by Rowe, Brian
“I have Christopher!” Alyson shouted.
“OK! Pass him through!”
She picked up the phone and did her best to refrain from giggling. “Hey you.”
“Hello Vivien.”
“How are your storyboards coming along?”
“They’re coming along OK, I guess. How’s your associate?”
“He’s doing great. I imagine he won’t be able to work for the next week or two, but he’s going to pull through this.”
“That’s really good to hear. And how are you doing?”
Vivien didn’t get asked this question much. She leaned back in her chair and looked up, where she could see a tiny bit of sunlight streaming through a crack in the ceiling. “I’m good, Chris. I feel like everything’s coming together. I feel like the worst is finally behind me.”
“With only the best left to come?”
“You know it,” she said with a big smile. “Only the best.”
Christopher had been there for Vivien and Gavin all weekend. Despite his numerous trips to the bathroom, he was everything she was looking for in a man. He was forty-one years old, bright, funny, attractive, and sincere. He helped her through a weekend of melancholy over the loss of the family dog, and her self-blame over Brandon’s car accident, by taking her and Gavin to the movies and some truly exquisite dinners. He even brought the two of them to a baseball game on Sunday afternoon, which turned out to be the most fun she’d had in weeks.
“Are you going to be at your office in the next few minutes?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. Are you in yours? You animator… actor… whatever the hell you are…”
Vivien laughed. Her one source of humor over the weekend came from Christopher’s confession that he wasn’t a professional actor at all but instead an animator working just down the hallway from her.
“I’ll be able to take a break from my storyboards in a minute,” Christopher said. “I have something special for you.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see.” He hung up the phone.
“Christopher?” He was gone.
Alyson looked through Vivien’s closed door like a peeping tom. “Do you want me to get you Tyler Stiletto on the line?”
“No.”
“He said it was important.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“So no?”
“No. Rip up that message and throw it in the trash. I’m done talking to these childish agents. Enough already.”
Vivien checked her e-mails for a few minutes, and then realized she was starving.
“I’m gonna get something from the vending machine,” she said, looking over at Alyson. “Do you want anything?”
The intern looked stunned by the offer. “Oh, thank you. No, I’m fine.”
Vivien wanted to be a good girl, but there was nothing healthy in the machine. The best she could find was some trail mix. She deposited the eighty cents, and the machine spit out a bag that felt like ninety percent air and ten percent food.
She walked back into the office to find Alyson’s eyes glued to her laptop. “Alyson?”
“Yes?”
If she just lost a little weight, this girl could be cute.
“As I told you yesterday, Brandon was in a car accident and will be recovering at home for the next couple of weeks.”
“Yes, I know. I think it’s awful.”
“Well,” Vivien said, “this means I need some help right now, and I was wondering, if I were to pay you, say, five hundred dollars a week, if you would considering working for me, full-time. At least, for the time being.”
Alyson’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Really. I need help. And you’ve been proving yourself so well these last few weeks that I think it’s time to promote you.”
“Promote me?”
“Yes. To Casting Assistant.”
“Really? So I’m not an intern anymore?”
“Nope.” Vivien delighted in Alyson’s great joy.
“Thank you, Vivien. I promise I won’t let you down.” Alyson got up out of her chair and hugged her like she was the mother she never had.
“All right,” Vivien said, softly pushing the girl away. “So I’ll pay you every other Friday. Your first payment will be in a week and a half.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Do you want some?” Vivien held out her bag of trail mix.
Alyson nodded and took a dinky pretzel from inside the bag. “You’re the best casting director in the world, you know that?”
Vivien was taken aback by the flattery. “Well, I don’t know about that. But thank you for the compliment.” She looked down at the telephone. It was blinking. “There’s a message. Can you see who that is?”
“Yes, of course.”
Alyson sat back down at her desk and put the phone up to her ear.
Vivien walked toward the audition room, savoring the trail mix as if she were taking the final bites of a slice of New York cheesecake.
She looked inside to see a giant mess. The camera tripod was shoved up against the desk, and at least a dozen copies of Friday’s session sheets were sprawled on the floor.
“Oh, brother.”
She stepped into the room and started gathering up all the sheets. She didn’t know whether to throw the pages away or keep them in a box somewhere so that ten years from now she could pull them out and laugh.
She started putting them in a pile on the right corner of the desk.
“Oh, hello,” she heard Alyson say to someone in the hallway. “Do you have an appointment?”
Christopher.
Vivien smiled. She started turning around, when a deafening sound almost broke her eardrums.
What… what the…
She started falling toward the floor but stopped herself by pushing her right shoulder up against the wall.
What the fuck was that noise?
Vivien stood still. She could hear no activity coming from the adjacent room.
“Alyson? What was… what was that sound?”
There was no response.
“Alyson?”
She took seven long steps to the doorway and looked to her right. Alyson was sprawled out on the ground face down. She wasn’t moving.
“Oh my God!” Vivien rushed up to her. “Alyson! Are you all right!”
