Part Thirty-Five
Thursday morning rolled around and Larry and I arrived in Richmond at a warehouse just off the 580. They should have called it Patios R Us, but they didn't. They sold everything from pool supplies to furniture to sun shades. Our job was to show it off. They wanted some shots of Larry in fireman's Nomex to demonstrate that it was fireproof. Then they had us in various athletic-looking outfits lounging around trying to convince the buyers their husbands would suddenly look like twenty-something hunks if they bought the product. The photographer was light on experience but professional. He did linger over the bathing suits, finding reasons to have Larry try on more than one and then adjusting the poses by hand. By the time we were back in our own clothes, the photographer had a rough set of proofs hanging up. I looked good, but Larry looked great.
“I hope you like these Larry.” The photographer was smitten. “Would you want to get together? I can show you a preview of the finished spread.”
I moved away from the conversation, letting Larry make whatever arrangements he wanted. As we were driving back I told him it was fine with me if he invited somebody to stay over one of these nights.
“Thanks, Eric. It's not going to be that photographer, but thanks.”
“Why not? He's into you, it looks like.”
“He likes body piercing. That's too close to my last problem. I'm not going down that road again.”
We got home in mid afternoon and Amanda called asking me to be available for three days reshoot next week. Two of the days matched my days off, so I needed only one excused absence at the hospital. That night Luke said Larry had enough first responder training, he could stand in for me. Since the hospital always liked what Luke liked, that would work out.
I was working on a way to carry the bonds for Tony and decided that I'd take my Cal reading material and some math theory books as a cover. The bonds fit neatly into an inner pocket of my back pack and the math material and a few clothes would fill the rest. The studio plane had barely been checked by Mexican customs the last time. Nobody smuggles stuff into Mexico, or, if they do, the Mexicans don't seem to care.
So Wednesday I flew down to Burbank and checked in at the dorm. I was told to report to the high school set immediately. When I got there a gloating Colin said, “Now you're the one late. Kind of high and mighty on your first job, Eric.”
Deck, the assistant director I had played lacrosse with on the last trip, laughed and said, “Ignore him. You're on time. He was late this morning and looked like shit. It took half a tank of oxy just to get him breathing evenly.”
We reshot some of the earlier scenes with the players carrying lacrosse gear and were done for the day promptly at four. Deck asked if I wanted to see the rushes and I said sure. Colin was leaving the set and saw us. “Hanging with the peons again, Malone?”
I said, “I think he meant I'm the peon, not you.”
Deck laughed. “We're all peons to that asshole. Oops, did I say that? Never mind, come on, I'll show you what they get out of a quick edit.”
The editing process produced the look of a seamless game, although only about a quarter of the segments included today's equipment; the rest were the earlier shots. They mixed in face shots, feet shots, and leg shots with a few long pans and it looked like a real game moving the ball all over the field. “The magic of Hollywood,” Deck said.
He introduced me to some of the editing technicians. One guy told me their work used to be much harder; now computer manipulation removed light and color variations and could even filled in some missing action. “You're not hard to process at all; we don't need to do much. But watch this.” The tech pulled up an image of me and played with the panel in front of him. My skin turned to a sickly yellow, my jaw sagged, my hairline receded. “That's what you'll look like when you're forty or fifty,” he laughed.
Until then the idea that some day I would actually be forty or fifty hadn't much meaning to me. I understood growing old in theory, but seeing photographic evidence put it in a very different light. I decided I had better keep my friends because that old guy on the monitor would have a hard time making new ones.
After a run through Buena Vista Park I returned to the Dorm. I was planning on a quiet night but Amanda called and offered dinner. I wondered where she would take me and whether I should offer to pay. She took me to her house in the Hollywood Hills. She lived there with her son Seth; two older children had already left home and were on their own. Seth had just got his high school diploma and wasn't sure what to do next. He had applied to a few colleges and been accepted by two, but had not acted on their offers.
“Am I here to get advice from you or is Seth here to get advice from me,” I asked.
“A little of this and a little of that,” Amanda said, putting some cold shrimp on the table. “We're not kosher, here,” she explained.
