KW 09:Shot on Location Read online

  He strolled past the now vacant pool and over the white gravel path toward the compound gate. He’d intended to walk to his appointment but then he saw the rack of bicycles. Best way to get around town, Joey had said. The only problem was that Jake hadn’t ridden a bike in probably twenty years, except for stationary ones at the gym, and those did not tip over. But he did have his goofy side, and a sudden feeling of what-the-hell had overtaken him, and he grabbed a cruiser, a purple one.

  He rolled it through the gate, mounted very gingerly, as if climbing onto a horse that might shy, and wobbled off. The seat was much too low for him and his bony knees cranked high and splayed out as he pedaled. His elbows flapped too, giving him the aspect of a prehistoric bird attempting liftoff.

  But he got the hang of it, the motion of the bike creating its own delicious breeze. The sun was low; light slanted through and underneath the canopies of dracaenas and palms. The streets were cooling except in little patches where glare was reflected from hot parked cars; on a bike, the feel and smell of the air changed with every second. By the time Jake reached the big hotel he was feeling almost giddy with the pleasure of the changes.

  Even so, his meeting with Quentin Dole got off to a rather rocky start.

  He’d been shown to the producer’s table in the Terrace Bar; it was an excellent table, on the rail overlooking the ocean and the sunset. Dole had risen affably to shake his hand. They’d agreed on what to drink — Tanqueray martinis. And, since they were near- contemporaries, the small talk came quite easily.

  But then, midway through the first cocktail, the producer said, “So, Jake, d’you bring the outline?”

  “Outline?”

  At this one word answer, Dole seemed just a bit nonplussed. The sun was about a palm’s breadth above the horizon; it kept slipping in and out among slabs of yellow cloud, and the lenses of the producer’s glasses kept getting darker and lighter, lighter and darker. He said, “The network wants an outline. Your agent didn’t tell you?”

  Jake sucked his olive off its toothpick. It sent a tickling squirt of liquor down his throat. “Nobody said anything about an outline.”

  Dole still looked affable but he couldn’t mask just a hint of a frown. “Hm, that’s really not so good.”

  Jake shrugged. “I never do an outline. What’s the point?”

  The producer quietly held his ground. “The network wants an outline. They need something to approve.”

  The writer smiled but his resistance was rising and the smile looked tight. “Look, I’ve got ten weeks to write a book. Who’s got time to cock around with an outline?”

  The producer tried to smile back. His didn’t quite work either. “It’s how they operate. They need something to sign off on. Doesn’t mean we’re locked into it. If it changes, it changes.”

  “Then why bother doing it?”

  The two men stared at each other over the rims of their martini glasses, their parallel and polite slow burns advancing by the finest of calibrations. Perhaps it was inevitable that there’d be some head-butting between them. A primal thing, a guy thing, a mutual testing that could lead either to friendship or to warfare. Dole, of course, was the richer and more powerful of the two men, but that was not always an advantage. Jake had the occasionally useful leverage of the free-lance, the unattached, the one with less to lose.

  It made for a delicate standoff, and Dole decided to try a different tack. He said, “The network owns your publisher.”

  Jake curled his lips dismissively. “That could change any day and it really isn’t my problem.”

  Realizing that his gambit had been ill-advised, the producer followed it up with yet another approach. With an ever more taut smile pulling at his face, trying to make the comment seem like half a compliment, he said, “You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  “About most things, no,” Jake said. “About my work, yes.” Then he added his own barb cloaked in the guise of grudging admiration. “And maybe you’re a little too used to dealing with L.A. suck-ups who’ll bend over and do whatever you tell them to.”

  At that, Dole swept off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His companion’s face hidden, Jake had no idea what was coming next. A punch? A thrown drink? A flipping of the table? Instead, Dole took a moment to regroup then shook his head and laughed. “All right, all right. Now that we know each other a little bit, how about we please start over? Let’s have another drink.”

  He signaled for the waiter, and when the fresh cocktails arrived the two men made a conciliatory clink with their glasses. The producer said, “Okay, there’s no outline. So how do you want to do this book?”

