Little Known Facts: A Novel (3 page)

Will blinks. “Fran?”

“My publicist. Her number’s at the bottom of the sheet.”

“I thought your publicist was named Barbara.”

“No, I had to hire a new one last year. Barbara retired with all the money I’ve paid her over the years and moved to Florence.” He pauses, smiling. “After that, I want you to have George take you to buy me ten pairs of white running socks. The short ones, ankle-length, and a dozen white V-neck T-shirts, a hundred percent cotton, extra large. Nothing fancy. He knows where there’s a Target. I need some sunblock too, sixty SPF or more. Four or five bottles should do it. Neutrogena, not Coppertone. I can give you some cash right now.” He reaches into his front pocket and removes a small wad of folded bills. “Here,” he says, pulling loose three fifties. “This should be enough. If you need anything, you can use whatever’s left over.” He also hands Will one of his two cell phones. “Use this to call Fran. She won’t pick up if she doesn’t recognize the number. If you get any calls on this phone too, let me know. Someone at Sony called me twice yesterday from a general line but he wouldn’t say who he was or what he wanted before he hung up. I don’t think I gave anyone there this number either. Maybe he’ll tell you what he wants if he calls again.”

“Okay,” says Will. “I guess I can try to get him to talk to me.”

“He probably won’t call, but just in case,” his father says.

On the way to the store, Will dozes instead of calling the publicist. George doesn’t try to talk to him as they drive out of the city toward the commercial sprawl on the outskirts, but when they arrive at the store’s bustling entrance, Will asks him a question that he abruptly wishes he could withdraw. “Is my dad dating Elise Connor?”

The driver doesn’t turn to look at him. “I don’t know,” he says.

Will studies the back of the older man’s gleaming, hairless head, feeling his face turn hot. “Sorry if I put you on the spot.”

“You don’t have to apologize. She is beautiful. She’s a nice lady too.”

“Yes, I guess she is.”

George hesitates. “You’ll have to ask him if they’re dating. I really don’t know.”

The store is crowded, its fluorescent lights overly bright. Parents of whining children listlessly push carts filled with boxes of cookies and chips and diapers. He finds the things his father wants and picks up some Oreos and cashews for himself. For what feels like the hundredth time that day, his phone rings. His father’s, however, has been silent.

“You’re in New Orleans, aren’t you,” says his mother.

“Yes. As of a few hours ago.”

He hears her sigh. “I hope you won’t let him boss you around too much.”

“Lucy, I’m supposed to be working for him.” He knows that she dislikes it when he uses her first name, but he can’t keep himself from goading her.

“Yes, child,” she says. “I know that, but don’t let him take advantage of you.”

He looks down at the bag of Oreos in his basket and sees that he has gotten double-stuffed instead of regular. “When are you coming back from New York?”

“Tonight. I was hoping you or your sister would be able to pick me up from the airport.”

“Anna’s probably working.”

“She is. I’ll take a cab.” She pauses. “How’s your father?”

“He’s fine. Maybe a little stressed, but since this is only his second time directing, I guess it’s—”

“I remember
The Zoologist,
Billy. Maybe he’ll have better luck with this one.”

“I didn’t think
The Zoologist
was that bad.” It wasn’t bad. His father had wanted it to be better, but he wanted all his films to be better, even the ones that had won awards. His last two films, which he had acted in but had had no part in the direction or screenwriting of, had not done as well as expected. Will knew that this was one of the main reasons why there was such an air of urgency surrounding
Bourbon.
If it didn’t do very well either, he would be very curious to see how his father reacted.

“You can say hello to him for me if you think of it,” his mother says. “How long are you going to be out there? Your sister said a month.”

“That’s probably about right.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“You could come visit.”

She laughs. “No, not in a million years. Who’s he dating now?”

“No one that I know of.”

“I’m sure he’s with someone.”

“He might be. I haven’t asked him.”

