Sixteen

As things went in Hollywood, Chazz Morton's people called Sally's people, and she went to dine at another gourmet restaurant where she couldn't allow herself to eat anything.

Right off the bat, her alarms pinged.

The restaurant was attached to the posh Hollywood Palace Hotel. The gaunt and foppish ma?tre d' informed her that monsieur was running behind due to business and that she should go up to his suite for their meeting.

"Screw that," replied Sally. "I mean, I'll wait for him here."

The ma?tre d' smirked, as if she were being stubborn.

"Monsieur Morton said—"

"I heard you, sir. But I'll wait."

"Of course, madame. Follow me this way, if you please."

The man seated Sally in one of the plush chairs. She had on the black suit jacket and skirt she'd worn to Raphael's wake, serious but shapely. She'd styled her hair the same way, professional yet playful. A few tourists at a nearby table shot her searching glances, on the lookout for someone they might recognize. She ordered a glass of wine and sipped it while perusing the menu for the most filling and least socially compromising salad.

A business lunch, nothing more or less. Win the part, get out. And maybe do a little fishing. Maude and Chazz knew each other from the old days. Something Maude had said. Two simple sentences that burrowed into Sally's brain and wouldn't stop itching. She'd been brooding about it off and on ever since.

Sally: How did it work out for you?

Maude: You know precisely how it worked out. You're here, aren't you?

"Sally Priest," said a gruff voice. "Great name. Hello, sugar."

She looked up at the man. "Hi, Mr. Morton."

"Chazz, please. Sorry to keep you waiting. I got held up."

As if summoned by dark arts, a waiter appeared at the side of their table to be of service. The studio executive ordered for both of them—fancy salad for Sally—while grinning at her the whole time like a man who'd bought a prize horse and couldn't wait to see her strong legs run.

Sally appraised him right back as sixtyish and homely but well-dressed and flush with the kind of confidence that came with having obscene amounts of money, success, and power.

Hollywood was a people town—which explained why everyone was nice to the point where nice didn't mean anything—but Chazz's word carried real weight. That myth about girls being discovered in malt shops and becoming movie stars? Men like Chazz did the discovering.

He said, "When I heard Maude Turner's little girl was all grown up and in the business, I checked out Mutant Dawn. Let's say I was impressed. Seeing you in the flesh, even better. You look great as a blonde."

"Well, it's an honor to meet you."

"When I watched that picture, I told myself this is a girl who likes to have fun."

"Yes, well. That was my character, Chazz."

"Oh? What's the real Sally Priest like? This I have to hear."

"I'm more like the Final Girl."

"I'm afraid I don't know what that is, sugar."

"It's a horror trope. Do you like horror?"

"Not so much. No, I can't say I like it a lot."

"Well, the Final Girl beats the monster by following the rules."

"I have no interest in the low-budget gross-outs that pass for horror these days," Chazz went on as if he hadn't heard her. "Enormous waste of funds and crackerjack talent, if you ask me. A load of crud. No, I am interested in blockbusters that fill theaters and make history. Romance, comedies, they endure. They make people feel good. Everybody loves 'em."

Sally pounced on the chance to segue into the main topic. "Like your new project. What can you tell me about it?"

The food arrived. She idly stabbed at her lettuce while he wolfed down the steak she wished she'd ordered for herself. The man had a prodigious appetite. As he chewed, he talked about the movie he planned to make. Big budget, colossal stars, hot director, major promotion plan, the works. A family vacation goes wrong and then right for a single dad. They'd shoot it in Maui.

The more he talked, the more she wanted a piece of it, no matter how small. It sounded like the kind of film where even a bit part could open doors.

"So, what were you thinking for me?" she asked.

Chazz clipped the end off a cigar and lit it. "We need a siren at the hotel pool who tempts the single dad until he realizes he's meant to be with someone else."

An eye-candy role, but at least she'd have a few lines.

"That's very kind. I appreciate the opportunity."

"We'll go up to the suite after lunch," he said. "We can look at the script."

Sally regarded his loaded stare.

"I'm very comfortable right here," she said.

"I'm happy Maude reached out. This is a town where it can be rough going it alone. People need to take care of each other. Give each other a hand. I'd be willing to consider you a special friend."

"A special friend," Sally echoed.

She wondered if Mom had been someone's special friend, selling herself to be a dancer in Houseboat.

