Thirteen

Sally Priest drove her clunker—a 1975 two-door Austin covered in colorful harlequin patches from an old accident—onto the Sunset Strip and parked near Spago, a favorite among Hollywood's celebrity caste.

Inside, the patrons lunched in bright white decor lit by track lights. The staff hustled around delivering food. The dining area smelled deliciously of Wolfgang Puck's gourmet pizzas.

On its far side, a curvy and stunning fiftysomething flirted with an aproned waiter at one of the tables. Always stylish, today she wore a short-sleeved, form-fitting party dress with puffed sleeves and bold eighties colors.

Sally hadn't seen her mother in three months. Last time, things hadn't gone all that well.

Still, she'd been happy to receive Maude Turner's phone call inviting her to lunch. It offered a perfect opportunity to test out her new Final Girl persona. Responsible, obedient, and always thinking of others regardless of the temptation to punch them in the nose. A girl who bought her mom holiday cards.

Sally wanted to inhabit the character archetype so fully that Max would believe she was the Final Girl. Directors considered acting a bunch of hooey and were always looking for talent that walked into an audition embodying the role. If Sally could convince her own mother, she could convince anyone.

Maude assessed Sally with a cursory once-over.

"Hello, darling," she said.

Sally slid into her white chair with all the grace of a surly teenager. Her next stop in her Final Girl transformation would be a new wardrobe. A prodigious hairspray perm and glam-trash fashion did not suit her new good-girl image.

"Hi, Mom—"

Maude had already turned away batting her eyelashes. "Do freshen up this drink if it's not too much trouble, Raul."

Flirting like a fading Doris Day, an image of robust female sexuality rendered as coy, dumb, and malleable. Sally hated it.

"At once, signora." The waiter retrieved her glass. "And for you?"

While considering her choice, Sally looked up at an angular face she found familiar. In her mother's loaded and domineering presence, Sally wanted a tall shot glass filled with tequila, but then she remembered herself.

"I'll have a ginger ale," she said.

"Of course, signora." Raul winked at her and left.

She blushed, recalling where she knew him from. An actor himself, he was a friend of Ashlee's who had witnessed her Look at me, world strip-show antics at the Jack the Knife III premiere party.

At least she'd blushed over it. She felt like a Final Girl already.

Maude looked around. "Well, this is pleasant enough."

"It's a very popular place. Swifty Lazar—he's a top agent?—holds an Oscar night party here every year."

"Of course I know Swifty. A lovely man."

"Well, celebrities come here all the time."

"I doubt the kind of men I worked with—Grant, Bogie—would hang out in a pizza joint. Maybe James Dean. Yes, I'd give you James Dean."

"It's haute cuisine, Mom. They make pizzas topped with smoked salmon and caviar here, for crying out loud."

Sally didn't know why she was arguing about it, but it felt familiar.

"At least it's not Gorky's again. Pierogies. So proletarian." Maude slipped into a charming smile. "So, Emily!" Using Sally's real name, the one she'd given her daughter. "I haven't seen you in ages. You look well."

"Thanks—"

"You've put on a pound or two. No, no, it looks ravishing on you. Anyway, your father sends all his love. Tell me what you've been doing. Do you need any money?"

"No, I've got some exciting news. I've—"

Raul returned with the drinks and offered to take their lunch order. With a final glance at the menu, Maude flirted her way toward a chicken salad. Sally felt a perverse desire to eat an entire large pizza on the motherly dime but remembered herself and demurely ordered a Cobb salad instead.

Raul assured them they'd made excellent choices.

Maude gave her an approving look as well. "That's probably for the best. The camera adds ten pounds, you know."

Sally did in fact know, as she'd heard it from her mom many times before. She laid out her latest progress in building an acting career. Razor Lips wrapping and the workshop with Dan Womack and his emphasis on Stella Adler's take on the Method. She finished with her hope to read for the lead role as the Final Girl in Max Maurey's next horror movie.

"Isn't that awesome?" she asked, fishing for approval.

"Well, if you think that's what's best for you, I'm happy for you, naturally."

"You don't sound happy, Mom."

"I think you can do better. There, I said it."

"Don't act—" Sally caught herself before she lectured her mother about pretending to find being critical anything close to a difficult job. In that role, Maude's performances were quite unconvincing. "It's the lead in a major feature."

"Yes, but it's horror."

She sighed. They'd been through this many times.

Maude offered a rueful smile. "Such a dirty, distasteful genre. Even sci-fi is more artistic." The way she said it, one would think she was talking about the decline of Western civilization. "And so misogynistic."

"No more than any other genre," Sally said. "It's all the same bullshit idea of masculinity. The same male wish fulfillment, the same hot girls. At least horror is honest. It's all out in the open."

