The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  Even though Ralph had briefly pitched Love Among the Gorillas to V.J.’s assistant, who had pitched it even more briefly to V.J., he and Tony should assume that V.J. will have forgotten the idea by the time they meet with him. Yes, he would have read the script before the meeting – by which Ralph meant his assistant would have sent it out to the reader, who would have read twenty pages of it, to produce three or four pages’ worth of notes, which V.J.’s assistant would then condense into a single page for V.J. to skim. Even so, V.J. would no doubt need to have his memory refreshed. What Ralph and Tony needed to choose was the single best word to convey the spirit of the work. Once they got in V.J.’s office, they had approximately five seconds in which to capture V.J.’s attention and heart.

  Tony thought perhaps the word should be “love.” “Love, or, if we’re afforded the chance to slip in another, ‘love, Africa.’”

  “He already knows it’s Africa,” said Ralph. “We can’t waste time with something he already knows. I’m telling you, these people have attention spans shorter than a sneeze. Better, ‘love and BO.’”

  “I suppose that does capture the exotic backdrop. But I should think BO is a bit vulgar. This is a tender love story.”

  “Box Office is God,” said Ralph, “vulgar or not. ‘Love, BO,’ and if his eyes haven’t already glazed over, ‘Redford.’”

  “Love, BO, and Redford,” said Tony. It did have an incantatory quality.

  “No ‘and,’ no ‘and’! Too wordy. ‘Love, BO, Redford.’ He’ll be bored – if you bore ‘em you’ve hung yourself.”

  V.J. Parchman’s office was on the lot in Burbank. Ralph and Tony needed a pass at the gate to get in. Tony felt privileged and official, conducting business with the guard. He imagined a time when they would be on a first-name basis with him, when he would see the car and wave them on through. “Mr. Holladay! Mr. Cheatham! How are the rushes?” Tony made a mental note to have Mouse get him a new pair of sunglasses.

  They drove Ralph’s car rather than Mimi’s. It was two years younger and one model up from the bottom of the line. Ralph parked far away from V.J.’s office, on the off chance V.J. or his assistant should see them. If they saw Ralph and Tony arrive in an econo-box it would reduce their chances of getting a deal.

  V.J.’s assistant was a regal young black woman with a diamond stud in her nose, a beaded Maasai necklace encircling her elegant throat. Tony thought she might be Kenyan. She was, in fact, from Jamaica.

  “Close enough!” said V.J., emerging from his office. “Tony, good man, is it really you? Jambo, habari.” He pumped Tony’s hand warmly. “Don’t get to use my Swahili much, but Emily here is learning. Come in.”

  Tony was alarmed to see that Vince had not changed. Wasn’t he supposed to be unrecognizable: a smooth Hollywood producer reeking of money and opportunity? Instead he looked like a Peace Corps volunteer fresh from a good night’s sleep and a shower. He wore pressed khaki shorts and a polo shirt. His thinning, graying brown hair curled over his collar, the earpiece of his horn-rimmed glasses held together with first-aid tape. Still, there was a whiff of opulence; the shorts and shirt looked expensive. He wore cologne and a gold watch. Tony thought – no, must be my imagination – that Vince had picked up a Kenyan accent. He thought Vince was from Pasadena.

  His office resembled a small ethnographic museum. Maasai spears and shields were displayed in a case on one wall. Carved masks hung on the opposite wall, illuminated by some kind of fancy lighting. Shiny ebony animal carvings occupied a long shelf beneath the masks. The coffee table was a piece of thick glass laid over a three-legged drum made from part of a hollowed-out coconut palm. His in-box was a small, brightly woven basket, the type sold by girls along the lip of the Great Rift, marked “in” in Swahili; the out-box was similar.

  “Dear God, you certainly have become quite the collector,” said Tony.

  Tony and Ralph sat on the faux-cheetah skin loveseat. V.J. lit up a meerschaum pipe, his acne-scarred cheeks hollow with the effort of getting the pipe to draw. He leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on his desk. Tony was further alarmed to see he was wearing tennis shoes.

  “So. Love Among the Gorillas.” He fixed Tony and Ralph with an executioner’s stare.

