When the Stars Come Out (38 page)

Wait . . . entourage?
For some reason, Chris had not expected an entourage. The goal was to talk to Quinn Scott one on one, mano a

mano. He didn’t want to compete with those
. . .
those
. . . other
people. But after thinking about it for a few seconds—ever the thinker, his brain
whirred
into action faster even than the brain of an Ant-Woman—he decided that maybe the entourage was a good thing.

One might be his future agent, another his future publicist
. . .
Quinn Scott and his crew might be the goldmine that Chris Cason had

waited for so patiently for too many years.

For his part, Quinn Scott—grumpy and limping slightly after

five hours in an airplane—looked down the corridor at the edgy,

Brillo-haired thirtysomething man waving at him and, turning to

Jimmy, said:

“What the fuck is that?”

“That,” Jimmy replied, not much happier than Quinn, “is proba-

bly your ride.”

“Fuck.”

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R o b B y r n e s

“Mr. Scott?!” asked the man, and without waiting for an answer

added, “I’m Chris Cason. On behalf of PorchStar International,

welcome to Los Angeles.”

Quinn grunted. When Chris proffered his hand, the actor

passed him his carry-on bag.

“Uh
. . .
yes.” Chris looked at the bag in his outstretched hand.

“I’ll, uh, carry this for you.”

It was not quite the reception Quinn had expected. This moron

was clearly nothing more than a studio gofer, and Quinn had antic-

ipated an executive. Maybe even one of the actors, although he

silently hoped the reunion with his son would be private and brief.

Very, very brief.

Things had clearly changed in his decades away. Once he was

the star, and got the star treatment. Now even his newfound celeb-

rity didn’t warrant an executive, and that realization annoyed him.

He supposed he should have been grateful that the studio had

even sent a car, but
. . .
he wasn’t.

In one sense, it was good that Quinn had been largely retired for

the previous three decades, because—as the airline crew and many

of his fellow passengers could testify—he was a bad traveler. He was too impatient to sit in one place for hours at a time, and the hip made extended trips uncomfortable. Even when he was young and

working, he regularly passed on roles if he’d have to travel a great distance. Flying cross country was still a great imposition to him, one he was only willing to undertake to prove to the world that,

contrary to his ex-wife’s assertions, he was still mentally sharp and every bit a skilled actor.

The next time, though, they were going to have to come to him.

Even if they had to move the entire damn show to New York to do

it.

Their SUV fought traffic along freeways long-forgotten to Quinn.

He looked out the window, only vaguely curious about their direc-

tion or how long it would take them. Next to him, Jimmy sat and

stared out the opposite window, thinking quite different thoughts.

Jimmy Beloit prided himself on never looking back, but—as fa-

miliar sights came into view, then disappeared behind them at a

slow thirty miles per hour—he couldn’t help but feel the slightest W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

253

twinge of nostalgia, the memories of a career cut abruptly short

fighting their way to the surface. He wondered what would have

happened if he had never met Quinn, and therefore had never

been cast out of this Entertainment Eden. Would his career trajec-

tory have played out as he planned, from dancer to actor? He knew

that was a question without an answer, but he couldn’t keep it out of his mind.

“Can you believe we used to live here?” he asked.

Quinn looked out at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405.

“What were we thinking?”

The four passengers—Quinn, Jimmy, Noah, and Bart—had

been content to trust their driver, but all of them were beginning to have the vague sense that the trip to the hotel was taking far too long. If they had known some of the daydreams occupying Chris

Cason’s brain—for instance, kidnapping them until Quinn agreed

to help bring
Ant
to the screen—they would have been even more concerned.

But they weren’t being kidnapped. They just weren’t being taken

straight to their hotel. Quinn was the first to notice that something was wrong.

“Why are we almost to Encino?” he asked. “You missed our exit.

The Bel Age is in West Hollywood. Off of Santa Monica.”

“Construction,” said the driver, as if that were a reasonable ex-

planation.

Quinn grumbled, but sat back in his seat. He really didn’t know

Los Angeles anymore, so even though he remained convinced they

were lost, he opted not to be a backseat driver.

Eventually, Chris looped east finally and, a few miles later, exited the 101. After quick left and right turns, he pulled up to a gate.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Quinn, peering through the win-

dow at a row of warehouses sitting beyond the gate, protected by

fencing and two lonely shacks, each populated by one lonely secu-

rity guard just waiting for a reason to raise the gate or lower the gate or otherwise do something besides fidget.

Chris allowed himself a smug smile. He did, after all, know some-

thing the big actor guy did not. “Welcome to Lilliane Studios. Home of
The Brothers-in-Law
.”

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“Huh?” Quinn squinted, and realized that what he thought were

warehouses were actually a string of soundstages lining the paved

lot. The security guards each leaned forward, staring back at Quinn and the SUV.

Chris turned the key and the engine came back to life. He eased

the vehicle forward a few feet to the nearest guard shack and, when the guard’s head was even with his window, said, in his most au-thoritative voice, “Chris Cason.”

“ID?”

“Of course.” He flashed a laminated card, and was rewarded

when the guard pushed a button. The gate slowly began to open.

“I don’t want to see the studio,” said Quinn, in a tone of voice

that Jimmy had learned to avoid over the past thirty-six years. “I want to go to the hotel.”

The driver ignored him and drove. When he reached the fifth

building—more of a Quonset hut than a building, Noah thought—

he again pulled to a stop.

“Okay!” Chris said brightly. “Let’s get out!”

“No.”

With a sigh and a nod of his head, Chris opened his door and

climbed down from the vehicle. Inside, Quinn turned to Jimmy

and said, “I just want to go to the hotel. Is that so fucking hard to understand?”

