Heartthrob (4 page)

Jed could hear water running in the sink and the clinking sound of dishes. He could picture David Stern in the kitchen of his modest suburban Montgomery house, loading up the dishwasher and helping Alison get dinner on the table. He felt a flash of something similar to envy. Similar, but not quite. The normality of David’s life, with his pretty blond wife and his respectable job and his mortgage payments and family-sized car was something that Jed had never expected to achieve. He might have dreamed of it—more so back when he was a kid—but he’d never expected it.

Good thing, because it wasn’t going to happen for him now.

“Yeah, I went to a meeting just last week,” he told his friend. David had been on his back to keep up with Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program.

“And stayed for only five minutes.”

Jed sighed. He’d needed the meetings, two, three, four times a week during the first year or so he’d been out of rehab. But over the past few years, he’d drifted away. He could handle staying sober on his own. But David didn’t think so.

David deftly changed the subject back to the movie. “Why is this particular role making you crazy? I can hear it in your voice. You’re pacing, right? You sound stressed. Is it really worth putting yourself through this?”

“This character—Laramie—he’s …” Jed shook his head, unable to explain. “I don’t know. I just know that I can play him. I
need
to play him.”

David made one of his shrink noises—a cross between hmmm and uh-uh. “So this is not about money. This isn’t going to be a big financial windfall, is that what you’re telling me?”

Money was something Jed had absolutely no trouble talking about. At least not with David. “Not at first. But I’m hoping to work some sort of percentage deal into my contract, so if it hits big, I’ll benefit. And I’ll get union scale, which at least will keep the creditors from lighting my house on fire. Oops. I forgot. I don’t have a house.”

Dave laughed at his pathetic attempt at a joke, but then brought the conversation right back to the place where it chaffed the most. As a psychologist, he was particularly good at doing that. “So if it’s not the money, then the need for this part is about artistic fulfillment. Yes? No?”

Jed rubbed the back of his neck as he gazed out the window at the rapidly falling dusk. Lights were going on, and New York City was starting to sparkle. He closed the
curtain, blocking out the view. “I guess you could call it that.”

“What would
you
call it?”

Jed threw himself down into the room’s one easy chair. “I didn’t call you to get analyzed.”

“This isn’t analysis,” David pointed out. “If it were, it would come with a bill for a hundred fifty dollars an hour. This movie is some kind of Civil War story, isn’t that what you said?”

“No, it takes place in the early 1850s. Prewar. I play a guy who does the California gold rush thing, but his wife and kid die of some kind of fever during the trip west. I come back to South Carolina to find out that my family’s plantation house has burned down and my brother was killed in the fire—”

“A comedy, huh?”

“It’s not as awful as it sounds. The script is actually a really sweet story about hope. This guy Laramie kind of camps out in his in-laws’ barn, does what chores he can manage during the day, and drinks himself into oblivion each night. But he’s got this sister-in-law, Jane. She’s only fourteen, and the writer, I swear, he caught the perfect mix of woman and child in this character. She works for the Underground Railroad—her family doesn’t know it—and she’s just so full of life, she manages to breathe some back into Laramie and”—he shook his head—“and Vic Strauss wants Susie McCoy to play her.”

“You say that as if that’s bad.”

Jed exhaled a burst of air. “I don’t know what Vic’s thinking, but I find it hard to believe Susie McCoy can handle a part with this kind of depth. She’s been doing television for the past two years.”

“
Uptown Girl
is one of Ken’s favorite shows,” David pointed out.

“Kenny is six.”

“Have you watched it?” he asked.

“I gave up bad sitcoms when I quit drinking.”

“This one’s pretty good.”

Jed wasn’t buying that. “There’s a hell of a huge difference between playing a spunky sitcom kid and playing a character like Jane Willet,” he said. “It was bad enough when she was making movies like
Little Mary Sunshine
and
Slumberparty.
They weren’t Shakespeare, but they were better than TV.”

“I read somewhere that Susie McCoy took the sitcom part to try to keep her parents from splitting up. All that travel for the movies was taking its toll on their family life.”

“That worked really well.” Jed stood up and started pacing again. The McCoys most recent divorce settlement battle was making headlines in the tabloids.

“So here’s a question for you, Jeddo,” David asked. “Suppose they do cast Susie McCoy as Jane. Would you walk away from Laramie? I guess what I’m wondering is, how badly do you want this role?”

