Barefoot In The City Of Broken Dreams Part 6

Done with Daniel, I faced Kevin. "So how was work?" I said.

"I spent four hours in the car in order to interview someone for fifteen minutes," Kevin said.

"That sucks."

"It's even worse. I'm not being paid by the hour."

From his side of the pool, Daniel said, "You're the gay guys, right?"

Slowly, almost in unison, we turned to look at him. We didn't say anything for a second, just stared at him.

Then, with absolutely perfect timing, Kevin said, "Yup," and of course he over-p.r.o.nounced the "p." Kevin hated att.i.tude too, but unlike me, he was much more willing to get back in people's faces. I stifled a laugh.

Daniel didn't react. Maybe he was too stupid to know he was being mocked.

I started to turn away again, determined to ignore him. The water sloshed and, I swear, it sounded exactly like someone slurping. I glanced back at Daniel - or, more specifically, to the thin, wet material clinging to his crotch.

This time, Daniel caught me looking. He smiled. Now I felt stupid.

"What about you?" Kevin asked me.

"Huh?" I said.

"No idea when you'll hear from Fiona?"

"Nah," I said. Unfortunately, he reminded me what I was trying so desperately to forget. I'd brought my phone to the pool, and I considered checking my email again.

As Kevin and I talked, Daniel must have been paddling with his hands, because he was suddenly back to floating in the exact middle of the pool. This wasn't a tiny swimming pool, but somehow Daniel was taking up most of it - sort of like how a housecat, only three feet long, can somehow stretch out his body and take over almost all of an entire double bed.

Kevin looked at me and rolled his eyes.

Then he pushed off the wall backward into the water, making a big ripple across the pool.

Daniel went bobbing over to the other side. Once the center was clear, before Daniel could re-take it, Kevin moved in. I joined him, cheering him on with a mischievous grin.

Displaced as King of the Pool, Daniel sat upright in the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him scowling at us, but we made a point of ignoring him again. I was tired of being tangled in the sticky web of this stupid kid.

"I have an idea for new screenplay though," I said to Kevin. "It's about this couple who inherits an old whiskey distillery, and they find this cache of old bottles. Little do they know that each bottle has an angry ghost trapped inside. It's called Spirits. Get it? It's about whiskey and it's about ghosts? 'Spirits'?"

"Clever. So it's a comedy?"

"Well, that's the thing. I can't decide. The t.i.tle sort of sounds like a horror-comedy. But I'm thinking I might go straight horror."

As we were talking, Daniel faced the wall of the pool. He was right next to a metal ladder, and I expected him climb up it, but he ignored it, pulling his whole body onto the deck with one swift, impressive yank. It was sort of impossible not to stare at the muscles in his back, or the way the black boxer briefs clung to his pert round a.s.s. He reminded me a little of a snake, with everything shifting in synch. Somehow I knew that Kevin was looking too.

Once on the deck, Daniel grabbed a towel and started drying off. He didn't turn away or anything. He stood right there on the deck, facing us, legs spread, the sun setting behind him, and slowly ran the towel back and forth behind his back. He was in silhouette again, the blue sky crisply outlining the shape of his body. But it was still afternoon, an hour or so from twilight, so the front of his body was visible too - the ridges in his stomach, the miles of smooth brown skin. He absolutely glistened.

Floating below him in the pool, I felt like a worshipper prostrate before the statue of some Mesoamerican sun G.o.d - maybe even Quetzalcoatl, the snake G.o.d.

He knows we've been watching him, I thought. We thought we'd vanquished him, but maybe he'd vanquished us. Had he just a.s.sumed we'd ogle him because we happened to be two gay guys? That was a completely bigoted a.s.sumption! Okay, yes, it happened to be totally spot-on. But it was still bigoted.

Daniel kept toweling off. Behind the wet, clinging material of those shorts, he jiggled.

Okay, I give up, I thought. You win.

"Daniel Manuel!" came a voice from the other side of the pool. "What do you think you're doing?"

It was Zoe, his older sister, arriving home from work.

Had she seen Kevin and me leering at her little brother? I felt stupid again. Then again, we hadn't really done anything wrong. Daniel had been a total d.i.c.khead. Yeah, Kevin and I had looked at him up on the deck, but that had been his whole point - to get us to look.

"How many times have I told you, you can't wear that in the pool!" Zoe went on.

"Chinga tu madre," Daniel said under his breath.

"What did you say to me?" Zoe said, louder, harsher.

"Nada, nada." Even in another language, I could tell Daniel was whining, exactly like a kid being caught eating the forbidden popsicles.

"Get over here right now!" Zoe said, and Daniel wrapped his towel around himself and scuttled her way, not unlike an admonished puppy. I guess she still had some control over him.

