Actors Anonymous (32 page)

One spring day on the Sony lot, Cent was doing green-screen shots on Stage 19. After all the post-production work, these green-screen shots would eventually portray Cent’s character, Brie, in a pine tree high above a forest with her character’s new paramour Zed (played by Zack Needly), who was a vampire and, as a result, a cool outsider at the local high school. Between the long lighting setups for these shots, Cent would go back to her large trailer and watch episodes of
Lost
on DVD, talk on the phone, or read. She was reading
The Brothers Karamazov,
and she was proud of the fact; she fancied herself a smart, hip girl. During one particularly long lighting setup—they usually take two hours—she was lying on the carpeted trailer floor, casually chatting with her mother. Her mother lived in Austin, and being very religious, had not been informed by Cent of her budding affair with the producer twenty-one years her senior, Marc Steely. Cent looked over and saw a large sketchbook lodged underneath the low couch. Her mother droned on about Cent’s younger brother, Butch, who was once again in trouble with the local authorities—he’d been caught performing some sort of Satanic ritual at midnight at Austin High, involving the immolation of two rabbits. Cent retrieved the sketchbook from under the couch. On the phone she heard pieces of her brother’s story. The cops had been abusive and called him a faggot. He had convinced Cent’s mother to fight the burglary, animal cruelty, and public endangerment charges on account of police brutality. But Cent was too busy examining the sketchbook to respond. Then in the middle of her mother’s monologue, Cent said, “It’s like Leonardo.”

“What is?”

“Nothing, Mom. I’m going to have to call you back, they’re calling me to set.”

Cent hung up and continued perusing the sketchbook. She handled it gently, as it was loosely connected in places. At first it was difficult to decipher anything in the scribbled mess: She could see that there were drawings beneath the scribbles, and there was mirror writing in the manner of Da Vinci’s sketchbooks, albeit in much cruder letters than the master’s elegant reversed Florentine script. After poring through the twenty-six pages of violent scribbles, Cent took the sketchbook into the trailer’s small bathroom (small, but larger than the one she would have had had she not been involved with the thirty-eight-year-old, balding Marc Steely) and held the first page up to the vanity. Even when the script was oriented to read left to right, it was difficult to make sense of. The individual letters were barbed and broken, and the lines were irregularly slanted and often obscured by the aggressive scribbles that shot across the page in great jagged arcs that spun into intense vortices. The easiest line to make out was on the first page. It was repeated three times, in three different sizes, in hot blue ink. It was the old Greek imperative, exploited by Freud, and known to Cent through the howling Doors anthem “The End,” which she had heard while watching
Apocalypse Now
repeatedly with her dad as a child, before he skipped town for good.

Kill the Father,
it said.

Beneath the violent refrain were less discernable lines, as well as the remnants of a portrait, almost totally obscured by the scribbling. All she could make out was the chin, the left nostril, and the outside corner of the left eye.

Later that day, Cent told Marc Steely about the sketchbook. Being
the ever-paranoid older lover, Marc was immediately suspicious of the sketchbook. He asked to see it, and on the first page he saw the triply stated imperative written in reverse,
Kill the Father
.

That couldn’t be good in any context, but especially not with the accompaniment of psychotic scrawls. And written in reverse! That was the way that the devil wrote. When Marc asked for the pages, Cent refused.

Marc Steely went to the head teamster, Joe Donuts, and found out that the star trailer Cent occupied had indeed been used on the
Spider-Man 3
production and had belonged to
The Actor
. The journals were undoubtedly the work of
The Actor
, a not particularly talented but fairly attractive actor in his late twenties. He wasn’t sure why Cent’s discovery upset him so much, but it undoubtedly did.

It was hard being a balding producer with a hot young girlfriend. Usually Cent stayed at Marc’s house in Beverly Hills, but that night Cent told him that she wanted to stay at her own apartment. Another disturbing turn of events.

