Hello Hollywood

by Suzanne Corso

  Then he vaulted to his feet, and Paul fell back against the ground and just lay there, his nose bloody, his lip cut and bleeding, his hands fisted, his eyes wild. He started laughing, a weird, hysterical sound, and his fists pounded the ground.

  “She’s that great in the sack?” Paul shouted. “Wow, I definitely missed something.”

  John tensed. I felt it in his muscles, his cells, his very being. I was that tuned in to the presence of a man with whom I’d never been intimate. How could that be?

  “Ignore him,” I said quietly. “We’re not in Brooklyn.”

  Davidson and the line producers stood nearby, and members of the cast and crew were watching from the windows, the open doorway, the sidelines. Overhead, birds flew past, a murder of crows, cawing loudly. Suddenly, I saw Paul in my peripheral vision, rushing toward John. Paul crashed into him from the side, John pitched to the right, rolled, and Paul hurled himself on top of him and began to pummel him with his fists.

  Now people poured out the front door of the studio, King and Prince in the lead and Liza not far behind them. King grabbed Paul, yanked him upward, and King clasped him by the shoulders.

  “You’re done, Paul. You’re done on this film.”

  Paul’s arms swung to his sides as though he simply couldn’t maintain the necessary strength to do otherwise. He blinked hard. “You . . . you . . . can’t fire me.”

  “I just did. Gather up your shit and get off this property.”

  Liza dropped a pack at Paul’s feet. “Here’s your stuff.”

  “You, Liza? You’re just a broad in her fifties who thinks she’s got clout, but you’re just pathetic. Maybe more pathetic than Sam.”

  Liza reacted with more fury than I’d ever seen in her. She stepped toward Paul and slapped him across the face. “You’re an asshole, Paul.”

  With that, Paul snatched up his pack, wiped his arm across his bloody nose, and stalked off toward one of the electric carts.

  I felt numb, and relieved.

  There’s a Hawaiian Shamanic chant—called Ho’oponopono—that made its way around the Internet after one of the major oil spills, and it ran through my head now:

  I am sorry.

  Please forgive me.

  I love you.

  Thank you.

  I repeated it to myself several times and suddenly understood its full meaning. We must forgive ourselves first. Without that forgiveness, we’re just a conglomeration of experiences. Rootless. Directionless. So as I watched Paul hurry to his car, I forgave him, thanked him, felt enormous gratitude for the changes he had ushered into my life. I honored the fact that I was here now because of Paul. But did I feel these words, this prayer of forgiveness? If I didn’t feel it, genuinely feel it, then the prayer was just empty syllables.

  I knew Paul was responsible for the break-in at my house. I also knew that something within me was attracting circumstances and situations similar to those I’d experienced in Brooklyn. It was the Bonti part of me that probably needed intensive therapy—although true love might do the trick, too!—and all that the Bonti in me wanted just then was a bit of peace.

  Once we were inside the studio, people came over to me and expressed their relief that Paul had been fired. Apparently, others on the cast and crew had had confrontations with him, too, but hadn’t said anything at the time because he was the producer.

  I felt enormously relieved that others had seen this side of him before, that it wasn’t just me, that it was something inside of Paul, unresolved issues, power issues, money issues, a messed-up son, a bad marriage, a messed-up childhood, who knew? Issues. But the main issue was that Paul had never learned to take responsibility for his own actions and decisions.

  A shrink would have a field day, no doubt, with most of the people who worked at this studio—or in the Hollywood entertainment business. Toss a bunch of creative types together and you were sure to find all the Jungian archetypes—heroes, villains, martyrs, saviors, psychopaths, geniuses.

  But Paul still scared me. Paul frightened me more than Vito, Tony, Alec, than all of them put together. And that was saying something.

  John’s arm came around my waist, and he pressed his face into my hair and whispered, “Swimming hole this afternoon? After the scene at Platinum’s?”

  “A date,” I whispered back, and he moved away from me, through the crowd, to get the shooting under way.

  TWELVE

  The filming of the scenes at Platinum’s in studio two were so awesome, I nearly forgot about the ugliness earlier with Paul. I didn’t experience the emotional angst I’d felt during my first day on the set, when they’d filmed the early scenes with my grandmother and mother. Part of the reason was that my daughter was stunning as one of the extras.

  Makeup had turned her from a teenager to a twenty-one-year-old woman, and she danced and wowed everyone who was watching. It sort of freaked me out that in just a few years she would be going off to college and building her own life. And a few years later, she would be as old as she was supposed to be now. Five years. Where would I be in five years?

  At one point, Liza was standing next to me and whispered, “You’re seeing five years down the road, right? But don’t fret. Isabella will be fine. Even more of a lovely human being than she is now.” She gave my arm an affectionate squeeze, then added, “You aren’t going to believe this, but Brian King asked me to dinner tomorrow evening.”

  “My God, that’s fantastic!”

  “I feel like a teenager. Butterflies in the stomach. Like that.”

  “I have a really good feeling about this, Liza.”

  “We’ll see.” She paused. “I used to think there weren’t any nice men left in this town. I’m now reconsidering.”

  “Me, too.”

