Page 35 of Second Act
“Did you sleep?” she asked him, worried about him. She knew how challenging this was for him, and how hard the decision. He looked tormented.
“Not much,” he said. “When Global fired me, I lost all respect for myself. Now I’ll lose the self-respect I’ve found if I go back. I don’t know if I want to be that person anymore. I like myself better now.”
“I love you either way,” Violet said firmly. “Do whatyouwant. That’s all you need to figure out. Everyone will adjust, and so will I.” Andy needed that reassurance from her and was grateful to have it. She always gave him what he needed and said the right things.
He left a few minutes later. A car came to take him to the plane. Planet Z had sent the car, a Rolls with a driver. They made it all so easy and so tempting, and eventually you bought into it and believed it was real. But he knew now it wasn’t, and it didn’t last. One day it all disappeared, and it all turned to dust in your hands, and you turned to dust with it. He felt whole again. It had taken a year and he hated to give that up. But having power again was a tremendous lure and hard to resist.
He held Violet for a last time at the door. “I wish you were coming with me,” he said, feeling like a little boy and not a man.
“You can do this, Andy. You’ll make the right decision. I have total faith in you.” As he heard the words, they were the same words his father would have said to him and often had.
“I love you. I’ll be back tomorrow.” Violet didn’t know if he would or not, and neither did he, as he hurried out the door and walked to the car. He didn’t turn back to look at her or she would have seen the tears in his eyes. He felt as though he was being asked to give up everything he’d built in the last year. What he had built was a part of himself he had never known before. Who he was without the power and the status, who he really was as a man. And if he went back that was what he had to give up. And part of him still wanted the power so badly. He was ashamed of how much he still wanted it. He could taste it. But the man he had become didn’t want it and wastelling him to run. He didn’t know whether to run forward or back. He knew both worlds now, the old and the new, and there was a life and death battle going on within him. He couldn’t be both men. He had to choose one. And whichever he chose, he’d have to give up the other part of himself forever. It was an agonizing decision.
Chapter 17
When Violet got to Dash’s studio that morning, she looked serious, and he showed up in her office a few minutes later.
“Did he go?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“He’s on the plane now.” She looked sad but resigned.
“What do you think he’ll do?” Dash asked her.
“I don’t know. I think he should take the job and go back. He’ll always regret it if he doesn’t. He’s meant to be in that world. It cost him so much when they took it all away. It was like ripping his heart out.”
Dash nodded. He didn’t disagree. “They’ll do it to him again if they want to. You’re never safe in that world.”
“I don’t want him to regret it if he doesn’t go back. He thrives on the power. He was lost without it. It’s taken him a year to find himself. He might not recover next time. But not taking back the power, he might lose his life force,” she said wisely. She knew him well.
“As much as I hate that world, I think he should go back too,”Dash said, although he knew that power could be a very empty thing. He went back to his own office then, and he and Violet tried to concentrate on their work all day, with little success. Violet knew she wouldn’t hear from Andy that night. He would be landing in London at eightp.m.London time, which would only be noon in LA. The meetings which would ultimately decide his future would begin at twop.m. in LA, ten in London, and would end hours later. His fate wouldn’t be decided until the next day in London. It was going to be a very long twenty-four hours for her. She had no idea which man would be coming home to her, if he even came home. He might stay and start the job right away. But would he be the man she knew and loved now, or the one he had been before that she had never met?
—
Planet Z’s Boeing Triple 777 landed at LAX at twelve-fifteenp.m. The plane they had lost over the weekend was brought down by a bird strike. It seemed so crazy that a flock of birds could bring down a plane that size and kill half a dozen people. Andy thought about Harvey, the late studio head, on the trip, and wondered what he would advise him, knowing the company and the job, and the shape the studio was in. As far as Andy knew it ran smoothly, but there were always hidden elements he couldn’t see, and problems they didn’t tell you if they wanted you for the job. He was awake for the entire flight, thinking.
He was through with Customs and Immigration by one o’clock local time.
A chauffeured limousine met him at LAX and drove him to Planet Z. He’d been able to shower and change on the flight. He waswearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a tie, as he always did. On sight of the familiar landscape of LA, and all the swimming pools they’d flown over, he felt like he was home again. He was going to sleep in his own bed in Bel-Air that night. He wasn’t going back to London until the next day.
