A Better Goodbye (9 page)

“Hey, I'm sorry. I just thought—”

“I know what you thought and it was wrong. Now, we done?”

Hardly
, Scott thought. He wanted to ask DuPree if he knew any guys—okay, thugs—who could provide security at the apartment. He'd hoped DuPree might be interested himself. The guy had never passed up a session with one of the girls, free, of course. But all Scott could say was, “Yeah, I guess so. We're still cool, right?”

And for the first time since DuPree had picked up, Scott heard him chuckle. “You know we are,” DuPree said. “You my nigger.”

He didn't shave for his audition, but how many actors did anymore? He didn't bathe either, which was a private joke on Hollywood that he shared with Steve McQueen. He'd heard that anybody who wanted McQueen back in the days of
Bullitt
and
The Thomas Crown Affair
had to be willing to scrub his unwashed ass because he wasn't going to do it himself.

That was how Scott wanted it, too. Obviously, suits from every studio trampled each other to do the honors for McQueen. Scott's ass, meanwhile, wouldn't have meant anything to anybody important if it were stuffed with silver dollars. And yet Scott maintained the fiction of his spiritual connection to McQueen. It helped get him over the rough spots careerwise, of which there had been many for, oh, the last decade or so.

The other thing Scott hadn't done as he drove his 1988 Porsche Carrera onto the Warner lot was give the sides for the casting session so much as a glance. His agent had faxed them over last night, but out of habit and a severe lack of enthusiasm, he had put off reading them for this morning. Then the Internet gossip about the rapes had screwed things up, and DuPree had done absolutely nothing to unscrew them. DuPree had spoiled his appetite, too. Scott had planned on using the time he was stuck in traffic to get his head around the scenes he was supposed to do, but the 405 was wide open, and so was the 101, and he couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

He couldn't celebrate being twenty minutes early, though, because if he showed up now, he would just look desperate. And he wasn't desperate, not for a guest-star gig on yet another cop drama, this one called
Stringer
. He was pissed off was what he was. How could he be anything else at the prospect of his ten thousandth audition? Even with a career at low tide, he thought he deserved better. He should be taking a courtesy meeting with the executive producer and the director, and the job should be his if he wanted it.

This was TV, for Christ's sake. He'd done it, been a star as a matter of fact. Well, a little bit of a star. Fifth lead on a young doctors-in-love show at the end of the eighties, one of those ensemble things loaded with actors who were still turning up in big-budget features and playing leads in artsy-fartsy indies. He, on the other hand, had gone on to play the title character in
Stormy Weathers
, which was what the trades called “a syndicated actioner.” Translation: off-network, non-prime-time junk. If the show contained one legitimate surprise, it was that Scott didn't lose his mind doing it for three seasons and sixty-six episodes. His salvation was the fifty grand he made per ep, just about what he needed to afford his bad habits, an ex-wife, and two kids. And he'd assumed his price would go up as soon as he jumped back on the prime-time gravy train. But the only train he found was the one that hit him with the news that he didn't count for much anymore.

He was thirty-one then, and now it was ten years later and all he had to show for the passage of time were two failed pilots, twenty or so guest-star gigs, a handful of bad cable movies, and a spreading girth that told him he needed to get to the gym more often. He still had his hair, though, as well as enough ego to believe he was better than any of the other clowns who were there on the second floor of Building 9 to read for the part of—what was this scumbag private eye's name? Grondyke, that was it. Al Grondyke. He sounded about right as fodder for
Stringer
's hero.

After killing time smoking and feeling sorry for himself, Scott checked in with a pleasant middle-aged woman who must have been the executive producer's assistant. Then he scoped the waiting area for actresses who had worked massage for him—didn't want any embarrassing moments—and actresses who gave off a vibe that they might. It was a no on both counts. There were two girls who looked like they should play nuns; everybody else was male, and at least two of them had to be up for the same part as Scott. The moment he looked at the lines for his first scene, another prospective Grondyke walked in, talking loud enough on his cell phone for everyone to hear and sucking the energy out of the room.

“Yeah, I just did a twenty-minute short. Corporate espionage, definite Hitchcock overtones. It was some kid just out of USC. He was going to use it as his student film, but it screened at Harmony Gold and now they're trying to get it in some festivals. Dante Spinotti took a liking to him. How's that for being anointed, a genius cinematographer like him? Anyway, Dante called over to Paramount and arranged camera packages. We were shooting every day with two- and three-camera setups, ten different locations around town.”

The show's casting director shut up the energy thief by calling him in ahead of everybody who had gotten there before him. By then, there was a bad echo in Scott's head, courtesy of the lines he was trying to memorize. “You're playing on my front lawn, Stringer. I want you off.” Hadn't he given Sonny Crockett that warning on
Miami Vice
? “If you get any deeper in this mess, you might as well say, ‘Goodbye, cruel world,' and pull the flusher.” That was
Hunter
, wasn't it? Or maybe
Silk Stalkings
, not that anyone remembered
Silk Stalkings
. No wonder reality TV was on fire—all those old cop dramas had been the same show, just different actors, settings, and budgets.

It wasn't the first time he had thought of that, but he had never done it with a job within reach. This was when he was supposed to call on his powers as a thespian to defeat the sameness of the material, to spin the stereotypically sour Al Grondyke in some new and unforeseen way. God knew Scott needed the fifty-two hundred dollars he could make on
Stringer
—and he'd ask his agent to demand final position on the acting credits, the one where it would say “And Scott Crandall” like he was a big deal.

