Chapter 3
THREE
Bennett Day Studios was on Washington Boulevard west of the Sony lot. It was composed of five soundstages and six or seven other smaller buildings all behind a ten-foot wall. It had two entrances, one to the north on Washington and one to the south on Culver. The 405 was so close it was nearly a part of the studio. The surrounding streets were mostly residential, which meant parking was terrible since some of them, most of them, required permits. It was a small studio, so they might not have had much in the way of their own parking. Though since it was nighttime, I thought there really should have been some available.
Their gate was not nearly as ornate as the larger studios. In fact, it was kind of bland. It was black iron and only large enough for one truck to pass through. Next to it was a small guard’s hut with a pedestrian door beside it.
Inside the guard’s hut was an overweight White guy of about forty, probably older. He was scanning the street, which I suppose was actually his job. He was supposed to be making sure nothing illegal was happening. And as nearly as I could tell, nothing illegal was happening.
When we pulled up, there were two limousines double-parked on either side of the gate. Eight people were standing on the nearby sidewalk: five women and three men. One of the men was a balding, husky, bearded guy in his early thirties standing apart from the rest, with several cases of what looked like camera equipment. He wore a dark T-shirt under a flannel shirt.
Even as Louis double-parked the Infiniti between the limos, he managed to growl and say, “Mmmmm… bear crossing.”
“I saw,” said Marc.
I was used to this behavior, though mostly it took place during beer busts at leather bars. It seldom happened in the ‘wild’ as it were.
I said to Eldridge, who was still practically on top of me. “They do that.”
“They like bears. I get it.”
The car stopped moving. I immediately peeled myself off Eldridge and got out to start unpacking. Well, I tried to. From the group, a woman in her late fifties hurried over to us—well, to me as it turns out—saying, “Marc! My goodness, you haven’t changed a bit!” I have to admit I jumped a little.
In her early sixties, she was a once-natural blonde who kept her hair in one long, thick, graying braid. Her clothes were black and flowing, a long skirt and a shapeless top. She was a bit breathless, as though she’d run a long distance rather than a few feet.
“My name’s Noah. I’m helping out with the craft table.”
“Wendy, I’m over here,” Marc said. He already had an extra-long cigarette in his hand and was waving it around like Cruella de Ville.
“Oh! Ha! Silly me.” She set down the bag she was holding and hurried over to hug Marc. I can’t say he looked too pleased. When she let him go, she said, “I’ve got a Polaroid camera in my bag. We’ll get a photo later. I promised your mother.”
“My mother?!”
Quickly, to avoid his agitation, she turned to me, saying, “You must be Louis.”
“I just said, ‘I’m Noah.’”
“Oh, so you did. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. I’m sorry. Noah .”
Over her shoulder, I watched Marc. He was smoking angrily. In the years that I’ve known him I couldn’t remember him saying much about his parents, other than they were disappointed he didn’t become a major movie star.
“ I’m Louis,” Louis said, busily making piles of TJ’s bags and coolers on the curb.
Wendy held out the Trader Joe’s bag she carried, saying, “I’m Wendy. Nice to finally meet you. I brought cups from our store. When you make?—”
“Great. We’ve got a lot to carry, though. Could you walk those in for us?” Louis asked. “And… nice to meet you too. In person.”
“Of course, yes.” Turning around, she called out, “Donald, come meet Louis. Donald…”
“I’m actually busy just now,” Louis said, far too politely. “Can we do that inside?”
“Oh, well, yes, of course…” She wandered off calling out, “Donald… never mind… Donald…”
Marc had the look of a thunderstorm—or that might have been the cloud of smoke he’d worked up.
Louis took one look and said, “Oh my. I think I need to park the car.” Then, “Eldridge, if you could take that cooler and the bag on top. Noah, if you’d take those five bags. They’re not as heavy as they look.”
That left a cooler and two bags for Louis. Knowing Louis, they were the heaviest bags and the heaviest cooler. He was like that.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, before jumping back into the car. Leaving me alone with Marc.