She grabbed Alyson’s right shoulder and pulled her over so she could see her face. Alyson’s eyes were open. She was staring up at nothing.
There was a large hole in the center of her forehead.
Before Vivien could scream, a hand grabbed her hair from behind and started pulling her into the audition room.
“NOOOOO!” was all she was able to shout before the door slammed behind her.
Next she felt a hard kick to the face.
And then, before she was even able to look up, a bullet struck her left shoulder.
Vivien screamed at the top of her lungs, something so shrill that someone in the building was bound to hear her. She scooted back, not knowing if these were her final seconds left to live.
She looked up to see a gun waving in her face. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
“Stop your screaming you dumb cunt.”
“NATHAN!”
“I want some explaining or I’m gonna put a fuckin’ bullet in your head I swear to God.”
Vivien put her hands up in the air. She tried to survey the area for a weapon, but there was nothing in sight.
“Nathan, please. Calm down. Put the gun down.”
Nathan’s voice was low and creepy. “You promised me a role in your movie, Vivien. I flirted with you.”
“I… I know…”
“I fucked you.”
“I wanted you to be in the movie. You damn well know I did! The whole thing just fell out of my hands. The financing went to shit, the director—”
“YOU ARE SUCH A LIAR!” he shouted, taking another step toward her w
ith the gun.
“No, it’s true, it happened over the weekend. Our investor got cold feet, and our director went off to start another movie. I had no control over it. I would’ve put you in this movie, I promise you.”
“Oh, is that a fact?”
“Yes! It is!”
Nathan looked to have lost all sense of rationality. He waved the gun around, and Vivien was waiting for it to go off at any second.
“Nathan, I promise you, I will cast you in my next movie, OK? You don’t even have to audition. I’ll put you in the lead. I’ll put you in the best—”
“Shut up, bitch.”
The hateful tone in his voice made Vivien want to throw up. She cowered in the corner of the room with her hands still in the air.
“You took me for advantage,” he said. “You promised me my dream, and then you just ripped it away.”
“No, it wasn’t my fault.”
He rushed up to her and waved the gun in her face. “STOP LYING! DO YOU WANT ME TO SHOOT YOU AGAIN!”
“No.”
“DO YOU!”
“Please.” The pain in her shoulder was nearly unbearable.
“This has happened to me for the last time,” Nathan said. “You casting directors think you’re Gods. Well you know what? I’m going to take great pleasure in shooting down every fucking last one of you.”
“Nathan, please. You don’t have to do this. I will make some calls. I will get you work. I will get you your dream! I will get you—”
“Vivien?” The voice was coming from the hallway.
Oh no.
No, no, no, no.
“Christopher! No! Get back!”
Nathan turned to his left and fired the gun. This time her eardrums felt like they would actually burst.
“CHRISTOPHER! NOOOOOO!”
He stumbled in, his left hand holding a bouquet of flowers, and his right hand holding his bleeding stomach.
“Vivien…” Christopher’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he fell to the floor with a loud thud.
“NOOOOO! NOOOOOO!”
Vivien crept up to him, crying excessively, trying to ignore the pain shooting all the way from her neck to the bottom of her left arm. She grabbed hold of him and brought him close to her. Vivien looked up at Nathan.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Was that your boyfriend?”
“No,” she said, wiping her tears away. “No, he’s just some guy I met a few days ago.”
“An actor?”
“Yes.”
Nathan held the gun out. His eyes became colder by the second. He laughed and smiled to himself. Then he said, very quietly, “How could I have been so stupid?”
“What?”
He stared at her, not moving his face an inch as he asked: “The movie was never real, was it?”
She opened her mouth, searching for a sentence that could keep her alive.
“THIS IS THE POLICE!”
Vivien turned to her right. She could hear a bombardment of footsteps coming toward her office.
Somebody called the police. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.
“They’re coming for me,” Nathan said.
“This is your last chance, Nathan,” Vivien said. “Put the gun down.”
“No.”
“Put the gun down!” Vivien shouted. “They are going to shoot you!”
Nathan didn’t move an inch. He smiled at Vivien with the same youthful, attractive grin he showed her the first time they met back in the Santa Monica acting school. “No. I think I’ve had enough of the Hollywood dream.” He took a step closer to her and pointed the gun at her face. “But first, I’m taking you with me.”
“Nathan, please,” she said, her eyes red with tears. “I have a little boy. I have a son.”
“I… DON’T… CARE!”
“PUT THE GUN DOWN!” A police officer from the end of the hall had his gun pointed at Nathan. “PUT THE GUN DOWN OR I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FIRE!”
Nathan didn’t move.
“THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!” the officer shouted.
Nathan took a step back and slowly brought his gun down to his right side. He started laughing and looked down at Vivien. “You know, there’s one good thing that’s come out of all this.” Nathan cocked the gun. “You won’t have to look at this awful scar any longer.”
He smiled, stuffed the gun in his mouth, and fired.
