Seeing Stars: A Novel PDF
Preview Seeing Stars: A Novel
Seeing Stars A Novel Diane Hammond FOR KERRY Contents September 2006 Chapter One RUTH RABINOWITZ HAD A WAKING NIGHTMARE THAT SHE had hit… Chapter Two ON ANY GIVEN DAY, MIMI ROBERTS TALENT MANAGEMENT represented anywhere… Chapter Three AS RUTH UNDERSTOOD IT, THERE EXISTED A DICHOTOMY of opinions… Chapter Four IN FACT, WHAT CAME NEXT WAS A CHECK FOR $995,… Chapter Five DILLARD BUEHL HAD MADE HIS FORTUNE SELLING BOILED peanuts at… Chapter Six AFTER THE SHOWCASE ENDED AND MIMI HAD ESCORTED the agents… Chapter Seven HUGH ALAN RABINOWITZ LOVED THE PRACTICE OF DENTISTRY. The human… October 2006 Chapter Eight ON A BEAUTIFUL SUNNY TUESDAY IN OCTOBER, LAUREL Buehl reported… Chapter Nine HUGH’S ALASKA AIRLINES FLIGHT A WEEK LATER WAS HALF an… November–December 2006 Chapter Ten ANGIE AND LAUREL BUEHL SAT SIDE BY SIDE ON UNYIELDING… Chapter Eleven THE CW’S CALIFORNIA DREAMERS, STILL IN ITS FIRST SEASON, was… Chapter Twelve WINTER IN SEATTLE WAS AS DANK AS A SEWER, BUT… Chapter Thirteen AS SOON AS HUGH AND RUTH HAD GONE TO BED,… Chapter Fourteen IF QUINN COULD HAVE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A CAR for… Chapter Fifteen MOST OF MIMI’S OUT-OF-TOWN CLIENTS WENT HOME FOR Thanksgiving, but… Chapter Sixteen THE WEEKS BETWEEN THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS were, in Ruth’s opinion,… January 2007 Chapter Seventeen TWO OR THREE TIMES NOW, QUINN HAD DREAMED ABOUT hands. Chapter Eighteen MIMI DELETED QUINN’S PHONE MESSAGE: HE WAS JUST ONE more… February 2007 Chapter Nineteen IN THE SPACE OF ONE WEEK, THE PACE OF THEATRICAL… March–April 2007 Chapter Twenty EVERYONE AGREED THAT SOMETHING WAS GOING ON WITH Allison. For… Chapter Twenty-One RUTH AND BETHY SAT IN SILENCE IN THE CAR OUTSIDE… Chapter Twenty-Two THE LITTLE CHILI PEPPER CHARM HAD BEEN IN QUINN’S pocket… Chapter Twenty-Three AT THE END OF THE MIX-AND-MATCH SESSION FOR BUDDY and… Chapter Twenty-Four THE DAY AFTER HER CONVERSATION WITH DENISE ADDISON, Mimi left… Chapter Twenty-Five CASSIE WAS THE ONE WHO DELIVERED THE NEWS. SHE TOLD… After Acknowledgments About the Author Praise Other Books by Diane Hammond Credits Copyright About the Publisher September 2006 T he thing about Hollywood is it makes you doubt yourself—your identity, your judgment, your motivation, your parenting—because you are trafficking in children. Harsh but true: if you want to cast a Geisha-child in kimono, wig, whiteface, and tabi, fifty mothers will rush forward and offer you their daughters; if your taste is for a redheaded tomboy who looks like she could build the atom bomb with a pen, two rubber bands, and some baling wire, you can find her on any street corner. Baby dimples, Eurasian glamour, Chinese dolls with moving parts, black girls and Barbie dolls and boys as beautiful as angels—they can all be delivered right to your door, where you can make them up and feed them lines and they will do whatever you ask them to do, because their mommies and daddies and agents and managers and producers and directors have told them it’s perfectly all right because they are going to be famous one day. Try your luck! Pull the lever, swing the hammer, throw the dart, shoot the gun, play any game you like, because you never know who’s going to be a winner. And you’ll not only allow your children to play, you’ll hold the door open for them on their way through. You’ll feed them and water them and dress them and coach them, and the fact is, you’d slap their latest headshots onto the backs of the benches where derelicts sleep, if you actually thought it might help. —VEE VELMAN Chapter One RUTH RABINOWITZ HAD A WAKING NIGHTMARE THAT SHE had hit a transvestite crossing Highland at Hollywood Boulevard. In her mind the transvestite would be lying in the crosswalk surrounded by Shreks and Dorothys and Princess Fionas; Batman would call 911 while Japanese tourists took pictures of the fallen one with their cell phones. The transvestite would be fine, of course—it was a waking nightmare—and when s/he was set upright on his/her extremely tall platform shoes, s/he would look down on Ruth from six feet up and say kindly, Go ahead, honey—you cry if you want to. Ruth would break down right there, and