Part 4 (1/2)

”Yeah?” I said, but I wasn't sure to whom. Did I need to press a b.u.t.ton to talk? I noticed a little camera on the intercom. So they could see me, but I couldn't see them. That figured.

The intercom buzzed, and the gate slowly swung open. I stepped into the yard.

Like the neighborhood around it, the yard was in transition too, but this time I had a clear idea which direction it was going: down. The landscaping had probably been really impressive in its day, but someone must have laid off the gardener. It was one of those yards where everything looks overgrown and dying at exactly the same time. Nothing had been trimmed, and the gra.s.s was long dead. Then again, California was in the middle of this terrible drought, so pretty much all the gra.s.s in the city was dead.

The residence - somehow more than a house, but less than a mansion - was old too, maybe even from the 1940s. It was some kind of tan adobe with a red terracotta roof. I'm not entirely sure what Spanish Colonial is, but let's say it was that. It could've used a coat of paint, but it's not like it was the setting to some dystopian YA novel.

The front door was already open when I got there, so I stepped inside. It was dark and cool, but not the unnatural cool of air conditioning. Did it have something to do with the architecture? Or maybe it was just the contrast with the mid-day sun.

My eyes adjusted. The floor was red tile, polished so it reflected, and the walls were dark wood paneling with lots of whirls and knots. Antique furnis.h.i.+ngs materialized around me - a bureau by the door, tables and chairs in the room beyond. On one shelf, I saw a set of three differently-sized elephants carved out of jade. The house smelled like something rich and exotic. I'm also not quite sure what patchouli smells like, but let's say it smelled like that. And there was something medicine-y, like menthol.

”Russel,” a voice said.

”That's me,” I said, turning. I'd been determined not to jump again, and I hadn't.

It was a black guy, good-looking, clean-cut, early thirties maybe, well-dressed in slacks and a b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt - nice, but not that nice. He had good posture and even better eye contact.

”I'm Lewis, Mr. Brander's personal a.s.sistant,” the guy said. ”We spoke on the phone?”

”Right! Hi, there.” I shook his hand. At the same time, I couldn't resist glancing down at his shoes. But since I didn't know anything about shoes, that didn't really tell me anything. Or maybe it did: they could've used a bit of polish, which made me feel better. I also tried to smell him, to see if he wore cologne, or even Gold Bond Ultimate Comfort, but I couldn't smell anything at all.

”Mr. Brander is waiting for you in his office,” Lewis said.

I followed him deeper into the house. I caught the lingering scent of bleach, as if someone had cleaned recently. Being here felt a little like I was going back in time again, to the days of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, or maybe just a video I'd once seen for that old Eagles song ”Hotel California.”

My footsteps echoed on the tile, but his didn't (softer soles?). I knew I should still be nervous, and I was, but not like I expected. Maybe it was the fact that this was so wildly out of my experience. It wasn't like going on a first date, or pining for some hot guy in French cla.s.s. So I didn't really know how to react. Or maybe my emotions hadn't caught up with me yet - they were lagging behind me, wandering like a wide-eyed puppy finally off its leash.

Lewis led me into Mr. Brander's home office. There was a big picture window opposite the doorway and the sun was s.h.i.+ning in, and after the darkness of the hallway, my eyes had to adjust again.

The first thing I noticed were the framed movie posters on the walls, of all the movies I'd seen on IMDb the night before. In between the posters, there were framed pictures of people: mostly men, mostly young, mostly very attractive. There were shelves too, built-ins, with mementos on them. I saw awards - I spotted a Golden Globe, and an Emmy, but no Oscars - and weird things like an antique hookah, a stuffed owl, and a packet of old Melachrino cigarettes encased in acrylic. It was probably all stuff that had a story behind it.

A room full of memories.

The sunlight from the window caught dust particles hanging in the air.

On the other side of those particles, a man sat at an old wooden desk.

”Mr. Brander?” Lewis said, and the man turned, and I finally made out his face.

What a face! It should have been staring back at me from Mount Rushmore: old and chiseled and distinguished, and also somehow out of time. It wasn't just that he was old - though he was old, in his eighties at least, with thick white hair. It was that he seemed like someone from a truly different era, like how the faces of actors from the 1950s really do seem different from the faces of actors now. Mr. Brander was handsome, or at least had been handsome, but it was an exaggeration of a face.

He rolled back away from the desk. It was only then that I realized he was in a wheelchair. (If his face was old-fas.h.i.+oned, his wheelchair was state-of-the-art: sleek and small and expensive.) ”Russel,” he said. He hadn't shouted, but his rumble of a voice filled the room as if from speakers. ”Thank you so much for coming.”

”It's very nice to meet you,” I said, stepping forward and offering him my hand.

We shook, and that's when I noticed that unlike Lewis, Mr. Brander had a smell, or at least a hint of one. Unfortunately, it was pee. I looked down to check out his shoes too, but he wasn't wearing any, only leather slippers tucked into the footrests of the wheelchair. They were nice slippers at least.

