Syrup (29 page)

6 catches a cab at five to be on the lot early, but that’s just a little too extreme for me and I stumble out of bed around seven. According to 6’s note, the committee meeting is at one, so I’ve got the morning to spend at the post-production house. I have a quick breakfast, get lured into a slow coffee and an even slower shower, then grab a cab over to West LA and Visuality.

It’s nestled among a coven of computer firms, and the first time I walk into an Apple dealership by mistake. When I work out the right entrance, I find myself face-to-face with a kid younger than myself, flipping through a copy of
Wired.
He is wearing horn-rimmed glasses. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Scat,” I say. “From Coke.”

“Yeah?” the kid says.

“Yes,” I say.

I wait, but I don’t appear to have galvanized any action on his part. I try to be a little blunter. “I’m in charge of Backlash.”

“Oh!” His eyes widen behind the horn-rims. “Right! Pleased to meet you! I’m Jerry.”

“Sure thing,” I say, my gaze passing over art deco furniture and
Star Trek
memorabilia. “Can I talk to someone in charge?”

“Well,” Jerry says, “that’s probably me.”

I blink.

“I mean, I’m only part owner of Visuality,” Jerry says. “But I’m the project leader on BL.”

“BL?” I say, embarrassingly slow.

“
Backlash
.” Jerry smirks. “We’re doing great things with your movie, Scat.”

“Well,” I say, feeling a little dazed. “That’s good.”

“Hey, why don’t you come down back? I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

“Great,” I say, and I am beginning to realize just how obnoxious youthful success can be.

I follow Jerry down a dingy corridor into a little room that looks almost exactly like my college dormitory. Except, of course, I never had a million dollars’ worth of computer gear lining the walls. Or a Bill Gates dartboard. The three guys lounging around in flannel shirts look about right though.

“This is the Dungeon,” Jerry says, grinning at me. “That’s what we call it. Our workroom.”

“You must be very proud,” I murmur. One of the monitors has an animated Pamela Anderson running along in her
Bay-watch
outfit, and although it’s hard to be sure, I think the boys have been playing around with digital enhancements. “So you’re working on
Backlash
here?”

Jerry lets out a little laugh, his eyes flicking to his workmates. “Uh, well, we’ve
done Backlash
here.”

I start. “What? You think you’ve
finished?”

“Of course. You guys called up and canceled the rest of your booking.”

I gape. “Who did? Sneaky Pete?”

“Yeah,” Jerry says. “He’s the guy we’ve been dealing with from the start. He called us a week ago.”

“Jerry.” I’m feeling a little dizzy. “We haven’t finished. We still need you.”

Jerry stares at me. “But Scat, you
canceled.
Next week we start work on a Columbia picture.” His face falls. “It’s not as good as yours. I mean, it doesn’t have, you know, aliens and Gwyneth Paltrow.” He sighs heavily. “It’s some
women’s
flick.”

“But we
need
you,” I say, appalled. “We can’t wait for you to finish some other—some—” I tug at my tie.

“Hey, look,” Jerry says, a little alarmed. “What sort of footage are you shooting? Because if you want, you know, Winona to eat someone else, that’s a big job.”

I think fast. “No, there’s no major special effects. We just need some color and lightness work, I guess a little sound mixing ...”

“Oh, well,” Jerry says. “That stuff is easy. You’re only talking about a week’s work.”

I blink. “I ... thought it would take months.”

Jerry barks out a laugh. “Months? No way. We’ve already spent months on
Backlash.
We’d only need to work on your new stuff.” He leans forward. “Look, Scat, we know how these things sometimes run over. If you need some more work, we’ll fit you in. When we start the Columbia picture, you’ll be second priority, but we’ll help you out. Okay?”

“Are you sure? Are you sure you can do that? Because—”

“I’m sure,” Jerry says.

“Okay,” I say, trying to calm down. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, beaming. “So, you want to see what we’ve done?”

I sit through all the post-edit
Backlash
footage, but there are no surprises: it’s virtually a copy of the stuff 6 and I have already seen at Coke. It seems incredible, but if Kline can shoot our changes in three weeks, I’m beginning to think we could have this movie finished in a little over a month.