  “For starters, I just need you to tell me what you want.”

  “What I want?”

  “You want a murder mystery? More of a corporate sabotage kind of thing? Government conspiracies? Global cover-up? A prequel? A sequel? Some combination of all of the above?”

  “Christ, Jake, it isn’t like ordering Chinese food.”

  “Yes it is. In fact it’s a lot like ordering Chinese food. A little of this, a little of that. I know the recipes. What I need from you are the ingredients.”

  “Go on.”

  “You want a tie-in, right? A story connected to the show, but not too much. Little strands. Teases. Coincidences. I get it. I can do that. But I need more to go on. I’ve only had time to watch the first half-dozen episodes.”

  This was a fib. He’d only watched three and a half.

  “What did you think of them?” Dole asked.

  What did he think? He thought they were utterly preposterous and highly annoying but drew the line at saying so. “Good soap opera …”

  The producer didn’t wince, and Jake went on.

  “… catchy sub-plots, plenty of balls in the air. But I need to know what happens the rest of the season, the season or two after —”

  Jake broke off because his tablemate suddenly seemed uncomfortable in the extreme. He’d lowered his head and was peeking somewhat spasmodically around him as if afraid that someone might be listening. Speaking barely above a whisper, he said, “Jake, we off the record here?”

  “Of course. And even if we weren’t, I’m just the writer, no one talks to me.”

  “Seriously now. Off the record?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Okay, then. Listen, I have no idea what happens in the next season or two. I have no idea what happens in the next month or two. I have three scripts in hand. After that …?” He let the question hang.

  Jake took a moment to process it. Then he said, “The buzz is that the show will run for six or seven seasons.”

  “Right,” said Dole. “And there are millions of people glued to their sets every week, dying to see how it all turns out, believing that there has to be a master plan, a God almost. But there’s no master plan. There’s no plan at all.”

  The producer swigged his drink, then leaned in closer, more confiding and seemingly more tipsy than he’d been just a moment before. They were three thousand miles from L.A. and he seemed relieved to talk. He took his glasses off and showed his eyes. What was in them wasn’t fear exactly, but a kind of surprise and bewilderment, a silent but frank admission that he was in the middle of something that had gotten way too big for him, maybe too big for anybody.

  “Last year,” he went on, “me and some buddies sat down with a yellow pad and many bottles of Cabernet. We had this kick-ass idea for a pilot. That was it. Now we’ve got a monster hit, a cult, and I have no fucking clue where it’s going.”

  Jake ate his second olive, scratched his nose, and said, “Be careful what you wish for, right? Must be a lot of pressure.”

  “Pressure,” the producer echoed. “Put it this way. The show stays on track, I’m set for life, I write my own ticket. It tanks after a start like this, I probably never get a job again. The phone doesn’t ring, the calls don’t get returned, I’m dead. I don’t think there’s any middle ground.”

  He drummed his
fingers on the table. Jake looked off at the ocean. The seam between the sea and sky was fading, the air and water both trending toward a violet that seemed to have no surface, only depth.

  Rather jumpily, the producer flagged the waiter for another round. Then he pulled in a quick breath like he was trying to suck back the words he’d indulged himself by confiding. “This conversation, it never happened, right?”

  “Scout’s honor,” Jake said. “Trust me.”

  Dole managed a grim laugh. “Which is how they say fuck you in Hollywood. Last two words I wanted to hear.”

  “Except we’re not in Hollywood,” said Jake, “and I mean it. It’s between us. I appreciate your telling me. Now let’s talk story.”

  7.

  Wobbling and weaving through mostly empty streets, Jake somehow made it home that evening. He opened the compound gate, rolled his bike into the rack, and was walking a bit unsteadily up the gravel path when he noticed a naked woman swimming laps.

  The small pool wasn’t really suitable for laps; it was only long enough for five, six strokes before a turn was called for; the laps, in fact, were as much about somersaults as swimming. Still, the naked woman determinedly shuttled back and forth, back and forth. A gibbous moon was high in the sky; it lit her tenderly and beautifully. There were highlights on the finely stranded muscles of her neck and shoulders. Her buttocks softly shone like a pair of wave-washed rocks just above the tide line. There was a playful frenzy in the foam that fizzed around her kicking feet, and when she twirled and dove, pushing off to change direction, he could sense the power in her thighs. Transfixed, he watched her do perhaps a half dozen circuits before she surfaced and looked up at him.

