What Movies Made Me Do (24 page)

The downstairs buzzer shrieked. I leaned into the antique intercom. The doorman had new authority. “Emergency,” he said.

“What?”

“Michael Finley coming up.”

“No, he’s not.” I couldn’t believe it. This was a showdown. He was showing me he knew exactly where to find me when he wanted to. But what if Jack came back in the front door.

“Tell him I’m coming down,” I shouted.

I was sweating when I spotted him in front of the lobby’s three brass doors, a stack of screenplays under one arm, his pale ostrich briefcase under the other.

“I’m on my way out to a screening.” My voice sounded slightly resentful.

“Sorry to bother you.” He smiled without looking at me. His face was flushed with excitement.

I was fed up with him. “I accept your apology. Want to grab a soda?”

“No time.” He checked his new watch. Then he glanced out at his bulging limousine. “It’s these scripts. I’m reading them on the plane. I need you to read them tonight and pouch me your critiques.”

I breathed deep. These were just scare tactics. Pretending big crisis.

I had to sit down. I marched forthrightly over to the yellow settee. He followed me. “Sit down, Michael.”

He was so startled he obeyed, crossing his legs. The lobby was behind him.

“I can’t read tonight,” I said, startling myself.

He jutted out his lower jaw. I didn’t pause. “I’m sure you can read them yourself.” Michael never knew
what
he thought of a script until I read it. Until I babbled at him about rising action, story, character changes, third-act climax, and packaging elements. For days I’d hear him repeating my words over and over to respectful directors, writers, and colleagues.

He cleared his throat. He loves a fight, especially one he can’t lose—with a subordinate.

“You hired me to run the New York office,” I said. “But these scripts are from meetings you held in New York behind my back; they’re from people I’ve been meeting with, scripts I should have. It’s your material now, so you evaluate it.” I’d had it.

He dropped the screenplays on the settee, staring me down. “Job pressure get to you?” He sounded victorious. “Tell me about the stress.”

“No, we’re talking about reading scripts.” I almost shrieked. Because just then Jack ambled in past the front desk. When he saw me, he stopped short, and held out a large bunch of red roses. His eyes widened at the sight of Michael. He held the flowers behind his back and began tiptoeing melodramatically behind the couch where Michael was sitting. He was imitating a cartoon burglar sneaking out of a house. He blew me a kiss over one palm and backed into the opening elevator.

I giggled wildly.

“You need a rest,” Michael said.

I averted my gaze from Jack, who was waving a handkerchief at me from inside the elevator. Jack Hanscomb thinks everything is one big game.

Michael was shaking his head. “You’re not making me happy. What’s so funny?”

My next words were in the air between us before I considered them. “The one-hundred-fifty-thousand severance you pay me off if you fire me.”

Michael’s eyes bugged. I could see his brain computing like a cash register gone berserk. He was vulnerable because of the half million he’d promised Sam, as a payoff. “You better watch it, Carol. You’re out of line.”

He twisted around as the doors closed on Jack. I squeezed my eyes shut in relief. I felt as though I’d been fighting my way upstream for years against a cold icy flow, and suddenly a deep treacherous river had changed course. Now it was whirling in little circular waves and soon it would carry me where I wanted to go.

“I’m talking round the clock to lawyers about the mess you made in Israel,” he said.

“I hope you know what you’re doing. It must be hard on your nerves.”

“I’m leaving
you
the scripts.” He raised his voice.

“Sorry, no time tonight.” I grabbed his hand, shook it, and ran to the closing elevators while he stood panting with anger. “You hired me, Michael, I hope you take credit for that.”

His jaw looked permanently dropped. For once in his life he couldn’t destroy me. The doors closed on Michael’s horror-struck face, and I spun around and clapped my hands. “Give that woman a big hand,” I said to the walls. “She finally acted like a person.”

Upstairs there was no sign of flowers.

My bedroom door was snugly closed. I rapped on it and paused. “No, Carol,” I said aloud. Every minute counted if Rosemary was in trouble. I had to find out what happened to her.

I dialed Minnesota information. I had a flush of pain. I didn’t remember a time when I didn’t love her. Rosemary’s dad answered on the second ring.

