Authors: Maggie Marr
Tags: #FIC027020 FICTION / Romance / Contemporary; FIC044000 FICTION / Contemporary Women
Hollywood Hit
Maggie Marr
CONTENTS
The book is dedicated to my producing partner, Peg Cafferty.
May the budgets be big, the scripts tight, and the days between productions few.
D-List Equals Dead
Jebidiah Schmaltzer was a legend in his own mind. His meteoric rise through the Hollywood stratosphere was the result of a long-lived 80s show
Bare Chests and Fast Cars.
Jeb (as he preferred to be called) relished his ever-dimming celebrity—from that of a white-hot star to a small red dwarf destined to implode into a giant black hole. He currently subsisted on royalty checks from his hit in the 80’s and a late-90’s cable show in which he played the father of the very same type of star Jeb had been circa 1984 (sans the bare chest as he was now pushing fifty). His royalties, combined with his national parade each year to the cottage industry of has-been stars selling memorabilia and signed headshots of themselves in their glory days, plus three mortgages was a large enough revenue stream to maintain an increasingly decrepit home in Beverly Hills.
But Jeb’s cemented status on the D-List was about to change.
He pressed his iPhone against his ear and soaked in the words the once-great producer Bikram Shasta, a doppelganger for Jabba the Hutt, wheezed into the other end of the connection.
“Jeb, with
Boundless Bound
, you’ve got a Hollywood hit on your hands.”
A molten ball of self-satisfaction bounced in Jeb’s chest. He closed his eyes. A smile curved across his lips.
“I’ll set this fucker up at Worldwide or Summit, maybe even Galaxy.” Bikram said. A wet cough rattled through the phone. “But first we need cast.”
Jeb’s ball of satisfaction oozed outward into his limbs. Cast. He was already working on cast. Jeb had his own brilliant ideas. One woman, whom he coveted for the female lead, Jeb would woo this very night.
“Let me make a few calls,” Bikram said. “Next week we’ll make a list of actresses.”
There would be no need for Bikram’s list of actresses. Jeb was in full-on pursuit of a little lady with no credits but a big name. The kind of name for which Sundance salivated, Tribeca trounced, and South by Southwest wet their Texas britches.
“You’ll have another draft by end of week,” Jeb said. He couldn’t contain his smile. Hell, why should he? With Bikram Shasta attached to produce
Boundless Bound
, Jeb would make his full-length directorial debut before the end of the year. He pressed the Off button and set his phone on the kitchen counter.
Finally, people would embrace the genius that was Jeb.
He uncorked a bottle of Chianti (one of Trader Joe’s finest) and decanted the bottle. He pulled two glasses from the cabinet and angled his way to the backyard. The underwater lights from his giant pool added a luminescent glow, enhanced the ambience, and hid the fact that he’d let his gardener Jesus go three weeks before due to an irreparable disagreement—Jesus wanted to be paid and Jeb had no cash.
Jeb glanced at the pool. He’d even kicked on the heater to the aquatic love nest. Financing a warm pool was like burning hundred-dollar bills with a Bic lighter. Jeb hoped his investment in hot water would culminate in a naked swim. Women loved to fuck in the pool. He lit the fire in the outdoor fireplace next to the chaise lounge and two chairs. Tonight, Jeb would get his starlet.
Having written five scripts in five months——he was nothing if not prolific——he’d been pleased when
Boundless Bound
garnered the attention of indie producer Bikram Shasta. Based on Bikram’s interest, Jeb was set to propel himself and his stalled career into the oxygen-thin heights of superstardom. He would inhabit the pinnacle where he would have been—should have been—if every agent and manager he’d ever hired hadn’t spent the majority of their time fucking up his career.
His chest warmed with the pride of a man who knew his worth in the world. Jeb would fly high with the best; Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, and now Schmaltzer. He would be rewarded for his talent, his taste, his intelligence—all that he possessed, in his own mind, but all that a flawed Hollywood system had failed for the last thirty-five years to recognize.
Jeb placed the decanted wine and the two glasses on the divan and perused the premises. He’d set the scene. He didn’t need hors d’oeuvres because the little lady he wanted for his lead in
Boundless Bound
was not meant to eat, she was meant to be wooed, and hopefully in the wooing would not only become the star of Jeb’s film, but also tonight’s main course.
Jeb ran his fingers through his ever-thinning thatch of black hair. This was the perfect setting. He’d sent her the script, she’d read it, she’d loved it, she’d given him notes. They’d met and talked and met and talked. Now… now, he need only convince her that he was her man. That he could in fact direct her and her costars, on the shoestring of a budget the producer would provide, to something Golden—either a Globe or a little man named Oscar. Jeb could do it. No doubt existed in his mind. He could and would make himself a star again, repackaged and resold in the writer-director mold.
Fuck Hollywood. Fuck all of them with their has-been words and smirking smiles. Fuck the fact that he’d made each and every one of those assholes that now refused to return his calls a shitload of dough. Fuck them. Once he was on top again——and he would be on top——he’d return their smirks and ignore their calls.
