Adulation (30 page)

“Ken, you told me to do more of the same, so that’s what I did. Now you’re telling me they wantedsomething different?”

“I guess the tides are turning and things aren’t as surefire as they once were,” said Ken.

Danny fumed. “Let’s pitch it to HBO. They’ve always had the balls to show some decenttelevision.”

“If it makes you feel better, David Kelley and Chuck Lorre just had their pilots rejected as well,and Chuck’s got the two hottest shows on television right now. That is, until Charlie Sheen went batshitcrazy.”

Danny couldn’t help but feel for the guy—he was an addict, after all; besides, he’d met Charlie’sfather, Martin, on several occasions and held him in high regard.

“What the fuck
 
did
 
get picked up, then?”

Ken seemed hesitant to answer. “You don’t know?”

“What?”

“Seriously, you don’t know?”

Danny threw his hands up in surrender.

“Grapevine says that Charlene was approached to lead a one-hour drama.”

He gaped at Ken as an inner thunder began to rumble. “Say that again?”

“High-profile woman making it in a corporate world, newly divorced. Something like that. Not quite
 
The Good Wife
, but of that caliber.”

“And network television wants it,” Danny said, more like a statement than a question.

Ken nodded. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you this.”

Danny stood up and showed Ken his cigarette. “I need to go outside and smoke this now.” He raced out the building and lit it, pacing back and forth in the shade and taking long drags—he was starting to feel a burning inside his lungs every time he did so. One moment later, Ken joined him with a cigar.

“Listen, Danny. It sucks. So you just come up with a new idea for a show and we pitch that. Or forget television and work on another screenplay. You’ll have offers up the yin-yang now that you’re Academy Award winner Danny Masters. Or go ahead and try HBO. Surely they’ll welcome you with open arms.”

“I just wanna keep writing things that people wanna watch. Oh God, this is gonna be like the
 
Sports Illustrated
 
curse, isn’t it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Every time an athlete makes the cover of
Sports Illustrated
, something bad happens—they get a season-ending injury, they go into a slump, they choke in the championship game, a scandal breaks out, you name it.”

Ken scoffed. “Please.”

“Or maybe
 
Exposed
 
was the last good thing. Maybe I’ve run out of ideas.”

“That’s even stupider than the
 
Sports Illustrated
 
thing. Look, Danny. You’ve had a phenomenal career. It’s rare to go through an entire career without a single rejection. Don’t sweat it, man. You can write your own ticket right now.”

“Whatever,” Danny said as he flicked the butt on the ground and headed for the door. He held it open for Ken, who bent over to pick up the butt and snuffed it out completely before putting it in the trash

can.

“The building gets fined for littering,” said Ken.

Danny immediately felt ashamed for his behavior. Rather than follow Ken back upstairs to his office, he said, “I’ve got some calls to make. Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

“That’s all for now. Seriously, Danny. This is not a big deal.”

He looked at Ken incredulously. “Not a big deal? God, wait until the word gets out that Danny Masters’s new show flopped before it even got out of the gate. Hell, before the Oscar accumulated dust.”

Back at his office, Danny’s first call was to Jackson Dobbs, who had left several voice mails for him.

“You know what?” said Danny. “I’m gonna throw my MacBook out the window. Then I’m gonnaapply for a job at a movie theater ripping tickets because that’s the only other thing I’m qualified to do.”

Jackson laughed, but out of frustration. “Stop being so fucking dramatic and go write something. But first, I just wanted to tell you that the script book has a release date for April first.”

“What? I thought it was coming out sometime in June.”

“Publisher decided to ride the wave of your Oscar win.”

Danny’s agent had sold the idea of a compilation of scripts to a publisher shortly before
 
Exposed
premiered, when the screenplay had been leaked onto the Internet, but he had forgotten about it in thewake of the premiere and everything else that had happened. His first thought was that April Fool’s Daywas appropriate. He was also happy the publisher changed the title from
 
The Danny Masters Masters
 
to
 
The Danny Masters Best.

An idea came to mind.

“What do you think about my doing a book-signing tour?” asked Danny.

He could practically hear Jackson’s wheels spinning with approval. “I like it. How many cities?”

“I was thinking just New York.”

“Why just New York?”

“Because I don’t have time to do a cross-country tour.”

“You just said you’re an unemployed writer.”

“And New York is where all the action is at. I was thinking Long Island too. You know, kind of ahometown thing.” He could feel his face flushing from the blatant lie he was telling, certain that Jacksonwas seeing right through it over the phone, albeit clueless to his motives.

“Maybe. I’ll talk to a few people about it. You should at least get in the entire Northeast, maybe Chicago or St.  Louis along the way, DC... I’ll check out the cities with the best film schools.”

Danny shuddered at the thought of schlepping around the country, every day away from Ella onemore day he would never get back. He only hoped the traveling, the wrist cramps, the posing for picturesand taking questions would be worthwhile if he could just find Sunny and make things right with her, as ifshe were the key to making every part of his life work in harmony, the glue that held it all together. Suchthinking was crazy, he knew, but what choice did he have?

