Another Thing To Fall Page 7

  Chapter 8

  "Man, isn't this something?"

  Lloyd stood in the middle of what looked to Tess to be a relatively ordinary suite of offices, indistinguishable from any other in the city, aside from the fact that this one featured posters from several film and television projects she had never heard of — No Human Involved; Ottoman's Empire; Mildred, Pierced.

  "It's something," she managed.

  "And look in there." Lloyd dashed through the open door of the corner office before Tess could admonish him, emerging with a winged statue.

  "This thing is heavy," he said, hoisting it in two hands. "I want to thank the members of the Academy and my mama—"

  "Don't forget God. He's big this year."

  The dark-haired man slouching in the doorway was tall and thin, with the type of sharp-featured face that Tess usually found attractive. But there was something a little mocking in his eyes, unkind. Lloyd was only seventeen, and his life had been sheltered in a lot of ways. Besides, he couldn't be the first person to play this game. Tess bet almost everyone who saw the Emmy grabbed it instinctively, delivering a mock acceptance speech. The cleaning lady had probably done it.

  "I'm sorry," Lloyd said.

  "Oh, I don't mind," the man said. "And I doubt that Flip would care. Greer — now Greer is another thing. She just had it all shined up, special for the boss man. But then, Greer is always buffing Flip's Emmy, in one sense or another."

  Was that supposed to be a double entendre? It didn't fit the dynamic that Tess had observed between Flip and Greer. Besides, the girl had a fiancé.

  "How do they get your name on it?" Lloyd said, puzzling over the inscribed base. "Wouldn't that give away who won, ahead of time? They always make a big deal of it being a secret."

  "You get them blank, then they send you a band that's fitted over the base. Or so I've heard." There was a lot of topspin on the last word, but Tess decided to make nice, anyway.

  "Tess Monaghan. I'm coming on board as security for Selene Waites, and Flip agreed that the production would find a space for Lloyd here in the writers' office, as an intern, doing whatever you need."

  She was a little bitter about Lottie MacKenzie, whom she had yet to meet, shortchanging Lloyd that way. It had been bad enough, agreeing to a cut in her own fee, but the truth was that Tess had jacked it up quite a bit, testing the limits, and even the renegotiated price was far better than what she usually got. Denying minimum wage to Lloyd was downright mean-spirited — not to mention detrimental to Crow's hope of instilling a work ethic in the kid.

  "Can you type?" the man asked Lloyd.

  "Sorta…," Lloyd said, an honest enough answer. Tess had seen him on a computer keyboard. He used the two-finger method, and his speed was admirable, his accuracy and spelling less so.

  "Work a photocopier? Answer phones? Get a lunch order right? The last is really the most important. A writers' office, like an army, travels on its stomach."

  Tess thought that Lloyd would bristle at this list of less-than-illustrious tasks, but he nodded earnestly.

  "Whatever you want, Mr. Marcus."

  "Ben," the man said, then on a delayed double take: "How do you know my name?"

  "When I learned I was going to work here, her boyfriend, Crow" — he jerked a thumb at Tess — "sat me down with the computer, and we went over everybody's credits on IMDb, then I matched the names to images on Google."

  "Were you familiar with our work before you did that little exercise?" Tess couldn't decide if the question was supercilious, or merely insecure. Of course, it was possible to be both, to use the former as a cover for the latter.

  "I seen The Beast twelve times," Lloyd said. "It's one of my favorite movies."

  Ben Marcus looked pained. "That's Tumulty, and Tumulty Senior at that. We don't give points for that around here."

  "Yeah, I know, but that's what I like. Horror. You wrote one of my favorite episodes on my favorite show ever, Freak Fest. I mean, I admit, I didn't know who wrote it before we looked it up, but when I did, I remembered it and shit. There was some righteous evil in that."

  Shamed out of his sardonic smile, Ben Marcus looked awkward, even naked.

  "I'd almost forgotten about Freak Fest." He turned to Tess. "It was an attempt to update the old anthology shows, like Night Gallery, and one of the few things I ever wrote on my own."

