The Far Side (10 page)

“The fuck you say!  If you want your name up in fuckin’ lights, I’m going to work your ass off!  Make you the chief scientist or something.  Wouldn’t that look cool on a resume?  Chief scientist on the first break-even commercial fusion reactor?”

“That’s not where my heart’s going to be,” Kris told her friend.

“Yeah, and you think my heart’s going to be there, making all those decisions?  My old man hasn’t got much to offer in the pithy saying department, but now and then he does come up with a gem.  ‘You gotta give a little to get along.’”

“Andie, before we do this, I want to tell you one thing.”

“Don’t even begin to suggest you have cold feet!”

“Nope, I don’t.  Andie, this is your project.  I’m too much my father’s daughter to want to take credit for what I don’t do.  Andie -- We can’t go together, not very often.”

Andie nodded soberly.  “Yeah, I know.  It sucks rocks.  It’s like telling Xenia she can’t take Gabriella with her on an adventure.  Don Quixote with no Sancho Panza.”  Andie sniffed.  “Still, there’s exactly one person I trust to go all out for me if there is any hope at all -- you.”

Kris nodded, knowing one of Andie’s favorite Star Gate episodes was where Major Carter took a lot of flack for not giving up on Colonel O’Neill, even though he’d been missing for months.

“Now, Kris, I want you to go home and hit up your old man -- gently.  Seven or eight digits?  We’re talking about building a lot of fusors!”

Kris was offended for a second, and then broke out in laughter.

“What?” Andie asked.

“How much is a fusor?”

“You know, I told you.  Couple six, maybe eight thousand dollars.”

“Andie, for seven figures, you could build a thousand of them.  Where are you planning on putting them?”

Andie brightened.  “Cool!  This will cost a lot less than I thought!  Maybe a hundred grand!”

Kris laughed hard.  “Andie, Andie... I told you a second ago.  Forty thousand dollars a day for equipment.  A half million dollars for everything.  Just what do you think the difference is?”

Andie shook her head.

“Salaries, Andie.  Salaries.  Three sound stages, call it two security guards, twenty-four/seven.  That’s eight guys a day, per sound stage.  Twenty-four guys.  Say they are el-cheapo rent-a-cops: nine bucks an hour.  That’s about two thousand dollars a day, just for them.  That’s three quarter of a million dollars a year, Andie.  Those friends of Kit’s -- how much will they cost?  Three at fifty thousand a year?  Another hundred fifty thousand a year.  Techs, secretaries, accountants... hey, you think I’m going to work for free?”

“Fuck!” Andie said.  “You’re fired.”

Kris laughed. “And Andie, if you’re smart, you’ll do like Dad does -- any project he works on, he pays himself something, even if it’s guild minimums.”

“More than a million bucks a year?  Maybe two million?  My poor Nobel!”

The two of them laughed at that.

Andie waved at Kris.  “It’s still light, so get out of here.  I’ll talk to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

Chapter 4
:: Lateral Progress

Oliver Boyle sat down at his desk at home and picked up the phone and dialed a number from his Rolodex.  “David!  How are you!”

“Oliver!  Much better hearing your voice!”

Oliver laughed.  “Funny you should say that.  Look, something has come up and I need some space.  Do you have a couple sound stages free?”

“Oliver!  Please!  We’re adults!  Of course I have four, five, maybe six available.”

“Three.  I need a rate.”

“Twenty thousand a month!”

“David!  I’m amazed!  Done!  Twenty thousand for all three!”

The other chuckled.  “Each -- a month.”

“David, David, that is just silly!  I could rent warehouse space for less than that!  Thirty a month for the three!”

David Solomon was silent for moment, contemplating thirty thousand dollars a month in the pocket as opposed to the mild outgo.  It wasn’t really much of a contest.  “Sure, thirty, Ollie.”

“Can someone show my people around tomorrow afternoon?  Let them have the best three available?”

“Now, Ollie?  You need them now?”

David Solomon saw dollars fading into the distance because he hadn’t had the wit to hold up Oliver Boyle.  Not many had ever done it successfully...

“Yes, this is a special project, David.  I know, right now you’re kicking yourself saying, ‘I could have held him for two, three times that!’”

“I’d never do that!” David said, a painful smile on his face.

“This is a graduation present for my daughter, David.  A week from Saturday, she graduates from high school.  She wants to make a movie before she goes off to Caltech in the fall.  Three months minimum.”

That was better, David thought.  It wasn’t just a filler to make up something else.

“Your daughter the cinematographer?” David asked cautiously, not wanting to offend the other.

“That’s her!  I only have the one!  It’s a cracker-jack idea, David!  A real money maker!  I’ll have her include the studio on the credits.”

David was less than enthused.  A teenager making a movie?  Yawn!  Daughter of a movie mogul making a movie?  Double yawn!  Sure, she had some street creds, but nothing on screen.  Big deal!  “What sort of budget is she projecting?”

