The Movie (56 page)

The same weakness that Goldman was feeling right

now.

What a tragedy that he had never seen what was right under his eyes, all the time. She had been his best friend, his protegee, his most trusted lieutenant. She had been the frrst person he would run to with a new idea, his sounding board, his best critic. He had tried to spend as much time as he could with her in and out of the office. He’d never confronted the root feelings behind his strong dislike of Paul Halfin, not until yesterday, not until it was too late.

Three months ago, and he could simply have asked Jordan for a divorce. But not now. His wife was an adult

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of sorts-and though he might have hurt her, it would have been better that way than trying to inch through a sham of a marriage. But all that had changed in the lobby of the Victrix. Because the child Jordan was bearing had to come first, whatever he wanted to do. He had conceived that baby in wedlock, and Tom Goldman knew he had a duty to his kid. He had to stay with its mother until such time as it was old enough to understand-at fifteen or sixteen, say. He’d s.upport the other baby if Eleanor required it, but he could have only one family. And he had married Jordan first.

Goldman got slowly out of his car and walked towards the house, thinking about his mother. Hannah Goldman had been dead now for seven years, but he knew she would tell him that this was. the only choice. He had to stay until he had seen this child’s bar or bat mitzvah.

But dear God, it was a terrible price to pay for his mistake.

He let himsdfin through the back door, punching their security code into the entry system. A flashing red light above the panel told him that Jordan was already home.

So what were you hoping for? Tom asked himself wryly. That she was out shopping on Rodeo? You’re gonna have to do this eventually, so it might as well be

now.

‘Jordan[‘ Goldman called. ‘I’m home!’

‘Oh, really.’ His wife’s Bostonian tones were dripping with acid. ‘Well, I’m in the drawing room. I hope you don’t expect me to come to you, Thomas.’

Here we go, Tom thought, walking through to their lavish reception room. It was an ornate fantasy of William Morris wallpaper and English Regency antiques; the decorator had charged him a small fortune for them, Goldman recalled. Well, possibly he’d get another quarter. million from an auction of every goddamn antique in the

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place. Nothing but functional twentieth-century Ameri

can for the Goldmans now.

Jordan was fitting bolt upright on one of their chintz armchairs, her long blonde hair clipped behind her head in a severe ponytail, wearing her pink Chanel. suit and her long diamond drop earrings. He noticed she had also put on her pearl and sapphire choker and the diamond and ruby eternity ring he’d bought her to celebrate her pregnancy. She was obviously making a point. And from the way she was scowling at him, she was pretty mad already, before he’d even started.

‘I hope you’re about to tell me that you’ve changed your mind about that horrid stock,’ Jordan snapped petulantly. ‘It was hell at the health club this morning, you know. Everybody whispering and pointing.’ She pulled a small lace handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed at some nonexistent tears. ‘I can’t take much more of this, Tom. How could you do this to me?’

‘I met with Lisa Weintraub today,’ Goldman began. The quicker he came out with it, the better. ‘She’ told me that we’ve lost a lot of our money. Almost eight million dollars.’

‘ Vat?” Jordan shrieked.

‘We’re going to have to sell the house, most of your jewellery,and auction offa lot of our effects. Lisa knows a good real estate broker who’ll get us a discount on a new place; we can get something compact in Laurel Canyon or Pasadena for about halfa million..That’ll leave us a million in disposable capital, so we should be able to get by until I find another job.’

‘It’s not true,’ Jordan whispered, shaking her head. ‘You’re making this up to scare me.’

‘Jesus, Jordan. Don’t be so childish. This is. tough, but we’ll pull through it. We’re a family; we’ve got each

The words rang hollow in his ears.

‘I’m going to stay at my job until our currert movie is released, then I’ll resign. And I won’t easily be able to get another job in the industry, certainly not at the level I was at before, so I’m afraid all the socializing is goin to have to go. We don’t have the money for expensive parties, anyway - we’re going to have to economize, honey. I’ll need to cancel most of your credit cards and arrange a small allowance for you. And you realize that we certainly won’t be able to hire a nanny now, so it’ll just be you, the and the baby,’ Tom concluded, trying to give her a snaile.

