Syrup (27 page)

“You must be a dumb ass,” Kline says, startling me. “You are in charge of jack shit. Now you get off my phone. I have to call Mr. Pete.”

“He isn’t running this show any—”

Kline snorts. “You think what you like,” he says, and the line goes dead.

“Now
that’s
it,” I say, slamming down the phone. “I’m going back to Jamieson.”

“Sit
down,”
6 says.

“I’ll get him to
make
Sneaky Pete tell Kline that we’re in charge,” I fume. “We can sit there and watch him make the call.”

“Then what happens when we leave the room?” 6 asks. “He calls Kline back. Do you want to watch him twenty-four hours a day?”

“I can’t believe this,” I say. “He can’t keep blocking us like this.”

“Of course he can,” 6 says irritably.

“If Jamieson knew what he was doing—”

“Scat, you’re really beginning to bore me,” 6 says. “You can stomp around and complain that the rules aren’t fair, or you can grow up and start playing the game. Now what’s it going to be?”

“Well,” I say, a little sulkily. “Well, if you’re going to be like that.”

We work until ten, which is the point where my head actually hits the desk. I snort and sit up to see 6 eyeing me. “Uh,” I say. “Tired. Just a little tired.”

“That’s enough,” 6 says. “Let’s go.”

“If you think so,” I say lamely.

When we get back to Synergy, I’m so exhausted that I just brush, flush, and fall into bed. By the time 6 finishes in the bathroom, I’m already asleep, still in my suit. Then I become vaguely aware of her tugging at my feet. “Wa,” I say, which I guess proves it’s not just in the mornings that I get so eloquent. I eventually realize she’s taking my shoes off, so I decide to fall asleep again.

“Roll over,” 6 says, a million miles away.

“Wa,” I mutter again, but I manage to roll. My face is enveloped by one of 6’s soft pillows, and that’s enough to put me out again. I fall into a dream where I’m fighting 6 for the world heavyweight boxing championship, and 6 is whipping my ass. Every time I swing at her, she ducks under my punch and lands a couple of body blows, her mouthguard grinning whitely at me. When I finally crash to the canvas in the fourth round, 6 has hardly worked up a sweat, and when I wake up the next morning I’m only wearing my boxers.

“So,” I say, taking a big bite of my toast, “you think we’re still in this thing, or what?”

“Of course,” 6 says, distaste flickering across her face at my table manners.

I swallow. “So what do we do today?”

“We go on location,” 6 says, sipping at her coffee. “I’m going to talk to Kline and the assistant directors. You need to handle the talent. And when you’ve done that, get in touch with our post-production house and tell them what’s going on.”

“Mmm,” I say, thinking of Winona Ryder. “Handle the talent.”

“Which includes,” 6 says, a little testily, “telling Cindy about her new name.”

“Ah,” I say.

I’m surprised by how small it is. Obviously this isn’t Universal’s main lot, but even so: they’ve bought themselves an ancient, dust-blown airport halfway to Nevada and called it a studio. I can’t believe that something as impressive as
Backlash
actually came out of here.

There’s a single guard, who seems to have the backbreaking responsibility of protecting a vast amount of sand, and he ushers us straight through as soon as we identify ourselves. “Studio One,” he tells us. I seriously doubt there’s a Studio Two.

We find the entrance to the building, which is an old aircraft hangar, and step inside. And that’s when I realize that this really is a movie set, and it really is serious, because there are maybe sixty people and twenty tons of equipment in here, and Gwyneth Paltrow is heading in my direction.

“Excuse me,” she says, and pushes at the door 6 and I have just come through. It sticks in the sand. “God
damn,”
Gwyneth says.

“Where is Gwyneth going with her
hair?”
a small man demands loudly, and from the voice this must be Kline. He is sitting in a huge mechanical contraption that looks like an antiaircraft gun, but I guess is just a big camera.

“I’m getting some
air,”
Gwyneth shouts.

“
Air?”
Kline shouts back. “There’s plenty of air in here.”

“Mr. Kline?” 6 says. He stops and peers at her, and Gwyneth takes the opportunity to slip outside.

“Damn
it,” Kline shouts. “Somebody go get Gwyneth.”