In a second, he was gone, thumping up the outdoor steps that led to their apartment.

Zoe stayed behind, staring down at Kevin and me. I sort of expected her to apologize, to say she was sorry that Daniel had been wearing his underwear in the pool again.

But she didn't apologize. Now she glared at us, not hatefully like Daniel had done, but suspiciously, like we were puppies in need of admonishing too, or maybe something more serious than that - like we had something more serious to feel guilty about.

That was crazy. Like I said, Kevin and I hadn't done anything wrong. But I had a strange feeling this wasn't the last we were going to see of our annoying (and annoyingly hot) teenage neighbor.

CHAPTER FIVE.

I didn't hear from Fiona the next day, or the day after that. Then it was the weekend (when I didn't expect to hear from her), and I didn't hear from her on Monday either.

The next day, Tuesday, I met Otto for lunch again. Kevin had the car, so we ate at a place within walking distance of our apartment, an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet on Hollywood Boulevard.

"I'm paying," I said, before we headed to the buffet itself.

"What?" he said. "Why?"

"Because I owe you. You hooked me up with your agent."

"Is that all negotiated now?"

"No, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time."

"Everything always takes three times longer than they say it will," Otto said.

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah! It's another rule."

This actually made me feel better. I didn't know the first thing about how any of this worked.

We both loaded up at the buffet. Once we were back at the table, Otto said, "So this Mr. Brander guy, he's the real deal, huh?"

"Well, he definitely was the real deal," I said. "I think that's why your agent took the project on - she knew the name at least. She was pretty upfront about the fact that he hasn't done anything in a long time. But that might end up helping us. I read online that no independent producer pays ten thousand bucks for an option on a spec script by an unknown writer anymore, not for a low budget project like this."

"Ten thousand bucks?" Otto said, and this time I sensed a note of jealousy in his voice. I couldn't blame him. He'd been working on his acting career for six years now, and he didn't have much to show for it. Meanwhile, I take up screenwriting a year ago, then I breeze into town, and two weeks later, I kinda sorta have a film in the works.

"I'm getting you a part in this movie," I said. "You know that, right?"

He nodded, but it was like he didn't quite believe me, or didn't think it would work out in the end.

"I'm serious," I said. "And, I mean, the movie probably won't get made anyway. The Internet was depressingly clear about that. Without financing, most options don't go anywhere."

"Russel," Otto said, stopping me, "I think it's great what happened to you. I really do. I'm b.u.mmed, but it's not about that."

"What's it about?"

"I had this audition yesterday. A real movie, not some indie piece of c.r.a.p. And I was good. I'm not trying to brag, because G.o.d knows I've blown plenty of auditions. But I didn't blow this one. It may have been my best audition ever. I really got the character, and I don't know - I was just on right then.

"The producers thanked me," Otto said, "And they said all the right things: Wow, that was great, I loved what you did with the pencil, we'll let you know, blah, blah, blah. But just as I was walking out the door, I literally saw one of them drop my resume and headshot into the wastebasket. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have cared. I mean, they didn't think I was right for the part, so what? Maybe they had someone better, or maybe they'd already promised the part to the nephew of some investor. Them's the breaks, fine, whatever."

I nodded.

"But I was right for that part," Otto said. "I knew it in my bones. So I'm, like, hold the phone. I'd just given the best audition of my life. But they weren't considering me, they weren't even keeping my resume as a back-up in case none of the other actors were available. And I knew this wasn't about me not being right for the part or giving a bad audition. It was about my face. I felt like that dancer in that song from A Chorus Line. You know, where she grabs her scorecard after an audition and sees that it reads, 'Dance: 10, Looks: 3'? But I'm not like that dancer - I can't go out and get plastic surgery and then come back and wow everyone with my fake t.i.ts. I've already had plastic surgery, and this" - he swept a hand over his face, his scars - "is as good as it gets."

"Which is pretty d.a.m.n good," I said. "You're a totally handsome guy. Plus, you make references to A Chorus Line. What's not to like?"

Otto smiled, embarra.s.sed.

"So I'm standing in the doorway of that audition," he went on, "and I wasn't sure what to do. I'd seen them dump my headshot in the trash, and I could also see it on their faces, that they'd already forgotten me, that they were moving on to whoever was next on their list. I knew I had absolutely nothing to lose, so I turned around and faced them and said, 'I'm right for this part. You all know I am.'"

"Really?" I said.

"Swear to G.o.d."

"What did they say?"

"They stared at me for a second. They weren't angry or annoyed - they almost looked scared. Definitely embarra.s.sed. Which is how I knew for sure I was right about what was going on, why I'd been rejected. But no one wanted to come out and say it. So I closed the door behind me, and I said, 'Why couldn't this character have scars on his face? Why couldn't that be part of this movie?'"

