The Bones (5 page)

The three-year, 12-million-dollar pact calls for Melnick to create and executive-produce network comedy series. The deal was
brokered by fosh Goetzman at CAA. Melnick is managed by Marty Lavin at Invisible Entertainment.

"It's good to be the king," Frank offers.

Lloyd, noticing deference in Frank's tone, something never apparent back in New York, says, "I'm just the dauphin."

"The dauphin. That's funny," Frank says, not laughing. "I like that. I'd laugh if I didn't hate the fuckin' French."

"How long has"—Lloyd angles his head, trying to indicate the camera, which is close enough to photograph his pores—"Otto been
following you around?"

"About a month. His father works at Nada. I'm his independent-study project. When he's done, we're gonna sell it on the Internet."

"Cool," Lloyd says, wondering if Frank is going to bring up the reason for their meeting. At that moment Frank notices the
book of fabric swatches and picks it up.

"What's this, babe? Calvin Klein's napkin line?"

"A little item I picked up in the gift shop at the Oscar Wilde Handkerchief Museum," Lloyd effortlessly keeping up with Frank,
almost forgetting Otto and his video camera. "The piecework of Lord Alfred Douglas," now, waxing esoteric. "We're building
a house so we're buying some furniture. My wife's channeling her inner gay man. You know, the whole outdated interior-decorating
stereotype I'd never stoop to reference. The whole thing's a point of contention in our marriage."

"Marriage itself is a point of contention, babe," says the twice-married Frank.

"I could live in a refrigerator carton, but my wife"—here Lloyd shakes his head wearily in the universal male bid for sympathy—"she
thinks she's Charles Foster Kane. We're building Xanadu in Brentwood. I want to get a dog just so I can name him Rosebud.
She's out of control. Whenever I leave the house, I have to remember to ask for my balls back."

"She doesn't want to wrap everything in plastic? I'd cover my whole house in clear plastic if I could. It's condoms for furniture."

"Once a week you have the maid Windex the place."

"I can't understand how that went out of style. Who doesn't like furniture you can see yourself in?"

Lloyd looks at Frank as he riffs on furniture trends, notices his hair is flecked with gray. Frank's been at this a long time,
he realizes.

"The only problem," Frank continues, "is if you like to lie around in your underwear. Then you can get stuck to the couch.
You fall asleep, the doorbell rings, you get up to answer it and leave a patch of flesh on the Barcalounger." Then, turning
to Otto's lens and leaning toward it: "On the Barcalounger, ladies and gentlemen!"

"I'd like to cover the whole goddamn house in plastic sheeting, then inflate it with helium and watch it float away," Lloyd
remarks, a little surprised at the level of vitriol in his words.

"We build our own cages."

Lloyd has a horrifying moment when he remembers Otto is taping his every word, but relaxes when he remembers the likelihood
of anyone actually seeing what he's shooting.

After a few more minutes of ruminating on marriage, escape, and plastic furniture covering Frank comes to the point as he
Jackson Pollocks his eggs-over-easy with hot sauce.

"Lynx wants me to do a series."

"That's great," Lloyd says, figuratively whacking himself on the forehead, thinking,
That's the best I can do after pulling the Oscar Wilde Handkerchief Museum out of the ether?
Not noticing Frank's last sentence was a simple declarative and didn't need to be one-upped.

"And I'm thinking maybe you should write the pilot. That's where your deal is, isn't it?"

This was not Frank's rent-controlled Second Avenue apartment with a bong on the table and the future spread out before them
like a buffet at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, where earlier in his career he had opened for the seventh incarnation
of the Beach Boys. This was Los Angeles and some very real expectations glittered, holiday lights on the desire tree.

"What's the idea?"

"It's about me."

"Lynx signed off on this?"

"No, they signed off on a show where I play an Eskimo." Lloyd laughs, not realizing it isn't a joke. "I'm not kidding. A fuckin'
Eskimo. So you want to write it with me?"

"The Eskimo show?" Lloyd, confused now.

"No. What am I, fuckin' Nanook? Fuck the Eskimo show and the fuckin' arctic elk it rode in on. I'm not doing the fuckin' Eskimo
show. We're"—Lloyd noting the use of the plural, as if he's already been enlisted in Frank's cause—"we're doing a show about
the Bones, babe. It's a show about
M
fuckin'
E,
okay?" Lloyd nods in a way intended to convey that Frank should continue, not
I'm with you.

