Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,33
could be moving. It could be a documentary series in the guise of something just stupid enough to sell. The Helix was out there doing basically the same thing, so why not Bruce?
He spent three days drafting the proposal and first few episodes. Meetings were set. He flew to L.A. the next day. Chop, chop, Bruce. And when Rita said: What’s the rush? he went: Chop, chop, Rita. He had five minutes before the networks lost interest or stole the project.
She said, “But you’ve been down this road before. Fly out there like a slave, get feted for a day, and then six months later no one has gotten back to you, yea or nay.”
He was throwing socks in a duffel. “You need faith, Rita. This business is not for quitters.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, but don’t cry on my shoulder when it falls to pieces.”
He stood with boxers in hand. Said, “And the Oscar for best supporting wife goes to . . .”
“I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
He got to L.A., had his meetings, and it was exactly as Rita had said. Two months waiting by the phone and then an email from his agent: Sorry, but no.
A documentarian drinks to excess.
Bruce managed to keep the information to himself for two days before Rita broke him down. To her credit, she did not say I told you so, just held his hand and said there would be other opportunities.
A month later, watching a movie about boarding-school kids and their nasty parents, he heard tell of the carpe diem spirit, which he took to mean: for the sake of Trial by Liar, you should collateral your house and take out a loan. He’d already promised Rita that, no matter what, he would not gamble to finance his projects. She thought he had a gambling problem, which he didn’t, though if he did, she got the idea from that one time at Atlantic City. On their honeymoon. She’d gone from slot to slot, betting nickels and dimes. He had nibbled her ear. They had pulled the handles together. He had just started prep on a film about people who fake their own deaths to escape the law. She’d thought it was a great idea. He’d needed to raise about $30 K. He had 2. They’d talked and laughed and she’d leaned over his shoulder at blackjack and it was romantic and it was fun. Fun until it wasn’t. By night’s end, he was out nine thousand dollars, and she was online, ordering books that promised to attenuate addiction. It was impossible to pair these words—attenuate, addiction—but the books said otherwise. They said his problem, though he did not have a problem, was surmountable. But what did they know? His problem, if you could call it that, was that he just wasn’t very lucky. He never gambled without a project that needed funding in mind. That he always had a project was beside the point.
Was a loan gambling? Only if you weren’t 100 percent sure you’d pay it back on time. So, no: not gambling. Trial by Liar was going to make it. He went to the bank, and the rest was easy: a deal with a cable station that broadcast only to the East Coast but was seen in a million homes. As for Rita, she was on a need-to-know basis; that was what a good marriage was about. He’d make the money back and use the profits to buy her peridot earrings.
The show attracted notice. It was raw and depressing. Some of the people were crazy. Others were violent. There were fights and tears. And for Bruce: vindication. He was not making money, not yet, but he was pleased. There was room in the canon of documentary filmmaking for work such as this. Unhappy people engaged in the venture of character assessment, which is a venture of love.
In the meantime, though, he was running out of capital. The major networks had not called. Pepsi had not called. The interest rate on his loan was awesome, and his wife wanted a baby.
Many nights over dinner he’d say the finances were prohibitive, to which she’d say: Oh come on, and woo him to bed. Which was, in the end, just fine. Those times together ranked as some of the best of their marriage, Rita being of the idea that the more explosive his orgasm, the smarter his sperm would be. She tried hard. She tried everything.