Chapter 12 1989
“What took you so long!”
Orson finds Susie scrunched into the end of the bar at Grady’s in Burbank, one leg cocked up on a second stool.
It’s busier than normal, and he has to push his way through the throng that floods in on a Friday: grips and boom ops, brigades of production coordinators, actors and wannabes and disappointed autograph hunters and the people who work the studio canteen.
Ever since Orson came to Los Angeles, the challenge has been sifting through them; figuring out who is important, who is worth his time.
Often, it’s the people you least expect.
“I had to fight people off with my bare fists to defend this,” she says, offering him the free seat. “Look at these battle wounds.”
She shows him her unbloodied hands, her long, elegant fingers.
“Ouch. Better get those taped up.”
“The things I do for you.” She slides him a single-malt whiskey, clinks her glass against his. “Cheers.”
“My hero,” he says. “Sorry, Mark wanted to talk about a storyline next week.”
“Well, we all know what that’s code for.”
Flowers is notorious for his Friday afternoon “script sessions,” which begin with a line of white powder and end sometime around four in the morning.
“The man is an animal.”
“I don’t know when he sleeps.”
“He doesn’t.”
“I heard from Rip that he went four days last week without a wink.”
“Jesus,” he laughs. “Americans.”
“Californians!”
Orson is ashamed to admit it to most people, but even after three years, the people here still bewilder him.
For a start, everyone runs. If they aren’t driving, they are running.
Often they will drive quite a long way just to be able to run indoors in giant complexes with names like 24 Hour Fitness or The Jungle Gym.
In the small town outside Glasgow where Orson grew up, people only ran when they were chasing or being chased.
Or last call at the pub. So it’s reassuring to have someone to hang out with who doesn’t go in for jazzercize or step aerobics or whatever god-awful fitness trend they’ve cooked up this week.
Susie makes sense to him. She drinks like she’s coming up for air.
“Another?” She waves to the bartender. “Do you want one or have you already been riding the ski slopes?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but he really did just want to talk,” Orson says.
“God, imagine that. Must have been serious.”
“Nah. Just this new serial-killer stuff. They want me to be a suspect, so. Have to be a bit more suspicious.”
She raises an eyebrow like she can tell he’s not giving her the full story. He’s not, but he raises one back, to put her off the case. No need to tell her the awful thing Mark said. Rather have a drink and pretend it didn’t happen.
“Do I know you?”
A woman (middle-aged, middle American) is leaning on the bar, looking at Susie curiously, like an old friend.
“I don’t think so,” she says, smiling her winning smile and shaking her head. Susie is seven years older than Orson, but she’s far less intimidating than the girls his own age around here with too-white teeth and terrifying abdomens. It’s no wonder people just start talking to her.
“I’m sure we’ve met somewhere. Or maybe I’ve seen you.” The woman squints. It’s obvious now what’s coming. If he had a magic pencil, he’d draw the lightbulb over her head himself. “I know! Margie!”
Susie beams, flattered, all generosity. “You’re a fan?”
“Oh! I watch every day! It’s very, very addicting.
I’ll arrange my day sometimes…” The woman natters on in the way that only Americans can, emphatically fawning, telling you things you already know.
Even if a Scot had that many compliments in them, they wouldn’t dare say them out loud.
That’s another thing he can’t get over: people here are so vulnerable.
“Well, you probably recognize Orson,” Susan says, trying to draw him back into the conversation, share the spotlight. But the woman looks at him blankly. “Joe? From behind the bar?”
“Of course! Gosh, you look so much smaller in real life! But maybe it’s just that you’re sitting down. A trick of the eye.” Well, fuck me then. “Oh, I’m so sorry to ask, but would you mind awfully if I took a photo? It’s for my daughter, see, we watch the show together every day.”
From her giant backpack the woman procures a giant camera—everything really is bigger here—and before he can arrange his face, she’s taken a shot.
“Enjoy your day,” Susie says, delighted, waggling her fingers. As the woman slips away, she drops her jaw. “Oh my God.”
“You’re famous.”
“We’re famous!”
“She thought I was furniture.”
“Don’t be stupid. Everyone is going to be saying your name. Just be patient.”
He sighs, puts his head on the countertop.
“Patience is not my strong suit.” This is why he came out here, isn’t it?
For a bite at the apple? But fuck, it’s been a long week.
It’s been a long three years. Audition after useless audition, never any news from his pointless agent.
Always, now he is telling himself: this is just a stepping stone.
He won’t get stuck making melodrama for housewives.
