Godbox

by Tim Earnshaw

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Cadogan Penn is a would-be movie mogul, who hopes he's on the way up. Tischia White is perfect for the Dean Mance's movie "Girl by Pool", if only Cadogan could connect with Mance without his mother calling him. Then Cadogan discovers the shoebox, in which people see something strange and wonderful.

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 199

Sample

Cadogan Penn’s table at Le Park was outside, behind a fern, practically falling over the white plastic chain onto the Sunset Plaza sidewalk, and had only slightly more cachet than a Safeway cart full of damp rags. The heavy coin was inside, being air-conditioned, and out here you were more likely to catch airplane waste than a waiter’s eye.

Penn positioned his cellphone at a dynamic angle and poured a glass of the imported water that Steven had brought him instead of embarrassing him with the menu. He’d only gotten this table because Steven was a client of his, a guy who did a creditable Bruce Willis smirk while he waited on you between his acting career. Le Park was hardly A-list, but Penn wasn’t there for Cher. This was strictly business. Today’s dollar to collar: Dean Mance.

Penn turned the bottle so people could check the brand. Four bucks the bottle, he should get some return from his investment. Made out of icebergs from Finland or something. He shook a Monte Cristo butt from the cigar tube in his pocket and stuck it between his teeth. A crosseyed blonde at the next table shouted above the noise of the traffic.

—Hey! You with the cigar! Excuse me?

They didn’t allow smoking at Le Park, not even outside, because it upset the delicate smog eco-system. In a town where passive smoking held more vitamins than the air on the street, the policy made sense only to Hillary Clinton. Penn leaned back slightly so his head was over the chain, technically on the sidewalk, and lit the cigar with a tortoiseshell Dunhill.

—What? he said. What?

The blonde grimaced, craned her head around for a waiter. Lots of luck, thought Penn. He scowled at the traffic on Sunset Plaza, so close he could check his hair in the brightwork, and wished he had the trades with him to keep his hands busy. Dean Mance had told him you ate at Le Park to be in the trades, not read them. Hey, you want to read, go to a fucking library. Mance was about as heavy as they came at Le Park, a hyphenate with platinum lines to some real players, and a guy who got more ass than a sumo thong.

Penn was here today, farming melanomas, as he needed to grab some watercooler time with Mance about the new Nick Nolte. He was closeasthis to inking pact for his best-of-book, Tischia Burke White. Tischia was hotter than a car wreck, as he told Mance every chance he got. The proposed Girl By Pool credit would garner Penn an inside table at Le Park and concomitant high-end regalia. All she had to do was remember three words and fall into a pool. So naturally Penn was worried. Tischia Burke White was a girl who had to read her mantra off a wrist tattoo. And this falling business. It could go either way.

He sipped his water, keeping an eye out for Mance over his Porsche-design sunglasses. Lent a Cary Grant vibe, he liked to think. He was relieved when his phone beeped, and fought the impulse to grab it up right away like a schnook with nothing else to do. He let it sit there and beep a couple more times, thumbed the button, swung it up to his ear, checking covertly to see if he was being watched. He wasn’t. The whole place was shrill with cell beeps, like exotic caged birds in the foliage.

—Cadogan, it’s your mother, said his mother.

Momentarily fazed, Penn finessed it up. Aaron! he said loudly.

—Hello? This is your mother, Cadogan.

—Just fabulous! So, how was Paris?

—Paris? Is that you? This is your mo …

Penn lowered his voice to a whisper, maintaining the broad outdoorsy grin that teamed with the sunglasses, like in the ads.

—Mother, I’m at Le Park? No-one fields calls from their mother at Le Park, not even the baby Jesus, for crissakes.

—Cadogan, I think you may have forgotten, so I’m calling to tell you it’s Arthur’s birthday today, and I’d appreciate it if you would talk with him.

Penn slumped. Arthur Sloan III, aka Snakeboy, was his half-assed half-brother by his mother’s second marriage, and a real drain on goodwill. The thought that he had crawled from the foot bath of his own gene pool always made Penn shudder.

—Talk with him? Okay, he sighed. Put him on, I guess.

—He’s not here, Cadogan, I mean go to his place?

—He has a place? Great. I’ll fax him.

—Cadogan, we have a problem. He won’t listen, he simply will not listen. He’s gotten beyond our capability to communicate with. He is just behaving totally inappropriately, and we believe there may be a drug situation. He looks up to you, and we feel in many ways, Art and I, that he needs the extended family at this time …

—He’s twenty-blah years old, Mother, and he only looks up to me when I step over him on the sidewalk. What can I do? Bond with him over a barbecue while he inhales the butane? Don’t get me wrong. The extended family is a good thing. But does it have to extend in my direction? Hey, excuse me one second.