But he needed his star.
Jeb’s phone, which he’d left on the kitchen counter, beeped and he reentered the house. He grabbed for the phone and scrolled down the screen. Gina—his wife. Where was she today? She’d escaped with a gaggle of girlfriends to Milan or Mallorca or whatever fucking place ex-beauty queens went to die. She was wife number four, and while younger, she wasn’t young. Not young enough for Jeb. Her face had the haggard cracks and lines of a woman once beautiful and now simply old. Her agedness depressed Jeb. Her incessant whining about purses, and trips, and shoes, and Botox, and clothes had killed any feelings of near-love that Jeb had once felt for his wife. He scrolled. It was her fault, the bitch, that their marriage was failing.
Hi, honey, made it to Spain. Miss you. See you in two days.
Jeb’s eyes rolled upward. Let the charade continue. He wasn’t about to file for a divorce now. California was a community-property state and half of what they had wasn’t half of much. The inconsequential hindrance called Marriage wouldn’t prevent Jeb from getting what he needed, what he wanted, from this fresh, young, nubile starlet.
Have Fun!!!! Miss you!!!!!!
Jeb texted back. He added a multitude of exclamation points in hopes that it would quell Gina’s chasm of need that Jeb be connected to her and her emotions. For fuck’s sake how much could one man give?
He walked to the bar on the other side of the house and poured a double of Jack Daniels, tight and neat. He slugged back the drink in one fine, stiff shot. The heat slid down his throat and into his gut. The tight pounding at the base of his skull ebbed. A man. He was a man. A man who deserved success, and wealth, and pussy—loads and loads of fresh, young, sweet pussy.
The doorbell rang. Jeb ditched the glass and headed for the door. His cock stirred with the thought of Nikki Solange. Sweet, young Nikki Solange. So what if she said she didn’t want to act—acting was in her DNA—it was her destiny. Nikki was going to be Jeb’s star.
Rock Star Bed Warmer
Cool LA evening air breezed through the open windows of Adam’s apartment. Cars rushed past on Franklin Avenue. The bump of vehicles hitting the pothole too fast at the Whitley intersection was a continuous metal percussion. Chopping rotors of an LAPD helicopter suddenly thundered overhead, and a spotlight bounced across the ground in front of Adam’s Hollywood apartment building. Light beams bounced around his living room. The light highlighted his guitar, his roommate Trevor’s drum set, three bongs, and the greasy white paper sacks which were the untossed remains of a multitude of takeout meals.
Nikki’s Aunt Cici called this slumming.
The thunder of the low-flying chopper faded into the night and Nikki grabbed her purse from the end of the army-green thrift-store couch and pulled a clean thong from the side pocket. Trevor, the drummer of Sick Puppy
,
was passed out on the far end of the couch, his head thrown back over the cushion. With each exhale, a watery, gurgling sound exited Trevor’s throat. The fresh air from the open windows couldn’t overcome the dense, musty smell of dirty bong-water, smoke, and used socks.
Nikki took her bag into Adam’s room. His bedroom was a messy continuation of the living area he shared with the band. She stepped over his clothes, his shoes, and his
Spin
magazines. She’d carried her underthings from her place to his in the side pocket of her purse for close to a month. At Nikki’s suggestion, three days before, that she leave some necessities—a clean bra, a shirt, some underwear in Adam’s top drawer—his fair skin had instantaneously appeared ghostlike, his eyes had widened, and his jaw had popped open. A dull “Uhhhh” had exited his mouth as his eyes rolled back and forth in their sockets. She’d dropped the idea and instead continued to keep her toothbrush in her bag.
Nikki shut Adam’s bedroom door and turned toward the full-length mirror. She flipped her skirt up over her bare ass, stepped into her panties, and then smoothed the skirt down with her hand. She pulled her fingertips through her coils of amber hair. Mussed. She looked a little mussed. She’d accept mussed. She’d known when she got Adam’s text inviting her over for a f&ff (fast & furious fuck) that this early evening rendezvous was meant to satisfy lust. Nikki glanced in the mirror at the reflection of Adam sacked out on his bed.
He lay on his stomach, his long, lean body ropy with muscle and his bare ass a moon-shaped curve. One arm was tossed above his head and his black hair shot out in odd-angled tufts. Adam’s giant Buddha tattoo covered his entire back and rose and fell with each sleepy inhale and exhale. His arms continued the Asian theme with a scaled Chinese dragon painted a bright blue and green. Kanji and hiragana spelled out words Nikki could no longer remember from her two semesters of Japanese in college.
His body thrilled her. She shut her eyes for an instant and sank into the leftover electric traces of his touch on her skin. The light, barely there fingertips that rushed over her arms and neck and down her back. The firmer, rougher squeezing of his hands on her breasts and thighs. Those lips. That mouth. The same mouth that belted out raucous songs in bars while girls churned and bumped inches from Adam.