Get Shorty: A Novel

got out of the car. They walked around to the patio side of the house and over to the swimming pool that was like a pond with a clear bottom, leaves, dark shapes on the surface, Chili telling about the dinner with Michael, most of what happened, and finally asking her, “Guess who paid?”

Karen said that, first of all, high-priced actors never picked up the check. They had no idea what things cost. They seldom knew their zip code and quite often didn’t know their own phone number. Especially guys who changed the number every time they dumped a girlfriend. Telling him this quietly in the dark. He felt they could be in a woods far away from any people or sounds or lights, unless you looked at the house and saw dim ones in some of the windows. They could have walked in the house when he got out of the car, but she was waiting for him with the idea of coming out here. It told him they were going to end up in bed before too long. He was-n’t sure how he knew this, other than being alone in the dark seemed to set the mood, the idea of moonlight and a nice smell in the air, except the moon was pretty much clouded over. Her waiting for him outside was the tip-off. He didn’t ask himself why she wanted to go to bed with him. It never entered his mind.

“So who paid, you or Harry?”

“I did.”

“You felt sorry for him.”

“Well, yeah, maybe. Twice in one day I have to explain something where he’s already made up his mind I’m trying to stick him. Michael left, we sat there another hour and talked. You know what his omelet cost?”

“Twenty bucks?”

“Twenty-two-fifty.”

“And he ate maybe half of it,” Karen said.

“Not even that. The whole shot came to two and a quarter, with the tip, and we didn’t have any wine.”

“Harry went home?”

“Yeah, feeling sorry for himself. I said to him, ‘This wasn’t my idea, I didn’t call it. If you wanted to ask him about Lovejoy, why didn’t you?’ Harry says, ‘What, follow him out to the parking lot?’ Harry had a point. Michael does all the talking and then he’s gone, never mentioned the check. You know, at least offered. No—see you tomorrow at the meeting. Now I either have to make up something quick or forget the whole thing. Or let him do it. Michael knows more about it than I do anyway. All the time at dinner he’s telling me how it should work: that the love part should be important and how he wants to play the shylock as a nice guy—like people don’t mind paying him a hunnerd and fifty percent interest. You know what I’m saying?”

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“That’s what Michael does,” Karen said. “He turns the story around to suit himself and then walks away. The shylock becomes a brain surgeon. The drycleaner—who knows?”

“I’m thinking of making him an agent,” Chili said, “and his wife, Fay, a rock-and-roll singer. It’s a little different’n what I told you and Harry. She comes here with the shylock and they fall in love looking for Leo. Also there’s a mob guy that’s after them.”

Karen stopped and turned to him. “His name Ray Bones?”

“Yeah, but I think I’ll change it. I don’t want to get sued. I’ve had enough of Ray Bones to last me the rest of my life.”

They started walking again, strolling toward the house. Karen’s shoulders hunched in the bulky sweater, hands shoved into the sleeves. She said, “What about Catlett?”

“He’s not in it.”

She said, “Are you sure? You have an idea for a movie based on something that actually happened, but now you’re beginning to fictionalize. Which is okay, like bringing Fay into it more . . .”

Chili said, “After I saw that’s what Lovejoy needed.”

“That’s fine—but what exactly are you keeping and what are you throwing away?”

“Well, if I have Bones as the bad guy, what do I need Catlett for? It’s not about making a movie, it’s about getting your hands on money without getting killed. Or it’s about a moral dilemma, as Michael says. If they do get their hands on the money, can they keep it? Michael says no.”

“So you resolve that,” Karen said. “You have action, suspense, romance, good characters . . . You have that wonderful scene with Bones in the hotel room. He takes the locker key and you set him up.” She paused and said, “It’s cool the way it works, but you can’t end the picture with it. What happens next, at the airport, is offstage. But if it did play as a scene you wouldn’t be in it.”

“You mean the shylock.”

Karen said, “Yeah, right,” thinking of something else. “What you might do is play the hotel room scene with Leo instead of Bones—it’s too good to throw away. Leo finds the key, leaves to pick up the money and you call the DEA.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, to Bones. I wouldn’t do it to Leo.”

She said, “Well . . . I don’t know. I like Catlett as a character, if you could use him somehow. Doesn’t he fit into this at all?”

“He’s Harry’s problem.”

“Isn’t Harry in it?”

“I left that part out, the shylock looking for him.”

He thought of Catlett again. He thought of the Bear, the Bear falling down the restaurant stairs, but didn’t see how he could use that either.

Karen said, “I wouldn’t throw anything away just yet,” as they reached the patio and she turned to him. She looked cold, hugging herself with her hands in the sweater sleeves. “What’re you going to call it, Chili’s Hollywood Adventure?”

“That’s a different story. I like it, though, so far.”

She said, “What happens next?”

He said, “I’m ready if you are.”

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* * *

He’d open his eyes and she’d be watching him, the first time smiling, and he remembered her telling him Michael said funny things. Then she’d close her eyes and he’d close his, moving with her, all the time moving, and he’d open his eyes and she’d be looking at him again, face-to-face in the lamplight. She was feeling it, not just going through the motions, he could tell by her face, a certain look around her nose and mouth that was almost a snarl, but her eyes would still be looking: like she was riding a bike with no hands to look at something she was holding, doing two different things at once: her body turned on and having a good time, but her mind still working on its own, watching, until her eyes glazed over and it became more the way it usually was in those final moments of hanging on, no time to think or do anything but ride it out. She opened her eyes with kind of a dreamy look, thoughtful, and said it was like falling backwards . . . a time you could let go knowing you were safe. He wondered if she analyzed everything she did and had been watching, before, to see her effect on him. When Karen left the bed, went into the bathroom and came back a few minutes later, he got to see all of her at once—a picture he now had for life— before she turned the lamp off and got back in bed.

Chili had his arm ready in case Karen wanted to snuggle in, as they usually did after, but she stayed on her side and was quiet. They were alone in a different kind of dark now that they’d made love, a dark for sleeping. He thought, Okay, fine. Though had expected there would be a little more to it. It surprised him when she said, lying there in the dark, “I’ve been watching you.”

“I noticed that.”

“I think you could be an actor. I know you’re acting sometimes, but you don’t show it.”

“You thought I was faking?”

“No, I don’t mean then.”

“What was I doing? I was auditioning?”

“We made love,” Karen said, “because we wanted to. That was the only reason.”

“Yeah, but you were watching.”