“From the way he appears in the beginning,” Harry said.
Michael didn’t even glance over. He went on saying to Chili—no doubt because Chili had spoken to him about it that other time—“Once their lives are in danger and you have the mob guy coming after them, it not only heightens tension, it adds a wistful element to their love. Now, because they have more to live for, they also have more to lose.”
Harry said, “The mob guy?”
Michael, the typical actor, onstage, ignored that one too. A simple, honest question, for Christ sake.
“I also have to consider, I mean as the character, this is another man’s wife I’m sleeping with. I know the guy’s a schmuck, he’s a sneak . . . By the way, what does he do?”
“He’s an agent,” Chili said, “and his wife, he handles, is a rock-and-roll singer.”
Michael nodded. “Like Nicki. I like that. I don’t mean for the part, but a character like her.”
Harry stared at Chili now, Chili eating his ice cream and refusing to look over this way, Chili telling Michael, “We’re still working on the ending.
Michael said, “You are?” sounding surprised. “I thought you were bringing the script.”
“You have the first draft,” Harry said, wanting to start over, make some sense out of this. “The one you read I sent to your house?”
He saw Michael shaking his head with that surprised look and Chili saying right away, “Basically it’s the ending has to be fixed, but there some other parts too.” The hell was be talking about? Now Michael was looking at his watch.
“Elaine wants us to come by tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon. How does that sound?”
Harry saw Chili nodding, so he nodded.
“I have to run,” Michael said. “But what I hope to see, they begin to have misgivings about wanting the money. It becomes their moral dilemma and they try to rationalize keeping it, but in the end they can’t.” Looking at Chili the whole time. “Can they?”
“Which money,” Harry said, “are we talking about?”
That got Michael’s attention, finally, but with a kind of bewildered look on his face. “The three hundred large. What other money is there? I’m not being facetious, I’m asking, since I haven’t read the script. I think their idea, ultimately, would be to let the husband keep it, knowing he’ll get caught sooner or later. No, wait.” Michael paused. “The mob guy gets to the husband first, the agent, and whacks him, knocks him off. But he doesn’t have the money. Somehow the lovers have gotten hold of it. We see it piled on a bed. Make it a million—why not? The mob guy, who scares hell out of the audience, is closing in but the lovers don’t know it. So now you’ve got the big scene coming up. But just before it happens . . . Well, it could be after, either way, but it’s the shylock who makes the decision, they can’t keep it.”
Harry said, “Theshy lock?”
Michael turned to him saying, “Look at me, Harry.”
Harry was already looking at him.
Now Chili was saying, “That’s not bad. I think you got it down.”
Harry turned to Chili and back to Michael again.
“Jesus Christ, you mean all this time . . .”
But Michael wasn’t listening. He was getting up from the table saying, “I should keep quiet, I know, till I’ve read the script, but I’ve got a feeling about this one. I’m that shylock. Really, it scares me how well I know him. I could do this one tomorrow, no further preparation.”
“What am I thinking?” Chili said.
Michael grinned at him. “Well, I might need a week to get ready. But I’ll see you tomorrow, right? At Tower.” He started to go, paused and said, “Chil, work on that moral dilemma. Harry? Remember that time you turned me down forSlime Creatures ? I’m glad you did. I might’ve gotten typecast.”
Michael table-hopped and touched hands all the way out. Harry watched him before turning to Chili.
“All that time he’s talking about your movie.”
Chili nodded.
“That’s what we came for?”
Chili nodded.
“You told Michael about your movie when you saw him that time? You never talked aboutLovejoy ?”
Chili finished his ice cream. He said, “Harry,” getting his cigarettes out, “let’s light up and have an after-dinner drink. What do you say?”
26
Karen was waiting for him. He saw her coming away from the front steps in a heavy-knit white sweater as he got out of the car. They walked around to the patio side of the house and over to the swimming pool that was like a pond with a clear bottom, leaves, dark shapes on the surface, Chili telling about the dinner with Michael, most of what happened, and finally asking her, “Guess who paid?”
