Seeing Stars (38 page)

Now she had this Quinn, a boy who had everything her own son lacked, even if he was clearly grappling with a difficult temperament. Evelyn had learned a long time ago to cloak her heart, but she could and would champion him professionally. The problem was, if he was worried about his housing situation—and who could blame him, at his age—he could blow the greatest opportunity he might ever have, an opportunity that could radically change his destiny.

Evelyn also believed that Quinn was her last best hope for playing a formative role in the early career of a talented actor, never mind
the
most talented young actor she’d ever met. She knew Joel Sherman wanted a legacy, too; they’d talked about this, agreeing, based on Evelyn’s assurances, that they would not only call Quinn back, but put him with two other actors of very different styles and profiles, leaving Quinn to shine. If he wasn’t chosen, it would be because Van Sant had had something radically different in mind, in which case Quinn could be godlike and still not book the part. But she couldn’t imagine the director turning the boy down, if Quinn was on his game. His Buddy was high-strung, angry, grief-stricken, and raw. He took Evelyn’s breath away, and Joel had seen exactly the same thing.

But when halfway home her cell phone had gone off and Quinn told her Ben was a no-go, he’d sounded on the verge of tears. She told him she was about to lose her phone reception going through Coldwater Canyon, but what she really wanted was a little time to think.

Because there was, of course, another possibility.

She lived in Studio City, in a tranquil little neighborhood of single-family homes with established jacarandas and oaks and dense rosebushes along white picket fences, attended to during the day by highly regarded gardeners. When she’d been looking for a house—how long ago, now, twenty-four years, twenty-five?—she’d thought her mother would come to live with her and so, with that in mind, she’d chosen a spacious single-story house with a tiny cottage behind it. Her mother, as fate would have it, had died of a brain aneurysm in her own living room in Connecticut, right in the middle of a rubber of bridge, but Evelyn had gotten attached to the place by then and had kept it. She had no more than to walk in the front door to feel her blood pressure drop, soothed by the soft mauves, grays, and buttery yellows she’d used everywhere. Her walls were hung with fine art—she was partial to abstract paintings and sculpture, and owned a modest collection of lesser Rothkos—and all her windows were treated with sheers for privacy and light. It was her sanctuary, her haven and refuge, and she had never shared it with another living soul.

But now she decided that, if necessary, the boy could stay in her cottage, a spare five hundred square feet including a neat Pullman kitchen, a single bedroom, and a bath. If he booked Buddy, he’d be on location in Portland, Oregon, right away, and staying for a good three months, during which time she could find him a more suitable place to live. In the meantime, she would make it clear that under no circumstances could he be in her house without her express invitation or permission. Even so, the thought of actually inviting a young person onto her property frightened her. She’d developed an entire lifestyle around safeguarding her isolation. She had no close circle of neighbors and acquaintances; she didn’t spend long, pleasant weekend afternoons in her garden sipping drinks with old friends or family members. Did she really want a boy in her backyard? She gathered that he was relatively independent, and that he had adequate spending money for food and incidentals. The San Fernando Valley had a usable bus system, as she understood it, and of course he could ride over the hill with her, which would give him a jump-off point to Hollywood, West Hollywood, Century City, and Beverly Hills. And it would all be temporary.

If she had to, she would take him in.

Chapter Twenty-three

A
T THE END OF THE MIX-AND-MATCH SESSION FOR
B
UDDY
and Carlyle, Joel E. Sherman shook a couple of Tums from the bottle in his top desk drawer, chewed them ruminatively, and reviewed his options. The problem, as he saw it—and the producers knew it, too—was that the chemistry between his top picks for Carlyle and Buddy sucked. No matter how he’d put them together earlier in the afternoon, the same crappy, flat energy sat over the room like a toad.

So he went back over his choices yet again, even resorting to the kids he’d eliminated in the last round of auditions, to see if there was something he was missing. The Rabinowitz girl was a good kid, and cute, but of course she was no more capable of holding down a feature film than somebody right off the street. He’d keep her in mind for something else, maybe some small part, but that was it.

