When the Stars Come Out (41 page)

trying to do to me? And I’ll bet you anything I’ll go out there and give them a fucking Norwegian accent and that fat fuck Cassidy will be screaming that it’s supposed to be French or something, and I

memorized the wrong script!”

“About the scripts,” said Bart, but Quinn talked right over him.

“Something is going on here. I made movies for more than a

decade! I was Philly Fucking Cop! I
know
how to read a fucking script!”

“Well, about that . . .”

Quinn was about to let Bart speak when they heard a knock at

the door.

“Get that, will you?”

When Bart opened the door, Ron Palillo and Joe Gramm stood

outside.

272

R o b B y r n e s

“Everything all right?” asked Palillo.

“We heard some noise,” Gramm added.

“Everything’s fine,” said Bart.

“Just fine,” snapped Quinn.

Palillo took a step forward into the dressing room. “You know,

Quinn, if you’d like help with line readings . . .”

“Listen,” said Quinn, making no attempt to hide his temper, “I

was Philly Cop before you ever dreamed of being Kotter! I know

how to act, dammit!”

“Uh
. . .
I wasn’t Kotter. I was
in
Kotter, but I wasn’t—”

“Bart, close the door.”

Bart shrugged apologetically to the actors and closed the door.

“Wet-behind-the-ears actors,” muttered Quinn. “They think they

can run laps around the old man.” He turned and hollered at the

closed door: “Well, I’ve still fucking got it!”

“Okay, Quinn, I really have to talk to you.”

The actor eyed his assistant up and down. Cautiously, he asked,

“About?”

“This is a setup. The whole thing.” And, with that, Bart detailed

what could only be an elaborate scheme to discredit Quinn.

When he finished, Quinn was silent for a moment. Then he

broke into a broad smile.

“Lilliane Porch,” he said, chuckling. “I should have figured that

one out myself. But you did good work, Bart. Real good work.”

“You know this isn’t over yet.”

“Of course it is,” said Quinn. “We’ve got her. You nailed her. The bullshit ends right now.”

Bart pointed to the script. “So what are you going to do about

Jake’s accent? Try to fake Norwegian?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” Bart said, “is that just because we’re on to them

doesn’t mean they’re not still running the show. Literally, in this case. You don’t know who’s working with her, Quinn. It could be

any of them. It could be
all
of them.”

“Even Kotter?”

“Yes, even Kot—I mean, Horshack. I mean,
Ron Palillo
. It doesn’t matter who it is, though, because unless they decide to stop fucking with you all on their own, they’ve got you.”

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

273

And Bart would not have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, but tough guy Quinn Scott actually looked like he was going to cry.

“It’s a disaster, David. A total goddamn disaster!”

Lindsay Flynn was on the line with David Carlyle, having just up-

dated him on the implosion of the Quinn Scott publicity machine.

It was bad enough when Larry King’s people cancelled an appear-

ance, but now she was even losing radio interviews in gay-friendly markets like San Francisco, Denver, and—most gallingly—right

here in New York City. She hadn’t intended to take out her frustration on the book’s editor—the frustration rightfully deserved to be directed at the senile old man who was making a fool of himself at that moment on a Burbank soundstage; probably trying to fake a

Norwegian accent or something—but Palmer/Midkiff/Carlyle was

paying for her services, so that’s where she directed her buckshot.

For his part, David was every bit as frustrated and unhappy as

Lindsay. He wasn’t concerned when Quinn’s difficulties on the set

of
The Brothers-in-Law
began appearing in the gossip columns, because it was ink, and therefore it wasn’t all bad. But as the week dragged on and the stories escalated at a rate David had thereto-fore thought impossible for a guest appearance on such an in-

significant television show, he was growing alarmed. His concern

had little to do with Quinn Scott’s nightly humiliation at the hands of Jay Leno and Jon Stewart, and everything to do with the word

coming back from his sales team:
When the Stars Come Out
had flatlined. Only one month after the book’s official release, it had lost its luster, and now—in a reversal the likes of which he had never before seen—returns were outpacing shipments. If things continued

as they were trending, the book was on course to set a record as the all-time
worst
-seller.

He had, of course, heard from Noah about the Great Lilliane

Porch Conspiracy, or whatever they were calling it out there on the West Coast. While it was good to know that Quinn Scott was not

mentally incompetent, David also agreed that the situation was out of their hands. He could only hope that Kitty Randolph would relent in her vendetta before PMC was forced to pulp the entire first printing of
When the Stars Come Out
.

274

R o b B y r n e s

But he didn’t hold out much hope. Hoping was for people

much more optimistic than David Carlyle.

He hung up the telephone, leaving a very frustrated, angry

Lindsay Flynn talking to dead air. She didn’t catch on until the off-the-hook tone began blaring in her ear.

“Hold it,” said MRC’s voice through a loudspeaker. “I’m coming

down.”

The cast and crew were still as statues—all except Jason St. Clair, that is, who folded his arms cockily, because he knew his breakout stardom put him beyond MRC’s wrath—as metallic footsteps reverberated, the cue that the big boss was descending from his office to the set. Moments later, Mark R. Cassidy was on the soundstage with all those contemptible people.

He eyed each person on the set, and, as he did, they took a step

back. Except Jason St. Clair. When his eyes finally reached Quinn

Scott, he held his gaze.

“Norwegian?”

“That’s what the script . . .”

“Why in hell’s name would Uncle Jake have a Norwegian ac-

cent? He’s from Indiana, or some place like that.”

“Midland City,” said a crew member.

MRC spun to face the offender and said, quite crisply, “Shut the

fuck up.” Then, returning to Quinn, he said, “And can I see this

script? The one where it says you’re supposed to swim a fjord or

something?”