“I guess Wendy knows your mom,” I said, unable to tamp down my curiosity.
“I was thirteen when the show started. My parents were around a lot. I didn’t know she still knew them.”
I had the feeling the photograph was not going to happen.
Just then, a Black woman a few years older than Marc and I broke away from the others and came over. Like the others, she had a garment bag hung over her arm. She had also wrangled two huge floral arrangements onto the sidewalk. They were at least two and a half-feet tall with spikey flowers shooting out in all directions. She left them where they were on the sidewalk and hurried over.
“Marc! Oh my God. You haven’t changed at all!”
Which was interesting, because she was actually talking to Marc and not me. I’d seen the show and been mistaken for Marc, so I had to admit… he had changed. A lot.
“Keely!” he practically squealed. They were hugging, as two other women came over. A short, heavyset, nerdy-looking woman, whose name turned out to be Meg, and another who was sharply dressed and looked vaguely familiar. Marc saw them and gave another squeal and then there were hugs all around.
“Can you believe we’re doing this?” Meg said. She was talking very fast. “It’s so weird that we’re all together again, isn’t it? Except for Wes, I mean. He’s not coming. Did Donald tell you? Do you know anything about that? Did you keep in touch with him?”
“No, I didn’t,” Marc said. “I think I heard something about him backpacking in Europe.”
“I heard he went to prison,” Keely said.
“No! Where did you hear that?”
“If it was in one of the tabloids,” the familiar-looking woman said, “it can’t possibly be true. If it were true we’d have to believe that aliens are running our government.”
Meg giggled. Though I did think she had a point.
“I don’t read those, so I wouldn’t have heard it there,” Keely said before changing the subject. “Marc, how are your mom and dad? They were so sweet.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see them.”
Keely took a breath, and said, “Oh, thank God, they were horrible. I always felt sorry for you.”
“You felt sorry for me? I felt sorry for me.”
Donald hovered nearby. In his early sixties, he was bald with bushy eyebrows sitting too high above his eyes. He looked like he’d raised them in surprise and they’d never come back down. He held a clipboard in his hand.
“Okay, so that was Louis,” he said, pointing to the Infiniti, which was slowly cruising for a parking space well down the block, then making a check on his clipboard. “And Marc.” Who was paying no attention to him and was instead asking the girls—Meg, Keely and Grace —about themselves. Donald made another check. Then to me, “And you are?”
“Noah Valentine.”
“Helper number one.” Check.
“Eldridge Hall.”
“Helper number two.” Check. Then, sounding like a school principal, he said, “Louis needs to hurry back. We’re going in all together at exactly eleven. Nine minutes. No stragglers.”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted us to do. We couldn’t make it easier for Louis to park.
“He’ll be back. He’s very responsible,” Marc said, breaking away from the girls and looking annoyed.
“Who’s missing?” Wendy asked. “Is anyone else missing?”
“No one, we’re all here,” Donald said.
“Are you sure?”
“I can count, you know.”
I reminded myself that Wendy and Donald were married to each other. Something about their demeanor drove that point home. They were obviously a team. Not a well-functioning team, but a team nonetheless.
“Is this what you were expecting?” Eldridge asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I was expecting,” I said, honestly. “It’s a little chaotic I suppose.”
“I think herding cats is the phrase you’re looking for.”
The only two not huddled around Marc were Ricky Bellows of the sex tape and the bearish bald guy with the camera equipment. Ricky wore a pair of jeans, a tank top that showed off his deeply muscled arms, and a gym bag slung over his shoulder. He looked like a thousand guys coming out of the gay gyms on Santa Monica Boulevard. If it weren’t for an entitled swagger and a complete lack of grace, you’d think he was gay.
“Fabulous,” Wendy said, looking at her watch. “We’ve got seven minutes.”
“Sweetheart,” Donald said, making the word sharp and unpleasant. “I just said nine.”
“My watch says seven.”
