Trading Up (72 page)

She leaned across the seat. “Don’t you think it would be better for both of us if we were seen talking?”

He was about to protest, but then a lascivious gleam came into his eyes. He patted the seat next to him. “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“My screenplay,” she said, handing him the pages.

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n i n e t e e n

on the night of the Academy Awards, a huge orange moon hung over the city of Los Angeles like a gold medallion, and as usual, the press faithfully reported that its luminescence was no competition for the human stars below. To the public, Oscar night is a glamorous swirl of seemingly heroic achievements accomplished by humans more beautiful and blessed, but to the denizens of the tight little world that composes Hollywood, it’s also an evening of a hundred little intrigues and slights, petty connivances and novelettish manipulations. At 9 p.m. West Coast time, the last golden statuette has been handed out, but the fun is just beginning.

Tanner Cole, the movie star, looked out of the tinted window of his limousine and frowned. Ahead of his car was a line of at least twelve other stretch limos, all angling to deposit their famous passengers in front of the narrow awning that had been set up in the parking lot of Morton’s restaurant, the site of the annual
Vanity
Fair
Oscar party. “Oh man,” he said out loud. As he’d told dozens of reporters over the years, he loved everything about being a movie star, he loved everything about this night, he even loved everything about this party. Except for the line of limousines. He hated waiting. It really was possible to have too many famous people in one place.

He extracted a chaw of tobacco from a silver pill box and placed it between his gum and lip. The problem, he thought, was the goddamned press line. Every star had to get their picture taken, and if there was another big star in front of them, they would wait in their car so as not to have their thunder stolen. It was all such a goddamned bore, he thought with annoyance, and to him, a sign that these “stars” weren’t real actors. Real actors didn’t care about press lines. Real actors knew that 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 386

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press lines weren’t part of “the work,” and for real actors “the work” was the only thing that mattered.

He pressed the button to open the window, and spat out a large, gooey green mass of tobacco. Tanner Cole, who had attended the Yale School of Drama twenty years ago, considered himself an intellectual, and, although he would only admit it to his closest friends, far above the grasping, petty, vulgar machinations of Hollywood. However, he wasn’t above pointing out to reporters that his friends included real people, like Craig Edgers, who was, at that moment, staying with him in his mansion high in the Hollywood Hills. Four hours earlier, he had left Craig in the hot tub, sipping a glass of iced green tea.

Every year, Tanner Cole hosted what had now become a famous after-party following the
Vanity Fair
Oscar party, and this year, Tanner had managed to lure Craig Edgers out for it. He didn’t know the whole story, but apparently Craig was having some trouble with the screenplay for
The Embarrassments,
and Tanner had promised to help him by introducing him to some people. Naturally, Tanner loved the book (hell, he thought, he “loved” everything), so who could blame him for wanting to play the lead . . .

The limousine came to a stop, and he squinted out the window again. There were still at least six cars ahead . . . What the fuck, he thought. He didn’t have to wait. He could get out and walk. He wasn’t one of those pansy celebrities who was so lame they needed someone to wipe their ass . . . And touching the intercom button that connected him with the driver, he said, “Yo, Kemosabe, stop the car. I’m gonna walk.”

The driver frowned into the rearview mirror. “Are you sure, Mr. Cole?” he asked. “It might not be safe.”

“I spent the last year shooting a movie in northern China,” Tanner snapped. “I think I can handle the entrance to a fucking restaurant in Los Angeles . . .” The car pulled over and Tanner got out, slamming the door behind him.

About four cars ahead, the actress Jenny Cadine sat enveloped in a haze of thick putrid smoke from Comstock Dibble’s cigar. “Comstock, please,” she said, coughing pointedly and waving her hand in front of her face. “If I’d known you were going to smoke, I never would have agreed to come with you . . .” Comstock Dibble laughed meanly. His tuxedo was stretched tightly across his barrel chest, while, as usual, his pants felt like they were hanging below his belly.

He’d squandered $5,000 on a custom-made tuxedo, but there didn’t seem to be a tailor in the world who could get his proportions right, no matter how much money he spent. He unbuttoned the front of his jacket, and, to satisfy Jenny Cadine while making it clear that she wasn’t more important than his cigar, he opened his window a crack.

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Jenny Cadine sighed. “Thank you,” she said, with an edgy smile. She wasn’t in the best of moods, having just lost the Oscar to Julia Roberts. She shifted in her seat, feeling the full taffeta skirt of her dress crinkle beneath her. Why on earth had she allowed her stylist to convince her to wear a new, young designer? she wondered furiously. On top of missing out on the Oscar, her dress, which resembled a ball gown from the 1950s, was all wrong and tomorrow the papers would probably claim that she looked like a big, pink marshmallow . . .

She glared at Comstock’s cigar, which he had somehow managed to position in front of her face, and expelled an annoyed breath of air. “About that part . . . ,” she began.

Comstock smiled and tapped the ash from his cigar onto the floor. “It’s a good one,” he said. He might have been out of place on Park Avenue in New York City, but in Hollywood, he was completely at home. “It’s potential Oscar material . . .”

“If you’re talking to me about it, it had better be,” Jenny said crossly.

Comstock laughed again. “I’m not sure that I am,” he said. “Talking to you, that is.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. She hated this part of her job, but there was no way around it. Even as a former Oscar-winning movie star, she had to fight to get the very best parts—she had seen too many actors’ careers go down the drain when they’d made the wrong choices. And so, when her agent had called her that afternoon to inform her that the whole town was abuzz with this new Comstock Dibble project, they’d agreed that she should try to get Comstock alone. So after the Oscar ceremony, she had simply pretended that she couldn’t find her car.

“Come on, Comstock,” she said, changing her tone. “You know you’re going to talk to me about it sooner or later.”

