The Decent Proposal (19 page)

            
I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan

and by noon she was truly irritated. On her way back from lunch, she became convinced that something terrible had happened and made the unprecedented move of calling Keith, who informed her that Richard was, on the contrary, alive and functioning and reachable on his cell. Mike called him, muttering “fucker” when she got his voice mail. She and Richard almost never left each other messages, but this time she waited for the beep.

“Emergency,” she breathed into the phone. “Call me back immediately.”

It wasn't an outright lie. It
was
an emergency—to her, at least. Ten minutes later he called her back.

“Hey, what's wrong?”

His obvious concern eased the tightness in her chest a little, but she filled the extra space with a forceful intake of air:

“Where the hell've you been all day?”

“What? I don't know, I've been . . . reading. For work. Wait, was
that
the emergency? That I didn't IM you? Seriously?”

“Whatever like you didn't have two seconds to write me back? Since you're so busy? With
work
?” She could hear his squeaky mattress; she was almost certain he hadn't gotten dressed yet for the day. Mike had never unironically disparaged Richard's work habits before because she knew how vulnerable he was to any criticism on the subject, but this was precisely why she couldn't help herself now. “I'm sorry for interrupting your
Simpsons
marathon. So what about tonight?”

“Can't,” he said flatly. “I'm swamped. And yes, with
work
.”

“That's cool,” she said, hanging up immediately so that he would know it was most definitely
not
cool. And he didn't call her back. This was their sole interaction for the day.

She was losing him. In the two weeks following this incident, she saw him a total of three times, and never one-on-one. The torrent of texts and IMs between them had dried up to a trickle. She was no longer his partner in crime. Instead she was becoming one of those tedious women too frightened of alienating the object of their affections to speak plainly to them, a mealymouthed malcontent whose primary motivations were possessiveness and jealousy. She couldn't blame Richard for avoiding her; she was beginning to hate herself too.

Mike was determined to find a way out of this mess. And the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that she had to locate the person who had orchestrated the Decent Proposal, the one who had brought on all these troubles in the first place. For starters, her curiosity had never diminished; she wanted to know
how
and
why
Richard had been chosen, and what this supposed benefactor's endgame was. She told herself she was doing Richard a favor.
He
couldn't investigate without jeopardizing the money he was getting, but what was the harm in
her
doing a little sleuthing? If she uncovered something bad, something that would bring the proposal to an end while restoring her to Richard's good graces, it would be a double win, two points for Mike. And even if by meddling she ruined a perfectly decent proposal, it would still be
over
. Richard would be angry; if he lost some or—God forbid—all the money coming to him, he would be furious. But he wouldn't starve. Eventually, he'd move on. He'd get past it. And she'd be there for him when he did.

But how? All she knew was that a lawyer named Jonathan Hertzfeld had made the proposal on behalf of an anonymous client. When she googled him, she easily found the name of his
firm—Heaney Schechter—but it was shocking how little else she discovered. What she needed was his client list, but as she soon learned, this was like saying she needed the
Mona Lisa
or the Hope Diamond. The identities of a lawyer's clients—especially clients as rich as Jonathan Hertzfeld's—were closely guarded secrets. How could she possibly get her hands on such a thing?

For a week and a half Mike didn't do much of anything other than to go about her life. She didn't see Richard at all during this period, and the pit stuck around like a houseguest incapable of taking a hint. But then she got the query letter.

Mike got query letters all the time, of course. Wannabe screenwriters bombarded her inbox as often as ten times a day. Nine hundred ninety-nine out of a thousand of these fell somewhere on the spectrum from boring to nonsensical to downright cockamamie, and the query that changed everything was no different:

            
A pro-life thriller where the fetus fights back!

she read.

            
It's
Alien
meets
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
!

Mike lunged for the
DELETE
button, but on her way there she caught sight of the e-mail address:

            
[email protected].

She paused.
Hm.