Karen said that, first of all, high-priced actors never picked up the check. They had no idea what things cost. They seldom knew their zip code and quite often didn’t know their own phone number. Especially guys who changed the number every time they dumped a girlfriend. Telling him this quietly in the dark. He felt they could be in a woods far away from any people or sounds or lights, unless you looked at the house and saw dim ones in some of the windows. They could have walked in the house when he got out of the car, but she was waiting for him with the idea of coming out here. It told him they were going to end up in bed before too long. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, other than being alone in the dark seemed to set the mood, the idea of moonlight and a nice smell in the air, except the moon was pretty much clouded over. Her waiting for him outside was the tip-off. He didn’t ask himself why she wanted to go to bed with him. It never entered his mind.
“So who paid, you or Harry?”
“I did.”
“You felt sorry for him.”
“Well, yeah, maybe. Twice in one day I have to explain something where he’s already made up his mind I’m trying to stick him. Michael left, we sat there another hour and talked. You know what his omelet cost?”
“Twenty bucks?”
“Twenty-two-fifty.”
“And he ate maybe half of it,” Karen said.
“Not even that. The whole shot came to two and a quarter, with the tip, and we didn’t have any wine.”
“Harry went home?”
“Yeah, feeling sorry for himself. I said to him, ‘This wasn’t my idea, I didn’t call it. If you wanted to ask him aboutLovejoy, why didn’t you?’ Harry says, ‘What, follow him out to the parking lot?’ Harry had a point. Michael does all the talking and then he’s gone, never mentioned the check. You know, at least offered. No—see you tomorrow at the meeting. Now I either have to make up something quick or forget the whole thing. Or let him do it. Michael knows more about it than I do anyway. All the time at dinner he’s telling me how it should work: that the love part should be important and how he wants to play the shylock as a nice guy—like people don’t mind paying him a hunnerd and fifty percent interest. You know what I’m saying?”
“That’s what Michael does,” Karen said. “He turns the story around to suit himself and then walks away. The shylock becomes a brain surgeon. The drycleaner—who knows?”
“I’m thinking of making him an agent,” Chili said, “and his wife, Fay, a rock-and-roll singer. It’s a little different’n what I told you and Harry. She comes here with the shylock and they fall in love looking for Leo. Also there’s a mob guy that’s after them.”
Karen stopped and turned to him. “His name Ray Bones?”
“Yeah, but I think I’ll change it. I don’t want to get sued. I’ve had enough of Ray Bones to last me the rest of my life.”
They started walking again, strolling toward the house. Karen’s shoulders hunched in the bulky sweater, hands shoved into the sleeves. She said, “What about Catlett?”
“He’s not in it.”
She said, “Are you sure? You have an idea for a movie based on something that actually happened, but now you’re beginning to fictionalize. Which is okay, like bringing Fay into it more . . .”
Chili sa
id, “After I saw that’s whatLovejoy needed.”
“That’s fine—but what exactly are you keeping and what are you throwing away?”
“Well, if I have Bones as the bad guy, what do I need Catlett for? It’s not about making a movie, it’s about getting your hands on money without getting killed. Or it’s about a moral dilemma, as Michael says. If they do get their hands on the money, can they keep it? Michael says no.”
“So you resolve that,” Karen said. “You have action, suspense, romance, good characters . . . You have that wonderful scene with Bones in the hotel room. He takes the locker key and you set him up.” She paused and said, “It’s cool the way it works, but you can’t end the picture with it. What happens next, at the airport, is offstage. But if it did play as a scene you wouldn’t be in it.”
“You mean the shylock.”
Karen said, “Yeah, right,” thinking of something else. “What you might do is play the hotel room scene with Leo instead of Bones—it’s too good to throw away. Leo finds the key, leaves to pick up the money and you call the DEA.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“But you did.”
