Part 28 (1/2)
”Yeah, I got that, but how come I didn't hear about it until now? I thought we were friends.”
”We are friends, Oz, and that's why you're the first person to see it. I haven't even shown it to Annabel yet. No one even knows I was working on it. For three years I got up every morning at dawn and went out to the garage and typed my f.u.c.king heart out and didn't tell a soul.” He looked at the script with pained affection. ”It's my last chance, man. This is it. Either it goes or I go. You know?”
Ozzie nodded, convinced. Slipped the script back inside its folder. Sipped his Scotch. Drummed five stout fingers on the folder.
”What's it about?”
”It's a Western.”
”A Western.”
”Yeah. I want you to read it. Tell me what you think. I'm talking dead honesty here. No dressing it up.”
”As soon as I get home tonight. It'll be my pleasure.”
Frank sat down at the table, visibly relaxed. He smiled and held up his tumbler. They toasted and drank. Through the kitchen window they would have looked like two friends celebrating an old sports victory or reliving past s.e.xual triumphs. The fact that within twelve hours one man would be dead by accident never would have occurred to an onlooker.
He hadn't planned on stealing the script. But after Frank died so suddenly, things went crazy. Ozzie showed the script around, planning to give Frank a writing credit if the movie got made. But by the time production started so many people a.s.sumed it was his that he started to feel the same way. Credits got traded around all the time in the business, he told himself. Frank was dead. What difference did it make? Annabel's family had tons of dough. Frank wrote it-but he would have wanted it to get made, right? Even if that meant someone else-his closest friend-taking the credit.
This is what Ozzie told himself.
That night they poured more drinks and resumed their usual talk, a gregarious bl.u.s.ter of references to movies, mysterious business interests and actresses they'd like to screw. When the doorbell rang, Frank jumped up to get it. Just before he left the kitchen he paused, hands spread on the door frame.
”One more thing, Oz.” He spoke very slowly, looking not at the script but straight into his friend's eyes. ”Be careful with that. It's the only copy.”
Jesus f.u.c.k!
Ozzie stood in the booth and shook his head-once, twice, hard, like a person trying to get rid of water trapped in his inner ear. G.o.dd.a.m.n memory. It's like you spend the first two-thirds of your life as a walking, talking hard-on-s.e.x constantly on the brain, all other thoughts a sideshow-then the last third you can't even concentrate long enough to get it up for a decent w.a.n.k.
He resolved to start from scratch. The lube bottle farted out another dollop of goo. Ozzie picked up the magazine and looked more closely at the girl in the brown suede skirt. ”When Dana isn't playing for the camera, she likes fast cars and even faster men,” read the text. ”'I lost my virginity to my driving instructor when I was sixteen,' says the Mancunian hottie, 'and since then I always get turned on when I'm in the driver's seat.'” Ozzie felt his mind lock in and begin to creep forward. He put himself in the pa.s.senger's seat, reaching over and slipping his hand under the brown suede skirt. Ah, yes...h.e.l.lo, Dana.
She couldn't wait to see him. Could. Not. Wait. Another. Second. Meredith wished she could commandeer the plane and fly it over the ocean herself. And now, of course, because of her impatience, the flight was delayed. And not just a few minutes but an hour. Another whole hour to add to the thirty-five years she had already spent without him. Which was fine before she knew him-but not anymore. Now there was no time to waste. Meredith had never felt so insanely impatient to see someone in her life.
The best of it was this: since Joe had seen her off in Florence she had not felt the Quest even once. Her sperm bandit days were over. Cured (dare she think it?) by love.
”Look at you!” her mother had said when seeing her off with Jeffrey at airport security several minutes before. ”You're positively twitterpated.” She had squeezed Meredith's cheeks and tousled her hair. ”Mind you, don't get too happy and start eating everything in sight,” she added, patting Meredith's left hip. ”That always used to happen to me when I fell in love. My bottom would grow to twice its natural size.”
Meredith prepared to say something caustic, but before she could, her mother let out a theatrical whoop and slapped Jeffrey's hand away from her nether regions.
”Darling! I told you, not in public.”
”Just checking to see if you care for me.”
”Ooh, my little p.o.o.psie-woopsie.” Irma began nuzzling his ear and tickling him around the middle.
Meredith rolled her eyes and took her place in the security line.
Nearly an hour had pa.s.sed since then and she was still no geographically closer to her own p.o.o.psie-woopsie.
Why, she wondered, did infatuation turn people into such idiots? It was like Christmas-excruciatingly tacky unless you were in the middle of it, in which case there was nothing lovelier. She thought of Mish, staying behind with Barnaby and Shane to tend to the birds of prey in that wonky cottage in the Cotswolds. Life, she decided, was inexplicably weird.
And of course there was Ozzie. Surprisingly he had made more than a token appearance at the wrap party. He was there when Meredith arrived with her mother and Jeffrey. The place-a new club near Irma's flat specializing in film types (there was a retrofitted movie theater decked out with great leather armchairs and footrests)-was packed with people Meredith recognized from the shoot. Still smarting from the way she'd been fired, Meredith ducked Richard Gla.s.s and huddled at a corner table with Mish, sending Barnaby back and forth to the bar for more vodka tonics.
”Your mother is in fine form,” Mish observed, and Meredith saw she was right.
Irma swept among the clumps of people with the Earl of Dorgi in tow. Everywhere she stopped she seemed to cause a little scene of hilarity-uproarious laughter and spontaneous dancing broke out in her wake. Meredith smiled and, for the first time she could remember, took pleasure in the effects of her mother's charm. Then Ozzie came into view. He and Irma air-kissed and then Kathleen took a turn. The actress leaned down and whispered something into Irma's wig. From her vantage point Meredith could see something between them-either a bond had been formed or a blockage had been removed, or both. Ozzie had somehow facilitated a truce.
He smiled and scanned the room with his eyes. Meredith froze, waiting to be spotted.
”Is that him?” Mish gripped her forearm.
”Who?”
”Oh, f.u.c.k off. You know who. Whats.h.i.+sface. The Wizard of Oz. Hugh Hefner. Donald Trump. Alpha-boy. Mister f.u.c.k-Off Producer guy. The Italian mystery man.”
”He's not Italian; he just happens to live in Italy.”
Just then his eyes fell on her. He began to push through the crowd like an unpenned bull.
”Whatever. Oh my G.o.d, look, he's totally coming over here.”
”Ow!” Meredith yanked her arm away and examined it to see if Mish's fingernails had broken the skin.
”h.e.l.lo, ladies.”
Before Meredith knew it, Mish was having her hand kissed and giggling like a small-town deb at a Texas swan ball. Mish lived to have her hand kissed.
”Ozzie.”
”May I steal you for a moment?” he said.
Outside on the roof deck he sipped his Campari and regarded her jealously. It was almost raining.
”That was quite a dramatic exit.”
Meredith shrugged. ”I had to go.”
”You might have left a note.”
”Yeah. I might have. I wish I could tell you I was sorry.”
They stood for a moment in the drizzly silence. The conversation limped on.
”I suppose you think I should have told you earlier.”
”Really?” Meredith felt her blood begin to rise. ”Because I don't suppose you should suppose to know what I'm supposedly thinking at all.”