Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m going up to Peebles for a week to an anti-war workshop retreat with Gayle.”

  “Who?”

  “Stop crunching in my ear, please.”

  “Sorry. Who?”

  “Gayle. I introduced you at Tilly’s party. Short hair? Nice smile? David?”

  “Tattoo…”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh yeah. Okay, I’m with you now. An anti-war rally? In Peebles?”

  “No. An anti-war workshop in Peebles.”

  “Ah. You’re organizing.”

  “We’re organizing.”

  “Really? You’re going to…protest? Like, with the signs and the marching and the chanting kind of protest? With the water cannons and the lunging dogs and…”

  “I’m going to a retreat, David.”

  “Yeah, but then what? I mean... you’re organizing, right?”

  “I don’t know what’s next. Maybe nothing. For now it’s a retreat and that’s it. It’s over in Peebles. It’s like a spa. Hot tubs and mud baths and walking trails in the woods.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So, what’s the problem, David. Stop eating in my ear, please.”

  “Sorry. There’s no problem. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think you were interested in being that… I don’t know… politically active. You know, involved at the protest level.”

  “I went to college in the sixties.”

  “Well, okay. True. But it’s not like you were a sign waving radical or anything.”

  “I waved lots and lots of signs. I marched. I hand-billed. I organized sit-ins.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You chanted bad rhymes at the establishment?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is it I never knew this?”

  “Ancient history, I guess. Another life before you even existed.”

  “I’m supposed to know history. Your history doesn’t go back any farther than schoolteacher.”

  “Well, I wasn’t born a schoolteacher.”

  “So you’re going back?”

  “Back?”

  “To your roots of protest and dissention and sewing unrest.”

  “I’m going to a spa in Peebles with Gayle.”

  “Have you ever thrown a Molotov cocktail at the pigs?”

  “No. David, if you put one more chip in your mouth…”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry …”

  “I’ll be gone a week starting the thirteenth or fourteenth. I’m not exactly sure when we leave. I’m telling you because I would like you to check in on your father and Ben while I’m gone.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because.”

  “Because why? I mean…what’s to check on?”

  “Because your father drinks too much, David. You don’t live here. I do. You don’t see him pass out in the evenings. I do. You don’t have to deal with being put down and ignored and treated like an idiot. I do. I don’t think your father is a stable person a lot of the time and your brother needs someone responsible to look after him.”

  “Dad’s responsible. I mean, isn’t he?”

  “Frankly, no. Not all the time. Your father does whatever he damn well pleases, responsible or not. I am the one who holds this entire place together. This entire marriage. Your brother. I do all of that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Myself.”

  “Okay. So…Dad’s fine with you going away?”

  “Your father’s not fine with anything. But I’m going anyway.”

  “I sense guilt feelings.”

  “I’ll be gone a week, David. I should think he’ll manage just fine for a week.”

  “Yeah, I guess…it’s just that you’re asking me to check on him…so…”

  “Is there a problem, David? Is there some reason you can’t look in on your father and your brother, just to make sure everything is okay?”

  “What wouldn’t be okay?”

  “I don’t know. That is why I am asking you…”

  “Yeah, okay, okay, Mom…so you want me to actually go over there in person and, what, look around I guess. See if I can smell his breath.”

  “David…”

  “Pay the hookers and send them away.”

  “David….”

  “Make sure Ben is not rooting through the trash for dinner.”

  “Why do you have to be this way?”

  “What way? I just think you’re over-reacting. They’ll be fine. I’ll give them a call a couple of times to see if they need anything. I’ll make him put Ben on the phone so I know he’s still alive.”

  “David, I can call on the phone as well as you can.”

  “One more. One more.”

  “One more what?”

  “Sorry. I was talking to Cee Cee.”

  “I’m asking you to just go over to check in on them and see…”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll go over.”

  “Thank you. It won’t take long. Every other day should be fine.”

  “Every other day!”

  “Evenings. It won’t interrupt your work. What time do you leave the school?”

  “…”

  “David?”

  “I can’t believe you were a radical hippie.”

  “I was a concerned citizen.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Between then and now?”

  “I’m still a concerned citizen. I got married. I started and ended a teaching career. I raised three kids.”

  “I guess there was the Fingerhut campaign, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes. There was the Fingerhut campaign.”

  “I thought you were just …”

  “What?”

  “I dunno. Dabbling. Dad said you were just bored. Helping out a friend.”

  “All true. I didn’t do much. Stuffed a lot of envelopes. Made a lot of buttons.”

  “Made a good speech.”

  “I’m not a good speaker. Your father is the good speaker. It’s a skill.”

  “Did you make speeches at Kent State?”

  “A few.”

  “Do you know the words to Kumbaya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you smoke refer?”

  “…”

  “Mom?”

  “David, honestly.”

  “Well, I’m just asking.”

  “Why? Do you smoke refer?

  “…”

  “David?”

