The Comedy Writer (20 page)

That day on my machine I had another message from the Gus guy. He “desperately” wanted me to call him back about the suicide woman, he said. He needed “information.” Around seven the phone rang again and I was afraid to answer.

“Adam Levine calling for Henry Halloran,” a woman said.

I picked up. “This is he.”

I was put on hold for five minutes, then Levine's new assistant Sheri came back. “I'm sorry, Henry. Adam's going to have to call you back. He picked up another line.”

“I'll be here.”

At 7:45 she called back and a moment later connected me with Levine in his car.

“Sonya Abrams in Ted Bowman's office called. I gave her your script over the weekend and she loved it.”

“Great.”

“Don't get your hopes up. I'm not so sure you want to be in business with this guy.”

“Why not?”

“Bad guy.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Asshole?”

“If you go by all your senses alone, yeah. But he does get movies made.”

“How bad we talking?”

“Hitler without the conscience.”

“Nice.”

“The worst human being in Hollywood, hands down.”

“Give me an example.”

“He's been married seven times, he still does blow, he's fucked every actress who's ever worked for him, he also fucks boys; for that matter, he's fucked everybody he ever knew in one way or another, he takes months to read scripts—”

“Months?!”

Levine laughed, then he wasn't there. As I hung the phone up, it rang. “Sorry,” he said, “I'm going over Coldwater. Bowman's also been known to punch out writers for turning in bad scripts or late scripts or—”

“But he gets movies made?”

“He made
Coma Cop.”

“Set it up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Levine, I haven't had a decent meeting in five weeks. Why the hell wouldn't I want you to set up a meeting with a guy who gets movies made?”

“All right, but I warned you.”

“I've been warned.”

Levine's voice started to break up. 'Tm losing you again. I'll have Sheri call you with the details.”

This Ted Bowman meeting wasn't the greatest thing that ever happened to me, but it was something to talk about, so I tried Jenna again at the
Times
and to my surprise she picked up. She was chilly and accepted my apology but wouldn't allow me to explain.

“It's not what it seems.”

“Just let it go, Henry.”

I was pleased to do this.

“Maybe we should go out again,” I said.

“Maybe we shouldn't.”

“Right, but maybe we should.”

“And I say we shouldn't.”

“I can give you two 'shoulds' for every one of your 'shouldn'ts.' “

“Not interested in hearing them.”

“Why don't we just go to lunch this week?”

“My lunches are booked.”

“Then how about—”

“Dinners, too.”

“I was going to say breakfast.”

“Don't eat breakfast.”

“Midnight snack?”

“I'm going to hang up.”

“Would you just hold on a second?”

She hung up. I waited twenty minutes to call back. It was a head fake, gave her time to cool down. She was laughing as she answered.

“Give me a chance to explain what happened.”

“You don't have to. I can figure it out myself.”

“Believe it or not, I have an explanation. It's not pretty, but please listen to it.”

“I'm really busy.”

“Wait a second. You're a journalist, aren't you? Be a little open-minded here.”

“Let me put this another way: I wasn't that interested in you to begin with.”

“Oh, that felt good.”

“I'm just being honest, Henry. But even though I wasn't that interested, there was something about you I found entertaining. So I decided to give you a chance. I gave you
two
chances. And what happened? First you stand me up altogether—granted, that one wasn't your fault—and then you try to—”

“No, I didn't. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I just told her that to get rid of her. I didn't really expect …”

“Me to be such a slut?”

“Don't be sexist—I was doing it, too. Now, come on, I want to see you again, we have a lot in common.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Well … we both aspire to write, we … we want to write … well, we probably have a lot more in common than you know about. Go ahead, ask me my opinion on anything, I'll bet we're in agreement.”

“What do you think of synchronized swimming?”

“Stupidest thing I've ever seen.”

“I think it's great.”

“I mean stupid in the sense that it's only on during the Olympics. It should be televised weekly, like
Monday Night Football'

“See?”

“You can't really like that shit.”

“Wrong again, Hank. I think it's beautiful. It's like ballet, except there's competition and pressure and winners and losers. I like that.”

“Maybe you're right, maybe we shouldn't go out. I mean if we both don't like synchronized swimming, what kind of future would we have?”

She sniffed.

“So that's it, huh?”

“Look, I'm sure your friends think you're a great guy—”

“Stop it. I liked you better when you were tactless.”

“You didn't let me finish.”

She giggled, which irritated me; a mini-Amanda scene.

She said, “I knew we had nothing in common when I saw that your bed was on the floor.”

“Really?”

“That says a lot about a guy.”

“You know what it tells me? It tells me the guy's bed frame is fucking bent. Where do you come up with these things anyway? Remember you told me the only reason I got a second chance was because a couple streetlights blinked off on your way home? It must've meant something, huh?”

“Whatever.”

“I got news for you, Jenna. It meant your headlights are pointing up. Those streetlights have sensors. They're affected by light— sunlight preferably—but crooked headlights turn them off, too. So you can get your high beams fixed and stop reading so damn much into your stupid signs.”

“Are you through?”

“Yes.”

'Then goodbye.”

“Okay.”

I hung up and looked at the phone. But of course it didn't ring.

I pumped a dollop into the cup Dr. Stein had given me and trudged out the door to stay inside the twenty-minute delivery time allotted for an accurate sperm count. Herb Silverman was out front catching rays again. He held up a beer. “Hey, fucky! Let's chase pussy tonight!” I waved my sperm and pretended not to hear.

As I was getting out of my car on Third Street, she walked past sipping a cardboard cup of coffee. Shiny brown hair, eyes like Amanda's, presumably a great body disguised in loose jeans and a Northwestern sweatshirt.

“Nice shirt,” she said.