“She’s still in pre-production, David.  Ten mill or thereabouts, I’d say.”

David Solomon sat up.  “You need some craftsmen?”

“Of course.  Still, like I said, they’re in pre-production.  Some grips, some gaffers at first.  It’s just concept stuff with Kris doing the camerawork right now.”

“Set dressers?” David asked.  It wasn’t exactly a military secret, but if he got jobs for his union crew, he received favors and occasionally dollars showed up in his bank account.

“No, not just yet.  Kris will be the final say for now.  Kit Richards is my guy for them.”

David tried to recall who Richards was but got nowhere.  “No problem, Ollie.  Just let me know when they’ll be here.  Someone will show them around.”

That was of course, a lie.  He’d show them around himself, with his ear to the ground to hear what he could.  Ten million was a lot of money, and a lot of that would fall on the trades, and they were always grateful when he directed work their way.

Oliver Boyle hung up, a smile on his face that was very close to David’s.  For a moment he contemplated what his wife was going to think about this.  Helen Boyle was a woman who’d interested him from the first time he met her.  She was, as far as he could tell, totally unpredictable.

She was one of the most intelligent people he knew, but at the same time one who was incredibly ignorant.  She was totally focused on her work, almost to the exclusion of everything else.  She rarely came out of her shell these days, and he had had no success figuring out what would trigger it.

When Kris had been a freshman in high school, his daughter had gotten tremendously enthused about biology, and that had gotten Helen’s attention.  Alas, even before the end of the school year it had become obvious -- to Oliver at least -- that Kris liked mathematics more.  Now, three years later, Helen still thought Kris was fascinated with biology and was going to follow in her mother’s footsteps.  He laughed to himself.  In the spring, Kris had gotten her acceptance to Caltech.  All Helen knew about Caltech was that it was one of the premier technical schools in the country -- that it lacked an adjunct medical school eluded her.

He sighed.  It wasn’t fair, but one of these evenings when Helen was reading a medical journal, he’d explain about Kris and Andie’s project.  Odds were, she’d be focused on the reading material and barely notice what he said.  Helen had an encyclopedic memory, but she rarely read anything out of her field.  She was proud, in fact, that she had only left Southern California twice in her life: once to go to a medical conference in Hawaii and another time to attend a conference in Orlando.  Oliver was quite sure she’d gotten off the airplane both times, had gone to her hotel, stayed there the entire time until she boarded the return flight home.

Kris... what could you say about a daughter like her?  Intelligent, cute -- a typical hyperactive California teenager.  A young woman who thought nothing of spending a day at school, then spending three, four hours at the studio working a camera and doing her homework in between takes.

Andrea Schulz wasn’t nearly as cute, and she reminded him more of his wife than anyone else, except Andrea’s interests were like a butterfly picking flowers to visit.  You just never knew where she was going to land next.  And he’d long since realized that Andie wasn’t the danger junkie Otto Schulz thought she was.  Andie just wanted to experience life to the fullest, and Oliver had no objections to that.  He’d done a number of wild and crazy things when he was younger, that was for sure!

Andie had a better sense of self preservation than he’d ever had.  With that, he reached for the phone again.  A moment later, Kurt Sandusky answered.  “Kurt, Ollie Boyle.”

“Ollie!  You got any work for me?”

“No, I’m sorry to say, I’m just coming off the principal photography on my latest project.”

“A romantic comedy set in Tarzana, Ollie?  What kind of movie is that?”

“Escapist entertainment for the masses, Kurt.  I decided to prove that I could actually make a movie without a car chase in it.”

The other man laughed.  “You understand, Ollie, that I find it professionally unpleasant to talk to a man who has just finished a film where the only stunt that I heard of was a pie in someone’s face.”

“Coconut cream,” Oliver laughed.  “They gave the last one to me.”  Right in the face, too.

“So, if you don’t have any work for me, Ollie, what do I owe the pleasure to?  Maybe you’re lining up something for later?”

“Well, I have a job, but I don’t think it’s one you personally would be interested in.  It’s in the security area.  My daughter and her friend are about to tread on the toes of some serious heavy hitters.  I would sleep better at night if I knew someone good was around, in case things turn unpleasant.”

“Ollie, this is the US... not some banana republic!  How many guys do you think you’ll need?”

“Well, one to start.  This is still early days and they aren’t on anyone’s radar yet.  Probably by the end of the summer.  It would be nice if they got used to the idea before things get tight.”

“She’s seventeen, eighteen?” Kurt asked.

“Eighteen, and her friend is a few days younger.  They’re both cute, although, of course, I think Kris is cuter.  What I’m going to need is someone who can keep his mouth and his pecker zipped, someone not afraid to take some risks.”

“What kind of risks, Ollie?”