  CHAPTER 28 – Tilly

  I felt better for having auditioned, if you can call it that. Better, not because doing so provided me with any sense of accomplishment, or because it abated my anger at having to prove again what I had hoped was already abundantly clear. It did neither of these things. Rather, I felt better simply because there was nothing else to be done.

  I left the sheaf of questions and answers, sealed in their manila envelope, at the offices of Bright Leaf Studio. I did not return them to Blair as I had been instructed.

  Leaning against the smooth stone counter, I scribbled the title of the film and my name across the front of the envelope and I placed it in the hands of Erica, the receptionist, a full-lipped, blue-eyed wonder who was guarding a lobby of nervous hopefuls like a nurse at an asylum. The hopefuls fidgeted along the wall in green and gold chairs, torturing scrolls of paper and muttering with vacant eyes into the air as though in deep conversation with spirits.

  “Uh, no direct submissions,” the receptionist cautioned perfunctorily as I handed her the envelope. She pinched it between her fingers like it had been soaking in urine.

  It was highly irregular for me to have gone about things in that way, straight in through the front doors as though I had no agent and no name; as though I was fresh off the bus and ready to transition from hayseed furniture store commercials and a modeling gig or two, into a stroll up the red carpet in one smooth step. As though I had not already been i
n the business. As though I had never been nominated at Sundance nor graced the cover of the entertainment tabloids. As though I had not, at one time, already had the very part for which I was auditioning.

  She translated my cursive scribbles upside down and looked at me in surprise.

  “Oh,” she said, turning the envelope around and flicking her blue wonders up at me suddenly to confirm the name with a face. She swallowed, leaving only a residue of her former expression and, in its place, a look of uncomfortable apology. She gestured hesitantly with the envelope toward the offices on the other side of the wall behind her.

  “Mr. Gaines isn’t in, he’s over at…”

  “I don’t need to see Mr. Gaines,” I said. “Send it wherever it needs to go.”

  And then I left – her stare at my back and the asylum patients still muttering, but with recognition in their eyes – pushing my way through the heavy glass doors and stepping back out into tinseled sunlight splashing brilliantly off the broken white rock that lined the pathway to the parking lot. I put down the top and donned my shades. I drove off along Wilshire, the morning sun full in my face, feeling better about things. Better simply because there was nothing else to be done. A door closed in my head, and for the first time in a very long while, I was able to put The Lion Tree behind me.

  After a quick lunch, I kept an appointment with Milton Chenowith. Milton was pushing seventy-five, but he was still a big man with solid shoulders, a full head of silver-white hair and a face that would have been jowly at the jaws and wrinkled at the eyes but for the retained services of the man with a scalpel that he referred to only as The Wizard.

  When I entered Milton’s office and plopped myself down into one of his blue over-stuffed swivels, he rose to his full height, gave me that Ed McMahon laugh of his, gestured to the chair in which I was already seated, and told me that I looked fresh.

  Fresh, meaning young and energetic and full of optimism. It was a standard, over-used greeting for Milton; a distilled variation of freshly famous, which was a phrase Milton liked to say he picked up from John Wayne in the glory days when he and The Duke were signing movie deals like they were autographs.

  Freshly famous was The Duke’s polished-up euphemism for freshly fucked, which was meant to conflate dizzily euphoric, post-coital expressions with the distinctly orgasmic look of young starlets who were beginning to feel those first surges of celebrity pumping through their veins.

  The walls of Milton’s office were lined with the slickly framed, autographed likenesses of his clients; the resume of a talent agent. The faces were arranged in no particular order, but, if one were so inclined, they could have been aligned to arc neatly through all of the eras of modern American film, showing that Milton Chenowith had indeed been a very heavy hitter twenty to thirty years before my visit and increasingly average as the points of light in the once dark, clear skies above Hollywood began bleed into one another, losing their brilliance and growing indistinct with the fuzzy glows of minor talents.

  None of the photographs were as large, or as prominently displayed – directly above the desk – as that of John Wayne. If The Wizard was the guardian of Milton’s future, The Duke was the guardian of Milton’s past. One of the only occasions I can recall Milton losing his trademark avuncular demeanor, becoming instantly though briefly peevish, was when I asked whether The Duke’s mother had ever stopped calling him Marion, his given name.

  But I got the impression that for Milton that afternoon, fresh did not mean freshly famous or freshly fucked. It meant, simply, fresh. New. Keenly attuned to burgeoning possibilities. I supposed that is what he meant because that, at long last, was how I felt.

  “You’ve put that mess behind you then?” He asked, loosening his tie and reclaiming his chair.

  “I’m ready to move on, Milton.”

  “Sure you don’t want to audition?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You’ve heard how he’s doing this? The written audition?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard.”

  “Pure nonsense. Have you seen them?”

  “What?”

  “The questions.”

  “No,” I lied, inexplicably.

  “Damnedest thing you’ve ever seen. Essay questions. College stuff. Blair’s lost his mind. Everybody’s talking about him. Never seen him loosen his grip on a project like this before. Just handed over the keys. And handed them over to Angus Mann of all people! The guy’s a drunk. He’s a has-been hack writer who doesn’t know the first damn thing about the movie business and now he’s running the whole goddamned show.”