"Sure," said Chazz behind a cloud of silver cigar smoke. He reached to plant his large hand on hers. He squeezed. "Everybody needs friends, right?"

Oh, shit, she thought. This is happening.

She'd thought she could control the meeting. She'd been wrong.

He had all the power. Not only to put her in a major feature film, but to keep her from ever working in one of his studio's productions.

"A girl like you needs a mentor," he added. "Someone to guide you."

One of the things Sally loved about horror was how simple it was. The monster wore a mask and wielded a machete. Here, the monster smiled in a business suit and offered you everything you wanted, confident you'd sign your name in blood and tears. He didn't threaten you outright because he didn't need to.

The Final Girl would walk away now on principle. The Bad Girl, the party girl who screwed for fun but never as a career shortcut, would toss her drink in his face. After that, she'd laugh at him for presuming to buy what wasn't for sale.

Sally did neither. Her fear of failure kept her pinned to her seat. It crushed her like a sudden and horrible form of gravity.

This was a mistake. Everything had been so clear before she'd shown up here.

"I guess," she heard herself saying. Her brain had scrambled.

"Then it's settled." Chazz signaled for the check. "A quick elevator ride up to the suite, and we can take a look at that script. We can figure out where you might fit."

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

Sally wasn't her mother.

And no, the Final Girl wouldn't simply walk out. She isn't perfect. She is flawed and tested and beaten to a pulp. What makes her special is she never surrenders. She fights, and she survives alone on her own merits.

Sally tapped into this Final Girl energy and decided she wasn't going anywhere with Chazz Morton.

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

She said, "Did you know my father?"

"I don't think I've ever met Ben Corn."

"I mean my father."

The studio executive regarded her with an unreadable expression. He took a thoughtful puff on his cigar. His face softened into a slight smile.

"Maude finally spilled the beans, huh?"

"Yes," Sally lied. "I was wondering if you could tell me who—"

"I don't rat on my friends, sugar."

She stared at him as it all sank in.

"Eww," she blurted.

The waiter materialized again as if by magic. Chazz signed the slip. The remnant of his cigar plumed in the ashtray. Then he stood.

"Sorry, but I just remembered I have an important call to make."

"What about the part?"

"My people will call yours."

As things went in Hollywood…

People made promises all the time they didn't have to keep.

Sally returned behind the wheel of her rumbling Austin. She had a hazy memory of leaving the restaurant and walking back to the car. With a phlegmy cough, it sped into traffic and joined the constant flow of motion.

Los Angeles. People in cars, always, everywhere, fleeing their demons and chasing their dreams. Sally was one of them.

She drove past the turnoff for the tiny apartment she shared with Monica, another hungry actor. She kept going east, all the way to the city limits, and then beyond even that.

Her Austin knew where she needed to go, through Pomona, where she swore she saw Max Maurey's roadster flash by going the other way. After San Bernardino, civilization began to thin, and the old Wild West asserted itself.

Dry grass, power lines, and eucalyptus trees swept past under sparse fan-shaped clouds. Only twenty more miles of hot asphalt to Joshua Tree park. When at last she arrived, she parked on the usual patch of dirt.

Rummaging around the mess in the backseat, Sally scavenged a pair of Chuck Taylors, ratty army surplus shorts, and the T-shirt Max had given her. She changed out of her formal outfit into this comfortable if gamey ensemble, feeling a little more like herself again. Then she exited the car into hundred-degree air.

Taking a deep breath, she inspected the dry earth and rock, rippling with heat waves radiating off the baking landscape. She spotted the trail she wanted and started hiking. She'd come here before, many times. Her special place. She liked the barren space, the quiet. A woman could think here. Really think.

Sally had plenty to think about.

Maude had planted the acting bug in her from an early age. Instead of Goldilocks and Snow White, her bedtime stories were about Hollywood. To Sally, it was a mythical but real place where girls went from malt shops to movie premieres, their faces shining on the cover of every magazine in America. Disneyland for grown-ups.

As Sally grew older, she fell in love, if not with Hollywood then with its product. Wonder, dreams, imagination. Hollywood existed largely in the brain, itself a projected image, an illusion. What religion did for thousands of years, the magic of cinema usurped, providing myths and meaning, moral lessons, gods to worship.

How could one not be romantic about it? Not want to be a part of it if she had a chance—even a slim half a chance?

