G'Day USA (6 page)

‘
You still haven’t told Charlie and me what the hell it is.’

‘
Hitting the high points, it’s about a military guy in the Philippines post-World War Two trying to get over the death of his wife from malaria while falling in love with a teacher at the international school his nine year old boy goes to.’

‘
So I’m the military guy?’

‘
No. That’s cast. Jeff Donovan. You’re one of the teachers at the school, a rival for Jeff’s character.’

‘
I like his stuff. Smiles too much though. Script any good?’

Bart laughed. ‘Since when did you care? It will be re-written half a dozen times before the movie is in the can.’

‘
I don’t know if I can work you with you again.’ Charlie sat back and took a long pull on his beer. ‘You were such an absolute dick.’

Saul shrugged. ‘Bart went to bat for you. Extolled your virtues. Told the folks you were the best new young Director he’s ever seen. It’s your call. It would get you out of the shit you’re doing now.’

‘
That shit pays better than scale.’

‘
But it’s hard work, and you’re not going to get much better in the dollar area than you’re doing now. Directing, on the other hand, the sky’s the limit.’

‘
I’m a fucking genius in the telecomm space, mate. You’d be surprised how much money I could make if I wanted to. And not one client has treated me like this guy has.’

Bart pointed the neck of his beer bottle at Charlie. ‘Told you yesterday, I was under a ton of time and money stress. Those days are behind me. You’re going to have free rein on all the Second Unit stuff and your input as AD will be considered very seriously.’

‘
But you know I don’t like you.’

‘
I like your work.’

Saul pushed two contracts across the table at Kent and Charlie. ‘Standard management contracts - I’m assuming neither of you have managers right now.’

Charlie took the paper and picked up the proffered pen. ‘Why am I doing this?’

‘
You just quit your job mate. You need the rent money.’

‘
Haven’t quit yet. How much? Fifteen percent?’

‘
Standard in the industry. You know that.’ Saul licked his lips, snaring his second and third client in his burgeoning management career.

Charlie signed. He tapped the pen on the table. ‘I know I’m going to regret this.’ He passed the pen to Kent. ‘You on board?’

His friend grabbed the pen and scrawled his signature across the bottom of the contract without pausing to read it. ‘Hell yes. I’m hitching my wagon to Bart. Anyone who can land a job so soon after getting out of the pen gets my vote.’

‘
Glad to hear that gentlemen.’ Saul removed two more contracts from his attaché case. ‘The deal for the movie.’

Kent took the folio and flipped through to the section on remuneration. ‘And you get 15% of this, right? Well, at least I’m not going to be paying you much.’ He flipped through the pages. ‘Dates?’

‘
You’ll get a script delivered to you tomorrow and rehearsals start on Friday. Two weeks of that and we start shooting. The shooting schedule is a very fast four weeks.’ Bart smiled. ‘So that small amount of money is only, really, two months work. Less, actually. Doesn’t look that small now, does it?’

Charlie checked his numbers. ‘About the same as I’d make contracting for the telcos. Hardly worth the risk.’

‘
This is the first step of many, and if you don’t enjoy it, you can always go back to the drudge of working 9:00 to 5:00.’

‘
The drudge of dawn to dusk is better?’

‘
It’s a hell of a lot more fun, boy, and you know it.’

Charlie thought for a second, smiled a half smile and signed. ‘I’m in. No rehearsals needed for me. I’m going to need to see the storyboards and script breakdown to set up the Second Unit stuff.’

Bart stood and held out his hand. ‘Charlie Bates, I’ve got to hand it to you; you’re as pro as they come. I promise this will be a different experience for you.’

Charlie looked at Bart’s hand and remained seated. ‘If it’s all right with you, mate, I’m going to do this on my own. We’ll discuss and agree, but I would prefer not to be known as your lackey.’

He stood. ‘Kent, I’ve got some things to do around here. There are a couple of friends I’d like to catch up with here in the Valley. I’ll call you later, okay?’ He passed the papers back to Saul. ‘Can you send me copies? My contact details are on the last page. Thanks.’