For the rest of the day Danny’s thoughts festered with rejection, Charlene’s new show, and ananxiety that, despite having just won an Academy Award, he could become obsolete. Any spark of energyfrom the book tour idea had already been extinguished by his inner skeptic, who posited that Sunnywouldn’t want to be anywhere near him. There were a lot of bookstores in New York. Hell, how did heknow she still worked in one of them? Maybe she quit or was laid off. Or maybe she wasn’t living on Long Island anymore. And why, after all this time, did he still care?

Forget Sunny.

Charlene’s question from the morning after the awards echoed in his mind: What more was there? He had to come up with something new but had no idea what that looked like. If this pilot rejection wasany indication, he’d already peaked. Anything else would be jumping the shark. He’d been reallypassionate about
 
Exposed
—in fact, he’d been disappointed to type the words
 
THE END
 
when he’dfinally called it finished. He’d been so eager to see that  film. What did he want to see these days, on thesmall or big screen? What would get him excited to write again?

Later that evening, he went to Charlene’s place, where she was packing to do a location shoot in Vancouver. Danny sat on the edge of the bed and watched her; she’d already done her hair and makeup incase the papa-
rat
-zi or a fan with a smartphone caught her at the airport. Something about this irked him.

“What are you working on these days?” he asked, feeling contentious and knowing all too well thathe was baiting her right off the bat, inviting a fight.

“The HBO miniseries about Gloria Steinem, remember?”

“Gloria Steinem was from Canada?”

Charlene shot him a look, one that Danny could’ve sworn said
jackass
, before she replied,

“Location outsourcing.”

“Since when does HBO need to outsource?”

“I guess this crap economy has finally hit everyone.”

Danny huffed. “That’ll be the day,” he muttered. He continued to watch her, almost with an air of

suspicion. “I thought your assistant did this kind of thing for you.”

“She went ahead to Vancouver without me. Geez, Danny, you’re acting like you’re new in town.”

“My pilot got rejected. Ken told me earlier today.”

Charlene stopped in mid-fold, dropped the garment on top of the open suitcase, and joined him at the edge of the bed.

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

“Wish I was. I think it’s my first rejection since I was twenty.”

“That’s a helluva winning streak.”

Danny’s nod turned into a shrug.

“Did they say why?” she asked.

“Just didn’t like it, I guess. Although here’s the interesting thing,” he began as he turned slightly to face her, knowing he was about to throw the match on the gasoline. “Ken said the network is picking up a new one-hour drama.”

Charlene looked down and pressed her lips tight, her face turning pink.

“You know anything about a new show, Char?” His tone sounded accusatory, like he’d caught her cheating on him. “A supposed knockoff of
 
The Good Wife
?”

“Ken got bad intel. Nothing’s set in stone. We haven’t even started shooting a pilot. And it’s nothing like
 
The Good Wife
.”

“Oh, so someone’s pilot script got accepted? That’s good to hear.”

“Danny, stop.”

He played dumb. “Stop what?”

“Stop your holier-than-thou attitude.” She stood up and waved her hand at him in a chopping motion. “
This.
 
This is why I didn’t tell you. So they passed over your show for mine. It’s not like you’re falling into obscurity. Hell, the least you could do is be happy for me.”

Danny rose from the bed as well. “You
 
knew
 
they were passing over my show, and you didn’t tell me? For fuck’s sake, Char, you could’ve just castrated me instead of stabbing me in the back. Then you could’ve played yourself in the Lifetime Movie:
 
Charlene’s Got ’Em by the Balls
.”

One second passed. One full second of Now.

She smacked him. Right across his face.

It sounded like the pop of a firecracker, and burned like one too.

He stood there, stunned. The entire left side of his face throbbed and stung. Charlene took a step back, her face a shade of crimson, crumpling as tears came to her.

“You have said some mean things to me, Danny Masters, but that is the
 
worst
. In fact, that is the most disgusting thing anyone has ever said to me.
 
Ever
.”

It wasn’t the slap in the face that made him regret it. He knew he’d crossed the line in that one second between the remark and her reaction. If only he’d known the second
 
before
 
the words came out of his mouth.

“Where do you get off?” she asked. “Really, what makes you so goddamn superior—because you have an Oscar now? No, it can’t be that, because you’ve always been a smug, superior asshole.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. It was out of line and you didn’t deserve it.” He wanted to take her into his arms and cradle her, beg her forgiveness, but she wouldn’t let him.

She went back to her suitcase and resumed packing for no other reason than to keep herself from hitting him again, he guessed. Probably not more than a few minutes of silence passed, but to Danny it felt like hours. He’d been leaning against a bureau, holding his cheek all the while. They’d had knock-down, drag-out shouting matches before. They’d exchanged nasty-isms. But never,
 
never
 
had one raised a hand to the other. He tentatively approached her, holding his arms out as if to surrender.  When he was next to her, he tried to touch her shoulder, but she jerked it away.

“Char,” he said softly, practically in a whisper. He didn’t want to lose her again, he realized, but not for the same reasons as the other times. No, something else was begging him to make it work this time, to stay together. Something inside him was clamoring to settle down. “I’m sorry. I really am. What I said was mean and degrading and wrong. I didn’t think before I spoke. I’ve got to stop that.”