An American Love Story (27 page)

“They don’t want to go to California,” Simon said.

“They’re businessmen, not artists,” Bambi said. “I would go to L.A. like a shot. That’s where it’s all happening.”

“You’d leave me?” Simon said. He was smiling because he knew she never would.

“Of course not. But … I was just thinking that what we ought to do would be to open another Simon Sez in Hollywood. We’d have better audiences, better talent, and make more money.”

“What about this one?” Simon asked.

“We could sell it to Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Bambi said. “We’d keep on using the same name in L.A. of course.”

“You’re serious,” Simon said, surprised.

“Dead serious.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I don’t know. It was amorphously moving around in my head, and then, finally, it came to me.”

“It’s not such a bad idea,” Buck said.

“But, a slight problem, gang; I’m perfectly happy here,” Simon said.

“We’d
be
somebody there,” Bambi said wistfully.

“We’re somebody here.”

“That’s the point. When you’re successful you go for more. I could be discovered in Hollywood. There are influential people all over the place. Maybe I’d get a record deal, or maybe I would become a writer. Judd loves my dramatic sketches, and so do you. It’s easy to write for television—do you see that junk they put on?” The more she talked the more excited she got. “Picture Simon Sez with a line outside waiting to get in. Movie stars trying to use their clout to get a good table, while you stand there, dispensing favors. Friends with everybody. The ‘magical kingdom …’ ”

“What’s the magical kingdom?” Buck asked.

“Something private,” Simon said. He looked at Bambi’s flushed face. “Let me think about it.”

“Hey, you guys could come down with me next week when I do amateur night at The Comedy Store,” Buck said. “You could look at the coffeehouses, get a feel of the place. Hell, maybe you’ll hate it, but I can’t imagine anybody hating sunshine.”

“Sunshine!” Bambi said. “Remember sunshine, Simon? No more of this depressing horrible rain! We’d just stay a day or two. Please?”

“I guess I could spare a day or two,” Simon said. “But don’t get your hopes up. I only want to look.”

They looked the following week. The moment Bambi saw all those new, shiny Mercedes cars with letters on their license plates that said things like THANX TV, she knew this was the place for ambitious people. From then on she never stopped pushing and planning. She was bubbling with optimism and dreams.

Simon was much more practical, working out figures, timetables, worrying. He realized she wasn’t happy in Seattle anymore, and because he loved her he wanted her to be happy. As for himself, he was torn. The Simon Sez he had created made him
perfectly content, but on the other hand he was a businessman and an entrepreneur, and he saw the possibilities of moving to L.A.

By then Buck was already settled in a tiny apartment in West Hollywood. Bambi and Simon went back and forth with increasing frequency, and slept on his floor. Simon found a small building that looked promising for a coffeehouse, and a designer to change the inside to duplicate the Simon Sez in Seattle; and meanwhile Bambi looked for a house they could afford to rent, not too far from work, but with trees, near nature. Simon talked to Judd and Tom about the possibility of buying them out. They were agreeable. He did some more figuring, and then found a silent partner in Los Angeles who was willing to come in with him and Bambi to supply the money they still needed.

Altogether it took a year before they were ready to leave their old life. He was cheerful because things were going to change but not too much. She was cheerful because she knew they would change a lot.

She didn’t feel the least bit sad about saying good-bye to everybody. Residents of California at last, Bambi and Simon drove up into the Hollywood Hills in their rented van, up the narrow winding road with a mountain on one side and a sheer drop on the other, overlooking the great sprawling city. Simon was driving, and sitting on the outside looking down at that scenic abyss protected by only a small white metal fence that already had breaks and dents in it from accidents, Bambi felt her stomach turn over, but she knew she would get used to it. They drove up and up, until they reached their little house among the trees. It was actually close to all the other houses, but it had a sense of privacy the moment you were inside. Inside it looked like Little House on the Prairie.

Bambi had already decorated it. Their bed had great wooden posts, and there were quilts everywhere, complementing the beamed ceilings, white painted walls, and the fireplace that worked. In their little back garden there was a lemon tree. They had only a living room, a bedroom and bath, and a kitchen, but it was cozy and clean.

