Page 6 of Second Act
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have no idea. I may not find another job, not soon anyway. Nineteen years, gone in an instant.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound sympathetic. “Good luck, Andy,” she said, which he knew was goodbye. She was not a woman of mystery and was blatantly transparent. He had served his purpose for three years, and they had had a good time, but he wasof no use to her now without a studio to run. She hung up a minute later and he doubted he would hear from her again.
The phones went crazy after that, his cell, the house lines. People he didn’t even remember meeting called him to say they were sorry, and pry about what he was going to do next. The envious and the jealous called, gloating, some of his oldest friends called, and more recent ones. Most of them were just curious and wanted to hear all the inside dirt. The people he respected didn’t call and left him to reverberate and mourn in peace, out of compassion for him. Frances fielded all the calls, took messages, and kept a list of them, in case Andy wanted to call anyone back. He didn’t.
He drank steadily through the day and she tried to get him to eat something, but he wouldn’t. She hadn’t either. The housekeeper made them sandwiches, which they didn’t touch. He watched the news again at six. It was the top story by then, and they once again said that Andrew Westfield had been unavailable for comment all day. Tony had made a brief statement about the sale, and how pleased they were to be passing the torch to FAQTS and the Latham family, and AMCO was sure they would do a wonderful job. Tony made no mention of Andy. Nine hours after he had been fired, he was history. His nineteen-year reign was over. Long live the new king. Andy would be forgotten in the blink of an eye. And no one would give a damn about him in Hollywood. That was how it worked. He remembered Tony saying to him that morning, “You know how it works.” “Yes, I do,” he said out loud to the TV, as Frances watched him. He didn’t look as drunk as he was, but he staggered slightly as he crossed the room for another drink.
“You should have something to eat first,” she told him gently. He’d been drinking scotch on the rocks all day.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re going to have an awful hangover tomorrow,” she said softly.
“I’ll take the day off work,” he said, and laughed.
His lawyer had called during the afternoon, and it was the one call Andy took. Barry Weiss called to explain the severance package to him, and it was a good one. Three years’ salary, which was astronomical, given what he was paid. He didn’t have to work again if he didn’t want to. He had a one-year noncompete, so even if he found a job as a studio head again, he couldn’t begin working for another year. Barry said they had wanted a three-year noncompete, and he got them down to one. It was a generous package, but nothing they paid him could replace what he had lost. If he didn’t take another job, or find one, he would have ended on a failure, getting fired. It was the nature of corporate life. And how could they repay him for the power he had lost, the respect, the image, the status, everything the job meant to him? Who was he now without that job? He was no one. They had stolen his identity from him. What would they pay him for that?
—
Alana didn’t call him that night. He knew she wouldn’t after her call to him that afternoon. She had nothing more to say to him. She hadn’t shown up to comfort him. His assistant had.
Wendy called to make sure he was doing okay. Frances said he was, considering.
She stayed for as long as she thought was useful to him. The phones eventually slowed down, and the house staff could answer them. She promised to be back in the morning and told Andy to get some sleep.
After she left, he took the bottle of scotch out to the pool and sat down on a lounge chair. The news trucks were gone by then. It wasn’t a story worth staying up all night for. It was Hollywood gossip and a business story. No one had killed or shot anyone. No one had taken a drug overdose. There were no bodies. There was just Andy sitting by the pool, drinking himself into oblivion so he didn’t have to think. Nothing like it had ever happened to his father. He’d made cowboy movies into his seventies, and when the parts slowed down, he turned to directing. He’d never been fired from anywhere, nor had Andy until now. This was a first for him. The ultimate humiliation at fifty-seven. He was a man without a job now. It was like being a man without a face, or a heart. He felt like he was bleeding to death.
—
He continued to drink in the lounge chair by the pool, long after Frances left. He had left his cellphone in the house so no one could reach him. There was no one he wanted to talk to. He just wanted to be alone with his bottle of scotch. He was still wearing his suit and tie, the one he had been fired in.
He lay there staring at the pool and looking up at the sky, until the bottle slipped from his hand onto the cement, and he finally passed out. It had been the worst day of his life.
Chapter 4
The day after he was fired was only slightly better than the day before. Andy woke up at six in the morning in the lounge chair at the pool. He had spilled some of the scotch on his tie and stained it. He sat up slowly, feeling as though his head was going to fall off, and walked back into the house. He lay down on his bed for another hour, and then he got up and showered. For the first time in years, he didn’t bother to shave. He was drinking coffee and eating a piece of toast when Frances showed up at eight o’clock.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him, looking concerned.
“Probably about the way I look, like I drank a bottle of scotch yesterday.” He smiled ironically and put down the paper that he had been reading. The story of his being fired, along with a list of all his victories in the past nineteen years, was in the business section of theLos Angeles Times. “Are the jackals still outside?” he asked Frances, referring to the news trucks. She nodded.
“But fewer than yesterday. They’ll be on to some other story in aday or two. They won’t hang around forever if you don’t talk to them.”
“I’m not planning to,” he assured her. He felt like a prisoner in his own home, and a stranger in his life.
Wendy called him a little while later. The story was inThe New York Timestoo. Not only was being fired humiliating, but it was a totally public event. All the major newspapers had run it. Andy couldn’t imagine walking down the street without wanting to hide.
“Maybe I should grow a beard or wear a mask,” he said to Frances, trying to make light of it, but there was nothing amusing about it. There was no part of what had happened that felt okay to him. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it, and theLA Timescommented that he had done an outstanding job for two decades and the new studio head would have a hard time filling his shoes.
The news trucks came back for two more days, and then finally gave up. By the end of the week, the last of the reporters and paparazzi were gone. People were still calling constantly, wanting comments from him, or to know the gory details, and how he felt about it.
Wendy was calling every day to check in and invited him to Greenwich to stay with them for a week or two to get out of the house. She didn’t say it to Andy, but she told her husband she thought her father should retire, and live a life for a change, instead of being devoured by his work. But the film industry was his life, and she couldn’t imagine him doing anything else, or just playing golf for the next thirty years.
He was still young at fifty-seven, and it seemed inevitable that he would go back into the movie business at some point, but doingwhat? There were only so many studios left. Many of them had merged years before into big conglomerates, or were owned by major corporations like Global had been. There were only so many heads, and no vacancies available. He might have a long wait, or not get another job as a studio head during his productive years. Andy had been thinking of that too, and his spirits were in the tank. He told Wendy he would rather visit her after he bounced back, and he had no idea when he would. He sounded very down to her.
A week later, he still hadn’t left the house, and Frances noticed that he was still drinking a lot. By the time she left at the end of the day, he always seemed drunk to her. She had never seen him that way, it had never happened before. He didn’t want to go to any restaurants to eat, because everyone knew him, and he didn’t want to be seen in public. He had nothing to say to anyone, and he didn’t want their sympathy, most of which was false anyway. There were plenty of people who reveled in others’ misfortunes, and he didn’t want to be the object of their pity.