And then there was Mimi Roberts’s other girl, Allison Addison. She might have been in contention before her callback, but even if that day had been an aberration and she turned to gold the next time, he’d never feel comfortable about hanging a movie from her shoulders. And he couldn’t recommend someone he wasn’t comfortable with. No, whatever she was working through, he didn’t want to be part of it.

And then there were the Buddys. His first pick was, still and absolutely, Quinn Reilly. But was the kid a solo act? Joel had certainly seen it before: you got an actor who had all the chops in the world in monologues, actors so strong they took your breath away, and then you put them in a scene with other actors and, presto, they turned to shit. He’d learned the hard way that when that happened, there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. If that was the case here, he’d have to cut the kid loose. And if he cut the kid loose he was fucked, because he didn’t have any other Buddy he felt certain could do the work. No, he’d have to start all over again for
both
roles, and that would probably mean releasing breakdowns in New York and San Francisco and Atlanta, and that would cost a fortune, both in terms of time and money. Plus Van Sant’s production window was tight and getting tighter by the hour: he wanted to start shooting in five weeks.

Then suddenly—and this was what he loved about himself—he came up with an idea from something Evelyn Flynn had mentioned to him on the fly. It would require Van Sant’s buy-in because she didn’t fit the breakdown, but if the chemistry worked the way Evelyn had described it, it was at least worth showing the director what he had.

“Hey, Lisa!” he yelled out his office door.

His latest skinny casting twit hollered back, “Yeah? What?”

She was probably too weak from anorexia to get up and take the ten steps to his office. He let it go. “Get Esther Stein at William Morris on the phone!”

Three minutes later he was explaining to the agent what he was thinking. Esther agreed: the girl was a doll, an absolute
doll
, and she had the chops to carry off the part. Did he want to see her reel? Nah—he could watch her demo online, but he’d seen her work before and anyway a reel wasn’t going to tell him if she could work with Quinn Reilly. So he set up a meeting with the kid for later the next day, never mind that it was Saturday and he didn’t work on Saturday, and then he yelled again and this time the skinny twit scared up Evelyn Flynn. Not only was she managing Quinn Reilly, but she was a damned good casting director, and if she thought he was crazy, he knew she’d say so.

She didn’t say so. What she said was, “What time do you want him?”

T
HE NEXT MORNING THERE WAS A POLITE KNOCK ON HIS
door and a small girl appeared. She was exactly the way Joel had remembered her: heart-shaped face, big, serious green eyes, freckles, hair the color of a copper penny, strong widow’s peak. He’d never been able to resist a widow’s peak.

“Hey, come on in. It’s good to see you, kiddo.” He came around his desk and gave her a hug. “Is your mom with you?”

“She’s in the car.”

Another sign that the gods were smiling: a good mom knew her place, and in Hollywood a good mom was rarer than hen’s teeth. “Yeah, good. Did Esther tell you what we’re doing?”

The girl nodded. “I only got the sides an hour ago, though, so I’m not off-book yet. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, no problem.” God, but you had to love this kid. Eleven years old and she was already more professional than 98 percent of the adult actors in LA. He found his copy of the sides. “I’m not even going to put you on tape right now. Let’s just run through it.”

So they did. And when they’d finished, he had goose bumps, actual goose bumps. She was a couple of years younger than the breakdown called for, but in his opinion—and his opinions were rarely off the mark—she could handle the part, if Van Sant was willing to go younger. And if there was chemistry.

God, let there be chemistry.

Q
UINN WAS WAITING ON THE STEPS OUTSIDE
B
ABY
-S
UE’S
apartment building when Evelyn Flynn pulled up. He held the usual headshot and résumé.

