Fight the Rooster

by Nick Cole

  The word “painful” fell painfully to the floor and sprawled in the midst of their mob. There was no rallying cry to come up against it. The Great Director had wanted it this way, and now, amid these charges, he continued to merely squeak back and forth in his chair. Imperceptibly, those who had followed him for reasons ranging from loyalty, to worship, and even gratitude, departed from his side within their hearts and minds. If he would not defend himself, why should they?

  “Well, Palmer, I thank you for your candor,” began the Executive VP slowly as he looked down at a pad of paper on his desk and tapped it as though making up his mind.

  “That’s not all.”

  Everyone turned to look at Palmer again. After a moment, certain he had their full attention, he went on. “The money is pretty messed up. It’s going to take a full-scale audit to straighten out production accounts. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are well over budget. This doesn’t include what I can only assume are going to be some serious legal troubles, fines, and compulsory settlements regarding the fire. All of which need to be settled quickly to avoid further bad publicity.” Palmer painted a grim picture, a tidal wave of blame heading straight for them all. Without words or doomsday sirens, the urge to head for high ground was palpable. If Palmer’s plan could be read accurately, it was that he would have the Great Director removed and replaced with an all-too-ready replacement director. Someone who owed, or would owe, Palmer dearly for a shot at the big time.

  Now began the next phase of Palmer’s captivating assault at taking over the film.

  “Oftentimes, in the business of film, artists ask for things they should not be given. They have to be controlled. Otherwise their wild indulgences can lead to… well, to what this movie has become. This movie is little more than an artistic folly that has engulfed this studio and almost cost a number of people their jobs. More importantly, it’s going to cost the studio a great deal of money to fix, among other things.”

  He looked directly at Kip.

  “It’s the job of the producer to rein in those flights of fancy. It’s the job of the producer to make sure that laws, union, civil, and criminal, are not broken during production. It’s the job of the producer to make sure the money adds up and people don’t get hurt. You, my friend,” he pointed at Kip, “are a failure. You are responsible for this, and frankly, you disgust me.”

  Silence. Rarely did attacks in Hollywood fall just short of drawn daggers, but Palmer was feeling his own; he wanted Kip’s job now, not later.

  “It’s not really your fault though,” continued Palmer, white teeth flashing like a hungry wolf. “I can tell just from looking at you that you’re incompetent. You’re fat and stupid, and how you got this job and where you came from doesn’t interest me, Jay. I’m pretty sure when all is said and done, you’re going to be in a load of trouble you little—”

  “Hold it!” shouted the stranger who’d entered earlier with Scott the AD. Now he was standing up. “You’re talking about my brother. You need to watch what you say, because nobody talks about my brother that way.”

  The stranger walked forward, extending his hand toward the Executive VP, and said, “I’m Jay Jameson.”

  The Executive VP shook the extended hand, his mouth moving like a fish out of water.

  “That’s my brother Kip,” Jay said, indicating Kip. “My plane crashed in the Cambodian jungle and I’ve been living off snake meat for the last few months. Thanks to my new business partner and fellow snake meat restaurateur Pho Hok, I was able to get home, check my messages, and get right over here. Without my knowledge my brother has been covering for me. He may have been misguided, but I assure you his intentions were sincere.”

  Before anyone could interrupt, the real Jay Jameson continued. “Listen, it sounds like things are crazy. But what production isn’t, am I right?” He looked around. The defeated and vanquished barely nodded. He was charming though. “Listen, I’ve heard great things about this production. Nice job, everyone.” He started clapping. A few joined in as he encouraged them to congratulate themselves.

  “I will have all these problems straightened out by close of business Friday. Just give me a—”

  The Executive VP interjected, “I think it’s gone past that, Jay. The head of the studio has decided no further footage is to be shot. We are to put together a rough cut as soon as possible for a screening.” He sighed heavily. “The feeling is that maybe we can go straight to video in hopes of fulfilling what seems to be a mounting outstanding legal debt against the film.”

  “I understand,” continued the real Jay Jameson. “Well… I’ll do what I can for the production. That is, if you want me to help.” He stood back and clasped his hands in front of him.

  “I think I do. Thank you, Jay.” The Executive VP looked at the Great Director. “As for you.” He paused, the weight of his words heavy. Slow. What was coming was like some glacier grinding the land beneath its icy reach. Changing everything it touched. “I believe the studio no longer has need of your services.”

  A stunned silence enveloped the room. Things were bad, and heads were sure to roll, but no one had expected such a moment of finality. One of the most respected directors in the business, a man who’d made great films, been nominated for, and won, an Oscar, had influenced a decade and a thousand young filmmakers, was being handed his pink slip in front of his crew.

  The Great Director stood. For the briefest of seconds his legs felt wobbly, as though they weren’t ready for the sudden action. That he really was free.

  He looked around.

  No one made eye contact with him. Not even Goreitsky.

  They didn’t know this had all been part of his plan. That this was his greatest moment. Now he was finally free. Maybe he should say something, he thought.

