Read My Life in Black and White Online
Authors: Kim Izzo
My Life in Black and White
BLACK AND WHITE
A NOVEL
KIM IZZO
Police Station—The Town of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England
I was dressed like a film star at a movie premiere in four-inch heels and a gold satin evening gown. Only the flashbulbs that popped in my face weren’t paparazzi, just your routine mug shot. And in lieu of gliding along a red carpet, I marched down an austere hallway with cops for escorts
.
Most people would have been scared witless, all things considered. Instead, all I was was cold. The trench coat draped over my shoulders like a cape wasn’t doing much to fix the problem, just made me long for its owner. I kept picturing his face and the sensation of his hands on my skin. Having been intertwined with each other only an hour before, there had been plenty of body heat to stave off the damp
.
When the cops deposited me in the tiny airless room, I shivered, but the police officer seated at the metal table with a yellow legal pad on it didn’t seem to notice. He was too fixated on surveying the outline of my figure beneath the satin
.
“I’m chilled to the bone. Can you turn up the heat or something? Get me a cup of coffee?” I asked, drawing the line at smiling
.
The cop lifted his eyes—nut brown and blank—to my face. “Why are you wearing a nightdress?”
A corner of my mouth lifted into an involuntary smirk. “It’s a slip dress.”
“A what?” he asked accusingly, like I was trying to pull one over on him
.
“An evening gown. You don’t sleep in it. It’s for fancy occasions.”
He examined me carefully, the kind of close-watch inspection that was meant to unnerve. I just stared back. “I can’t do anything about the temperature, but I will get you a hot tea.” He stood up and strode to the door. It was pale green, like hospital scrubs, with a small window. Other than the yellow pad of paper, the green was the only real colour in the room. The walls were a dull shade of grey. The metal table and chairs were silver, like brushed nickel. Even his uniform, though I knew it was dark navy, appeared black beneath the sole light source—a dim bulb that shone down from a metal pendant fixture in the ceiling
.
He opened the door and muttered to another cop, then stood there, waiting like a sentry. Within minutes there was a knock at the door, and I saw a Styrofoam cup thrust towards him by an unseen hand. The door was shut once again, and the cop stepped to the table and placed the cup in front of me. It was steaming. The tea bag had been left in it but there was no milk or sugar to be seen. My instincts told me to shut up and sip the tea. But I hated strong tea, so I grabbed the string and lifted the bag out. I let it hover over the cup, dripping, and looked up at the cop. “Is there a garbage can handy?”
He sighed audibly and took the string from me and held the dripping bag away from his clean uniform as he crossed the room to the green door and opened it. There were more mutterings, urgent and irritated, and then he was back. He took a pen from his pocket and tapped it on the table. It had a tinny sound
.
“Name please,” he ordered brusquely
.
“Clara Bishop.” I kept looking at him as he wrote my name down
.
“Occupation.”
I contemplated for a moment, then said, “Screenwriter.”
This seemed to pique his interest. He looked up at me with a hint of life in his face
.
“Anything I’ve seen?”
It was the usual question. “Not yet, but one day,” I gave him the usual answer. Then it was my turn, “How long do I have to stay here?” I gripped the Styrofoam cup, letting its warmth bleed into my fingers
.
“Until I get a proper statement!” he snapped, and I saw the hint of life had vanished. “When there is an alleged crime, especially one that involves foreign nationals, particularly Americans like you, all loose ends must be tied. And the entire lot of you has been uncooperative.” He picked up the yellow pad to slam on the table for effect, but when he let go it fell to the floor. He dove down for it, flustered
.
The smile came back to my lips. I replaced it with a scowl. “Maybe that’s because there’s nothing to say.” I shoved my hand into the pocket of the trench coat and felt the familiar cigarette case—his case—and took a cigarette out. I held it to my lips, parting them just enough to show my top teeth. “Got a light?”
“You can’t smoke in here!” he snapped again, this time seemingly aghast at my audacity
.
“Can’t I?” I asked, even though I knew he was right. I made do with clenching the cigarette between my teeth like a soother
.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” he added, like being a propagator for the anti-smoking brigade was part of his job description
.