‘No! I won’t do it!’ Jordan shrieked. ‘You can’t do this to. me, Tom! I won’t live like that!’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ Goldman answered, suppressing his anger. She was reactinglike a spoiled teerager, even now, in the midst of this catastrophe, at the ne time a husband might look to his wife for support.

But I don’t have the right to be angry will her, Tom

reminded himself, considering what I have to tell her next. ‘Jordan, listen to me. There’s something worse.’ ‘Something worse?’ Her angelic young face was pink with fury. ‘Something worse? You son of a bitch, what the hell could be worse than that? Don’t you. understand that you’ve mined my life?’

‘You remember when you flew up to the Victrix, in New York, to tell me about the baby? Jordan, I have something to confess to you.’ He swallowed. ‘I slept with Eleanor Marshall the night before-it was the ft and only time - and yesterday she told me that she coaceived that night. She has decided to have the baby.’

Silently he waited for the storm. Over tlais, she had every right.

‘Is that it?’ Jordan asked.

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘I thought you were going to tell me we were being investigated by the IIS,’ Jordan sniffed. ‘You slept with Eleanor Marshall?. Tom, how could you? She’s so old!’

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Tom Goldman stared at his wife, but the words wouldn’t come. He wondered if he was hearing things. Jordan went into utter hysterics at the thought of lowering her lifestyle, but to his admission that another woman was also bearing his child she acted as if it was a nfinor lapse of

taste. Could she really be that petty? Could anybody?

Maybe she’d misunderstood him.

‘Jordan, I just told you that Eleanor is also pregnant. By

me. Don’t you have anything to say?’

‘Yes! Yes I do!’ she screamed. Suddenly all the fury was

back, and it was almost a relief. But then she continued, ‘How dare you humiliate me like that! Don’t you realize how everybody will laugh at me? They’ll say you preferred

that wrinkled old woman to me!’

‘Eleanor’s thirty-eight ‘

‘And I’m twenty-fou. And don’t think everyone won’t point that out! She doesn’t even work out. She’s just a bluestocking! How could you?’

He couldn’t hide his disgust. ‘Jordan, that’s the most -‘ ‘Iwant a divorce.P She was yelling at him, the veins on her slender neck standing out like a whipcords. ‘I want a divorce right now!’

‘But our baby,’ Tom managed.

‘What baby? I’m not pregnant, you stupid fool! There never was any baby! Isabelle told me to say there was, so you’d leave that old bitch alone!’ She laughed hysterically. ‘Do you think I’d get, pregnant with the baby of a stupid asshole like you? You just wantedme to ruin my figure! To stay home all day with some screaming brat when I’m young!

You’re just jealous of me because/know how to have fun!’ Goldman’s head was reeling. ‘There’s no baby?’

‘No! Don’t you understand English? I was going to tell

you I’d had a miscarriage. iF i was pregnant you’d have made me have a miscarriage!’ Jordan was sobbing with rage. “You can live in Pasadena! I won’t do it! I want a divorce!. And I

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came to this marriage with two million dollars of my own in savings, and you’re not having any of it!’

‘You never told me that,’ Tom said quietly.

‘You’re not having any of it! It’s mine!’

‘I wouldn’t touch a cent of your money,’ Tom told her with contempt. ‘You’re welcome to walk away with everything you brought to this marriage. I’ll have my hwyers get in touch tomorrow.’

Tm keeping the diamonds!’ Jordan screamed after his retreating back.

Tom Goldman walked out of’his house and out of his marriage. And by the time he hit the back door he was smiling.

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‘All right. OK,’ Goldman said resignedly, looking across at Eleanor and shaking his head. ‘Two weeks. If that’s the

best you can do… yeah, I know. Thanks, Janice.’

He hung up.

‘What did we get in Seattle? Two weeks?’ Eleanor asked, disappointed. ‘I was hoping for a little more time than that. It’s supposed to be the Generation X capital of the universe. You’d think that Zach and Florescu alone would be enough to guarantee some box-office down the re.’

Tom shrugged. ‘What can I tell you? Everybody’s fighting shy of the tLoxana thing, I guess.’

‘No, it’s not that. A scandallike that is just free publicity.

My guess is that it’s Jake Keller and David Tauber.’