  “He’s not a drunk or a hack, Milton. Maybe a has-been.”

  “He doesn’t make movies, Tilly. Okay? He doesn’t make movies. I still think you ought to sue the bastards. You’ve got a name and reputation to protect in this town.”

  I looked at him without responding, as though genuinely considering the issue. There were only a few people like Milton Chenowith still around who could refer to greater Los Angeles, or even Hollywood, as a town without any hint of irony.

  “You can’t just let them push you around. What’s the word from Conrad?”

  “I’m past it.”

  “Conrad’s good, Tilly. I’ve used him twice personally. He’s a barracuda in an Armani suit, that guy. He could get you a judgment. He could at least scare a decent settlement out of Bright Leaf. They’ve paid out claims on this mess already. I’m sorry I ever steered the project your way.”

  “I don’t want their money. Let’s move on to something else. Your message said you’ve got something new.”

  Milton leaned back, dropping his large fleshy hands in his lap and twisted a silver ring on his finger.

  “You move on to something else one way or the other, doll. That’s easy. There’s always something else. That doesn’t mean you have to let go of your rights.”

  “I’m letting go.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Okay. You’re the star. Well then…”

  Milton swiveled in his chair and shuffled through some papers on the heavy oak credenza that held down the floor beneath The Duke. He extracted a file folder and dropped it on the desk.

  “Moving on. Simon finally got through to Alan Yates over at Columbia. Alan’s got something that Simon thinks will be perfect for you.”

  “What do you think, Milton. Simon’s nice but…”

  “A little young?”

  “Green.”

  “Simon’s going places, Tilly. Wait and see. Chenowith, Taylor & Reid will be here forever, but I won’t be here forever. Simon’s good. His father’s in the business. He’s well connected in this town. Very well connected. He’ll take good care of you. He is taking good care of you, Tilly. I back him one hundred percent.” Milton leaned in towards me, bracing his forearms against the edge of the desk. “Trust me?”

  “I trust you.”

  “You know, I was about Simon’s age when I first met John.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. I ever tell you about Kate Hepburn and the horses when John was working on Rooster Cogburn?

  “Yes. At least twice. And I think if she were here to defend herself she would smack you silly, Milton.”

  “Oh, dolly! You got that right. Whoo. But it’s the absolute truth according to John. Stunk something awful he said.”

  “Okay. No stories about The Duke. Let’s have it.”

  “Right.” Milton slapped the file folder with his hand. “Pryce Point, it’s called. Raymond Lang and, oh, what’s the guy…Abrams, Cecil Abrams are putting it together. Action suspense. Terrorism thriller. Loaded with names, Tilly. You’ll be in very good company. Unlike certain never-to-be-mentioned-again art house literary pictures stocked with mediocre talent, this is a big budget blockbuster, Tilly, loaded with A-List names.”

  “And who am I?”

  “Wife of an ex-CIA spook. Beautiful neurosurgeon with a rising practice. Husband was bounced out of the agency because he didn’t follow
rules or some such thing, I don’t know all the details. He’s working as head of security for a corporation with a lot of foreign mining interests. Turns out the company he is protecting is playing footsies with a nest of terrorist... what do you call ‘em… cells. Terrorist cells. The company wants some highly sought after mineral extraction permits, and the terrorists want to get onto the payroll of the company’s foreign subsidiary. Why, you ask.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “Because that gets them critical access to a fleet of corporate jets.”

  “Ah.”

  “The company believes the target is a middle-eastern government, I forget the country, which is just fine with the company since that government has steadfastly banned all outside mining interests.”

  “So… the company uses the terrorist to…”

  “Ah, but it turns out, Tilly, it turns out that the real objective of the terrorists is a simultaneous strike on fifteen different government and military installations in the U.S.”

  “I see.”

  “Now… don’t give me the face, doll, just listen. Now the husband, ex-CIA guy, Jack is his name…”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “Patience, Tilly. Hear me out. Jack finds out about the plot and has to fight not only the infiltrating terrorists, but also the greedy corporation and also the CIA who has long since washed their hands of Jack and doesn’t believe anything he says and has its own reasons for letting the terrorists take out another middle-eastern government.”

  “Am I in this movie at all?”

  “I’m getting to that. You…wait, what’s your name, what’s your name.” Milton leafed through the file with a tremor that was getting difficult for him to disguise. His finger came down decisively on the desk. “Sienna! Jack and Sienna Pryce.”

  “Pryce Point.”

  “You got it. Sienna is lecturing at a medical conference in Bahrain – smart role, Tilly, smart role – and she gets abducted by members of this terrorist cell who’ve decided that they need some insurance against Jack-the-husband, who’s too close for comfort.”

  Milton stopped contentedly, as though there were nothing more to say.

  “And?”

  “And, well, you need to read the script for the details. Simon says there is a pretty gritty scene where you have to use your skills as a surgeon to save a limo driver who gets caught in a cross fire.”