Quite frankly, though, he was beyond caring. Without even thinking about it, he rolled up his sides and let the crushing monotony of his career drive him deep into his seat. He neither moved nor let the name Grondyke enter his consciousness again until the casting director summoned him for his three minutes in front of
Stringer
's producers. As he walked through the door, the infinite wisdom of his decision to tune out was validated. The casting director was pulling aside the actor who had just read, a guy Scott actually liked. “The producers want you to come back later and meet the director,” she was telling him. “And don't change a thing—you were perfect.” Scott knew instantly that he was dead on arrival.

He didn't bother getting upset when he saw that the three producers he was reading for were far more intent on their lunches, one very crunchy salad and two sandwiches dripping with what looked like Russian dressing. When the casting director asked if he wanted to do his scenes sitting or standing, he had to resist the impulse to say, “Standing—on my head.” But he managed to annoy her anyway by reading every one of his lines and hardly bothering to make eye contact with her. She was staring death rays at him as he left. Of course that might also have been because of his response when one of the producers, the young one naturally, couldn't have been out of his twenties, confided that he still had a
Stormy Weathers
T-shirt. “No shit?” Scott said.

He would deal with the inevitable fallout from the casting session later. All he wanted to do now was get to Patys in Toluca Lake and dig into a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Those fucking producers had reminded him how hungry he was.

He headed toward a table that an older blonde waitress was clearing. She had her hands on an abandoned copy of the
Times
when he snatched it from her, an act of daring that earned him a nasty look and a little advice: “If you want it that bad, make sure you take it with you.” He flashed a smile that sent her to the kitchen muttering and flipped through the ketchup-stained paper until he found the sports section. Shaq and Kobe were getting along for a change—what was up with that? And then it didn't matter because he saw a story about a fighter he remembered seeing back when both of them had futures. By the time he finished reading it, he didn't care that the waitress hadn't come back yet. He'd had an epiphany, and if the producers who never hired him anymore didn't know the meaning of the word, they could look it up.

Jenny wanted to see how high she could bounce off the sofa, treating it like a trampoline, her long hair flying and her laughter filling a designer-perfect living room. Up she'd go, her eyes pinwheeled by the blur of Impressionist paintings and Moroccan pottery, and when she descended she would see her friend Rosie bouncing up toward the stratosphere she'd just left and loving it as much as she had. Rosie did massage too. Gentle and willowy, she was a Singapore fantasy right down to her broken English. But she was self-conscious about her accent until she took a hit of Ecstasy. Jenny, on the other hand, did E because it made her feel so good, even now when the guy who had invited Rosie and her up to the Hollywood Hills was running back into the room, screaming at them.

“Get the fuck offa there! That's a two-hundred-thousand-dollar sofa!”

“What?” Jenny said, unable to stop bouncing on demand, just hoping she wouldn't go as high as she had before.

“The fucking sofa! It cost two hundred thousand fucking dollars!”

“No way,” Rosie said, laughing harder than ever.

“Goddammit, I'm not fucking around!”

The guy looked as angry as the music he and his band played. He wasn't the lead singer—if he was, he probably would have been in jail or rehab—but he was supposed to be this great guitar player. He even had a contract with a major label to do a solo album. At least that's what he had told Jenny and Rosie at the Falcon in Hollywood when they were making up their minds to take off with him. His house sounded great, Spanish, built in the twenties, featured in
Architectural Digest
the year before he moved in. The drugs sounded even better.

They were still making Jenny smile as she rummaged through her brain for the power to reason with someone who was seriously pissed off. The best she could come up with, besides the good sense to stifle a laugh, was a meek, “We're sorry.” Every other part of her was begging to start bouncing on the sofa again. After all, she and Rosie were still standing on it.

“Fuck sorry,” the guy said. “You gotta leave. Now.”

That struck Rosie as the funniest thing she had heard all night. “Deported,” she said in her own special way.

“What?” the guy said.

Jenny offered a translation and gave Rosie a look that begged her to shut up. Rosie started giggling so hard that it looked like she was having a seizure. Before the guy could go off worse than he already had, Jenny said, “She was making a joke.”

“Well, I'm not laughing, okay?” he said. “And Jesus Christ, get down from there before you fuck it up any worse.”

“We took our shoes off,” Jenny said. It was the best defense she could muster.

While the guy was saying he didn't give a shit, she grabbed Rosie, who was still having a giggling fit, by the hand, and the two of them stepped carefully onto the dark wood floor, like they were afraid it would move.

That was when Jenny was reminded of how tall the guy was and how small they were. There must have been more than a foot difference, and the guy's tats and piercings made him scary even though he was concentration-camp skinny. Then he spoiled everything by saying, “If you silly cunts ruined that sofa, my parents are going to kick my ass.”

For the first time in her life, Jenny didn't frown at being called a cunt or fight back by saying something equally nasty. She was too busy recoiling with surprise. “Your parents?” And then she burst into laughter. Rosie, who may or may not have understood what the guy had said, resumed laughing along with her. Mr. Rock-and-Roll Drug Fiend still lived with Mom and Dad. That was some funny shit.