“I doubt you’ll need that,” she said. “I think he knows who you are.” He looked over to see if she was teasing him, but he couldn’t read her. Even after all the time they’d spent together—and it was hours and hours and hours—he still didn’t know a damned thing about her.

“So who am I reading with?” he said.

“That shouldn’t make any difference. And evidently Gus Van Sant won’t be there—this is just for Joel.”

“Yeah, but is it someone I’ve read with before?” She didn’t answer, and he decided to keep his mouth shut. If she didn’t want him to know, she must have her reasons. Besides, she looked like she had a lot of things on her mind, and he wasn’t necessarily one of them.

“Remember that this is for chemistry,” she said when they were a block from Joel Sherman’s office. “He already knows you can act. What he isn’t convinced of is whether you can act
with
somebody. So you’re going to have to prove it. And I probably don’t need to say that even if you do, you’re a hell of a long shot, so don’t fuck up.”

She pulled her car up to the curb and let him out. Just before he slammed the door she said, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You know this one matters.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Call me when you’re done, and I’ll come pick you up.” He shut the door and she drove off without looking back.

Inside, he found Joel Sherman sitting at his desk talking to someone. She turned around, and he saw it was Cassie Foley. They couldn’t be considering her for Carlyle, though—she was two years too young. But maybe Evelyn had talked the casting director into bringing her in to read with him anyway so he could see how Quinn worked. That would be a huge break for him. Even if he passed the test, he’d still have to audition well with the real Carlyle, and for Gus Van Sant, but he was pretty sure he could do that no matter who it was, if he thought they’d cast him.
If they cast him.
For the first time, he actually thought that.

If.

If!

J
OEL
S
HERMAN GOT ON THE PHONE AS SOON AS THE KIDS
were gone. It had been a great read; his hunch had been right on the money. He tried not to think about the fact that he was about to propose something that would fundamentally change the way a world-class director like Gus Van Sant looked at his characters, even coming from a casting director of Joel’s stature and reputation. Interfering with the Vision, and all that crap. Better not to think about it. “Yeah, it’s Joel Sherman. He around?”

But it turned out that he was not around; he was already in Portland scouting locations. Joel checked to see if he’d be there long enough for Joel to actually fly up there in person with the tape he’d made of Quinn and Cassie, but he wouldn’t; he’d be coming back to LA in the morning, after a week out of town. Joel didn’t think he should wait that long, knowing he’d be competing with everybody else for the director’s attention. So he took a deep breath and closed his door so the skinny twit couldn’t eavesdrop on him if it didn’t turn out well.

“I’m putting him on,” somebody said on the other end of the line, and then there was Van Sant.

“Yeah, Joel Sherman here. Listen, I want to run something by you.”

“Go.”

And so Joel laid it out: Quinn Reilly and little Cassie Foley and her widow’s peak and freckles and his little-boy-lost quality and suppressed rage and her sweet charm and old-soul depth. He talked and talked, but when there was still nothing coming back at him, not a single word, he ran out of steam and just stood there, looking out his office window at a bum pawing through a trash can on the other side of Hollywood Boulevard. He’d probably been an actor once. “Hello?” he said.

“Yeah, okay,” Van Sant finally said. “I’m willing to consider it. That’s all I’m going to say until I see the tape. I’m going to put Sybil on, so she can tell you how to get it online or whatever so I can take a look at it tonight. I’m open, though. Okay? Yeah. I’m open. Here’s Sybil.” And there she was. Joel had the skinny twit pick up, because he didn’t know a thing about uploading and downloading and photo buckets or whatever the fuck you were supposed to do, and he had no desire to learn it. That’s what he paid her for. From the sounds of it, they worked something out in a minute, minute and a half, and then she was off the phone and he was having an attack of delayed sweating.

“No prob, boss,” she yelled at him. “I just need the disk.” So he popped out a tiny CD—Jesus, how much smaller could they get before you were recording on Cheerios?—and took it to the desk out in the waiting room and she smiled at him nicely and said thank you. If she got this done right, he might give her a raise so she could take more acting classes, maybe put on a little weight.