The following morning Marc knocked on her Great Western trailer door at 8 a.m.

“Come in,” Cent said.

She said it without knowing it was Marc. She could have said it to anyone. If it had been her young costar Zack Needly or even
The Actor
, she would have said the same thing. Very disturbing.

When Marc entered, she was sitting on the carpeted floor, smoking, looking at the journals. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she wiped a tear from her eye. She didn’t look up.

“You just say ‘Come in,’ without knowing who it is?”

Cent looked up at him.

“Oh, good morning.” She definitely had been crying.

“What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

She looked back at the violent drawings.

“No. I just… my brother is in trouble with the police again, and my mom is being so crazy.”

“
That’s
why you’re crying?”

“I’m
not
crying. I’m just pissed at the whole situation. That Butch doesn’t have a dad, because our dad ran off when he was like two, and he’s just so fucked up.”

“I thought you didn’t care about your family.”

“Why would you say that?” She looked up at him again.

“I don’t know. That’s what I thought. So, you’re not crying over those sketches?”

“Why would I be crying over the sketches?”

“I don’t know, just a question.” He was standing against the wall by the door. For some reason he didn’t feel like he could get close to her. “You know they belong to
The Actor
.”

She didn’t say anything. She just took a long drag from her cigarette.

“I thought you were going to stop smoking.”

“Oh, God. Are
you
going to be my dad now?”

“Did you hear what I said? Those drawings belong to
The Actor
.”

Cent turned over one of the pages, very gently.

“I already knew,” she said, without looking up. It looked like she was crying again.

“Do you know him?” said Marc.

“Who?
The Actor
? No.”

“Are you, like, in love with him?”

She looked up at him.

“What? Jesus. No! What is your problem this morning? I’m sorry I didn’t stay over last night. Do I have to like, be with you every second for you not to be a total asshole?”

“No. I’m just wondering why you’re crying about those stupid pictures.”

“I’m
not
crying! God. And they’re not stupid. Will you just get out of here, please? I can’t deal with you being like this right now, I have to get ready for work. You
do
want me to be good in this movie, don’t you?”

Marc left and got himself a cup of coffee with two packets of Splenda from the craft service truck. He definitely didn’t like this business with
The Actor’s
sketches.

He finished his coffee, had another, and then ate half a breakfast burrito with turkey bacon, when his stomach started to hurt. He tossed the other half of the burrito and decided to contact
The Actor
directly. He was a producer; that’s what producers did, they contacted actors. It would be no big deal. He would just tell
The Actor
to come pick up his sketches, and he would be done with them. He could have his regular loving, nonsmoking Cent back.

Marc called Endeavor and was connected to
The Actor’s
tough-talking female agent. She said that
The Actor
was currently not working. When Marc said that he had something that belonged to
The Actor
, the agent told him that he should keep it. When Marc asked if it was possible to get a contact number, the agent said it was impossible and hung up.

Marc had the impulse to contact the head of the agency and have the agent fired, but he didn’t call. He wasn’t sure if he had that kind of power, but he didn’t try. Instead, he called a club promoter friend, Sasha Apple. Sasha was pushing forty-one, but she knew all the young actors in LA. She was at the center of every hip gathering and had slept with half the guys in town under twenty-five.

At 9:30, Marc got her voice mail. He called several more times that morning, but couldn’t reach her. He wandered around the lot, thinking
of people to call. He couldn’t focus. It was strange how worked up he was getting, but he couldn’t help it. He stayed away from the set of
Day’s End,
even though he was one of the producers. He knew that seeing Cent would only upset him, and he didn’t want to do anything that might ruin her performance. She was doing very well in the movie, and there was the potential for her career to really take off. The prospect made Marc proud but also paranoid. More paranoid than proud. He thought of all those young actors that she would be kissing in all those future movies. Not good.

He contemplated sneaking into Cent’s trailer and stealing the sketchbooks, but there were a bunch of PAs around and he would be seen.