“You’re right.” I took the cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it onto the table
.
I noticed a calendar on the wall. Its pages were as grey as the walls and lacked the vivid photography normally used to make the passing of time appear less monotonous—just look at the April shot of … insert animal, car, bikini model, etc. The numbers were stupidly small, but if I squinted I could make them out. The year was what it ought to be. Obama was still president and for the second term
.
“Look here, Miss Bishop, Clara, whichever you prefer …”
“Miss Bishop, please. Let’s see how we get on before we go to first names.” I leaned forward to read the name tag on his uniform. “Officer Hooper.”
He fidgeted awkwardly, like he was insulted that I wouldn’t let him call me Clara, and that amused me. “Sergeant Hooper. Tell me, Miss Bishop, do you always act like you’re a character in a film noir movie?”
I bristled. “No,” I answered and picked the cigarette off the table and sucked on it a moment as he watched. Then I smiled what I hoped passed for a droll smile and said, “You’re not the first man to ask me that. And if by character you mean the femme fatale, then I take it as a compliment.”
He fidgeted some more
.
“I take it you’re a movie buff?” I asked him. “Not many people would make a comment like that unless they were.”
“I’ve seen a few.”
I tossed my head back so my hair fell across half my face. “Do you like film noir?”
There was no answer. Then I continued, “I love those movies.”
His patience was at an end. “This situation, this crime …”
“Alleged crime,” I corrected him. I’d seen enough television police procedurals to know the drill
.
“This alleged crime,” he repeated. “This isn’t a movie.”
“It isn’t, is it?” I leaned forward
.
“No.”
“There was no crime,” I said
.
“Assault is a crime.”
“Like I just finished saying, there was no crime, no assault, no anything,” I told him firmly
.
“You need to tell me what happened, what you saw,” he said
.
“I didn’t see a thing,” I lied. I’d seen everything and then some
.
“Then I’m afraid you’ll be here for quite some time until it all gets sorted out.”
“Where are the others?” I asked
.
“They’re here too. In equally cold rooms with black tea and no smoking.”
“Now who’s talking in noir?” I asked sarcastically. “Just tell me what happened,” he said
.
I stared past him at the calendar on the wall. The room spun a little and I felt weak. I wondered what was in that tea
.
“You want the long or the short version?” I asked at last, the veneer of brazen defiance cracking. Or maybe I was finally coming to my senses. The reliable, predictable Clara Bishop
.
“Up to you.”
I shuddered and crossed my arms tightly. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“What about the other American woman, Amber Ward?”
I smirked. “Let me guess, you’re a gentleman who prefers blondes.”
His features softened, like he was remembering all the girls he’d ever loved all at once. “I like all hair colours. Including redheads.”
That made me smile. He was flirting with me. It was probably a tactic, but I liked it more than the bad-cop routine
.
“Is Amber a friend of yours? Did you travel to England together?”
“Not exactly,” I said
.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked firmly, the bad cop returning a little
.
I twirled the cigarette between my fingers like it was a cheerleading baton, faster and harder until it broke in half
.
“I can tell you all about Amber …” I began
.
“And you, I want you to tell me about you,” he said pointedly, his pen poised over the yellow pad of paper
.
“Don’t worry, I won’t leave me out of it. I couldn’t even if I wanted to …”
I
t started with a splatter. If this were a scene in a classic film noir, the audience would see the tall willowy brunette was shot in the chest. The red ooze on her breast would have been less lurid in black and white, but the dark circle spreading fast on her pale dress would have gotten the point across
tout de suite
. There were certainly enough gasps from the crowd to alert the entire room that something terrible had happened.
Fortunately, the splatter was no gunshot. The thick ooze had hit like a bullet all right, but it was a chopped-beet-and-baked-goat-cheese-topped potato crisp that did the damage. I was the tall willowy brunette, and it was my new dress that took the hit. This is routinely how things worked out in the life of Clara Bishop. I was the girl who never saw the banana peel until I was flat on the ground. Sure, I loved film noir, but back then, if someone had asked me to compare my life to a movie genre, I would have told them screwball comedy.
