What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  He turned around with a squinty smile. “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thirty, why?”

  “Just wondering.” I popped my hand over my mouth. I was out of control.

  He looked at me steadily while he put on a pair of lopsided green prescription sunglasses. My mind jumped like a frightened bug. I’d get his precinct address from information. I’d write him a formal note. Instead of dating, I’d ask him to make a blind date to get married. He just looked so strong and nice. He’d be upset by our age difference at first, but I’d grow to love him like the sweet and dark-mouthed Delhi girls whose parents arranged their marriages in Satyajit Ray movies.

  I smiled at him. He smiled back shyly, seeing something in my eyes that made him want to change the subject. “What’s your job again?”

  I told him. He walked back to me. I knew he saw a middle-aged career woman, thin, Jewish, and expensive-looking, clearly overwrought, probably one tough bitch.

  “This your secretary’s desk?” He pointed at the closed drawers.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll call you as soon as we hear anything.” He waved goodbye.

  Boy, did I need a strong shoulder to lean my forehead into. I tried to imagine Rosemary clutching the telephone with both hands, talking to Sam, then hanging up, crying to herself, rushing out of here, talking her way into Sam’s apartment. I guessed she’d whipped herself into a frenzy, unspooling his movie, draping film over his bed, working up enough fury to drop a camera. Thundering out in a mad dash when she realized what she’d done. A kind of orgiastic ritual, destroying the nest of a rejecting lover.

  It was too much to bear. I dialed her home number in tears. The telephone rang and rang like a broken burglar alarm. I thumbed her Rolodex and dialed her girlfriends. They hadn’t seen her. They sounded frightened.

  Her roommate didn’t know if she came in last night. I told the girl to call me the minute she heard from Rosemary.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  “Not with me,” I said. “Tell her, okay?”

  Ivy was madly working the switchboard. “I’ll tell Michael you’re reading at home.” She looked worried.

  I walked home in what felt like six seconds. I was on automatic pilot. I didn’t notice traffic lights. I didn’t feel the cold. My knees were weak. A horn blasted in my face. I waited for my elevator in my lobby standing on one foot and then the other. Hysterical. Maybe she came here. No. I wished Jack wasn’t upstairs. I wanted to draw my quilt up to my chin, shut my curtains, pull down my shade, and hide my head under the pillows. What about Rosemary’s boyfriend, that sweet resident at Columbia Presbyterian? I could page him.

  On the elevator a couple was bickering because he made her leave a play early. They seemed to have a life without peril. The elevator door lurched behind me and I smelled something familiar cooking, sour pea soup, undoubtedly my neighbor, a rich elderly widow with yellow pearls and a uniformed Irish maid. The smells seeping from her apartment were heavy and poignant like my grandmother’s soup, simmering on her gas stove. My mother chopped Hebrew National hot dogs into her pea soup.

  In front of my apartment I leaned against the door and it fell open. Great, he could have been mugged in my bed. It took Rocky a long minute to rush in skidding on his big paws. “Getting a lot of attention?” I knelt down.

  His coat was silky and brushed. I peeked into the bedroom, where Jack was sprawled in my unmade bed. He was mumbling into the telephone, the loose sheet over his sweatpants, pillows folded in half under his neck. He’d shaved, and the tan and pale colors of his face looked blended.

  “Honey, don’t worry,” he confided into the phone while waving one hand at me. I was ready to kill him. Hundreds of people were in a tizzy about wasting months and years of their lives, basically because he preferred talking to girls on the phone to working.

  I marched into the living room and dialed the police. No news. Kevin was on dinner break. I pulled a flat club soda from the refrigerator. The kitchen was hot. I peered into the oven beyond a blast of heat at a huge flat cookie sheet with rows of bubbling buttery batter.

  Great. Rosemary was a missing person, the movie was halted, I was going to be fired, and he was baking cookies and sweet-talking girls on my phone. I sighed. The movie wasn’t made of flesh and blood. Rosemary was.

  I let the oven door slam.