  “Well… umm…” He cleared his throat. He couldn’t think of anything other than, “Goodbye.” So he just whispered that.

  He edged his way out between the crew and opened the door, turning back, before he left, for one last look.

  Still no one wanted to look at him.

  “All right,” he said, and he closed the door quietly behind him.

  In the outer office, a secretary looked up for a moment from her computer, gave a dismissive smirk as though she already knew all the bad news that was to be known, and returned to her work. Various clusters of the angry mob stopped to look as the once-Great Director made his way to the elevator. Tones were hushed and silent as he passed among them like some unclean thing making its way to the city gates and away from their presence forever. Banished to the Wastelands.

  On the bottom floor, secretaries pounded away at computers or quickly rushed from one side of the office to another, disappearing down starched white hallways. Writers waited, leather satchels in hand, supplicants seeking an audience for a pitch. Players chatted up pretty girls, noting the Great Director’s passing with the vaguest of agreements. At the front door, he thought about pausing, turning back one more time to look at what he was leaving. The writing, the deal-making, the business of film, but decided he’d already done all that. Before he knew it, he was too soon through the double doors.

  The backlot was quiet. It was Monday afternoon. Most productions were either sleepily working their way through the afternoon, satiated with lunch, or quietly waiting until the evening hours, unable to start until much later. Somewhere far away, a hammer pounded wood, at first determined and steady, then haphazardly, as if overwhelmed by the immensity of the project.

  The Great Director called Kim, who was nearby on the lot, and soon she dropped off his SUV. He would drive himself home; she would have to find her own way from now on. She told him she would call tonight. He stared at her for a long, hard moment. What would he do about her? Would she still be his assistant? He wouldn’t need an assistant if he was going to work on a fishing boat in Alaska.

  He drove to the main gate. Guards wave
d people through on the other side, people looking around the lot with wonder, riding in a convertible, obvious friends of some star, invited onto the lot for the day. Hollywood up close. He drove past the shack, and the guard inside, gray, hefty, blue eyes under an old cap, gave him a two-fingered salute.

  He saluted back and was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Ugly Cat

  The feeling of melancholy departed as soon as he was out the front gate. He shook it off with an involuntary shudder. He turned on the jazz and blues station and was immediately greeted by the Bones Wilson classic, “What Now?” He decided his cosmic destiny had agreed with the actions of the day and the song was meant to be some sort of sign.

  On the way home, he saw a sporting goods outlet and stopped to shop. He spent two hours buying a pair of Timberland work boots. The salesman, who’d lived, fished, hunted, and worked in Alaska, or at least so he told the Great Director, talked fondly of his time there and urged the Great Director to seek out a pair of highly valued work boots all the locals wore, and which were impossible to find in Beverly Hills. The store also specialized in offering gourmet dehydrated items such “Penne Portabella” and “Chicken Quattro Formaggi” for weekend camping getaways or the next disaster, courtesy of fire, flood, or earthquake, sure to rock LA.

  After the store, from which he wore his new boots out the door, he drove home. He passed a number of bars, most advertising an early morning opening, catering to those who just could not wait until cocktail hour. He thought about going in. He could have a beer and listen to a little jazz. He was sure there would be jazz deep in those dark caves where the wounded chose to hide for the day. A celebration perhaps. It would be cool and quiet. Blue and red leather he imagined, deep leather banquettes and dark light in which to hide forever.

  Invariably some writer or producer, or down-and-out actor, looking to scratch together a deal on the back of a cocktail napkin, would recognize him. He didn’t want to be drunk and talked into a project, suddenly nostalgic for film, uttering, “This time we’re gonna do it right. Bartender, another round for my new friends!”

  Not this time.

  Not ever again.

  He drove home just before twilight. All the lights in the house were dark. His Perfect Robot Wife’s SUV was in the garage.

  Odd, he thought.

  “Hello?” he said to the marble cavern that was his home. “Anybody home?”

  From far away, across the living rooms, sitting rooms, piano rooms, rooms with names, rooms based on colors, quarters for servants, and all manner of justified enclosed spaces, he heard a soft muffled crying.

  Maybe, he thought, she’s having an affair. Maybe I’ve caught her in the act. Sure, it’s all my fault and I don’t really care anymore. But still, if I have caught her I’ll have to act upset. That seems appropriate.

  He crossed the palace, homing in on the sobbing.

  In a room she called the garden room, he found his wife, arms covering her head, weeping into an expensive ottoman with heedless abandon. Her shoulders heaved with fresh sobs. She was unaware of his presence.

  He closed the distance between them quickly, putting away his selfish fantasies of her adultery.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he said in the way he’d spoken to her long ago. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  She lifted her head. Her face was a desert plain of torment through which streams of tears ebbed, her cheeks red, her eyes puffy.

  “He’s dead,” she sobbed, letting her head fall back behind the fortress of her arms. And now he was aware of the form on the couch a few feet away. It was the Ugly Cat, and now he knew the source of her pain. He bent down on his knees, holding her, and she wept shamelessly, holding nothing back.