“Yeah, to Bones. I wouldn’t do it to Leo.”
She said, “Well . . . I don’t know. I like Catlett as a character, if you could use him somehow. Doesn’t he fit into this at all?”
“He’s Harry’s problem.”
“Isn’t Harry in it?”
“I left that part out, the shylock looking for him.”
He thought of Catlett again. He thought of the Bear, the Bear falling down the restaurant stairs, but didn’t see how he could use that either.
Karen said, “I wouldn’t throw anything away just yet,” as they reached the patio and she turned to him. She looked cold, hugging herself with her hands in the sweater sleeves. “What’re you going to call it, Chili’s Hollywood Adventure?”
“That’s a different story. I like it, though, so far.”
She said, “What happens next?”
He said, “I’m ready if you are.”
He’d open his eyes and she’d be watching him, the first time smiling, and he remembered her telling him Michael said funny things. Then she’d close her eyes and he’d close his, moving with her, all the time moving, and he’d open his eyes and she’d be looking at him again, face-to-face in the lamplight. She was feeling it, not just going through the motions, he could tell by her face, a certain look around her nose and mouth that was almost a snarl, but her eyes would still be looking: like she was riding a bike with no hands to look at something she was holding, doing two different things at once: her body turned on and having a good time, but her mind still working on its own, watching, until her eyes glazed over and it became more the way it usually was in those final moments of hanging on, no time to think or do anything but ride it out. She opened her eyes with kind of a dreamy look, thoughtful, and said it was like falling backwards . . . a time you could let go knowing you were safe. He wondered if she analyzed everything she did and had been watching, before, to see her effect on him. When Karen left the bed, went into the bathroom and came back a few minutes later, he got to see all of her at once—a picture he now had for life—before she turned the lamp off and got back in bed.
Chili had his arm ready in case Karen wanted to snuggle in, as they usually did after, but she stayed on her side and was quiet. They were alone in a different kind of dark now that they’d made love, a dark for sleeping. He thought, Okay, fine. Though had expected there would be a little more to it. It surprised him when she said, lying there in the dark, “I’ve been watching you.”
“I noticed that.”
“I think you could be an actor. I know you’re acting sometimes, but you don’t show it.”
“You thought I was faking?”
“No, I don’t meanthen .”
“What was I doing? I was auditioning?”
“We made love,” Karen said, “because we wanted to. That was the only reason.”
“Yeah, but you were watching.”
“For a minute.”
“Aminute— it was a lot longer’n that.”
“Why’re you getting mad? I say I think you could be an actor, you take it the wrong way.”
“I don’t like being watched.”
“That could be a problem.”
“Why would it?”
“If you want to act.”
“I never said I did.”
“You don’t want to, then don’t.”
It was quiet for a minute or so.
“You don’t mean become a movie star. More like a character actor.”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning. I’m beat.”
“I ever made a movie, you know who’d go set it? My mother and my two aunts. Tommy, he’d go, for a laugh.”
Karen didn’t say anything, meaning that was the end of it.
He could see himself in different movies Robert De Niro had been in. He could maybe do an Al Pacino movie, play a hard-on . . . He couldn’t see himself in ones, like say the one where the three guys get stuck with a baby. They don’t know how to take care of it and you see these big grownup assholes acting cute. Put on a surprised look and that was as far as they could take it. People liked that cute shit, they went to see it. But, man, that would be hard, try and act cute.
What else could he play? Himself? The shylock?
No, he’d start trying to act like himself and it wouldn’t work, because acting wasn’t as easy as it looked. He knew that much. No, what he needed . . .
He heard Karen’s voice in the dark say, “I forgot to tell you. The Bear called.”
Chili said, “Yeah?” even though for some reason he wasn’t surprised. “He say what he wanted?”
“He left a number.”
“I’ll call him in the morning.”
