She looked on the brink of multiple orgasm, gushed, “Liked... liked? I got down on my knees and worshipped that script. When the alien says to the hero, ‘I feel your pain. Your pain is my pain,’ I wept buckets.”
“Wow, really?”
Sold.
She ran an outline of the Bust story, then the hook, “It needs a writer of extraordinary sensitivity and vision to bring this to glory.”
She thought she may have overpitched but there are two types who will buy this shite fully — writers and wannabe writers.
He was on board. Asked, “That fucking piece of shit Larry Reed won’t be involved, right?”
“No, I guarantee it.”
“Am I gonna have full freedom?”
She smiled, asked, “Is Barack black?”
Bill was getting into it, promised, “I’m right on this sucker.”
She fluttered her eyelashes, said shyly, “You are the man, Bill.”
And he fucking believed that too.
She had asked him, “How do you define film?”
Not that she gave a toss but she felt it was vague enough to sound like she knew what she was asking and because he was the kind of gobshite who loved abstracts.
He didn’t disappoint, went into a long spiel about post-structuralism and the use of prism as a channel to postmodern parody.
She battled not to yawn.
In an attempt to be clearer, he tried, “The writer Stuart Kaminsky, his son Peter wrote, ‘If there was a hell, he had a one-way ticket, and if there was any argument he had with Satan about the matter, all Satan had to do was say, “Roll the film and show that scene from the bathroom.” ’ ”
She couldn’t help it, went, “Wot?” in faux Cockney as the whole gig seemed to require absurdity.
He said, “The world is divided into those who hear this and nod and those who ask, ‘What bathroom scene?’ ”
What choice did she have? She nodded.
Later, leaving the restaurant, Angela called Darren on her cell and gushed, “I got Moss.”
“Great news,” Darren said, “and the timing’s perfect. I got great coverage on Spaced Out, and I agree, Moss is perfect for Bust. Also, I heard through Lionsgate that for some reason Ethan Coen doesn’t want to be in business with me. But, hey, it’s Ethan’s loss. I’ll be sure to thank him when I win my Oscar.”
When Angela clicked off, she saw a familiar face, staring at her in the lobby of the Chateau. Was it Lee Child?
The guy saw her noticing him and rushed away. Angela went after him, but when she got near the escalators, he’d either gone into an elevator or left.
The truth was setting in. It was actually him — the man who’d shot her and left her for dead in Canada was now here in L.A. Definitely not Lee Child, but when she found him he’d wish he fookin’ was.
Fifteen
The best the white world offered was not enough ecstasy for me. Not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music. Not enough light.
Sebastian, a name to reckon with.
You’d think, right? ’Twas a curse and a blessing that he looked like Lee Child. While ol’ Lee’s star was in the ascendency, so was Sebastian. But, oh dreary me, now Lee was losing his grip. I mean, Sebastian pouted, that bloody Jack Reacher movie.
Sebastian looked in the mirror, he still was hot, wasn’t he? So okay, a slight pot belly, gotta cut down on those pints of bitter. As if a Brit could. It was enshrined in the constitution that an Englishman must down pints of the swill and eat Yorkshire pud at every opportunity. It was also enshrined that a handsome British man with no wife must be in want of a good fortune.
Sebastian came from a reasonably wealthy family, i.e., they could afford to play polo but not quite afford to fund Sebastian’s lifestyle. He was a writer, with stunning plots, descriptions, gripping narrative style. So okay, get petty, he hadn’t actually written down any of his masterpieces, but gosh, a chap had to live, experience the planet. And did he ever! On the lam, on the loose in Greece, a few years back, he’d met an American babe, Angie. The moves he put on her, he was astonished at his own charm. You got it or you don’t. He had it, in bucketfuls. But she turned out to be a complete nutter, a psycho of epic proportion. He shuddered to think of it now, helping the mad cow throw a dead body over the cliffs of Santorini.
Write that.
He’d managed to get away from her, until the dead guy’s insane brother recruited him to carve revenge. He’d managed to blot the whole crazy sordid affair from his mind, almost. The years in between had been lean, and Darling, he gasped, he wasn’t getting any younger.
The big Four Oh was beckoning and he hadn’t a pot to piss in. The days of marrying a debutante were gone. Those gels were marrying Americans! Horrors indeed.
For several years he lived in London, hiding out too from many assorted creditors, and working, yes, working. One had to earn a crust. It was what made the Empire great. He was in Earls Court, in a call centre, trying to swindle ordinary Johns out of their pensions. His track record wasn’t exactly lighting up the skies and the boss, a Paki, had the bloody cheek to suggest that he hit the targets or hit the road. That someone from the Colonies would have the effrontery to speak to an Englishman thus!
The situation worsened. The Paki suddenly appeared over Sebastian’s shoulder one day, screeching, “Facebook! This is how you waste my time, you...” He reached for an English description, found, “...wanker!” Then commanded, “My office, now.”
And Sebastian found the old forgotten rage of the Angela era, tired of being the fall guy, of forever hustling for a break. His growing anger was fueled by the looks of the other drones in the centre who looked on him with, was it pity?
He was God’s own Englishman, by Christ, he would not be talked down to by a shitheel who should be grateful to even grab a job as a bus conductor. His temper was ignited by the fact that being fired, he’d again be scrambling for nickel and dimes. Enough.
The Paki led him into the office, closed the door, began, “I must say...”
Whatever it was was lost as Sebastian hit him on the chin with a Golden Award Statue for Sales that had been perched, pride of place, on his desk. It knocked him back against the board of projected sales for the first quarter. And lo, Sebastian came alive. All the groveling, the desperate kiss-ass existence, the fucking Facebook insult, why wasn’t he up there with Katy Perry, who had eclipsed Obama on the site? Where was his share?
Sebastian strolled over to where the fallen Paki lay, kicked him in the head, asked, “So, who’s the wearing the knickers now?”
Pulled the desk drawers open, found a bottle of Teacher’s, twenty Valium, one thousand pounds sterling, five hundred dollars, and a well-thumbed copy of a trashy paperback called Fake I.D.
Put the lot in a bin liner (except for the cash), moved back to the man on the floor, and asked, “Got a wallet?’
He did.
Holy Queen, three thousand in cash.
The man began to rise, blood dripping from his chin, spat, “I make sure you go to prison for life, yes, life, you piece of Rawalpindi sewage.”
Sebastian had no idea what this meant save that the foreigner was insulting him. He grabbed him by his non-UK throat, hissed, “We might have lost the World Cup but by all that’s English, we never, never lose our dignity, so swallow this, you fucker.”
Managed, with great difficulty to force the phone receiver down the guy’s throat, not an easy task but got there, and as he watched the guy finally succumb to his death rattle, said, “Hello, call waiting.”