SUGAR ON THE RIM
"Wherefore the fuck art thou?"
"Terminal five."
"I flew from Mexico," I said. "I'm outside the international terminal."
"TequilAir stops in San Diego," Euclid said. "The connection makes it domestic."
"I flew their Guacamole Express. It's nonstop from Cabo."
Euclid asked, "What's that run these days?"
"It's only money."
"Especially when it's not yours," Euclid said.
We're either not as screwed as we think we are, or lowballing our screwed magnitude. Rare is the being who sees all that is as it is, pronounces, "I am screwed to this degree," and goes forth clear-eyed to dry hump reality's leg.
After gaining access to Sydney's pay pig's villa via the unlocked beachside door with the taped-on note reading Enter Me, I'd finished the Key lime pie, emailed myself everything I'd ever written in case I had to sell my laptop for the flight to Los Angeles, and searched the home for spare change.
I was a teenager the last time I'd rifled my parents' room for change, and in those days of yore finding ten bucks in a drawer would have been the equivalent of stumbling upon Paititi, the lost Incan City of Gold.
In the villa's master bedroom closet I discovered five blocks of cash wrapped in cellophane beneath a straw sombrero, each block the size of a carry-on suitcase. I suffered the ethical implications of taking a few dollars from the tech billionaire's smuggled, tax-avoiding stash while strolling to the kitchen for plastic gloves and a knife, and decided enough to hire a car to the Cabo airport and fly back to Los Angeles was morally defensible. I'd pay it back when I had it. So—technically—it was a no-interest loan. I checked online for available flights, and weighed the extra fifteen hundred dollars necessary for the luxury and expediency of TequilAir's Guacamole Express (departing an hour earlier from Cabo and arriving at LAX three hours earlier) against my debt burden tolerance. The reply was hazy, forcing me to factor in the emotional toll the sensory deprivation hood had extracted from the moment I'd regained consciousness to my escape from the hood, account for unknowns such as developing nyctophobia or sedatephobia or eremikophobia, or all three, and estimate the opportunity cost of avoiding margaritas in Los Angeles given the city's many excellent Mexican restaurants. I arrived at Yes.
Euclid stopped his car at the curb. He ran around to open the door.
"Namaste, and thanks for choosing URide," he said, and closed the door behind me.
Once Euclid was behind the wheel, I said, "Namaste?"
He made a little half-assed shrug. "I'm exploring a new spirituality called Tantrarma. It flows through the mistress Shiva-Lu Shiva."
"What flows through her?"
"The bright word."
"In what way?"
Euclid hesitated. "I don't understand the question."
"How'd you meet her? Is she a yoga instructor?"
"Yes, and other things. But I've never met her. Her temple is in Bangkok."
I considered. "So it's a hybrid? Tantra and karma?"
"Tantrarma is a philosophical and spiritual blend," Euclid said. "It's apart from the earth. Karma is a prime element of Shiva-Lu Shiva's philosophy."
"Great. Now I have to pay back the billionaire."
"You might want to," he said, "so you don't reincarnate as a cockroach."
He tapped at his phone, on the URide app.
"You're charging me for this?"
"Cash, grass, or ass," he said.
"To quote my good friend Euclid," I said, "Ha fucking ha."
He grinned and handed me his phone, "Void the ride, please."
We exited LAX and, predictably, Euclid took La Cienega north toward Hollywood.
When we continued past Beverly, I said, "Where are we going?"
"To pick up the equipment."
"What?"
"We shoot tomorrow."
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." I'd forgotten it all. "I shot yesterday."
Euclid said nothing.
"I'm sorry," I said. "We were on the beach, and the ocean, and the moon—"
"And she was just so pretty?" he whined. "And it felt so right? Holy crap, Brät."
It's often necessary to analyze Euclid's reactions, and determine whether he's feigning anger because it's the expected reaction given the circumstances, or legitimately angry. I categorized this one as legitimate.
"The situation was complex, Uke. I saw an escape route and made an executive decision."
"Yeah, that worked out well. Naked on a beach in a mask. Did you ever consider that if she'd put the locks on you'd be dead?"
"Of course I did. That's how I know she loves me."
The rotational speed of Euclid's head snap to eyeball me threatened to toss his nose onto the dashboard like a small child on a merry-go-round's perimeter, given the tangential force applied to his nose because of its distance from his head's axis of rotation.
"Please tell me you're kidding," he said.
I smiled. "I'm kidding."
He took a good look at me. "Are you wearing the guy's clothes?"
Rustic khaki slacks. A DB-brand polo shirt with distressed collar. Numbered, limited edition black deck shoes with a skull and cross-bones on one blood red sole and a pitchfork and flames on the other, to leave unique footprints. This pair was branded 2/666. I was keeping them.
"She took all of mine," I said.
"He has better taste than you."
I frowned. "That's a little over the line."
He barked a laugh. "One of my many jobs is assuring your erection stays in frame. So our friendship has no lines."
Euclid parked near the rental company's door and switched off the engine.
"We can't change our shooting days again," he said. "I just negotiated a weekend rate for Tuesday and Wednesdays. We pay whether or not we shoot."