  "I liked it when those strange little men chanted, ‘One of us, one of us, one of us.'" Lloyd squatted down and began hopping around in the fashion of a demented chicken. Perhaps Crow should have spent less time on the Internet, more time briefing Lloyd on acceptable office behavior.

  "Yeah," Ben said, his tone moving back into its naturally arch range. "Well, there's a reason for that."

  Lloyd, still in chicken mode, nodded. "I know, Tod Browning's Freaks, 1932. Johnny Eck, the Baltimore screen painter, was in it. You know, one of them guys with no legs. Crow 'n' me watched it a couple of weeks ago. I love those pinhead ladies."

  If the life I see on my deathbed is more a series of greatest hits than unfiltered memories, Tess thought, then this moment will be part of that final slide show: Achingly Hip Screenwriter Dude shot down by a seventeen-year-old street kid, left nonplussed by Baltimore arcana. Johnny Eck! Screen painting! Oh, it was lovely.

  "Yeah," Ben said at last. "Unfortunately, Freak Fest was more of a Weak Fest. No one can make an anthology show work anymore."

  "Why is that?" Tess asked. She had zero interest in the answer, but she didn't want Ben to resent Lloyd, and appealing to Ben's insider knowledge might restore the equilibrium, allow him to play the expert he clearly prided himself on being.

  "I haven't a clue. William Goldman gets credit for saying ‘Nobody knows anything' in the movie business. I'm just the rare soul who admits it. Okay — Lloyd, was it? Welcome to writers' world. Flip and I are actually doing all the writing this first season, and Flip has a personal assistant, so you'll be fetching and carrying for me, mainly, but also doing anything that Greer tells you to. Or the script supervisor, Bonnie. Or Lottie MacKenzie, especially Lottie MacKenzie. She may not even come up to your shoulder, but she's the one person you never want to disappoint on this set. Lottie fires people."

  "He's not getting paid," Tess pointed out.

  "That won't stop Lottie. Where's Greer? Never mind, I'll show you the computer basics, and the phones. Lottie has mad-anal systems for everything here, from the phones to e-mail. With phone messages, you have to log everything in by hand and by computer. When you send an e-mail, always blind-copy it to yourself. And make sure you have a list of all the restaurants we like for lunch, along with their menus. But you'll also have to call them to check the specials every day."

  Tess felt a little like a mom, watching the kindergarten teacher lead her son to his cubbyhole. Lloyd, however, had no separation anxiety whatsoever. He couldn't have been more enthusiastic about the mundane tasks that Ben was outlining.

  She gave it three days.

  Greer tried to wrap her arms around the slippery dry-cleaning bags, but there was too much to carry in one trip, and one of the bags ended up slipping to the pavement. How did someone who seemed to dress exclusively in T-shirts and blue jeans generate so much dry cleaning? When Flip had interviewed her for the job of his assistant, he had cited dry cleaning as the type of errand she would never be asked to do. No dry cleaning, no child or pet care, Flip had promised. Nothing demeaning. The problem was that Flip, who had been sucked up to most of his life, had no idea what demeaning was. He had kept his promises about children and pets, but that was probably because his son was on the West Coast, along with whatever animals the family kept.

  Still, there was no end to the trivial shit she was asked to do. Last week, Greer had spent her workday trying to find out if the cable system in Flip's rented house could be reconfigured so he could get a different menu of pay-per-view options on the sports channels. She had then spent the better part of an afternoon with one of the electricians, setting up the DVR, and
writing a sort of "TiVo for dummies" shortcut guide for Flip.

  And now Greer was supposed to be shopping for a bigger house, in case the series got a pickup and Flip had to relocate to Baltimore. This meant endless and exhausting conversations with Mrs. Flip, whose singular obsession seemed to be kitchen countertops. Mrs. Flip had decreed that granite was over, that her Baltimore kitchen, should it come to pass, must have cement or slate surfaces, a hard-to-find decor element in a Baltimore rental, where granite was considered pretty high-end.