“Of course not,” said Jimmy. “But maybe if we humor him . . .”

Quinn’s response was to fold his arms across his chest. He was

absolutely not going anywhere.

“Uh, I don’t want to cause any problems,” said Noah from the

backseat, “but my legs are cramping. Can we get out for just a

minute?”

Quinn exhaled sharply, unfolded his arms, and finally opened his

door. As he descended carefully from the vehicle, Chris Cason ap-

peared, offering him a steadying hand, which Quinn took reluctantly.

“Long time since you’ve been on a studio lot?” asked the younger

man.

Now on the ground, Quinn abruptly dropped Chris’s hand.

“Should’ve been one day longer.”

When the others had also reached ground level, Chris said,

“The producers wanted to have you take a look at the soundstage

before we start rehearsing.”

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Quinn wasn’t happy. “Which is why I’m here.”

“Which is why you’re here.” With that, the production assistant

began walking toward the double doors leading into the building,

and the others followed at a slower pace, taking their cue from Quinn.

Inside, Chris turned on a bank of lights, dimly illuminating the

spacious interior. The main set, surrounded by three false walls,

was positioned in the middle of the room, opposite a tier of bleachers which would accommodate a live audience when it was time to

tape.

Quinn stood, hands on hips, drinking it in.

“Much different than it used to be?” asked Bart.

Quinn thought about it. Yes, it was different, but someone who

had only been on a soundstage a handful of times in the past thirty-odd years expected change. Since the answer was self-evident, he

chose not to speak, leaving Bart’s question hanging, unanswered,

in midair.

He looked at the set, carefully designed for maximum mobility

and minimal visual clutter. The living room of
The Brothers-in-Law
looked pretty much like every living room in sitcom land: forgettable couch; forgettable armchairs; forgettable china cabinet dis-

playing forgettable fake china. The front door was stage left; the fake stairs to the nonexistent second floor were stage center; the entrance to the kitchen—make that, the kitchen
set
—was stage right.

Quinn felt immediately comfortable with the familiarity sur-

rounding him, even though he had never been a situation comedy

actor and had only seen his son’s show three or four times. His sets had been from the world of action, and a lot of it was filmed outdoors. But the soundstage of
The Brothers-in-Law
was familiar in a different sense, in the sense it would feel familiar to anyone who had ever spent more than a day watching network television. All

those generic television living rooms looked alike.

The others watched Quinn, wondering what pangs of nostalgia

he was feeling, and completely unaware he was not feeling nostal-

gia
. . .
at least not in the truest sense. He was thinking what any other television viewer would have felt at that same moment: as if he had walked into the living room of every situation comedy ever

made.

Somewhere in the dark periphery of the room they heard faint

footsteps approach, and then a man’s silhouette appeared, backlit

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in the doorway. Slowly they turned, one by one, and tried to see

who the new arrival was, but they saw only his shape.

“Can we help you?” asked Chris Cason, the closest thing to an of-

ficial presence in the room.

The man was silent for a moment. Until he said . . .

“Dad?”

Voices fell silent—even the echoes fell silent—as they looked at

the silhouette that was Quinn Scott’s son.

He took a few steps toward them and then there—in the flesh,

dimly lit by the overhead lighting—stood two-time People’s Choice

Award-winner Q. J. Scott, looking nothing whatsoever like his fa-

ther, but every bit like his on-screen image.

“Q. J.?” Quinn faltered briefly. Awkwardly, he continued. “It’s

been a long time.”

The son took a half-dozen rapid steps until he reached his father

and embraced him. At that exact moment, light suddenly flooded

the room, and there was a scattering of applause at the emotional

moment from the men and women who had, to that point, been

hidden in the shadows. Chris Cason smiled, knowing that he had

done his task—delivering the package—very well indeed.

As the others made themselves known, emerging from the shad-

ows to applaud the father and son reunion, Quinn began to pull

back, but as he struggled to disengage, Q. J. gripped his father all the harder.

And then came the flashes.

“What the fuck?” snarled Quinn, as he finally pulled clear of his

son. He scanned the room, confused.

Q. J. grinned. “It’s a very special moment, Dad.”

Quinn shook his head, not quite sure if he was supposed to be

angry. “Photographers?”

“We sold the exclusive, Mr. Scott,” said the portly man who was

approaching with a manner oozing with whatever the opposite of

friendliness would be. Despite the man’s unpleasant manner, Quinn

was afraid he, too, wanted a hug, so he took two steps back. “I am Mark R. Cassidy, associate producer of
The Brothers-in-Law
. Welcome to the set.”

“Yeah, I’m thrilled,” said Quinn, who was now certain that he

didn’t mean it. “So you sold the photos?”

MRC forced a smile, which came out as something like a modi-

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257

fied frown. “We’re working with a reputable industry photographer, Quinn—can I call you Quinn? Anyway, our
reputable
photographer will only work with
reputable
media outlets. It’s all on the up-and-up.”

Quinn didn’t like anything about this man, which is why he found

himself reluctantly saying: “I was having a private moment with my son.”

Off to the side, Q. J. rolled his eyes and said, “Dad, geez! You’re embarrassing me! We do this all the time when Mama visits the

set!”

“What, with the photographers and everything?”

“Well
. . .
no, not always. But sometimes. And then I hug her.”

Quinn rolled his eyes. “Save the hugs for your mother. She

needs them more than I do.”

The photographer sidled around the room, hunting for a good

angle. The Scotts were not cooperating, doing their own dance of

estrangement. And every time he did get a good angle, that bastard Mark R. Cassidy was in the shot. The photographer wondered if

Cassidy remembered firing him from the set of
The Doug Stone

Show
. Probably not; the fat fuck had fired thousands of people, and most of them were grateful just to be away from him. He found a