Two days later she was sitting with Anand Singh at the Conservatory for Coffee, Tea & Cocoa, a tiny café across from the Sony lot, a few minutes away from her office:

“I'm surprised it was
Fetal Attraction
that finally got your
attention,” he said, slurping the triple espresso she'd bought for him.

“Finally?” asked Mike. He had the typically famished look of a struggling screenwriter, which was something akin to hyperthyroidism: skinny frame, bulging eyes, a constant tremor running through his extremities—a combination of existentialist anxiety and caffeine.

“
Fetal
is my fourteenth screenplay,” he told her proudly. “I've sent you queries for all of them. My favorite is this fantasy script that's sort of
Harry Potter
in reverse—”

“Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?”

“Sure, sure. Lawyer by day, screenwriter by night. Kind of like a superhero.” (She watched with moderate alarm as he dumped a 5-hour Energy shot into his cup.) “Which reminds me, I actually created an online comic deconstructing the superhero genre and I really think there's a TV show in it, I can send you the URL—”

“Anand. Listen. I can tell you're a go-getter.”

“I will do
anything
,” he said, his bulgy eyes shining with a zealot's lunatic devotion, “
Anything
, to be represented by you.”

Mike paused. Had it really come to this? What would her parents have said? She pushed away this horrible thought.
Desperate times
. . .

“I need you to get me Jonathan Hertzfeld's client list, no questions asked.”

“Done!” he exclaimed, gulping the dregs of his drink triumphantly.

Apparently there was no overestimating the commensurate desperation of the unrepresented screenwriter.

The next day she received thirteen screenplays, four television pilots, two novels, a music video, a stand-up routine recorded on an iPhone, the aforementioned online comic strip, and a rundown of Jonathan Hertzfeld's clientele. That same
day she cross-referenced the list against anyone unusually rich and/or illustrious using a pinch of Google, a dash of Ancestry.com, and a heaping spoonful of Wikipedia.

There was one candidate far richer than the others. Mike managed to find an address: it was a historical landmark, one of the oldest mansions in the Hollywood Hills. And the very next day, on a slow Wednesday in the middle of October, she ducked out of work early to make the trek north from Culver City.

Mike hated the Hills. She could never understand why so many people wanted to live there. It was a wild, mountainous region full of cliffs and ravines tailor-made for death, albeit of the spectacular variety. The roads were steep and narrow. The air was thinner and colder than the rest of L.A. Cell reception consistently failed. It was the perfect setting for a horror movie. She had to admit that once the ordeal of getting into one of these houses was over, the view on either side—the L.A. basin to the south, the Valley to the north—was sublime. But who could enjoy it, knowing they had to take their life into their hands every time they went somewhere? She approached a hairpin turn on a 45-degree incline, the pebbles kicked up by her tires hurtling past the edge and plummeting to their fallen comrades fifty feet below. A Range Rover careering downhill almost sideswiped her, and she jerked to a stop to offer it the finger.
Probably some idiot actor.
Celebrities loved the Hills, of course.

Mike paused a moment to look down on Los Angeles in all its flat, metallic glory, glinting in the afternoon sun. It was a literally breathtaking view, and it was hard for her to believe she was really
here
and not down there, chatting away on her phone while texting, IM'ing, Facebooking,
whatever
-ing with Richard. She felt like an astronaut looking down on Earth, except hers was a voyage fueled by desperation. Was it really possible that
love
had led her to this point in space and time? She could still
go back. There were little lookout points all along the road, ideal for turning around. . . .

Mike pressed her sunglasses firmly into the bridge of her nose and continued the upward climb. The maze of concrete eventually led to a maze of gravel, and slowly an iron gate materialized in the distance. She lowered her sunglasses, squinting.

A call box had been hammered onto a giant eucalyptus tree standing beside the gate. She approached it slowly, the gravel crackling beneath her tires. She leaned halfway out the window, pawing at the box uselessly. Nothing happened; there was no button to press. What was she supposed to do? She pictured herself making a three-point turn and descending the hill after all, returning to the pile of unread scripts by Anand Singh that were sitting on her Kindle. The pit in her stomach throbbed a little, as if anticipating a hearty feeding.

