L.A. Success (8 page)

“It would be a pleasure,” I
answered.

19

I woke up the next morning and got
ready as fast as I could. When I went into my closet to get a fresh Arnold, I
saw that Tommy had ironed my clothes. Life just kept getting better and better.

I took my dad some fruit for
breakfast. He was already up playing chess on the computer. He was really
looking good nowadays, but I was going to have to buy him some more clothes and
make him take a shower again soon.

I arrived at the Starbucks before
9am. Some of the writers were already there. We said hello, and I went inside
to get a coffee. The same guy as yesterday was working, so I waited in his
line. The name on his badge was Max. He remembered who I was.

“Okay, now imagine that Columbo is
coming in for some coffee. Give me whatever you would give him,” I said.

The kid thought for a while and then
grabbed a big cup and filled it up. No steamy, foamy stuff this time around.

“Dark roast,” he said. “Put two
creamers and a pack of sugar in it, because Columbo has a soft side.”

I thanked him and did exactly that.

I went outside with the writers and
took out my paper and pen. I was going to have to pretend to be writing
something from now on if I wanted to maintain my cover. The guys looked at me
with admiration, as if I were an old kung-fu master keeping an ancient fighting
style alive.

This coffee was exactly what I
wanted. It was rough at first, just like when you look at Columbo and think
what an ugly guy he is.

I looked up from my coffee and
noticed that the bald USC guy from yesterday was wearing the same sweatshirt
again. In fact, all of them were wearing something they had worn yesterday. One
guy had on the same hat. Another, the same scarf. I, of course, was wearing the
same T-shirt. I started thinking that after this P.I. stuff was over, I'd have
to give a try at the writing since I apparently fit the profile.

“I forgot to introduce myself. I'm
Lonnie.”

They all told me their names. USC
guy's name was Jake. Scarf guy was Al. Hat guy was Leonard. Then there was
pocket-watch guy—it actually took me a few more times before I realized that
this was his thing—whose name was Eddie, and old-Birkenstock guy, whose name
was Jerry. I tried never to sit too close to Jerry. Occasionally, no matter
where I sat, a gust of wind would remind me he was there.

At about 10am, a young woman walked
up to Gertie's office. She took out a key, unlocked the door, and went inside.
I saw the lights come on, but I couldn't see what she was doing from where I
was sitting. I had barely started in on my coffee, but I really needed to go
see what this chick was up to. I thought about going right up and talking to
her, but then when I came here to spy on Gertie in the future, this chick might
come over and say hi or tell Gertie that I was the guy who had been looking for
her. No, that wouldn't work at all.

After a few more sips of coffee, my brain
got into the right mode of thinking. I stopped pretending to be writing stuff
and called Gertie's office number on my shit phone. The young woman answered.

“Gertie Elliot's office. Gertie
isn't here right now because she's off doing it right! Can I help you?” she
said in a perky voice.

“Uh...who are you?” I asked.

“This is Ellen, Ms. Elliot's
assistant. Do you need to talk to Ms. Elliot?”

“Yeah...I was wondering about a
house or something.”

“Great! I'll have Gertie get in
touch with you as soon as she comes in. One second while I write down your
number.”

I hung up as fast as I could. A
couple of seconds passed, and my phone rang. It was Ellen. Damn caller ID. She
must have thought we had got cut off. I answered it.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Look,
I'll call back later. I've got meetings all day today, so I don't want to be
bothered. Don't tell her to call.”

“Oh. Okay. But call us as soon as
you can.”

That wasn't very smooth, but at
least I now knew that Gertie was supposed to come by the office today. All I'd
have to do is wait around long enough, and that wouldn't be too difficult as
long as I could keep myself occupied.