Seth was reluctant to talk much so I gave him a little rundown on my history of failure at UCSC, getting tossed out by my parents, landing in Alameda, and working things out from there with the help of friends. He seemed unimpressed and didn't find much relevant to his own life. Then I told him about the Disney techs making my picture age before my eyes; that did impress him.
“You mean some day everybody is going to look like me?” he asked, sounding unsure of whether he believed it. He wasn't that bad looking, but it did look as if he had known a few bad years with acne.
“I tell you, that picture wasn't pretty. And what's wrong with you, anyway?”
“Everything.”
“I don't think so. You're healthy; you have a decent build; you're smart; and you haven't made any fatal mistakes yet. I probably got all the advice you're getting but I didn't believe any of it; I had to learn it on my own. It's a whole lot easier if you can learn from others.”
“Easy for you to say. You're on magazine covers, you have a contract with Disney, you're going to Cal.”
“Well, I'm not on any magazine covers.”
“Yes, you are.” Amanda plopped down a glossy men's magazine.
“That's news,” I said to Amanda. “But that can all disappear overnight. The only smart things I've done were to go back to school and to make some great friends.”
Seth sat silently.
I tried another tack. “Next time I'm in town, you want to play lacrosse with some of the Disney guys? It'll just be a pickup game in Buena Vista Park. Nobody's a star.”
“Sure, but I don't have any gear.”
“Wear soccer clothes and I'll take care of the rest.”
“Who do you play with?” Amanda asked.
“Tom Cashell, he's an extra in the sports scenes who may get some lines, and Deck Charles, an assistant director.”
“I don't know Tom, but Deck is a hot prospect; he's going places. If you know him, you're meeting the right people.” That sure wasn't what Colin Turner kept telling me over and over.
Amanda's chicken was so-so, but her strawberry pie was great. Even Seth showed some appreciation. She and Seth dropped me off at the Dorm, where I had a chance to work through some of the Cal reading list before falling asleep.
We were packed onto the plane early, more crew than players this time. The plane landed in an hour and, as I hoped, customs was perfunctory; we all turned our passports over to an assistant producer and that was it. We were back on the school athletic field in a half hour.
The Mexican kids had not played lacrosse before so Deck and I gave a little demonstration. They got the idea immediately even if they shaky at catching the ball. I was able to signal a thumbs up to Tony. I was showing some of the kids how the ball was kept in the net by spinning the pole when he came up to the group. “Hey, Mr. Cortez,” I said. He acknowledged and translated some of my coaching into Spanish for the kids.
One of the kids was practicing and managed to clip Colin Turner in the shins. “God damn it, can't somebody keep these idiots away,” he yelled to a group of cameramen who ignored him.
“He's such an jerk,” I confided to Tony.
“Bueno, I needed an incident. There will be a commotion during the lunch break in about an hour, when attention is on the incident, give me the bonds.”
We continued playing at playing lacrosse and from what the techs had shown me the day before I knew they were getting lots of usable film. We broke for lunch and I sat by myself reading Bertrand Russell on the philosophy of mathematics.
My reading was disturbed by voices at the buffet table. Colin was complaining, “Has this lettuce been washed? This is all Mexican food.”
Somebody replied, “Duh. This is Mexico,” and got a big laugh.
I went back to my book. Tony came along and started a conversation asking what I was reading. I tried to tell him until I realized that wasn't what he was interested in.
A minute or so later there was yelling from the direction of the porta-potties. Like a Leaning Tower of Ensenada, slowly, one of them fell over. The entire crew laughed when Colin crawled out of it with his pants down quite exposed. Then the crowd hushed when a girl in the school uniform crawled out with her underpants around her knees. She was crying and pointing at Colin, who was trying to pull his pants up and shouting “I never did a thing! I never touched her!”
The initial illusion of debauched innocence soon changed. A voice in the crowd observed, “That's one ugly chick!” A second observed, “That chick has a dick!”
At the first outcry, Tony took the bonds and walked toward the school building. He gestured to security to get the 'girl' and Colin into custody.
There was tumult on the set with everyone talking while a dozen people checked to see how pictures of the incident had come out on their cell phones. I could hear lots of laughing as more than one set of photos was instantly sent on it's way to LA.
Tony returned to the field and was talking to a couple assistant producers, who assured him of a generous Disney contribution to the school.
