THE GREAT EQUALIZER
The bored dude with the khakis, polo shirt, and eternal three-day stubble inspected my vehicle while I completed the necessary paperwork and online licensing exam. He took his time filling out my license, yawned while I downloaded the necessary phone app, and affixed the required URide window sticker on the bottom right corner of my windshield.
“Take it off when you’re not working,” he said. “The taxi dicks’ll key your car.” He stared into the middle distance. “And chicks’ll think you’re a douche.”
“Thanks. Good tips.”
“Yeah.” He handed me a business card. “These are the pickup rules for LAX. Keep them in your car. Hotels are usually cool about us. The hip ones, boutique-sorts, especially. Downtowns not so much. Just ignore the cabs. They’ll try to intimidate you.”
“Okay.”
“You in the business?” he asked. “Actor? Producer?”
“Writer-director.”
“Ah, a hyphenate. Well, maybe you’ll get stories from it. Don’t give passengers your script. Even if they ask. The powers-that-be find out you did that, you’re done.” His expression shifted to self-reflective. “It’s a means to an end. You’re not a driver. You’re a writer. You don’t want to be a stereotype, unless you’re a masochist. So separate the two. Riders ask what you do, which they will all the time, just say you’re paying your way through college. Everyone involved’ll feel better about it. Most importantly you.”
“Thanks. Are you an actor?”
He smiled. “I’m paying my way through college.”
We shook hands and just like that I could “be my own boss and earn money on my time” and “turn my ride into rubles.” “Brät, the script wasn’t ready for prime time.”
I sat across from my agent—Stu Goldberg of Goldberg & Associates—in his luxurious office. His dark, monstrous, polished wood desk dominated the room. He sat behind the desk in a matching throne with blood red seating surfaces. I sat in one of two smaller chairs. A personal injury attorney, Stu’s love for film had inspired him to open an entertainment division at his firm. Bookcases lined the walls, filled with screenplays, legal documents, and thick leather legal tomes. Behind him a vast window framed Century City’s glass towers and the 405 freeway. He wore a black suit and a black openneck dress shirt. His salt-and-pepper mane flowed to a matching trimmed beard—adult radio rock star circa 1987 meets angelinvesting hipster. This was our first face-to-face meeting.
“What do you mean?”
He steepled his fingers. “I told you I had Mark polish it.”
Mark sat across the room sipping green tea at a “breakout” table and chairs. He wore a graphic t-shirt and jeans and struck me as a true blue dick.
“Yeah, I remember.” I’d agreed to this arrangement from a distance. Mark would polish my first screenplay, Assassination—my “kids track normal people for sport and ‘assassinate’ them with paint guns but they choose the wrong target: a real life assassin who turns the tables on them” thriller—in exchange for an extra five percent of the sale. Goldberg & Associates would keep twenty percent total. I knew nothing of Hollywood and assumed Stu saw the same genius in me I fantasized I possessed, and viewed Mark’s polish as a barely necessary launch step.
“We do this for our clients all the time,” Stu had told me.
“It’s changed a lot, obviously,” Mark said. He gazed out the window, sipped his tea.
“In what way?” I asked.
“So you need to understand it’s much different than the original script you sent us,” Stu said.
“Then explain to—”
“And it would be unfair to Mark,” he continued, ignoring me, “not to mention misrepresenting the authorship to potential buyers, if you received sole credit for the work.”
“But that was our agreement. It was supposed to be a polish. Mark chose to do what he did. Which I haven’t seen, by the way.”
“I think we’re beyond that,” Stu said.
“Beyond what?” I said, getting pissed.
“The question of authorship. I’m uncomfortable misrepresenting the work. It’s co-written, your name first of course—”
“Oh of course,” I snapped.
“—and a fifty-fifty split of the sale.”
“First off,” I said, “this is bullshit.”
“I feel exactly the same,” Mark said from behind his precious tea cup.
“Do you? I don’t see how that’s fucking possible.”
“Brät—” Stu began.
“I have to run the new agreement past my sister.” My sister Georgia is a mergers and acquisitions attorney.
“There’s no time,” Stu said. “It goes to market tomorrow.”
This was news. “Tomorrow?”
He grinned.
