Bungalow 2 (8 page)

The room was full of important-looking men and beautiful women, several of them well known. There were dazzling-looking women having breakfast with each other, in pairs or small groups. Men dining with each other, and a few men with women, usually years younger. She noticed Sharon Osbourne having breakfast in a quiet corner with a younger woman. Both were expensively dressed, and wore large diamonds on their hands and ears. Barbara Walters was at a table having breakfast with three men. There were men and women from the entertainment industry scattered throughout the room, and at most of the tables, there were men conducting business and having meetings. For the most part, it looked like ideas, contracts, and money were being exchanged and changing hands. The smell of power hung heavy in the room. The Polo Lounge looked like a hotbed of success, and as soon as Tanya saw it, she felt noticeably underdressed. Barbara Walters was wearing a beige linen Chanel suit and pearls. Sharon Osbourne was wearing low-cut black. Most of the women had had face-lifts, the rest of them looked like ads for collagen and Botox. Tanya felt as though she had the only natural face in the room. She kept reminding herself that she was there because of the way she wrote, not how she looked. But it was daunting anyway to be in the midst of so many beautiful, exquisitely groomed women. Tanya felt unable to compete with that, or even try. All she could do was be herself.

Tanya told the maître d' whom she was meeting, and without pause, he walked her to a corner table. She recognized Douglas Wayne immediately, and as soon as she saw him, she recognized Max Blum, the director. He had five Academy Awards to his credit. Tanya nearly choked when he told her it would be an honor to be working with her, and that he loved her work. She discovered after she sat down that he had read everything she'd ever published in
The New Yorker
, right back to the beginning. He'd read most of her essays, and her book of short stories, and he'd been reviewing tapes of most of what she'd done on the soaps. He wanted to know everything he could about her work, her range, her style, her timing, her sense of humor and drama, and her point of view. And so far, he said, he liked everything he'd seen. There was no question in Max's mind, Douglas had been absolutely right in choosing her to do their script. As far as he was concerned, it was a stroke of genius to have made a deal with her. Douglas thought so, too.

Max and Douglas looked like opposites in every way, as they both stood up to greet Tanya as she approached their table. Max was small, round, and jolly, somewhere in his mid-sixties, and had had an illustrious career in Hollywood for forty years. He was hardly taller than Tanya, and he had a face like a friar, or an elf in a fairy tale. He was warm, friendly, and informal. He was wearing running shoes, with a T-shirt and jeans. The word one would have used to describe him was
cozy.
He was the kind of person you wanted to sit next to, hold hands with, and tell all your secrets to.

Douglas was an entirely different breed. What sprang to mind immediately when she saw him was that he looked like Gary Cooper in his middle years. Tanya knew from all she'd read of him that he was fifty-four years old. He was tall, lean, spare, had an angular face, piercing blue eyes, and gray hair, and the word that would have best described him was
cold.
He had eyes like steel. Max had warm brown eyes, a bald head, and a beard. Douglas had a thick well-cut mane of silvery-gray hair, and was impeccably neat. He was wearing perfectly pressed gray slacks and a blue shirt with a cashmere sweater over his shoulders, and when she happened to look down, Tanya noticed that he was wearing brown alligator loafers. Everything about Douglas spoke of style and money, but what one noticed most about him was that he exuded power. There was no question in anyone's mind, as one glanced at him, that he was a very important person. He looked as though he could have bought and sold the entire room. And as he looked her over, his eyes bored right through her. She was far more comfortable making idle chitchat with Max, who went out of his way to make her feel welcome. Douglas looked as though he were taking her apart and putting her back together piece by piece. It was an acutely uncomfortable feeling.

