Page 23 of All That Glitters

Chapter nineteen

Pizzas and Reindeers

There, sitting on a couch in the waiting area and casually flipping through a gossip rag as if she owned the place, was Carrie Thompson. His number one client. His number one problem. His number one career-ending, ulcer-inducing migraine.

Eli immediately backpedaled into the hallway by the elevators.

He definitely wasn’t in the mood to face her, not after yesterday’s call about a zombie that had ‘inappropriately sniffed her’ on the set of Teenage Zombie Cheerleader Summer.

It had taken him three hours and a promised guest spot on a daytime talk show to keep her from walking off the set.

He peeked around the corner, but she was still there, a beautiful, blonde ticking time bomb of demands and entitlement.

He was pondering his next move, maybe faking a sudden, debilitating illness or simply sprinting for the fire escape, when the elevator dinged.

A pizza boy stepped out, balancing a stack of four large pizzas.

He was a college-aged kid with the determined look of someone trying to get his foot in the door of Hollywood.

An idea born of pure desperation lit up Eli’s face. He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars for your outfit,” he said, his voice a low, urgent whisper.

The pizza boy just looked at him. “No way, man. Go find your own costume.”

“Thirty dollars,” Eli countered, upping the ante. “And I’ll read the script inside the top box.” It was a safe assumption, given how many other desperate writers were using this approach.

The pizza boy’s eyes lit up, like he’d just hit the jackpot.

Without another word, he dropped the entire stack of pizzas onto the floor, ignoring the cheese and marinara sauce that probably just drenched his script.

The kid quickly stripped out of his uniform and swapped clothes with Eli, not sure what to do with the expensive Armani suit he now held in his hands.

A minute later, Eli hurried back across the reception area, now dressed in the slightly too-tight pizza uniform.

He held the stack of squashed pizzas high enough to cover his face from Carrie’s view.

Thankfully, she didn’t even look up from her magazine as he slipped past her and made a beeline down the hallway.

Eli found Neil Bergman in his paper-choked cave of an office, flipping idly through a script. Eli poked his head in.

“Tell me some good news, Neil,” he pleaded. “You found Carrie a script? Anything? A commercial for adult diapers? A voiceover for a talking dog movie? I’m desperate.”

Neil looked up, unfazed by the absurd sight of his hyper-caffeinated colleague dressed as a pizza delivery driver. “New job, Eli?” he asked dryly.

“She’s staking out the lobby,” Eli explained, closing the door behind him. “It’s the only way I could get past. It’s like Escape from New York out there.”

Just then, Neil’s intercom buzzed.

“Neil, there’s a Craig Caldwell on line one,” Amy’s voice crackled through the speaker. “He wants to talk to you about a vampire script called ‘The Frat.’”

Neil frowned; the name clearly meant nothing to him. “Never heard of it. Tell him we’re not accepting submissions.”

“He said he’s a producer, and the script has a Starving Artists cover sheet on it,” Amy said.

Neil’s eyes scanned the mountains of paper around his office as if the script might magically appear. “You said it’s called The Frat?”

“Yeah. I have a copy up here at my desk. One of the pizza boys dropped it off a couple weeks ago. It has pepperoni stains on it.”

“Tell Craig I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake,” Neil said.

Before Neil could say another word, Eli bolted across the room and slammed his hand down on the intercom button.

“Amy, it’s Eli,” he barked. “Forget what Neil said. Does this guy sound like he has any money?”

There was a brief pause. “He said they’re ready to make the movie,” Amy’s voice replied.

Eli’s eyes lit up. He straightened his crooked pizza hat, all traces of panic and desperation gone. This was it. A go picture. It didn’t matter who this Craig guy was; this was a lifeline.

“Put him through.”

The bluff at La Jolla Shores spread out like a vast green carpet, beyond which the Pacific’s deep blue waters spanned to the horizon.

The late afternoon sun painted everything in shades of gold and amber, and a gentle breeze carried the smell of ocean air.

Tony and Debbie sat on their favorite weathered picnic table, sharing a large pepperoni pizza from a cardboard box and drinking from a beer bottle wrapped discreetly in a brown paper bag.

“You know,” Tony said, washing a bite of pizza down with a swig of beer, “maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me I’m supposed to be a cell phone.”

Debbie nearly choked on her pizza. “Are you kidding me? You’re giving up?”

“I prefer to think of it as cutting my losses.”

“As in giving up.”

Tony sighed. “Okay, fine. Yeah. But think about it, Deb. In the past month, I’ve been tasered, chased by security guards, nearly eaten by a mechanical shark, and arrested on suspicion of being a domestic terrorist. At what point do I just accept that maybe this isn’t meant to happen?”

“Never,” Debbie said firmly, setting down her slice. “Because I’ve seen you give up on too many things, Harding, and this isn’t going to be one of them. I won’t let it.”

“You realize, you may be the only one who believes in me.”

“That’s because you’ve always been the only one who believes in me.” She shifted on the table to face him fully, her expression growing serious. “Do you remember when we were in fourth grade, and I wanted to try out for the Christmas play?”

Tony’s brow furrowed as he searched his memory. “Sort of. Didn’t you want to be one of the reindeer?”

“I wanted to be Rudolph,” she corrected with a small smile. “But Mrs. Patterson said I could audition for ‘Reindeer Number Three’ if I promised not to, and I quote, ‘pull a Debbie and knock over the Christmas tree.’ End of quote.”