Bart watched him walk out, sucked air between his teeth and clapped Kent on the back. ‘He’ll be fine, if he doesn’t try to torpedo me. You keep your friend in line, okay?’

Kent shrugged. ‘I’ll do what I can. Now tell me more about the story. Any sex scenes for me?’

Chapter Five

I woke with a start. A vaguely nebulous dream lingered in my subconscious, hints of home, and danger and old friends drifting apart, then faded as the message to pee pushed to the front.

I satisfied the bladder urges and stepped out on the balcony. At just a bit after 6:00 the sky was a pre-dawn gray. The Pacific was gray also, but calm. Perfect for a morning swim.

G
ulls scattered along the beach as I jogged past the empty bowl of the skate park and across the sand to the water. It was a lonely beach. A few homeless people combed for bottles or loose change left behind in the sand. A regular gave me a wave and a decayed toothy smile and turned back to her task at hand. She was mid-fifties or so, shape almost impossible to determine. She always wore a wool hat and many layers of jackets and coats. I made it a point to stay upwind of her.

I stripped down to my suit and ran into the water. The cold caught my breath, but it was a momentary pause. I put my head down and swam. Sometimes you just needed to bury yourself in an activity not needing brains. Swimming fit the bill perfectly. It was as automatic for me as breathing. I swam out about a hundred yards then turned right and followed the beach. My stroke was strong. It had been a few months since I last went out, but again it was like breathing. The ocean was really flat this morning, like swimming in a giant, slowly rolling pool.

With the swimming on autopilot I had a chance to think. I
was
remarkably lucky. The ascension from getting by week-to-week not even two years ago to where I was now was, by most standards, meteoric. Granted, I had paid a price. I lost a good friend to a senseless murder. That hurt the most. And my social life was non-existent. The hours put in when making a movie as grand in scope as
Blood Thunder
made a 9:00 to 5:00 job look like a vacation. Not that I’m complaining. But add to that the semi-regular spot on
Modern Family
and the occasional soft drink commercials and whatever free time I had left was reserved for me and me alone. And even that was sparse. I’ve had time to read only three books in the past year, and none of them were huge. I’m not a slow reader. There just weren’t enough down days. I was mentally exhausted.

And as an Australian it shocks me to say this: my drinking had dropped way off. Try getting up at 3:00 in the morning for a 4:00 a.m. makeup session when you’ve had a drop or two the night before. It just wasn’t worth it. And I estimate I had spent more time in the air than on the ground in the last month doing the rounds for this movie. I’d hit every talk show from Conan down to the local cable show run out of the owner’s garage in Boise. At least on the Boise trip I caught up with Joel’s parents.

After tonight’s premiere I had a break for a day, then it would be red carpets for the next few weeks. The last one in Sydney. I was looking forward to going home.

I groaned. I realized I was sounding like a spoiled brat. I had done everything I wanted to do. I was making more money than I knew how to spend. And if the early reviews held, it was a pretty good movie. If anyone overheard my whining they’d laugh in my face. Any actor who says they have a difficult job needs a good slap up the head, Gibbs style.

I reached the north end of the beach and turned back. I was about halfway through. My shoulders were loose and my breath still easy. And I was feeling good, physically. The sun was up and the air was getting warmer. It was going to be a scorcher.

So here I was, doing better than I could ever imagine myself doing, and living a life I didn’t dare dream of, and I wasn’t satisfied. With all the people I’d worked with over the last fourteen months, I was actually lonely. I was raking in the big bucks, face plastered on half the billboards in town and I was eating alone, sleeping alone and one of my regular non-business, social contacts was currently digging through the sand for lost loose change. The other was a juggler. The last time I saw him work it was a machete, a loaf of bread and a bottle of scotch. Cheap scotch, I hope.

Aside from those two, my contacts outside the business were sporadic. Regular cafe visits made me friends with the lovely Emily and her husband, but that was based on the money I brought in. I had no illusions.

