Gilley had been waiting a half hour at the Grant Hotel Bar and Grill. Of course, he was comfortable. He had his favorite table facing the door, which was remarkable given that he hadn't called for a reservation, and could watch his appointment enter the room and walk toward him, giving him time to size up the man who had called him this morning and, frantically, begged for a few minutes of his time. Now the guy — what was his name? Oh yeah, Andre — had the balls to be late. Had he not been seduced by the day's luncheon special — his favorite mahi-mahi with red potatoes — he might have left one minute past eleven thirty. But he'd already taken off his driving gloves and had told the garage to deliver his Lexus at two thirty, so he might as well enjoy a quiet meal now that it was in front of him. If he was writing this script, he would have called it My Luncheon With Andre. The critics would savage it as a poor imitation of My Dinner With Andre, but what the hell. The adult film business was notorious for bastardization of well-known genre film titles, why not a high-brow ground-breaking blah-blah film?
He looked up from chasing a cherry tomato around his plate, and saw a man wearing an intense stare and two days growth of chin stubble bulldozing his way through empty tables. The man certainly looked the part of a temperamental film director. As he neared, Gilley caught a whiff of Eau de' Dumpster. “You Gilley Croft?” the man said.
Gilley was tempted to say no, but if Andre had been delayed by a mugger who tossed him in trash bin, he wanted to hear the story. It might be grist for his production mill. “And you must be Andre,” he said and motioned the man to sit as he took a sip of his white Zinfandel.
“I have the money and the talent,” Andre said. He hauled out a checkbook from the pocket of his green and gold plaid sports coat and laid it out flat in front of Gilley's plate. The ending balance of $835,000 was highlighted in yellow. “All I need is a location, film equipment and catering. You can arrange all that, right?” A tremulous hand patted the check register as his eyes reconnoitered the room.
Gilley noticed a large emerald ring on his finger. It looked expensive. A mugger wouldn't have passed it up. “I usually like to take a more leisurely approach to a pitch, but you've definitely piqued my interest, Mr....”
“Andre. I'm the one-name performance artist.”
“Oh, yes of course. The Andre.”
“It's me. In the flesh.”
Did Andre believe himself as famous as, say, Cher? He looked capable of delusions. “What's your project, Andre?”
The waiter hurried over when he saw the disheveled new customer sitting with a neat old big-tipping customer. “Everything alright, Mr. Croft?” he said, taking a half-karate stance.
“My appointment has arrived. Bring him something to drink. Anything but coffee. What'll it be, Andre?”
“Jack Daniels, straight up.”
Definitely a Southerner. “You were saying about your project ...”
“It's not just a project. It's my life's work. My magnum opus. Opus Dei. Dei gratia. Do you understand?” Andre took Gilley's water, and drank it like a man in a desert. “I'm remaking The Shooting Party.”
Instantly Gilley imagined rows of ejaculating young men wearing red plaid Elmer Fudd hunting hats. It could work. But Andre didn't seem like he had a sense of humor. “You don't mean the real Shooting Party — pre-World War I British aristocracy Shooting Party.”
“Yes! That's the one. One, two, three.”
“Never seen it.” If not sex with cartoon costumes, then sex with violence. Perhaps the rape of scantily clad Victorian ladies by jock-strapped footmen driven mad with lust. “With or without clothes?”
“What?”
“You do know what kind of movies I make, don't you?”
Andre produced a list of scratched off names. Gilley's was at the bottom. “You're my hope. I've tried faith and charity. Now all I have is hope.”
No doubt there were more decent people out there than Gilley ever expected. Did no one really want to rip this crazy guy off? His was begging to be fleeced, unless the bank balance was as imaginary as his name recognition. “What kind of location do you have in mind?”
“A country estate. A meadow ...”
“Not in Europe, I hope. I don't do international shoots.”
“No. No. Jamul will be fine. This is an updated version. Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Only with politicians and CEOs instead of patricians — all unaware their world is ending. So privileged they can't imagine fate dealing them a bad hand. Their universe about to change without notice. Firing at them with no warning or consideration for their responsibilities. Their individual uniqueness.”
“Who do your villains shoot?”
“Small animals. Families. Minorities. Endangered species. Pasolini. Salò, 120 Days of Sodom. Megadeath with class and refinement.”
Sex, violence, and money? It was the trifecta for success. Gilley could hear the cash rolling in.
“You got creds?” Gilley said.
“I'm a metaphysical Mozart. A wunderkind commentator. A 21st Century Siddhartha. With a pinch of Cassandra and a dash of de Sade.”
Gilley gave him an “A” for intellectual word salad. “I'd need a bond. If I set everything up, I have to make sure I get paid.” He handed Andre his business card. “Bring a copy of the bond by my office tomorrow and we'll call the lawyers.” Let the A-listers turn it down. This was a goldmine. “And I'll need to see a script. Shouldn't be more than thirty minutes of dialog. Let the action do the talking, I always say. Show, don't tell. Where are you staying while you're in town?”
“Knickerbocker Hotel.”