I catch a cab to Coke and have time for a quick sandwich and a call to 6 before the afternoon committee meeting.

“They’ve been working in parallel with production?” 6 asks, surprised. “They don’t need months?”

“No way,” I say through an unattractive mouthful of beef. “We just need to give them our new footage and tell them what to do with it. They said about a week, maybe longer if we have to share them with Columbia.” I wash down my beef with a gulp of Fukk. “So I guess Sneaky Pete’s plan failed, huh? He thought we’d lose post-production.”

“Mmm,” 6 says.

“How are things on the set? Is everything okay with Kline?”

“We’re getting what we need.”

“Great,” I say. “Hey, things are looking up.”

FILMS LIVE OR DIE BY WORD OF MOUTH. IF YOU HAVE A BAD FILM, SUPPRESS WOM UTTERLY: NO PREVIEWS, NO REVIEWS AND BUCKET-LOADS OF ADVERTISING. IF YOU HAVE A GOOD FILM, PULL IN AS MANY OPINION LEADERS—CRITICS, CELEBRITIES AND HOLLYWOOD HEAVYWEIGHTS—TO SEE IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

I arrive ten minutes late for the committee meeting, which provokes a round of furrowed eyebrows and obvious glances at watches. But I’m feeling pretty good about securing post-production and I confidently ignore them all.

“Mr. Scat,” Finances says, with just the tiniest peevish tinge, “thank you for coming.”

“Pleasure,” I say, settling into a chair. “6 can’t make it, unfortunately. She’s on location. She ... sends her apologies.”

“Duly noted,” Finances says, satisfied, making a little note. “Perhaps you can open, Mr. Scat, with an update on the action items as identified in our last meeting.”

It takes me a moment to work out what “action items” are, but I get there in time. “Right. Well, Cindy is on location and performing extremely well.” I abruptly recall 6’s tips for dealing with the committee. “If I may, I’d like to say that her inclusion was a brilliant idea on this committee’s part.”

Astoundingly, false modesty breaks out across the room. “We’re all just trying to do our part,” Accounting blushes.

“Your comment is duly noted,” Finances says, and he’s not even kidding. He beams at me. “Well, it certainly sounds as if things are on track for the premiere.”

Imagine you are walking down a street.

Any street. It doesn’t matter. You are happily strolling along, observing the birds in the sky, the trees lining the road, the litter on the sidewalk. You are very comfortable walking along this street, because it all makes sense. Everything is how it should be.

Then a trash can leans toward you and says, “Nice day, isn’t it?”

This is very much what it feels like to hear the words
the premiere.

“What?”
I say. My voice is low and strained.

“The premiere.” Finances’ head is buried back into his notepad, transcribing my praise. “I was just remarking that everything seems ready for it.”

“Of
course
we’re ready,” Logistics says dismissively. “You’re practically finished, aren’t you, Scat?”

“Uh, well, kind of,” I say. “But pardon me, did—”

“Can’t we
go?
” a girl pipes up from the back. I have no idea who she is and at this moment I really don’t care. “Please?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Finances says sadly. “Only top management are going.”

“I heard
Brad Pitt
is going to be there,” the girl says, her eyes shining.

“All
the stars will be there,” Logistics says importantly. “This is a very big night.”

The girl pouts. “I want to
go.”

“Madeleine, we’d all like to go.” Finances turns to me, eyes wide with hope. “Mr. Scat, if there is any chance at all of procuring some spare tickets—”

I say evenly, “When is the premiere?”

A long pause.

“‘When?’ ”
Finances says. His voice is hoarse and shocked. “You mean you don’t know?”

As steadily as I can manage, I say, “No one told me about any premiere.”

“But it was announced more than a week ago,” Finances protests. “The same time you and Ms. 6 came onboard. Everyone knows about it.” His eyes plead me to confess knowledge of it. “It’s been in the
papers.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh my God,” Logistics says.

“You must be ready in time,” Accounting says. “You
must!”

Perhaps it’s just Accounting, but I’m getting very close to punching someone. “Will somebody please tell me when the premiere is?”

Uncomfortable looks shoot back and forth. Finances loses. “Ah, well,” he says. “You see, it’s, ah, Saturday. This Saturday night.”

