When the Stars Come Out (39 page)

particularly bad angle at which to capture MRC’s image and

popped off a dozen shots in rapid succession.

Q. J. spotted a tall, balding man standing near the set and waved

him over. As he approached, Q. J. said, “Dad, this is Bernie Bernstein.

He’s our director.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Scott,” said Bernie, taking his hand.

“Welcome to
The Brothers-in-Law
. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Quinn shrugged. “Thanks. I’m sure it’s an
. . .
uh
. . .
experience working here.”

Bernie’s smile dropped, and something unspoken passed be-

tween them as he agreed. “Yes, it’s always an experience.”

Turning back to his son, Quinn asked, “So is there anyone else I

have to meet?”

“Well, there’s . . .”

“Good. Now I want to go back to the hotel.”

*

*

*

258

R o b B y r n e s

“So then the Ant-Women finally realize that he’s been their op-

pressor all along, and they
. . .
oh, look, there’s the hotel.”

Finally
, Quinn—and the rest of them—thought, as the Bel Age came into view. Chris pulled the SUV into the entrance and came

to a stop in front of the hotel entrance.

“Can I help you with your bags?” he asked.

“No,” said Quinn tersely, and without a thank-you. “The bellhop

will get them.”

“In that case . . .” Chris handed the actor an envelope. “Here’s

the script.”

Quinn looked at the packet, afraid to take it from his hands. “Is

this for
The Brothers-in-Law
? Or your ant-man movie?”

Chris fought the urge to correct him. He had been talking about

Ant-
Women
! Hadn’t the actor been listening?

“It’s for
The Brothers-in-Law
! But I’ll definitely get you a copy of
Ant
before shooting wraps!”

And, again, Quinn did not say thank you.

Safely in their suite, three floors above the smaller room shared

by Bart and Noah, Quinn and Jimmy showered, ordered room ser-

vice, and, as they relaxed in their Bel Age robes, Quinn began to

leaf through the script.

“So how long has it been since you’ve seen Quinn Jr.?” Jimmy

asked, when he saw Quinn’s attention wander from the printed

page. “Ten years?”

“More than that. Not since . . .” He struggled with the memory.

“1990? Maybe even before that.”

“How did it feel? You seemed a bit awkward.”

Quinn looked back at the script. “My hip hurt. And I’m trying to

read.”

“No, you’re not. Tell me how it felt?”

He closed his eyes. “It felt
. . .
strange. Listen, I know he’s my son, and I shouldn’t feel this way, but when he was hugging me, it was like I was being hugged by a wholly owned subsidiary of Katherine.

The two of them cut me out of his life—not just her, but him, too—

and he doesn’t feel like family anymore.” His eyes opened and he

looked to Jimmy. “Does that make me a bad man?”

“No,” said Jimmy. “Just a bad father.”

“Thanks. Now I feel much better.” His attention went immedi-

ately back to the script.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

259

*

*

*

“And how was your father, dear?”

Quinn Scott Jr. held his cell phone tightly and worried about

how to answer the question. He had been hoping she wouldn’t ask,

but now knew he should have prepared an answer.

“Uh . . .”

“Q. J.? Darling, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. He looked
. . .
uh
. . .
old.”

“Old?”

“Old
er
.”

On her end of the phone line, Kitty sighed. “Well, of course he’s

gotten
older
. You haven’t seen him in almost twenty years. What did you expect?”

“And he looks
. . .
uh
. . .
well, he limps.”

“Darling, let me put this another way. Did he look tired?”

Tired
!
There
was a word he could have used!

“Yes! Yes, he looked tired.”

“Did he look sad?”

Well, no, he didn’t really look sad. But he did look
. . .
“He was pissed off.”

“Language, darling.”

In the privacy of his own home, Q. J. blushed. “I mean, he was

angry.”

“He probably wasn’t getting his own way. Your father can be a

baby sometimes. Remember that if he tries to boss you around on

the set.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Okay, dear, I have to go now. Please let me know how he treats

you, and let me know if he causes your show any difficulties. Love you! Bye!”

Q. J. Scott looked at the cell phone in his hand, and wondered if

his mother would ever give
him
the opportunity to say good-bye at the end of a call.

Pocketing the phone, he walked the length of his living room to

the wet bar, where he made himself a martini and contemplated

calling Amber, the Jet Blue flight attendant he had met the previ-

ous week who, according to her text message, was back in town. But to hook up with her, he’d have to make a round-trip to Burbank,

and he wasn’t in the mood. After all, this had been a significant day 260

R o b B y r n e s

in his life—reunited at last with his estranged father—and he

thought he’d prefer solitude over sex. Which
also
made it a significant day in his life.

Martini glass precariously in hand, he ambled over to the wall-

length window and looked out at the lights of hundreds, maybe

thousands, of houses, glimmering in the hills. One of them even

belonged to his mother, Life was good, he thought, sipping his

drink and staring into the twinkling nighttime panorama. Life was

good . . .

Q. J. heard his phone chirp and took it from his pocket. Amber

had texted him—
r u coming over 2 get me?
—and it suddenly occurred to him that the twinkling nighttime panorama was too pre-

cious not to share with someone.

Plus it made a great backdrop for sex.

The next morning, Quinn, accompanied by Bart, drove onto

the studio lot. They parked, and as they walked to the soundstage

Quinn noted the presence of a van emblazoned with the logo for

Hollywood’s Hottest Stories
.

“What are they doing here?” he asked, almost to himself.

When they entered the soundstage, he could see for himself

what the
HHS
crew was doing there. They were apparently going to tape the taping of a television show.

“Mr. Scott,” said Bernie, the director, when he saw his guest star enter the cavernous room, which caused other members of the cast

and crew to turn in Quinn’s direction.