There was an entire team of people waiting for him in the lobby of Planet Z when he walked in. The décor was as spectacular as he had expected it to be, with planets and satellites hanging from the thirty-foot ceiling in an entirely black granite lobby with an enormous twenty-foot bronze Z in the center of it. The team escorted him upstairs to the executive floor, where top management was waiting for him, and his own office would be. They had cleared it that morning of all of Harvey’s things, which had already been delivered to his home. They had moved quickly so there was no trace of tragedy when Andy arrived. The meeting was about the future of Planet Z, not the past. And a full buffet had been set out on a long sideboard in the conference room.
The entire legal team was there. They already had contracts drawn up, which could be modified instantly. Barry Weiss had already received a draft of the contract digitally and was waiting in his office. The chairman and CEO of the parent company were there at the Planet Z offices to clinch the deal, and so were the most important department heads that Andy would be directing and would want to meet. They were fully prepared to woo him, and the entrance package they were offering him was dazzling, with a list of perks ten pages long. It was a deal that not a single person in the film industry could resist. They were incredibly smooth.
When Andy stepped off the elevator, the escort team disappeared.The chairman of the parent company, and the CEO, a woman, stepped forward to greet him, and asked how the flight was. They pointed out the meal set up for him, but he said he had eaten on the plane. Andy was suddenly reminded of a meeting his father had described to him once when he was screenwriting in the beginning, and the studio wanted to talk him into something he didn’t want to do. His father had said, “Son, just remember, all horseshit smells the same, no matter how fine-looking the horse.” And it was so true. Andy had to struggle to keep a straight face, but it had relaxed him to think of his father. And Planet Z had some fine-looking horses.
The chairman and CEO of the parent company did a very impressive presentation, telling him all about Planet Z, their current status, and plans for the future. The department heads at the meeting were equally impressive, and each of them spoke for a few minutes and Andy could see they would be interesting to work with. They were all extremely bright people. No mention was made of Harvey Seligman, their late CEO, although he’d been in the job for fourteen years and they must have had some attachment to him. The CFO handed him a sealed envelope with their final financial offer, which encompassed everything, and their chief counsel handed him another copy of the contract to look over. They had done absolutely everything in their power to make the job as attractive as possible to him.
On the list of perks in his contract, in an itemized memorandum, he saw that he would have a Triple 777 Boeing for his personal use, available at all times.
The chairman cleared his throat and spoke when he saw that Andy was on that page, since they were sitting next to each other.
“We’re down a plane at the moment,” he explained. “But it will bereplaced by the end of the week,” obviously the one that had gone down with Harvey only days before. Even that was being speedily remedied and replaced with no mention of their late CEO.
“Would you like to see your office?” the female CEO of the owning company offered in a motherly tone, and they trooped down a locked hall with a security guard at its entrance to show it to him, no doubt the same security guard who would escort him to the street if he were ever fired. He couldn’t get that memory out of his head from a year before, being walked out of the building with a guard on each side of him.
They went back to the conference room, and the chief counsel offered him a pen, if he was ready to sign. Andy held it in his hand for a moment and looked around the table at all of them. He was tired from the trip, and he had been there for three hours during their presentation.
“I’m sure you all know who my father was, John Westfield. He was from Montana, a genuine cowboy. And he always told me never to sign a deal without sleeping on it. It’s good advice, and I’ve stuck to it all my life. The deal you’re offering me is an absolutely magnificent package. There is nothing I’d want to change, although I’d like to discuss it with my attorney. You’ve been generous in the extreme, and I’m honored to be here, and by what you’re offering me. But I’d like to sleep on it before I sign. I’d like to honor my father and all of you by signing when I’m wide-awake and rested and have given it very serious thought. To be honest, I thought my days as a studio head were gone forever. These jobs come up once in a blue moon, if then. And I’m very sorry about what happened to Harvey Seligman and his wife, and that his tragedy would be myopportunity, but above all I’m grateful to you for offering me a way back, and I hope to do you proud if I accept it. You’ll have my answer at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” They told him they already had, to speed up the process. With that Andy stood up and shook hands all around the table. There were eleven people in the room, and the parent company chairman and CEO walked him to the elevator and the escort team materialized magically again to take him downstairs. He could see the anxious looks on their faces when he left, but he needed the night and time alone to give him counsel.