None of this made any sense. Mr. Brander was a real producer with a long list of impressive credits. He'd won a Golden Globe, for G.o.d's sake. He'd invited me to his house to talk about producing my screenplay, and it had clearly once been a pretty nice place. His personal a.s.sistant had good posture and even better eye contact. But the man himself was older than the pyramids, in a wheelchair, and smelled like pee. It was such a weird mix of contradictions.

Or maybe there weren't any real contradictions. Maybe Mr. Brander was just a has-been. I looked back at the posters on the walls of his office. Sally Field. Robert Redford. Burt Reynolds. These were old actors. The movies Mr. Brander produced had been back in the 1970s (or earlier). Why hadn't that occurred to me the night before when Kevin and I had looked him up on IMDb? It probably explained the neighborhood too. Back when he bought the place, it had probably been really nice, but that was so long ago the whole area had had time to take a downturn and was now even starting to get nice again.

I was such an idiot. Did I really think becoming a screenwriter would be this easy? Even in movies about Hollywood, where things probably aren't anything like real life, it's never this easy for screenwriters to break in. There's at least a ”hard at work” montage.

”Oh, dear,” Mr. Brander said. ”I've horrified you.” His voice was deep, but gentle, soothing. ”You didn't expect me to be so old. Or in this chair.”

”What?” I said. ”No! Not at all.” I almost said, ”I have a really good friend who has facial scarring, and he's disabled too,” but I think that would've made things even more awkward.

”Then there's this old house,” Mr. Brander went on. ”I swear, all I need is a crazy sister, and suddenly it's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

I smiled.

”You know Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” he said.

”Of course,” I said. I almost said, ”Doesn't everyone?” Then I remembered that the movie was mostly a ”gay” thing - campy.

Mr. Brander was gay, of course. I'd known that from the dark wood and antiques in the other rooms - the masculinity of the house - and also the good-looking, smiling men in the photos on the walls and shelves. Then there was the fact that he was interested in my screenplay in the first place. This wasn't really a realization: I'd sort of a.s.sumed it all along.

”I worked with Bette Davis,” Mr. Brander said, nodding to the star of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? on a poster on the wall (for a movie I'd never heard of). ”I've worked with a lot of movie stars, and they all have charisma, but Bette was different. She wasn't beautiful exactly, but you couldn't not look at her. More than Marilyn, more than Marlene. She was a walking train wreck, always about to crash. You couldn't look away.”

”That's funny,” I said, but I didn't laugh.

”Please sit down,” Mr. Brander said, nodding to a chair opposite him. ”Can we get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?” I looked over at Lewis, who I hadn't realized was still standing in the doorway.

”Uh, a gla.s.s of ice water?” I said. By this point, his perfect posture was kind of annoying me.

”Sure thing,” Lewis said, and then he withdrew.

When he was gone, Mr. Brander picked up a small stuffed monkey from the windowsill. It was one of the wind-up kind with the cymbals and the red fez cap, but he didn't wind it up.

Finally, he set it down and looked at me again. ”Russel, let me be completely honest with you. I'm old. That's obvious, isn't it?” He laughed, so I smiled. ”I haven't produced a movie in more than twenty years. But I produced a lot of movies back in the day. Some of them were quite successful, and one or two of them were even pretty good!” Now I laughed too. ”But I never produced the movie I truly wanted to produce. I feel like I never made the mark I wanted to make. Now I'm old, but I'm not dead yet. I know how to produce movies. And the one movie I want to produce before I die is A Cup of Joe.”

Mr. Brander's voice was hypnotic, seductive almost, ma.s.saging me with its timbre. I didn't know how to react. Maybe this crazy old man might still be able to produce my screenplay after all. Clint Eastwood was still making movies at age eighty-whatever. On the other hand, Clint Eastwood didn't smell like pee (presumably).

”You're an excellent writer,” Mr. Brander said. He nodded to my screenplay, which I hadn't noticed on his desk before. It was dog-eared, and the cover was all marked up. There's a rumor about Hollywood that producers never actually read screenplays: they have their ”readers” read screenplays for them, and then those readers write up ”coverage,” which is like a synopsis and which also gives the screenplay's supposed strengths and weaknesses. Mr. Brander may have been older than the Grand Canyon, but at least he'd actually read my screenplay himself.

”There's a freshness to this script that I haven't seen before,” he went on. ”Whether I make it or someone else does, it's going to make a very fine movie.”

”Thanks,” I said, blus.h.i.+ng. This was literally the first time anyone who wasn't a friend had said anything like that about my writing. Now I knew what people meant when they said, ”Flattery will get you everywhere.” At that point, I would have washed all the windows in his house if he'd asked.

But what did it matter if he liked my script? He was a smelly old man in a wheelchair, locked away in a dusty old house. He couldn't actually get it made. Could he?

”You're not sure about me,” Mr. Brander said, and I was impressed by his ability to know what I was thinking (and a little worried he'd also know I was thinking about how he smelled). ”That's okay, I wouldn't be either. But at least let me make my case.”

I nodded. Right then, Lewis returned with my water - actually a small bottle of Evian with a gla.s.s of ice (and a cup of tea for Mr. Brander). He left again, but I had a feeling that he was lingering somewhere just outside.

”When I was active in Hollywood, there were people who wanted to make movies about gay people. A few of them even did. Did you ever see a film called Making Love?”

I shook my head no.