He looked at his watch and said, “Well, now my watch says eight. We synchronized before we left the house.”
“Yes, I remember. I don’t forget everything , you know.”
“I wasn’t saying you don’t remember; I’m saying now we’re off. How did we get off?”
“Your watch is obviously slow.”
“Or yours is fast.”
“My mobile phone says ten-fifty-three,” Grace said. “Seven minutes. Speaking of which, I’m assuming reception is going to be crap inside?”
“The stages are made of concrete and rebar,” Donald said. “I can’t imagine you’ll get much of a signal.”
“Who are you going to call at this time of night, Grace?” Marc asked.
“I have clients.”
“You’re a real estate agent, dear, not a hooker,” Marc told her. “If your clients are calling at eleven at night?—”
“Ten-fifty-four.”
“If they’re calling this late, you shouldn’t answer.”
Donald then said to his wife, “Can you start getting people in line. I’ll deal with… this.” He motioned toward the limousines.
It didn’t take much to figure out that Finn Henderson was in one of the limos while Kathleen True was in the other. Despite the fact that they were in different parts of the entertainment business, they were both stars deserving of star treatment.
Donald walked over to the first limousine and tapped on the window. Before the window opened, a woman wearing a mannish black suit jumped out of the second limousine and hurried over.
A voice from inside the first limo said, “My mom doesn’t want to go in until everyone has gone first. Someone needs to show us directly to her dressing room.”
“I’m Amber Bright. Mr. Henderson’s manager,” the woman said, tapping Donald on the shoulder. “Mr. Henderson is going in last. And he’ll need to go directly to his dressing room. No one’s to speak to him, I want that understood. And please, don’t look him in the eye.”
“No one should speak to my mom either,” said the voice inside the limo. “And she goes in last.”
“They can’t both go in last unless they go in together,” Donald said.
Immediately, Amber and the voice screamed “No!”
“Absolutely not.”
“That can’t happen.”
“The thing is,” Donald said, “We’re all going in at the same time. That’s what the studio has agreed to. How about if Finn is first in line and Kathleen is last. Would that work? And you need to decide really fast because we’re going in four minutes from now. Or three. Or five. Something like that.”
It was really Amber’s decision, or rather Finn’s. After a moment, she sighed deeply and said, “Oh, all right, fine. If Kathleen’s going to insist . Mr. Henderson just wants to be reasonable.”
Someone said something deep in the limo, and then the voice said, clearly repeating it, “My mom’s a Christian. Christians are always reasonable.”
Most of us were close enough to overhear the exchange. Eldridge stood next to me and quietly said, “He can’t really believe that, can he?”
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Marc said, quoting Monty Python. “Just one example of Christian reasonableness.”
“Salem witch trials,” Eldridge countered.
“The Crusades.”
“Centuries of British history.”
“Okay guys, that’s enough,” I whispered. “Your point was made, and he wouldn’t believe you anyway.”
Amber walked away from the limo and its window rose. Behind us, Ricky asked loudly, “We could bring people? Donald, you said we couldn’t. My girlfriend really wanted to come. Why do they get to bring people?”
Donald ignored him. “If we could form a line. Quickly.”
Wendy hadn’t actually encouraged us to do that. Now that we knew Finn would be going in first, Ricky, Meg and Keely hurried over to get into the second spot. Ricky won the race.
Grace offered to take a bag. She had a wardrobe bag slung over one arm. Marc said, “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you all. Noah, Eldridge… this is Grace Horlock.”
“Oh, the real estate agent,” I blurted, finally recognizing her. “I’ve seen your picture on lawn signs. And bus stops.”
“Then you must be spending your time in some very ritzy neighborhoods.”
I hadn’t thought about that, but the houses she offered were usually on the tops of hills around the city.
“Louis and I are looking for a house,” Marc said. “We’ll have to talk.”
“I don’t speak to anyone with less than a million to spend. But for you I’ll make an exception.”
“How would you know if—” Marc started.