  We looked at each other, and the current that passed between us then was that linking soul sisters. She high-fived me, and we both struggled not to laugh out loud.

  There were two takes of the scene at Platinum’s, and several breaks, and when we finally wrapped for the day, a dozen pizzas arrived at the main building. The whole cast and crew sat outside at the picnic tables, in the splendid late-afternoon air.

  Isabella, Liza, King, King’s sixteen-year-old son, Brent, John, and I were at the same table. As I listened to the laughter and conversation, I realized this group was a kind of family, kindred spirits whose immediate goal was to bring my novel to life. My gratitude to these people, all of them, was so profound that I nearly wept for joy.

  “Hey, Sam,” John whispered. “This will last for a while. Want to watch the sun set at the swimming hole?” He touched my leg as he said this, his large, powerful hand warm against my thigh, and I suddenly hungered for that hand against my bare skin, for his mouth against mine, for our bodies fitting seamlessly together. And it wasn’t just hormones or that visceral attraction. There was something else at work with this guy.

  “Sounds perfect.” I told Isabella that I’d be back in about thirty minutes and that she should just enjoy herself.

  But she didn’t need any encouragement from me. It was obvious that she was enjoying herself and that Brent was interested in her. He was a good-looking kid, a younger version of his father. He and Isabella were both competitive swimmers, and, yeah, he’d seen her dance. It worried me, this boy thing, this hormonal thing, particularly when I thought back to when I was about her age. At fifteen, I had lost my virginity to Tony Kroon. I understood that, despite Isabella’s Catholic school education, maybe it was time for a visit to Planned Parenthood.

  John and I slipped away from the others and quickly realized it was too far to walk, so we took one of the electric carts to the swimming hole. He drove like a Manhattan cabbie, as though there were a wall of traffic he had to negotiate. The cart bounced over the hard-packed path—beneath a vast sky with blue melting into soft golds, streaks of orange—and veered into the trees.


  He tapped the brake, the cart stopped, and he slipped his arm around my shoulders and drew me gently against him. “I’ve been wanting to do this all day,” he said softly, and kissed me.

  If life was composed of perfect moments strung together like lights on a Christmas tree, then this moment was certainly one of them. His mouth was warm against mine; his hands cupped the sides of my face, thumbs caressing my skin. My arms went around him, and his fingers strolled through my hair, as if to memorize its texture and even the shape of my skull.

  My senses exploded wide open, and I was suddenly aware of the scent of his skin, his hair, his clothes; and of the smells in the air around us, the trees and the greenery and the water. Birds sang from the branches, a celebration of spring. When I drew back, the shadows cast by the trees surrounded us, embraced us, creating a cocoon of privacy.

  “C’mon, let’s walk down to the swimming hole,” he said.

  He took my hand, and we moved down the slippery path. The air here smelled loamy, rich, of moss and damp grass, and of the earth. I paused to remove my shoes. I wanted to feel this richness against my bare feet. He took off his shoes, too, and stood for a moment, wiggling his toes against the softness.

  “In Brooklyn, I never went barefoot much,” he said. “But since I moved out here, I go barefoot every chance I get.”

  “I know what you mean.” I pointed at my toes. “Look.”

  My toes slipped and slid through and under moss, wet grass, fallen leaves. The closer we got to the swimming hole, the damper the earth became, so that when we finally reached the edge of the water, our toes were black with mud. We laughed at the silliness of it all, how we were like a couple of city kids out in the country for the first time.

  We moved farther up the bank, where the ground was relatively dry, and stretched out on our backs, arms folded under our heads, and peered upward, through the branches. The incident earlier today with Paul stood between us; I could feel it like a concrete wall. I lifted up on one elbow. “You’re on Paul’s shit list now, John, and I’m really sorry that I’m the cause of that.”

  “He’s disliked me since the day we met. You’re just the catalyst. And being on his shit list doesn’t worry me. I’ve dealt with much worse. My concern is Paul coming after you. Psychos don’t need a reason to do what they do, that’s the disturbing thing.”

  “The security company I hired and the stuff I had installed on my property will make his coming after me a lot more difficult.”

  “More difficult, yeah, but not impossible, especially if you’re anywhere but at home. Psychos usually find their way around obstacles. And unless you sue him, you probably won’t see a dime of what he owes you.”

  “Sue him? That would probably cost me in legal fees what he owes me. Or it would cost me even more.” I shook my head. “Besides, my aversion to lawyers is nearly equal to my aversion to cops.”

  “Did Liza review your contract with him?”

  “Liza negotiated it. She got me one percent of gross.”

  “Good. That’ll come directly from Gallery now.”

  I told him what Paul’s son had said about his father using my photo for target practice. “And that worries me.”

  “Shit. Do you own a gun?”

  “I’m allergic to guns. I figure that if you own one, then you may attract circumstances in which you’ll have to use it.”

  John turned his head, looking at me, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He touched the tip of his index finger to the tip of my nose. “Smart lady. I agree with you completely.” I do remember when we were younger and Tony was in the picture, that crazed murderer, mafia henchman of mine, and John liked me, a girl could tell, but he wouldn’t dare act upon such a feeling or even look at me wrong. To a guy like Tony that’s a sign of disrespect and there would be high consequences to pay, so he stayed away. Now here he is again. Fate has this funny way of showing up unexpectedly.

