Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (22 page)

“Thanks,” I answer, looking past him.
“What does it say?”

“I don’t think you need to see it,” he
says.

“I’m not as delicate as all that,” I tell
him and walk past.

As I get close, Damian looks up and says,
“We’re going to find her. She can’t keep doing stuff like this and not get
caught.”

I look down.

The fire, while an aesthetic touch, makes
the message rather difficult to read, but after about a minute, I see it pretty
clearly.

“Hands off, bitch,” I read. “He loves me.”

It was the fact that she used punctuation which
made the message so difficult to read through the fire.

Damian pops his lips.

 
“The
way Jackson back there was acting,” I tell Damian, “I thought it was going to
say, ‘I’m going to shoot you in the face around noon on Thursday’ or
something.”

“Nobody has any common decency anymore,”
he says. “The least a person can do when they’re threatening you is have the
courtesy to be specific.”

I smile.

“You all right?” he asks. “I know this is
kind of freaky shit.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of freaky shit,” I tell
him. “But I don’t think it’s going to bring my life to a screeching halt,
either, so I guess we just do what we have to do and hope she ends up caught
sooner than later.”

“You’re taking a very enlightened approach
to this whole thing,” Damian says, and in the background, a couple of police
cruisers pull up.

“I’m past the point where I can even
process any of this,” I tell him. “It’s a nice place.”

“I hope it sticks around,” he says and
that enlightened perspective must be starting to crack, because I’m already thinking
of popping him in his stupid throat.

But I take a breath and everything’s just
the slightest bit better.

The police come over and we talk. I learn
a lot more about the stalker hearing Damian talking to the policeman than he
ever said to me.

Why didn’t I say I loved him earlier?
We’re still not to the point where we can trust each other with the things in
our lives that make us uncomfortable.

I know he was trying to protect me, that
he didn’t want me to worry, but I’d take the communication over the illusion of
security any day.

After the officer’s done with his
questions, we all just kind of look at each other because we all know the same
stupid truth: Nobody knows who this woman is and she’s probably going to keep
this up until something big happens.

I can’t imagine it would be something
good.

The police leave after taking some
pictures and the firemen leave after putting out the fire. The paramedics stick
around for a couple of minutes to chat with Damian about an action movie of his
that came out a few months ago called
The
Force of Law
.

One might say that it wasn’t his best
movie and certainly not performance. One might also say that the movie probably
would have threatened to destroy his entire acting career if people had
bothered to go see it.

One might say those things.

Still, the few who saw it and liked it
formed a loosely organized cabal of people who, whenever any topic that may be
construed to have a remote relation to the film comes up, they talk about the
movie.

I almost lost my lady boner for him after
seeing that steaming pile of…

“Emma!” Damian calls over. “Check this out;
you’re not going to believe this.”

I never bothered leaving the side of the
fire. The fire was small enough that I didn’t even have to move when the
firemen put it out. Now, though, Damian’s over on the driveway with those
paramedics and they’re all looking down at a cellphone.

One more look down at the now illegible
threat somehow arranged entirely without anyone noticing and then I walk over
to see what they all find so interesting at a time like this.

“Check this out,” Damian says. “That guy
who was blackmailing you—Ben Whatever,” he says. “He got into a fight in the
slammer and got the shit kicked out of him.”

“Don’t toy with me, Jones,” I tell him.
“Don’t tease me with good news that isn’t true.”

“Check it out,” he says.

I was hoping for pictures, but it’s just
an article. Apparently, Ben was standing in line, waiting for his food tray,
and some man just came up to him and socked him right in the fucking mouth.

“Did you see the best part?” Damian asks.

“I’m still reading,” I tell him.

When questioned about what possible motive
he could have had for the assault, the attacker, LeRoy
Tsvetkov
is quoted in the article as saying, “I know what that punk did to Emma Roxy. I love
that bitch. I
seen
all her movies.”

I think it’s somewhere around here that I
realize any significant understanding I may have thought I had regarding the
ways of the world is completely wrong.

“Being famous isn’t all bad,” Damian says
with a laugh.

Chapter Sixteen

The Art of Conversation

Damian

“And cut!” Dutch yells and I know I’m in
for some shit. “What the hell was that?” Dutch yells. “I told you to take the
suitcase, put it on the bed and then grab the big stack of towels. It’s really
not that hard, Jones. Jesus! What’s the matter with you?!”

Dutch is angry.

I know I probably didn’t need to tell you
that, but he’s been angry with me a lot lately, and it’s no secret why. I’ve
been choking like a motherfucker for over a week now.

“Let’s try it again!” Dutch shouts.

I take my place at the foot of the bed. In
this scene, my character finds out that Emma’s character has left the hotel and
is planning to leave the city, so he’s chasing after her and Dutch insists that
we do the old stealing-hotel-towels gag like it hasn’t been done to absolute
death.

Still, I took the job, so the least I
could do would be to do a decent take, or at least one would think.