“That’s harsh,” Tony said, but he was starting to remember.

“Everyone thought I was going to be a disaster. My mom even suggested I try out for ‘Girl Who Holds Up Scenery’ instead, because it seemed safer.” Debbie picked at the crust on her pizza. “But you believed I could do it.”

The memory was coming back now. “You were so nervous about those lines.”

“Terrified,” she admitted. “Three whole sentences. ‘Santa, we can’t fly in this fog!’ ‘But what about Christmas morning?’ and ‘Rudolph’s nose is so bright!’ Everyone was so down on me, that I even convinced myself I was going to mess it up and ruin Christmas for the entire fourth-grade audience.”

The details came flooding back into Tony’s memory. “I remember. We practiced every day after school for two weeks.”

She nodded. “You made me rehearse it over and over until I could say those lines in my sleep.” Her voice grew softer, more vulnerable.

“And when I doubted myself, when I wanted to quit because Billy Morrison kept saying I was going to trip over my own antlers, you told me I was going to be the best reindeer anyone had ever seen.”

Tony smiled at the memory. “You were, too. You nailed those lines.”

“And I only knocked over one light,” she added with a grin.

“It was in the middle of the stage, and you didn’t have a rearview mirror in your reindeer costume. Anyone could have bumped into it.”

She looked at him fondly. “I remember you telling that to Mrs. Patterson when she bawled me out. You were my knight in shining armor again, Tony.”

“She wasn’t being fair.”

“I think you would’ve defended me even if it totally was my fault.

That’s just who you’ve always been for me.

” She took a breath. “Anyway, the point is, you didn’t let me give up when everyone else expected me to fail.

You believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.

And that meant everything to me, Tony. It still does. ”

She turned to face him directly, her eyes bright with determination.

“So now it’s my turn. Everyone’s making bets on how long you’ll stick with this screenwriting thing before you move on to something else.

Matt gives you six months, Jeff thought you’d give up after your first arrest, and I’m pretty sure your mom is already planning your backup career in insurance. ”

“At least I’m consistent with my fails,” he said with a self-deprecating grin.

“No, you’re not. Not this time. Because I won’t let you.

” She grabbed another slice of pizza and pointed it at him for emphasis.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to roll up our sleeves, and we’re going to figure out how to get your script into the right hands.

And we’re going to do it legally this time. ”

“We?” Tony asked, Tony asked, almost doing a double-take.

“We,” she confirmed. “You helped me become Rudolph, and now I’m going to help you sell your screenplay. Even if it kills us both.”

“Given my track record, that’s a distinct possibility,” Tony said, but he was smiling now, some of the defeat lifting from his shoulders.

“Then we’ll die trying,” Debbie said. “And they’ll put that on our tombstones: ‘Here lie Tony and Debbie. They died as they lived: causing completely avoidable disasters in pursuit of their dreams.’”

Just then, his phone, which he’d placed on the table next to the pizza, buzzed to life. The screen lit up with a number he didn’t recognize. A 310 area code. Los Angeles.

“It’s an LA area code,” he said, reaching for it.

He answered, expecting a telemarketer or a confused wrong dial. “Hello?”

“Is this Tony Harding?” a man’s voice on the other end asked, a voice that crackled with an energy Tony could almost feel through the phone.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“Tony. Eli Bernstein. Starving Artists Agency.”

Tony froze, a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. Oh crap, he thought, his mind racing through every worst-case scenario for why they would call him — the pissed-off director whose shoot he barged in on, Universal suing them for damages their ‘client’ caused, and on and on.

“Uh… hi,” he stammered, sitting up straighter. Debbie watched him, a curious look on her face.

“Listen, kid, I’m not gonna waste your time,” the voice on the phone barreled on. “I read your script. The Frat. It’s… something. It’s got vampires, it’s got jokes, it’s got babes, and it’s actually really clever. But that’s not the point. The point is, I have a buyer.”

Tony’s mind went completely blank. He couldn’t form a thought. The sounds of the ocean and seagulls and cars, it all faded into a dull, distant hum.

“A buyer?” he repeated, the word feeling foreign and strange in his mouth.

“That’s what I said, kid. A production company. They want to make your movie. They’re ready to go. Green light. Cash on the table. Are you hearing what I’m saying?”

Debbie was leaning forward now, her eyes wide, trying to understand the one-sided conversation that was clearly causing Tony’s face to drain of all color.

“I think so,” Tony managed to say.

“Good,” Eli’s voice snapped back. “Because they want to meet. With you. Tomorrow. Can you be there?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tony said, nodding so hard he nearly gave himself whiplash. “I’ll be there.”

“That’s what I like to hear, kid,” came Eli’s voice. “I’ll text you the address.”

And with that, they hung up. Tony looked across the table at Debbie, whose eyes were wide with curiosity.

“And...” she said, waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

“Someone wants to buy my script.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other in stunned silence. Then Debbie let out a shriek of joy that probably scared every seagull within a five-mile radius.

“I KNEW IT!” she yelled, jumping up on the picnic table. “I KNEW you could do it!”

She launched herself at him in a hug so enthusiastic it knocked them both off the table and onto the grass along with the pizza. But neither of them cared.

“So who’s buying it?” she asked, releasing him from the hug just enough to give him room to breathe.

He did a double-take, realizing only then that he forgot to even ask. “I probably should have asked, shouldn’t I?” he chuckled. “I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”