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Never in Hank’s career had one of his novels been so sought after for a film deal. Charlie had been fielding calls on a daily basis from studio execs and some fairly prestigious producers trying to smooth talk their way into buying the rights. Some of the offers were so low it was offensive, but some had been worth listening to their pitch before Hank ultimately shot them down. Charlie just assumed Hank was trying to start a bidding war, but no amount of money could tempt Hank over this book. Maybe for the first time in his life, he felt extremely protective over this piece of work and he wasn’t going to let some studio bastardize his masterpiece, not for all the money in the world.
And then Netflix came calling and their offer to fly him out to LA and hear what they had to say happened to coincide with Stella’s spring break and well, why not take a free trip to the west coast, first class, for some wining and dining on someone else’s dime? Three days and two nights at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, because what could be more Hollywood than Marilyn Monroe’s former residence? Sure.
Stella was whisked away almost as soon as they arrived. Per the check-in clerk, “your wife has been booked for a spa treatment, Sir, and the studio has sent a car for your meeting.” And with that, fingers were snapped, a bellhop appeared, and Hank went one way, Stella another. Charlie was waiting in the black Escalade that was apparently his ride to the studio.
“Runkle,” Hank said, putting his agent in a headlock to rub his knuckles back and forth over his smooth, bald head.
“Dammit, Hank,” Charlie complained, slapping at Hank’s arm.
“What? It’s not like I’m gonna mess up your hair.” Hank pressed his lips to the top of Charlie’s head before he released him.
“No, but you’ll wrinkle me.” Charlie pushed himself across the car seat, away from Hank, smoothing his tie down his chest.
“Same Runkle, still as tightly clenched as a nun’s twat.”
“This is a big deal, Hank. Netflix has more money than God and they want your book. Maybe they want a whole development deal. I could retire. I could spend the rest of my days sipping mai tais on a lanai in Florida.”
“Florida is where rich assholes go to die, Charlie.”
“Hank, I’m telling you, I think this is big. They fly you out here, they put you up at the Roosevelt, they’re sending private cars, they don’t just do that for a lowball offer.”
“I know how much dollar signs get you hard, Charlie, but try not to nut before we even get to the meeting. Besides, I’m probably not even going to say yes.”
“Ohhhhhh…” Charlie bent his head back and put a hand over his chest. “Hank, you say things like that and it triggers my agita.”
“They’re gonna want to change the ending, which is a nonstarter for me, and they’re gonna want to cast some…some America’s sweetheart like Reese fucking Witherspoon as Miranda, which tells me that they haven’t even read the book at all, they had some intern pass on a synopsis and they don’t give a fuck about the actual material, they just want content. They’re just a fucking content factory shitting out turdburgers that only like five percent of is even watchable.”
“What’s wrong with Reese Witherspoon?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Reese Witherspoon except you can’t cast Reese Witherspoon in a part that should go to…I don’t know who, but the opposite of Reese Witherspoon.”
“I think you’re really underestimating Reese Witherspoon here, Hank, she’s a fantastic actress, you know she’s an Academy Award winner.”
“Jesus, Runkle, you’re missing the point.”
“Okay, okay.” Charlie put his hands up in surrender. “No Reese Witherspoon.”
Hank closed his eyes. It’d been years since he smoked, but he wanted a cigarette. Every time he came back to LA it was more and more apparent what a hostile, toxic environment it was for him. He didn’t want to go to the meeting anymore, he just wanted to have the driver turn the car around and take him back to Stella. Take him back to New York. He never should have come. It would have been a lot less time consuming to just tell them to fuck off over Zoom.
After they arrived at the studio lot, Hank and Charlie were escorted to the production offices by a young PA whose voice had probably just cracked, but was eager to please. He brought them bottles of water and a tray of snacks which Hank refused and Charlie happily dug into and ripped open a bag of peanuts. The conference room they were left in had a long, sleek table made of solid oak and a view of Sunset Boulevard.