“Well, never mind. Call me when you want to, Billy. Love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

They are in the middle of shooting the scene when Will gets back to the set. From where he stands on the periphery, he can see that his father’s shirt and hair are drenched. He stands next to the cameraman, watching the two leads confront each other over the money Tim has gambled away. Elise and Marek are very good, Will thinks, and seem at ease in front of the camera, but his father finds fault with their interaction many times, telling Marek to look at once more guilty and defiant as he apologizes to Elise. Another time he tells her to be more physical, to push at Marek’s chest, to raise her voice. He doesn’t call them by their characters’ names, which Will knows that some directors do. Despite the complaints that are often made against actors’ public personas, his father has not, to his knowledge, been called a phony, at least not with any frequency. Many people like him because he seems, despite his considerable fame, to be a person who is not overly impressed with himself.

It is six thirty when the company wraps, a two-minute scene that took three and a half hours to film to his father’s satisfaction, not including the four hours spent on setup. When they are done, his father pats Marek’s shoulder. Elise looks like she wants to kiss Renn when he tells her that he can see great, shining rewards in her future. Will guesses that he means an Oscar, but it’s bad luck to talk about the Oscars or the Golden Globes during a shoot. “What about me?” says Marek.

Will’s father turns to face him, opening his mouth, but before he can reply, Marek says, “I’m just giving you a hard time.”

“You too,” says Renn. “I’ll do what I can to help you both get your due.”

In the car on the way back to the hotel, his father is buoyant with the pleasure of the day’s work done well. Will listens to him and the driver talk about the catering company, one that was contracted for a reasonable price. “They make the best jambalaya I’ve had in years,” his father says, turning to look at him. “Did you try some?”

Will shakes his head. “I bought some nuts at Target. I had a few of those.” He doesn’t tell him about the Oreos. It seems a childish confession.

“Is everything good for Saturday?” his father asks. Will gives him a blank look.

“The interviews for the glossies. You called Fran, right? Has she gotten back to you yet? Where’s the phone I gave you?”

The phone is still in the side pocket of his cargo pants. He has not called Fran. In the excitement of watching the shoot, he has forgotten to take care of this task. When he confesses this, his father exhales loudly. In the rearview mirror, George’s eyes meet his boss’s for a second, but the driver keeps his face neutral. Will can feel himself sweating.

“Maybe you don’t really want to be here, Billy,” his father finally says. “Is that what this is about?”

“No,” he says, voice cracking. “That’s not it at all. I’m really sorry.”

His father closes his eyes and presses his fingertips to his eyebrows. “Then what are you doing?”

It is a question Will wants to be able to answer without sounding like an irritable child. Although he has never said it directly, he suspects that his father has thought of him as one for years.
My son the leech, the slacker, the listless, the attention-deficit-disordered, the spoiled brat.
The jobs he has had since college: day trader, entrepreneur (with two friends, he founded a dog-walking business and a personal-assistant service), health-club manager, and furniture salesman, all failed to hold his interest for more than six or seven months. Because he has not needed to work to eat, he has never felt the same urgency as his coworkers about keeping a job. He has wondered how much time people spend doing things they’d really rather not do, and he knows that there are two probable answers: (a) at least half of it, or, (b) most of it. But unlike him, they can claim that they are doing something with their lives every day. They are setting goals, and in some cases, achieving them. His parents and sister have all done this, whereas his main goal each day is to resist inertia.

“I was so tired earlier,” he says, not looking at his father, “that it slipped my mind. George and I went to Target, and I got sidetracked. I’m really sorry.”

His father emits a small, harsh laugh. “If this is going to work, you need to do everything I tell you as soon as I tell you to do it.”

“I’ll call Fran right now.”

“You can try,” he says gruffly. “She’s not going to like having to spend the evening making phone calls for me.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I was going to say that we should go out for dinner, but you’ve got work to do now. Ask Fran if you can help her contact the journalists. You can call room service for your dinner. The food at the Omni is all right.”

George pulls up to the front of the hotel, and his father thrusts open the car door and doesn’t wait for Will to climb out before he strides into the lobby. From the car’s floor, Will grabs the bags of socks and cookies and T-shirts and follows his father, feeling like he has just shown him a report card filled with Ds and Fs.