The Bear could wait. What he needed to think about was an ending. And maybe a title.Get Michael. Except that wasn’t the movie, that was real life. He kept getting the two mixed up,Chili’s Hollywood Adventure and whatever the other one was . . .
He must have heard the sounds coming from downstairs, because something woke him up before he heard Karen say, “Not again.” He turned over on his back and was looking at a faint square of light from the window reflected on the ceiling. Karen said, “It’s Harry, downstairs.” He could hear the sounds as faint voices now, a movie playing on the TV in the study. “Harry pulling the same stunt on you,” Karen said. “He was drinking, I’m sure of it, and got this wonderful idea.” He saw Karen sitting up, her face and breasts in profile. Another picture to keep. The clock on her side of the bed—seeing it behind her—said 4:36.
“If he was drinking all night . . .” Chili let the words trail off before saying, “he’d be out of it, wouldn’t he? How could he drive?”
“Ask him,” Karen said, “he’s waiting for you.”
She turned to fix her pillows, puff them up, and sunk back in the bed.
“If I know Harry he’ll act surprised to see you. ‘Oh, did I wake you up? Gee, I’m sorry.’ What happened at dinner, well, not forgotten, but put aside. This is Harry the survivor. Sometime during the past five hours or so he realized that if his project is dead, he’d better quick get a piece of yours. He’ll offer to take over as producer . . .”
“I don’t know,” Chili said, wanting to listen for sounds, different ones than the TV.
But Karen kept talking.
“He’ll get a writer, probably Murray, and handle all negotiations. He’ll already have a plot idea and that’s why he’s here at four-thirty in the morning. He’ll say he couldn’t wait to tell you. But the real reason is he wants to be annoying. He still resents what he thinks you pulled on him, stealing Michael, and I know he doesn’t like the idea of us being together . . .”
Telling him all that until he said, “I don’t think it’s Harry.”
And that stopped Karen long enough for him to hear the TV again and what sounded like gunshots and that sharp w
hining sound of ricochets, bullets singing off rocks.
Karen said, “If it isn’t Harry . . .”
“I don’t know for sure,” Chili said, “and I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.” It was a western. He heard John Wayne’s voice now. John Wayne talking to the West’s most unlikely cowboy, Dean Martin. Getting out of bed he said to Karen, “I think it’sRio Bravo. ”
Catlett sat in the dark with the big-screen TV on loud the way Harry said Chili Palmer had done it; the difference was a movie instead of David Letterman and Ronnie’s Hardballer .45 in his hand resting on the desk and pointed at the door part open. He believed the John Wayne movie wasEl Dorado, the big gunfight going on now with the sound turned up so high it was making him deaf, but he wanted Chili Palmer to hear it and come down thinking it was Harry paying him back. He’d checked to make sure Harry was home and not here and after so many rings he almost hung up, got Harry on the line slurring his words bad, the man almost all the way gone. He told Harry to go to bed before he fell down and hurt himself. All there was to do now was do it. Chili Palmer walks in the door—let him say something if he wanted, but don’t say nothing back. Do him once, twice, whatever it took and leave the way he had come in, through the door on the patio he found unlocked.
He had waited this long so as not to be seen or run into by other cars on the street. Most went to bed early in this town, but some stayed out to party and drove home drunk when the bars closed or in a nod. Four a.m. was the quietest time. He had been here now since four-twenty. Shit. If Chili Palmer didn’t come down in the next two minutes he’d have to go upstairs and find him.
Chili put on his pants and shoes, Karen watching him, and got out the Lakers T-shirt he’d bought at the airport to go with Karen’s Lakers T-shirt if he got lucky. But when he did, when they came upstairs earlier and jumped in bed, he wasn’t thinking of T-shirts. This one fit pretty well. Karen probably couldn’t see what it was. He walked over to the bedroom door and stood listening. He was pretty sure the movie wasRio Bravo.