Crashed (12 page)

“It’s about what you’d figure,” Tatiana said. She was folding a restaurant napkin into a tight, tiny square. “Take an eighteen-year-old girl, give her no education because she worked six days a week from the time she was seven until she was fifteen. Make her as sensitive as a fern, and throw in an absolute beast of a mother who’s trying to rip her off and a brother who hates her because she’s famous. Then give her an almost unlimited amount of money and no one to say no to her. Dig up a crowd of parasites, some of whom are her relatives, to sue her for big chunks of the money. Add unimaginable amounts of cocaine, methedrine, ice, and, for all I know, heroin, and a bunch of bloodsucking motherfuckers who pretend to be her friends so she’ll keep buying dope for them. Let her trust them and believe they care about her, so they’ll be able to break her heart when the money runs out. Close the doors on all that and leave it to cook for five years. Then let her stagger out into the sunlight, broke, friendless, strung out, and unable to tell up from down. Uninsurable in an industry that won’t cut a fart without taking out a policy. Bingo: You’ve got Thistle Downing.”

“This year’s model,” I said.

“That fucker Rodd,” she said. She tore the napkin in half. “Goddamn television directors. What have they got? The best technical crews and the best journeyman actors in the world.
Pretty good writing, as good as they could appreciate, anyway. And it’s all about
them
, the genius directors. They’re fucking
auteurs
. D.W. Griffith, Murnau, von Stroheim. Nobody as vulgar as Hitchcock or Spielberg.”

“I’d like to feed him his viewfinder.”

“He’s too dumb to know that Thistle, whatever shape she’s in, is the most talented person he’s ever been in a room with. If she hadn’t fucked herself up, she could be one of the biggest stars in the world. I mean, she could have been on a career path that would have kept her working until she was eighty. Instead, here she is, doing …” She crumpled the napkin with both hands and threw the wad over her shoulder, and went, “Puh.”

We were at a coffee shop on Ventura, about a mile from Palomar Studios, the complex Trey had bought and was using for
Three Wishes
. Trey had gone back to adding assets to her newly legitimate empire, and Rodd was probably looking at his reflection through the viewfinder. A couple of people from the crew were due to join us and bring me up to speed on what had been happening, but Tatiana was still steaming from the encounter with Rodd.

“And what’s with that second ‘D’?” she said, loudly enough that people were looking at her. “One isn’t enough? Maybe we ought to pronounce it that way. Hi, Rod-d. Morning, Rod-d. Or start doing it to other words. That’s rid-diculous. Sorry, Rod-d, I d-didn’t hear you. Honestly, Rod-d, d-don’t you think that’s red-dund-dant?”

“Do it with other letters,” I suggested. “F-frankly, Rod-d, I d-don’t give a d-damn.”

Tatiana started to laugh, and then cut it off. “Why do I trust you?” she said, leaning forward across the table to look at me more closely.

I’m not actually fond of being looked at closely, but I held my ground. “Got me. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know anything about you.” She picked at a cuticle,
and I noticed that they’d all been worked ragged. “This movie, if you can call it a movie, has more intrigue behind the cameras than the Italian Renaissance. I know you’re with Trey, who I sort of like, but as we all know, she’s made out of ice. I guess I don’t know which side you’re on.”

“If there’s a side that wants to see Thistle treated like a human being, that’s the side I’m on.”

“That’s better than nothing,” she said. “Rod-d would run over her with a truck if he thought it would cap a scene.”

“And you don’t like that.”

“I like talent. There’s never enough of it. I grew up with her. On TV, I mean. She’s one of the best things I ever saw, and she did it week after week, up to those last couple of years.”

“What happened then?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. She ran out of steam. She’d been, and I hate to use this word because nobody ever means it, but she’d been unique. Even the last couple of years, she was better than most actresses on their best day. And then there’s the movie itself. It’s bad enough that she has to be making this piece of shit without her being treated like a bagged-out crack whore.”

“I’m with you.”

“Not that it’s a
total
piece of shit,” she said. “I’ll give it to Trey. I’ve worked on real porno, and this isn’t it. I mean, she got an actual writer, she got Rodd, who, for all that he’s the dickwad of the century, has directed some good actors. She got a cameraman—camerawoman, I mean—Lauren Wister, who’s shot a couple of independent features, and I think it’ll be easier for Thistle with a woman behind the camera. And the second-line people—me, Craig-Robert, whom you’ll meet in a minute, a bunch of others—well, we’re pretty good. Trey’s probably dropping five, six million on this thing. The average budget for porn is lower than most home movies.”