“Badly,” Jed admitted. He wanted it so badly, his teeth hurt. “I’d do damn near anything to get this—even work with little Susie McCoy.”

Her father’s face had turned a very dark shade of red. It was so dark, it could almost be described as purple.

But this time he wasn’t mad at her—he was mad at her mother.

“Union scale!” Russell McCoy had been shouting those two words as if they were going to starve if she accepted the Screen Actors Guild’s minimum wages—wages that were significantly higher than what other fifteen-year-olds earned by working at Taco Bell. “Jesus Christ, Riva! How could you let her do this?”

Her mother was nearly in tears. “Don’t shout at me! We’re divorced now! You have no right to shout at me!”

“I can shout at you all I want, goddamn it! How long have you known about this?”

Susie sat at the kitchen table, hands tightly clasped in front of her, waiting for this portion of World War III to end. Her agent had made a major mistake by leaving a message on her father’s answering machine. She’d been waiting for the perfect time to break the news to her father about her decision to take a role in this low-budget, lowpaying, high-quality independent feature film, but the perfect time had never appeared. She’d put it off, and put it off, and now she was paying the price.

She’d told her mother about the movie weeks ago, but all that had done was make her father even angrier today when he found out Riva knew and he didn’t.

Susie’s stomach hurt, and her head ached. She tried to block out the hateful words that were being fired over her.

Her father looked like an angry bulldog, his jowls nearly shaking. A purple bulldog. The purple-red flush extended up past the receding hairline of his forehead, making him look more than angry. He looked vicious and mean, and Susie could not imagine what her timid, pretty little mother had ever seen in him.

He finally looked at Susie. “Union scale,” he said again. “I told them one and a half million—no less—and
you
turn around and say union scale.”

“What does it matter how much she gets paid?” Riva asked in an unprecedented show of backbone. “She’s got over six million dollars in her bank account, Russell. I think she’s going to be able to pay for her own college education. That’s how this all started, remember?”

He ignored Riva. “They want you for the next
Slumberparty
movie. You’ll get far more than one and a half for that.”

“She doesn’t want to do
Slumberparty Three.
She wants to do this movie. We’ve already told the director
Susie’s in if he wants her, provided they fulfill the terms of our agreement.”

“What terms?” her father exploded. “You’ve agreed to let her work for slave wages! What kind of mother
are
you?”

Riva’s face turned nearly gray.

Susie took a deep breath and stepped in. “Daddy, I asked Mom to stay with me on location this summer because it’s going to be a low-budget shoot, and I know how much you hate that.”

Her soft words managed to completely shut him up. She’d done ten movies, and Russell had been on set with her every single day of every single picture.

“Susie and I thought it would be nice if I could spend the summer with her,” Riva added weakly.

Unfortunately, Russell found his tongue again. “You thought it would be nice, huh? You’re the one who moved out. You should’ve thought in advance how that would impact the time you spent with your daughter.”

“Stop,” Susie said, and her father turned to look at her in surprise. When was the last time she’d stood up to him? She couldn’t remember. But she was doing it now, and even though her knees were shaking, it felt good. “It’s already settled. I want this part, and I want Mommy to spend the summer with me.”

Her father looked from Riva to Susie and then back. As he walked out of the room, he got in a final dig at his exwife. “Better make sure they reserve an extra trailer for you and Jose, the Latin lover. I’d prefer it if you didn’t screw his brains out in the same trailer that my daughter is living in.”

“His name is Enrico,” her mother whispered in the sudden stillness. She turned to Susie. “Are you really sure you want this part?”

Susie nodded. She was in—with a vengeance—provided Jericho Beaumont was cast as Laramie. She’d wanted a
chance to work with him for as long as she could remember. She wanted it badly enough to be willing to stand up to her imperious father.

She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything.

And after years of doing exactly what her father told her, it was high time she did what
she
wanted.

Kate was in the back room of Victor’s New York City office when he returned from lunch.

There was so much for her to discuss with him. They’d received a thumbs-up from the city council of Grady Falls, South Carolina. If Victor approved the location, she would be able to start sending out contracts.

And, of course, there was Jericho Beaumont.

She’d thought long and hard about casting the actor, and she still felt completely uncomfortable about the idea.

But, God, she wanted Susie McCoy to play Jane.

She finished the letter she was writing and was starting a second one when she heard the door buzzer ring.