  He came into the kitchen rubbing Rocky’s ears. “Home early,” he said, stretching his whole body, his elbows high above his head. “Come and visit me in Los Angeles after I sort out my life, I’ll return the hospitality.”

  “I thought you were on your way out,” I snapped.

  “Just a ruse.” He smiled big at me.

  I ignored the flirting and opened the refrigerator, which was crammed with new exotic packages. “Been on the phone all day?” I munched crumbling goat cheese. He must have sent out for it.

  He reached around me to the counter and pulled the plastic wrap off a ceramic bowl filled with fragrant chocolate-chip cookies. He shoved one into my mouth. “Be my guest.”

  “Not hungry,” I lied balefully.

  “I love fresh cookies.” He ate one with his even white teeth. “It cools me out to bake. No matter what part of the world they’ve exiled me to, if I bake cookies for a while I feel like myself.”

  I licked crumbs off my lips and fished raisins out of a damp box. They are full of iron and natural sugar.

  “How’s the political intrigue?” he continued.

  “Let me alone.” After a threatening silence, I added, “I got problems.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “It’s my secretary, she’s missing, and the cops came over.” I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

  “It’s not easy living without sharing these responsibilities. Believe me, I understand.”

  “You just hang on the phone, flirting, what do you know?”

  “Gimme a break.” He leaned against my counter, frowning. “Don’t play the cuckolded wife so quick. That was my sister, and I was telling her how I was safe and in the care of a new friend, no matter how ugly the press stories got.”

  I sagged into a chair feeling like a beast. He casually dropped a soft brown cookie into Rocky’s eager mouth. The dog froze. Poor thing was so amazed at his first taste of chocolate and refined sugar after eight years of kibble and water that he held it lightly between his jaws like the retriever his ancestors were, his saliva drooling. He was waiting for the command to drop it.

  “Okay, Rock.” I was tired of being a killjoy. Rocky sank down on his front paws, chomping and sucking at his cookie, his tail wagging. Then he licked Jack’s fingers.

  “Don’t feed the dog. He’s got a bad stomach.” Rocky kept dragging his pink tongue over Jack’s fingers. Rage flashed behind my eyes.

  “Why not let him enjoy himself?”

  “Bullshit.”

  Jack looked stricken.

  “Sorry, I guess I need some time alone.”

  He turned and left the kitchen. A minute later the front door slammed. I peered out to see Rocky sniffing under the door. My knees felt weak. Suppose Jack was gone for good? Too damn bad.

  Rocky kept whining in his throat. “Star-fucker,” I said. “Well, it runs in the family.”

  A second later I was on the phone paging Columbia Presbyterian, and crossing my fingers. The city lights beneath my window sparkled like cheap rhinestones. Things were so fragile. Rosemary had been sitting right here mooning over Sam this morning.

  Dr. Albert Goldman came on the line. “Rosemary?” He coughed a few times. “Been on the ward thirty-six hours, getting a flu. I haven’t heard from her for a couple days now. But listen, she’ll turn up.”

  “Sure, I’m sure she’s just home sleeping. She had her hands full while I was away.”

  “She’s crazy about the job. She’s always got a pile of scripts on her night table. Sometimes she makes me read them; what do I know?” He was earnest and even-keeled. Not as much fu
n as Sam in the short run.

  I wandered into the bathroom and watched the moisture dripping down the mirrors. An acrid floral smell reminded me of Israel. I dipped my finger in the puddle on the black marble floor. His puddle from the shower. I dropped to my knees and mopped it up with a towel.

  The downstairs buzzer shrieked. I leaned into the antique intercom. The doorman had new authority. “Emergency,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Michael Finley coming up.”

  “No, he’s not.” I couldn’t believe it. This was a showdown. He was showing me he knew exactly where to find me when he wanted to. But what if Jack came back in the front door.

  “Tell him I’m coming down,” I shouted.

  I was sweating when I spotted him in front of the lobby’s three brass doors, a stack of screenplays under one arm, his pale ostrich briefcase under the other.

