Chapter 9
NINE
“That’s so typical,” Grace said.
“The producers locked you in when you were kids?” I asked, somewhat horrified.
“Not that I remember,” she said. “But they did flagrantly disregard our health and safety.”
“ Flagrantly ,” Marc repeated. “We should go talk to Donald. Give him an earful.”
Feeling edgy, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself in a bright sunny meadow rather than trapped in a sound stage. I added flowers to the meadow. Yellow. Red. Purple. Too many flowers. I subtracted some. There was a nice breeze, cool, comforting?—
“What are you doing?” Marc asked.
“Trying not to panic.”
“We’re trapped in here. Panic is appropriate.”
I didn’t find that helpful at all. Marc grabbed me and pulled me around the set until we stepped through the red curtain, which put us on the opposite side of the set from where Finn was being filmed. Amber noticed us first, and yelled, “Cut! Cut! Cut! Get them out of Finn’s eyeline.”
Donald spun around and said, “What are you doing? You can’t just walk through the curtains! Not while we’re taping! Did everyone hear that? NO ONE WALK THROUGH THE CURTAINS!”
“Donald…” Marc started forcefully. “We need to talk.”
“Now is not the time to talk about your radical liberal agenda. Finn is taping.”
“Donald,” Grace said, behind me. “The doors are jammed.”
His manner changed completely. He turned around and said, “Finn, buddy, we’re going to take the tiniest little break.”
Finn was barely paying attention. He’d put his glasses back on and was staring up at the studio lights as though they were constellations. “It’s cool.”
And then Donald came over to us, sweeping us off the Guessmate? set and into a corner of the soundstage near the entrance.
“Now, quietly tell me what this is about,” he said, as though we’d been the ones yelling.
Marc said, “We wanted to go have a cigarette, but all the doors are jammed shut. What’s going on?”
“Well, for one thing… you really shouldn’t be smoking.”
“So I’ve heard. Still, I’d like to go outside and have a cigarette. Why are the doors jammed shut?”
“You can’t just lock us in here, Donald,” Grace said. “I’m sure that’s against union rules. This is an AFTRA shoot, isn’t it?”
“Let’s be reasonable. The two of you need to calm down. Everything is under control.”
“What do you mean everything’s under control? We can’t get out of the building!”
Grace said, “You didn’t answer my question, Donald.”
“We’re doing everything according to AFTRA rules.”
I sincerely doubted that but kept my mouth shut. Grace, on the other hand, said, “Locking us in here can’t be according to the rules.”
“We are absolutely following the rules. In spirit.”
Then I realized Donald didn’t seem surprised by the revelation at all. I said, “You knew about the doors, didn’t you? There’s a reason we’re trapped in here. What is it?”
“All right, Helper Number One, this isn’t really?—”
“NOAH! My name is NOAH!”
I very nearly apologized for yelling, but was distracted when I realized my hands were shaking. I jammed them into my pockets. I’d managed to get the attention of everyone in the soundstage. I flushed.
Wendy came over, and asked, “What’s happening?”
“I have everything under control, dear.”
“It doesn’t sound that way, Donald.”
And then he said nothing for a long moment. A very angry long moment. His eyes flitted from one of us to another. Thinking. At least it looked like he was thinking. If he was thinking he was probably trying think up a lie.
When that didn’t work, he leaned forward and quietly said, “You can’t tell anyone. OTN didn’t give us enough money to rent the studio and pay you.”
“Donald—” Wendy said.
“No, I think the truth is better. You probably don’t remember him, but the security guard who let us in? That’s Alan, who was our stunt coordinator in the second season.”
“You had a stunt coordinator?” I asked Marc.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Anyway, no one’s supposed to know we’re shooting in here. That’s why we came in the way we did, while the guard at the north gate was on his break and wouldn’t see us. That’s why I had Alan shut us in. We can’t have people wandering around the lot. If the other guard gets wind of us being here…”
“You’ll have to pay him off too,” Marc guessed.
“Exactly, and then how do we pay you?”
Something told me Donald and Wendy were getting paid before the actors. If there was a problem they wouldn’t be taking any shortages out of their own pockets.
Wendy decided to do damage control. “That’s not true. Donald, you’re making them think we don’t have any money. The budget is fine. We have more than enough money to make the show. Everything will be fine.”
“What if there’s a fire?” I asked.
“Well, that doesn’t have anything to do with the budget,” Wendy said.
“What if there’s a fire and we’re locked in here?” I repeated.
“Then we pull the fire alarm and Alan will come,” Donald said. “Plus, you know… sprinklers.”
I looked up at the ceiling. I saw lights, metal girders from which the lights hung, electrical cords, cobwebs, mysterious dark nooks and crannies, a couple of catwalks—but no sprinklers. The building probably pre-dated that particular code. Right? Though, I suspected their insurance was high, it probably cost less than actually installing sprinklers. Nothing about this felt particularly safe.
“What about the elephant door?” Marc asked. “Can we open that? I promise not to go more than two feet from the stage.”
The elephant door was on the west side of the building, near the entrance we used. It was a twenty-foot door and slid to one side to allow furniture and props (and occasionally elephants) to be loaded onto the stage.
Donald said, “I promised we wouldn’t, for one thing… And for another, it does make a lot of noise. So, please don’t go near it.” He chewed his cheek for a moment. “You can smoke in the men’s room.”
“Donald, I’m not sure?—”
“We have to let them smoke somewhere… dear.”
