Page 20 of Second Act
“Thank you for the tea,” she said softly. She seemed so fragile, but he knew she was stronger than she looked, stronger than anyone he knew, including himself. “What are we doing today?” she asked him, and he looked serious.
“I’m applying for a job,” he said simply.
“You are? Did you have an offer?” She was ready to be thrilled for him. It had only been less than five weeks since he’d been fired, which seemed remarkably quick to her.
“Not yet,” he answered. “But I know there’s an opening, and I’ve got the right experience for it.”
“As a studio head?” He had told her there were no current openings, but something must have changed. He must have had a call from LA during the night.
“No, better than that.” He seemed very sure of himself as he sat straight up in the chair. He seemed powerful again, and not beaten. She had seen the dark side of his despair, but now he had seen hers, and it had renewed his strength. He felt like himself again, a better version of himself, because of her. “I was a screenwriter for sixteen years before I was a studio head, and to be immodest, I was good at it. I wrote some damn good pictures, and I’m fast. Dash is going to spend the next six months or a year chasing screenwriters for you, and then they’re going to dawdle around trying to convince us how important they are because they take so long to write the script, and will drive us all nuts waiting for the next page or the next scene. I’m applying for the job. I’d like to give it a shot. I happen to be available.” He grinned at her. “I’m willing to work long hours. I have nothing else to do. I think I can do it in a month, and if you don’t like it, you can turn me down, and we’ll get someone else. I’ll even payfor another screenwriter myself if you don’t like my work.” She stared at him and started to laugh.
“Are you serious?” Violet couldn’t believe Andy was willing to do that for her, and he had already done so much, introducing her work to Dash.
“I am. And you’re the boss. If you’d like to see samples of my work before you hire me, I can have your LA counterpart go to my storage unit and dig up some of my old scripts and send them to you. And I’m also free. You don’t have to pay me. It’s a gift. I’m still a member of the Writers Guild, in good standing.” He had kept his membership out of sentiment, not because he intended to use it. “Do you want Frances to send some of my old scripts?”
“No,” she said immediately. “If you say you’re good, I believe you. Why are you doing this for me? You’ve already done so much.”
“Because you deserve having something wonderful happen to you. A run of good luck,” he said simply.
“So do you. You’ve just had a terrible blow.”
“Maybe it was for the best,” he said quietly. “Some kind of blessing in disguise. Or a lesson I needed to humble me. I’d gotten pretty big for my boots, maybe the universe decided to take me down a notch, or several notches, or dump me on my head to wake me up. It was a job, Violet. A job I loved, admittedly, but there are more important things in life. You reminded me of that yesterday. And I was happy screenwriting too. It’s not a big deal. I have the time, and it would be fun working on it with you. So, what do you say? Am I hired?” He grinned at her and she laughed.
“Of course. What can I do to help?”
“We’ll work on it together and I’ll show you how it’s done. Maybeyou’ll write the next screenplay yourself, which would make things even easier. I think I’ll use the dining room as an office. I need a big board,” he described the size with his hands, “like the size of a door, on an easel, and some way I can attach things to it, so I can move scenes around. There’s an arc to it. It doesn’t flow the same way a book does. You’ll see,” he said confidently. He hoped that he was still up to it. He hadn’t written a script in twenty years. He was hoping it was a skill you didn’t lose. He was counting on it. It would be embarrassing if she or Dash hated the end result, but he was willing to take the chance. “I’m going to be asking you how you feel about certain scenes, what you feel the fundamental support structure is and what we can do without. Screenwriters get that wrong sometimes, and then the whole thing falls apart. The support structure is very important, like building a house. Some beams hold the house up, and others are purely decorative. We’ll need both.” He made the process sound fascinating, and he sent her off in search of the materials he needed and went to call Dash from his upstairs study. It was still early, and he woke Dash up when he called him on his cell. He sounded rough.
“Are you sick?” Andy asked him, worried.
“No. I was overserved again last night. The bartender at my favorite pub has a heavy hand and is a little too generous.”
“Watch that,” Andy warned him. “I did a bit of that myself in the last month, feeling sorry for myself. I have a proposition for you.”
“Since I know you’re not gay, and I wouldn’t be your type anyway, this must be business. Let me sit up, I was still in bed. What’s the proposition?”
“You need a screenwriter. I used to be a pretty decent one beforeGlobal Studios made me king. Now that I’m back among the peasants, I want to write the screenplay of Violet Smith’s manuscript. I’m fast and I’m good. You can keep looking for one who’s currently active, but I’ll bet I have it finished before you find anyone who’s available. And if you hate what I do, or she does, you can hire whoever you find. I’ll pay them out of my own pocket, if you don’t like my script. And I’m doing it for free.”
“She must be incredible in bed,” Dash said, “if you’re doing this for free. And twenty-two years old.”
“She’s thirty-eight and I’ve never slept with her, and she’s an incredible woman. And you’ll figure it out eventually anyway. She was married to Gabriel Foster, if the name means anything to you.”
“Holy shit! The guy is a monster. That’s why it sounds so real.” Dash was bowled over by what Andy said.
“She’s left a lot out, but he was the inspiration for it.”
“That’s incredible. She must have gone through hell with him. I’m sorry to hear it. I assume he’s in prison now.”
“He was sentenced to forty years. He must have thirty-seven left.”
“No one deserves it more than he did. He destroyed the lives of so many people—some of them lost all they had, and they were little people. He was indiscriminate about who he ripped off. There were a number of suicides as a result.”
“Apparently. She lost her seven-year-old son because of Foster. She’s a brave woman.”
“I hope I get to meet her. Are you serious about doing the screenplay?” Dash asked him, wide-awake now, and intrigued by the idea.
“I am. I’d like to give it a try, assuming I haven’t lost my touch. I think I can knock it out in a month.”
“A month? That would be unbelievable. We can move forward very quickly if we have a script that fast.” Dash thought about it for a minute, but it was an easy decision. “Go for it. We’ve got nothing to lose. If we’re not happy with it, we can still keep looking and stand in line for someone else.”