I mulled over my prospects for a while. Bumping into Charlie and Kent was a nice surprise. I’d known them for years. They were like brothers. Or cousins. The kind you hear about at family dinners after they’d spent the night in jail for wrecking a club in a drunken brawl. I didn’t need that. Not now. I’d managed to avoid bad press so far.

If it wasn’t a criteria of my job I’d be happy with
no
press. I wasn’t doing this to get on
Entertainment Tonight
. And while it was great, I wasn’t doing it for the money. I was doing this because I loved telling stories.

I was back to where I started swimming, almost. I turned left and almost body surfed back to the beach. My towels and flip-flops were where I had left them. I pulled the towel over my shoulders and carried the flip-flops as I walked back across the sand. Emily and Henry would be cooking up a storm. Hopefully they kept a table for me.

As I passed the fence backing the skate-park I was assaulted by the vermin who made everybody’s life miserable. As if appearing from nowhere, at least fifteen assholes with cameras jumped in front of my face yelling things I couldn’t make out, even if I wanted to. And trust me, I didn’t want to. One of them, a middle-aged, fat and greasy son of a bitch I’d run into on more than one occasion stuck his foot out and tried to trip me. Nothing like a picture of me falling flat on my face under a “Drunk at 7:00 in the morning” headline.

I wasn’t an idiot. I stepped over the foot, giving him a kick as I did. ‘Watch yourself mate. You’re going to hurt yourself.’ I wasn’t going to pull a Sean Penn. Just below the falling down drunk picture, from a value perspective, was the “Britney pounding on a car with an umbrella” picture. I wouldn’t give them anything.

They didn’t like that.

The cameras pressed closer. I started making out sentence fragments. ‘Sweeney out of jail - fucking him? - What are you going to do? - Comment on the story - what about the dead kid? - Are you fucking him again?’

I clenched my jaw. I tried to ignore the comments and pressed through the crowd. I’m skinny, but I’m strong. The most exercise these guys ever got was reattaching lenses to their cameras. I just spent a year in weapons training and unarmed combat training with some very tough guys.

Then it went over the line.

‘
So if Sweeney didn’t kill the faggot, he must have killed himself then, right? Why’d you try to set up Sweeney?’

I popped.

‘
Who said that?’ I picked out the questioner. A younger slime-ball, shaggy hair, a shaggy beard and really foul body odor. I reached out and grabbed a fist full of beard and immediately regretted it. It was greasy. I had to wrap my fingers around it to keep a grip.

But a grip I kept.

I yanked hard and pulled his face close to mine, regretting that also. He clearly couldn’t afford any oral hygiene. ‘Listen, you smelly, half-assed piece of shit. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear to God, if I see you anywhere near me again, I will pop you in the fucking eye. You like Sweeney so much, go ask him what I fight like.’ I gave the beard an extra hard yank and released him. ‘You smell worse than the bag lady on the beach. Have you no pride?’

That only seemed to spur them on. I tried to push through them, but the beard yanking seemed to have triggered some sort of bloodlust, like chum to a shark. It was frightening. I was getting manhandled.

I snugged the towel tighter. Hands tugged at it, trying to pull it from around me. ’Back off. Let me through before I call the police.’

‘
You don’t have a phone, bitch.’

I was looking for the owner of that voice, to deliver a punch to the neck when some of the paps on the east side of the group started dropping. A couple more dropped before anyone noticed. I pushed through in that direction and met Henry taking a swing at the kidneys of the really fat greasy guy.

To the rescue.

I had to stifle a laugh. As frightening as that experience was, the sight of a middle-aged Asian man in a cook’s apron wielding a rolling pin was classic. Five of the paps were on the ground holding a leg or their back. I tucked in behind him like he was my bodyguard

The fat guy looked up at the two of us and started yelling. ‘That asshole hit me with his stick.’ Murmurs of painful agreement followed from the others on the ground. Those remaining on their feet backed off a bit but had their cameras at the ready.