Get Shorty: A Novel

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loafers as he said, “Harry, I was thinking of calling you, man. How you doing?”

Harry said just great. The way he always did, sitting on the other side of this desk times before, here to ask for investment money—oh, everything was just great— though he did happen to have a few points left over if they wanted in. A few points meaning half the budget for the movie. In financial shit up to his chin, no doubt as he was at this moment, Harry was just great.

“We got a deal going at Tower . . .”

“On Mr. Lovejoy?”

“They’re extremely high on it.”

“I hear you got Michael Weir.”

“Boy, this town. Word gets around, doesn’t it?”

“So how can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a little working capital.”

“Like how much?”

“Couple hundred.”

“What’s wrong with using the money we put in Freaks?”

“That’s in escrow, I can’t touch it.”

Meaning the man had spent it. So for the time being Catlett resigned himself to forget it. Move on to bigger things.

“You offering a participation in Lovejoy?”

“A small one, considering it’s a twenty-milliondollar shoot, minimum. Maybe twenty-five.”

“So we’re talking about like one percent.”

“Around there.”

“Or less.”

“Tell me what you want,” Harry said. “Let’s see if we can work it out.”

Listen to him. Cool for a man who was desperate or wouldn’t have picked up the phone. “I was about to call you, Harry.”

“Is that right?”

“Tell you how much I like Lovejoy.”

“You read it?”

“I think so much of it, man, I’m prepared to make you a deal you might not believe. But I also want to participate actively. You understand what I’m saying? I want to work on the movie with you, be part of it, man.”

“I’d like to know where you got hold of a script.”

“Harry, let’s me and you meet someplace and have a drink. I’ll tell you how you can put your hands on a hundred and seventy thousand and you won’t have to give me any points or pay interest on it. You pay me back at your convenience. How’s that sound?”

“You serious?” Harry said.

No mention now of the script.

“Where you want to meet?” Catlett asked him.

“I don’t care,” Harry said. “Where do you?”

After going around on that Catlett called the Bear, named a restaurant and asked him to be there in half an hour. When Catlett left, going out through the working office where Marcella the pink woman sat behind her computer, he wondered what it was like to go to bed with a woman you would never think of going to bed with, if it was different.

A Mexican in a white busboy coat and crummy-looking pants brought drinks to them on Karen’s patio. She sounded different, so polite saying, “Thank you, Miguel. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The Mexican didn’t say anything. He was bowlegged and had big gnarled hands on him. After Miguel went in the house Karen said, “Would you think he’s only in

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his forties? He’s been a migrant farm worker all his life. He came by one day asking to do yard work and I hired him as my houseman.”

Chili sipped his drink and said, “Jesus, I don’t think he put any tonic in this. It’s good though.”

“Miguel’s learning,” Karen said, and looked up at the trees. “It’s nice out here, isn’t it? This is my favorite time of the day.”

She sounded different this evening. Neither of them said anything for a minute or so, looking at the trees and the sky changing color. It reminded Chili a little of sitting with Fay as it got dark and they waited for Leo to come home; except Leo and Fay didn’t have a swimming pool. He had thought they were waiting for Harry—the plan, to go out to dinner—till Karen said Harry had already stopped by. Changed his mind, made a phone call and left. Still upset about the meeting, among other things.

Chili took the “among other things” to mean him. “He doesn’t think I’m doing anything for him.”

Karen turned to look at him. “Are you?”

“What’s he want? I’ll do it.”

“He wants Michael . . . But listen,” Karen said, “the way Harry’s acting, that’s his personality. To help him, you first have to break through this barrier he sets up—doing it his way, the independent producer, nobody knows anything but him. His last three pictures might’ve broken even, but didn’t do nearly as well as his early stuff. I tried to tell him. You know why? You haven’t kept up. If you’re going to do low budget exploitation you either have to go much heavier on the special effects, or you have to get outrageously campy, make pictures like Assault of the Killer Bimbos, Surf Nazis Must Die, Space Sluts in the Slammer— they’re so bad they’re fun. Or, you have to approach horror in a new and different way, like Near Dark, that I think is brilliant. A love story about a guy who falls for a vampire. But there’s not one scene in a dark empty castle, the vampire dressed like Fred Astaire in white tie and tails. These are raunchy vampires; they roam around this flat, empty farmland out west in a station wagon looking for blood, hurrying to get what they need and stay out of the sun or they’ll catch fire and burn up. It shows what it’s really like to be a vampire,” Karen said. “And I couldn’t get Harry to go see it.”

Chili sipped his vodka and not much tonic, glad Harry wasn’t here, comfortable in the cushioned patio chair, more impressed by Karen every time he talked to her. She wasn’t anything like Fay, but she’d understand Fay and could play her in a minute.

“You know all that stuff,” Chili said. “I don’t mean just what movies are about, but other things, the business.”

“I’ve been out here fifteen years and I pay attention,” Karen said. “Harry’s upset, and one of the reasons is my being offered a studio job. He said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ because he still thinks of me as the girl he hired with nice tits and a great scream. My dad teaches quantum physics at a university and my mother’s a real estate broker, has her own company and is incredibly successful; she has a super business mind. I’m not saying I follow after either one of them exactly, but I did-n’t come into the world on a bus to L.A. I have a background. I know more about the film industry now than Harry does because I keep up, I know what’s going on and I have good story sense. Elaine knows that, it’s why she wants to hire me.”

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“You gonna take the job?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Karen said. “Meanwhile, poor Harry’s off trying to raise money, so he can hire a writer . . .”

Chili paused, about to sip his drink.

“. . . and get deeper in debt. That’s where he went, to talk to his investors.”

Chili said, “You mean the limo guys?”

“I know it’s the same ones he’s been trying to avoid. I said, ‘Harry, you told me you’ve been dying to get out from under them,’ and he said he didn’t have a choice.”