Tom Goldman and Eleanor Marshall were sitting together in Tom’s office at Artemis Studios, surrounded by phones, piles of notes and the remains of a tray of coffee and bagels. It was seven,p.m., and the sun was just starting to sink in the rosy sky outside Goldman’s huge windows, the pollution in the atmosphere hanging over LA distorting the light into wild streaks of scarlet and copper. That was one thing you could say for the smog: it made for great sunsets. But today neither of them had had much time to notice the beauty of nature. They had spent the entire day trying to persuade distributors to book See the Lights; this morning it had looked as though the picture would get shown in two art-house theatres in Minnesota and one

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multiplex in Tucson and then die an ignominious, straight-to-video death. Nobody wanted to touch it with a disinfected ten-foot pole. Word was out that See the Lights was going to be Fred Florescu’s Last Action Hero; even Steven Spielberg had bombed with 1941, and now it was about to be Florescu’s turn. The Artemis marketing team had gotten the same message over and over: this movie is a total failure, absolutely unreleasable, how can you even ask us to book a flick which is practically forcing your studio into bankruptcy? It had taken Tom and Eleanor all day to salvage a minimal opening distribution for the movie. They’d exhausted a lot of stored goodwill and personal credit in the process, cashing in fieen years of favours owed, and even then the two of them had only been able to get a skeleton release. But that was the most they could squeeze out of the market. People just did not want to

know.

‘Tauber and Keller? I guess it’s possible,’ Tom mused. ‘You know I’m right. After Sam Kendrick finished trashing David Tauber round this city no other agencies would pick him up, and he wound up working for some fly-by-night schmuck with one phone line and a PO box number down in West Hollywood, casting pet food commercials.’ Tom grinned. ‘And as for Keller, when you put the word out, he was all washed up too, so he’s -‘

‘Fulfilling his boyhood dream of becoming an indie producer,’ Goldman finished off, laughing.

‘Exactly. So I think we can take it as read that neither one is wishing this movie the best of luck. David Tauber was out there on the set, andJake Keller has a lot of memos detailing stuff that went wrong. All they had to do was plant a few whispers - you know, Florescu wouldn’t let anybody see the rushes, Artemis was in despair over a creative and commercial disaster, loxana Felix couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag… It’s very simple to do, and those two assholes want revenge.’

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Tom nodded slowly. ‘You have a point. Plus, we have to remember that the industry knows we only get to stay in our jobs for the release of See the Lights because we have good lawyers. As soon as this movie is out, we’re out. Howard and Co are making that pretty clear. So nobody cares if they offend us by blanking this picture. Why should they? We’re as good as gone.’

Eleanor gave Tom a soft smile, nodding at his T-shirt and jeans. ‘At least you don’t have to dress up for work any more.’

‘If it’s good enough for David Geffen, it’s good enough for me,’ Goldman said unrepentanfly. ‘I should have done this years ago.’ He reached across the desk and took Eleanor’s hand, stroking it softly. ‘I should have done a lot of things years ago.’

, Eleanor looked at him, his dark eyes ftxed so intently upon her, and felt the familiar warmth of desire blossom across her skin. But it was too soon. She had to be sure he wasn’t on the rebound from Jordan, that he meant what he was telling her, that he wouldn’t wait another couple of rdonths and then trade her in for the latest trophy wife de your . The pain of losing him was too recent; she just couldn’t risk her heart again. Because if he smashed it this time, Eleanor Marshall knew in her deepest soul that it would be broken forever.

She pulled her hand free, gently but firmly. ‘Maybe it’ll be a huge hit. Mayb we’ll rescue the studio with this picture. Fox was in trouble when they put out Star Wars, and nobody was expecting that movie to do anything either.’ ‘

Tom Goldman swallowed his disappointment. Eleanor needed time to trust him, he realized that. But it was so hard, to be near her, to know she was carrying their child, and not to be able to hold her and caress her.

‘Eleanor, you have to understand something here. We’ve done what you said; we beat all the odds in forcing

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the board to let us stay and finish the movie, persuading l.oxana to go back to the set, and getting some kind of basic release going. But this was a hundred-and-twentymillion-dollar movie! Do you realize the kind of distribution, marketing, or whatever that we’d need to earn our money back? Star Wars cost seven million dollars. You’ve done the right thing, creatively, for your project, but you have to face facts. We’re going to bomb, and we’re going to bomb huge.’