Minutes later, a young woman entered the room through a side door and an entourage of assistants, all women, filed in behind her, all sitting in chairs along one wall as she approached Hank and Charlie. She was tall and angular and looked as though she’d stepped off of the latest cover of Vogue. Her long dark hair was pulled into a slick ponytail and her heels were as sharp as her nails, painted black.
“Eloise Lambert,” she said, extending her hand to Hank. “We appreciate you coming down. Did Paul offer you tea or espresso or is there anything else we can get for you?”
“An espresso sounds nice,” Charlie said.
“You must be the agent,” Eloise said, shifting her handshake to Charlie. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Charles Runkle. Love the set up here. Great production house you’ve got.”
“Settle down, Charlie, they’re supposed to be kissing our asses here, not the other way around.”
Eloise smiled and moved away to take a seat across from the two of them at the short side of the table. One of the assistants slid an espresso in front of Charlie while another slid an ipad in front of Eloise.
“You know I was a PA on A Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” Eloise said, referring to the movie that had been made of Hank’s breakout best seller, God Hates Us All. “It was the first film set I was ever on.”
“Oh?” Hank said, keeping himself as relaxed as possible as visions of sexual harassment charges started dancing in his head.
“And it’s when I vowed that one day I would be an executive producer. It’s criminal how that was adapted. It makes sense to me why you’ve turned down all the other offers for this.”
“I may or may not have punched the director in the dick at a screening, but I got over it, eventually.”
“Todd Carr. Decent guy. Shit director.”
“I take it he’s not on the shortlist for this?”
“I think he’s working on industrials these days.”
“Too bad.”
“I’m going to have Sabrina here take over with the pitch.” Eloise pulled out the empty chair that was next to her and one of the women came over to sit beside her. She was almost a carbon copy of her boss with her dark, slick-backed hair and sharp heels, but she also resembled a child playing dress up.
“Mr. Moody,” Sabrina said, nodding at Hank. “Mr. Runkle. I’m sure the two of you know Reese Witherspoon.”
Hank pressed his lips together and shot his agent a look. Charlie’s eyes were wide, but he kept them forward. Hank felt like kicking him under the table, but refrained.
“Uh, yeah,” Hank said. “I’ve heard of her.”
“It’s not really a secret that her book club has been a major success and that most of her picks have then gone on to be developed from there.”
“Mmhm.”
“We’d like to do something similar, but we want to cultivate a selection that has a bit more…edge, let’s say.”
Hank relaxed a little. “So you’re not looking at Reese for…casting?”
“Casting?” It was Sabrina that tensed now. “That would be a very interesting choice. Is that…is that who you had in mind for Miranda?”
“God, no.”
“Okay, great.” Sabrina nodded and then gestured at someone over her shoulder. “We do have a few choices in mind, if you’d like to take a look.”
“Yeah, sure.”
One of the women gave some papers to Sabrina and then she slid them across the desk to Hank and Charlie. It was a standard breakdown of the characters and the first name on the list under Miranda was Catherine Keener. He could see that. He could even get behind that.
“Okay,” Hank said. “Back to the anti-Witherspoon book club.”
“Not anti, just…alt. Material that might have a bit more grit and that may not always have the neat little happy endings tied up in a bow.”
“So you’re okay with the ending?” Hank asked.
“We’re not trying to give this the A Crazy Little Thing Called Love treatment,” Eloise said. “There’s no reason to not be faithful to the material.”
“Which is why we’d like you to write the scripts,” Sabrina added. “Be the showrunner.”
“Wait, what? Showrunner?”
“Hank would make a great showrunner,” Charlie said. “I think this sounds like a fantastic idea.”
“Shut up, Charlie. What do you mean, showrunner?”
“We’d like to shoot this as a limited series,” Eloise answered. “Eight episodes, possibly ten.”
Hank managed not to fidget through the rest of the pitch as they explained what they wanted from him in terms of scripts, the responsibilities of casting, hiring directors, even the minutiae of costuming and set decoration would fall on his shoulders. The weight of it freaked him out, but the opportunity to maintain creative control over one of his works was enticing. He was suddenly taking this offer very seriously.