Nathan’s brains splattered against the wall behind him, and he slumped down against the table, his head coming to rest on the stack of Friday’s session sheets.
-43-
Gavin yawned and continued to doodle some drawings in his creative writing notebook while surveying the other students around him. Kendyll was in the back right of the classroom, ravenously chewing on a wad of gum. She saw Gavin’s eyes roam toward her, and she glared at him.
He turned to his left and smiled at his current girlfriend Grace. Her skin was pale white, with freckles, squinty eyes, and an adorable mole above her upper lip.
Gavin tried to hold her hand. It was a maneuver as risky and challenging as defusing a bomb. He looked up to see his creative writing teacher writing on a chalkboard, not paying any attention to him or his hand.
His fingers started caressing Grace’s. She was much better at hiding the flirtations than he was. Their palms met, and Gavin could swear their heartbeats were touching.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Brooks?” Gavin heard from the desk behind him.
Their middle-aged teacher turned around. “Yes, Duncan? What is it?”
“Gavin and Grace are holding hands!”
The whole classroom burst into laughter as Gavin turned around and flicked the obese Duncan in the forehead. “What is it to you, huh?”
“What is it to me? It’s pathetic, that’s what it is!”
“Oh yeah? Well at least I can get a girlfriend, fatty!”
Mrs. Brooks clapped her hands together. “Hey! Stop that!”
“But your girlfriend isn’t even cute,” Duncan said, punching Gavin’s right shoulder.
“Owww!” Gavin slugged him back against his chest. “You take that back!”
“And you wanna know another thing?” Duncan asked, ignoring him. “Neither was your stupid dog!”
Gavin jumped out of his chair. “YOU ASSHOLE! I’M GONNA KILL YOU!”
He planted his fist against Duncan’s face, and the two started wrestling on the floor.
“Stop it, boys!” the teacher shouted. “All right, that’s enough!”
All of the students were chanting. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“I’ll stop if you stop,” Gavin said, not letting go.
“No, you!” Duncan shouted, blood dripping down his double chin. “You first!”
Gavin thought his shoulder hurt from Duncan’s punch, but nothing compared to the pain of Mrs. Brooks’ sharp fingernails digging their way into his left ear. She pulled him up with the strength of a hundred men.
“Principal’s office!” she shouted.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brooks—”
“NOW!”
The agitated teacher pointed her bony index finger toward the door. He looked back at Duncan, who was smiling at him with his bloody teeth.
Gavin’s glance at Grace made his heart sink. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the wall beside her, avoiding his eye-line, like she was disappointed he didn’t win the fight.
He shook his head as he walked toward the front door. He stopped and turned to the desk on the left. In a large pile were the short stories of last week’s assignment graded, and with comments.
Gavin knew he only had a second or two. He bent over and saw that the top paper wasn’t his. But the one below it was. He grabbed it before Mrs. Brooks turned around, and he walked down the hallway toward the principal’s office.
Bald and super frail, the principal didn’t look happy to see Gavin again. He said the typical administrative ambiguities. “I’m calling your mother about this,
” was the statement that almost made Gavin laugh.
Yeah, good luck with that, dipshit.
When his mom didn’t pick up the phone, the scrawny man told him to go straight to detention, where he would spend the rest of the school day.
He ended up staying in detention a half hour longer than he needed to. His mom had been increasingly late picking him up from school. Her friend Lila showed up sometimes to take him home, but sometimes even she wouldn’t show and he’d have to take a bus back to Woodland Hills. He had been able to walk to their previous home, but Lila’s place was too far.
When Gavin stumbled out into the late afternoon sun, he was surprised to see how stunningly perfect the September weather was. The leaves were finally starting to change, and the wind was cool and calm. He sat down on the front steps of the school and watched as boys and girls around him all flocked to their moms and dads in the parking lot. An hour passed, and by five o’clock he was the last person under legal drinking age still present on school grounds.
He took a deep breath and looked down at his cell phone. It was dead. He had forgotten to charge it.
“Oh, great.” He tapped it a couple of times, hoping for a miracle.
He stood up and looked around as the wind started to pick up. He couldn’t wait any longer. He grabbed his backpack and started walking.
Gavin liked a nice stroll every once in a while to clear his head. He rested his thumbs against the straps of his backpack and turned a corner. The neighborhood was silent and serene, like something out of a painting. The sun was shining through oversized trees along the quiet street.
Now I’m close.
He passed through an intersection and made a right turn on the next street. He walked for another minute and stopped when he saw the mailbox.
Gavin sat on the porch of his former residence, the house that his parents had made for him, and stared out at the front yard. He set his backpack down and zipped it open, some folders accidentally falling out onto the dry grass in front of him.
He pulled out his creative writing paper. He looked at the grade he had briefly glanced at in the classroom. He had seen it right the first time. It was an A.
He started leaning back against the grass, his eyes darting up toward the darkening sky, when he heard a car door slam.
Gavin sat back up. The first thing he saw was the arm sling. “Mom?”