I had decided to write screenplays because I figured scripts were easier to write and more lucrative than novels, ergo a faster path to tooling around in an Aston Martin like 007. I’d start with scripts, move into directing, and spend my golden years in Bel Air penning acclaimed espionage novels while receiving twice-daily blowjobs from worshipful starlets wowed by my maverick genre-unto-its-own literary blend of action, humor, and sex. Unfortunately, I’d told this to Stu during an unguarded moment.
“Fifty percent of what this baby is going to sell for will put you in a twelve-cylinder Vantage,” Stu said. “Maybe a DB9.”
“Where are they?” I asked. “The script and the agreement?”
He slid a manila envelope across the desk. I opened it. The new contract waited on top. I pulled out my phone, took photos of all six pages, and messaged them to my sister with the note, “I’m getting screwed, but read it and tell me how hard.”
“Like I said, there’s no time for that,” Stu said.
I ignored him and read the script’s cover page. They’d changed the title to Uberman.
“Add a ‘story by’ credit for me on the cover page.”
“You’ve got to be kid—” Mark began.
Stu silenced Mark with a glare and texted something. A muffled curse from the receptionist carried through the closed door.
“Done,” Stu said.
My phone buzzed. I read my sister’s detailed response to my message. They’d tried to fuck me on the back end—potential sequels and such.
“I’m forwarding you something,” I said to Stu.
His phone beeped. He read and said, “No.”
“Then the script goes out with the current agreement,” I said. “My sister says you need me to capitulate to alter an agreement already in place.”
He glared with open annoyance. I steeled myself against trem‐ bling nerves threatening to set my teeth chattering, grateful I hadn’t divulged my sister’s profession until now.
“We won’t represent you again,” Stu said, a last ditch threat.
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Stu glared at me and forwarded the text to his receptionist.
“This is so unfair,” Mark muttered.
Stu set his phone on the desk. “Shut up, Mark.” The Queens Street Café sits at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Queens Street. It offers indoor and al fresco seating, good drinks, excellent food, and the occasional star sighting. My small, inside table featured a good view of Beverly and a prized electrical outlet within cord’s length. A big, honey-laced cup of masala chai crouched on the left side of my laptop, and a pumpkin muffin on the right.
My L.A. plan: Write in the morning, take meetings (if any) in the afternoon, drive for URide at night, revise as necessary. Like most good plans, it had structure with space for improvisation.
I’d received an email from Stu a few minutes earlier. They’d messengered Uberman to potential buyers late last night and I could expect word maybe today, certainly by tomorrow. I’d read the script for the first time last night and, of course, hated every revised word. Assassination had provided the premise and structure for Mark’s histrionic Nietzschean bullshit, ludicrous character names, and subpar dialogue:
ZARA
(staring at the bridge)
This isn’t my end. I shall overcome it.
I peered over my laptop screen at a girl across the room. Dark hair, ghost pale skin, exquisite features, slender, about my age. She wore torn jeans, black suede knee-high boots, and a tight black sweatshirt emblazoned with You’ll Know. She read a leather-bound book, her lips moving a little, and didn’t raise her eyes when the waitress refilled her coffee cup. Her immersion in the book struck me as armor against dashing writers, no matter how charming.
A loud rumbling approached, and she looked up. When the windows vibrated I thought earthquake. But except for the girl, around the café eyes remained on screens, conversations continued. Soon the source revealed itself—a big Harley. Bright blue, gleaming chrome, an older style, not museum quality like some in Los Angeles. The rider parked the bike on Queens Street, back tire against the curb, and shut it down with a gunshot blast. He took off his half helmet, set it on the seat with total confidence no one would dare steal it, and walked toward the café.
As he entered, I recognized him—the inspector from URide. Torn blue jeans and a heavy canvas jacket were a different stylistic universe from the khakis and polo shirt he’d worn at URide. I gave him an up nod, he narrowed his eyes, didn’t recognize me, and continued to the counter.
The girl watched him, met my eyes, blinked, and returned to her book.
I hit the key combination for dialogue in my fancy screenplay program and wrote the most obnoxious opening line I could think of to say to the girl with the book. I’d work backward, editing and editing until I crafted something natural, organic, and clever.
Boots approached.
“Writer-director,” the URide guy said. He made a half-assed motion toward the open chair at my table and sat across from me.