Penn had seen Dean Mance leaving the restaurant like he had somewhere to go, head down. Penn leaned back in his chair to give him a big hello. Mance didn’t look at him and swung into his Porsche-design Porsche, valet-delivered to the curb. Penn called his name, Hey, Dean, breaking rule number one, never call out guys’ names in restaurants, felt like a jerk as the Porsche slid away with its characteristic metallic motor flutter. He grabbed at the fern to keep him from lurching into a roller-blader and cursed silently.

—Okay, my meeting just got sidebarred. Thank you. So, tell me, what is this big trauma with Arthur, like he needs a brother all of a sudden as well as the hole in his head?

He heard his mother sigh. He could imagine her rubbing her eyes with the hand that held her sunglasses.

—Cadogan, please, try to talk some sense into him. He’s just, dysphasic. He’s really a sweet kid. He listens to you. Just be there for him. Be nice. Please?

It was Penn’s turn to sigh. Okay, he said, he’s my half-brother, I can be half-nice. Where exactly is his place these days? I don’t think he’s on my Rolodex.

His mother gave him directions, above an adult bookstore in Compton. I’ll be carjacked, he thought. Even a preowned. He reluctantly agreed to go see the Snakeboy that pm in a window between taking meetings, and had his head in his hands when Steven came by. Penn moved the cigar under the table.

—I hope you’re not recklessly abusing our no-smoking policy, Steven said. We’ve had a complaint. Was the water excellent? May I squeeze you another?

—Steven, Penn said through a cloud of smoke, if you had a mandrill’s ass for a half-brother and you had to do something with him on his birthday, without putting your rep in the toaster, what would you advise?

Steven drew his eyebrows together with forefinger and thumb and pursed his lips.

—That’s good, said Penn appreciatively. Is it new?

—It’s for Albee next week. Remember?

—He’ll love it. Well?

—Oh, I don’t know. Lapdancing?

Penn changed the subject and asked who Dean Mance was networking with.

—All Tinseltown heard you shouting his name. Have some dignity, Steven said, rolling his eyes despairingly.

—That’s good too, said Penn. A tad camp, but hey. So?

—Couple guys from Fox, I think. Not my table.

Penn craned his head around and peered inside. Where? he asked, pointing a rolled five-dollar bill at Steven’s stomach.

—Oh my, said Steven in a reverential whisper. We don’t see many of those here. Brinks will bring your change.

—Any chance I get a table actually in the restaurant next time, or at least a fucking umbrella? I spent so much time on the sidewalk I think my teeth are tanning. I got smog sinus.

—They buy food, we let them sit in the restaurant. Crazy, I know, but it’s policy. You want airconditioning, sit in your car. Or buy a cocktail, use the umbrella from that. They’re at the center window to your left. They just got their check, I think. Be discreet, for god’s sake. Bottom-feeders deplete the ambience of privilege we work so hard to engender.

Penn gave him a watch-it-buddy look while he checked his necktie, major-player full Windsor. Taking a last drag on the Monte Cristo, he carefully extinguished it on the edge of the table, stowed the butt. He walked purposefully inside like he had somewhere to go, exhaling a lungful of cigar smoke into the blonde’s hair as he passed.

Le Park was a long room lit by a frosted green and blue glasshouse roof. Plants hung from the ceiling over cast-iron garden furniture. The floor was black and white diagonal checkerboard, with steps leading up to a kind of low mezzanine on either side, with tables behind a railing. A small raised stage at the far end with a green-painted baby grand which got opened at night, when they themed the place out for Hollywood tributes.

Penn had brought Tischia here a long time ago for the Pia Zadora Celebrity Roast. Back then she’d given him the impression she’d fulfilled her womanly destiny servicing his lower body parts. She’d undone the buttonfly of his chinos with her toes during appetizers, and by entrées the table had five legs. Those days, she’d have drunk a tub of his bath water. But that, as historians agree, was then.

He scoped the place out and saw the two suits up on the mezzanine. A waiter came up and asked if he had a reservation. Penn said thanks, his table was outside, he needed to talk to the gentlemen at the center table, nodded in their direction. He strode confidently up the steps and along to where the two suits were frowning at the check. One, the bulky guy, filling his slub silk suit like a diesel boat engine, working a toothpick. The other, small, bald, neat gray mustache, wearing a pale linen jacket and a silver necktie in a pattern of little fishes wearing top hats.

—Excuse me, gentlemen, Penn said. Have I missed Dean Mance? He said to meet with him here. Cadogan Penn? He held his hand out to the big guy with the silk suit, who eventually looked up from the check, examined his toothpick and said, Who cares? Penn let his hand fall to his side. He didn’t mention me? The suits looked at each other.

—Well, said the heavy, in a cigarette-torn voice, he did mention that asshole a few times. Could that be you?