“Going-over-Niagara-Falls-in-a-barrel-type risks.  Going-on-a-hunting-safari type risks.”

“Well, I think I know just the guy.  He was in the army and racked up his back in a bad parachute landing.  This doesn’t involve any heavy lifting, does it?”

“Not that kind,” Oliver said, and then chuckled.

“Well, he’s had a couple of surgeries and is in physical therapy.  He was telling me the other day he was going stir crazy.”

“And he’s good?”

“Ollie, his nickname was ‘The Lone Ranger.’  He went into Indian country and would sneak around for a couple of weeks, laying laser targeting designators on bad guys.  Then the Predator drones or F-16s would come in and do the work.  Sometimes he walked in, but mostly he dropped in at night.

“Sometimes, Ollie, you have to wonder whose side those generals in Washington are on.  He got hurt, and they essentially told him ‘tough shit.’  Some of us got together and paid for the surgeries, surgery that army doctors said was impossible.  He’s never going to be a hundred percent again, but his ninety percent is a hell of a lot better than most of us on our best days.”

“Send him on over tomorrow morning.  Have him see me or ask for Kit Richards if I’m on the set.  Kit will make sure I see him as soon as I can.”

“Ollie, if you do this, a lot of guys, me included, will owe you a big one.”

Oliver Boyle laughed.  “Kurt, you already owe me a bunch of those.  I’m still trying to decide what’s up next, and this one is, I’m thinking, going to be up in the air more that most.  I might have something for you after all.”

“Thanks, Ollie!”

He heard Kris come in and he got up and went to meet her.

“Are you still speaking to me?” he asked.

She stuck her tongue out at him.  “It’s common wisdom to think your parents want to wrap you up in a straitjacket to keep you safe.  I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

He shook his head.  “No, you got it right the first time.  Don’t be too hard on Kit, Kris.  He wants you to succeed for the same reason you want to succeed.  And he was a most effective advocate for you and Andie both.”

“Still...  he told on us.”

“I know it’s more of that common wisdom among people your age, just as it was among those my age.  Never rat someone out, no matter what.  Well, when I was your age, my best buddy was Barry Brady.  He told me he was going to steal his neighbor’s Ferrari and see if he could get it over two hundred miles an hour.  I thought he was crazy, but I never told anyone about it.

“Sure enough, he burgled the neighbor’s house and got the keys.  By the time he got the car running, the cops were coming from the burglar alarm.  They chased him a couple of miles and then quit, because he was going at speeds in excess of a hundred miles an hour.

“Did you know that you have to carefully warm up a high performance engine like that, so it doesn’t break?”

Wide-eyed, Kris shook her head.

“I didn’t know it either and neither did Barry.  They figure he was doing 180 miles an hour when he tried to downshift for a corner.  He blew the engine and transmission into a million pieces.  He died four years later, a quadriplegic vegetable.  I don’t know if it would have saved him if I’d spoken up, but I do know I did nothing for him by keeping silent.

“What Kit did took some guts, even if you won’t admit it.  You know I can help, but you assumed I wouldn’t.”

“I thought I knew you.”

He smiled and shook his head.  “That’s because you don’t pay attention.  It’s true, in the heat of the first few moments, I’d have said no.  But Kit reminded me of why I’ve said yes to all of your other exploits over the years.  People drown in the bathtub, electrocute themselves with blow dryers, and fall off stepladders -- there are a million ways to kill yourself.

“I’m not so fatalistic as to say that if your number’s up, you best make your peace with God, but Kit said the one thing that made the difference: if you do this, you may or may not get yourself killed, but that if I forbid it, you’d never ever forgive me, and it’s unlikely you’d ever talk to me again -- and you’d do it anyway.  And that’s a price I’m not prepared to pay.”

She looked at him.  Yeah, that had been her first thought.  Not to mention, second, third and other thoughts, until she understood where he was going.  There still was some residual mistrust, but if he was lying, life wasn’t much worth living.

“I understand, Dad.  Neither Andie nor I are in any rush to get hurt.  We were careful, and were working to be more careful.  We’ve learned a lot of lessons in the last couple of days.”

“Andie is entirely too fond of those Star Gate SG-1 stories, Kris.  Yeah, they saved the Earth over and over again, until it got to be a joke even for the screenwriters to use.  In real life, you start having razor-thin escapes, and one time you miss.”

“We’re going to be careful, okay?”

“Okay.  I’ve talked to someone and arranged for a couple soundstages for you two in Hollywood.   They come equipped with this and that, plus two full time rent-a-cops round the clock.  That’s thirty grand a month.”

Kris made a face.  “Andie was all excited because the fusor machines don’t cost but a few thousand dollars each.  I started toting up the other costs, particularly payroll and she had a cow.  She’ll be okay; it’s just a surprise the first time you learn about it.”

He chuckled again.  “Oh wise and clever daughter!  You have paid attention to your lessons!”