More Calls

Calling Gomez

Harry studied Gomez Glick's  handwriting on the back of the rumpled wedding seating card. Just like the handwriting of a teenage girl - wide and loopy, round  and sentimental. He had a sinking feeling that having anything to do with a guy who dotted his 'I's with tiny smiley faces, was a mistake. Still, a contact was a contact. Harry sighed and dialed the phone number.

"Hey there, Gomez! It's Harry Starr calling. We met at that wedding in Montreal."

"Yeah, Harry, of course. So when are you coming down to L.A.?"

"That's actually why I'm calling you. My script is ready and I'm looking to go down there..."

He had no idea when he was going down.

"...really soon."

"Cool. Do you have a place to stay?"

"Umm, no. D'you know anybody."

Not gay.

"In fact, I do, Harry. This girl, Wendy, who I was seeing for a while..."

'This girl I'm seeing.' Like Joy? This Gomez,  got his number. The not-really girlfriends, the loopy handwriting, the swishy swishiness. This Gomez, Mr. Platonic, home address - the closet.

"...She's renting out rooms in her big house in Santa  Monica. Big story there: her father who owns this traveling carnival...did a killing with it...Anyhow he got arrested for fraud and tax evasion, so he put the house in Wendy's name. So she's renting out rooms."

Too much information. I just need a room. 

"...So Wendy works as a low-paid production assistant on Sheza the Amazon Warrior. Those tits are real by the way..."

"Wendy's?"

"No Sheza, you big dummy. Don't you watch the show."

"Never."

"Doesn't matter, neither do I. Anyhow I could speak to Wendy..."

"Sure."

Mistake number two. Harry knew that he'd live to regret tumbling down the rabbit hole into the make-believe world of Gomezland,  but there'd be stories to tell. There'd be stories.

"I think she's charging like $400 a month."

"Four hundred bucks a month?"

"Without a lease...that's a good price. The house is in a great area, a couple blocks from Montana in Santa Monica..."

Cliché break: Sounds too good to be...

"Sounds great, Gomez. Can you speak to her?"

"Sure, we're going out for dinner tonight. Call me back tomorrow. Just a word of warning..."

Another cliché break: Spoke too soon.

"...Wendy's got like a bunch of dogs, some cats, and maybe a ferret or something.  And there are these other boarders living there, so, well...it is what it is.  A room in a cool place for a good price."

"Yeah..."

Maybe I should call up my mother's cousin? 

"Don't say I didn't warn you, Harry."

He's even warning me. 

"I won't say anything, Gomez. By the way, how's your pilot, Leftovers, going?

Gomez clipped his big toenail. He loved to talk on the phone and clip. Talk and clip, talk and clip. If only he had twenty fingers and twenty toes, he oft wished.

"Ouchie!"

"What's wrong, Gomez? Are you okay?"

"No, it's okay,  just clipped my big toe.  The corners of my toenails are just so hard to clip. God didn't bless me with straight toenails," he sighed. "I guess we can't have it all."

"?...I guess?"

  

Aw you know, development hell, especially when you're dealing with washed-up stars. Duane Day dropped forty pounds since his Feldman days and he's just not funny if he ain't fat. Now he's just skinny and butt ugly. Meanwhile he dumped Cindy Saffron for some amateur porn star. So now Miss Saffron, who hasn't worked in ten years if you don't count dinner theaters,  wants to quit. Meanwhile Sonny Pinto's trying to get the movie made of Mr. Nanny, and will drop this project if that ever happens. At least Wenzday Wilson's still hysterical, even if he hates my guts because I asked him to pay me back the fifty bucks I lent him. I mean fifty bucks is fifty bucks, it's not like I've got this series in production where I'm taking home a hundred grand an episode. I only made twenty grand so far off this pilot and who knows when the next pay check will come. Meanwhile I may have to take a job in telemarketing. But aside from that, everything is great."

"Sorry to hear that, Gomez."

"That's the biz, Harry. Get used to it."

"Yeah...So I'll call you back tomorrow, Gomez. Thanks."

"Oh fuck, I just felt a tremor...Gotta go..."

One Mo' Call

Teddy Slutsky, Harry's old football coach who led the Mustangs to two consecutive provincial finals. Tubby Teddy with the fu manchu moustache, flowing silk shirts and clogs who barked orders from the sidelines and snuck out for smokes during time-outs. Teddy was now a producer on kiddie sitcom House Hubbies and partied with Nick Tassos. 

Teddy never answered his home phone, but the message on his answering machine attested that he was now a Hollywood insider, at least in his own mind: 

"Hey there folks and strokes, I'm not in right now because I'm preparing my monologue for theTonight Show. Leave a message and I'll have my buxom assistant, Brandy, call you back...Hee hee hee, Brandy. Knock it off, I'm recording a message..." 

Fortunately for the millions of Tonight Show fans who like good comedy, Teddy got bumped off (again) from the show at the last minute and never got called back. Would Teddy remember Harry Starr, former quarterback whom he taught how to throw a screen pass, run a bootleg, call an audible?

"Hello Teddy, it's Harry Starr. You used to coach me on the St. Clair  Mustangs. how are you?"

"Oh man, St. Clair. That was in another lifetime. St. Clair."

'Yeah, I used to play quarterback. Remember we made it to the provincial finals two years in a row and got our asses kicked both times. We were too cold to play."

"Yeah, right the Mustangs. Were you the kid with the red hair and freckles who stuttered?"

"N-n-n-o, that was Jeff Shrier. He played center."

"Jeff Shrier? The orthodontist's kid?"

"No, that was Mitch Handelman."

"Mitch Handelman?! That shit-head fucked my little sister!"

No, that was actually my cousin, Joey Prager. But your sister fucked almost everyone.

"I don't think so."

"I'm about to run out...What's your name again?"

"Harry. Harry Starr."

"Did your father sell ties?"

"No, but he once sold--"

"So what's up, Harry. Make it quick, I gotta run for a taping."

"Well, I'm--"

"Can you call me back in a few days, Harry. I really gotta run now. I'm late and I'm warming up the audience for Vets in Heat. Bye."

Click.

"I'm going down to..."