Dutch yells action, I take a step toward
the bathroom and Dutch yells cut.

“I want you to repeat this in your head,”
he says. “Take the suitcase, put it on the bed and then grab the towels. Repeat
that for me.”

“Dutch, I know,” I tell him. “I don’t know
what my problem—”

“Take the suitcase,” he says, “put it on
the bed and then grab the towels.”

“I’m on it,” I tell him. “I don’t know
what’s going on, but I’ve got this—”

“Take the suitcase,” he says a little less
patiently, “put it on the bed and then grab the towels.”

“Fine,” I tell him. “Take the suitcase,
put it on the bed and then grab the towels.”

“Good,” he says. “I want you to take about
half a minute and just play that like a broken record in your head, all right?
Then, we’re going to try this again and we’re going to get it right.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Dutch, I—” I start.

“What’s the only thing I want going
through your mind right now?” he asks.

This is humiliating. They haven’t spent
this much time on any single
group
of
extras.

“Take the suitcase,” I tell him, “put it
on the bed and then grab the towels.”

“That’s right,” he says and the whole set is
silent for thirty seconds.

The whole set. Quiet. For thirty seconds.

If this is doing anything to my
confidence, it’s not doing anything good.

“All right,” Dutch says. “Now you know
what you’re doing?”

“Take the suitcase,” I tell him, “put it
on the bed and then grab the towels.”

“That’s right,” he says. “And action!”

I just stand here for a second, trying to
remember what the fuck it is I’m supposed to be doing. The fact that it’s so
simple is making it harder for me to get it.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Dutch says.

I take a step.

“Cut!”

I want to kill myself.

“What happened that time?” Dutch asks. He
patronizingly adds, “You were saying the right words, it looked like you knew
what you had to do and then poof! You fuck it up again.”

“Does it really matter if I put the towels
on the bed before the suitcase?” I ask.

“Of course it matters,” he says. “It’s all
about the punchline. If you get the towels on the bed from the beginning of the
shot, you’re going to know what’s going to happen. If you’re under the impression
that he’s going to quickly throw some clothes into his suitcase, but he just
comes back with a big stack of towels, that’s comedy. You know the fucking
drill,” he says. “Now get it right.”

“I got it,” I tell him. “I’m on it.”

“And action!” he calls.

I walk toward the suitcase.

“And cut!” Dutch yells. “Okay Jones, what
the fuck? Are you trying to bury me? Are you trying to send my stress levels so
far through the roof that I start bleeding from my eyeballs and strangling my assistant?
I haven’t strangled an assistant in a very long time, Jones and there’s a
reason for that. It’s not a pleasant thing to do to another person. Forget
about how unpleasant it is for the person being choked, I have to look into
those eyes, screaming for life and an answer to the question, ‘Oh great, dear
God, Why?’ and I have to let go because I’m starting to feel like an asshole.
Is that what you want?” he shouts.

“Not even remotely,” I tell him.

“Okay, then why the hell are you lazily
sauntering to the suitcase?” he yells. “You’re in a hurry, the love of your
life—though you’ve only just realized it—is leaving and if you don’t find her
now, you’re never going to see her again. You’re running. You’re rushing. This
isn’t a slow process, you want to get that suitcase on the bed, get the towels
in it so you and she can start your happily ever after. Is that so fucking
impossible to understand or are we going to have to do this again in thirty
seconds?”

“I’ve got it,” I tell him. “Quickly take
the suitcase, put it on the bed and then grab the towels.”

“Don’t screw me here, Jones. I’ve sent
bigger stars than you back to the trailer parks they came from,” he says.

“Well I think that was a little out of
line,” I tell him.

“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“Now will you shut the fuck up and do the
God damned scene?” he asks.

“Right,” I answer and get back to my
place.

“And action!” Dutch calls and I lunge
forward, intending for the motion to be the first step on my hurried race to
steal the hotel’s towels for some reason and one foot catches the other foot
while the leg is on its way out and I fall flat on my fucking face. “And cut!”

I’m expecting another diatribe, but Dutch
just throws his copy of the script in the air and starts walking away. I will
say, though, that it’s pretty extraordinary how both the assistant director and
assistant to the director start catching pages before they land.

This is my career ending when I can’t even
act out a stupid gag.

Right now, I wish I was in any other
profession in the world.

Somewhere in the distance, Dutch yells,
“Everybody take fifteen!”

Fifteen minute break: That means chain
smoking.

When Dutch is in a good mood, he only
smokes a couple of cigarettes in the day and when he does, it usually takes him
like eight minutes a cigarette because he’s talking and laughing and all that.
When Dutch is in a good mood, all quick breaks are ten minutes because that’s
how long it takes for him to get where he can smoke, smoke, and get back.