“That’s one of the reasons Trey’s wound so tight,” I said.

“But even with all that money, and people who know how to do their jobs, the thing that scares me senseless—” She broke off and looked past me, and I turned to see two people come in to the coffee shop, one a worried-looking young woman in her early twenties and the other a play-it-to-the-rafters African American queen with orange hair and honeybee yellow lips, wearing a kelly green semitransparent scarf that swirled around him dramatically as he made what was, apparently for him, the newest in an unending succession of grand entrances.

“How astonishingly dreary,” he announced while he was still eight feet away. “Couldn’t we think of
anything
more middle class? All we need is a tailgate party in the parking lot, and a nice mug of beer, and I’ll hit high C, and aren’t
you
the tall one? Where’s your basketball, or do you only play at night?”

“Craig-Robert Loftus,” Tatiana said. “This is Junior Bender. And Junior, the girl sort of lost in Craig-Robert’s blinding aura is Ellie Wynn.”

“Oh, my God,”
Craig-Robert said, placing a splayed hand in the center of his chest. “You’re that
criminal
. Well, I have to say it: Crooks do furnish a room. You’ve certainly dressed
this
dump.” He sat next to me. “Scoot over,” he said. Then he said, “Not
that
far.”

“Ellie works with me,” Tatiana said, as the young woman sat down. “And she’s also Thistle’s double. Craig-Robert, in case you hadn’t guessed already, is the costume designer.”

“Costumer,” Craig-Robert corrected her. “Nice plaid shirt, by the way, Tatty. Did it belong to one of the members of Nirvana?”

“Fuck off, C-R. We’ve just had an hour of Rodd, and we’re in no mood for more drama.”

“Rodd,”
Craig-Robert said in italics. “Such an inappropriate name for someone who’s probably hung like a mosquito.”

“
Are
you a criminal?” Ellie Wynn asked. She was slight, almost childish, with foxlike features that had something
vaguely feral about them, something that suggested a small animal that hadn’t learned to trust people. There are people who radiate well-being and people who radiate misery. Ellie Wynn radiated insecurity.

“Oh, please,” Craig-Robert said. “Weren’t you listening yesterday? Miss Trey—swell outfit this morning, by the way—Miss Trey said she’d be bringing in a
specialist
to deal with The Problem. And we’re all aware that Trey, for all that she’d look good wearing a bookshelf, is a crook. I mean, is there someone here who does
not
get a paper?” He choked the flow long enough to look at me. “I must say, though, that I was expecting something more lethal looking, maybe with sallow skin and dead eyes—you know dead eyes? Like this.” He dropped his lids halfway.

A young waitress who had ignored us thus far came over to the table, pad in hand, mainly to get a better look at Craig-Robert, and Tatiana said, “Keep the coffee away from this man.”

“Uh, sure,” the waitress said, and her accent briefly filled the air with the scent of Georgia peach blossoms. “What y’all want to—”

But Tatiana was already talking.

“Bring us five chef’s salads, all in a big bowl in the middle of the table. That way, Ellie can eat around the meat and Craig-Robert can hog the avocados.”

“Um, gosh” the waitress said, “Ahm not sure ah can—”

“Sure you can,” Tatiana said. “You’re not on Walton Mountain any more. You know the chef’s salad? Eight-ninety-five on the menu? You know those big bowls in the kitchen your illegal immigrant staff uses to mix things up in? Put five chef’s salads in one of those bowls and bring it here. Write five chef’s salads on your little pad. Bring us five plates. What could be easier?”

“Um, okay.”

Craig-Robert said, “Don’t you want to tell her what order to put the utensils in?”

“Why bother?” Tatiana said. “You’ll eat with your fingers anyway.”

“And, uh, drinks?” the waitress said, speaking only to Tatiana. “Y’all want—”

“Diet Coke for me and the lady next to me, regular Coke for the Queen of Spades there, and Junior?”

“Coffee, black.” To Tatiana, I said, “Is there someone here I can’t see?”

“Sorry?” She was watching the waitress retreat.

“Five plates. Four people.”

“I arranged for Doc to come by as soon as he gets back.”

“Back from where?”

“From Thistle’s place.”

“Ah. And you,” I said to Ellie. “You’re a vegetarian?”