  Tony was nervous. This was it! He was overcome with the feeling that this was, as he’d long suspected, the center of the galaxy. This, the Industry. The Business. This, the last place on earth where a talentless sod with no appreciable skills could still make a fortune by legal means. It was a place roiling with absurd miracles, and here he was: at the center of it.

  “BO,” said Tony.

  “BO?” said Vince, brows furrowed.

  “What we mean –” Ralph cut in.

  “Oh dear, not really!” said Vince, leaping to his feet. “It’s not BO, it’s Christ, I just had Allyn Meyer in here.” He strode over to the end table next to Tony’s elbow, peered down at a Plexiglas box in which a perfect orb of flaky white rock was preserved. Vince sniffed until Tony was sure he would hyperventilate. “You sure you smell something, old chap?”

  “No, I was –”

  “It’s supposed to be air-bloody-tight,” said V.J. “I wouldn’t have it displayed if… Allyn must think I’m a bloody barbarian.” He strode back to his desk and called Emily in.

  “Smell that,” he commanded her. She leaned over, holding her Maasai necklace down so it wouldn’t crash against her nose.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It smells, can’t you smell it? Take it back to that, wherever you had it made, tell them I can’t have my office smelling like an outhouse. It’s got to be airtight.”

  Emily’s beautiful pink lip curled as she picked up the box carefully with both hands and strutted out. “This is what you get, trying to make shit art.”

  “And vice versa, old girl, vice versa,” said Vince. “Christ, it’s such a lovely piece of dung, round as a bleeding tennis ball rolled into perfection by two terrific dung beetles at Olduvai, on the exact spot where old Zinjanthropus was dug up. Tony, old boy, you’ve been to Olduvai. That Leakey, such a good chap. Had a meeting with him.”

  Tony was mute. He smiled and pulled at the end of his nose.

  “So. Love Among the Gorillas. Absolutely.” Vince’s cheeks chuffed in and out as he pulled on his pipe. He resumed his position behind his desk.

  “We see it as a sexier Out of Africa,” said Ralph.

  “I want to bloody make this movie,” said Vince. “Tell me how you envision it.”

  Tony glanced over at Ralph, who beamed at V.J. as though this was a perfectly normal conversation. “Pretty much, I’d say, how I’d written it,” said Tony.

  “How you’d written it,” repeated Vince, mystified.

  “The script,” said Tony.

  “The script!” said Vince. “I creamed over this script.” He patted a screenplay in a light-blue cover sitting among the nest of papers on his desk. Tony was sure he’d ordered green covers. “I can’t believe that turd isn’t an absolute rock by now,” he said to himself. “I knew I should have just picked up some rubble, but everyone collects rocks.”

  “We’re going for something original, but something everyone will recognize immediately,” said Ralph. “We want something serious, but also something light and playful, something profound and also, in parts, kind of dumb, you know, for the target audience.”

  “Exactly what we’re looking for,” said Vince. “But before we run it past Allyn and the rest of the VPs I’d like to make two changes.”

  “Certainly,” said Tony. He dug in his leather case for a note pad and pen.

  “First I want to use your real names. We’re looking for a true-life story set in Africa. We want Born Free, we want Out of Africa. We want to be able to say, ‘This is a true story’ before the opening credits. To do that, we have to use your names. That’s easy though, right?”

  “– as a cheerleader on prom night,” said Ralph.

  “I don’t know,” said Tony. He’d never
shown Mouse the screenplay, figuring he was saving himself no small bit of grief. She’d get bent out of shape when she recognized herself in the tough and lusty Kitty. Now, though, if he was going to get a deal – and from the looks of things he was – she would certainly find out about it. She would want to read the script. He could not imagine her reaction if she saw her own name in it. “Let me discuss it with Mouse.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be no problem,” said Ralph, “just a courtesy. We want to do things right.”

  “What was your other suggestion?” asked Tony.

  “That, boys, I will leave up to you. I believe in letting the artist do his job. Even though this script is perfect as it is, let’s see if we can make it more perfect.”

  “Indeed,” said Tony. “And how, exactly, are we to make it more perfect?”

  “I need…” Vince pursed his lips and waved his pipe in front of his face as though trying to beat the right words from the air, “… differences. Get it more there. Just don’t get too creative on me. We want to get this thing made, remember.”