  The Ugly Cat was dead.

  ***

  Long ago, before there had been a Great Director. Before there had been a Perfect Robot Wife. There had been the Ugly Cat.

  On a rainy morning at the beginning of winter, the Ugly Cat had made his way down an alley running alongside Melrose Avenue. Padding around puddles, avoiding its reflection, inspecting the garbage it came across.

  The cat was missing half its ear, a result of some battle. Atop its large head an ancient scar began, wickedly tracing itself through the destroyed remains of an eye and onto the mouth below. From the other side of the mouth one large fang rose up from the lower lip, forcing its way toward long, drooping whiskers. Its fur was a mottled brown, orange, and black, with areas that, should anyone ever decide to wash the cat, might be white.

  No one ever did.

  Because the Ugly Cat was so repulsive, other cats also shunned it. Often it was involved in pitched battles for territory or food, or for fear, or even love sometimes. Though, if the fight was for love and the Ugly Cat won, he was still rejected by the lady in question.

  So mostly the beast kept to himself, seeking out the deserted places. A morsel here, a scrap there, seldom love, mostly loneliness. This veteran of many battles and horrors unknowable, never ever gave up. He was always moving, always looking, always ready for something good to happen. His hope was that there was someone waiting for him somewhere.

  One morning soon after the alley, he encountered a young woman who was yet to be the Perfect Robot Wife. She’d just come to Hollywood the night before. This was how she came to be there. She was from a small town far away. She had a grandmother who was very sick. Each day she would take care of her grandmother, feeding her soup she would not eat, watching old movies that were almost old memories, looking out at the winter sky as dark trees clutched at passing gray clouds.

  One afternoon as they sat quietly, the grandmother asked her granddaughter, her voice frail and fading, “What is your dream?”

  “What?” asked the granddaughter, looking up from a book she’d been reading.

  “What do you dream that you might do one day?”

  The granddaughter thought for a moment. “I want to be here with you, always. That’s my dream, Grandma.”

  That’s what we think someone wants to hear when they are dying. When death is closer than it has ever been. When it has made its appointment.

  The grandmother snorted and laughed. “You’re such a good granddaughter. I know that’s not your dream, but thank you all the same. No, child. What is your dream, not mine?” she asked seriously.

  “That’s it, Grandma.”

  Seeing that her good granddaughter would not relent from her faithfulness, the sick old woman tried a new tack.

  “Do you know what my dream was when I was young? As young as you are now. Do you know?”

  “What was it?” the granddaughter asked, closing her book.

  “It was to be a movie star.” Which was the most incredible thing she could have said to the young woman.

  She’d always been Grandma. The wife of Grandpa Hooper, who raised corn and talked to chickens. She’d never been a young girl with faraway movie star dreams. Never ever. At least not to her granddaughter.

  “It’s true!” Now she had her granddaughter’s attention, and her voice was alive as it had not been for several months. “When I was young, I would go to the pictures and I would memorize every word. I would do scenes from every movie late at night in my room, and my brother would bang on the wall and say, ‘Stop kissing Gable, Gabby!’”

  She laughed at her forgotten nickname. As though it was some beautiful and treasured thing found in a drawer not opened in years.

  “I had a job at the bank. Mr. Parsons gave it to me because he wanted me to be near his boy in hopes that he might take to me. It’s a good thing he didn’t—he was killed at the Remagen Bridge in World War Two. He was nice all the same. I saved my money, every paycheck, because I was going to Hollywood someday.”

  “Really?” asked her granddaughter, closing her book and leaning forward.

  “Yes. I worked for two years. E
very night I listened to the train pass by south of town, dreaming that someday I’d be on it. Every night calling me. Telling me to hurry up, telling me time was running out.”

  She was silent. She was there. She was smiling.

  “Did you go?” asked the granddaughter.

  “No. No. I was too scared. I did buy a ticket though. Once. I was ready to leave.” She stared silently out the window for a moment.

  Gray clouds scuttled across the prairie sky.

  “But I didn’t go.” She paused and swallowed painfully. The granddaughter helped her with a sip of water. “That night I heard the train pass by and I cried. Oh, how I cried. The next day I let your grandpa take me for a drive in his father’s car. So it was all for the best.”

  The trees outside bent and twisted in a sudden wind.

  Summer was forever away.

  It was beginning to get darker. Evenings this time of year came early.

  “Just once though, I wanted to do a scene, in a real movie. I could have done it. I know I could’ve. I just know it.”

  It was dark now and the room was quiet.

  When she died early that spring, her granddaughter was holding her frail papery hand. No words were said. No final commission. Minutes passed as the body wore out. Giving up. Closing down. Letting go and moving on.

  While the family waited to bury the body, the granddaughter walked south of town. She crossed the old rail yards and came to the abandoned train tracks. She saw the long forgotten spur leading to the main line, farther south, heading west.

  She didn’t have any dreams of her own. Not now. Not just yet.