Get Shorty: A Novel

“I thought at first it might be Miguel,” Karen said. “My houseman. But he’s visiting his mom in Chula Vista.”

“You have a houseman?”

“Miguel does everything, cleans the house, takes care of the outside . . . There,” Karen said. “If you can’t hear that, Harry, you’re deaf.”

He wanted to ask her how old Miguel was and what he looked like. Miguel . . . and thought of Michael, her former, now a superstar. Michael had lived here and slept in this bed. He wondered if Miguel ever got in it with her. Karen was closing in on forty but still a knockout. She kept in shape, had given up dope for health food, switched from regular cigarettes to low-tar menthols.

“Harry, don’t go to sleep on me.”

He said, “Have I ever done that?” Was quiet for a moment and said, “You have any idea what that is?”

“Those are voices, Harry. People talking.”

“Really?”

“On television. Somebody came in and turned the TV on.”

“You sure?”

“Listen, will you?”

Harry raised his head from the pillow, going along, hearing a faint monotone sound that gradually became voices. She was right, two people talking. He cocked his head in the bedroom silence and after a moment said, “You know who the one guy sounds like? Shecky Greene.”

Karen turned her head, a slow move, to give him a look over the shoulder. “You’re still smashed, aren’t you?” Judging him, but the tone not unsympathetic, a little sad.

“I’m fine.”

Maybe half in the bag but still alert, with a nice glow. The headache would come later if he didn’t take something. He must have put away half the fifth of Scotch earlier, down in the study where the TV was on, while he told Karen about his situation, his thirty years in the picture business on the brink. He was about to become either a major player or might never be heard from again. And she sat there listening to him like a fucking Teamsters business agent, no reaction, no sympathy. He thought of something else and said:

“Maybe, you know how you go downstairs in the morning sometimes you see pictures cockeyed on the wall? You’re thinking, This is some hangover, wow. Then you see on the news there was an earthquake during the night over near Pasadena someplace. Not a big one, like a four-point-two. You know? Maybe it’s something like that, an atmospheric disturbance turned on the TV.”

Karen was listening, but not to him, staring at the bedroom doorway, pitch-dark out there, her nice slim back arched.

“Or maybe it’s only the wind,” Harry said.

That got her looking at him again because she knew the line, intimately. From Grotesque, Part Two, one of his highest grossing pictures. The maniac’s up on the roof ripping out shingles with his bare hands; inside the house the male lead with all the curly hair stares grimly at the ceiling as Karen, playing the girl, says to him, “Maybe it’s only the wind.” She hated the line, refused to say it until he convinced her it was okay, it worked.

“I love your attitude,” Karen said. “What do you care if somebody broke in, it’s not your house.”

“If you think somebody broke in, why don’t you call the police?”

“Because I don’t intentionally allow myself to look stupid,” Karen said, “if I can help it. Not anymore.”

The way she kept staring at him, over the shoulder, was a nice angle. The dark hair against pale skin. The lighting wasn’t bad either, Karen backlit with the windows behind her. It took at least ten years off her age, the tough little broad a sweet young thing again in her white T-shirt. She was telling him now, in a thoughtful tone, “When I came upstairs, you stayed to finish your drink.”

“I didn’t turn the TV on.”

“You said you wanted to watch a few minutes of Carson.”

She was right. “But I turned’ it off.”

“Harry, you can’t be sure what you did.”

“I’m positive.”

Yeah, because he had turned it off the moment he thought about getting in bed with Karen instead of sleeping in the guest room: the idea, start talking again, work on her sympathy . . .

“I used the remote control thing and laid it on the floor,” Harry said. “You know what could’ve happened? The dog came in and stepped on it, turned the TV back on.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“You don’t? What happened to Muff?”

“Harry, are you going down, or you want me to?”

He wanted her to but had to be nice, obliging, to have any hope of using her.

Getting out of bed his boxer shorts hiked up on him and he had to work them down, get the elastic band under his belly. Karen thought he was fat.

In the study, earlier, he had told her about the story he’d optioned that could change his life, an original screenplay: no fiends or monsters, this one straight-up high-concept drama. He told her he was taking it to a major studio and Karen said, “Oh?” He told her—making it sound like an afterthought— yeah, and guess who read the script and flipped over it? Michael. No kidding, loves it. Her ex, and she didn’t say a goddamn word, not even “Oh?” or make a sound. She stared at him, smoking her cigarette. He told her he did have a few problems. One, getting past Michael’s agent, the prick, who refused to let Michael take a meeting with him. And, there was some sticky business to clean up that involved money, naturally, not to mention getting out from under his investors, a couple of undesirables who’d been financing him. Which he did mention, in detail. This was his career on the launch pad, about to either fly or go down in flames; and Karen sat there letting the ice melt in her drink, blowing menthol smoke at him. Didn’t comment outside of that one “Oh?” or ask one question, not even about Michael, till he was through and she said, “Harry, if you don’t lose thirty pounds you’re going to die.” Thanks a lot. He told her he was glad he stopped by, find out all he had to do to save his ass was join Vic Tanny.

“Harry? What’re you doing?”

“I’m putting my shirt on.”

He moved to a window to be moving, doing something while he worked on the goddamn buttons.

“Is that okay? So I don’t catch cold? But I’m not gonna get all dressed for some friend of yours thinks he’s funny.”

“Friends don’t break in, Harry, they ring the bell.”

“Yeah? What about stoned they might.”

Karen didn’t comment; she was clean now, above it. Harry looked out the window at the backyard, overgrown around the edges, a tangle of plants and old trees surrounding the lawn and the pale oval shape of the swimming pool. It looked full of leaves.

“Does Miguel skim the pool? It needs it.”

“Harry—”

He said, “I’m going,” and got as far as the door. “If somebody broke in, how come the alarm didn’t go oft?”

“I don’t have an alarm.”

“You have it taken out?”

“I never had one.”

That’s right, it was the house in Westwood, where Karen had lived with him. She’d come in, forget to touch the numbers to turn it off . . . Marlene had the alarm system now and the house that went with it. He had married Marlene, his director of development, after Karen left to marry Michael. Then when both marriages ended at about the same time he told Karen it was a sign, they should get back together. Karen said she didn’t believe in signs. Which was a lie, she read her horoscope every day. Marlene was married to a guy who at one time ran production at Paramount and was now producing TV sitcoms, one of them a family with a Chihuahua that could talk. Tiny little dog with a tiny little fake Puerto Rican accent. Why chew look hat me like dat? The dog always fucking up. He was thinking of Karen in the Westwood house instead of this one, her own place, a semi-French chateau high up in Beverly Hills, above the lights of L.A. Built in the late twenties for a movie star and passed on to others.