“Am I?” Comstock asked, exhaling a large puff of cigar smoke. For the first time in weeks, he was enjoying himself. There was nothing he loved more than torturing actresses—especially one as full of herself as Jenny Cadine—and on top of it, he had the hottest property in town. He was, as he liked to say to himself, “back,” and there wasn’t a thing Jenny Cadine or anyone else could do about it.

Early that morning, drinking coffee and dressed in a tiny pair of red silk boxer shorts, Comstock had sat in his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, reading Janey Wilcox’s “script.” When he had finished, his immediate thought was what a dummy she was not to have given it to him in the first place. But his second thought was that he knew exactly what to do with the material—it was the kind of story at which he excelled. It would be a modern-day classic—a tale of excess, of how a beautiful young woman lost her innocence through her greed. Naturally, she would have to fall, but then she would be redeemed—and wasn’t that the great human story? Sin and salvation, over and over again, and it was his story as well . . .

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And now, sitting in the limousine with Jenny Cadine, he congratulated himself on having saved himself once again. The trick was to simply throw another golden ball into the air, to distract everyone’s attention. And then, taken with his own genius, he applauded himself for having signed Janey Wilcox up to do the screenplay in the first place. Hadn’t he known that she had something “special” all along?

He would be sure to let everyone know, so they’d understand the depth of his brilliance in having taken a chance on an unknown . . .

But he mustn’t get ahead of himself, he thought, and taking a puff on his cigar, he stared at Jenny Cadine (who was certainly not looking her best that night) and asked casually, “How much do you know about the project?” Jenny Cadine wasn’t a particularly intelligent person (nearly every thought in her head had been placed there by her clever agents and managers), but this, she knew, was a cue to make an attempt at flattery. “Only that it’s supposed to be genius,” she said sulkily.

“It’s the Janey Wilcox story,” Comstock said, wondering what her reaction would be given that incident at Dingo’s. As he expected, Jenny lived in such a tiny, insular world that the name hardly rang a bell. She frowned and bit her lip. “Wasn’t she some kind of feminist?”

“You could say that,” Comstock laughed, patting her leg. Jenny Cadine would make a perfect Janey Wilcox, he thought, if only she were ten years younger. It was such a shame that people had to get old . . .

“Comstock, really,” Jenny gasped, as if she were about to expire from the smoke.

“Could you please put out that cigar? You’re killing us both . . .” Comstock smiled and deliberately exhaled a noxious puff in her direction. “On the contrary, my dear,” he chortled. “Smoke is a preservative . . .” And in a limousine two cars ahead, Janey Wilcox looked down at her left hand and let out a little cry of horror.

She was still wearing her wedding and engagement rings.

Quickly twisting them off, she was about to slip them into her small silver Prada evening bag when she hesitated, holding the rings in the palm of her right hand. She was suddenly hit with a terrifying wave of remorse. If only Selden were there to see her, she thought, to see her in her big moment of triumph . . .

Looking down at her rings inevitably brought back that moment, just seven months ago, when she had stood under the hot white Tuscan sun, staring into the eyes of the man who was about to become her husband. She had been convinced that she was in love, but once again, love had let her down, and instead, she was alone . . .

Life wasn’t supposed to be this way, she thought wildly. When something good finally happened, weren’t you supposed to share it with someone? And she had no 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 389

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one, not even a friend . . . And sitting by herself in the vast black leather interior of the limousine, she very nearly felt like . . .
crying
.

But she mustn’t do that, she scolded herself. Not when the makeup artist had spent two hours doing her face (and Janey had had to pay for that herself too, $500

because it was Oscar night), and she was about to attend the most important party of her life. Staring down at the rings in her hand, she felt regret mingle with excitement. New beginnings were always painful, and she was quite sure that this evening would change her life . . .

And what were those rings anyway, but a sign of bondage? She should fling them out the window, she thought dramatically, but the thought of possible future penury stopped her. The engagement ring alone had cost $40,000; what she should do was sell it . . .

And coldly dropping the rings into her bag, she removed her compact and studied her face.

It was one of those evenings when Janey was looking her very best. She was always technically beautiful, but on this particular night it was as if her beauty had a life of its own. Knowing that it was going to be called on to work its magic, it had made that extra effort, and this evening, she glowed as if lit from within. Her hair was sleek and shiny, and her teeth, set off against a new red lipstick she had found, appeared startlingly white.

She looked at her face with satisfaction, and then, snapping her compact shut, reminded herself that her beauty was not her only asset.

At about eleven o’clock that morning, she’d received a phone call from Comstock Dibble informing her that he wanted to turn her “script” into a movie. Two summers ago, when she’d started writing the screenplay, a phone call like that would have made her scream with joy, for that summer, when she’d had no money and no job, selling a screenplay was nearly more bounty than she could have imagined. But quite a bit had happened to her since then, and she’d certainly learned not to set her sights so low. Even a year ago, she would have been thrilled to have her movie made and would have allowed Comstock to do whatever he wanted with the project. But she was a little smarter now, and she didn’t think she’d give up control that easily.

She intended to get as much as possible for herself out of the project, and at the very least, she intended to become a producer . . .

But naturally, she hadn’t told Comstock that, she thought smugly. His very first question was why hadn’t she shown it to him before, and while she hadn’t been able to give him an answer—the thought of explaining her feelings about those two months on Rasheed’s boat nearly rendered her speechless—a flash of insight told her that if she
had
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with a few scribblings on pink paper, but now, she was famous and everybody knew about her. And instinct told her that if Comstock Dibble was interested in her project, chances were, others might be as well . . .

The car moved forward to the entrance, and the driver opened his window, handing her invitation to a burly security guard. The guard shone a flashlight into the window and then the driver got out and opened her door.