“You have very small feet” was the first thing Douglas said to her after she sat down, and she had no idea how he could see them, unless he had X-ray vision and was looking through the table. It never occurred to her that he had carefully studied the questionnaire that his secretary had had filled out by her husband and agent, in order to buy her welcome gifts. He had noticed her shoe size on the list, before they bought her the Pratesi robe and slippers. He was the one who had decided they should be pink. Douglas Wayne made all final decisions, even about the most minute details and trivial things. Nothing was trivial to Douglas. He had approved the satin nightgown and robe, too, also in pink. He had told them to get her something beautiful but not sexy. He knew from her agent and scuttlebutt around town that she was married and had kids, and Walt had finally admitted to him that she had nearly passed on this opportunity, in order to stay home and take care of her twin daughters. Walt had told him that Peter had helped her make the right decision, but it had been far from easy. She wasn't the kind of woman you sent a sexy nightgown to. She was the kind of woman you treated with respect and grace.

“Thank you for all the beautiful gifts,” Tanya said, feeling timid. Both of them were such important men that she felt cowed and insignificant in their midst. “Everything fit,” she said with a cautious smile.

“I'm glad to hear it.” Heads would have rolled if it hadn't. But there was no way for Tanya to know that. It was hard to believe looking at Douglas that he was addicted to soaps, particularly the ones she wrote. She could far more easily imagine him hooked on more challenging fare. And she wondered how often people had told him he looked like Gary Cooper. She didn't know him well enough to comment on his looks, but the resemblance was striking. Max on the other hand was looking more and more to her like Happy in the Seven Dwarfs. And she was aware during their early moments of conversation that Douglas hadn't taken his eyes off her since she sat down. She felt as though she were being examined under a microscope, and in fact she was. Nothing escaped his sharp gaze, and it was only when they started to talk about the script that he relaxed and warmed up a little.

He suddenly became animated and excited, and as Tanya made comments about the script, and the changes she'd made, he laughed.

“I love it when you do funny, Tanya. I can always tell when you wrote the script on my favorite soap. If I start to laugh my head off, I know it had to be you.” The script they were currently working on, and the movie they were about to shoot, didn't have a lot of leeway for funny, but she had slipped some in anyway, and they all agreed that it worked. She had done it in just the right doses, to add spice and warmth, which was the trademark of her work. Even when it was funny, it never failed to strike a poignant chord, and exude her natural warmth.

By the time they finished breakfast, she could see that Douglas had relaxed. She couldn't help wondering if he was shy. All the ice she had noticed when she joined them seemed to have melted. As Max said to a friend afterward, with a look of wonder, she had him eating out of the palm of her hand. Douglas looked totally entranced.

“You're a fascinating woman,” he said, studying her intently again. “Your agent said you nearly didn't do the picture, because you didn't want to leave your husband and kids, which seemed nuts to me, and I thought you'd show up here, looking like Mother Earth, in Birkenstocks and braids. Instead, you're a totally sensible person.” She was a pretty, youthful-looking woman, simply dressed. “You don't even look like you have kids, and you were smart enough to leave your husband and kids at home, and make the right decision for your career.”

“Actually, I didn't,” she confessed, slightly taken aback by his comments. Douglas didn't pull any punches, and said whatever he felt. Money and power allowed him to do that. “My agent told you the truth. I was going to turn it down. My husband made the decision before I did. He convinced me it was okay. He's at home, with our twins.”

“Oh God, that's too domestic for me,” Douglas said, and nearly winced, as Max smiled and nodded.

“How old are the twins?” Max asked with interest.

“Seventeen. They're girls. Fraternal twins. And I have a son who's eighteen and starting college today at UCSB.” She beamed proudly as she said it.

“Nice,” Max said, and approved visibly. “I have two daughters myself. They're thirty-two and thirty-five years old, and live in New York. One's an attorney and the other one is a shrink. They're both married, and I have three grandsons.” He looked immensely pleased.

“Very nice,” she returned the compliment to him, and then unconsciously they both turned to Douglas, who returned Tanya's questioning gaze. As he looked at her, he smiled.

