Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

Becca had been telling Rusty for months that she wanted to read the script, but he always said he wasn’t ready. She never really saw him working on it. He kept saying she could see it soon, and she thought maybe he was planning to show it to Spike. Whenever Grady or anyone asked what the script was about all Rusty would say was it was a murder mystery that took place among horse trainers. Rusty used to work a lot around stables, at least he said he did anyway. On the sly, Grady told Becca, “You cain’t trust to believe half the shit come out that boy’s pretty mouth.” But Grady liked the whole racetrack thing. Ever since Cassandra told him about the Spider-Man kid starring in Seabiscuit, Grady thought that horse and jockey stories, or anything having to do with the track, were a sure bet. (Rusty said his movie wasn’t gonna be “no sobby, suckass Seabiscuit turd.”) He became more and more convinced that Look-Alikes was going to make Rusty Goodson a star and incessantly spoke to Cassandra about drawing up a contract to lock their homeboy into a QuestraWorld film at a bargain basement price. Grady read in The Hollywood Reporter about how even Kirsten Dunst’s hotshot agents got stuck honoring some craphouse deal she’d made with a studio way back when, before Spider-Man spun its billion-dollar web worldwide — if Rusty got hot off of Look-Alikes, QuestraWorld should already have him in the bag. Cassandra wouldn’t bite. She was more focused on the new baby than on Rusty’s screenplay anyhow. Focused on the reality show and managing their money. She loved getting loaded and sucking Rusty’s dick in a group thing, but she’d be damned if she was going to shell out cash for something that wasn’t even real. She pissed Grady off, but he kind of loved her for that.

• • •

THE WRAP PARTY was on the roof of the Standard. There were so many stars, it seemed more like a premiere. Being downtown and high up like that was such a different perspective, skyscape-wise. Becca and Cassandra were stoned and kept pretending they were in Toronto or Vancouver, places they’d never even been. When her mom came, Becca for sure wanted to bring her there for cocktails.

The costume ladies and makeup girls and all the funky women that Becca saw hauling equipment during the shoot were dressed to the nines, showing lots of skin. Wrap parties were like that — they were all about sex, and majorly blowing out the pipes. Celebrities were wraparound because Spike and Sofia knew everyone and everyone wanted to know them too.

The look-alikes showed up in full force: her friend the Barbra, the Cameron and a Cher, the Billy Bob, the Pope and a James Gandolfini, a Mike Myers, a Reese, the Benicio and the Cusack, and of course Becca and Rusty. Whenever an official shutterbug flashed a photo of him Rusty knew (even though he was hands-down the best “specialty” actor, and had the biggest role) that attention was being paid because of his look-alike status, and not his own merit. She saw that he was ashamed. He said to her that being a look-alike was like being a porn star. You could never escape your caste: Untouchable.

Becca disagreed, though not to his face. She didn’t mind having her picture taken at all. After a few drinks, she got the courage to say hello to Spike and Sofia. They were always so courtly, especially Sofia — just folks. Mrs. Coppola-Jonze immediately said, in her sweet, disingenuous way, “Oh, Drew’s in Turkey,” as if Becca and Drew were officially linked. Sofia asked how things were going with her boss. Becca said fine, and Sofia asked if Viv was coming to the party. Becca got a shiver because that was something she hadn’t thought of — that Viv had been invited and would probably show. (Suddenly, it seemed superlikely.) Becca didn’t want to run into her, fearing that a whole petty cycle of hassles would be set in motion. Even if Viv acted nice, she knew there’d be hell to pay during the workweek.

Sofia introduced her to Charlie Kaufman. (They had already met, once at the Chateau, and a few times on the set.) The writer was with a woman he said had done the novelization of the Ethan Hawke — Gwyneth Paltrow movie Great Expectations. Charlie kept saying how great it was that his friend had “novelized Dickens,” but Becca felt kind of bad because she didn’t get it. Sofia kept smiling in that mysterious way; you could never figure out what she was thinking, or, for that matter, Spike either, and Becca was always on guard because as far as she was concerned being around either one of them was like an audition for one of their future films.

She ran into the second A.D., and they made out in one of the crazily decorated hotel guest rooms (in addition to the roof, a whole floor had been consigned). The second said that Drew was vacationing in Turkey before returning to work on A Confederacy of Dunces. Becca said Sofia already told her that, then went back to the roof to find Rusty. That was when she saw Cassandra in midconversation, wildly gesticulating before Viv Wembley and Alf Lanier. Becca’s heart went straight to her throat. That was another thing she stupidly hadn’t considered — that the Dunsmores, knowing she worked for Viv, would of course approach the television star and act like the shameless freaks that they were.

I am fucked, she said to herself with a carefree shrug.

Reentry

ROSLYNN BABY-SAT her at the Fairmont while the others went to the Star Ball. There had been urgings among the group that she be hospital-assessed — her behavior after landing continued to be worrisome — but Lisanne always emerged from cloaked silences to resist deftly and cogently, against their better judgment. Mattie and Phil were from San Mateo, so a doctor they knew dropped by the suite to give Lisanne something to settle her. He told Philip and the Loewensteins that he wasn’t sure what was going on but that some sort of “abreaction” should probably be ruled out. Not really his area.

On Monday, they sent her home in a Town Car. She asked the driver to take the coastal route. She loved Carmel and Big Sur. They stopped at coffee shops, and ate club sandwiches and fries.

From her backseat nest, Lisanne caught up on newspapers and magazines. One of the ads featured a gorgeous, buff young black girl.

Shanté puts all kinds of heat on the world’s torturers. And then she hits the gym. Shanté is a member of Amnesty International. Every month, Shanté sends e-mails to world leaders, urging them to stop torturing and killing the prisoners in their jails.

Torturers worldwide wish they never heard of Shanté Smalls.

She read an article in The New York Times about people who have recurrent infections acquired in hospitals, mostly from health-care workers who neglected to wash their hands. The infections were of the type that could no longer be cured by antibiotics. One of the sick persons was an older woman whose sternum had been eaten away by bacteria, and now whenever she went for a drive she had to wear a bulletproof vest because if she got in an accident her chest would be crushed by the air bag. Another article was about a little Jewish girl who was snatched from her crib and killed by a black bear in the Catskills. On the next page was a financial ad with the head of a big black bear staring out. “Are you managing the bear?” read the copy. “Or is the bear managing you?”

• • •

LISANNE VISITED THE Bel-Air home office of Dr. Calliope Krohn-Markowitz, Holocaust survivor and legendary shrink to the stars. Roslynn Loewenstein, a client for years, had arranged it.

“Did you ever lose control like that before?”

“You mean,” said Lisanne, embarrassed, “on the plane?”

“Yes.”