“And what about location?” he asked.
“What about it?” Eloise inquired.
“The novel’s set in New York. I’m in New York. I’m not spending eight months in Atlanta or wherever the fuck the tax break du jour is for filming these days.”
“We have relationships with the studios in Queens, not to mention a plethora of east coast based line managers and location scouts to choose from. That won’t be a problem.”
“I don’t know the first fucking thing about running a show.”
“Fortunately, we do.”
Hank felt backed into a corner. He had no good reason not to say no to such a deal. He looked to Charlie, who had the same panic written on his face as that time he’d stupidly thought he could handle a chili dog with sauerkraut from a street vendor on Melrose. His silence was loud.
“There is one other potential offer we’d like to make,” Sabrina said, cutting the tension that suddenly seemed to fill the room. “The daughter in the novel, Paige, she isn’t really part of the story, but she’s mentioned quite often.”
“Yeah.”
“We were thinking that, if this were to be successful, that maybe we could do a second series exploring her perspective.”
“I don’t know that I care to explore Paige’s POV.”
“Not you, necessarily. Isn’t your daughter also a writer?”
“I don’t know that Becca would be interested in Paige’s POV either. You’d have to ask her.”
“Just food for thought,” Eloise said. “A father-daughter created series might make for a potentially interesting gimmick from a marketing perspective.”
“And lucrative,” Charlie suddenly piped up.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Hank said, glaring at Charlie. “He’s got his sights set on a condo in a golf cart community in Florida.”
“Wouldn’t be a very good agent if he wasn’t interested in numbers,” Eloise answered, gesturing over her shoulder at another woman who passed her what Hank recognized as a set of contracts. “I’ll presume you’ll want your lawyer to look things over.”
Charlie immediately started flipping through the pages as soon as the contract was in his hands and Hank stepped on his toes under the table. He stood up, and Eloise stood as well, coming towards him with her hand outstretched.
“I think you’ll find our offer more than satisfactory,” she said, shaking Hank’s hand. “But, if there’s anything we’ve left off the table, I’m sure Mr. Runkle will be in touch to let us know.”
“I am a little disappointed you didn’t even try to hit on me. I thought that’s what all the big Hollywood executives did.”
“My wife probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I did.”
He shrugged. “Neither would mine.”
Hank left the offices in a cloud of quiet dread. Once upon a time he would’ve just signed the contract without giving it much thought as to how he would pull it off, but the older he’d gotten, the more contemplative he’d become, less impulsive. While his agent may have been ready to open a good bottle of champagne, he wasn’t quite there yet. There was only one person’s input that mattered to him.
Wanting to avoid what was sure to be his Charlie’s incessant babbling on the ride back to the hotel, Hank opted to walk. He thought his agent would put up a protest, but Charlie waved to him from the back seat, already on the phone with their lawyer. He watched the Escalade pull away and made his way west on Sunset. The too blue skies and palm trees lining the streets fed into Hank’s already contemplative mood by adding a dose of nostalgia and melancholy.
At Vine Street, Hank turned right, wanting to catch a glimpse of Capitol Records on the way up to Hollywood Boulevard. He casually browsed the walk of fame stars that lined the side street, tallying up how many were dead and gone and were largely forgotten. He had to pull out his phone to take a photo of the star of Richard Dix and set a reminder to himself to search for a wikipedia page later and find out if the man was a porn star or his real name was Dick Dix.
He crossed Hollywood to go stand in front of the famous recording studio building and daydream about what his life might look like if he’d went into music instead. Probably dead. He snapped a photo of the building and texted it to Fish. As he put his phone back in his pocket, he paused as his attention was drawn back to the sidewalk.
“I’m a writer,” he mumbled to himself as he crouched down over the star of Billy Wilder. “But then, nobody’s perfect.”
Hank had made it no secret that a lot of his career had been driven by money and he’d always found it to be a more honest, less vulgar motivator than fame, but secretly, deep down, he’d always admired the real storytellers of the world, the ones driven by passion and need to express. Even more, he’d always admired the ones that could make their art last. He had the soul of a tortured artist, all he was ever lacking was the brain brimming with stories. He took a photo of the star and made no other stops on the rest of the walk to the hotel.