“Don't look at me. I've never had kids. I've been married twice, no children. I don't even have a dog, and don't want one. I work too hard, and always have, to spend enough time with children. I suppose I admire whatever prompted you to almost stay home with your children instead of writing the screenplay. But I can't say I understand it. I think there's something noble about work. Think of all the people who are going to see our movie, how many lives you'll touch with what you put in the script, how many people will remember it one day.” Tanya thought he had an inflated sense of his own importance, and theirs. One child seemed far more important to her than a thousand movies. One life. One human being on the planet to reach out to others. She never had a sense of importance about her work. It was just something she enjoyed doing, and that meant a lot to her at times. But her children meant so much more, and Peter. She felt sorry for Douglas if he didn't understand that. He lived for his work. Tanya had a sense that there was something missing in him, some vital human piece that hadn't been included. And yet she found him interesting. He was brilliant, and his mind was sharply honed. But she much preferred Max's innate softness. They were both interesting men, and she suspected it would be exciting working with them, although she hadn't figured out yet what made Douglas tick, and maybe never would. He appeared to be completely driven, there was a fire that burned in him that she didn't understand. You could see it in his eyes.

The three of them talked about the script for the next two hours, and Douglas explained to her what lay ahead, the changes he wanted her to make, the subtleties he still wanted included in the script. He had a fine sense of what it took to make an extraordinary movie. As she listened to him, she began to glimpse the workings of his mind. Douglas was the fire, and Max was far gentler, and tempered the producer's sharpness. Max brought humanity to the movie, Douglas brought a brilliant mind. There was something utterly fascinating about him.

They sat in the Polo Lounge talking about the script until nearly noon, and after that she went back to the bungalow and worked on what they'd said. Douglas had inspired her to take it to a deeper level. She tried to explain it to Peter when he called her, and she couldn't. But whatever he and Max had said to her made sense. She added some wonderful scenes to the script that day. She was still sitting at her desk at six, pleased with a good day's work.

She was surprised that night, as she lay on her bed, mindlessly watching the TiVo, when Douglas called. She told him about the work she'd done all afternoon, and he sounded pleased that she had gotten the drift so quickly. She had sensed, as much as heard, what they were saying, and absorbed it readily.

“It was a good meeting this morning. I think you've taken just the right amount of inspiration from the book, without going overboard. I can't wait to see what you've done today.”

“I'll work on it some more tomorrow,” she promised. She had been thinking of going back to it that night, but knew she was too tired. “If it's not too rough, I'll send it to you on Wednesday morning.”

“Why don't you give it to me over lunch? How's Thursday?” She was startled by the invitation, but she had gotten the sense that morning that they were all going to be working closely. She felt totally at ease with Max, but she wasn't comfortable with Douglas yet. Max was easy. Douglas was as hard as steel, and cold as ice. And yet he was intriguing. Beneath the ice, she instinctively sensed something warmer, a human being behind the mind.

“Thursday would be fine,” Tanya said, feeling slightly awkward. It was easier seeing him with Max, with whom she had more in common. Max was a warm friendly guy, he liked kids, as she did, and everything about him seemed open. Douglas was closed and sealed tight. The temptation was to try and find a way in to discover who he was. But Tanya didn't think anyone had scaled those walls in a long time, maybe ever. Douglas was guarded, and watching for intruders at the gates. She had sensed him observing her closely that morning, as though to find the weak places in her. Douglas was all about power and control and owning people. Tanya was very clear on that. Douglas had bought her services, but he didn't own her. She sensed that he would be dangerous to get close to, unlike Max, who had welcomed her with open arms. Douglas gave away as little as possible of himself.

“I'm giving a dinner for the cast at my place on Wednesday night,” Douglas said then. She had the impression that he was feeling her out. She could sense him circling her, as though trying to assess her. “I'd like you to come. It's only for the major stars, of course, and the supporting cast.” They were a glittering assortment working on this movie. Tanya was anxious to meet them—it would make writing for them easier, if she developed a sense of their style and rhythm. She knew who most of them were, but seeing them in the flesh would be exciting and fun. This was a whole new world for her. She was suddenly glad she'd brought the one black cocktail dress. She had nothing else to wear other than the black pants she'd worn today, and jeans. And given the way Douglas had looked that day, she suspected that dinner at his house would be dressy. “I'll send my car for you. You don't have to get dressed up. They'll all come in jeans.”