Page 12 - Finding Tulsa - Preview

4 Jim Provenzano

“Mmm,” Barry hums appreciatively. He doesn’t leave L.A. much, ex-
cept in his Range Rover. He’s an outdoor type, but hates planes. Once he
fucked me on a mountaintop in the Santa Monica Mountains. I would
have fallen in love with him at the time, but I had a rock poking into my
back.
“Hope you don’t get some bore next to you,” he says. I think at one
point I mentioned the idea of Barry coming with me. I was either jok-
ing at the time, or we were still sleeping together. But it’s months after
the broadcast, the Ace Awards, and Lance ... it’s all in post-production.
Everything’s post—.
“Or a lousy movie,” I say.
“Ugh. I hate the way they chop them up.”
“Undoubtedly starring Hugh Grant.”
“The English Father of the Bride.”
“Who Went Up a Mountain and Came Down Busted.”
Barry doesn’t laugh. His jovial mood has passed. He wants to get a
decision out of me before I leave. I’ve read it, another great one. Barry
doesn’t know I’ve already bought two copies of the graphic novel it’s based
on. One is for the creator to sign when we’re still in our honeymoon phase,
before the rabid fans trash its prospects online. The other set’s already cut
up and laid out on makeshift storyboards all over my house. I’m hoping
my touches will more than fill up any deficiencies in the script. I will not
argue it into art, like I had to last time.
“You know, Stan, you should do that cameo.” Barry shifts gears to
Brendan, the up and coming music video director, my former ingénue,
who wants me to be in his short. I’d rather be in his shorts. We already
made a movie together, so the seduction thing is backwards. Not courting,
Brendan’s working me for every bitmap of info he can get.
“I have an interview at the theatre with some local cub,” I say, deleting
Brendan as content.
“You did a lot of theatre there when you were a kid, didn’t you,” Barry
says.
“So?”
“So, you know how to do it.”
I sip my coffee. No whip plus double café poser float. Just coffee,
thanks.
I consider my choices, the ones I had as a kid. Performing? Never
again. I would have given my usual comfort-from-behind-the-lens spiel,
but I’ve already been quoted on that, twice. After that, it’s just dumb.
“Time to put away childish things.”