The other guy chuckled. Don’t mind my friend here, Mr, er…

—Penn. Cadogan. Cad.

—Sure. Usher. Edward. Ed.

Penn extended his hand and Usher gave it a brief third-person shake. The other guy, the diesel in the silk, slid a gold Amex across the table with a retina-puckering flash of finger jewelry accompanied by its own heavenly choir. A waiter swept the card up out of nowhere. Distracted, Penn hesitated a little in replying, breaking rule number two, never stammer at a suit.

—I’m representing Tischia Burke White? We’re working with Dean on the new Nick Nolte.

The suits stood up, a waiter moving their chairs back for them, like it was making his week, he was so happy. Penn saw that Ed Usher wasn’t small, it was the other guy who was built like two guys carrying a bowling bag.

—Whatever with that, said the big guy, rubbing his nose with a thumb the size of Penn’s fist.

—Nice meeting you, grinned Ed Usher, and they left, parting a sea of swooning white-coated waiters ahead of them. Penn walked along the mezzanine muttering Fuck you very much under his breath, down the steps. In the mensroom he stole some wrapped soap from the metal lattice basket and a washcloth with Le Park monogrammed onto it, pushing them into his hip pocket. He gazed absently at his reflection in the mirror, framed by a wooden trellis.

Ed Usher. Ed Usher. E.V. Usher. Nailed the guy. Used to be an independent, produced the Vengeance series back in the seventies. Retired but still associate producer for that daytime sudser The Fires of the Heart, Hearts on Fire, Farts on Hire, whatever. The big guy, Fox, Steven said. The fuck he knew.

Penn pushed his fingers through his hair, gave it a little loft. Caring-nineties boyish fringe pushed back from a tan forehead. Green-gray eyes, touch of manly blue shadow on a strong jawline. There was nothing wrong here. Except he was watching himself get poorer just standing there, and this wasn’t a pretty sight. Everytime you see yourself, Mance had said, you want to be looking at a richer guy. If the slide continued he’d develop underachiever’s slump, and people would flinch away like he was a human ear on a mouse’s back. He splashed some house cologne onto his face and went back into the restaurant, passing Steven on his way back through to the kitchen.

—Any joy? smiled Steven, without waiting for an answer. Penn laughed mirthlessly, pretended to recognize someone off in the back of the room, clicking his fingers like a pistol. There was a bunch of 4Bs at the table by the door: baseball caps, beards, boots, beers. Tech crew he vaguely recognized, but all these guys looked alike.

—Hey, Cad, said one of them, raising his hand. They letting you use the restroom again?

Penn grinned and gave the guy a whitebread soul-grip.

—Hey hey. Good to see you. Who you working with, you can afford cutlery?

—Same crew. Just slumming down with the suits. You’ve met the guys? Guys, Cad Penn …

The guys smiled blankly at him. He nodded, paused, looked at his watch. Hey, look, I’m shedding sunlight. Let’s spool up real soon, huh?

Out in the heat, he wondered at the iniquities of a business where a bunch of lens jockeys could eat inside at Le Park while he was sucking smog on the sidewalk, fielding calls from his mom. He went around the back and beeped his BMW open in the lot. Valet parking was harder to get than a New Yorker cartoon. A short Italian-looking guy walked up and presented him with a card.

—Hi. I’m Paul George, he said in a deep warm voice. If you need my look, call me. Thank you for your time, and enjoy your day.

Penn flicked the card out the window and headed south to the Santa Monica freeway, fender to fender with all the other creeping cellphone booths, fumbling up Tischia Burke White’s number on memory. What I should have said, he thought to himself, was I was always a John Ringo man myself. That would have been very funny.

—Tish?

—Did you pick up the suit?

—Huh? Not as of now, hon, I’m helming a meeting. I’ll pick it up later, I promise. Listen, I just did lunch with Ed Usher?

—Tonight just won’t happen without that suit, it’s like really important. I can’t believe you haven’t done this for me.

—E. V. Usher, right? The producer?

—My celebrity spot on the Shuggy show tonight is falling at a real propitious time. My aromatherapist says the odors are good tonight. There’s a hint of bougainvillea coming in from the mountains and that, as you know, is my keynote scent. My ensemble has to be in harmony with it. I’m in wardrobe at six, you know that …

—Jesus, Tish, listen, I can put you up for Flames of the Heart. A glide-by to get you established, build to a regular. You’ll be sensational.

—It’s the color. I’m creating my entire maquillage around it. Peach accents. What did you say?

—Huh?

—Fires of the Heart?

—I’m in bed with the producer. He loves me. We’re going to …

—Isn’t that daytime? Do I do daytime? I don’t think so. Oh, here’s my voice coach; I have to find my sides. The suit, Cad. Ciao for now.

Penn squeezed the phone in his fist and grunted at it like a hog through his clenche. . .