"We're gonna get together, smoke a blunt . . . " Frank goes on in this vein and Lloyd politely listens, wondering how to handle
the situation. On the one hand, he respects Frank. He is as talented a nightclub act as exists at this time. On the other
hand, he is Frank: a dark, brooding, junkie-looking guy who does not appear headed for success in a traditional American television
context. "We'll pitch it together, then you can write it."

Lloyd is trying to nod thoughtfully as if he's weighing Frank's suggestion, wondering,
How do I get out of this?
when Frank asks "Have you ever met Honey?"

"Frank, I haven't seen you in almost ten years. I have to think about it." Not bothering to address the Honey issue.

"We all should go out." Frank ignores, or chooses not to get, the implication of Lloyd's remark.

They push through the rest of the meal discussing the Kennedy assassination, a current obsession of Frank's, and talk about
meeting at the LAX Gun Club, where Frank claims to have persuaded the manager to allow him to test the veracity of the single-bullet
theory with a mannequin he found in a Dumpster behind Neiman Marcus.

Chapter 3

Lloyd's Saab is stuck in traffic heading west on the 10 freeway. It's early evening on a Saturday, and the Santa Anas have
blown the smog away, making the sunset less colorful without the usual chemical enhancement.

"We got those tickets four months ago," he says, clearly not thrilled.

"This is important," Stacy informs him, impatient with what she perceives to be his male obtuseness.

"So is Elvis Costello."

"Elvis Costello is going to come back to L.A."

Lloyd liked Elvis Costello very much, believing him to be an artist who had held fast to his integrity and still managed to
be successful, although he probably wouldn't live in Brentwood. "I can't believe we're missing him for some charity event
where we could discharge the whole obligation by just sending a check. Why did I sign off on this? Explain that to me. Why?"

"Are you serious?"

"Extremely."

"Because it's important for us to go to this kind of thing," she says in that drink-your-milk tone he loathes, "if you want
people in the industry to think of you as more than a writer."

"Why do I have to be more than a writer? What's wrong with being a writer?"

"Lloyd, do you have to be stupid?"

"You know, that's a rhetorical flourish I just love. 'Lloyd, do you have to be stupid?' That gets me paying attention."

"I don't mean it." Looking over at him to make sure he's mollified before continuing. "You have this big new deal now where
you're supposed to be producing, and you don't want people to think you're still some schmuck writer. I don't want to argue,
okay? I'm gonna get mascara in my eye."

Stacy is applying makeup in the rearview mirror as Lloyd drives through the gloaming toward the home of Robert Hyler. It's
a few days after Lloyd saw Frank, and Stacy, through her relentless networking, has arranged for them to have the privilege
of writing a huge check at a fundraiser for Save Our Aching Planet, the pet charity of power spouse Daryl Hyler.

Stacy saw her chance to insinuate herself into the orbit of Daryl Hyler and become a power spouse under her tutelage when
she learned a year earlier, while getting a seaweed wrap at the Burke Williams Day Spa with Marisa Pinsker, her friend from
Mommy and Me, that Daryl and Robert sent their twins to the Tiny Tuna Pre-School in Santa Monica, universally acknowledged
to be the first step on the path to either Harvard or the William Morris mailroom, depending on the proclivity of the child
or, more to the point, the child's parents. Marisa had tried and failed to get her three-year-old in there, a fact Stacy correctly
ascribed to her friend's lack of social connections. A flurry of phone calls and a few discreet donations later and Dustin
Melnick, four years old, son of Stacy and Lloyd, was blindly leading the family on their charge up the social ladder by relinquishing
his place in a local Montessori program and matriculating at Tiny Tuna.

Unfortunately for Stacy, the Tiny Tuna Pre-School was not in the migratory pattern of Daryl Hyler, who, being busy making
the world a better place, always sent one of her two Salvadoran nannies to pick up the twins. Yet every day, Stacy was stationed
on the sidewalk in front of the adobe building on Colorado Avenue that housed the tiny tunas, chatting with the other caregivers
as she patiently waited for Daryl Hyler to appear.

Months had gone by with no sign of her until the previous week, while standing in front of the school in a gaggle of women
who were discussing their kitchen renovations with a fervor you would more typically associate with medieval kabbalists parsing
a particularly arcane passage in the
Zohar,
Stacy finally spotted her quarry.

Daryl Hyler was driving a pint-size electric car, a kipper can Stacy could crush into a tin pancake with her Suburban and
not notice. Stacy's first thought was
How can a woman with all that money drive something that looks like it should be used to make toast?