Quinn was holding the script, so he handed it over. MRC leafed

through it and said, “So where do you see anything Norwegian?”

He took the script back and, as he turned the pages, knew im-

mediately it wasn’t the one he had carried onto the set. And therefore there would be no references to a Norwegian accent.

“It’s not the same script.”

“So let me get this straight. Someone gave
you
a special script?

You
got the Norwegian version, and everyone else got the American version? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Quinn didn’t bother to answer. And in any event, he was too fo-

cused on the few moments the script had been out of his hands. He

had briefly set it down on a table at one point, and that kid Jason W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

275

St. Clair had asked to see it to refresh his memory for a few min-

utes, but other than that . . .

Jason St. Clair. Of course. Why wouldn’t the breakout star of

Katherine’s show starring Katherine’s son shot at Katherine’s stu-

dio be in on the plot? Quinn turned and glowered at the handsome

young man, who was perched indifferently on the couch that

served as the centerpiece of the set. He had been nothing but trouble from the beginning, and now Quinn knew why. He looked over

to where Jason stood near Q. J.

Jason noticed Quinn’s glare. “Looking at something?”

“Not much.”

Off to the side, MRC suddenly felt excluded.
He
was supposed to be the badass around here, but now it looked as if the old hack and the hot young star were going to be mixing it up, and he couldn’t

have that. It would be tantamount to losing control. So he stepped between them—at no risk of personal danger, since Quinn and

Jason were still separated by twenty feet—and said, “Okay, I want

you both to shut up. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I want it to end right now.”

“Here is how this ends,” said Quinn, tossing the script to the

floor. “This ends when everyone stops fucking with me.”

“Nobody’s . . .”

“I get incorrect scripts
. . .
I get the wrong information on blocking
. . .
Every hour there’s a new fuckup, and you know what? It’s not me.” He looked around the set. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I was starting to think it, too. But now I know that my ex-wife owns this show and this studio, and it’s all beginning to make

sense. I don’t know which one of you is doing it—although I have

my suspicions—but I’m putting you on notice that it stops right

now.”

And with that, he stormed off the set, leaving all of them—even

Mark R. Cassidy—dumbfounded in his wake.

Not to mention more convinced than ever that Quinn Scott had

lost his mind.

As Q. J. watched his father leave the set, he thought,
Mama owns
this studio? Wasn’t that something he should know?
And then he called his stepfather, to demand an explanation.

*

*

*

276

R o b B y r n e s

Quinn sat on the bench, staring at his image in the dressing room

mirror and not liking what he saw. He could deny his reality for

four decades, through banishment from Hollywood and a host of

physical ailments, but, face to face, he couldn’t deny that he had become the man who now stared back at him.

He was getting old. He was entering the sunset of his life that he had always believed was so far away.

The old man in the mirror still looked, more or less, like the

young man on celluloid
. . .
the man he always thought of, when he thought of himself. But the dark brown hair was now thinner, and

gray; the square jaw was now framed by jowls; the broad shoulders

sagged; those eyes—those gray eyes that had first captured Kitty’s imagination, then Jimmy’s—were weary and surrounded by a relief

map of wrinkles.

He continued to stare at his reflection, as if seeing for the first time the old man that Quinn Scott had become. It was still a handsome face, he thought; it just wasn’t the face he expected to see, even though he had watched its slow decline over decades. That

was in increments; this was sudden. And that, to Quinn, made all

the difference in the world.

And Kitty had won. Yes, he knew he hadn’t lost his mental acuity,

but that was a small, personal victory. That’s all. To know that he had not become a senile old man, but was the victim of Kitty’s manipulations, was only a personal victory because the rest of the

world—his audience, his fans, his
readers
—would never know that.

To them, Quinn had tried to return from obscurity for one final,

humiliating moment, embarrassing himself and guaranteeing his

quick and merciful disappearance once again from public life. For-

ever.

And the image they would always remember—the kids and the

handful of survivors who still remembered
Philly Cop
and
When the
Stars Come Out—
would never be the Quinn Scott of the ’60s, nor would it be the handsome actor striding proudly out of retirement

as he simultaneously strode out of the closet. No, they would re-

member the doddering actor who they believed couldn’t remem-

ber his lines, wrote a book full of false memories, and, possibly

worst of all, had physically decomposed into the gray, jowly old

man in the mirror.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

277

“Dammit,” he muttered, and he would have continued to mut-

ter and stare if he hadn’t been interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Go away!”

The knock—three raps, the same as before—came again.

Quinn took another look at himself in the mirror, then tried to

shake off the image. He knew he wasn’t seeing anyone different; it was the same face he saw every day. But there was a new weariness

to it, and he couldn’t get that out of his head.

Again, three knocks.

“Hold on!” Annoyed, he rose slowly from the bench and walked

the few steps across the tiny room to the door, ready to rip into Bart or Horshack or whoever else was bothering him at this moment,

which he wanted only for himself. But it wasn’t Bart or Horshack

who stood in front of the door when he finally opened it.

“Sorry to bother you,” said the man Quinn recognized as Dean

Henry, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot outside the door. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching who should

not be watching. “Can I come in?”

“I don’t know that we have anything to talk about.”

“I think we do. May I?”

“Suit yourself.” Quinn stepped back from the doorway and Dean

skittered in, making a point to close the door gently but quickly in his wake. Without so much as a glance he slid past Quinn and

made a beeline for the actor’s makeshift bar.

“Can I pour you one?” Dean asked, his back to Quinn and acting

as if the dressing room and bar were his own.

“No.” Quinn reconsidered. “Yes
. . .
yes, I think maybe I will.”