“Um,” Ellie said. She was clearly flustered by the question, which had seemed relatively harmless to me. “I try, you know, not to eat anything that’s got, like, a spinal cord? Except fish, I guess. They’ve got a spinal cord, don’t they, Tatiana?” She was blushing.

“They do,” Tatiana said, a bit wearily. “But they are too dumb to know they’ve got one, so that makes it okay, wouldn’t you say, Junior?”

“Junior?”
Craig-Robert said, looking terrifically interested. “What ghastly secret does that mask?”

“None,” I said. “It’s my name. My father was named Merle and he wanted his son named after him, but he’d had a skinful of being named Merle and he wasn’t about to hang it on me. So he just named me Junior.”

“Mmmmm,” Craig-Robert said. “So what are your qualifications? Aside from the obvious ones, I mean.”

“Got me. I have some history with Trey, I guess. And she seems to think I might be her little trouble-shooter. But to tell you the truth, I’ve got almost no idea why I’m here.”

“The human condition,” Craig-Robert said. “
None
of us know. You need someone sensitive to explain it all to you.”

Tatiana rapped on the table. “Craig-Robert, if you could put all the fabulous on hold for a few minutes?”

“Certainly,” Craig-Robert said in a deep radio announcer’s voice. He crossed his hands on the table in front of him in a businesslike manner and said, “You’re probably wondering why I called you here tonight.”

“My life is passing before my eyes,” Tatiana said.

“It’s to clear up the age-old question: Why are gay men so fascinating and gay women so grim?”

“Maybe because you’re imitating the
interesting
sex,” Tatiana said. “We’re stuck with acting like men.”

“We really don’t have a lot of time?” Ellie Wynn said, phrasing it as a question. “We need to eat and get back? Everything, and I mean everything, has to be ready for tomorrow.”

“What’s gone wrong so far?” I asked.

“Little things,” Tatiana said. “But obviously intentional.”

“Costumes,” Craig-Robert said. “Ergo,
moi
being invited to this confab. Four costumes disappeared. And you may say,
so what?
, but there was something
very interesting
about the choice of costumes.”

“And you’re going to make him ask what it is, aren’t you?” Tatiana said.

“What it is,” Craig-Robert said, “is, A, they were all for Thistle, and B, they had all been worn by little Miss Ellie here in second-unit shots.” Ellie blinked at the sound of her name as though someone had thrown a dinner roll at her.

“Which means?” I said.

“Which means they all had to be replaced with identical stuff,” Tatiana said. “Otherwise, you’d see Thistle from behind wearing a gray dress as she pushes open a door and then, when you cut to inside the building and she comes in, she’d be wearing, I don’t know, a pink one for example.”

“Pink doesn’t work for Thistle,” Craig-Robert said.

“Oh, who gives a fuck?” Tatiana said. “I said,
for example
. It’s not going to endanger your Golden Pecker or whatever they call the adult film Oscar.”

“Le Peqoir d’or,”
Craig-Robert said. “And I have a place all ready for it.”

“And those were the only costumes taken,” Ellie said, looking vaguely surprised at the sound of her own voice. “The ones I’d worn on film, pretending to be Thistle. Which meant that we either had to re-shoot, or remake the costumes. Right, Craig-Robert?”

“So you remade them.”

“It wasn’t
quite
that easy,” Craig-Robert said. “We’re scheduled down to our hineys. It put us back by a full day.”

“Trey said two days,” I said.

“We’d actually be three days behind if people hadn’t busted their butts to catch things up,” Tatiana said. “Tell him, Ellie.”

“Oh.” She took a second to organize her thoughts. “Umm, two days ago, I got a call at seven-forty-five
A.M.
, just as I was about to head for the set. It was a girl, telling me that the location had changed? We weren’t going to be shooting in Hollywood, she said, we’d moved it to a shopping mall in Chatsworth. I should leave immediately, because the crew was on their way there.”

“And?” I said.

“And, um, the crew was right where they were supposed to be. You know, in Hollywood. But by the time they wondered where I was and called me, I was all the way out in the Valley and I’d gone into the mall to find the closed store we were supposed to be shooting in. And then, when I got the call on my cell phone and went back outside, someone had slashed my tires.”

“Cost us a day,” Tatiana said. “Then yesterday, it was Lauren, the camera operator, who got the call. Toted herself halfway down to Torrance before it occurred to her that it might be bogus. And by then she was in total rush hour, just gridlock all the way back up. Just like whoever it was planned it. Half a day gone.”