  He, too, lifted himself up on one elbow, and traced the contours of my face with a blade of grass; then he drew me toward him, his mouth meeting mine, his hand against the small of my back. Then we were lying on our sides on the cool ground, our tongues dueling. My fingers slipped through his thick dark hair, his hands traveled slowly down my back, over my hip, and I was so turned on that I felt like tearing his clothes off then and there.

  We rolled across the grass, through light and shadows, laughing and touching each other, until we were nearly at the edge of the swimming hole. He covered my throat in soft, gentle kisses, as though he were inscribing a secret language against my skin. My skirt had hiked up and when his hand found my bare thigh, his fingers ducked beneath the hem and then between my legs.

  I gasped at his touch, and he kissed me deeply, passionately. I felt his hardness against my leg and wanted him inside of me. I didn’t care where we were—nothing mattered except the exquisite sensations he ignited in me. I knew this wasn’t just hormones or chemistry; it went deeper than that. What I felt toward him was starting to bloom, blossom. Pretty soon, this feeling would be as huge and lush as those banyan trees I’d seen in Florida, gigantic beauties with roots so thick and deep they could withstand even hurricanes. He rolled my panties down and slipped his finger inside of me, moving it slowly, delicately, over and over again until I started groaning, my back arching. He drove me right to the edge, then suddenly we heard laughter somewhere close by and scrambled to our feet like a couple of guilty teenagers.

  We laughed as we straightened our clothes, buttoned buttons, zipped up zippers, and laughed more as I stumbled around trying to pull my panties back into place. We ran toward the cart and tumbled inside, giggling so hard we both had tears rolling down our cheeks.

  John turned the cart around just as a cart with Marvin and Flannigan appeared. Right behind them were Liza and Isabella, and behind them were King and Prince and Renée. We all waved to one another, and John and I joined the line of electric carts. I was still reeling from what had happened, from what I’d felt, and my heart hadn’t yet settled down into its normal beat.

  “You going to be on set tomorrow?” John asked.

  “Probably not. I’ve got tons of emails and calls to return and more scripts to go through. Clara has pretty much been running the place by herself since shooting started.”

  “You free for dinner anytime this weekend?”

  “I’ll have to find out what Isabella’s plans are.” It sounded coy, but it was the truth. “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll fix you an Italian dinner like you’ve never had before.”

  “That sounds fantastic. I just realized I’ve never seen your place.”

  “It’s pretty simple. Just a two-bedroom bungalow in the hills above Malibu. What kind of wine do you like?”

  “Rosé.”

  “Rosé it will be. Any preference in Italian food?”

  “I’ve never had an Italian dish that I didn’t like. Do you actually cook?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I actually did a lot of cooking in prison for all the guys on my tier. Why? Is that rare in men or something?”

  “Very rare in my experience of men. Most of the men I’ve known figure that cooking is women’s work.”

  He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Too bad. Old thinking. I actually learned to cook in the joint. We had job assignments, and that was mine. I got so good at it that the superintendent started using me for lunches and suppers when we had outside visitors.”

  It was as if we were now catching up on the minutiae of each other’s lives, squeezing the details in between everything else.

  “What about you, Sam? What do you enjoy?”

  You. “I try to enjoy everything I do, but I particularly love being with Isabella, walking on the beach with her in the evenings. And I love to write. When I was younger, I could sit for hours and write. Now I’m usually so busy that I’m lucky if I can write fo
r a few minutes every day. Not complaining, though. Running a production company is just a different expression of the creative process. What else do you cook?”

  He laughed. “White clam sauce with linguini is my specialty. The sautéing of the garlic makes it perfect.”

  The line of carts slowed as we approached the main building. The actors were already waiting outside, and I suddenly wondered if any of them had seen John and me rolling around on the grass by the swimming hole. Had we been visible from the road?

  As we all exited the carts, King called out, “Hey, everyone, listen up!”

  Liza, Isabella, and Brent joined John and me. My daughter was glowing. She and Brent talked quietly, and I sensed their mutual attraction. Liza noticed my watching them and leaned in close to me and whispered, “Chill, Sam. He’s a nice kid. Just like his dad.”

  Easy for her to say. She’d never had a daughter, and her three sons were adults.

  “Okay, we’re going to finish the Brooklyn-girl scenes this week, and if we don’t need any retakes, then we’ll head to Brooklyn next week,” King said. “And we’ll be ahead of schedule. Good job! Anyone have questions?”

  “Where’re we staying in Brooklyn—do we know yet?” asked someone in the crew.

  “The Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca. It’s close to Brooklyn and will be super-convenient to the shooting locations.”

  Murmurs of fantastic and awesome rippled through the crowd.

  “Should we make reservations now?” asked Renée.

  “Liza’s going to take care of our travel arrangements,” Prince said. “Our goal is to leave midweek and spend six or seven days there. We’ll be shooting every day. Either George or I will get you the script notes for the scene locations before this weekend. As always, if you have questions or concerns, call or email me.”