To stay in good with everyone, I
didn't even have to pretend to be writing anymore because I noticed that
Old-Birkenstock Jerry hadn't written anything at all today, and everyone was
being much nicer to him because of it. He would sigh, grimace, and drum on the
laptop, or write a few words with soft, irregular tapping on the keyboard and
then delete what he had written with hard, regular pounding of the delete key.
And everyone understood what he was going through without asking him anything.
Pocket-Watch Eddy even bought him his next coffee. Swell guys, these writers.
The less you work, the nicer they are.

At noon I was exhausted. I couldn't
take the writers sympathizing with my lack of writing anymore. It was
emotionally draining, and somehow it made me feel ridiculous, as if I were
pretending not to be able to get it up around a bunch of impotent dudes just to
be nice. And anyway, this writing crap didn't seem too difficult to me. I was
thinking that I was going to come back after I was done pretending to be Dennis
and write some serious shit. But for the meantime, I'd just write down
descriptions of all the people who went into Gertie's office to talk with
Ellen.

I was really getting into my
descriptions when the kid from Starbucks, Max, came out to pick up the empty
cups that had been left on the tables. He looked over in my direction and saw
that I had already thrown my cup away. I thought he was going to be happy about
this, but instead he came over and said, “Ummm, these tables are for customers
only. You can stay here as long as you want if you keep buying coffee.”

This was getting expensive, this
spying. I was going to have to bill Spieldburt for this. I went in and got
another coffee. This time I asked for something inspector Clouseau would drink.
I got an espresso, which wasn't cool because it was so small. I had to go back
for another one every thirty minutes so I could keep sitting at the table. And
although I had avoided running off to the bathroom so far, I couldn't take it
anymore. I just hoped Gertie wouldn't blow through there while I was away from
my post. Old-Birkenstock Jerry must have had to go too, because he got up and
followed me into the restroom.

We took our positions next to each
other at the urinals. I started going and had to hold back what would have been
orgasmic-sounding groans. I bet he was doing the same thing, because even after
twenty seconds we were still going strong. And then I noticed something. I
could feel a fine mist hitting my flip-flopped feet. I had no idea whether this
mist was coming from me or Old-Birkenstock Jerry, but either way, it was pretty
clear that my feet were getting peed on. This was one of those things in life
that I'd never be able to ask about, no “Hey Jerry, you aren't peeing on my
feet, are you?” especially because if I could feel that, he had to be feeling
the same thing, if he was paying attention. No wonder those sandals of his were
smelly. I finished up and got out of there.

Maybe I was imagining it, but as I
rounded the corner and headed outside, I thought I could feel my feet stinging.
I looked down at them, stopped paying attention to where I was going and walked
right into someone.

“Oh god, sorry,” I said and looked
up into the eyes of Gertie Elliot.

She was wearing a green miniskirt
and a pink, frilly blouse. She was showing a lot more leg and cleavage than I
wanted to see, and that was saying a lot since those were things I usually
didn't complain about seeing too much of. The thing was, she managed to set
everything up so that you didn't have a choice but to look at her action. And
when you have the impression that you're being forced to look at something you
normally try to look at, you ask yourself why, and then you get really confused
about the whole thing instead of just enjoying the view. So what I finally
decided was that I wouldn't have normally wanted to look at her because she was
out of my age group. It gave me the feeling I was doing something weird,
looking at an old lady like that.

“Slow down there. Lucky for me
there's a little cushion,” she said and put her hand on my belly for a second.
Her breath floated over to my nose, and I could tell that she had been a
life-long smoker. The smell was like a mix of old tobacco and rotting meat.
This again gave me a weird impression. It was like she was hiding a bunch of
nastiness behind an artificially sexy facade. But the stuff she was hiding kind
of poked out all over, like the little whiskers she tried to cover up with
foundation. I couldn't help imagining that if you took off all her clothes,
everything would come loose and she would turn into a greasy, red-haired sea
lion. One that would try to do you.

“Sorry about that. You okay?” I
asked.