I was wearing a T-shirt that said FAILURE. (A band.) I probably could have sucked it up and gotten over her, if only she hadn't caught me glancing back and thrown me the smirk. The jiz sample was rapidly cooling, but I was sick about this girl, so I popped into a market, all the time keeping an eye on her. I grabbed a newspaper and a cellophane-sealed hunk of oat bran, held out a handful of change, which the clerk graciously counted out for me while I watched Miss Northwestern cross the street. She stopped in front of a community center. Five or six people were hanging around smoking. What the hell kind of group was this, and could I join? Then I got it. What else would a bunch of cigarette-smoking, coffee-guzzling twenty-seven-year-olds be doing at eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning in L.A.?

AA.

Perfect. I
could
join them.

A man with a red beard poked his head out, said something, and they all followed him back in. For a moment I envied them their addictions, not just because it put them in the room with Miss Northwestern. I imagined how great it would be to simplify my problems, to narrow it down to one thing, to know that if I could just knock off the booze or the drugs or the kleptomania or the food, everything would be okay.

I stood across the street, pretending to peruse the front page, trying to get up the courage to join them. This would be good for me, anything to get my mind off Amanda and Jenna. I knew it was undignified, but surely I wouldn't be the only randy sot in there trying to get pooned. Hollywood AA meetings were legendary meat markets.

A compromise: I'd check Boggsie's stats. Three or more hits and I'd go in. Less and I'd hit the road. I peeked into the sports section: three for five and Roger got the win. I placed my sperm in the car and ran across the street.

As I walked in, all heads turned my way. More heads than I'd anticipated. Fifty at least, almost all of them young and, for drunks, healthy-looking. I didn't see my girl—I didn't see anything. A burst of stage fright hit me, tunnel vision ensued. I needed to find a seat and hunker down. The stares didn't quit, but I tried to calm myself. We were all in the same boat—addicts—they'd each had to enter this room for the first time, too. I climbed over ten people to reach the lone empty folding chair. As soon as I got settled, Red Beard, standing up front, apparently the soberest of them all, spoke: “Excuse me, can I help you?”

It dawned on me that maybe these people
didrit want me here.

Maybe they'd all started out together and felt comfortable confessing their alcohol-and-cocaine-and-crystal-meth-and-I-stole-Mom's-china stories to each other, but didn't welcome a stranger in their midst.

“Urn, I just want to sit in … if that's okay.”

Tee-hees from all sides.

Beard peered over his glasses. “Do you know what we're doing here?”

The tunnel vision narrowed. I could only see the man's eyes now; I mustered a lame shrug.

“Traffic school,” he said.

My humiliation turned the room into a dungeon of laughs.

I worked my way back through the room of speeders and red light runners. At the door I glanced over my shoulder and magically locked eyes with the Northwestern one. She shook her head, amazed by my stupidity.

Outside I waited around reading the paper, insanely hoping that she'd come looking for me. After a few minutes, I knew it wasn't going to happen and realized that if I didn't hit the road, I was going to scare the shit out of her. My twenty minutes were up, the sperm was dead; I tossed the plastic cup into the backseat with all my other garbage and drove off.

I was still jacked up from my close call with the girl, so when I got home I made plans to hit the town with Silverman later on. Inside I had a few more hang-ups on my machine. Gus, I presumed. I read the paper, wrote for a few hours, put the notebooks back in the fridge, then showered and cut open my toothpaste tube to scrape out one last gob. I ate a chunk of cheese and an apple, put on pleated slacks, my FLOYD THE BARBER T-shirt, and a sport coat. I
returned to Carl's Market but balked at the prices. Eight-ninety-five for deodorant? I should get my sweat glands removed for that. I ducked down in the aisle, drenched my pits with Ban Basic neutral scent. Flipping through a few magazines, I found one with an interesting cologne and folded the page around my neck. Hopeful now, I grabbed a box of Tic Tacs, dropped by the condom display. Prices had zoomed. The latex ones were in twelve-packs and went for around ten dollars. Extra-thick heavyweight lambskins were cheaper, but you might as well wear a batting doughnut. I busted open a carton of Trojans, taking out just one. I grabbed two beers, headed for the counter. A knockout at the register. Suddenly a lone rubber seemed pathetic. I considered going back for the extra-large ones, but sucked up the courage to face her. She looked at the two beers and the rubber and said, “Good for you. Everything in moderation.”

We took Sixth Street, passing through Hancock Park (Jenna country), then Koreatown, then a Spanish neighborhood where crowds of people stood around, apparently doing nothing. Silverman pointed out a place called Maria's Donuts and Chinese Food, which I wanted to stop at, but we kept going until we got to an art deco diner car full of upscale, self-conscious artsy types, mostly male with stand-up-comic-style suits and greased-back ponytails. It was a “pecker party,” Silverman said, so we downed our drinks and drove to a large warehouse in the skid row area for a “concert.”

This was the kind of crowd where in a half hour you could round up a dozen people to go on a homicidal spree. A band called Sandy Duncan's Eye was screaming out something on a stage in the corner, but nobody was paying much attention. Everyone was dressed in black, like a convention of clergy, but these clerics wore
low-cut blouses or just bras, and although they were in agreement about style, no one seemed happy about it.

“This is a pretty good concert,” Herb said, “except for one thing.”

“The band?”

“It's too fucking dark to see who's here.”

“Let's go,” I said. “I want to get something to eat.”

“Eatin's cheatin'.”

“But I'm starved.”

“There's a pork chop in every drink.”

The draft beer was served in cheap paper cups that stood up to liquid about as well as a Communion wafer. Within minutes my fingers were through and then the bottom gave out onto my shoes.

“Come on, this place sucks.”