the transvestite would take her gently in his/her arms—and his/her skin would be wonderfully silky and toned from hours at the gym—and smooth her hair from her face while she wept. That’s how much pressure she was under. Driving into Hollywood was always harrowing, and though she and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Bethany, had been in Los Angeles for only three weeks, she had already learned that the smoothness of the trip to a casting studio was inversely proportionate to the importance of the audition. Right now it was three o’clock, Bethany’s callback time had been two forty-five, and they were stuck in choking traffic on Highland near Santa Monica. Admittedly, some of their tardiness—all right, most of it—was Ruth’s fault. She had a tendency, even under routine circumstances, to dither. She’d changed clothes twice before they’d left, even though no one would care or even notice what she was wearing. She’d checked and rechecked an e-mail in which Mimi Roberts, Bethany’s manager, had forwarded the callback’s time and location. She’d printed out, misplaced, reprinted, and then found the original copy of the MapQuest directions she’d pulled up—even though they’d driven to the same casting studio just yesterday. Now she heard the same maddening refrain looping endlessly inside her head: You should have left sooner, you should have left sooner, you should have left sooner. Her blood pressure was so high she could feel her pulse in her feet. “I just can’t believe there’s this much traffic,” she said. “Mom,” Bethany said with newfound world-weariness. “This is LA.” “Well, you can certainly see why it’s the birthplace of road rage.” They moved up a couple of car lengths and then stopped, still at least eight cars short of the intersection. Beside them a young man in a BMW cursed energetically into his Bluetooth. Ruth couldn’t tell what he was saying, but she thought he looked very attractive in his nice suit and tie and tiny gold hoop earrings. She couldn’t imagine her husband, Hugh, in earrings. He was only forty-six, but he could have belonged to their parents’ generation. He was, conceivably, the last man in America to own Hush Puppies. “What?” he’d said when she’d pointed this out once. “They’re very well-made and they’re comfortable.” “You should try clogs,” she’d offered. “Dansko ones, like your hygienists wear.” But he’d just made a dismissive sound and applied himself to tying his shoelaces so that the loops of the bows were the same size and the leftover lace lengths matched. Sometimes it took him three or four times to get it just right. Ruth would have just pulled the hem of her pants down lower so no one would see. Not that she wore oxfords. She’d been wearing the same style of Bass Weejuns loafers since 1973. “Hold up the MapQuest directions again,” she said. Bethany held the sheet of paper far enough away for Ruth to read without her glasses. She scanned the page and sighed deeply. “At least we’re within five blocks. Do you have your script? Maybe you should run your lines.” “Sides. They’re called sides. If you call it a script, people will think we’re right off the boat.” “We are right off the boat.” Bethany crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “No?” The girl gave her a look. “Don’t sulk. I know we should have—” “Mom.” “What? Oh!” Ruth finally got it. “Right. You’re in character.” “Duh.” Ruth sighed. She wished Bethy wasn’t in character, because right now her daughter was the rapidly fraying line that connected Ruth to everything she loved and gained strength from. Still, everyone talked about how important it was for even the youngest actor to walk into every audition in character, even if she had just one line. Casting, as Mimi had told her and Bethy in their first week in LA and repeatedly ever since, began in the waiting room. Actors were sometimes cast on the spot, before they’d even read a line, they were that right. “Do you have the glasses?” Bethany held up eyeglass frames without lenses. She was auditioning for a costar role—a part with fewer than five spoken lines—to play a nerdy sidekick on the Disney Channel sitcom That’s So Raven. Ruth felt a little shiver of
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