  Mrs. Flip also had endless questions about the quality of life in Baltimore, which she seemed to think was one rank above a Third World country. Were there mangoes in the grocery stores? Bottled water? Good bottled water? Gluten-free products? What was the local version of Fred Segal? She prefaced every conversation by saying, "You know me, Greer, I really don't want to be any trouble," then proceeded to outline a list of demands, questions, and needs so extreme that she was right, they weren't any trouble. They were way beyond that.

  Mrs. Flip's most offensive moment, however, had come when Greer was offered the assistant job. Mrs. Flip had e-mailed Flip, asking that he send a photograph of the prospective employee. After seeing the JPEG, she had replied: "So not a temptress. Approved." Greer knew this because she was the one who had sent the photo — attachments were beyond Flip's computer capabilities — and she opened Flip's in-box every morning, per his instructions, and "previewed" his mail, assigning each communication a priority code. But then, Mrs. Flip must have known that, too.

  The dry cleaning, even halved, was still too much to handle, and another bag slid to the street just steps from her car, a pair of khakis brushing the pavement. Would Flip even notice, much less care? If he did, she could always blame the dry cleaner. Greer had quickly learned that it was always easier to blame someone else, then promise to handle the problem as if she hadn't caused it. Things had a way of working out. The detective lady had come to work on the production, after all, just as Flip wanted, and as far as he was concerned, Greer got the credit for that. And she would be happy to take it, as long as everyone was happy.

  Of course, Tess Monaghan had made it a package deal, which bothered Greer far more than it did anyone else. She had insisted on installing some inner-city kid in the writers' office, and Greer had worried for a moment that he might turn out to be a spy or, worse, someone as ambitious as herself. But when she came into the office, her arms full of plastic, and saw how young the kid was, she decided that she had nothing to fear from him.

  "You the new intern?" she asked, and he nodded eagerly. "Go to my car and get the rest of Mr. Tumulty's dry cleaning, then hang it in his office." He all but ran from the office, happy to have something to do. Later, she would blame him for the dirt on the khakis.

  "Don't abuse him, Greer," Ben said, popping out of nowhere. He was a sneaky one, although not quite as sneaky as he thought. "There's enough scut work. You don't have to create more for him."

  "He works for the writers' office and Flip is one of the writers, is he not?" She had a troubling thought. "Hey, will he get a credit?"

  Ben sighed. "Jesus, Greer. You worry about the tiniest things."

  "Well, I could worry about some pretty big things, but I think you would prefer that I not do that."

  "Flip wants you on set," Ben said. "He wants you to give the lady dick a tour, show her where the magic happens, give her the lay of the land. More clichés to come, as they occur to me. In fact, I think I'll just plug that in the minipub for episode seven — more clichés TK. She's going to meet you over there in an hour."

  "Are you heading over to the soundstage eventually?" she asked. "I'll drive you."

  "I was going to check in later, see how the new scenes are working."

  "We should go together," she said. "Then we can… catch up."

  "Yeah," he said, rubbing his chin. Flip liked to tease Ben that the mannerism was a holdover from their college days, when Ben had sported a Vandyke for a while. Ben rubs his chin like that to apologize to it for the years of pretentious stupidity. Flip could tease Ben, and Ben could tease Flip, but no one else was allowed to speak about them the way they spoke of each other. "Okay, if that's what you want to do."

  "Yes, it is what I want to do. Let the new kid answer the phones."

  "He's barely been briefed on Lottie's system—"

  "It's not exactly rocket science."

  "Speaking of clichés."

  She shot him a look. "I'm going to set. Flip likes to have me around. Do you want to come or not?"

  She could tell that Ben longed to say something snarky, but he remained silent, bobbing his head slightly. Greer felt a strange surge of emotion — a rush of blood to her cheeks, a flip in her stomach. She wasn't sure what to call it, but power was as good a word as any.