“I've bumped up against harder
things than you,” she said and gave me a wink. She continued over to the
counter to order a coffee. I went outside and sat down with the writers. After
a few minutes, she strolled by us on her way over to her office, her rump
swaying to the rhythm of her high heels. I watched her go down the sidewalk and
into her office.

I looked over and noticed that
Pocket-Watch Eddy was fidgeting more than usual. He had a desperate look on his
face. He started hitting the keys harder than normal and was breathing like an
animal. The other writers noticed it too and stopped working.

“Eddy,” said Hat-Guy Leonard, but
Pocket-Watch Eddy just continued banging away at his laptop. “Eddy!” he said
again, louder.

“No no no, not now,” said
Pocket-Watch Eddy, and he continued to hammer away. “I was just not thinking
big enough—I'm changing directions. Bigger, better, more modern. Going with
what people like. Everything's flowing fast now.”

“Eddy,” said Hat-Guy Leonard, “you
aren't working on that idea that you told us about last week, are you?”

“I've made changes, lots of changes.
It's okay now,” he said. He looked hysterical as his fingers tapdanced all over
the keyboard.

“No Eddy, it's not okay. Just go
back to the themes Sony is developing. Give them what they want,” said Hat-Guy
Leonard.

“To hell with their themes! I can't
write in a box, Leonard! They're holding me back, killing my creativity. No,
no—I won't do it!”

“What are you working on, Eddy?” asked
USC-Shirt Jake, but it didn't sound like a question.

“Oh, you'd like to know, wouldn't
you? I'll never tell you!” he answered, and hunched up closer to his screen to
prevent us from seeing anything.

“We know what you're writing, and we
want you to stop,” said Scarf-Guy Al. “Stand up, stretch your legs a little
bit, grab another coffee—I'm buying—and get back to work.”

“You have no idea what I'm writing!
It'll be the biggest film of all time!” he said. Then he leaned back and stared
off into the distance. “Imagine an enormous, environmentally friendly luxury
cruise liner, sailing inexorably toward a tragic destiny, upon which a friendly
race of twelve-foot tall, blue, cat-like people vacation peacefully, all of
which have humanoid sexual organs that you will guiltily try to sneak peeks of
throughout the movie. Suddenly, an American Army spacecraft lands on the deck
of the ship. Their mission: infiltrate the vacationing blue cats with advanced
cat clones in order to turn the giant, doomed ship into an oil platform and
drill for rare natural resources beneath the sea—resources that seem
unnecessary based on the level of technology they have clearly acquired to be
able to make the clones, but hey, you'll be too busy trying to look under the
loincloths to make that deduction. One man resists and is accepted by the cat
people before the ship slams into a floating sea rock and sinks, killing
everybody except the cat woman who had been getting it on with the good human.”

“Damn it Eddy! You told us about
'The Titavatar' when you lost it last week. You don't have permission to use
those characters. Stop it now!” said Hat-Guy Leonard.

Eddy seemed to come out of his
trance. He looked down at his screen.

“My God, what have I been doing?” He
erased the document and then stood up to go get a little air.

“At least we caught him early,” said
Scarf-Guy Al. He looked over at me. “I once cracked like that and started
writing a movie about an ambitious wookie groomer, who, when confronted by an
intergalactic conflict, decides to move to a neutral country and open a salon.
It was a musical. I finished half of if before the guys realized I had cracked
and stopped me.” He shook his head and went back to work.

20

Gertie came out of her office about
a half an hour later. I watched her as she made her way over to her car. It was
a yellow '78 Eldorado Biarritz, one of those old boats that, even though it was
the size of a house, only had two doors. It had sweet white-wall tires. It was
going to be easy to follow.

I ran over to my car and got in. I
pulled around to her side of the parking lot and caught a glimpse of her making
an illegal turn onto Venice Boulevard. She was heading out west. I turned east
and then, when I was sure no cops were around, swung a Uey. I had lost sight of
her, but I had no trouble catching up in Dennis' powerful Charger.