Take the first meeting I had with an agent. I was a freshly minted screenwriting graduate from USC with a pile of scripts ready to take on Hollywood. The agent was Howard Katz. By reputation, he made Ari Gold on
Entourage
seem like a puppy lying on its back for a belly rub. I was lucky he was willing to meet me. He’d heard about one of my scripts from a colleague who had taught a semester. I arrived
fifteen minutes early, and not wanting to appear too eager, I waited in the lobby. I should have killed time walking around the block instead of standing there like a target, because then that girl from film school wouldn’t have seen me. But she did see me and hopped over with a big grin on her face like we were best friends. I can’t even recall her name, but she told me she had gotten a job as a temp at the agency for the summer. I felt proud that, unlike her, I was potentially a client, not a receptionist. It was to be a fleeting feeling. I noticed that in her hand was a banana. It had been frozen and dipped in white chocolate and she sucked on it like it was, well, it wasn’t something that should be done publicly, but you get the idea.
“Clara! So nice to see you!” she cheered.
“I’m having a meeting with Howard Katz,” I announced.
“He’s tough,” she warned between sucking sounds. Then her phone rang. “It’s my boss. Can you hold this while I scribble down his lunch order?”
What choice did I have? I took the banana, which had the tip bitten off, and stood there as she sidestepped away from me to take her call. That’s when he came by. How he recognized me I couldn’t say. With my mousy brown hair, jeans and Converse sneakers, I usually blend into the crowd. I blame the banana.
“Are you waiting to see me?” Howard Katz boomed at me, his eyes glowering at the offending frozen fruit.
“Yes.” I gulped.
“You’re Clara Bishop?” he asked, not quite believing.
“Yes.” I gulped again. “I’m early.”
He looked me up and down, judging every inch of me. I could see in his eyes that I was just a tall, skinny brunette with a frozen phallus on a stick, not the next big thing in screenwriting. He automatically offered his hand, and I automatically shook it. Only by then the chocolate had begun to melt, and a white sticky mess was dripping down my
right hand and consequently covered his palm in the melted ooze. “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” I said, horrified. “I can get you a paper towel from the restroom.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll take care of it.” He stared down at his hand and swallowed, completely revolted. “Come up when you’re finished with that
thing
.” He then walked quickly away, holding his right arm as far from his body as he could. Finally, whatever-her-name-was came back.
“Ooh, thanks for holding my banana!” she cooed.
The meeting was a disaster. It was impossible to recover. He didn’t sign me.
After that, my screenwriting career went nowhere. For a few years, I worked several crew jobs on independent films. I kept meeting reporters and crews that showed up on set for celebrity magazines and entertainment television shows, and I gave one of the journalists an idea for a regular behind-the-scenes feature, and the reporter said he’d talk to his editor. He did. I got the assignment and haven’t looked back. Seeing my name in print was addictive at first. Now, a decade later, I was over the celebrity-reporting thing, having grown tired of chasing famous people around for a living and not creating something original. I kept trying to write scripts in my spare time, but I never finished anything. So without a handful of screenplays, or at the very least a
great idea
for one, to the entertainment industry I was just a gossip writer.
Which brings me back to the party and my ruined dress. I locked eyes with the waitress. She wore an expression that I was sure was horrified embarrassment. I knew it wasn’t her fault entirely. I had been racing to the exit, anxious to get the hell out of there, when out of nowhere the canapé hit me. Navigating through a packed room balancing trays full of hors d’oeuvres can’t be easy, though it seemed strange that only one managed to fly off the tray, but no matter. The
waitress—a tanned, blonde, blue-eyed goddess with cheekbones so sharp you could hang a mink coat on them—looked no older than twenty.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said and smiled warmly to reassure her that I wasn’t a high-maintenance movie mogul’s wife. Then the party guests circled and began tossing out home remedies to try.
“Sprinkle baby powder on it,” one suggested.
“Salt and club soda,” offered another.