The same check-in clerk from hours before nodded to him as he headed to the elevators. He double-checked the room number written on the keycard holder and punched the number three. A fully-stocked wet bar greeted him beside the door and he called out Stella’s name as he grabbed a glass and looked for the whiskey. His wife emerged from the bedroom door in a plush robe, looking more than freshly showered. Her hair was pulled back, but fluffed. Her face was dewy and her cheeks were pink.
“Netflix spring for the deluxe spa package?” he asked, pouring himself a drink.
“A lovely facial and a wonderful Swedish massage,” she answered.
“Happy ending included?”
“I was waiting for you for that.”
Hank grinned as he took a sip of whiskey and opened up one arm as Stella slipped her arms around his waist. “Good answer,” he murmured, and lowered his glass to kiss her. She licked a drop of whiskey off his bottom lip when he pulled away.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Hank grunted and took one of Stella’s hands, crossing his arm over her chest as he shuffled them out to the main area. He caught a glance of the pool over the balcony view from the wall to wall sliding glass doors as he pulled her down onto the black leather couch. He crossed both feet on the coffee table that looked like it had been carved from driftwood and she put her hand under the side of his jacket to run her hand across his chest.
“They want to give me everything I never knew I even wanted,” he said.
“How very unsatisfying for you.”
He grunted again and took another sip of whiskey before he handed her the glass to sit up and pull his jacket off. She tucked her feet up under her and balanced the glass on her knee as he leaned back and sighed, crossing his feet on the table again and lacing his fingers behind his head.
“They don’t want to change the ending?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Did they share their thoughts on casting?”
“I saw a list.”
“And there was no Reese Witherspoon, I take it?”
He chuckled and then turned his head towards her. “No, they seemed to be spot on with the breakdown. And, they were thinking a limited series format, not a movie.”
“For television?”
“More or less. Eight to ten episodes.”
“Is that preferable?”
“They want me to develop it. Be the showrunner.”
“What does that mean?”
“Write it, cast it, set decorate the fucking thing if I want to, basically be the czar of the show.”
“I see.” She hummed and then her expression turned pensive.
Hank took the glass of whiskey out of Stella’s hand for another drink and then offered it to her. She shook her head so he quickly downed the rest, coughed once from the sting of it and pounded a fist lightly against his sternum. Sometimes he forgot that he couldn’t drink the way he used to. She took the glass from him and put it on the table and then settled next to him again, her hand on his chest.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Is this something you want to do?”
“I’ve never had full creative control over a project before. It’s tempting.”
“Hm.”
She was quiet again. He slumped towards her to nuzzle his face against her neck and closed his eyes as he breathed her in. She smelled like coconut and her skin was warm and slick as he slipped his hand through the gap in her robe to caress her breast. “God, you smell good,” he mumbled. He dragged his bottom lip back and forth across her collarbone and she finally reached up and put her fingers in his hair, scratching her nails up the back of his head how he liked it, but didn’t say anything.
“Tell me what you think I should do, Sherlock.”
“I think it sounds as though you want to say yes, don’t you?”
“I want to know what you think,” he murmured, tipping his chin down and opening his eyes to gaze at her half-exposed breast. He circled his fingertip around her areola in the way he knew she liked, very lightly, counterclockwise. “Be my voice of reason. Talk me out of it, maybe.”
“I would never talk you out of something you want to do.”
“But?”
“What will the timeline of this be like? I have exams approaching and I don’t know how flexible I can be with the time I can take, not like previously when I was in London. If it meant weeks apart…months, even…”
“Mmm say flexible again, but let me get my dick in my hand first.” He pulled back with a smile to let her know he was teasing before she could develop a frown or chastise him for not taking her seriously. She frowned anyway and he began massaging her breast as penance. “Not to worry, Sherlock, I’ve already made it conditional that I wouldn’t even consider agreeing to their offer if they weren’t willing to shoot the show in New York.”