On the elevator up to their rooms, Renn looks at him and says, “If you don’t want to work for me, I won’t be angry with you. If you do want to work for me, I can’t have you fucking up like this.”

“I’ll be better from now on. I didn’t sleep well last night,” he says, sheepish. “Who are you going to have dinner with?”

“Myself, probably. I don’t feel like making small talk tonight.”

Their rooms are on the same floor but at opposite ends of the hall. “Call me if you need anything,” his father says. “After I get something to eat, I’m going to look at the dailies in one of the conference rooms downstairs. I’d say you could join me, but maybe tomorrow would be better. Let me know when the interviews are set up.”

When they part ways outside the elevator, his father doesn’t say good-bye. “I’m sorry, Dad,” Will calls after him. “It won’t happen again.”

Renn doesn’t turn around. Instead, he raises his hand in a halfhearted wave.

Fran answers her phone on the second ring and sounds disappointed when she realizes it is the son, not the star, who has called her. It is only five in L.A., but he suspects that the work his father has for her will take a couple of hours. Even so, she doesn’t want his help. “It’s easier if I do it myself so there won’t be any overlap in the schedule,” she says briskly. “It’s fine, Will. I’ll get back to you as soon as everything’s firmed up. Because most of these people are in New York, I might not reach them until tomorrow. I wish you or your father had e-mailed me this list earlier. I don’t know why he’s so averse to computers.”

There is nothing more for him to do that evening, but he doesn’t dial his father’s room to say they could have dinner together after all, or that he wants to watch the dailies with him and the assistant director. He tries calling Danielle, but she doesn’t answer. He tries his sister next, and she doesn’t pick up either. She is probably working, making good use of her intelligence and energetic kindness. When they were kids, they used to play school, and because she was younger, he always made her be the student, but she sometimes had to remind him of the year of the first moon landing or the name of the man who had invented the lightbulb. The subtext to her corrections was always, “What are you doing at school each day if you’re not listening to the teacher?” Daydreaming, he supposed. Thinking about his toys that were sitting idle at home, or the after-school soccer game where he wanted to be a striker for once instead of a boring defender.

He wonders where Elise is staying. It is likely that she also has a room at the Omni. He doubts that he has a chance with her, but possibly they could become friends, and eventually he might become important to her, whether or not she ever lets him have sex with her.

But a little while later, he sees that it is unlikely he will ever matter to her very much. He is on his way out of the hotel in search of dinner when ahead of him in the lobby he spots her with his father. Renn’s hand lingers for a moment at her lower back as he guides her toward the doors that open onto Chartres Street, both of them dressed in black—she in a minidress, he in a short-sleeved shirt paired with khaki pants. People watch them leave, and within a step or two of the exit, Will can see that someone has stopped them on the sidewalk to ask for an autograph. His father signs what looks like a newspaper for two college students. Elise signs the same newspaper and smiles at the two boys in their oversize LSU T-shirts. Will feels his heartbeat accelerate, not sure if he should go out and try to insinuate himself into their plans, pretend to his father that he is not particularly impressed by the fact that Elise appears to have fallen for him. He could go out to the street and say that he only wants to give him back his phone, Fran having at last been contacted, and wait to see if Elise invites him along.

Despite his desire to be near her, he doesn’t want to be a hanger-on. He lets them walk out of view and hesitates for several seconds near the doors before he follows them into the humid night. But once in the street, he doesn’t see them. A taxi has spirited them away, or they have disappeared through a nearby door and entered a room filled with people who will remember their sighting of the two movie stars for years. If he were to join them at their table, no one would really notice him. He would feel as incidental as the salt and pepper shakers, part of the scenery and not even an important part.

He knows that he could do anything he wants to with his life. If he wanted to study oceanography or take photographs of gazelles in the Serengeti, no one would tell him that he should find a more practical career, one that would enable him to pay his bills and support the family he would surely want one day. Isn’t he lucky to have so much? He should be happy, they would say. In fact, he should be ecstatic.