Maude's dream for Sally was for her to become a big star, an actress so successful that she didn't have to put up with any shit. Once she fought her way to the top, she could be anything she wanted. And until that day, she should do whatever it took to get there and settle for nothing less.

I played to win, Maude once said. But I made mistakes along the way.

And one of those mistakes, apparently, had been Sally.

Some Hollywood mogul likely promised old Maude she'd be the next Marilyn Monroe and instead put a bun in her oven. She'd married Benjamin Corn, the rich, kindly bank executive Sally would end up calling Dad her whole life.

After the baby was born, Maude's Hollywood dreams were over, and she'd forever know whose fault it was. She also knew who owed her what for it. Ever since, they'd all played the roles they'd been assigned in life's script.

Sally spotted her favorite point, a tall boulder pile looming over the desert. After crossing a stretch of sandy gravel, she gazed up toward the summit.

The sun's glare half blinded her. The heat dried her sweat to a crust. She noticed her growing thirst. Taking her first step past prickly pear and clumps of juniper, she began to climb the bare hot rock.

The climb itself another meditation.

Her entire life, Sally shared Maude's vision. School, competitions, internships, waitressing, workshops, running lines on rooftops by moonlight, flubbed auditions. And networking, always networking in a town that spoke in cheerful code and sometimes felt like a giant Amway convention. Actors, she learned, were like beautiful zombies that fed on hope instead of brains.

Then her lucky break came. A speaking role in Mutant Dawn. Dashing around sand dunes half-naked, chased by radioactive mutants craving human flesh.

God, that was fun. The whole production rolled out like one long party. The energy was terrific. They were making popcorn post-apoc horror, and they knew it.

Out in that desert, Sally had gained so much. She'd cut her teeth on professional acting and didn't flop. She'd embraced her inner Bad Girl and finally ditched her virginity for a hunky, gentle stuntman. She'd not only solidified her love of acting but found something of a home for her talent.

In horror, the roles weren't particularly challenging, being somewhat flat, but the genre was edgy, playful, and accessible. In Mutant Dawn, she'd screamed a lot, flashed her boobs, and died with a wink. The audience loved her for it.

Her mother did not approve. Not because of the nudity but because of the lowbrow genre and bare-bones production quality. It was the start of a rift that widened in time, her first clue Maude didn't want her to live her life on her own terms.

Climbing the rocky hill, Sally realized how much pressure she'd been under all along, now that it was all out in the open. Pressure that extended even to Maude willing to see her daughter consider making the same mistakes, because that was how Hollywood worked, it was all she knew. Any pride Sally felt about protecting herself from Chazz Morton was ruined by this understanding of how hard things were, how having principles might preserve your self-respect but otherwise won you zip. And her inner critic chided her for not going along to get ahead, saying, Whatever mistakes she made, Mom is always right in the end.

Parched and gasping, Sally clawed the final distance to mount the summit. By the end, she wept hot tears that evaporated in the thirsty air. Standing atop the bare hill, she gazed out across a desolate flatland populated by Joshua trees, twisted and bristling creatures with leaves like knives. Sucking in a deep breath, she took a moment to admire its harsh and deadly beauty.

And then she screamed.

Throaty. Bloodcurdling. Full blast.

A solid practice horror-movie scream, trying out a whole new pitch she hoped to incorporate into her craft. But as always, it proved therapeutic. This time, she screamed to frighten not an audience but her own demons.

Sally screamed—

At her mother, who'd pressured and lied to her over her entire life and may have regarded her as a mistake that put the final nail in her dreams' coffin, and the lie Sally had lived her entire life regarding where she had come from—

At the brutal and hungry predators that lurked behind Hollywood's glittering veil, starting with the first jerk who tried to grope her back when she was an intern reading scripts in an office the size of an outhouse—

At the rigid and rampant typecasting and how some genres were considered a smart career move and others a black hole—

At her fear of all the wasted minutes that might become wasted years, the prospect of ending up bitter like old Maude, whose life and youth had been lived in a single decade, her remaining years spent mourning their loss—

At the resulting perfectionism that both helped and hurt her—

And the new emotion she'd added to her acting toolbox, which was a deep sense of shame she didn't deserve.

Life had never punched her in the face. Careful what you wish for, right?

The twisty Joshua trees appeared as human figures in racing flight, bolting in mute terror from her banshee screams.

Sally screamed until she didn't have any left in her.

The next time she did this for a camera, it would be the real thing.