Skinnydipping (22 page)

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

She looked behind her, then leaned toward me. “It was Josh’s writing partner,” she whispered.

“Peter Jarrell?” I whispered back. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been rolling around on the floor at Carol’s big party. “Yes,” she hissed back. “He and Josh were doing a marathon writing session all weekend. This morning, they found him … dead … in the Kamerons’ pool!”

“Oh my God! Are you serious?” I said.

She nodded vigorously, then let me in. I walked cautiously into Carol’s office. It was empty. I peered out into the kitchen. Carol was talking to a police officer. I could see the pool through the glass doors. It looked empty. Then I saw the stretcher and the body bag. I shivered. Carol looked up as she saw me. “Faith, come here,” she demanded.

I went into the kitchen. Carol looked pale and visibly shaken. “This is a nightmare, just a nightmare; what are the papers going to say?” she said. I’d seen her overreact to a million stupid little things, but this one finally seemed worthy of her hysteria. She was standing right next to the refrigerator with a glass in her hand, but she didn’t seem to know where she was. I took the glass from her and poured her some orange juice, which she used to swallow a handful of pills she had in her other hand. “We’re going to have to go away for a while. I just don’t see any other option. Sandy’s prepared a statement and faxed it to everyone,” she said. She seemed to be talking to herself. Sandy was Carol’s publicist.

“OK, Carol,” I said.

“Oh, and Faith—I’m sorry, but with all of … this…” She waved her hand toward the pool. “I’m really going to have to leave town. I can’t be here in this house now. So I won’t be needing your services anymore. Tomorrow can be your last day. Also I will need you out of the Malibu house by the end of the month.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was numb. I hated the job and knew the house was only temporary, but it was all too much too fast. I just nodded and walked back down the hall to the office.

Jeannie found me before I left. “Can you believe it?” she whispered. “They’re going to have to drain the pool. Vomit and shit. He let everything out when he croaked. And now they’re leaving. Well, all for the best,” she said, looking into the kitchen and shaking her head. “Carol’s gearing up for a major anxiety attack, and neither one of us wants to be here to see it.”

“Maybe you don’t,” I said. “But now I’m out of a job
and
out of a house!”

“Shit, that sucks,” said Jeannie. “Well, I guess you better start looking. I’m out of here. I paid my respects but this is too much for me.”

Propped up with big feather
pillows in Vince Beck’s bed, I scanned the classifieds. We’d been together for a month now, and we’d progressed from dating a few times a week to staying overnight more often than not, settling into a sort of weird domesticity that I didn’t quite understand, but was trying not to overthink. Were we rehearsing for the real thing? I didn’t dare ask, but I imagined what it would be like to be Mrs. Vince Beck.

“Maybe I should sign up with a temp agency,” I said. “At least the jobs would keep changing.” Part of me was hoping Vince would offer to support me, or let me move in, but so far he hadn’t, and another part of me knew it was for the best, if I was ever going to make it on my own. I had to figure this one out for myself.

“That sounds fine, dear,” he said, vaguely.

“I could always sign on as a top-shelf call girl. I have an in with Farrah Hughes,” I said. “That would probably be the most profitable option.”

“Lovely, darling,” he said.

I punched him in the arm. He was absorbed in an exposé in
People
magazine about the gory details of Peter Jarrell’s final binge. The
reporters had dug up all kinds of witnesses willing to offer up their quotes. “It sounds like he’d just finished a script,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I wonder if old Josh’s got it, or if someone else has it.”

“Josh’s probably got it. They were working on something all night,” I said. I was sure every director and producer in Hollywood would be mad to get ahold of it, no matter what it was. Peter Jarrell’s final opus.

“I wonder if I could get hold of it,” Vince said, murmuring to himself.

The first temp agency I called took me on, and I began working jobs before and after my La Fenice shifts. Receptionist, file clerk, envelope stuffer, telephone operator.

For the past week I’d been working as a receptionist for a booking agency. I was mostly responsible for answering phones and alerting agents when clients arrived. One of the agents who worked for the owner seemed to be particularly interested in me. His name was Henry Davis, and while he had an annoying habit of talking to my breasts, he kept telling me I should be an actress. I didn’t bother to tell him that I was already trying to be one.

“You’ve got what it takes,” he would tell me, over and over. “You’ve got something special. There’s just something about you.”

One day, about an hour into my shift, he came into the reception area and sat on the edge of my desk. “Can I help you?” I asked him, slightly annoyed. I was trying to file a stack of client folders, and had been surreptitiously looking for clues as to how I might convince one of the agents to take me on as a client.

“I’m waiting for a client,” he said, looking toward the door. The parking lot outside was empty. “And”—he leaned over toward me—“I also wanted to ask you something.”

I prayed he wasn’t going to ask me out. While I had to admit that Vince and I had maybe fallen into a bit of a rut, and had started to argue a lot about stupid things that made me hate myself—like why he hadn’t called or why he’d forgotten I had to work and made reservations for us, or why he left his clothes on the floor (what did I care,
it wasn’t even my house?)—I was still crazy about him. When we argued, I always waited until he left to cry my eyes out, so he wouldn’t know how weak and smitten I was. My knees still felt wobbly whenever he smiled at me.

“What?” I said, suspiciously.