“Hello there,” he said hesitantly.

“How are you?” I stalled.

“How you doing?” He sounded protective. “I guess you’ll be wondering about our girl.”

“Listen, I—”

He had covered the receiver and was calling to somebody. I pulled the telephone cord into the kitchen and tore the Saran Wrap off the bowl. I wolfed down three cookies.

A scared voice said “Hello?” I stopped chewing. Then she spoke in a normal voice to somebody else. “Okay, okay, I will.

“Dad says you’re invited here and with the snow on the trees our street beats Paris.”

“Tell him thank you. Rosemary, what’s going on?”

She thanked her dad.

“What the hell’s going on?” My breath puffed with relief. It’s amazing what two thousand calories of sugar will do.

“I got real upset and I figured you’d be really pissed, so …” I barely recognized her subdued tone. It sounded like all the anger had been knocked out of her.

“Why would I be pissed?” I broke another cookie in half. Rocky’s tail was fanning the air like crazy.

“I wrecked that guy’s stuff.” She spoke in a whispered rush. “I talked my way into his penthouse apartment and I just got nuts.”

“You still feeling nuts?”

“Guess not, but there wasn’t any point in staying in New York, not after what I did and—”

“What about your job?” I had a pang. She didn’t give a damn.

“I disappointed you.”

Tears smarted in my eyes. There was just too much stuff coming at me. “Rosemary, it’s not just that you behaved badly.” I hated the formal note in my voice.

“I know, yeah, yeah.” Then she spoke to somebody else. “No, I don’t feel like riding in a snowmobile.”

I shook my head. I bet they were happy she was home. I was rubbing my forehead for inspiration. “No, wait, you behaved badly, but certainly—”

“Don’t rub it in,” she said in a low voice.

“Wait, really, I understand, I do. I remember how my flesh crawled when I opened Sam’s closet in Dallas and saw a whole pile of the leading lady’s clothes. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried and cried and called my friend Lynn in New York and she spent an hour trying to convince me that I should see her shrink.”

“But you didn’t do anything horrible.”

“I got needy and he hated me for it,” I said slowly. “I hit myself in the head and knocked myself down.”

“That’s how I felt.”

I dreaded this. “Rosemary?”

“Well, I went to a bar afterwards and picked up some guy, oh, it was a bar near your house where we met with a white piano and fern plants and I went home with him. We started necking and I couldn’t stop crying.”

“You’re all right?”

“I don’t know, sometimes I start crying again and I can’t stop.”

“How’d you get out of the guy’s place?”

“He wasn’t so bad. He listened to my story and he kept drinking gin. He’s a stockbroker but he used to make collages. Anyway, he told me I had to lick my wounds. He offered to lend me train fare.”

“Did you take it?”

“No, I just got an American Express card, so I went to the airport and got on a plane home.”

“Healthy. But you got to face the music.” I waited.

“I been thinking, maybe I’ll stay here and get a small place in St. Paul. Dad and Mom want me to stay on. They think it’s right. I been looking in the classifieds. I can get a roommate but—”

“What about Albert Goldman?”

“Oh, God, I feel so guilty. I don’t know. He doesn’t even know me.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, I never told him the secrets I told Sam. He doesn’t understand me like that.”

“Rosemary, I don’t know the answer,” I said, “but your father, he loves you, right? And he’ll always be there for you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, did you ever tell him the secrets you told Sam?”

“No, are you kidding? We don’t talk like that.”

“Well, think about the fact that people don’t have to listen
and say all the fancy things to be good people you want in your life.”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “You know, you are sophisticated.”

I laughed. “Sometimes I am. But I hope you come back. In a way you are my family here.”

“Thanks, me too,” she said in the unfamiliar small voice.

“Better hurry, or you’ll miss my final fight.”

She whistled with shock. “That bad?”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind so much. I got my health, I got a couple ideas, I feel confident.”

“I hope it works out,” she said.

“Well, I need you,” I said lightly, “for hand-holding, and anyway, if I get the sack and you stick around the office, you can fill me in on all the scuttlebutt.”

“How?”

“I want to hear how they claim I’ve done a terrible job. It will amuse me,” I said.

“You won’t feel awful?”