By noon there was still no call from Sasha Apple, so he went to his office in the Thalberg Building and googled
The Actor
. He found a bunch of fan sites and some news items about
The Actor’s
drug addiction, but those were all from three years ago. The most recent items were about the death of
The Actor’s
father. They said he was shot in his Palo Alto home last Christmas. Some of the less reputable outlets linked
The Actor
to the murder. One of them said that
The Actor
was currently at an undisclosed institution.

After learning this information, Marc decided it was his
duty
to go into Cent’s trailer and confiscate the sketchbook. If
The Actor’s
father had been murdered, it was probably not a good thing for Cent to be holding onto a sketchbook that said
Kill the Father
three times.

Marc made sure that Cent was shooting on-set, waited for the PAs to clear, and then went into her trailer. If anyone caught him, he would just say he was doing producer things.

The sketchbook was gone. Marc searched the whole trailer, but it was obvious that Cent had taken it.

Marc stormed out of the trailer and slammed the door, no longer
concerned about who saw him. He paced around. He was very upset. She was choosing the sketchbook over him. Marc bummed a cigarette from one of the grips, even though he didn’t smoke. The cigarette made his head light and his throat hurt. It was his third cigarette ever.

Finally, at 1:30, Sasha Apple called back. Her voice was always gravelly, but it was extra gravelly that afternoon. She talked quickly.

“Marc? Sorry, I had a long night last night. We just opened a new place on La Cienega. You and that new little cutie should come by. Oh, wait, you’re keeping this one a secret aren’t you?”

“Sasha, shut up for a second. Do you know
The Actor
?”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Yeah. Everyone knows
The Actor
. He used to go out a lot.”

“He used to?”

Another pause, then, “He doesn’t anymore. I don’t know where he is.”

“Is there like some big secret I don’t know about? Why is everyone being so fucking crazy about this guy? His fucking agent hung up on me!”

Sasha was silent again. This was the most quiet she had ever been. Usually one had to force words through her endless barrage of talk.

“Sasha? What the fuck? What is going on with this
Actor
guy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask someone else.”

“Tell me!” A few grips walking by looked over. Marc lowered his voice. “Fucking tell me now, Sasha.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think his dad was murdered or something. Then he just disappeared. I haven’t seen him in months. I swear to God, that’s all I know.”

“Do you have his number?”

“Marc, I…”

“Give me his fucking number, or I swear to God, Sasha, I am going to have your new place shut down for serving minors and cocaine use and for being a fucking whorehouse! I swear to fucking Christ!”

“Jesus, Marc. What is your problem? I’ve never heard you like this, except when you were on coke. I don’t have his number, all I have is an email.”

“Give it to me!”

Marc was so intent on getting
The Actor’s
contact info that he found himself suddenly unsure about what to do with it once he got it. He could write to
The Actor
and tell him to come and pick up his sketchpad, but in light of his father’s recent murder, this track seemed unwise. He looked at the ripped piece of the day’s shooting schedule where he had written the email address:

[email protected]

A palindrome. What did it mean? “Mock
The Actor
”? “Rot California 80”? “Rot cat”?

Instead of writing to
The Actor
, Marc called his friend Ty. Ty was an editing teacher at a third-rate film school in the Valley called Encino Film School. It was right next to a drug rehabilitation center called the Warm Heart Treatment Center, which specialized in a ninety-day detox program. Because the two facilities were separated by a chain-link fence, the film students and drug addicts often mingled during smoke breaks, and more than one addict had pursued a relationship with a film student after his treatment ended. Marc Steely knew Ty from college and often went to him with computer questions.

“Ty, how are you?” Ty was never good. He hated his students.

“As fine as can be, over in hell.”

“What happened? Another film student/addict romance?”

“What? No, we have plenty of those. No, one of the kids had the great idea to film one of the addicts shooting up into his dick.”