The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,83
more specifically, her face, she felt this pull to England, and to the past, and to the lives lived in the books that she had spent her own life devouring.
She got out of bed and walked over to the black plastic phone on the vanity table, a modern instrument fully at odds with the rest of the room. Placing a collect call to Beverly Hills, she dragged the phone as far as it would go over to the windows.
“Hey, what time is it?” Jack’s own voice sounded slightly groggy.
“Midnight—that puts you at what? Four P.M.? Cocktail hour.”
“Actually, I’m just about to head over to the studio to see Monte.”
She laughed. “Say hi to him for me.”
“Actually, Mimi, I’m serious.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, we’re partnering in a new distribution company, trying to offset the risk from your Scheherazade with our upcoming Sense and Sensibility. Monte says the studio will put up fifty per cent in exchange for our covering their exposure to loss with your final film for them.”
“Scheherazade isn’t going to lose any money,” she asserted, although she was becoming increasingly worried. She had learned the hard way that once money was at risk, few in Hollywood cared about anything else.
“Of course, baby, you and I know that—that’s why it’s such a great deal for us.”
“For you. A great deal for you.”
“Tell me about the book club meeting. Such a little ragtag group you’ve got there. Who cried the most?” he teased. “Oh, who am I kidding—it was Yardley. It’s always Yardley, that little fruit.”
“It was great,” Mimi cut in, ignoring him. “I’m starting to think we might really pull this off. You know, there are few places left in England where you could still try and do this—the houses are usually long since demolished and gone, or otherwise unavailable. And that we could be bringing the home of Jane Austen, of all people, back to life—”
“So, Monte and I were talking.”
She heard him clear his throat on the other end of the line. If she didn’t know him better, she would have thought he was nervous.
“So, okay, it’s looking like the budget for Sense is going to approach one mil—but the good news is that we’ve got half of that now from your old studio.”
“As you just told me.” She found her throat becoming dry, and cradling the handset under her left ear, she went and poured a glass of cool water from the pitcher left out for her on the bedside table.
“Yeah, well, look—this was never going to be easy to tell you. But the studio has some requests.”
“Of course. Fifty per cent worth of them, I should think.”
“Look, Mimi, this is still our baby, but the studio wants to go in another direction with Elinor.”
“You mean younger.”
“Not necessarily.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s just … the energy, you know? We need a good complement to Angela Cummings as Marianne, and they feel the chem is a bit off with the age difference.”
“Goddammit, Jack, Greer Garson was a year older than me when she played Lizzie with Olivier—Jesus, she was even older than Larry—”
“But Garson had the muscle of MGM behind her and they wanted her in that role.”
“Oh my God, Jack—you’re the one who told me to go free agent and screw the studio!”
“Honey, honey, calm down, would ya? You’re gonna scare Frances Knight out of her frigid bed.”
Mimi took a deep breath. “I can’t believe you’re caving in to Monte on all of this—you don’t even technically need his cash from what I can tell.”
He was silent for once.
“Jack…”
“Look, I bought into a company in Scotland—nothing risky—but I used up some of my cash flow, and I need to cut corners a bit right now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Listen, Mimi, it’s all leverage, you know that. And the more risk I minimize on this, the more risks I can take elsewhere. I won’t allow myself to put too much on the line. You should know that about me by now.”
Something in his tone worried her more than his giving away the role of Elinor at Monte’s request. She felt as if this was the Jack Leonard she should have been getting to know the past year. She had only herself to blame because clearly he had been there all that time. Sometimes it was better to know the defects of one’s partner after all.
“I can’t do this right now,” she said into the handset, as she placed the base of the phone back onto the vanity. “I have to go.”