The other mothers, lost in the minutiae of tiles and trash compactors, didn't notice as Daryl, her tall and slender frame
accentuated by a tailored pantsuit and topped with a helmet of straw-textured blond hair that looked as if it could stop bullets,
got out of her four-wheeled appliance, cell phone jammed to her ear, and marched toward the school, a Prada battering ram.

"Tell the senator to blow me!" were the first words Stacy could discern. "If the plant gets built near that beach, I'm holding
her personally responsible and she better not come to Los Angeles thinking she's going to raise a fuckin' dime for her next
campaign." Daryl snapped the phone shut like an angry clam, saw a friend, another mother, not part of Stacy's group, and waved,
calling, "Hi, hon. You coming Saturday night?" flipping the charm switch. The friend, wearing a too tight, midriff-exposing,
black T-shirt and white cotton pants doing nothing to hide a turquoise thong, nodded, waved a manicured hand, and went back
to her own cell phone conversation.

Wasting no time, Stacy approached.

"I love your car. It's so cute!"

Daryl looked at her, head tilted. Smiling, ingratiating, Stacy lifted her hand and indicated herself with her fingers. "Stacy
Melnick. Dustin's mom."

"Are you Lloyd Melnick's wife?" Daryl thinking,
Forget the icing, who's the cake?

"Yes." Recognition. That's good.

"Wasn't he on
The Fleishman Show7."
Stacy liking the specificity, a hit show powerful currency.

"All seven seasons."

"I loved
Fleishman.
My husband and I always watched." A direct hit!

"Lloyd enjoyed doing it."
And before you start thinking he's unemployed and pathetic, Daryl, let me point out,
"He just signed a new deal with Lynx."

"That's great." Totally uninterested, Daryl looked over Stacy's shoulder. The kids were about to be sprung.

Thinking she'd better breach the walls of the fort, Stacy charged ahead: "Lloyd signed this new deal, like I was saying, and
we're looking for a charity to get involved with . . ."

And the change that came over Daryl was almost like one you'd see in a cartoon character, an animated figure whose physical
transformation embodied her thought process. Suddenly, dollar signs were in her eyes as the tumblers clicked into place and
the ding ding ding of a Las Vegas jackpot could be heard heralding a river of silver. Daryl cocked her head and grinned at
her new best friend, her bosom pal, her Santa Monica soul sista.

"Really?"

"I know you do a lot of work for Save Our Aching Planet . . ."

"Yeah, I help them out." Falsely modest. Then, unable to contain her essential nature for more than a brief moment: "I break
my ass for that organization, but it's all good."

"Well, it's really . . . you do really valuable things."

"I have to because, you know, if people like me don't get involved . . . they're raping the planet, these corporations. It's
criminal and somebody has to tell them it's not acceptable." Now Daryl was on a roll, ignoring the point that many of these
same corporations advertised their wares on shows her husband produced, thereby allowing her a platform from which to denounce
their perfidy. "I can't get past the front page of the paper anymore without having a seizure! Robert hates it." Stacy thought,
I just met this woman and it's like I'm hosting a radio show and she's an irate caller.

"We'll be sitting there at breakfast and I'll see something about a developer wanting to pave a wetland area and just go ballistic,
but then I think, 'What else should I do with my life?' How many times a week can you get your legs waxed? That's a really
cute sweater you're wearing. Fred Segal?" She reached past Stacy's ear and lifted the label from the back of the collar.

"It's a Donna Karan."

"Love her! She's given us a shitload of money. Love-love-love her! What did you say your name was? I know you're married to
Lloyd."

"Stacy?" She said it with a question mark as if doubting her own identity.

"Why haven't we met before? You look familiar. Did you work at Endeavor?"

"No."

"You look like someone there. Do you have plans Saturday night?"

Stacy knew Lloyd had bought the Elvis Costello tickets from a broker a week before they went on sale, that he'd mentioned
the show was this weekend every day for a month, but out popped, "No. I don't think so."

"We're having a little get-together at our house this Saturday. The governor's going to be there. Why don't you and Lloyd
come?"

"We'd love to."

"Write down your address," she said, the woman very comfortable speaking in orders. "I'll have my assistant send you an invitation."

As Stacy fumbled in her purse for a pen and paper, Daryl surveyed the area with her guardtower gaze. "What kind of car do
you drive?"

"A Sub . . . " And Stacy nearly blew the whole thing. But with the lightning quickness of a major league shortstop adjusting
for a bad hop before it can rocket into the outfield, she grabbed her mistake (". . . urban." Gotcha!) in her well-oiled glove.
"A subcompact."