“Well”—he raised his eyebrows as if he was about to imply something more than his words—“I’m involved in helping a promising little studio cast a new movie. They told me about the storyline, and the first person I thought of was you.”

“Really?” I put down the file in my hand and turned my chair toward him. “I’m listening,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I think you would be the perfect person for one of the characters. The script practically describes you.”

I hesitated. “I’m … always looking for something worthwhile.”

“On the make. I like it,” he said, leering at me. It occurred to me that the number of leering men was disproportionately high in L.A. “OK, so listen. Here’s the number.” He took one of his cards out of the card holder on the front of my desk, where all the agents kept a stack, and wrote a phone number on the back. “Call this number. Tell them Henry Davis sent you.”

“OK… thanks,” I said.

“If it goes well, I’ll even sign you,” he said. He pointed to the stack of client folders. “One of those folders could have your name on it.”

I looked at the folders, and then I looked at Henry Davis, and I thought,
What the hell.
I really hoped this would come to something. I was so sick of false leads. Last week, I’d gone to an audition I’d seen advertised for a “high-profile media event.” It was in a gorgeous mansion with a strange vibe. When I got there, a man introduced himself to me as an auditor and said he had to test whether I would be right for the position. He sat me down next to a machine with dials and gauges and told me to hold two cylinders with electrodes in them, and began asking me all these questions. He said the machine would register my thoughts. That scared the shit out of me. Was he trying
to turn me into a brainwashed zombie? When he asked me if I knew what Scientology was, I realized it wasn’t an audition at all. I told him I had to go to the bathroom, and then I bolted out of there as fast as I could.

“Sure,” I said to Henry Davis. “Thanks. I’ll call.”

chapter sixteen

V
ince hadn’t called in two days, which was unusual. I started to obsess about where he could be, who he was with, what he was doing. Then I felt Henry Davis’s card in my pocket. I took it out and looked at it.
Forget Vince Beck
, I thought.
You’ve got a career to manage.
I dialed the number.

“Rocket Productions,” said the woman who answered the phone. She had a sexy, husky voice.

“Hi,” I said nervously. “My name is Faith Brightstone, and Henry Davis asked me to call about a part in a movie.”

“Of course,” she said, in a matter-of-fact manner. “Can you come to the studio on Wednesday at four to meet with the producers?”

I’d have to get off work, but I thought I could make an excuse. She gave me an address downtown. That night, Perry and I went out and I didn’t tell her about the audition. I’m not sure why, but I felt like I should keep it to myself. Instead, we talked about why Vince hadn’t called me. I knew Perry had never been Vince’s biggest supporter. She was suspicious of his motives, no matter how much I defended him.

“You can’t be objective about a guy you’re that ga-ga about. Sorry,” Perry said. “I just see you losing your common sense around him.”

“But he could be ideal husband material,” I said, pleading.

“In what way?” she said.

“In the way that he’s … funny and charming and cute … and rich and successful. And he really likes me. We have great chemistry.”

“Has he said he loves you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I just don’t want to see you compromise yourself for him. Granted, I don’t know him all that well, but Vince Beck seems to me like a man who needs a lot of attention. I just don’t see you as the woman standing behind the successful man. You’re too ambitious. You need someone who can stand alongside you, and be your support and rock. You’re not exactly the type to be someone’s rock.”

I sighed. She couldn’t possibly understand.

I put on a simple
blue cotton dress and sandals, lip gloss and blush, and clear polish on my nails. I curled my hair and shook it upside-down to give it some volume, spraying the roots with hairspray.

It took me a while to find the building, but finally I saw it—a run-down-looking studio that needed new paint, with a makeshift sign over the door that said “Rocket Productions.” The girl at the front desk had platinum-blonde hair in a bad perm and lipstick much too bright for day. She wore a tight, scoop-necked pink T-shirt that showed her impressive cleavage.

“Faith Brightstone, here for a meeting with the director,” I said to her, realizing I didn’t even know the name of the movie.

“Hi, Faith,” she said with a familiarity I didn’t quite like. “Have a seat. He’ll be with you in a moment.”

A few minutes later, a broad-shouldered man with thick, side-parted brown hair and a wide walrus mustache emerged from behind a black curtain. “You must be Faith,” he said. I stood up as he reached out to shake my hand. “I’m Rick Burton, the director. Henry speaks very highly of your abilities,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what Henry knew of my abilities, or what abilities he was talking about, but I smiled.

He held up the black curtain for me and I walked into a large unfinished space with a cement floor. On the other side of the space, five men and two women sat in chairs in a circle. They were all holding scripts and talking. It seemed legitimate. I thought maybe this was the way low-budget indie films go.

He brought me over. “Everyone, this is Faith Brightstone. Henry’s sent her over. He thinks she’s the Tanya we’ve been looking for.”

Everyone looked up at me and smiled. The men all looked like late thirties, and the women all looked like early twenties. “Hi, Faith,” some of them said.

“Yes, welcome, welcome,” said Rick Burton. “We were all just going over the script.” He handed me one. “OK, is everybody ready? Let’s try Scene Three, on page forty-six.”

I got the part, although
it all seemed too easy, considering what I’d been through in the past year. I cheerfully told Perry I’d gotten cast in a movie, too, and we went out to celebrate, but somehow I couldn’t drum up the same level of excitement about my so-called movie as she obviously had about hers.