“Nope.” I meant it.

“They’ll fire me too.”

“Rosemary, they won’t.”

“What will I do?”

“You’ll get a new job assignment at the corporation, and then when the time comes, I hope I can offer you another job.”

“Listen, I don’t know what to do,” she said, but she sounded more pulled together.

“Sam?”

“It doesn’t feel so bad as it did.”

“It’s like a bad cold. Pretty soon you won’t be able to remember why he made you feel like that.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, stay home with your folks a couple days and cool out.”

“I miss Albert and the office and you.”

“I miss you too, Rosemary, and you can call Albert from out there.”

“He’s probably still at the hospital.” Her voice sounded more buoyant.

I felt happy myself. “I can’t wait to see you, Rosemary.”

“Thanks,” she said, “me too.”

When I hung up, I wanted to celebrate. These strong feelings toward other people make a whole life. Families don’t always form the way they told us in those junior high school books about the birds and bees.

In the refrigerator, behind the ketchup bottle and the small dripping Perriers, was a botttle of good champagne that had been sitting there since a studio movie opening. I aimed the cork at a distant wall, popped it, and smoky vapors came out. I tipped the bottle and sucked two tingling cold gulps. The heat spread throughout my body. I never learned how to drink. In middle-class Jewish Philadelphia, it had no place except at seders, where my father and I always dozed from sweet syrupy red wine. My mother never set foot in a bar and was proud of it.

I danced in a little circle, feeling light as a feather. Rocky bounced behind me. I poured three drops on his nose. He backed away, licking furiously. The label slid off the cold bottle.

I sat down and bounced my feet while I thought about nothing, feeling my body relax, cell by cell. Then I grabbed the phone and called Sam. He let the answering machine run until he heard my voice. “Hi.” He sounded anxious. “No lectures, okay?”

“I got a deal, take it or leave it.” I grinned.

He was silent. I grinned. “Just forget your revenge on Rosemary, and I’ll make sure Jack Hanscomb reads your treatment.”

“I need to talk to Jack.”

“Deliver the treatment here and I’ll see he reads it.”

“Swear on your mother’s life.”

“Swear.”

“I’m too mad at the girl.”

“Listen, I can’t talk, just take it or leave it. Call the police and tell them to forget it.”

I could tell he was computing everything, the chance to get Jack in his movie, our years of friendship, his fury at Rosemary, his destroyed footage.

“You will never lecture me,” he began.

“Can’t promise that.”

“You wait six months to lecture me.”

“One month.”

“Two and you have a deal.”

“Six weeks, take it or leave it, you did a bad—”

“Six weeks,” he interrupted guiltily. “I’ll leave the treatment with your doorman now.”

I hung up the phone and shouted “Yippee!” Slugged back three more gulps of champagne. Then I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. No point in courting a hangover. Then I polished off another six gulps.

The phone rang. It was Jack calling on the other line in the bedroom.

“Hi,” I yelled.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m celebrating.” I burped.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Rosemary, my secretary, she’s safe and I just feel good about my life.”

“What are you wearing?”

“My office uniform.” I giggled.

“Hey, babe, I’m lonely in your bed.”

I yawned, feeling like champagne bubbles were popping from my ears. An ocean of pressure was rolling off me. “How lonely?”

“Guess.” He clicked off. I picked up the champagne bottle and tapped open the bedroom door. In the dim light Jack sat cross-legged on the unmade bed, Rocky snuggling by him. He was wearing a thick navy velvet bathrobe with a price tag still sticking out of one sleeve.

I stopped short at the sight of a silver tray heaped with bagels and lox in front of him. There were red roses in a vase surrounded by tiny black olives, cream cheese, and scallions, unevenly sliced tomatoes, and fresh tub butter.

Unbelievable. I stared dumbfounded at my favorite food.

“Anita liked it when you brought this stuff to Israel,” he said shyly.

I hugged the champagne bottle. “Food’s the way to my heart. When did all this happen?”

He shook his head sheepishly. “Just now at Zabar’s with my last American dollar. Look, the olives still have stems.”

I swung the champagne bottle by the cold wet neck and swallowed more foam, instantly warming my chest. He gave me an old seductive smile. “Please join me.”