“Key set PA.” My negotiation skills were rusty, but I tried to apply some grease. “You know I was in the running for Best New Director at the Seattle Film Festival, right? The Stone Guest? That was mine.”
Caryl gave me a mild look, so long I felt my ears go hot. Even before she spoke, a dagger of shame centered itself above my gut, and her next words drove it home.
“The Arcadia Project is here to reopen a door that you closed,” she said. “But we only open it. You will have to be the one to shoulder your way through it past the crowd of people in your way.”
“I know how Hollywood works,” I said, shifting my weight. “But let’s not ignore the fact that you said ‘creative positions’ before I packed up everything I own and came out here. I worry what else you’re going to shame me into accepting further down the road.”
“If you are looking for guarantees,” Caryl said in a bored tone, “you are in the wrong business and quite possibly in the wrong city.” She turned her head to study a smudge on the heel of her glove. “I saw The Stone Guest,” she added, seemingly as an afterthought.
A flush of a different kind stole over my face. “What did you think?”
“I trespassed on private property to recruit you.”
My tongue felt thick, and I looked away, studying the abstract statue at the edge of the park. When I looked back at Caryl, I couldn’t remember what we’d been saying. The human brain holds a grudge about being bounced around in the skull, even after thirteen months.
“So what’s next?” I bluffed, lobbing the ball into her court.
She caught it smoothly. “If you are not averse to riding in my car, I will take you to the place where you would be staying, so you can see for yourself if it would be agreeable to you.”
I considered. Though unsettling, Caryl didn’t seem dangerous, and on a good day when I’m not “splitting” people into angels and demons, I’m actually a pretty excellent judge of character.
“All right,” I said. “But I may need your help getting my stuff into your car.”
For someone who apparently made her living placing the mentally ill into part-time jobs, Caryl had a really nice SUV. The smell of sun-warmed leather made me drunk and drowsy. As Caryl drove, I found myself picturing a close tracking shot: Caryl’s gloved hand moving from the steering wheel to settle on my left knee. Since it was fantasy, I still had a left knee.
I forced myself to sit up straight and look out the passenger--side window. Dr. Davis and I had talked about my history of using sex as a painkiller. Combine that with the lack of attractive staff at the Leishman Center, and apparently now I would project sexuality onto a stack of cinder blocks.
It was eerily silent in the car: no radio, no chatter, no GPS. The farther east we drove on the 10, the more uneasy I became. “Where are we going exactly?”
“The North University Park district, near USC.”
An instinctive sense of rivalry flared up before I remembered I no longer gave a damn about UCLA. They’d washed their hands of me the moment I’d bloodied up the pavement under Hedrick Hall, and I guess I’d washed my hands of them a few miserable weeks before that.
We exited the freeway at Hoover, and as someone who had always clung to the Westside, I found myself bemused by our surroundings. It looked as though a ghetto and a college town had been shaken together in a bag and dumped out in no particular order. North University Park itself served to further confuse my sense of atmosphere; a handful of residential streets were lined with Victorian-era houses in Easter egg shades, most of them lovingly restored.
Caryl hung a right just past Adams and drove by several picturesque residences before making another right into the shaded driveway of a sprawling Queen Anne. At the sight of it I had the sudden certainty that I’d just exchanged one loony bin for another.
4
Next to its neighbors, this house looked like a cat lady at a PTA meeting. It was painted a deep teal green and crowded by thuggish trees that seemed intent on intimidating if not outright crushing it. At the far right was an emphatic octagonal turret that looked likely to tip over the entire house.
I took only my cane with me, figuring I could get help with the rest later. We left the car and crunched our way through a mulch of leaves to the front porch, which was adorned with three mismatched rocking chairs and a wicker love seat with traces of mildew on the cushions. Caryl didn’t help me on the porch steps, which were the first real-world stairs I’d encountered in more than a year.
“I’m completely fine here,” I said to her back. “Don’t mind me.” Since my left knee was prosthetic, it was impossible to climb step-over-step; I had to lead with my right knee. Having carbon feet made it tricky to get a sense of where the steps began and ended, but I got to the top more easily than I’d expected and felt a little smug about it.