“Mr. Kline, my name is 6,” she says, striding toward him. “This is Scat. We’re from Coke.”

Kline stares at her for a moment, then sighs hugely, perhaps to show the crew exactly how tired he is of corporate interference from suits who wouldn’t recognize a good film if it was projected on their butts in 70mm. “I’m on a schedule here. Can’t it wait?”

“Of course it can,” 6 says, which surprises me. “Don’t let me get in your way, Mr. Kline. Just let me know when you have a free minute.”

This obviously surprises Kline, too, because he blinks and is momentarily silent. I think he’s almost disappointed that he doesn’t get to have a public argument with his corporate backers. “Fine,” Kline says. “I will let you know.” He turns back to his antiaircraft gun and a short brunette with a clipboard.

“Now what?” I ask, looking around to see if I can spot Winona. “We twiddle our thumbs all day waiting for him?”

“He won’t keep me waiting,” 6 says, and she is also scanning the hangar, although I presume not for Winona. “When he sees me talking to a few of his key staff, he’ll worry about what I’m doing and come see me.”

“Oh.” By now I’m no longer surprised by 6’s business acumen. “So we’ve got a few minutes?” I am now thinking about wandering outside and accidentally bumping into Gwyneth.

“You,” 6 says, “are making a call. Remember?”

“Oh yeah,” I say, disappointed. “Cindy.” I pull out my cellphone, then pause as a particularly sneaky idea occurs to me. “I’ll go outside. For the reception.”

6 looks at me.

“Reception,” I say again, a little more desperately.

“Whatever,” 6 says, and heads toward the first assistant director.

I step out into a blast of desert sun, which makes it momentarily difficult to get a bead on Gwyneth. Then I spot her leaning against the hangar a bit further down and wander in her direction without trying to make it look too obvious. When I sneak a look, she’s staring out at the desert, oblivious to my presence.

I dial Cindy and do a little desert-staring myself while it rings. Gwyneth notices me and squints in my direction, and I give her a smooth little eyebrow-raise just as Cindy picks up. I can’t speak for Gwyneth, but I’m fairly impressed with me.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Cindy. How you doing?”

“Oh,
great,
Scat,” she says, laying on the cheerfulness in thick, barbed slabs. “What do you need?”

“Now, you see,” I say obnoxiously, “you just
assume
I need something. As it happens, I’ve got an offer for you.”

Cindy’s silence oozes suspicion.

“Coke was very impressed with your work on Diet Life. We want to offer you a small part in
Backlash.”

“Really?” Cindy says excitedly. “A real part?”

“Probably only a small one,” I say. I glance at Gwyneth, who has turned her attention back to the desert. “But still, it’s a great opportunity.”

“It’s
fantastic,”
Cindy enthuses. “Wow, thanks a lot, Scat. You’re the—” She stops herself. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.” I take a breath. “There’s just a teensy little catch.”

Pause. “Oh?”

“There’s this committee. They’re kind of in charge, and they want to ... change your name.”

“My name? What to?” Only surprised so far. Not yet outraged.

“To ...” I have to swallow before I can say it. “Babe-A-Licious.” I rush on to beat her objections. “Now, I know it sounds terrible. I know you won’t want to perform under that name. But—” Then it abruptly occurs to me that if Cindy really does refuse, it’s no skin off my nose. In fact, it’s the obvious solution to this particular problem, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. “So I want you to know that if you hate it, I’ll just go back and tell the committee you won’t stand for it. I mean, you have your credibility to protect, right?”

“Are you kidding? Like I’d risk a shot like this because of a
name
.”

“Uh,” I say, which is, apparently, my submission to Great Rebuttals.

“I mean, I’ve heard better,” Cindy says. “Geez, Babe-A-Licious. But I was actually thinking of changing it, anyway. Maybe something short and snappy, you know. But that’s okay.”

“Uh,” I say, my brain racing for a solution.

“When do I start?”

“Uh,” I say.

“Wow,” Cindy says. “A
movie
role!”

When I kill the call, I realize that Gwyneth is staring at me. There is an expression of incredulity on her face.

“Babe-A-Licious?”
she says.