"I understand," I said. "It's on me. Did I mention you're an excellent producer?"
We picked up the equipment and headed for Euclid's apartment.
"Is the stunt dick available tomorrow?" I asked.
We sat at a red light. "Don't know. Why?"
"Maybe we could get him over tomorrow. We could shoot day two the first day, and vice versa. It would give me an extra day to build my reserves."
"But then our star will be tired for the big scene."
"No I wouldn't," I said.
"The girl, dumbass."
"Right. How about dialogue in the morning, stunt dick non-pene-tration shots in the afternoon, the climactic scenes morning of day two, and finish with the stunt dick in the afternoon?"
Euclid punched it when the light turned green. "You'll pay for the stand-in's extra day?"
"It seems like a production expense."
"It is, but it's coming out of your monthly take," Euclid said. "You can't screw up, as understandable as it is with the beach and all"—he winked at me—"and expect the rest of us to pay for it. We're all working toward something bigger."
"All right."
"Why are you grinning?" Euclid asked.
"It's just good to be back."
He laughed. "We'll see how you feel after you talk to Troika. She's dying to monologue about professionalism."
"We're there," Stu said, dipping a tortilla chip in Ocho's salsa raro, made from Mazahua heirloom tomatoes flown in from Mexico twice daily, and jalapeño peppers raised behind the restaurant in three-inch clay pots for perfect marbling. Ocho had managed to sell the Hollywood elite on its stratospherically priced authenticity by arranging rusted, weather-abused tables and chairs reclaimed from a dust-riddled town sixty miles south of TJ around a polished concrete floor sprinkled with sawdust. Other Authentic Ambience Elementals included artistically cracked glass (with a pristine inner pane to pass L.A. health inspections), primary color painted window lettering, a mule petting zoo next to the jalapeño nursery, and Authentic Itin-erant Graffiti in the side alley, erased and revised nightly by an Authentic Undocumented Immigrant, whose oils on canvas had recently shown at LACMA. A tin plate screwed into every table apologized for the restaurant's failure to pipe in authentic tap water from south of the border.
"So what's the next step?" I asked, lifting my blended strawberry margarita, hesitating, and setting it down for the fifth time.
"I'll run through it, fix some errors of grammar and clarity I noticed, then Nikki'll give it a light proof and we'll send it out Tuesday."
"Who's Nikki?"
"My daughter. It's my weekend."
"Is she qualified?"
"She's majoring in journalism," he said. "I mean, she will. They can't declare until sophomore year."
"Okay," I said, thinking Nine Lives warranted a keener eye. "What's 'a light proof'?"
"Whatever she catches over the weekend. It doesn't have to be perfect from a grammatical or punctuation perspective. Just not distracting. If you wrote the greatest script of all time on toilet paper with a gray crayon, it would eventually sell." He killed off another few chips. "Hell, it would probably sell faster because it was on toilet paper, and its unreadability would contribute to its mystery."
My expression betrayed my doubt.
"Brät, all the formatting to airframe tolerances, and Dante's nine levels of copyediting, and the brass fucking brads 'of an inch but not an inch and a quarter in the outside holes but never the center hole' are guidelines. Nothing more. That shit sells screenwriting books, not screenplays. The only ironclad rule of screenwriting is you've gotta be here in L.A. And even that isn't ironclad."
I smiled. "So is it ironclad or not?"
Stu laughed, murdered a chip, swigged margarita. "What do you care? You're already here. You've optioned a script. You're living the dream, with your bat out of hell at the curb."
The sun ignited off the twisted exhaust pipe and exploded in my heart.
"I really love it."
Stu studied me. "You say that like your best friend rode it while you were out of town."
Our waitress, who'd earlier informed us she'd portrayed a murdered exotic dancer's dead body in a recent episode of Beat Cop, stopped by the table. "Excusa me, amigos. Life with the Lobahtums is shooting here in five minutes. I guess Lily's mom is confronting her about the whole Linen thing. I thought I'd give you a head's up in case you wanted to leave before they arrive."
"Thanks for the warning," Stu said.
"No problemo." She laid our check on the table, and next to it a pair of model release forms. "If you want to stay for the fireworks."
When she'd left, Stu paid the check with cash. "You ever watch that shit?" he asked.
"The Lobahtums? No. My life's drama enough." I touched my tongue to the margarita glass. Sugar on the rim. Thank the gods. I sipped some, swished it around. Waited. Steeled myself and swallowed.
"Something wrong, Brät?"
"Margaritas make me nervous these days," I said.
"That's not what I mean."
A crew-type with a network logo t-shirt stopped at our table.
"What's up guys? I'm Scott, PA for Life with the Lobahtums. Lily's two minutes out. If you're going to stay, I need you to sign your release."
"We're not done here yet," Stu said. "You can blur us."
"Yeah," Scott said, super apologetic, "that's not really L-square canon."
"But it's reality."
A stare down ensued. Stu won. Scott swore under his breath and stalked off.
"So what's going on?" Stu asked.