"What did they say?" I said.

"They all sort of looked at each other. Then one of them said, 'Because it'll distract the audience. It's not what this movie is about.' So I said, 'But that's what's so great about it! It wouldn't be about the scar. It'd be completely incidental to the story. Think about the statement you'd be making!' And of course they said, 'We're not making a statement, we're making a movie.'"

"a.s.sholes," I said.

"No, wait, hold on," Otto said. "When they said that, I thought that too. So I tried to argue with them. I said, 'You're not giving the audience enough credit. They're smarter than that. They'll understand what you're doing, they'll even give you credit for it!' And they said, 'Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's a risk. But we've been working our b.u.t.ts off on this project for three years now. Somehow, incredibly, we finally got the money to make our movie. This is our one shot. If this movie is successful, we might get to make another movie. But if it's not, it could be years before we get another shot - if we ever get another shot. For us, everything is riding on this. And now here you come into our office, saying, 'This completely unrelated issue is really important to me, so important that I think you should risk your movie on it.' But we've already taken our risks - in the script, in our careers. This movie is one of the biggest risks the three of us have ever taken, because we've risked years of our lives to get it made.'"

As Otto had been talking, I'd been eating. Now I'd finished everything on my plate, but I wasn't going back to the buffet to load up again. Otto's story was too interesting.

Otto went on, still quoting the producers. "'You want the truth?' they asked me, and I nodded, and they said, 'You really were great today. If you didn't have that scar, we'd probably have seriously considered you. Even as it is, it'd be a really interesting choice to have a character who looked like you. If someone else made that movie, I'd totally support it. As for people with scars, I think there's way too much prejudice about stuff like that, and I look forward to a day when people change, when we all get more mature. But this is all still your issue. Everyone has issues they care about, things that are personal to them, and that's yours. We're just not willing to risk our whole careers on your issue. If you want to take that risk, you should make your own movie.'"

When he was done, Otto stared at me. He wasn't done with his plate yet - he'd been talking, so he'd barely touched his food.

"Wow," I said. "But look, just because those guys-"

"No, wait, hold the phone," Otto said, stopping me. "Don't you see? I finally get it. It's not just those guys. It's everyone. They didn't say anything offensive. They were just being honest. I asked, and they told me the truth. And they're right. If I were them, I'd probably see it exactly the same way. That's what most people don't know about this town, about Hollywood. Everyone always talks like Hollywood is, like, one thing, one ent.i.ty. But it's not. It's a bunch of people, individuals. And just by coming here, we've all taken the biggest risk there is: we've risked our whole lives. The compet.i.tion is beyond insane, success is a total pipe-dream, and we're all only hanging on by our fingernails. If one of us does break through, if we do find ourselves in a position of power for five minutes, we know we're only a flop or two away from being thrown out on our a.s.s."

I didn't say anything to that. What could I say?

"I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer," Otto said.

"Really?" I said. "Because what would you be like if you did try?"

Otto half-snorted. "I'm just discouraged." He played with his food with his fork. "Right after I nailed that audition, I was actually thinking I might've finally got my break. That's what this town does to you: it leads you on. It's like a slot machine. It delivers just enough winnings to keep you going. And all around you, people are hitting jackpots, bright lights and bells and everything. But you never win. It slowly whittles you down."

"I really am getting you a part in my movie," I said.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but..."

"What?"

"You're the writer," Otto said. "No one listens to the writer about anything."

I'd heard this before - the old joke about the starlet who was so stupid that she slept with the writer in order to advance her career.

"Mr. Brander's different," I said. "You should've heard him."

"I know," he said. "I just...need something more definite. I'm getting to the end of my rope." He nodded to my empty plate, even as he finally started digging into his own. "Go get more food."

I did get more food, mostly because I needed time to ponder everything he'd told me. Otto was thinking about giving up acting? That made me feel even more guilty than before, that my break had come so easy with Mr. Brander. It was almost too good to be true.

By the time I made it back from the buffet, I'd come up with the perfect solution.

I put my plate on the table and said, "What about what those producers said? Why not make your own movie?"

Otto stirred his food. "Yeah, I thought about that too. But you still need money. Even a micro-budget is, like, fifty thousand dollars. And I don't have a screenplay or anything."

"I'll write the screenplay. And what about Kickstarter? That seems like exactly the kind of thing people might actually donate to, a movie with a cause."

"Russel, you don't..." But then he stopped. "Hold the phone, what about a web series?" He was thinking out loud now. "I know someone who has a camera - if it's only online, we don't need, like, a Redbox or anything. I know someone who can direct it. And I can handle the editing, nothing too crazy."