  “I’m on my way out to a screening.” My voice sounded slightly resentful.

  “Sorry to bother you.” He smiled without looking at me. His face was flushed with excitement.

  I was fed up with him. “I accept your apology. Want to grab a soda?”

  “No time.” He checked his new watch. Then he glanced out at his bulging limousine. “It’s these scripts. I’m reading them on the plane. I need you to read them tonight and pouch me your critiques.”

  I breathed deep. These were just scare tactics. Pretending big crisis.

  I had to sit down. I marched forthrightly over to the yellow settee. He followed me. “Sit down, Michael.”

  He was so startled he obeyed, crossing his legs. The lobby was behind him.

  “I can’t read tonight,” I said, startling myself.

  He jutted out his lower jaw. I didn’t pause. “I’m sure you can read them yourself.” Michael never knew what he thought of a script until I read it. Until I babbled at him about rising action, story, character changes, third-act climax, and packaging elements. For days I’d hear him repeating my words over and over to respectful directors, writers, and colleagues.

  He cleared his throat. He loves a fight, especially one he can’t lose—with a subordinate.

  “You hired me to run the New York office,” I said. “But these scripts are from meetings you held in New York behind my back; they’re from people I’ve been meeting with, scripts I should have. It’s your material now, so you evaluate it.” I’d had it.

  He dropped the screenplays on the settee, staring me down. “Job pressure get to you?” He sounded victorious. “Tell me about the stress.”

  “No, we’re talking about reading scripts.” I almost shrieked. Because just then Jack ambled in past the front desk. When he saw me, he stopped short, and held out a large bunch of red roses. His eyes widened at the sight of Michael. He held the flowers behind his back and began tiptoeing melodramatically behind the couch where Michael was sitting. He was imitating a cartoon burglar sneaking out of a house. He blew me a kiss over one palm and backed into the opening elevator.

  I giggled wildly.

  “You need a rest,” Michael said.

  I averted my gaze from Jack, who was waving a handkerchief at me from inside the elevator. Jack Hanscomb thinks everything is one big game.

  Michael was shaking his head. “You’re not making me happy. What’s so funny?”

  My next words were in the air between us before I considered them. “The one-hundred-fifty-thousand severance you pay me off if you fire me.”

  Michael’s eyes bugged. I could see his brain computing like a cash register gone berserk. He was vulnerable because of the half million he’d promised Sam, as a payoff. “You better watch it, Carol. You’re out of line.”

  He twisted around as the doors closed on Jack. I squeezed my eyes shut in relief. I felt as though I’d been fighting my way upstream for years against a cold icy flow, and suddenly a deep treacherous river had changed course. Now it was whirling in little circular waves and soon it would carry me where I wanted to go.

  “I’m talking round the clock to lawyers about the mess you made in Israel,” he said.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. It must be hard on your nerves.”

  “I’m leaving you the scripts.” He raised his voice.

  “Sorry, no time tonight.” I grabbed his hand, shook it, and ran to the closing elevators while he stood panting with anger. “You hired me, Michael, I hope you take credit for that.”

  His jaw looked permanently dropped. For once in his life he couldn’t destroy me. The doors closed on Michael’s horror-struck face, and I spun around and clapped my hands. “Give that woman a big hand,” I said to the walls. “She finally acted like a person.”

  Upstairs there was no sign of flowers.

  My bedroom door was snugly closed. I rapped on it and paused. “No, Carol,” I said aloud. Every minute counted if Rosemary was in trouble. I had to find out what happened to her.

  I dialed Minnesota information. I had a flush of pain. I didn’t remember a time when I didn’t love her. Rosemary’s dad answered on the second ring.

  “Hello there,” he said hesitantly.

  “How are you?” I stalled.

  “How you doing?” He sounded protective. “I guess you’ll be wondering about our girl.”

  “Listen, I—”

  He had covered the receiver and was calling to somebody. I pulled the telephone cord into the kitchen and tore the Saran Wrap off the bowl. I wolfed down three cookies.

