Danielle Steel - Bungalow 2

They talked about other things after that, and then they both had to get off the phone, although Tanya would have liked to chat with him forever. They both had early meetings the next day, and needed to get some sleep so they had their wits about them. She promised to call him earlier the following night, and asked him to give her love to the girls. She felt almost like a stranger saying it to him. It was completely foreign to her to be away from her children and sending them her love. In her own mind more than his, she was supposed to be there to give it to them herself.

Tanya was back in the same conference room the next morning, and this time Max arrived with his dog, if you could call it that. Harry was closer to the size of a small horse, but he was very well behaved, and sat in the corner, with his gigantic head on his paws. He was so well trained that after people's initial surprise over his size, no one noticed him at all, until food appeared in the room, and then he sat up looking alert, whined loudly, and drooled profusely. Max gave him treats to eat, and everyone else gave him table scraps, and then he lay down again and went to sleep. Harry was an extremely polite dog. Tanya complimented Max on it halfway through the meeting.

“He's actually my roommate, not a dog,” Max said with a grin. “He was in a commercial once. I put the money in the stock market, and he's done very well. He pays for his half of the rent. I think of him as more of a son.” She could see that he did.

The meeting was long and arduous. Douglas ran it extremely well, with Max's help. And Tanya was very surprised at the copious notes the actors had made. Some were very sensible, which made good points, and others were totally disorganized and irrelevant, but for the most part they all had something to say, and something they wanted changed. The biggest problem was dialogue that didn't “feel like them,” and then she had to work with them to find ways of saying the same thing in most cases, in ways they felt better with. It was a long tedious process, and Douglas got irritated with all of them more than once. His stress level seemed to be high in meetings, and he and Tanya got into another argument about a different scene involving the same character he hated and that they'd battled over the day before.

“Oh for chrissake, Tanya,” he shouted at her, “stop defending the bitch. Just fucking change her!” Tanya was more than a little startled, and was silent for a while after that, while Max shot her encouraging glances. He could see that Douglas had upset her and hurt her feelings.

Douglas himself stopped to talk to her after the meeting, as the actors were filing out. It was nearly six o'clock, and there had been carts of food in and out of the room all day. She could see what Max had meant. Even scones, whipped cream, and strawberries at four o'clock, and a hell of a lot of sushi and tofu all day long.

After the meeting all the actors were heading for the gym, or for sessions with their trainers. Tanya just wanted to go back to the bungalow and collapse. She was beyond exhausted, from concentrating on what everyone had said all day, and trying to work with them on making changes in the script.

“I'm sorry I was a little rough on you today,” Douglas said smoothly. He looked as though nothing had happened, but Tanya felt like she'd been hit by a bus and he could see it. “These meetings with the actors drive me nuts. They pick on every word and detail, and worry about how they sound when they say it. It's in their contract that they can request changes in the script, and I think they all feel they didn't do their job if they don't ask you to rewrite every scene for them. After a while I just want to strangle everyone. These meetings over the actors' notes always take forever. Anyway, sorry if you got the blunt end of my temper.”

“It's okay,” Tanya said easily. “I was tired, too. It's a lot of minutiae, and I'm trying to preserve the integrity of the script and keep everyone happy.” It wasn't always easy, and he knew it. He had done this hundreds of times over the years, on dozens of scripts. “I've been working on the character you hate so much, and I don't think I've solved the problem yet, but I'm trying. I think the snag here is that she doesn't strike me as boring. I see all the undercurrents in her, all the hidden thoughts and intentions, so I get that she's not as boring as she looks. Or maybe I just identify with her, and I'm as boring as she is.” Tanya laughed as she said it, and Douglas shook his head with a smile. Tanya was grateful he had stopped to talk to her to relieve the pressure. He had intimidated her considerably for the past several hours. It wasn't fun. This was better.

“That's not how I would describe you, Tanya. You're anything but, and I hope you know it.”

“I'm just a housewife from Marin,” she said honestly, and he laughed out loud.

“Try that on someone else. Helen Keller maybe. That housewife thing is the game you play or the mask you wear, I'm not sure which one yet. But I can tell you one thing I know for sure, it's not who you are. If it were, you wouldn't be here. Not for a hot minute.”

“I'm a housewife on loan from my family to write a script,” she tried again. He remained unconvinced.

“Bullshit. Not even close. I don't know who you fool with that one, Tanya, but it wouldn't be me. You're a sophisticated woman with a fascinating mind. Casting you as a housewife in Marin is about like putting an alien from another planet in a job at McDonald's. They may be able to do it, but why waste all that mind and talent?”

“It's not wasted on my kids.” She didn't like what he said or how he perceived her. It bothered her. She was exactly what she said she was and how she appeared, and took pride in it. She loved being a mother and housewife and always had. She enjoyed her writing, too, especially now, and the challenge of it. But she had no desire to become a Hollywood person, and it sounded like that was what he was intimating, that she belonged there and not in Ross. And that was not what she wanted. She knew she would never do it, except this one time as a lark. After this she was going home and staying there. She had already made up her mind on that.

“The tides have turned, Tanya, whether you like it or not. You can't go back. It doesn't work. You've been here a week and you've already outgrown it. You did before you came. The day you made the decision to do the film, it was done, the die was cast.” His saying that made chills run up and down her spine. It was as though he were saying that her way home had vanished, and she wanted reassurance that it had not. Every time Douglas said something like that, it made her want to run into Peter's arms. Being around Douglas, she felt like Bess with Crown in Porgy and Bess. What Douglas said was terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. She wanted to go home. “You were very patient with all the actors today,” he commended her. “They're an unruly lot.”

“I thought Jean's comments were very good, in relation to her character. And Ned's made sense, too,” Tanya said fairly, ignoring everything Douglas had said. She wasn't going to argue the point with him about whether she should be a housewife or not. He didn't get a vote, except for the duration of the film. After that, she didn't care what he thought. He had no power over her life, nor was he clairvoyant or a shrink. He was obsessed with Hollywood, and she was not. He was drunk on the power he had. She was learning that about him, even though he expressed it subtly at times, and showed his hand at others, depending on what worked best for him in the situation they were in. He was a pro to watch, like a tennis player at Wimbledon.

She went back to the hotel afterward, and worked on the script for hours that night. She managed to get some of the changes in. Others were harder to effect. She called Max several times the next day to discuss it with him, and he told her not to worry about some of it. Some of the changes and subtle alterations would happen on the set, farther down the road. Max was by far the mellowest person she was dealing with, and she appreciated his ever-calm perspective about everything. He was very easygoing, and supremely knowledgeable. It was a perfect combination, unlike Douglas, who exuded tension and an obsession with control, which she found difficult at times.