6 is standing just inside the door, hands on hips, surveying the hangar. She turns as I approach. “I just talked to Kline. It’s going to be difficult, but he’ll shoot our changes.”

“Hey,” I say, brightening, “that’s great. How long?”

“He wanted five weeks. I talked him down to three. We’ll have to squeeze post-production, but I think we can have this finished within the two-month deadline.”

“Should I talk Kline through my changes?”

6’s mouth tightens. “No, Scat, you should not. You should not talk with Kline about anything. He doesn’t like you.”

“Oh,” I say.

She softens. “Look, your ideas are great. They’re going to transform this thing. But let me handle the politics.”

“Okay,” I say, mollified.

“Here’s a script,” 6 says, handing me a manila folder. I am becoming very, very sick of manila folders. “The writer is over there.” She points out an old lost-looking guy in a dirty T-shirt. “Now I want you to work with him to rewrite the scenes we talked about, and do it without offending him. Can you do that? ”

I take a breath. “I promise not to offend him.”

6 stares at me for a moment, weighing this up, then takes a step closer to me. “That’s right,” she says, her dark eyes glinting at me. “You won’t.”

I’m very careful with the writer.

On Friday we start shooting the changes, which is pretty exciting. In the morning, Tom Cruise appears beside me without warning, and I nearly leap backward with fright. He looks calm—even vaguely bored—and somehow manages to look nothing like he does in the movies while being unmistakably, incomparably, Tom Cruise.

The day’s shoot starts slowly, with Kline devoting a full hour to a shot of Tom turning his head, but then things start to pick up. It’s particularly gratifying to see the scene where Tom and Gwyneth meet reshot, where instead of wrestling a male partner at the academy to the ground, he goes up against Gwyneth and gets rubbed into the dirt. When it’s done, Gwyneth shoots me a happy grin and I get warm shivers.

Cindy arrives on the lot about ten, is swept into makeup and emerges two hours later looking like a goddess. She is playing Gwyneth’s roommate at the academy and has only two lines (“What was that?” and “Wait here. I’ll go check”) before being blasted by aliens. But she’s palpably excited about the whole deal and it shines through in her performance. Inexperienced as I am, I can’t help but feel that things are going well.

I’m supposed to be getting in touch with post-production, but instead I catch Cindy between scenes. “You were
great,”
I tell her. “Cindy, I’m really impressed.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, lowering huge eyelashes.

“You look fantastic. What is that, silver mascara? And boy, that uniform—it really fits you well.”

“Oh, Scat,” Cindy sighs happily. “I’m so grateful for all this. This really means a lot to me.”

“Aw, it’s not as if you don’t deserve it. For putting up with me, if nothing else.”

“Oh,” she says coyly, taking a step toward me. “You weren’t so bad.”

“No, I think I was,” I admit.

“You were worth it.” There’s a little smile tugging at her lips, and I don’t really know what that means. “You’re a special guy, Scat.”

I shrug, a little embarrassed. When I look up, she is still smiling at me. “You want to get a coffee?”

There’s a tiny coffee room at the back of the hangar, and it takes us ten minutes to coax a respectable cup of coffee from the ancient Beanmaster 2000. It takes us another twenty to drink it, and somehow another thirty minutes or so slips in there, too, so I guess we’ve been gone a pretty long time when 6 appears in the doorway.

“It was
nothing
like that in high school,” Cindy is shrieking.
“You
were chasing
me—”

“Scat,” 6 says. Her voice is low and dangerous.

“Oh,” Cindy says. “Hi, 6.”

6’s eyes never leave me.

“Can I help you?” I say awkwardly. It comes out all wrong.

6’s eyes burn into me for long moments. Then her gaze flicks to Cindy. “You,” she says, “are needed on the set.”

“Oh,” Cindy says, flustered. She puts down her polystyrene cup. “Okay. Sorry.” She shoots me an apologetic glance as she squeezes past 6. “Bye, Scat.”

“Bye,” I say, and then it’s just me and 6. Her stare is unnerving. “We were just talking,” I tell her, defensive for no reason. “Just catching up.” That doesn’t make any impression, so, stupidly, I switch to aggressiveness. “Is that okay with you?”

“I
trusted
you,” 6 says.

This is not a good start. “Hey, now—”