Stella shifted and pulled on Hank’s hair so that he had to tip his head back to look up at her. “Are you telling me they’ve offered to let you write your own show, cast it, direct it, shoot the ser-”
“Don’t forget set decorate the fucking thing if I wanted to,” he interrupted.
“Set decorate the fucking thing, and shoot the series in New York. You who has no experience with any of these things?”
“I thought I was going to have to pinch myself, but no one offered to blow me, so it was pretty obvious it wasn’t a dream.”
“You actually want to do all those things? Be responsible for all of it?”
Hank sobered and sighed as he pulled his hand free from Stella’s robe. “Take the hits if it’s a failure, you mean?”
“No, that isn’t what I meant at all, though it would be something to think about. Trust me, being in charge of a number of people can seem alluring, but it’s also a heavy burden.”
“You don’t think I can carry the load?” He put his hand up and scrunched his face. “Wait, don’t answer that.”
Stella wove her fingers through Hank’s and pressed her palm against his. All he had to do was give her a gentle pull and she lifted up onto her knees. He held onto her as she straddled his thighs and he slouched into the back of the couch. He took her other hand and for a few quiet moments, she stretched her fingers between his as he rubbed circles over the insides of her wrist with his thumbs. She finally twisted her hands free and then brought them to the back of his neck and laced her fingers together.
“This is a massive offer,” she said. “It will mean a lot of time and work and energy.”
“I know that,” he answered, unknotting her robe. Her breasts were bare, but she had plain white cotton panties on. Nothing fancy or lacy, but a view he could still appreciate for the dark shadow of pubic hair through the thin material and the wet spot that hinted at her arousal.
“It’s a huge commitment.”
He let his thumbs drift down and dip into the waistband of her panties. “I think I’m pretty good at commitment,” he murmured. “Don’t you?”
“Very, very good,” she whispered, thighs clenching against his legs.
He took a deep breath and moved his hands up her body, over her breasts to her shoulders and back down again. “Do you know who Billy Wilder is, Sherlock?”
“Should I?”
“Golden age of Hollywood filmmaker. Wrote and directed Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot. On his tombstone, he had them put ‘I’m a writer, but then, nobody’s perfect.’”
“Ah, I see.”
Hank cocked his head at her.
“Some Like it Hot,” she said. “Paraphrasing the last line of his own film.”
“Your well of knowledge never ceases to impress.”
“It’s a rather shallow well, I’m afraid, but I do know that one.”
He hummed and ran the flat of his hand down the front of her chest to her navel. “I don’t know what they did to you in that spa, but I don’t think you’ve ever felt so soft.”
“All but the happy ending.”
“Oh yeah, let’s not forget about that.” He made a move to slip his hand back between her legs but she grabbed it and pushed it away.
“Finish your story,” she said.
“And I saw his star on the walk of fame today, the end.” He tried to touch her again, but she pushed him away again and raised her brow. He sighed. “And I saw his star on the walk of fame today and it made me think about how lucky he was to have been able to put his words out there and that we can sit here what, sixty years later, and remember what he wrote.”
“I’ve been snobbish about it in the past,” he continued, “and thought that people who could quote novels were somehow superior to people who could quote movies, but honestly, so what? Someone had to write it first for someone to say. And then someone out there thought it worthy of their grey matter. I have always wondered what it could be like to see something through from page to screen. Not have to complain when they inevitably get it so fucking wrong. So, if Netflix has faith in me, maybe I should have faith in myself and take the chance. No, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I never know what the fuck I’m doing so it’ll just be another day ending in ‘y’.”
Stella’s eyes, dark blue and piercing, softened and lightened. She smiled and her mouth descended onto Hank’s in a firm kiss. He squeaked in surprise and then chuckled. He managed to grasp her hips again and pull her firmly down against his chest.
“My brief affair with an existential crisis turn you on, Sherlock?”
“No, but your commitment does.”
He grinned and then flipped her down to the couch. “Now, then,” he said. “I finished my story. I’d say it’s time for your happy ending.”
“About damn time.”
The End