“Joe,” he begins. “I have to say that I’m hurt.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “But do me a favor. Before we get into anything, call your sister.”
He shakes his head. “I know you think I screwed you over somehow, but you need to remember that I’ve been working on these scripts for years.”
“Let’s not get into that now,” I say. “I just want your family to know you’re okay.”
“Well, I’m not okay,” he snaps. “You couldn’t even congratulate me properly. I get the news of my life and you turn into a jealous little bitch.”
“Forty, we had a deal . . .” I stop, I take a deep breath. This is not why I came here. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is call your sister.”
But he’s exasperated. “A deal? Do you know how many people have pitched in on these projects over the years? That’s what this business is. We read each other’s shit. There was no deal. A deal is what I have with Megan.”
Every time he says Megan my aspirations flare. I won’t let them do me in and distract me. I’m here for one reason: He either gets to call his family and have one more shot at life or he gets to abuse his family and suffer the consequences.
The music is too loud and he goes off on how the scripts are his. He paints a picture, wherein I am the shady one, the one who didn’t even want to tell Love that we were talking about maybe doing something together.
“You know, I’m actually kind of impressed. Separation of church and state.” He winks. “My dad would have told my mom in a fucking heartbeat. But you didn’t let your dick get in the way of your brain.” He smacks my shoulder.
“Whoa,” I say. I want to bash his face in and set him straight. I count to three. “Love has nothing to do with the deal we made.”
And I should have told Love; I regret not telling her. I want a time machine. Secrets erode trust and that’s how I got into this mess. Had I told Love about Forty’s proposal she would have lifted her little hand to her chest and said ooh, Joe, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. But you can’t go back in time; I know this from the mug of fucking piss.
“Old Sport, can you fucking just believe it?” Forty says. “How cool is it, right? Megan Fucking Ellison! I still can’t believe it. But at the same time, I can, you know how that is? How unlike the lottery it is, meaning that there’s nothing random about the good fortune. You do the work. Eventually, you get paid. Then you get laid!” He twiddles his thumbs and looks at me so directly, like a bear facing a human in a backyard in New Hampshire.
“You maybe want to call your sister?” I ask him.
“I never use my phone during a meal,” he says.
Forty whistles at the waitress and asks her for a bottle of their worst champagne and she laughs, as if he’s so funny and comes back to us with two small bottles of white wine. “What are we toasting?” she asks.
“My career,” he says. “I’m blowing up.”
She says the drinks are on her and she winks. “I would eat that ass,” Forty says. “And I generally don’t do that.”
I slam the table. “Forty.”
He looks at me and moans. “Old Sport, I did not invite you here to be lame,” he says. “Now, you should be thanking me. You did some beautiful tweaks on my work. You’re well on your way to a great career.”
“I didn’t tweak anything,” I snarl.
He slumps, like I’m so boring, like I’m stupid. “When Harry Met Sally. Jaws. Do you know what these movies have in common?”
“Fuck off,” I snap. I know where he’s going.
“I’ll tell you what they have in common,” he says. And he tells me what I already know: The famous lines about orgasms and big boats were improvised. “But do the actors get credit? Hell, no. Do they get cowriting accolades? Fuck, no. Are they earning royalties on that gold? Hell, no.”
“That’s different and you know it.”
He shakes his head. “You just don’t get it,” he says. “You waltz into this town and you think it owes you something because what? Because you fuck my sister and you have a flair for dialogue?”
The waitress brings beers. “These are for you guys to keep up the celebration.”
Forty grins. “You are a doll. Porcelain doll.”
She smiles. “No,” she says. “I’m slightly more flexible.”
She leaves and his eyes are gone. “Wouldn’t it be aces if the waitresses in here were on Rollerblades?” He squirts ketchup on a napkin for seemingly no reason. “You should work that into something. Roller skates are killer on film. Boogie Nights meets I dunno, you know.”
The waitress returns with a shake. “On the house,” she says. “The chef read about you in the Hollywood Reporter.”
Hollywood, where the rich don’t have to pay for anything and Forty thanks her and lowers his chin and nods. He pulls his straw out of the case and sips his shake. “I drink my milkshake,” he says. “Get it? Like, you think I’m drinking your milkshake but see, the chef knows, the waitress knows. They know what’s up.”
“Fuck you,” I snap.
He shakes his head and tells me I need to watch out for my ego. He says I didn’t kiss Barry Stein’s ass the right way. He preaches about my lack of respect. I don’t know what it is to pitch and pitch and hear the word no and go back and try again.
“Fifteen years I’ve been at this,” he says. “For fifteen years I have been developing my brand. Getting my name out there. Generating buzz. Fifteen years of driving to studios and telling my stories to executives and producers who have told me they love me and they love it and they want it and then a week, two weeks later, nothing.” He’s fuming now. Give a miserable person an ice cream cone and the miserable person will nosh, digest, and go back to being miserable. “I just can’t wait to see the look on Milo’s face. Right?”
“You should really call Love,” I say. “She’s literally worried sick.”
He’s brittle, pissed. “She’s fine,” he says. “They’re all fine.”
The food comes. He’s happy again. He plows into his bacon sandwich and I don’t touch mine. He’s failed his test, and I tried, I really did. But this codependent twin saga existed before I got here, Forty fucking with Love, Love forgiving him, no matter what. My job is to end it. I see that. I will do that, for Love, as an apology for the mess I made, the way I enabled this selfish louse.
I can’t decide how I’m going to kill him but I do know that when rich people die, the cops actually care. The first thing they try to figure out is the motivation. I can’t risk those e-mails we exchanged biting me in the ass. “Forty,” I say. “You should delete all of our e-mails, you know, about the scripts. Just in case someone were to hack into your account. You want to make sure that there’s nothing, well, you know what I mean.”
He laughs and chokes and sips beer. “See, only someone fresh off the boat would say something like that,” he says. “You can go to a lawyer right now. Have fun. Good luck paying the retainer. Oh, and good luck finding anyone who wants to work with a guy who lawyers up like a fucking baby when his girlfriend’s brother gets a sweet deal.” He burps. “You can be litigious or you can be creative but you can’t be litigious and creative. Nobody wants to get in the sandbox with the guy who sues people.”