The call box let out an ear-piercing screech.

“Who there?”

Fob
, thought Mike. The voice undoubtedly belonged to an old Asian lady who at some point in her life had been “fresh off the boat” from somewhere across the Pacific. Mike could sniff them out a mile away. She leaned out the window again, her head tipped toward the box, as if she were about to order a burger and fries, supersize.

“I'd like to speak with the owner.”

“What for?!”

Mike hesitated.
Screw it.
“I want to talk about Richard Baumbach and”—she hated saying the DP's name; it pained her to say it aloud—“Elizabeth Santiago.” The pit in her stomach throbbed again and she imagined the shoots traveling another centimeter up her chest, its leaves rustling against her exposed blood vessels and mucous membranes.

There was a long pause on the other end, which she took as a promising sign. A camera on top of the gate angled downward
like an owl tipping its head, eyeing her unnervingly. The pit was pulsating now, and when the gate cracked open it gave a sick little quiver.

There was another long stretch of gravel to cross before a sharp corner revealed the house as suddenly as if a curtain had been lifted. Mike knew what to expect from the photos she'd seen online, but it was even more impressive in person. The house itself wasn't much, just a big three-story rectangle: solid, well made, with large windows and simple moldings. All the ostentation had been reserved for the landscaping. The front lawn was a wonderland of palm trees and bright, tropical flora: orange-and-blue birds of paradise; a rainbow's worth of begonias and other flowers she couldn't even begin to name; dark green, dangerous-looking plants that looked as though they belonged in
Jurassic Park
, with their humongous leaves and hairy tendrils trailing on the ground.
How much water did this place use up in a day?
Bloodred bougainvillea exploded in a majestic arch over the double-wide front doors. Pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the ground floor were snow-white trellises dripping ivy and an assortment of softer, paler-colored flowers. Mike spied a lagoon-like pool peeking out from behind the house, and beyond that a lush, multitiered garden where half a dozen laborers were toiling in the orangey afternoon sun. But she almost missed these details because her eye had been drawn immediately to the
HOLLYWOOD
sign towering over the property. Like any iconic landmark, it looked a little unreal to the naked eye, especially up close, and as she approached the half flight of stairs leading up to the front door, her eyes roved over the tall, white letters hungrily, though she must have seen them a thousand times before.

The door flew open. In its place appeared the fob. She was an old Vietnamese woman with a salt-and-pepper bob and loose, sallow cheeks. She motioned impatiently with one flabby arm:
come on!

Mike flushed. She could already feel the woman's hot, toxic disapproval tumbling toward her, and she began climbing the stairs as slowly as possible to spite this old Asian biddy with her pidgin English, who probably wore surgical masks in public and walked in the sun with an umbrella to keep her precious skin as light as possible—something even her somewhat fobby mother would never do. She guessed that to this woman, her oversize features—the big eyes, full lips, and jutting cheekbones so coveted by white people—were disgusting. Even though she was Korean and looked nothing like her, Mike was often compared to the Chinese-American actress Lucy Liu, usually by her parents' church friends and never in a complimentary way, since Liu had larger, “Western” features too. Mike always pretended to be flattered, and rhapsodized about the actress's beauty, knowing full well this made her seem more “whitewashed” than these reverse racists already thought she was. Behind their backs she joked that it was people like them who destroyed all the “hard work” she did boozing and slutting it up in the clubs, teaching white people that not all Asians were good at math and obeyed their parents to the letter. There was something real behind the joke. What was the point of leaving a place if you were going to spend the rest of your life pretending you never left? She resented being judged for fitting in. When Mike reached the top of the stairs, the woman offered neither a smile nor a word of welcome, pressing herself against the door to let Mike pass, as if she were afraid of contracting a disease.