Tinseltown Riff Read Free Page B

what-have-you.
    Her list-making reminded him of the time he found himself in her apartment four blocks north of Hollywood and Vine. The one with the glistening black-and-white décor replete with posted rules of engagement, including the timing and sequence of foreplay. You wanted to keep up with Gillian, you had to get with it, be it sex or projects or, as Sweet-face put it, whatever was trending.  
    Scribbling away, Gillian noted the wanna-bes’ main competition: ninety-five percent of Writers Guild members were unemployed, ever-hungry for any opportunity to take a flyer and do whatever it takes.   
    Gillian’s broad smile and mellow tone belied the way she then uttered, “Those past thirty are especially bad off,” aiming the aside solely at Ben.                                            
    Undaunted, in no time the bevy of seekers were lapping it up. A portly man in an oversized Disney T-shirt and baggy shorts observed that only an hour ago a woman his age, naked, swaddled only in Saran Wrap, was hawking a video of her love poems. Poised between the two oversized palm fronds fronting the hotel entrance, she’d succeeded in gathering a crowd. “Yes-sir-ree,” the portly one chortled, “ready to take a flyer on anything.”
    Sloughing off this loopy deflection, still dying to find out what Gillian had in mind for him, Ben finally managed to cut the discussion short and announced it was time for lunch. But he’d no sooner left the dais, when he was accosted by a gaggle of leery matrons who questioned him about his credentials and wanted to know exactly how he broke in.
    As fast as he could, worrying he was about to lose track of Gillian, he revealed that he spent months watching the mouth movements of Japanese cartoons while supplying the English dialogue. He’d also helped doctor plots for kiddie shows, sitcoms and a few low-budget movies, leaving out the fact that most never got made.
    But before he could break away, Sweet-face and the guy in the Disney T-shirt cornered him and asked how any of this actually jibed with Oh the Places You’ll Go . What kind of success story was this anyway?  Then the matrons butted back in. One of them, brandishing a shiny clipboard covered with a jumble of notes, mentioned the movie Wall Street and reminded then that Gordon Gekko said, The most valuable commodity is inside information.  If you’re not inside, you’re outside . She also crowed that the second Ben let on what he’d really been up to, it was no longer exclusive and anything he had to offer was worthless.
    Sweet-face chimed in suggesting that, perhaps, Ben was only a flunky who did odd jobs. After all, who’d ever heard of him?  And the best any of them could hope for was to follow suit, volunteer to be a gofer at a production company, latch on to a seasoned pro and worm their way in like Ben.    
    As they headed off for the lobby kicking this notion around, Ben spotted Gillian by a cooling vent on the far side of the hall. Lying in wait, she now went straight after him, her three-inch heels clacking on the terrazzo floor. How she managed to balance herself--toes tucked into a strand of velvet with no sides or back--was one of the world’s great wonders.  
    â€œDr. Suess?” said Gillian, hissing over his right shoulder. “‘Find some un-loopy road’?”