I think about this.

It is now Monday afternoon. Saturday is five days away.
Backlash
still needs three weeks of filming and at least one week of post-production. And although I’m having trouble focusing at this particular moment, I’m pretty sure that makes it impossible for us to be ready in five days.

I consider this carefully, approaching it from a couple of different angles, and every time it comes out the same: it just can’t be done.

When I look up, pale committee faces are staring at me. “Mr. Scat,” Finances says. He swallows. “Please tell me that when the Coca-Cola Company unveils its history-making marketing project before the most influential people in Hollywood, we will have something to unveil.”

I say nothing.

“Mr. Scat.
Please.”

“Excuse me,” I say, and I stand and walk out of the room.

I stride out of Coke and head for the street. When I switch on my cellphone, it informs me that in the last half hour there have been nine unsuccessful attempts to call me. So I guess 6 has found out about the premiere, too.

She picks up on the first ring. “Scat.”

“Yes.”

Her voice is hard. “I got a call from Coke’s Event Marketing. They wanted to talk about the seating arrangement. For the premiere.”

“I know.” I wave at a cab, to no avail. “The committee just asked if I could get them tickets for it. Apparently everyone knew about this thing but us.”

“This is the setup,” 6 says grimly. “A deadline we can’t meet.”

“We’ve got to go straight to Jamieson.”

6 is silent for a moment. “Did you tell the committee that we can’t be ready in time?”

“Uh, no, not exactly. But they realize something’s wrong.” Another cab sails toward me and this one responds to my wave. “Why?”

“We could, as you say, go talk to Jamieson. We could tell him we won’t be finished by this weekend because we didn’t know we had to be.”

I get into the cab and give the driver directions to Synergy. “We have to do that, right?”

“No.”

I blink. “Why not?”

“Because we did know about the premiere.”

I’m speechless. “
I
didn’t know about it! 6, what the—”

6’s voice is perfectly level. “After I got off the phone to Event Marketing, I called Pam. I had her go through my In tray, voice mail, drawers, everything. She finally found it in my e-mail.”

“What? Found what?”

“A copy of the message we sent to Sneaky Pete. Confirming a previous meeting with him that ended in a joint decision to move the date of the premiere forward.”

“6! I didn’t—”

She sighs down the line. “E-mails can be faked, Scat. They’re just electronic. @ probably just sat down in our office and wrote it.”

I’m reeling. “But this is—it’s—”

“It’s business.”

“No, wait. He can’t prove we wrote that e-mail. It’ll be our word against his.”

“This isn’t a court of law, Scat,” 6 says, irritated. “Everything in business comes down to somebody’s word. And he’s VP Marketing. He’ll say we’re lying because we screwed up and now can’t meet the deadline.”

I hate to say this, because it’s so obvious it can’t be right. “But that’s not true. None of this is
true
.”

“Whatever,” 6 says. “Look, Scat, we are deep in this thing. It’s a bomb that goes off as soon as we start shouting about it. The second Jamieson finds out there’s a problem, we’ve lost this. Do you understand?”

“So what can we do? Actually try to finish this by Saturday? You know we can’t do that.”

“We have to. If we don’t, he wins.”

“Hey, wait a minute. 6, we can’t do it. We just can’t. Let’s try and work out some compromise, okay? Maybe we can postpone the premiere or—”

“Scat,
Spielberg
is attending. This thing is
booked.
Come Saturday night it will be like the Academy Awards at Mann’s Chinese Theatre, and we have to show them something.” I hear Kline shouting something about Winona’s extra teeth in the background and 6 says, “Scat, I have to go. I’ll meet you home around nine and we’ll talk. Got it?”

“Got it,” I say, but 6 has already killed the call.

At Synergy I change into jeans and a T-shirt, fix a snack out of scraps from 6’s fridge and start work. I find a notepad in 6’s desk and cover the first three pages with all the things I need to do between now and Saturday. I come up with thirty-two tasks, which sends me into a panic, so then I concentrate on condensing them into broader categories. By the time 6 arrives home, I have a much smaller list, and even though each item is a major challenge in itself, at least I can start to comprehend what needs to be done.