"Well, I see you're still quite the little philosopher. You're young and want to rebel. That's wonderful. You may regret it later when you're typecast and find yourself stuck doing the same role the rest of your career."

"Jamie Lee Curtis got her start with Halloween. It's not a black hole."

Maude shrugged. "That's her. Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh's little girl. She's practically royalty. As for you, well. Not so much. You do what you think is best, of course. I just happen to think very highly of you and that you can always do better. Which, as the woman who brought you into this world, I am allowed."

Raul returned to present their salads with a flourish, and Sally dug into hers fuming at her mom and sulking that she hadn't ordered a signature pizza. Too late, she remembered Tom Hanks's first role had been in He Knows You're Alone.

Damn, being the Final Girl was proving way harder than it looked. No wonder the girl displayed so much warrior strength when the maniac showed up with a chainsaw. She worked out on a treadmill of family dynamics and carried a lifetime of grit and perseverance built up layer by layer into a kind of medieval armor.

In comparison, playing the Bad Girl was a piece of cake.

"I have a suggestion about a move in your career that's far more vertical," Maude said. "I bumped into Chazz Morton."

"The producer." A top executive at one of the major studios, in fact.

"Lovely man. He's putting together a new picture around—well, some very big stars and a very hot director. It's all hush-hush right now, but he did let slip it's a lighthearted romantic comedy. Anyway, I pulled a few strings to wiggle you in to read for a minor speaking role."

"Mom, I just said I'm waiting for a phone call about being cast as a lead. What you're describing sounds like a step down, not up."

"But this gets you into a far bigger playing field. The major league."

"Maybe," Sally said, chewing on it. "How much speaking are we talking?"

"I was told it's an under-five."

Meaning she'd have fewer than five lines of dialogue. Well, she could do both movies as long as there were no scheduling conflicts. Work was work, though the idea of stepping outside horror's comfort zone worried her a little.

The more she thought about doing the under-five, though, the more it appealed. A blockbuster movie. Sharing a set with household names. A small step up into a whole new league. Today's memorable minor character might be tomorrow's leading star.

Yes, she could do it. She would do it.

"Chazz wants to meet you to talk about it," Maude added.

"Seriously?"

A top dog like Chazz didn't put in time for a no-name actor auditioning for an under-five. Sally didn't see that they had anything to talk about.

"It's your chance to make the right impression and swing a bigger supporting role. These things happen."

"Ha! Over dinner and a nightcap at his place, I'll bet."

Sally had heard stories. Word got around in this town. Who respected actors or treated them like cattle, who had a clear vision or was prone to change everything on the fly. Whom you could trust being alone with.

Or maybe he was only taking the meeting as a favor to an old friend.

Okay, she decided. She'd meet with him. It wasn't the kind of thing an actor refused. But she'd do it in a public place. He'd flirt, she'd playfully deflect, and perhaps between all the bullshit they could do business.

Maude shrugged. "It's the game."

"Well, I don't play that game."

"Everyone plays it, darling. One might as well play to win, right?"

Sally froze, lettuce forgotten on her fork. She had a creeping sensation this conversation had stopped being academic.

"Wait," she said. "What?"

"All I'm saying is he has his power, and you have yours. You can use yours to get what you want."

"He has a hell of a lot more power than me. What if he uses it?"

Another shrug as Maude stabbed at her salad again.

How far Sally wanted to take things was up to her.

She watched Mom take a demure bite. "Just so we're clear, acting in a horror movie is beneath me, right? But selling my soul is fine."

"Hollywood doesn't care about your soul, darling. It simply charges it as the price of admission and then throws it away."

"Now look who's the philosopher. My body, then. That at least appears to be worth a good deal." Sally winced as a thought struck. "Did you, Mom?"

"Did I what?" she muttered.

"Play the game to win?"

Maude refused to look at her. "I assure you I don't know whatever you're insinuating."

"How did it work out for you?"

Her mother smiled, though it turned into a bittersweet grimace.

"You know precisely how it worked out," she said. "You're here, aren't you?"

"See? Playing that game doesn't get you—wait. What?"

"It's not important. Water under the bridge, as they say."

"It sounded important, Mom."

"It's a chat for another day, darling. Now let's talk about something far more interesting." Maude raised her glass. "Like how you're going to take your first real step to becoming a movie star."

Sally scowled. "Fine."

Still unsettled, she couldn't shake the nagging sensation she'd missed some salient truth that lurked just outside the light.

What she did know: She had an opportunity. So, yeah, she'd take the meeting, risks and all. Life was full of risk. A life without it was one not fully lived.

Her story was only beginning, waiting to be written and bursting with potential. She couldn't waste a single page.