The producer didn’t seem nearly as enthused as Marty expected him to be, and it threw him.
“I was worried about you,” Marty replied.
Josh shared a look with his wife, then turned back to Marty. “When, exactly, did you start worrying?”
“I was walking by just now, and I remembered you lived here, and thought I should check up on you, make sure you’re okay.”
“Now you’re concerned,” Nora said pointedly. “How nice.”
“We’re fine, Marty,” Josh sighed. “Thanks for stopping by. Say hello to Beth for us.”
“I was hoping you could do me a small favor. I was downtown when the quake hit so I’ve got to walk home. To Calabasas. As you can see, I’ve been already been through a lot.”
“You want to borrow the car?” Nora nodded toward the driveway. “Be our guest.”
“Actually, all I really need is a fresh shirt and a clean pair of pants.” Marty would have asked for some shoes, too, but he could see Josh’s feet were smaller than his.
Josh scratched at a fleck of dried blood on his cheek. “What you’re saying, basically, is you’d like the shirt off my back.”
“Any shirt will do,” Marty forced a smile, assuming Josh was making joke. Or at least hoping he was. “I just don’t want to go home looking like this. I smell like someone pissed on me.”
“Good,” Josh leaned forward now, his face reddening with anger. “Now you know how I’ve felt every day for the last two years, you son-of-a-bitch.”
That took Marty by surprise, and Buck loved it, a big grin on his face.
“What did I ever do to you?” Marty asked Josh.
“Nothing, Marty. Absolutely nothing.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“Bullshit. I thought we were friends. But I was wrong. As soon as Manchine was canceled, I never heard from you again.”
“You know how it is,” Marty said, “you get busy. I got a lot of shows in production.”
“And did you recommend your friend Josh for any of them? Did you ever invite your friend Josh in to pitch pilots? Did you ever return a single call from your friend Josh?”
Marty didn’t know what to say because the answers to Josh’s questions were obvious. It was like challenging the existence of gravity. Josh was challenging the natural laws of the television business.
It wasn’t personal. But once a show is canceled, the talent on it are tainted with failure, at least for a while. Marty would look foolish arguing that the producer of a flop show last year was the perfect guy to run a new show this season. Who’s going to get excited about that? As far as returning calls and having lunch goes, Marty’s obligation was to the guys with shows on-the-air. That meant that people without shows got put off indefinitely. Friendship didn’t figure in to it.
But it had been a long time since Josh took an unwanted hiatus. Maybe he’d forgotten what it was like.
“You know how it is,” Marty said, as sympathetically as he could. “You’d just come off a couple years on a marginally-rated show. We needed a breather. I’m sure you did, too. But you never stopped being my friend.”
“Two years, Marty. That’s how long I haven’t worked. Why do you think I’m selling my house? In another month, I would have been living in this tent anyway. Thanks to you. And now you want the shirt off my back, too?”
“It’s not me you’re mad at,” Marty said, “it’s the business.”
“We used to talk on the phone every day. We ate lunch together. You’ve been to my home. We’ve gone to concerts together. And as soon as my show is canceled, you don’t want to hear from me any more. That’s not the business, Marty. That’s you.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Buck snorted. “What kind of pussy are you? Your show sucked, so you suck. End of story.” Buck elbowed Marty hard in the side. “Can we fucking go now?”
“Yeah,” Marty said, then turned to Josh. “I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for you.”
“No you’re not,” Josh settled back into his chaise lounge. “Because every writer who fails makes you feel better about being a failure yourself.”
It was exactly that kind of on-the-nose, preachy dialogue that made Josh’s writing so flat. Now Marty felt justified not returning his calls. That, and the fact that what Josh said was absolutely true.
“See you around,” Marty walked away.
They were mid-way up the block, nearly back to Melrose, when Buck spoke up.
“So that loser was one of your fucking friends.”
“Yep,” Marty replied.
“What the hell are your enemies like?”
Marty was beginning to wonder if there was really any difference.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
11:12 a.m. Wednesday
West of La Brea, Melrose became the self-consciously funky fashion center of Los Angeles before morphing, just as self-consciously, into the high-end, home decorating district as the avenue crossed San Vicente.
Marty and Buck were in the heart of the funky stretch, where stores with names like Wasteland, Armageddon, No Problem, Devastation, and Redemption competed in Marty’s mind as the Most Tragically Symbolic.
But the greatest accomplishment of these fashion-sellers wasn’t their prescience at picking business names but their skillful repackaging of thrift store hand-me-downs and garage sale castoffs. They discovered you could slap the word vintage on a ratty t-shirt, a rusted refrigerator, a dented Pontiac, or an old pair of reading glasses and suddenly it wasn’t an out-dated, beat-up, broken piece of crap; it was stylish. It was hot. It was cutting edge. Vintage clothes, vintage furniture, vintage records, vintage jewelry, vintage cars, even vintage food, in the guise of a fifties burger stand, could all be found here.
Vintage stuff wasn’t all that was hot on Melrose. Marty was surprised to see that an upscale porn emporium, selling ointments, videos, vibrators, chains, condoms, handcuffs, inflatable women, and anything else that might come handy in the bedroom, was doing a brisk business.
Obviously, no earthquake kit would be complete without a couple dildos.
Buck stopped to look at two mannequins, still standing in the shattered window of a clothing store that once offered “Goth Babe ensembles” and “butt pirate duds.” The female mannequin was dressed in an Edwardian dress with a seatbelt corset. The male mannequin wore a crushed velvet pirate shirt and leopard-print tuxedo jacket.
“What kind of fucking freak wears that shit?” Buck asked.
But Marty was more interested in the store next door, which sold old jeans, old shirts, and new Doc Martens-heavy, no-bullshit shoes that would be perfect for a post-quake journey over buckled asphalt. And a clean shirt, no matter how many people had worn it before, looked pretty good to him right now, too.
Marty stepped through the broken window into the store, wading through the piles of clothes on the floor.
“What are you looking for?” Buck asked.
“Some clean clothes and a new pair of shoes. See if you can find a size twelve.”
Buck drew his gun. “The hell I will.”
Marty looked at him wearily. “What are you going to do, shoot me again?”
“It’s what I do to looters.”
“I’m not going to steal anything. I’ll pay for it,” Marty turned his back on Buck and sorted through some shirts, looking for a large. This was the third time Buck had pointed a gun at him and the impact had worn off. “I’ll leave the money by the register with the price tags of whatever I take.”
“You’re stopping to go fucking shopping? What the fuck is the matter with you? I thought you were in a hurry