Nestled in front of the house because they didn’t even have a garage was her old yellow car, waiting for her. They squeezed the van behind it, unpacked a few things they would need immediately, and went to buy food. By then it was night. They were too excited to be tired in spite of the long trip, and they had planned what they would do for this momentous occasion: their first night in Hollywood.

This time Bambi drove. She had marked the map, but she had already memorized it. Down and around and up, up, up, past the little pretend western town with the billboard blowups of photos from silent movie days, up and up the hill that was really a mountain, until there were no more houses, only a dirt and grass plateau that seemed to overlook the whole world, the wind blowing eerily in the emptiness. And above them to their right, huge and white, was the famous sign that said
HOLLYWOOD
. If they wanted to they could climb up and touch it.

Below them in the distance were a million glittering lights, shimmering as if moving. Up here it was almost prehistoric. There was the silver glitter of a reservoir in the moonlight, like a magic pond, and the dark mystery of trees. But that panorama of tiny lights! All those yearning lives, and the successful ones, and the studios, the promise …

They got out of her car and took an old blanket from the trunk. They spread it at the edge of the plateau and then Simon brought out a packet of magic mushrooms and a bottle of the mandatory cranberry juice to wash down the horrible taste. They looked at one another, and then they chewed their musty dried drug and drank their juice and waited for their souls to fill with answers.

The wind sounded sweet now, no longer eerie. The tiny lights were both far away and accessible. Suddenly it happened: Bambi saw her heart leap out of her chest, like a paper cutout of a heart, but white; slowly turning over and over and floating down into that world where her brilliant future lay.

Confidence and warmth swept over her, and she knew it was a prophecy. Here was where she would make it. At last,
at last
, Bambi Green would be special. She was not the slightest bit frightened to be without her heart.

18

1981—HOLLYWOOD

F
inally Clay and Susan were in preproduction for
The Romeo and Juliet Murder.
Through all the drafts, the meetings, the interminable waiting, he finally had a firm commitment from ABC. It was something she had wanted so long—writing a script and having it produced—that it seemed a kind of miracle. But the real miracle was being able to live and work with Clay as partners. It had taken a year to get this far, and now the network wanted the movie as soon as possible. Despite the pressures bubbling around them Clay seemed calm and happy, and Susan felt both excited and at peace.

She had worked on the script all summer, living with him in his apartment as usual, and now she would continue to stay until the picture was completed. She was no longer hanging around to be near him, taking “a vacation”; now she had a function, and she knew it would do great things for her career and for his. Clay needed this picture. It seemed a very long time since he had done
anything good, and in fact, although neither of them would ever admit it, it was.

Her fortieth birthday had come and gone painlessly this year. She looked great, she didn’t feel old, and Clay loved her more than ever. Sometimes out of nowhere he would look up and say abruptly, his voice hoarse with emotion: “I love you.” He was still doing that after all these years, and she never failed to be touched by the spontaneity of it.

The offices at Sun West were small, and, she thought, quite unattractively furnished, as if they had gotten the furniture from a company that supplied motels. Clay didn’t care. He had his longtime secretary Penny with him, sitting in a cubicle outside his office, and he had hired a line producer who wandered in and out. There was a meeting room where they could also watch tapes, and where Susan sat for hours poring over the casting books. She made long lists of actors and actresses who might play the two young leads; but the two people she really wanted were Erica Skinner and Mark Gaskett. Not only did they have the right quality, but they looked right. Their resemblance to the real people in the story was almost uncanny.

Clay was not enthused. He didn’t know any of the younger people in the casting book, except for the ones he had once hired, and a few obvious stars. Susan, who watched a lot of television when she was alone, knew who almost everybody was. Clay hardly ever watched television anymore, and when he did he changed the channels constantly, impatiently playing the cable box as if it were a piano.

“How can you not watch TV?” she asked him.

“I
made
TV; I don’t have to watch it,” he said.

She knew he was hurt at the way his life had turned out, but she thought he was being self-destructive. Since he had no intention of changing, she became his link to the viewers.