“Thank you,” Marc said.
He was about to storm off, when I asked Donald what seemed like an important question, “Isn’t it your job to get enough money to make the production?”
Marc watched, waiting for the answer.
“We have enough money. I said that already,” Wendy repeated.
“Where did you come from?” Donald wanted to know. “And what are your qualifications?”
“Noah owns Pinx Video,” Marc said. “So he knows how to do things on the cheap.”
“Wait a minute. I run a profitable business.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Look, I haven’t worked in the industry in a long time, and I miss it. I really miss it,” Donald said, nearly whining. “I may have over-promised. Just bear with me. I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I’m in negotiations with OTN to bring the show back. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Donald, you’re oversharing.”
“None of that has anything to do with us,” Grace said. “You’ll be casting teenagers. Not us.”
“There could be cameos,” Donald said. “In fact, I could make sure there are cameos.”
“Oh my Lord,” his wife said.
“More opportunities to work all night for scale?” Grace asked. “I don’t think so.” To Marc she said, “Come on, let’s go have a cigarette in the men’s room like high school kids.”
Louis was standing there with another Giant Green Monster. “What’s going on?”
“We’re locked in,” Marc said.
“Is that some kind of industry lingo?”
“No, darling, they’ve jammed the doors so we can’t go outside,” Marc said.
“What?! Why?”
“Could you bring that over here,” Amber called out to Louis. Meanwhile, Meg and Keely came over.
“Did you just say we can’t get out of here?” Keely asked.
“Oh my gosh, I’m claustrophobic,” Meg said.
Wendy heard her, and called out, “Oh for God’s sake. It’s a six thousand square foot building with a thirty-five-foot ceiling. You can’t get claustrophobic.” I had to be on Meg’s side, though. I was a little anxious thinking about how we couldn’t—okay, a lot anxious.
Louis came back from giving Amber the drink for Finn. It didn’t seem like either of them cared that we were trapped. Finn was happily pulling at his straw.
“Explain this to me,” Louis said. So, I started to. Partway through, Marc said, “I’m dying for a cigarette. I’ll be in the men’s room with Grace.”
The two of them scurried off.
Louis recapped, “So, we’re not supposed to be here, which is why we can’t go outside. They paid the guard but not the owners of the studio. They’re doing this on a shoestring—oh crap. I only got a twenty-five percent deposit from them. If they don’t pay me this will actually cost me money.”
“Do you really think we won’t get paid?” Keely asked. “I could really use the money. Flowers are a low margin business.”
I tried to calm myself down. Breathing slowly. Honestly, I felt like running around the stage screaming ‘We’re trapped! We’re trapped!’ but maybe that wasn’t reasonable. Maybe Donald was telling the truth, and it really wasn’t a big deal. I walked back to the craft table telling myself again and again, “Not a big deal. Not a big deal.”
Donald asked Finn if he was ready, and they began. Pressing the button on the camera, he said, “Action.” Followed a few moments later with, “So, Finn, tell us what happened to you right after Kapowie! ended.”
“Well, I was cast in Young Leonardo actually before Kapowie! ended.”
Young Leonardo was a TV show that ran four seasons. I have the tapes at the store. In case you don’t go in for television shows, it’s the one about Leonardo DaVinci as a young artists’ apprentice, solving mysteries and chasing women. On a slow day, he might dabble in painting and having genius ideas, but mostly he chased after girls and beat up bad guys because… that’s what gay Renaissance artists did?
“We began filming almost the day after Kapowie! ended. I barely had time to throw a party between the shows.” He smiled as though to acknowledge his reputation as a party boy.
The interesting thing about watching him was that as soon as the camera came on, he seemed to brighten. He was suddenly more alert, more charismatic, better looking, shinier. It was kind of weird, actually.
“The show was crazy popular,” he continued. “People really responded to my performance. It meant a lot to a lot of people. And then I started making movies and didn’t stop for almost ten years.”
“More than half a billion dollars in box office,” Donald said, obviously impressed. “Tell us, Finn, what’s your favorite memory of Kapowie! ?”
“Everything. The whole thing felt special. You know, it was all in front of us. The future. Even if we didn’t make it, we knew we’d do something. It was like Christmas morning, and you’ve got these presents in front of you. You don’t know what they are, you don’t even know if you want them, but you know, you just know they’re going to be great.”
“That’s really profound,” Donald said.
“Thank you,” Finn replied as though it actually was. He resumed sipping his drink.
Suddenly, everyone around me gasped. I turned to see that Kathleen was standing there with Gameboy-playing Heston. With her wig and her four-inch heels she was an Amazon towering over most of the people in the room. Certainly, she was much taller than her son. And me. Her dress was sprinkled with sparkles and her makeup was thick and carefully drawn. She didn’t look like a woman, she looked like a creature from another dimension.
She and Finn saw each other. I thought for sure one of them, or maybe even both, would spontaneously combust. Looking back and forth I couldn’t tell what they were feeling. It could have been anger, rage, love, lust, disgust, longing, passion, hatred. Any one of those, all of those things—or, given that she was an evangelist and he was an actor, it could have been none of those things. It could have all been completely fake.
It got so quiet that even Heston looked up from his game. Then I noticed something I should have seen before. His eyes. They were the same exact blue as Finn’s. Mentally, I subtracted the flat black hair obscuring the boy’s face and there were Finn’s cheekbones, his jaw, his chin. It was glaringly obvious that Finn was Heston True’s real father.