Back at the window, he could see that the bum had moved on down the street to the next garbage can. Who knew why an actor’s career lived or died? Sometimes it was just a bunch of unrelated things lining up: who smiled the right way at the right moment at the right person in the right frame of mind to say yes. That same smile, ten minutes earlier or later, and instead of having a star on the boulevard you’d be picking soda cans out of the trash. It was a killer world out there. Despite his many, many successes, if he’d known, when he was just starting out, all the things that he knew now, he’d be selling shoes in his grandfather’s store in Pocatello.

W
HEN
G
US
V
AN
S
ANT GOT BACK TO
LA,
HE WANTED TO
see Quinn and Cassie right away. If he didn’t feel they could anchor the movie, he’d told Joel, who’d told Evelyn, he was prepared to open the casting call to nonactors. He often worked with what he called naturals, nonprofessional kids who could read fluently and had a natural ease in front of the camera. And if they did that, it probably wouldn’t be cast in LA at all, but in Portland, Oregon, Gus’s hometown, where most of the movie would be filmed because Gus thought soundstages made movies feel inauthentic.

Quinn and Cassie had exactly one shot. Evelyn had already told Joel that she’d worked with Quinn so he’d have the character down without sounding stale in a cold read. She knew Quinn was ready.

Evelyn picked him up at his apartment at one thirty. She was relieved to see that though shabby, his clothes were clean and his hair freshly washed. They said very little on the way to the audition. Quinn seemed to be in a good frame of mind, though nervous; as she drove, he drummed on his thigh in the supremely irritating way that every teenage boy seemed compelled to do. She let it go, pulling up in front of Joel’s office and letting Quinn out before dealing with the car. She looked at him, he gave her a curt nod, and then he was out and gone. They both knew exactly what was at stake.

By the time she parked the car and got upstairs, the waiting room was empty except for a small, curly-haired woman marooned on one of the heavy wooden benches. She smiled at Evelyn and said, “Are you with Quinn?”

Evelyn nodded. “You’re Cassie’s mother?”

The woman affirmed that she was, but she seemed as disinclined to talk as Evelyn was. They were both trying to overhear what was going on in the next room. There was laughter, but the voices themselves were too low to hear clearly. Then chairs scraped across the floor, and in another minute Evelyn could hear them reading from the script. She identified it as the scene in which Carlyle and Buddy explained to the grandmother that they’d had the household’s landline cut off that morning at the mall, since they both also had cell phones. The grandmother arcs from anger to grief, saying she’d called that number every day since her daughter died so she could hear her voice on the message, and now, by disabling the phone line, it was as though they’d killed her. Buddy loses his temper and storms out of the kitchen and then the house, leaving Carlyle to cope alone. It was a pivotal scene, and a great opportunity for Quinn to rapidly cycle through a range of emotions. The kids read the scene a number of times, presumably on Van Sant’s redirects. Then it got quiet for a few minutes and all Evelyn could hear was a single low voice murmuring. Abruptly, chairs scraped against the floor again, the door opened, and Quinn and Cassie came out. Both were flushed.

Joel appeared in the doorway just long enough to say, “Thanks, guys. We’ll be in touch.” He gave Evelyn an unreadable look and then closed the door.

Cassie’s mother gathered up Cassie’s backpack and iPod and led her out into the hallway with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Quinn and Evelyn waited until they heard the woman’s heels fade away down the marble stairs.

Evelyn looked at Quinn, and Quinn looked at Evelyn with a shrug. Without a word, they went into the hallway and down the stairs and out onto the street to the car. They could just see Cassie’s mom pulling away into traffic.

In the car, Quinn finally said, “I think it went okay.”

Evelyn started the car, but she didn’t go anywhere. “Good.”

“I mean, I think it went okay.”

“Good,” Evelyn said again. “Did he say anything?”