“Nice bike,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“I assume that’s not a URide vehicle class.”
“You are correct,” he said, pleasant, much different than during the inspection.
“Euclid!” the barista called.
He grabbed his drink at the counter and returned.
“Euclid?”
“My parents are mathematicians.”
“I was conceived in Germany,” I said.
“Therefore, Brät.”
“You remembered that?”
“It’s unusual,” he said. “And I’m good with names. Plus, you’re wearing the same clothes.”
“Different black t-shirt, maybe the same jeans. I’m not sure.”
He dumped two packs of raw sugar into his espresso.
“That’s a cute cup,” I said.
“Isn’t it? Double espresso. Gives me a jolt. I’d go for a quad shot, but then they’d give me a cappuccino cup which’d be too big for my dainty fingers.”
I laughed.
“What are you working on?” Euclid asked.
“Third draft. And I’m waiting to hear from my agent about a script making the rounds right now.”
“Congratulations,” he said, studying me. “But you don’t sound as pumped as most writers do when they’re on the brink of fame and riches.”
“My agent had his assistant revise my script.”
“His assistant? Why?”
“Apparently it wasn’t good enough.”
“Huh. Who’s your agent?”
“Goldberg and Associates.”
“Never heard of them.”
“It’s a boutique agency.”
He sipped his espresso while the girl with the book packed her stuff and left the café. Euclid followed my eyes and checked her out as she passed by the window.
“I see you haven’t mastered it, yet,” he said.
“Mastered what?”
“Ignoring the famous.”
“She’s famous?”
“Oh, yes.” He finished his espresso and set down the cup with a tiny plink. “Troika, the thinking man’s porn star.”
Outside, a couple oohed and aahed over Euclid’s motorcycle. “She liked your bike.”
“Motorcycles are the great equalizer,” he said, admiring his bike. “Ride one and you’re the rebel, the bad boy, which in turn removes you from socioeconomic classification. You don’t have to be rich if you’re dangerous. Women’ll come to you.”
“I might steal that line from you.”
“You can have it,” he said, his tone genuine. “I’d be honored.”
“Thanks. What do you do when you’re not inspecting cars for URide?”
“I’m a producer,” he said.
I sat up.
“At ease, soldier. I’ve done a few shorts that made it into festivals. Nothing you’ve seen.”
“Still—”
“I’m the Babe Ruth of story ideas, but I can’t write and actors drive me nuts.” With one finger he pushed the espresso cup a few inches toward the table’s edge. “It’s been tough breaking in.”
Outside, a sky blue Ferrari with cream white leather seats rolled to a stop in the handicap spot. The passenger, an ethereal Asian girl whose youth and beauty made her relationship to the older man driving the car easy to characterize, kissed the man, hopped from the car, and dashed into the restaurant next door. The Ferrari charged into traffic.
“I’m going to take off,” Euclid said. “You got a bike?”
“No.”
“You should get one. We’ll go riding. Can you email me your script? The original?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks,” he said, jotting his email address on a napkin. “I’d like to read it.”
He left, fired up the bike, and roared off in the same direction as the Ferrari. I messaged Stu. ME: Any word? A few seconds later— STU: No.
VARYING SHADES OF
CONDESCENSION A fifty-something man with a shaved head and dyed goatee in so-so shape and a centerfold-type blonde woman in her twenties rode with me on my apartment complex’s elevator. He watched the ascending numbers and she actively avoided my gaze. On my floor a man and woman yelled at each other behind a closed door, and another man exited the apartment next to mine—black suit, white sport shirt, hair plugs, sweat beading on his forehead. I glanced into the apartment as the door closed, as one will, was greeted by long tawny legs rising to blinding white shorts, and I conducted a brief thought experiment to determine the detectability of a small hole drilled through our bathrooms’ shared wet wall.
I unlocked my apartment door as a smash and an accompanying scream echoed through the hallway from the elevator’s direction. The shouting spiked when the woman about to carom into my life flung open a door I couldn’t see to escape a crazed Hungarian boyfriend chasing her with a nine-inch carbon steel chef’s knife. Feet slapped the hallway floor, coming fast. She rounded the corner, slipped, slid, and crashed into the wall.