  THERE WAS AN agent at Talent and Artists, Thaddeus Herman, who heard Mimi ask Solly if he had any suggestions as to how she might get Mouse and Tony a screening. In response, Solly said, “Lemme get back to you. Get me Rocky Martini.”

  Thaddeus looked about fifteen and had degrees from Harvard in business and philosophy. He was one of the best agents at Talent and Artists. He’d recently gotten one of his worst writers six figures for a rewrite which required changing the main character’s name from Bruiser to Crusher.

  Mimi could not figure out why Thaddeus was so hot on documentary. Probably in order to look like an intellectual instead of a bottom feeder, which is what agents really were. Alyssia said he also wrote sonnets, which he read once a week at Casa Chez Moi on Fairfax with a bunch of other successful industry people (as opposed to the people Mimi knew). You could only imagine what that was like. “A View from Above-the-Line.” “Ode to Gross Participation.”

  But as powerful as Thaddeus was, able to get his clients lots of money to do nothing, he was not able to get the LAFI to host a screening for Mouse and Tony. They turned him down flat. He apparently had no friends there, which was the lie he’d told Mimi, but had just assumed he’d radio in on his headset, drop his own powerful name, and show up the night of the screening. But, as Mouse had already told Mimi, the LAFI was booked eight months in advance. The LAFI had done an ethnographic film festival two years before. The LAFI had never heard of Mouse FitzHenry and Tony Cheatham, nor had they heard of Thaddeus Herman.

  “We’re going with the Venice Documentary Consortium instead,” he told Mimi. “Very new. Very cutting edge. I got the ball rolling. All you need to do is follow up.” He snuck a manila file onto the edge of her desk. Inside there was nothing but a scrap of paper with a name, E. Bomarito, and a phone number.

  E. Bomarito had never heard of Thaddeus Herman either.

  “Wasn’t he the guy had the multimedia show on self-mutilation?”

  “I’m calling from the Talent and Artists agency,” said Mimi. “We’re cosponsoring a series of African films by Mouse FitzHenry and Tony Cheatham. Thaddeus is an agent, and I’m his – an associate. Mouse and Tony just got back from Kenya.”

  “Did talk to a Herman few weeks ago. Lemme – sure, ‘s got a fourpart thing on sewage-treatment plants in the Midwest. I told him anytime. Just let us know few days ahead so’s we can make sure we got enough folding chairs. Should tell you, Tuesdays tend not to be the greatest. Church upstairs gets kinda rowdy.”

  “There’s a church upstairs?”

  “Chapel of the Divine Psychics. They got a workshop Tuesday nights, Schmoozing with the Dead. The Dead can really get down.”

  “You don’t mean –”

  “– the deceased, not the Grateful Dead. Sounds like I’m talking the Grateful Dead, doesn’t it?”

  DURING THE FIRST week in December, almost five months before the wedding, Mouse and Mimi met one lunch hour at the Consortium “offices” to take a look. Even though Thaddeus insisted it was the cutting edge of documentary in Los Angeles, Mimi was leery. The administrative offices of the Venice Documentary Consortium operated out of E. Bomarito’s studio apartment. To be more specific, they operated out of the gray rumpled sheets of his Murphy bed. Who could tell if this was avant-garde or pathetic?

  Mouse was more concerned with the screening facilities than with where E. Bomarito kept his file folders. The Venice Documentary Consortium and the Chapel of the Divine Psychics were located in the old Venice Beach Fire Department. The Consortium was in the basement. There was no sign, just crumbling steps leading downstairs from a side entrance. Over the doorway, in purple felt pen, someone had written: we show anything with sprocket holes. Inside, it smelled like disinfectant and rancid butter flavoring. Shadows of God knows what scurried around the baseboards. Someone had built a projection booth out of knotty plywood and stuck a small screen on the concrete wall opposite. Smack in the middle of the room was a hole in the ceiling the size of a small child’s wading pool, through which ran a brass pole. The hole had been covered with silver tape and black construction paper. Mouse stood next to the pole, hands on her narrow hips, looking back and forth between the projection booth and the screen.