“Hey,” she heard Victor say. “How are ya? Nice to see ya. Thanks for coming over to meet with me.”

“I’ve only got a half an hour.”

Whoever had come into the office had a deep, commanding voice—and an attitude that was pure royalty. An actor, Kate decided without even cracking open the door and peeking out at him. Had to be.

“Let’s not dick around, Victor. You want me in your movie. My agent wants me in your movie—even though the money you’re offering is a joke. Put on your tap shoes and go all out, my man. Give it your best shot. Convince me that spending my entire summer in Crackerville, South Carolina, playing the part of a slave is something I want to do.”

Kate gave in to the urge to peek out into the other room, to see who possibly could have read her script and not understood instantly that the part of Moses, the slave, was a part to die for.

The man with attitude was none other than Jamaal Hawkes, one of Hollywood’s spiciest flavors of the month. Except Jamaal was more than a tall, young, dark-skinned black man with well-defined muscles and a harshly handsome, impossibly photogenic face. He had true talent. It was yet to be discovered, though, if he had the discipline and drive necessary to shape himself into a major player.

He was wearing what had to be a thousand-dollar designer suit that was tailored to fit. His shirt was crisp and white, and he had on gold cuff links and a matching tie clip. His only other jewelry was a small gold hoop earring in his left ear.

“I’m not going to dance for you, Jamaal,” Victor said quietly. “I want you for this movie, because I think you can do justice to this part.”

“The slave.”

As Kate watched, Victor gestured for Jamaal to sit. The young man hesitated until Victor sat down first. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded. But why should he be? Even though he looked and dressed like a grown man, he was only a teenager. Less than three years ago, he’d been living on the bottom edge of the middle class with his social worker mother and two sisters. Now he had a penthouse on Central Park West. He was still new at this game, and learning the rules as he played.

“Moses is the third biggest part in the movie,” Victor told him. “Your agent wants you to do it because it’s Best Supporting Actor material. And it’s different from the roles you’ve played up to now. That’s good for your career.”

Jamaal sat down on the very edge of the sofa.

“
I
want you to do it,” Victor continued, “because I can’t think of another actor who can do justice to this part.”

“I’m just not sure I want anything to do with playing a slave.”

Victor nodded. “Have you read the script?”

Kate went back to the computer, but she left the door
partly open so she could hear the two men talking. It wasn’t eavesdropping. If Victor knew she were here, he’d invite her to join the meeting. But this way she could listen in and still get her work done.

“I’ve read some of it,” Jamaal admitted.

“It’s a good script.”

“It’s a story about a white man.”

Victor chuckled. “That’s right. Laramie. Your character, the slave, Moses, was friends with Laramie’s sister-in-law Jane when they were little. And this girl, Jane, she was really into Moses. Even though he was a slave, he was like her hero, you know? And she had this crazy dream that when she was old enough, she would buy Moses and they’d go out west and she’d set him free.”

“Jane’s a white girl.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“Yeah. When the story takes place, she’s still very young—only fourteen. And Moses, he’s about your age. Eighteen or nineteen.”

“And they have a thing going? This little white girl and this slave?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Victor told him. “But yeah, there’s definitely an attraction between them, along with this long-standing childhood friendship. Anyway, what happens is, at the beginning of the movie, the plantation owner dies and his son inherits—and this son, Reginald Brooks, he’s a real bastard. He sells off a whole bunch of the slaves—he doesn’t care that he’s separating families, he only cares about money. Moses is sold and taken farther south, and Jane doesn’t see him for about four years. When she does see him after all that time, he’s on the block, being sold again, and he’s wearing chains because he’s a runaway, right? He’s tried to escape to the north, and now they’ve got to keep him locked up because they know if they don’t, he’ll run again. And his old owner—the real son of a bitch, Reg Brooks—he buys Moses back and basically kicks the shit out of him for running
away. In his warped way he feels responsible—he sold Moses and Moses ran, so now he’s going to break him. Brooks has this need to make Moses submit. But Moses would rather die, right? He’s got all this pride, see, and he’s never going to bow his head and say, ‘Yes, master’ to any man. And Jane, she still cares very deeply for Moses, and she figures she’s got to help him get to freedom before Brooks kills him. She’s willing to make all kinds of sacrifices—even sacrificing her own freedom by agreeing to marry Brooks—for Moses. It’s a really powerful story.”