  A scared voice said “Hello?” I stopped chewing. Then she spoke in a normal voice to somebody else. “Okay, okay, I will.

  “Dad says you’re invited here and with the snow on the trees our street beats Paris.”

  “Tell him thank you. Rosemary, what’s going on?”

  She thanked her dad.

  “What the hell’s going on?” My breath puffed with relief. It’s amazing what two thousand calories of sugar will do.

  “I got real upset and I figured you’d be really pissed, so …” I barely recognized her subdued tone. It sounded like all the anger had been knocked out of her.

  “Why would I be pissed?” I broke another cookie in half. Rocky’s tail was fanning the air like crazy.

  “I wrecked that guy’s stuff.” She spoke in a whispered rush. “I talked my way into his penthouse apartment and I just got nuts.”

  “You still feeling nuts?”

  “Guess not, but there wasn’t any point in staying in New York, not after what I did and—”

  “What about your job?” I had a pang. She didn’t give a damn.

  “I disappointed you.”

  Tears smarted in my eyes. There was just too much stuff coming at me. “Rosemary, it’s not just that you behaved badly.” I hated the formal note in my voice.

  “I know, yeah, yeah.” Then she spoke to somebody else. “No, I don’t feel like riding in a snowmobile.”

  I shook my head. I bet they were happy she was home. I was rubbing my forehead for inspiration. “No, wait, you behaved badly, but certainly—”

  “Don’t rub it in,” she said in a low voice.

  “Wait, really, I understand, I do. I remember how my flesh crawled when I opened Sam’s closet in Dallas and saw a whole pile of the leading lady’s clothes. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried and cried and called my friend Lynn in New York and she spent an hour trying to convince me that I should see her shrink.”

  “But you didn’t do anything horrible.”

  “I got needy and he hated me for it,” I said slowly. “I hit myself in the head and knocked myself down.”

  “That’s how I felt.”

  I dreaded this. “Rosemary?”

  “Well, I went to a bar afterwards and picked up some guy, oh, it was a bar near your house where we met with a white piano and fern plants and I went home with him. We started necking and I couldn’t stop crying.”

  “You’re all right?”

  “I don’t know, sometimes I start crying again and I can’t stop.”

 
“How’d you get out of the guy’s place?”

  “He wasn’t so bad. He listened to my story and he kept drinking gin. He’s a stockbroker but he used to make collages. Anyway, he told me I had to lick my wounds. He offered to lend me train fare.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “No, I just got an American Express card, so I went to the airport and got on a plane home.”

  “Healthy. But you got to face the music.” I waited.

  “I been thinking, maybe I’ll stay here and get a small place in St. Paul. Dad and Mom want me to stay on. They think it’s right. I been looking in the classifieds. I can get a roommate but—”

  “What about Albert Goldman?”

  “Oh, God, I feel so guilty. I don’t know. He doesn’t even know me.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, I never told him the secrets I told Sam. He doesn’t understand me like that.”

  “Rosemary, I don’t know the answer,” I said, “but your father, he loves you, right? And he’ll always be there for you, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, did you ever tell him the secrets you told Sam?”

  “No, are you kidding? We don’t talk like that.”

  “Well, think about the fact that people don’t have to listen and say all the fancy things to be good people you want in your life.”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “You know, you are sophisticated.”

  I laughed. “Sometimes I am. But I hope you come back. In a way you are my family here.”

  “Thanks, me too,” she said in the unfamiliar small voice.

  “Better hurry, or you’ll miss my final fight.”

  She whistled with shock. “That bad?”

  “It’s okay, I don’t mind so much. I got my health, I got a couple ideas, I feel confident.”

  “I hope it works out,” she said.

  “Well, I need you,” I said lightly, “for hand-holding, and anyway, if I get the sack and you stick around the office, you can fill me in on all the scuttlebutt.”

  “How?”

  “I want to hear how they claim I’ve done a terrible job. It will amuse me,” I said.

  “You won’t feel awful?”

  “Nope.” I meant it.

  “They’ll fire me too.”