little less like a bag lady when they see me taking fistfuls of twenties out of the ATM. Will you please come with me? I'm Millie.”

“Tjuan,” he said, pronouncing it like the last half of Antoine. “I'll go if you get me some ice cream.”

“Uh, okay.”

“I'm just fucking with you. I'll go.”

“Okay then.”

Although his long legs could have eaten up the distance between the house and the shopping center in about two bites, he kept pace with me as I wheeled myself along. The silence started to get to me; I remembered I wasn't supposed to ask him anything about himself, which meant he couldn't ask me any of the usual small talk stuff either.

“So!” I volunteered. “This is my third day. So far everyone seems pretty nice. But I get the feeling Gloria doesn't like me very much.”

“You are not wrong.”

I didn't know what to say to that, not without asking a question, so I floundered for a bit. When we got to the intersection across from the shopping center, he hit the button and we waited for the light.

“You were reading a book on screenwriting,” I said. I figured a declarative statement was within the letter of the law.

“Yeah.”