  Chapter 9

  He stopped at an ATM, making sure it was affiliated with his own bank to save the two-dollar user fee. Even before his money worries had become chronic, he had kept track of such fees, calling the bank each month to argue over ATM charges and point-of-service fees. The bank always backed down, too, refunding him the ten or twenty dollars on his statement. More things could be negotiated than people realized. The key was to have the stamina, the willingness to fight, and that was one thing he did have.

  The drawback to using his own bank was that it always showed him the balance in his account, a number he preferred not to see, much less think about. He took out twenty dollars. How much time did he have to resolve things? Six months? Nine? It was the COBRA that was killing him, an apt bureaucratic acronym if ever there was one. He was being poisoned, oh so slowly, by that monthly nut for medical insurance, a breathtaking two thousand dollars, as much as all their other bills combined, even the mortgage, which was five years from being paid off. But the only thing worse than making COBRA payments for eighteen months would be not making them, because no other medical plan would touch them if they had to go through an underwriting period. If they exhausted COBRA, then someone would have to take them. That was the law, the very rules and policies he had explained to so many others, over the years, with patience and, in his opinion, compassion. Yet people had yelled at him, and cursed, as if he were the arbitrary power denying them what they needed. In hindsight, he had to admit that he was a bad fit for human resources. He was a scientist by nature. He never should have left the classroom for a job in administration.

  Was there any way he could save money? He could pack a bag lunch, but Marie would find that odd. When he started working at North Avenue, he had always maintained that eating lunch out was the one reward in his dull gray day. Perhaps he could say he was putting himself on a diet? But she would find that strange, too, possibly suspicious. Sometimes, when her moods sunk to their lowest, Marie would accuse him of having an affair. No, accuse wasn't the right word. It was more like an invitation, a concession. She would enumerate all her inadequacies and issues, making the case for him to find another woman, and he would be forced to argue the other side — death till do us part, for better for worse, in sickness and in health. Secretly, he had wondered over the last few months whether he was still obligated to stay with her. Whose enmity would he risk if he left? Who would care now?

  He had hated that glimpse into himself, however. He hadn't married Marie because she was his best friend's sister, and he wasn't staying with her for that reason, either. He remained because he loved her, strange and surprising as that fact might be to everyone, including Marie. Marie needed him. He wouldn't let her down. He was going to make sure they were set for life.

  Let's see — according to his source, they were on the set today. Of course, that didn't mean she would be on the set. She wasn't, not every day. Still, he decided to drive over there, take his position, as he thought of it. He never parked in the part of the lot directly in front of the soundstage. That might be noticed. Instead, he chose the far end, near a run-down Chinese takeout. The people who owned the restaurant were wonderfully incurious, indifferent to h
is on-again, off-again presence. Only once, when he had been writing in his notebook, had anyone approached him. The owner, Mr. Chen, had questioned him nervously, and he realized that he had been mistaken for some sort of official, probably from immigration. He had shown Mr. Chen his legal pad, and said the first thing that came into his mind: "Poetry. I'm a poet and I find this a peaceful place to write."

  Mr. Chen had been happy to accept the idea that the parking lot of a derelict strip center on Eastern Avenue was a suitable place to write poetry. But then, people often were quick to hear what they wanted to hear. Wasn't he the same way himself?

  He glanced toward the far end of the parking lot. He wished he could buy some expensive surveillance equipment, but he was stuck with the old camcorder, which he didn't dare bring up to his eye here. From this distance, it wasn't really possible to make out the people coming and going. Of course, she was somewhat distinctive, and he knew her vehicle, too, but she had a way of slipping in and out that made her easy to miss. Not that he could always stay until the end — the later they started, the later they went — which was frustrating. It was very hard for him to come up with plausible cover stories for any late-night shenanigans, although he sometimes found a way to sneak out after Marie was asleep, especially if she had been hitting the Xanax a little harder than usual. But there was almost no way he could justify being out regularly between the hours of eight and twelve, not without sending her into shrill lamentations about how she would wander, too, if placed in his situation.