The Bequest Read Free Page B

stroke of genius for them when Teri won her
second Oscar in relatively short order after the first, but then the drought
hit, culminating in her most recent failure. Cinema USA was already
bleeding red ink, for a whole list of reasons unrelated to Teri, but her
latest movies not only failed to stem the blood flow, they also seemed to
open up new veins.
    She reached the door to Mike’s office, which was uncharacteristically
closed. Teri’s anxiety kicked up a notch as she knocked.
“Come in,” Mike said.
When she opened the door and saw Bob Keene sitting there, she
knew instantly things were worse than she imagined. Neither man stood as
she entered. Wordlessly, she sat in the guest chair next to Bob, directly
across
from
Mike.
Mike
looked guilty, Bob
looked resigned.
Teri
wondered if she looked panicked.
“The deal’s gone, isn’t it?” she asked. Her tone was matter-of-fact, as
if this were just another business meeting, even though she knew full well
it wasn’t.
“You’ve got to look at it from their perspective,” Bob said. “You’ve
lost them a lot of money.”
“I made them a lot of money, too.”
“Old money is a forgotten memory.”
“Then we’ll go to another studio.”
“No other studio’ll take you. Right now, you’re poison.”
The words stung more than Teri could have thought possible. Her
own agents, quoting the press as if it were truth. She looked at Mike,
silently pleading with him to come to her rescue.
“You’ve seen this coming for a long time, Babe,” he said. “Remember
what you said just the other day? No studio wants an actor—”
“I don’t need you to remind me what I said,” she snapped. “I need
you to remind the studio who I am.”
“What you need is a hit,” Bob said.
“Look, Babe,” Mike said, “no one believes you’re washed up as an
actress. The problem’s been the movies you made; not you.”
“You and Bob were involved in every decision I made. In fact, as long
as we’re talking about short memories, do you recall that it was you two
who brought this last fiasco to me and insisted that I do it?”
“And that was our mistake,” Bob said. “But by that point, we were
desperate to find something to let you break back out.”
Teri tried to make eye contact with Mike, but he seemed more
interested in looking at the desktop, the floor, and the ceiling, than at her.
“Look, maybe it’s time we switch gears,” Teri said. “No more
romantic comedies, no dramas, and damn sure no period pieces. How
about a thriller? I haven’t done a thriller in a long time.”
“Do you have a thriller script?” Bob asked.
“Isn’t it y’all’s job to find one for me?”
She could tell when she said it that, as usual, the “y’all” was like
fingernails on a blackboard for Bob. She couldn’t help the way she talked.
Her Texas roots were deeply engrained, but sometimes, when she was
annoyed at Bob, she made it a point to sneak in a few extra “y’alls” and
“fixin’ to’s” just to piss him off.
“Y’all can’t tell me there are no good thrillers making the rounds
right now.”
“Everything out there that’s worth a damn has got a male lead,” Mike
said.
“So we tweak it a bit, turn it into a female lead. Any writer worth a
damn can do that. And y’all do rep writers, don’t y’all?”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Bob said evenly.
His calmness pissed her off even more. “What do I care what
becomes me? I’m poison, remember?”
She turned her attention to Mike, banishing Bob to invisibility. “We
just need one hit—”
“You mean you just need one hit,” the refusing-to-be-invisible Bob
said.
“No, I mean we need one hit. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Mike spun his chair around and looked out the window. She glared at
Bob, who met her gaze with the same evenness with which he had spoken
earlier.
“The executive committee has discussed it, and we think maybe it
would be best if you sought representation with another agency,”