“Then you're right down the street.” Way down. Gilley cringed at thought of the infamous city eyesore with its permanently stained carpets and bed linen, and the Glow-worm condom dispensers in the bathrooms. He used the place for the Cum Blow My Horn shoot and came home with a case of crabs. If Andre made good on a bond, he'd do business with him. He was used to eccentrics. Southern California was full of 'em. Like Zha Zha Lamour, the E-cup star of his first picture he'd married in '89. Talk about a cash cow. Retired now, to a little house with a white picket fence in Del Cerro and divorced, she was sitting on $2.8 million dollars worth of California real estate. The dumb lucky bitch. He still loved her.
Andre didn't offer his hand to seal the deal, and Gilley was glad they'd leave the details to the lawyers. Touching a crazy like Andre was dicey with no hand sanitizer nearby. “You won't regret this, I promise,” was all Andre said before he snatched up his check-book and strode out of the dining room to God knows where, leaving a dirty business card next to his undrunk whiskey. It was quarter past twelve.
“Check, please,” Gilley said to the waiter, and put Andre's business card into a credit card slot in his wallet when he paid. Andre had forgotten his producer's list — or figured he didn't need it any more — and Gilley gave it a once over. George Lukas. Steven Spielberg. Ron Howard. He crept down the list, wondering if Andre managed to actually get hold of these people to hear a no. Secretaries, probably. He'd have to hire one someday. To keep out the riff-raff. But, if a guy like Andre did get to talk to a somebody, maybe he could too. He called Abe Goldberg. Jews know everybody.
“Anyway, this crazy guy named Andre goes into a restaurant...”
“Is this a joke?” Abe interrupted. Gilley could imagine him smoking a cigar and fondling his Johnson.
“No, it's Gilley Croft. And I just met with Andre —you know him?”
“Hell yes. Or fuck yes because I don't believe in hell. What'd he say? Le'me guess, The Shooting Party, right? Am I right?”
“Wha'dya think?”
There was a long silence. Was Abe gettin' his rocks off, or was he really thinking? “The guy's a nut job, but a lot of artists are … were. Van Gogh. Dali. I passed, sure, but the more I think about it — he might be on to something, Gilley. Remakes are all over the screens now. They made The Hulk three times already. And what about the classics. Pride and Prejudice? Two films. Two more for TV. Anna Karenina? 1927, 35, 48, 97 - and those are just the English versions. There's one in the works for 2030!” Abe coughed up a lunger. Gilley heard him spit. Probably into a napkin. He kept a stack of them on his desk. “The Shooting Party is a remake too — Rules of the Game.”
“I'm considering the project, Abe. If I can meet the right people.”
Abe laughed long and hard. “A hack like you? You peddle booty bangers. Not an artistic bone in your body. This Andre guy's thinkin' epic impact — Sam Peckinpaw does Upstairs Downstairs. Social statement. We're all oblivious to the coming financial deluge. He might as well stand on a street corner with a sign. Repent, ye sinners. Yeah, that's right up your alley, Porn Boy.”
“You in or not?” Like Andre, Gilley was ready to make his own list, move on to charity and hope if faith petered out.
“You're goddamned right I'm in. When's your next meeting with Andre?”
“Tomorrow. I'll call you. My car's waiting.” Gilley walked the eight blocks to the garage, picked up his car, and asked GPS to direct him to the nearest Blockbuster. He wanted to see Rules of the Game. Maybe use it too. Drools of the Dames. Abe seemed to know what Andre saw in the film.
“We don't carry movies like that,” a teenager with enough metal sticking out of her body to receive messages from Saturn said. “Try Kensington Video. They carry all that old shit.” She had brown Anime eyes, red and purple striped hair, and loads of personality on her chest. Just what he needed for the Poke-D-Man shoot — a born dominatrix.
“You eighteen?” he said.
“Not till November.”
“Call me if you want to make some money, Honey.” He handed her a business card, drove east down Adams Avenue to Kensington, rented both classics, then drove north to Del Cerro to Zha-Zha's.
He watched The Shooting Party twice. What he saw was a bunch of people being waited on by a lot of servants who were invisible to their bosses, and who beat the bushes, making animals and birds visible so their bosses could kill them. It made little sense to him, especially after downing a six pack. The only thing he got out of the story was that these people who spoke in that funny British way, liked a lot of meat on the table, and loved to screw. He watched Rules of the Game twice too. Rich and poor people like to screw and it was okay as long as they kept to their own kind. So, what else is new? Maybe Andre could explain it to him. Killing people or animals in movies, what did it matter? We live in a virtual world that allows everything. Video games that let nine-year olds kill cops.
Andre didn't show the next day or the day after that. Gilley wasn't surprised. He'd called the number on the dingy business card Andre had given him, and the recording said disconnected. It described Andre accurately.
But Abe's disappointment did surprise him. “I suppose we could make the remake ourselves,” he said, “there's no patents on ideas. He never showed us a script.” They'd met at the Corner Coffee Shop across the street from Kensington Video where Gilley had dropped off the rentals, and were drinking lattes at an outside table.