When Dutch is in the mood he’s in right
now, though, he manages to cut his time from eight minutes a cigarette down to
three. There’s only one way of knowing just how pissed he is and that’s when he
says a number other than eight. Five minutes is slightly bothered, twelve
minutes means someone’s about to get fired. Fifteen minutes means someone’s
about to be killed and have their body disposed of by the mob connections Dutch
has long been rumored to have.

That’s not what’s got me scared, though. I
can handle Dutch’s tirades. What I can’t handle is being unable to do my job.

“Hey,” Tammy from wardrobe says and I look
down.

“Shit, did I tear my clothes or
something?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I just finished up and
they said they’d let me watch you do your scene as long as I kept quiet and out
of the way.”

“Ah,” I answer.

“You seem to be having a bit of a rough
time,” she says. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I think I’m
getting the yips.”

“The yips?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “It’s when you’re
suddenly unable to perform the simplest tasks with something you’ve been doing
a long time because you’re all up in your head freaked out about how you’re
suddenly unable to perform the simplest tasks with something you’ve been doing
a long time.”

“Sounds complicated,” she says.

“It’s really not,” I tell her. “So, what’s
up?”

“I just wanted to know if there was
anything I could do to help. I don’t know if you have or would even want
someone to talk to, but I’d be more than happy to listen if you think it would
help,” she says.

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “I appreciate
it, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. I just need to get my head
back in it and I’m sure everything’s going to be fine.”

“Great,” she says. “Well, if you change
your mind, I’ll be around. And hey, good luck with your scene. I hope you nail
it.”

“Yeah,” I scoff, “thanks.”

There’s a big part of me that
does
want to nail the scene because I’m
an actor and nailing scenes is, well, it’s kind of what we do. There’s a part
of me just as big, though, that’s just stupefied that we’re doing a scene like
this at all.

There are old gags and there are old gags
and I fail to see any way in which me stealing hotel towels like every
character in every comedy everything that’s ever existed. Back in the dark
ages, for the purposes of my point, we’ll say that even court jesters would
often talk about how they would slip a tuft of hay when they were travelling
from inn to inn. See,
that
was a
better joke than the one in this scene and it was terrible!

So, here’s where I have to stop and ask
myself for the forty-seventh time today whether this kind of movie is really
what I want to be doing for the rest of my career.

For the forty-seventh time today, I don’t
have an answer, though I will say there are good arguments on both sides.

“All right, Jones, you sack of shit,”
Dutch bellows as he approaches the set, “are you going to keep fucking around
or can we make a fucking movie here?”

*
                   
*
                   
*

“So this is going to be your swan’s song,
huh?” Danna asks, dipping a granola bar into a cup of yogurt. “I can hear the
trailers now:
Flashing Lights
, the
final film by notable actor and bumbling idiot Damian Jones.”

“You could be a lot more supportive,” I
tell her. “You
are
my agent after
all. What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m screwing up the stupidest things.”

“It sounds like it,” she snickers.

“You’re not helping,” I tell her. “Any
news on stalker lady?”

“She’s not the woman that I’m worried
about,” Danna says.

“Yeah,” I tell her, “I get it, I’m a big
girl. Ha-ha.”

“Actually, for once I wasn’t talking about
you,” she says, “although I will say that I do love how that’s immediately
where your mind goes when I say something about a woman.”

“Who are you talking about then?” I ask.

“Who else is there?” she asks.

“Oh, she’s never done anything to you,” I
tell her. “What’s your problem with Emma, anyway?”

“My biggest problem with her right now,”
Danna says, “is that she’s a scandal magnet and with you tripping over your
panties on the set, you really don’t need anything else to complicate your
employment right now.”

“They’re not going to fire me,” I tell
her.

“It wouldn’t be the first time a leading
man got hired onto a set, couldn’t get his shit together and got his ass kicked
right back off of it again,” Danna says.

“Still,” I tell her, “so helpful.”

“I’m just trying to make this real for
you, because you apparently don’t seem to think it’s that big a deal,” she
says.

“This is my career,” I tell her. “This is
something I’ve put so much of my life into. It’s my identity. I am an actor. I
don’t want to have to change that to ‘I was an actor.’”

“Then pull your head from between your
thighs, Clarabelle, and start listening to me,” Danna says.

“Clarabelle?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says, “I heard the name on a
show earlier and thought I’d go for it.”

“So you’re saying that I should dump
Emma?” I ask. “You think I should just break it off, huh?”

“Yeah,” Danna answers. “I know that’s not
what you’re hoping to hear, little bro, but that’s really your only good option
here. The difference between you and her is that you’re going through a slump.
You can pull out of what you’re going through, but she can’t keep drama off her
ass for five seconds and people like that only make things worse. It’s like a
superpower: The incredible ability to attract negative shit.”

“It’s not her fault,” I tell Danna. “You
don’t know all the shit she’s been through.”

“I’m sure she’s been through a lot, seeing
those pictures,” Danna says, “but the fact remains that you’re not able to do
your fucking job because you’ve got your head stuck between the legs of some
actress.”