Instead of making for the exit, I wound up in the ladies room with my dress soaked in club soda and splattered with baby powder, like some deranged Jackson Pollack knock-off. But I never saw that waitress again. It wouldn’t be until much later, reliving the moment over and over, that I realized she never apologized. And when I remember that look on her face, I recall now that it wasn’t horror or embarrassment. It was satisfaction.
How I regretted my polite “don’t worry.” I should have punched her in the face.
I slunk into the party feeling uncomfortable for several reasons. The first was the pale pink dress I’d bought. I’m not much for showing leg; I’m mainly a jeans type of girl. I probably have close to fifty pairs, which I wear either with sneakers or knee-high boots if I need a confidence boost, which brings up reason number two that I was uncomfortable: high heels. But my friend Sylvia insisted the dress needed heels. It was all about impact, making an entrance, owning the room and all those sorts of things women who weren’t me seemed to do effortlessly. But despite my best attempt, I was more Molly Ringwald than Megan Fox, for here I was standing in the middle of a room having made an effort and no one noticed. Least of all Dean. I’d
had a crush on him since university, when crushes were appropriate. Now that I was thirty-five, I still swooned when I saw him, though it was more controlled. Dean was right over there, within eyeshot, and I swore he looked right at me once, but he might as well have been across the room or even across the country for all the attention I got. I was about to shove my chin up and walk over to him like the life of the party with a bit of hip action here, a bit of hair tossing there, except as I began to approach, he turned his back to me to speak to another guest. Instead of a swagger, I began to stagger on my four-inch heels, from nerves at first, then a loss of balance. It wasn’t good. I needed to sit down. I told myself I would connect with Dean soon enough. After all, we had a lifetime of connecting ahead of us. I knew this because Dean was my husband. This was his wrap party.
My husband’s a reality television producer who, like most men in Hollywood in his position, would rather be directing films. But he got his big break, if you could call it that, as a producer’s assistant on a show that pitted dwarfs against giants in a race to find a pot of gold out in the desert. I wish I were making that up.
Disappointed my unexpected appearance at the party didn’t get better results, I headed to the food. The craft table was stacked with the expected variety of snacks from the humble carrot stick to classier fare like beef sliders topped with foie gras. If no one bothered to talk to me, at least I wouldn’t go home hungry. I normally avoided wrap parties. If you didn’t work on the production, then you were seen as an outsider at best, or at worst, a groupie. Dean preferred me to stay home on nights like this, too. He said he had to focus on the guests, particularly if there were television network honchos in the mix, or if he was really lucky, a movie studio executive or two whom Dean would want to schmooze in the hope he could at last escape the reality television racket. But tonight was different. It had the whiff of a going-away party attached to it, and I had taken a risk that he would be happy to see me.
“Are you Clara?”
I was midway through a beef slider when I heard my name. I turned around and found myself face to face with Kiki, the “breakout star” of Dean’s latest hit. Her looks were what tabloid reporters referred to as “plastic fantastic.” Her skin was plump from strategically placed filler, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she had cheek and breast implants. I wondered if she got a two-for-one special. Her eyes were large, almost Kewpie-like, and she had a sweep of platinum hair that Gwen Stefani would envy. Kiki was the poster girl for reality TV: a standard-issue blonde with big assets and a mouth willing to say and do anything.
“Yes, I’m Clara.”
Kiki giggled but her face barely moved. Botox
and
filler, then. I bit into the slider.
“Clara Bishop who writes for
Hollywood Hush?
”
I swallowed. I had no idea how she recognized me, but I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“They ran your photo a few times when you were doing Emmy picks,” she explained. I nodded but said nothing, because her interest in me meant one thing. I was a celebrity journalist at a top weekly glossy that could make or break a star, or at least extend the run after a series finale, and it wasn’t unusual for D-list celebrities to ask for my help. Some even tried bribing me. I never took bribes; never slept with a source either, but I was happily married. That didn’t stop reality contestants. Even the girls. Oh Lord, maybe Kiki was a lesbian. It wouldn’t be the first. Clearly Kiki wanted me to write about her.