  “Take a picture,” she said. “It lasts longer.”

  Caught, Jake mumbled, “Sorry. Was I staring? Sorry. I think I’ve had a lot to drink.”

  Standing now, the water encircling her breasts like a shimmering blue bodice, the woman shook her hair and tried to clear an ear. Then she splayed her elbows along the apron of the pool. “Hey, no problem. If I was shy about being looked at I’d probably spend less time naked in public places. You new here?”

  “As of today.”

  “Vacation?”

  “No, not really. Working.”

  “Ah. You with the show?”

  “Adrift?”

  “Is there another one? You must be one of the unimportant people.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re here. Like me. The stars, the bigshots, they get put up in fancy hotels and brought to the set in limos. I go in a minibus with the crew. What’s your deal?”

  “I’m writing a book for them.”

  “Ah, a brainy guy.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

  “Me, I do stunts. That’s why I’m out here swimming fucking laps when I could be in a nice bar drinking margaritas. I have a scene tomorrow. A big swim. I double for this bitch of a star. It’s the worst job in the world but it’s better than nothing. Would you reach me that towel over there?”

  Jake grabbed the towel from a nearby lounge chair. It had a blue background with a big picture of a pink flamingo on it. With no shred of inhibition, the woman, leggy as a model but with the firm and straight-hipped step of an athlete, climbed out of the pool and began to dry herself. Her brown hair was shiny with wet and wild from the somersaults. Her young face was open and pleasant but a bit too rough-hewn to be really pretty, the nose a shade too broad, the cheekbones a little too flat. She twisted the towel around her torso so that the flamingo’s beak seemed to be reaching down between her breasts. Then she lay down on the lounge and took a cigarette from a pack on a plastic table.

  Reading Jake’s face, she said, “I know, I know. Smoking. Right after a workout, no less. Girl can’t be good all the time. Want one?”

  He declined. The woman patted a chair next to her and invited him to sit. “Let’s chat a while. It’s so damn quiet here. I thought Key West was a party town. So where’s the freakin’ party? I’d rather be downtown, you know, Duval Street and all, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? I’m Donna.” She extended a hand that was still cool and a little crinkled from the pool.

  “I’m Jake. Nice to see you. Meet you, I mean.” He couldn’t quite forget that she was nude underneath the towel and this made it a little difficult to pursue a normal conversation. Somewhat awkwardly, he said, “I always thought being a stunt person would be a really cool job.”

  Donna smoked her cigarette. “Yeah. Lacerations, broken bones, it’s great. It’s just that this particular gig happens to suck.”

  “What’s so bad about it?”

  She blew some smoke out with a quiet fury. “What’s so bad about it. Well, for starters, I’m a distant second banana to a princess who doesn’t like to get wet and doesn’t like to get dirty. So why’s she doing a show where the whole fucking thing is about water and muck? Next thing--our character’s a real superwoman. She can do anything, fix anything, she’s always showing up the guys. So whenever there’s something super to be done, that’s me up there. But that’s all I get to do: be super. She gets to be the actual woman. She gets to act. I get to grunt now and then. She gets the close-ups, I get the crotch shots while I’m climbing up a tree. Not to mention she makes fifty or a hundred times more money. The whole thing’s so fucked up.”

  Jake looked for something to say but he was pressed back in his chair by Donna’s virulence.

  “Hey,” she went on, “she’s prettier than I am. I know that. I got eyes. But I don’t miss by much. A little knife-work, a little collagen. You think I miss by much?”

  Jake swallowed. “Actually, I think you’re great-looking.”