  E. Bomarito had soft kinky black hair and a black handlebar mustache from which hung the leftovers of a breakfast that included something gooey and beige. A wedge of furry potbelly, featured between the bottom of his limp, tie-dyed T-shirt and the tops of his jeans, was his only other notable feature. He slouched against the doorjamb while they looked around, cleaning an ear with one of his car keys. “No box office, per se, we just stick a coffee can here by the door.”

  “This pole,” said Mouse, bunging it with the heel of one hand, “can’t we get rid of it?”

  “The pole?” said F. Bomarito, “What do you mean?”

  “How do you project with this thing here?”

  “She didn’t tell you?” He gave Mimi a chastising glance. “This used to be a fire station.”

  “I told her,” said Mimi. “Couldn’t you set up a little card table? I mean, for the box office?”

  “This pole is right in line with the lens.”

  “Can’t people just sort of schooch around it? Move their chairs?”

  “Mimi,” Mouse said, “I don’t care where people sit, the pole is right in line with the lens.”

  Beggars can’t be choosers, Mimi was about to say. Just screen your stupid movies and get on with it. She had a fifty-minute drive back to the office in midday traffic. When she got there, she had to do her homework for How to Write a Blockbuster, while pretending to be doing her regular drudge work. The homework was to write the copy for the dust jacket of her projected blockbuster on love and betrayal in the business. The class had not actually begun writing yet. First they created the publicity campaign for their projected books, then they wrote what they considered were ideal glowing reviews, then they did the dust-jacket cover copy, then a plot outline, then character sketches, then the book. They were to think of it like eating an artichoke, Ralph had said.

  “We had Werner Herzog here last year,” said E. Bomarito. “He liked the pole.”

  “I like it, too,” Mimi said. “We could have a brie wheel. Come on, Mouse it’ll be a scene. I’ll invite everyone I know, all our clients, and we’ll get press releases out to the African community. Thaddeus knows people at the Times, we can get one of the Arts writers to come.”

  Mimi conned Mouse into believing that this was the place to premiere her films. Much better than the old-fogy and obvious LAFI. Sure, the Venice Documentary Consortium redefined the word funky, and sure, E. Bomarito was the type of dandruffy intellectual and lost soul who gave documentary a bad name, but she should consider it like a trendy Lower East Side alternative-art space.

  Secretly, Mimi knew it would be humiliating. She could only imagine the kind of deadbeats and never-weres who would show up, if anyone showed at all. But sh
e promised she would do PR, she said she would see if she could scam an ad in the Times, round up the little card table for the box office, prod the dim and revolting E. Bomarito to do whatever it was he usually did to promote his screenings. All this she promised. She promised it out of guilt. She promised it because she was not going to invite anyone to this whose opinion she respected, i.e., anyone she knew. Could you see Nita Katz, with her perfect hard-boiled-egg complexion, her bony white shoulders and red corkscrew curls stuck watching a documentary on elephantiasis from behind a pole in a smelly basement with the six or seven loneliest losers in L.A.? Mimi couldn’t.

  Mimi said she would invite her.

  Mouse knew Mimi wouldn’t.

  THE NIGHT OF the screening, Mimi caught Mouse talking to herself in the bathroom mirror. Her nose was an inch away from her worried image, her dry brown hands anchored against the side of the sink. “Okay, Frances. You can do this,” she exhaled.

  “What are you so nervous about?” Mimi said. “It’ll be great. Can I get in here to do my mascara?” She pulled her makeup bag out of the bottom drawer.

  Mouse dropped the lid of the toilet and sat down, chin in hand. She wore a stretched-out black cotton sweater and black leggings, castoffs from Mimi. The leggings fell in folds around her ankles, the sweater was like a dress. Mouse resolved every morning to go out and buy herself some new clothes, but frankly she was terrified. Of the stores, the salesgirls, the selection, the prices. She had not scrutinized her looks in sixteen years, and had come to the conclusion that compared to every other woman in Los Angeles, she was a withered hag. Mimi’s wrong-headed solution was a perm. Now Mouse’s dark thick hair sprung straight up, a soufflé of curls. All efforts to comb it flat failed.

  “You look sort of like the Bride of Frankenstein, except without the white streak. Your hair and everything,” said Mimi. She hung from the waist, scrunching her own blond curls.