"Good for you. But you have to"—not
should,
because that would imply choice, but
have to
because she was willing it—"get an electric. They're the best. I have three."

"We're going to," Stacy quickly replied, and thought this should end it for now.
It's exhausting talking to this woman. And yet, somehow exhilarating.
She scribbled her address on a soiled Post-it.

"Where's it parked?" Stacy was stricken with the fear that Daryl was going to ask to see the nonexistent subcompact.

"Around the corner," Stacy lied.

"Look at that thing," Daryl said contemptuously, pointing at Stacy's Detroit mastodon, formerly the pride of the Melnick fleet
but soon to be consigned to the scrap heap, parked twenty feet away where it glowered at her like a prehistoric beast. Raising
her voice slightly for the benefit of the anonymous malefactor with the temerity to buy it, Daryl demanded, "How can anyone
with a brain in their head drive a car like this now? Don't they know what they're doing to the planet? I see one of those
things and I just want to scream." Then, catching Stacy off guard, she turned to the mothers, now engrossed in the subject
of window treatments, and gruffly inquired, "Who owns the Suburban?"

Stacy held her breath, praying no one would betray her and reveal the colossal automotive faux pas she had made.

At that moment, the gates of the Tiny Tuna Pre-School opened and humanity's hope for the future poured forth. No one was paying
attention to Daryl's question as Stacy pressed the Melnick address into her hand and a sea of sticky faces surged onto the
sidewalk.

"See you Saturday," Stacy said to Daryl as she scooped Dustin up and walked toward the corner.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" Dustin asked, reasonably enough, since he noticed their car was in the other direction.

"Mommy'll tell you later."

Lloyd is pulling the Saab up to the valet parking stand in front of the Hyler home for the Save Our Aching Planet event, Stacy
turning to him.

"If anyone asks, we have an electric car," she says.

"Why?"

"Just say we do."

"I don't even want to be here. I'm not moving until you tell me why I'm supposed to prevaricate."

"Prevaricate?" It annoyed her when he used words she didn't know.

"Lie."

"Because I ordered one and if anyone asks—"

"What do you mean you ordered one?" he interrupts. Traditionally, all large purchases have been joint decisions in the Melnick
marriage. This breach of protocol does not please Lloyd.

The parking valet is leaning into the window now, wondering why Lloyd's not getting out of the car. But he's not moving. He's
staring at his wife. Tries one more time. "Stacy, what do you mean you ordered one? Without telling me?"

"We're getting involved in the environmental movement now." Waiting for that to sink in as he stares at her. "Lloyd, hello,
the valet parking guy is waiting for us."

Fuming, he gets out of the Saab, hands the keys to the young Mexican who risked his life climbing into an oil drum to be driven
north across the border so he could make $5.50 an hour parking cars, and follows his wife toward the house, a vast, recently
built hacienda-style home, the architectural love child of Louis XIV and Cortes, Versailles by way of Taco Bell.

"Stacy!"

"Can we discuss this later?" Her heels concussive on the imported flagstone as she moves toward the huge oak front door. "And
don't mention the Suburban."

"Why not?"

"Because they'll look at you like you're a freakin' war criminal."

The door is slightly ajar and Stacy pushes it open and enters, Lloyd right behind her still masticating over the surreptitious
purchase of the electric car. What did that portend? A new streak of independence for Stacy? A further manifestation of her
profligate spending habits (the Suburban being barely a year old)? A burgeoning social conscience, reaching blindly, like
a baby bird, toward the newly esteemed source of solar power.

From the threshold of the Hyler hacienda Lloyd, dressed in his usual combination of aggressively untrendy cottons and Nike
high-tops, surveys the spacious home and sees a gumbo of fashionable Hollywood producers, agents, lawyers, managers, and directors,
with a sprinkling of celebrities known to favor progressive causes tossed in to flavor the broth. In one corner he sees überagent
Yuri Klipstein, a man reported to make 150 phone calls a day, talking to a woman who has written a movie about a talking vagina.
In another, a well-known hyperactive comedian/actor whose movies Lloyd finds grotesquely sentimental is conversing with an
acerbic talk-radio personality. Standing at the sunken wet bar being handed two
mojitos
by the female bartender is a former starlet who parlayed a series of early-career nude scenes into marriage to a studio head
and a home in the Malibu colony.

Lloyd is filled with the urge to turn around, go back to his car, and drive home. He thrusts his hands into the pockets of
his frayed khakis and prepares to denounce the entire event quietly into Stacy's ear.