  “Great-looking. Okay. Not as good as beautiful, but I’ll take it, thanks.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette and turned over on her side. The towel followed her but not precisely. Lifting on an elbow, fixing Jake with a ferocious gaze, she went on. “It’s just that I’d be so much better in that part. I know that character inside and out. I am that character. When she’s treated like a girl, she gets pissed off and has to show how tough she is. When her toughness pushes people away, she wants to get all soft and be treated like a girl. She’s stuck in this pattern. Tomboy, pussycat. Pussycat, ballbuster. Back to pussycat, back to tomboy. I get it. I could play every little shred of it. I could win a fucking Emmy in that role.”

  Trying to be helpful, Jake said, “Maybe you’ll get to play a part like that sometime.”

  She picked a fleck of tobacco from her tongue and pushed forth a dismissive sound. “Fat chance. You don’t go from stunt girl to leading lady. That would take a miracle. And I happen not to believe in miracles. Except maybe the do-it-yourself kind. So there it is. But hey, you shouldn’t have to listen to me bitch all night. Tell me about you, what you’re doing here, your book. It’s about the show?”

  Jake leaned his head back and looked up at the stars. “Sort of. Not really. Yes and no.”

  “That clears it up,” said Donna.

  “You know Quentin Dole?”

  “Christ, that’s like asking if I know the Pope. He’s the man. He’s the franchise. They say he’s a genius. Has the whole series mapped out in his head.”

  “We just had drinks —”

  “You had drinks with Quentin? So you’re a bigshot after all.”

  “Not hardly. But we had drinks, we chatted, we’re trying to figure out what the book should be.”

  “Drinks with Quentin,” Donna said again. “You’re a bigshot but you hide it. I think that’s nice.”

  “Stop, please. But I have a question for you. Would you rather not ride the minibus tomorrow morning? Quentin’s sending a car to bring me to the set.”

  “A limo? That’s more like it.”

  “I doubt it. Just a car.”

  “Still beats the hell out of a minibus. I have to do anything to get this ride?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. Do anything. I mean, this is show
business, after all.”

  Slightly embarrassed, not sure if he was coming across more as a prude or more as a cad, Jake said, “No. No, nothing like that.”

  “See, you’re a nice guy. I could see right off you are.”

  “Just be ready by eight.”

  “I’ll be ready by seven,” she said. “Getting into character, you know.” And she gave a little laugh that dissolved in the blue haze above the pool.

  8.

  Donna, all revved up, was awake at dawn and soon got down to her daily regimen of stretching and core work. By seven she was showered and dressed and rubbed with lotions that made her taut skin glisten. But then her morning had a setback. She couldn’t find the looseleaf binder that held her scripts. She was sure she’d left it on the wicker table in her tiny living room. Well, almost sure. Occasionally she read scripts out by the pool, fantasizing that some talent scout or bigshot might happen by and be fascinated. Or sometimes she read scenes aloud in the bathtub, playing all the parts, sloshing water as she gestured. Still, there were only so many places the notebook could be, and it didn’t seem to be in any of them. This embarrassed her. Even though she had no lines, it seemed unprofessional to show up on set without her script. She looked for it again and again.

  Jake, slightly hung over, slept till twenty of eight. He made coffee, stuck his head under running water, pulled on the first clothes he found. He wasn’t very talkative in the morning.

  Their ride in fact was not a limo but at least it was a black Town Car and at least the driver, while not in uniform, wore a jaunty cap. He drove them through the sleepy pastel streets of Old Town, only the cats apparently awake, then north on Highway 1, through precincts where Key West ceased being special and looked a lot like many other slightly seamy tourist towns — here a pancake house, there a porn shop, a grim line of motels that had lost some paint on their archways and some letters from their signs.

  Not till they turned off the highway at a place called Big Sandy Key did the landscape once again seem singular, antic, a somehow facetious version of reality stuck onto the wider world with a piece of fraying tape. For one thing, the name Big Sandy was either a willful illusion, a developer’s fib, or a mapmaker’s joke: there wasn’t any sand there. There was only coral, chunks of it in every size. Slabs big enough to serve as pockmarked driveways. Outcrops that broke toes in the dark. Gravel that ranged from knucklebone size down to something almost like dust but with very sharp edges. Through this finer stuff, mangroves grew, their arched roots standing in the water, capturing muck.