Clay was busy, so he sent Susan to the casting director’s office to look at actors and actresses. So many paraded in and out so fast that she had to scribble sometimes harsh notes to keep from becoming confused. She was glad none of them could see the notes. She felt sorry for all of them, and now she knew why Dana complained
so much. After Susan had chosen the people she liked best she gave her list to Clay so he could look at them. She was still rooting for Mark Gaskett and Erica Skinner.

“She’s probably too expensive,” Clay said. “There are other people.”

“You don’t like any of them.”

“They’re too young,” Clay said. “I want to get the adult viewers, that’s the real market, and they aren’t interested in teenagers.”

“But this movie is about a couple in college. The Romeo and Juliet Murder. Romeo and Juliet … teenagers. Meredith was eighteen.”

He thought for a moment. “I’d like to cast them mid-to-late twenties,” he said. “The public is used to that.”

A little bell went off in Susan’s mind: Greg Serdry, she thought, remembering. Why did Clay keep wanting to cast people who were too old for the part? Maybe this time he knew better than she did what the public wanted. She had to defer to his long experience, but she was uncomfortable about what he intended to do.

“I’ve hired the director,” he told her. “Thalia Perret. The network likes her. She always comes in ahead of schedule.”

They met with Thalia Perret in Clay’s office. Just before the meeting Clay took Susan aside. “A movie is like the army,” he said. “The director is the general. You are the sergeant. I am the commander in chief. Never tell the director what to do. If you have a problem tell me. I’ll tell the director.”

“Okay.”

They went in to the meeting. Thalia Perret was in her forties, dark and slim, dressed all in black. Black silk shirt, black trousers, impossibly black hair cut short and slicked straight back over her slightly elongated skull, black-rimmed eyeglasses.

“You look like, uh, that French actress …” Clay told her.

“Anouk Aimée,” Susan said. She could always finish his sentences.

“Yes,” he said, and smiled at both of them.

No she doesn’t, Susan thought; she looks exactly like a ferret. Thalia Ferret. She smiled back.

“Thank you.” Thalia Perret took out a black cigarette and lit it
with a black enamel lighter. Of course. Since Susan had given up smoking several years ago she hated it when other people smoked, but she had to admire Thalia Perret’s entire presentation of herself. You certainly wouldn’t forget her. “I like the script,” Thalia said. She turned to Susan. “I haven’t read the article you based it on. I never read source material. I’m afraid I’ll put something into the script that isn’t already there.”

That is the dumbest thing I ever heard, Susan thought, but said nothing.

“There’s a wonderful actor I want for Charles,” Thalia went on. “I think we can get him. Gary Nell. He has the perfect nerdy quality for Charles.”

“But Charles isn’t a nerd!” Susan blurted out. Never mind being the sergeant. “He’s an attractive, popular, all-American boy. That’s the point—how can a person like him come so under the thrall of a crazy girl like Meredith.”

“Because he’s a nerd,” Thalia said implacably.

“Who’s Gary Nell?” Clay asked pleasantly.

“You remember him,” Susan said. “He was in
Mudsuckers
. The one with the funny teeth. He’s at least thirty.” Then she remembered Clay had never seen
Mudsuckers
. Not only did he not watch television but he refused to go to the movies. But he must have seen the promo photos on billboards and in the newspapers.

“He doesn’t look thirty,” Thalia said. “He looks much younger.”

“Charles Sheridan is a real person,” Susan said. “The case had a lot of publicity. Everyone knows what he looks like. Gary Nell is the opposite of Charles Sheridan. The actor who has the right quality is Mark Gaskett.”

“Who’s he?”

“We have some tape on him,” Clay said. “You could look at it.”

“Oh, no, I remember who he is now,” Thalia said. “A highly overrated heartthrob.”

They seemed at an impasse and went on to discuss other things. Susan kept quiet while Clay and Thalia talked about hiring guest stars to do cameos. There were no questions about the script and Thalia and Clay thanked Susan, which she realized was her order
to leave, so she did. She did not, however, intend to give up her position on the casting.