I got a brief chance to talk to him again. “Can't you ever do anything the easy way?” I almost cracked his severe protector-of-the-children expression.
“Come back to Ensenada, Eric and I will show you lots of easy ways to do things. By the way, have you banged on the pipes? Try it.” Tony went back to the school building and the rest of us went to the airplane.
Shortly before takeoff a police car delivered Colin to the boarding stairs. He went through the plane telling everyone, “They let me go! I'm innocent! I never did a thing. It was a prank!”
One camera man said, “Jeez, Colin, school boys … ”
Everyone laughed except Colin. “He wasn't a school boy! He was in his twenties!”
“Sure, sure. That's what they all say.”
“This Bloody Mary sucks! Get me another one.” Colin was back in character.
We got back to Burbank and I got an immediate call from Amanda. She had worked up a public date with Maddie for me in case Colin's disgrace got people wonderinng. I explained Colin's claim that it was a prank and he was actually innocent. “Doesn't matter when the sharks are circling. It's ninety-five percent certain he's finished.”
Maddie and I had diner with Amanda and Seth at a very public restaurant in Santa Monica. Photos were taken entering and leaving. I decided Seth was much more impressed by Maddie than he was by me and by the photographers more than either of us.
I took Maddie home by taxi to her apartment on Wilshire and for the first time she invited me in. I let her do the talking and she said she was at a turning point in her career. She could either be a model whose popularity was declining or she could try television, where she had a few offers but could fall on her face, like so many other ex-models.
“If I flop in TV, it probably means I'm through in modeling also.”
“How much longer do you think you have as a model?”
“Oh, maybe five years of declining demand. Then I'd become a curiosity, who got hired a couple of times a year.”
“How important is the money?”
“Well, I couldn't live here any more. I've got some saved up, but I'd eventually have to work at something.
“What about finding a rich husband?”
“Hopeless. I always like the poor guys.”
“I'm poor, maybe not as poor as I used to be. I can tell you being dirt poor sucks, but being a little poor isn't so bad.”
“Really? You always seemed the opposite and your parents are way up there, aren't they?”
“My stepfather, who treats me like Cinderfella, has money; but I'll never see any of it.”
“I just don't know what to do.” Maddie seemed as lost as I was not so long ago.
One thing led to another and I spent the night. She had a beautiful, taut, athletic body, combined with that lush softness only women have. I liked our night; and I'm pretty sure she did, too. At any rate, we were up at dawn since we both had work to do. She was cheerful for so early in the morning and made us some eggs and coffee. She also made me some toast, but skipped it herself claiming she couldn't have carbs until she was on Social Security.
Her manager came in as we were finishing. “Hello, Eric. You looked good in Details.” So much for me; she moved on to earning her pay as CEO of Maddie Inc.
Maddie mouthed her name to me; I hoped I got it right. “Vera, what do you think of television? Is TV imagery fair to somebody suited best for another medium?”
“If you mean you, you'll look great unless you gain weight. If you gain a couple of pounds, you'll look lumpy on TV. They can correct for color and height, but there's an unavoidable lumpy look that ruins people on TV.”
“I was thinking of Maddie,” I said; but she had moved on to other concerns. I had to leave to get to Disney by eight, so I bid the ladies goodbye.
Maddie walked me to the door and said, “You can come back tonight if you want.”
“I want; but I'll get fired if I miss another shift at work.”
Skipping the Dorm, I went right to the studio a little overdressed. Disney had us sit around while they decided whether any retakes or additional footage was needed.
“Never made it to the Dorm last night?” Deck asked. I just smiled and said nothing. “It was on the morning show.”
“What was?”
“A brief item about you taking a supermodel to her apartment last night.”
“Man, nothing is private anymore.”
“Not on Wilshire Boulevard. Cheer up, the two of you looked great, the treatment was friendly and they got your name right. It balances the Colin Turner stuff. Man, the studio is pretty hot about that.”
“Do they post reporters at every apartment house in LA?”
“He probably followed you from wherever you were before. Don't worry. You'll get used to it.”
“I'm not sure I want to.”
I couldn't wait to get home; and Alameda never looked so good as it did that night.