“I want to ask you a favour,” Kiki purred, flashing her Chiclet teeth in the process. Here it comes.
“Sure,” I said cautiously. It took chutzpah to ask someone you just met for a favour.
“I’d like to buy you a coffee,” she began and paused nervously.
Cripes, maybe this was a come-on. “I’d like to pick your brain because I’ve always wanted to be a writer like you.”
This floored me enough that I stopped myself snatching a second slider off the tray. I took a closer look at her. She was busting out of her dress like an escaped convict. Her platform pumps were ridiculously high, but given my own shaky gams I gave her points for balance. Her expression said fun-loving party girl, no serious thought detectable beneath the thick layer of foundation and lashes of lipstick. She looked like a writer about as much as I looked like Santa Claus.
“You write?” I asked in a tone more snooty than I intended.
“I’m a poet,” Kiki enthused. I grabbed another slider and shoved it in my mouth whole. “But I want to switch to journalism.”
I continued to chew on this bit of information and the slider. “That’s a big switch,” I said as sincerely as I could.
“I know. That’s what I keep telling myself.” She shook her head like she was discussing giving up an opera career at the Met. “But no one’s buying poetry.”
“Sadly, no one’s reading it either,” I interjected.
“Riiight?” she agreed in a high-pitched voice. “But I know all about how this reality thing works, and I could write inside scoops and do post-mortems and things like that.”
She was no dummy. She knew the term “post-mortem.” Magazines like
Hollywood Hush
loved first-person stories, as did entertainment television shows. A successful contestant could parlay their fifteen minutes of cavorting fame into a career if they were smart. And I never met a smart cookie I didn’t respect.
“Sure, we can have coffee and chat about writing,” I offered and smiled at Kiki for the first time. She beamed, which made me like her more. Smarts and enthusiasm got you places in this town, not to forget Kiki’s plastic-fantastic attributes.
“That’s awesome!” she hugged me. “Are you here to cover the show? I can introduce you around if you like.”
I shook my head, “My husband worked on it.” In these situations I preferred to be vague.
“Who is your husband?”
I hesitated as long as I could. “Dean Lapointe,” I said and waited for the inevitable reaction of surprise. I was never what people expected, but Kiki gaped in a way that alarmed me. “You seemed shocked,” I said flatly.
Her eyelashes fluttered like a moth trying to land on a light bulb. “I had no idea that Dean was married,” she exclaimed, looking more alarmed than me.
“We have a policy of not telling people in the industry. Except for our closest friends, that is,” I said politely. Liar. But what else could I say? That my husband was embarrassed that I wrote for
Hollywood Hush?
That my husband disliked wedding bands because he didn’t like how his felt on his finger? Or that lately it was something more than rings he didn’t like the feel of? That was enough reality for a dozen television series.
As if sensing my attempt at faking it, Kiki touched my arm, “You shouldn’t worry about him.”
“I wasn’t,” I stuttered and felt my heart race as the heels once more wobbled beneath me. Sensing my anxiety, she flushed.
“No, of course not. Why would you? He’s just a man, that’s all I meant. And we all know how
they
are! Riiight?”
“Riiight,” I drew out the word in a perfect imitation of how she had said it, but she was gone before she could hear it.
It was time to leave. Clearly Dean didn’t intend for this current crop of “stars” to know anything about me. I wondered if he
had
seen me earlier and turned his back anyway. Feeling a fool, I moved through the packed room towards the exit, past a leather sectional
sofa stuffed with the men and women who had appeared on the show. The door was only a few feet away, but by then it was too late; Dean was standing in front of it like a Walmart greeter when he saw me. He was shaking hands with a man who produced a sitcom. The sitcom’s star had just fallen off the wagon, and I had written an unflattering but honest story about it. This wasn’t going to be pretty. Dean pasted a smile on his face, but not before I’d seen the flash of disappointment. As I walked towards him one agonizing step at a time, afraid I would topple over, I felt a desperate urge to have Kiki at my side for reinforcement. The pace was excruciating, as though the world had become a slow-motion film.