“Reporting to duty,” said Quinn, as he limped to the set. He

looked around and, not seeing him, asked, “Where is Q. J.?”

“He’ll be here in a little while. Q. J. and Jason generally arrive a bit later.” Bernie glanced at his clipboard. “I’m going to have everyone do a run-through of the script in a few minutes, so if you

wouldn’t mind staying near the set . . .”

“No, not at all.” Quinn pointed to the corner of the room, where

lights and a camera bearing the
HHS
logo were set up. He recognized correspondent Mary Hoyt, the woman who had recently in-

terviewed Kitty, standing just out of the light, clutching a

microphone. “So what’s that all about?”

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

261

Bernie smiled. “They’re going to be capturing your comeback

for posterity. So remember to knock ’em dead.”

Later, Bart watched from the bleachers as the actors sat on the

living-room set and read through the script, their voices echoing

through the spacious room. Bernie and the writers watched, con-

ceptualizing the staging and consulting on the lines of dialogue

that fell flat
. . .
which, in the case of
The Brothers-in-Law
script, constituted a great deal of dialogue. Occasionally Bernie would have a discussion into his headset, obviously with an unseen superior,

probably that foul Mark R. Cassidy. And
Hollywood’s Hottest Stories
was capturing it all.

During the first read-through the actors meshed well, although

Bart could sense tension between Ron Palillo—whom he remem-

bered from reruns of
Welcome Back, Kotter—
and an actor named Joe Gramm, a gray-haired man with a deep, mellifluous voice who was

playing his cousin. Their squabbling was only compounded when

Gramm kept calling Palillo “Horshack,” the name of his
Kotter
character.

“Call me Ron,” the actor would correct him, to which Gramm

would invariably reply, “Whatever you say, Horshack,” leading to

another tense go-around. Bart could only guess at their profes-

sional history, but it didn’t look good that day on the set.

More importantly, Bart was pleased to see that Quinn was hold-

ing his own on the soundstage. He was a bit rusty, and bungled a

few of his lines, but for someone who had only acted a few times

over the previous three decades, he was keeping up, more or less,

with the professionals.

After they finished the reading, Bernie called for a break. Bart

was about to join Quinn when he saw Q. J. enter the studio; in-

stead, he settled back onto the bleachers, allowing father and son to have their private moment. He need not have bothered; the reunion was quickly over.

Q. J. strolled up to his father and, once again, embraced the

older man. As Quinn tried to wriggle away Q. J. said, “Isn’t it great to be working together?”

“It would be a hell of a lot better if you’d stop hugging me.”

262

R o b B y r n e s

Q. J. smiled and released his father. “You’re so funny. Listen, I’m going to run to my dressing room and get ready. I’ll see you back

on the set.” With that, he was gone. Quinn was not disappointed.

But Quinn would think that a bear hug from his son was close to

heaven when the other star of
The Brothers-in-Law
graced the set a half hour later.

It was well known by those in the entertainment business, as well

as by those who had kept their
People
and
Us
reading current, that Jason St. Clair was not supposed to be the star of
The Brothers-in-Law
. The former teenage underwear model was expected to become, eventually, a middle-aged underwear model, while John

Stamos was to have played Ted Huntley on the network for eight to

ten years, and then in reruns in perpetuity. But Stamos and the

producers could never make a contractual love connection, and

Jason St. Clair’s twenty foot billboard image was in the right place at the right time—the right time being when a particularly lecher-ous casting director was stuck in traffic at its base—and so, after a few quick rewrites to subtract twenty years from Ted Huntley’s age, a star was born.

Or rather, a
superstar
was born, because Jason St. Clair soon took the nation by storm. Good genes helped, of course; he was, quite

simply, beautiful, with clear green eyes, enviable bone structure, and lustrous dark hair. The rest of the package—especially the torso,

which managed to lose its shirt in every other episode, especially during sweeps—came from the gym, but what would one expect

from a former teenaged underwear model? If there was a flaw, and

it was minor, it was his excessively dry skin, but that disappeared under constant applications of very expensive moisturizer, so it

could be ignored.

Beyond the physical wealth, though, Jason St. Clair won the air-

waves over with his cheery, laid-back personality. On the screen and in interviews, he came across as genuinely sincere and unspoiled,

appreciative of the fact that, four years earlier, his talents extended no further than taking off his pants, looking at a camera and flashing a smile or pout.

And as Jason St. Clair walked onto the set, trailing a small en-

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

263

tourage of handlers, that was exactly the personality Quinn was expecting.

But that’s not what he got.

“What the fuck are all these people doing here?” Jason raged,

seeing too many unfamiliar faces among the cast and crew. “Bernie?!”

Bernie seemed to shrink. “Good morning, Jason. We’re about to

start clearing the set.”

The young actor tossed his hair. “The set is supposed to be clear

before I come down, Bernie. This is a fucking waste of my time.”

He turned to Quinn and demanded, “Who are you? Bernie?! Who

is this?!”

“Quinn Scott,” Bernie and Quinn answered at the same time.

“And that means
what
to me?”

“That means,” said Quinn, remarkably polite, “that I’m playing

Uncle Jake in this episode.”

Jason snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. I know who you are.

Q. J.’s father, right? The guy who was married to Kitty Randolph?

The gay guy?”

“Yes, I was married to Kitty Randolph,” confirmed Quinn. “And,

yes, I’m Q. J.’s father. The gay item isn’t really relevant.”

“Well . . .” Struggling, the young actor offered his hand to the elderly homosexual. “Welcome aboard. Sorry I yelled.”

“No need to apologize. I’ve been on sets before.”

“In that case, you’ll understand when I tell you that this is a professional set, right? I don’t believe in outtakes, and I don’t believe in goofing around. We get the shot in a few takes and move on.

And that’s why I’m a little leery, Mr. Scott.”