“Stop right there,” Gilley said. “Shooting Party and Rules of the Game are duds. Too tame. Too lame. Zha-Zha went to bed and left me with that tubby-tuba cat she loves so much,” he told the documentarian.
“Look around, Pal. An economic tsunami's coming and we're no more prepared than those crazy Brit bastards were. It's a perfect metaphor.”
“Maybe.” There was no arguing with Abe. He made boring movies about everyday shit that university librarians bought and nobody watched because they were glued to u-tube. Fucking frogs. Pollination of flowers with neon vulvas. Highbrow sex. Disclaimers: No people were entertained by the viewing of this film.
“I think I can get a good script,” Abe said. “Maybe hand it over to the grad students to toy with. It'd be some project for them.” Oh, God, Abe had gone into his Jewish intellectual mode. Gilley hated smart poor people. They fucked up the universe and then spent their time repeating mea culpa about the fuck-up rather than cleaning up the mess.
“You do that. I got a line on a new star.” The Blockbuster girl wore a name tag: Hi! I'm Chrissy. It had a smiley face beside her name. How could someone who looked like the Anti-Christ have a name like Chrissy? He'd change it to something more relevant. Marysatan or Devilia. Maybe both. Put them together and they sound Italian — like something out of a parochial school yearbook: Marysatan Devilia wants to major in necromancy at San Diego State University. “You through with that paper?” he asked as a tennis-outfitted man at the table next to them folded and stacked printed pages in a neat pile.
“Be my guest,” the man said. “We won't have the luxury of newspapers pretty soon. Books as we know them will be gone forever.” He nodded towards a multi-tasking young couple. The guy held a Kindle in one hand and gently rolled a stroller back and forth with the other, while the gal knitted, her Kindle propped up on a stand in front of her. “They read the paper for a quarter. We pay two dollars when papers used to be a quarter,” the man said.
“Yeah, it's an outrage,” Gilley agreed. He opened to the front page and read the headlines. Debt Ceiling Battle Underway. Mid-east About to Explode. Greece Near Bankruptcy. Suicide Bomber Kills 7. How many times would they remake those movies?
“I'll bet they don't even talk to each other anymore,” the man said loud enough for the couple to hear. Gilley glanced up, but didn't reply. He didn't want to talk to an aging preppy-jock at nine o'clock in the morning. He turned in his chair to face Abe, who was scribbling notes on a legal pad. Maybe a snub would get the guy to shut up. It wasn't till page three that he saw a high-school year-book picture of a vaguely familiar young woman sans black-mass make-up next to a small headline near the bottom of the page: GIRL SHOT OUTSIDE BLOCKBUSTER.
“Oh, shit,” Gilley muttered.
“Oh, shit what?” Abe said. Gilley folded the paper and handed it to Abe.
“You see that girl? She was gonna be my star.”
“Chrissy Brooks — a porn star? She looks like she belongs on the cover of a gospel CD.” Abe's face turned ashy.
“What's the matter with you?” Gilley said. Abe handed the paper back to him.
“Page three. Look at it. Really look at it.”
Gilley started at the left-hand top corner and read to the right. Each two-hundred-word article concerned the shooting of people all over San Diego with Facebook-sized pictures next to their names. Alexander Phillips. Roman Marquez. Leanna Simmons. He stopped counting at twenty and threw the paper on the table. “Jesus! Is this for real?”
Abe went to the paper box, fumbled in his pockets for change, and finally smashed the plastic cover in with his foot. The couple momentarily came out of their mental cocoons, and looked around nervously. “What the hell you doin?” Gilley said. The couple went back to their Kindles.
Abe came back with a handful of papers, unfolded one, spread it out on the table, and frantically turned to page three. “The page threes don't match,” he said. “The guy with the paper ... the tennis guy with big green ring ... where'd he go?” Abe was bending over a second paper when Gilley heard the rat-tat-tat of an AK-47 pistol and watched a silver Mercedes with tinted windows pull away from the curb. The noise jolted the couple into action and they raced into the building, baby in arm. He turned and saw Abe clutching his chest as he slid toward the sidewalk. Gilley caught him on the way down, but the weight took them both to the pavement. Abe's eyes were teary. He was barely breathing. Gilley managed to get his cell phone out and hit 9-1-1. He saw the Starbuck's barrista at the window punching her cell too. Her eyes looked like fried eggs on her forehead.
“Help! We need an ambulance. There's a guy shootin' people here,” he heard the girl scream. Gilley reached into the stroller, yanked out a blanket, and stuffed it between Abe's chest and his. Blood was beginning to pool beneath them. Abe was bleeding out, his eyes telling Gilley it wouldn't be long. Gilley clutched him tightly in his arms, kissed his wrinkle-creased cheek, and rocked him slowly. He heard Abe whisper, “Hear o, Israel, the Lord our God is one,” as he fell into the big sleep. Leave it to a Jew to utter a perfect exit line.
Gilley felt himself gulp in air, fill his lungs, and expel a gust of pain-leadened breath. Like Abe's Brit bastards, he wasn't ready.