"Just the usual," I said. "Cash flow."
"That's pretty much par. You're still driving, I assume."
"Against my will."
Stu leaned back in his chair, holding his margarita glass by the stem. In his white pants and open-collared palm frond print shirt, he looked like a Bogotá brothel owner fresh out of coca-laced cheroots.
"We all do shit we don't want to do," he said. "Wait tables, drive taxis, give handjobs at the Marmont." He grimaced. "Practice law. The dream doesn't come cheap. So you do what you have to. You bet on you. If you win—and believe me, you're winning right now, Brät—your life's above and beyond. If you lose... well, you gave it a shot. More than most."
Outside the restaurant, three big black SUVs and a platoon of paparazzi cars and motor scooters screeched to stops, too close to my bike for me to relax. Three network cameramen burst from the first SUV and took position in front of Ocho, mere steps ahead of the paparazzi. The first two cameras focused on the second and third SUVs, while camera three rehearsed his rack focus in the restaurant's glass.
I turned from the outside frenzy to maintain my sanity. "It doesn't feel like I'm winning."
"It never does. That's lifestyle escalation. You optioned your script, got a little money, and the first thing you did was buy the motorcycle. Which was about two or three grand more than you had. So right at the gun you're over your head—"
"I financed it."
"You still have to pay for it."
I glanced at my bike to assure myself no one was touching it.
"Sometimes," Stu said, "on rare occasions, one's problems aren't one's fault. But yours are. When Uberman is financed and you get a check for a couple hundred grand—"
"Did they get the financing?" I blurted.
Stu's stare was hard. "This is a desperate place," he said. "But you can't show it."
"I'm new in town."
"Not anymore, Brät."
The doors of the second and third SUVs opened in unison and out stepped Lily Lobahtum and her entourage. Cameras flashed, paparazzi shouted, traffic halted. Lily stood, sculpted from marble, her chin and gaze imperious, above it all. She was shorter and heavier than I'd expected, and more beautiful. Responding to market demands, an L.A. plastic surgeon had developed a package of tucks, injections, and implants for women who wanted to go full Lobahtum.
"You want to sign the release, Bröt, or do you want to listen?"
"Sorry," I said. "I'm nervous about my motorcycle."
"Then I'll make it quick." Stu breathed yoga-like, calming. "Horde your money. Don't be the asshole who won't learn from his mistakes. Precede the eight ball."
I maintained eye contact and gritted my teeth against the certainty my bike would soon crash to the pavement.
"For most of us," Stu said, "there's two ways to win here. Hit the jackpot and walk, or be the house." He pointed at me with a meaningful tortilla chip. "You'll never be the house, Bröt."
The restaurant doors flew open. Lily and the cameras and the throng invaded, spoiling the authenticity, but Stu's stare was intense, straight at me, waiting for an acknowledgment I'd tattooed his words on my virgin soul and they would become thematic elements in everything I wrote for all my remaining days.
I matched his earnestness and raised him a solemn nod, but a paparazzi brushed past my motorcycle's back tire in his haste to take a primo Lily Lobahtum ass shot. I jerked my attention to the bike, willing it to stay upright, dying a string of unending moments as it wavered on its kickstand. Three lives later the bike went still.
I collapsed in my chair, shaken.
"Bröt, the motorcycle will be okay," Stu said from a far off, echoing place. "Do you get what I'm saying?"
"You're telling me to walk away?"
"Not yet, obviously. Write like hell for now. Strike hard, before they do. If you get the golden ticket, which I think you will because I'm a starry-eyed dreamer with a pet unicorn, enjoy the meteoric rise, and the instant, the fucking instant, the phone doesn't ring quite as much as it used to, get out, go like you've never gone, ride into the sunset with your piles of money and a nice girl who'll embrace your sins."
MY PROFILE—RECENT photos portraying me as fun and sexy and mysterious but not shady, confident yet humble self-descriptions, specific-sounding ideal mate essays eliminating exactly zero women who categorized themselves as slim or athletic, likes, dislikes, love and sex quiz responses, star ratings, favorite movies, most-loved books, and checked boxes pegging me as tall and athletic—resides on twelve dating sites and three hot-or-not meet-up apps, including Zamba. I've A/B tested photos, quiz responses, self-descriptions, and what-I'm-looking-fors. Each profile has a different primary photo—similar but not so similar as to inspire "oh, him again" by women who share my shotgun method of finding "an intimate relationship with someone special." I may be more analytical than most, but I'm simply employing a work smarter, not harder methodology to a numbers game.
I turned onto Sweetzer, parked at the curb to wait for my passenger, and opened Zamba.
Shooting our films mid-week had freed my weekends, which enabled me to drive during URide's most lucrative weekend time periods and resume my online dating regimen—to retain my fifth-in-the-world ranking. Truly the salad days. I was two scripts ahead on Crimes Against Passion, and "between scripts" in my mainstream career, which is writer-ese for sitting on my ass and hoping what I'd already written would instigate a bidding war.
"Thanks for choosing URide," I said when my passenger climbed in. "Still heading for Santa Monica?"