“Please, I can tell a person’s net worth at a glance.” She turned to me and said, “So sorry, dear.”
“What? No. Wait.” She was right that I couldn’t afford to buy a house, but I wouldn’t say I deserved pity.
Then Finn Henderson stepped out of his limo. He was wearing a pair of impenetrable aviators. Sunglasses at night were a very LA thing. They screamed ‘I’m important, notice me but don’t look at me.’ He had a square jaw, cheekbones that looked carved from stone, and artfully messy chocolate-colored hair. As everyone knows, beneath the glasses were intense, brilliant blue eyes. In a nod to Frank Sinatra—Ol’ Blue Eyes—the press often called Finn ‘Young Blue Eyes.’ Clunky, I know.
Seemingly satisfied that Finn had gotten out first, Kathleen True left her limo. She, too, wore a pair of sunglasses, giant and white-rimmed, along with a colorful scarf on her head. She wore a shiny black fur coat and carried a hat box in one hand. Even mostly covered, you could tell she was a beautiful woman—though she looked more like a fifties’ movie star than an evangelist’s wife.
Getting out of the limo behind her was her fourteen-year-old adopted son, Heston True. He wore nothing but black, had dyed his hair so it was a lifeless soot color, he’d put on a ridiculous amount of mascara—and obviously never went into the sun. Clearly, he and his parents were having issues.
Over one shoulder he’d slung a black backpack. In one hand, he carried what was clearly his mother’s makeup, in the other he struggled to keep a garment bag from dragging along the ground. I wondered if his mother knew the difference between a child and a pack mule.
Finn and Kathleen studiously avoided looking at each other as they took their places at the front and rear of the line. Well, it seemed like they didn’t look at each other. Behind their sunglasses, their eyes could have been doing almost anything.
“Dude, it’s so good to see you,” Ricky said to Finn, only to be ignored. Apparently, Amber had been serious when she laid down the ‘don’t talk to him’ rule.
“Two minutes,” Wendy said.
Louis was still not back.
Seriously, it was like a space launch. I didn’t see the big deal, but we all did as we were told. I picked up four bags, two in each hand. We got in line. Then Eldridge went over and got the cooler and bag Louis would carry in when he got there. His own cooler sat in front of him.
I heard Meg saying to Keely, “Your flowers are beautiful, but… I hope you know foxglove is poisonous.”
“Of course, I know that. All florists know that. But they’re only poisonous if you eat them. I don’t think anyone’s going to eat them. Do you?”
I got a squidgy feeling in my stomach. I really should have stayed home. She was right. No one was going to eat the poisonous flowers. But I didn’t need reminding that the world was a dangerous place and that someone could accidentally eat a flower and end up?—
“I’m not carrying that, Donald. You know I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy,” Wendy said.
I glanced over. The bearish guy was carrying a heavy looking case and a bag. Donald had a camera bag slung over his shoulder and three cloth Juicy Juicy shopping bags.
“It’s not that heavy,” Donald said.
“I think I get to decide what is and is not heavy. That’s heavy.”
“I’ve seen you carry twenty pounds of fruit, Wendy.”
“Watch your step,” she hissed.
We all did our best to look elsewhere. Searching the street, looking for Louis seemed like a good idea. We studied each direction. Nothing.
“What happens if Louis doesn’t get here in time?” I asked.
No one said a word. That was ominous. Then, at the back of the line, Kathleen said, “Can’t we just go in? I don’t stand on street corners.”
We weren’t exactly on a corner, so I didn’t see?—
And then, finally, Louis ran up to join us. Donald nodded at the guard, who came around and opened the door. He was looking over his shoulder, seemingly worried someone might see our little parade. We were ushered in single file through the door and onto the lot. Donald kept whispering that we needed to be quiet.
I hoped we didn’t have to walk far. Others had taken some of the bags, but I still had three to deal with. Plus, the whole thing was ridiculous. I felt like we were the Von Trapp family attempting to escape the Nazis. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. In front of me, Louis began to hum “Edelweiss.”