Susie always acts like fame will just take care of itself, but Orson knows better.
He’s seen how it happens. It’s why he’s been buttering up the writers for more storylines, more airtime.
“Maybe this serial-killer thing will be it for you. Your breakout.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Well, I hope not. Selfishly. As soon as the world discovers you, you’re going to leave me.”
“We’re both going to leave, Susie. Don’t you want to?”
Susie sips her drink, casts her eye around the bar, her eyes trailing the woman with the camera. “I used to think so. But now I’m not so sure. It’s nice to have a long-term relationship.”
“You mean, other than your husband?”
She sticks out her pink tongue. “I said long-term, not long-distance.”
He looks at her for a second, asking silently: Are we going to go there? Susie’s husband is the drainpipe that all their conversations circle around. But for the moment, she swirls away, back to the here and now.
“I just want to do right by Margie, that’s all. I still have so much to learn from her.”
Orson smiles, because how can he not? For Susie, Margie is more than just a voice, a wardrobe, a posture. She is flesh and blood, a cause for crusade. A villain miscast and misunderstood, knocked again and again by life but endlessly brazen, endlessly resilient.
“You’re such a pro, Susie. I’ve got more loyalty to my left shoe than I do to Joe.”
“Well, Margie keeps me honest.”
“Ironically. For a serial liar.”
“Come on, are you really saying you don’t love that? Knowing someone else so deeply that the sense of yourself slips away? Feeling what someone else feels? Wanting what they want? I’d do it for free.”
No one on set is realer than Susie, no one works harder than she does.
Yesterday morning at seven, Rip handed her thirty dreaded pink pages: last-minute rewrites.
Most people (Orson included) would have laid them out all over the floor of the set, pinned them to the wall, sneaking glances mid-take.
But Susie went into a fugue state, somehow memorizing all of it before cameras started rolling.
Afterward, he got down on his knees and bowed to her.
If there’s no eye contact, they don’t buy it, kiddo, she said.
It’s enough to make you feel like a fraud.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m just not very ‘method.’ They’re just roles to me. And I’m ready for the next one.”
“One day. We should do a play together!”
“God, I don’t know if I could get on a stage again,” he says. “The audience, the pressure…”
“Well, at least with theatre it’s all gone after the curtain comes down.”
“That’s even worse. Half the point of getting famous is being remembered.”
“Aw, but Orson. I’ll never forget you.”
And when she looks at him, he can tell she means it, that this isn’t just a bit. She’s as real about this as she is about anything. What did he do to deserve this?
“Do you have to go home this weekend?”
She nods her head, pulls on the bags under her eyes. Shit, maybe Mark is right.
I’m worried about her, Flowers said earlier. People aren’t tuning in for her anymore. This flying is affecting her looks. She’s supposed to look like you can fuck her from all directions.
Mark grinned then like he had imagined it personally, like Orson was supposed to agree. It made him sick. But he bit his tongue, because more than anything, he needs Mark to like him.
“He’s a lucky guy, your man,” Orson says. “Married to a celebrity.”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll dump him, be out here full-time. Talk to her. She trusts you.
The worst part is that Orson agrees. If Susie weren’t flying all the time, she could be auditioning more. “Why doesn’t he move out here?”
“He will. It’s just not the right time for him, I guess. With the tenure stuff, and the college cycle. But when we have kids…”
“It seems like you’re always the one compromising,” he says softly.
She closes her eyes. Like opening them might give away the part of her that agrees. “I’m never compromising as long as I get to do this.”
When she looks at him again, it’s with a bright, clear conscience, a need to redirect. “What are your plans for the weekend, then?”
“Oh, me? Do nothing. Sit on the beach. Write some bad poems. Think about calling my parents, decide not to. Think about cooking, decide not to. Drive around Hollywood Hills, maybe break into a house, steal someone’s identity.”
“You’re tragic.”
“I know. Would you believe I haven’t had a home-cooked meal since last Christmas?”
Susan nearly knocks her drink off the counter. “Orson!”
“I know.”
“It’s July!”
“I know.”
“Jesus, kid. What are you doing tonight?”
“I thought we were going out—”
“No. Come on now. I’m coming to your house, I’m cooking for you.”
She gulps down her second (third? fourth?) drink, grabs him by the hand, pulls through the crowd, quizzes him on his nonexistent spice collection, asks whether she needs to buy olive oil.
God, she’s going to hate it, his dark, microscopic flat.
There isn’t a thing on the walls. But maybe this is good. Letting someone take care of him.