Chapter 12
One of the kitchen workers Perlmutter knew from the Korean-barbecue restaurant sat on the back stoop near the dumpsters while he smoked a cigarette. Perlmutter waved hello and the kitchen worker gave him a disinterested nod in return.
It was still early, only six thirty in the evening, but Perlmutter asked anyway, “Any takeout orders tonight that weren’t picked up?”
“Three.” The worker let a stream of smoke escape out the side of his mouth. “I’ll let you have them for ten bucks.”
“You should give them to me for free,” Perlmutter complained. “Because of this restaurant, my apartment’s noisy all night, and it always smells like fried pork and kimchi.”
The worker shrugged as if to say it’s not my fault you chose to live over a restaurant. Perlmutter made a face as he handed over ten dollars.
“What am I getting?”
The worker deadpanned, “An assortment.” He took several more drags on his cigarette before flicking it away and disappearing inside the restaurant. A short time later, he came out and handed Perlmutter a bag with three takeout cardboard boxes in it.
“Bon appétit,” he said with a thin smile before heading back into the restaurant.
To get to his studio apartment, Perlmutter needed to use a different entrance, and then had to climb a set of narrow, rickety steps that creaked badly under his weight. When he opened the door to his place, Orson, a big, fat orange tabby padded over to him and meowed.
“You want dinner, huh? What else is new.”
The cat meowed again.
Perlmutter only had to take a few steps to enter the meager kitchen area in his apartment. He placed the bag on top of the small patch of open counter space next to the sink, and then held his breath as he opened a can of discounted cat food and dumped it into Orson’s bowl. The stuff was supposed to be a mix of chicken and tuna, but it smelled awful, and God only knew what was actually in it. Orson meowed angrily as he watched Perlmutter do this—he didn’t want the canned food, but the Korean-barbecue takeout. If he wasn’t so fat, he would’ve jumped onto the counter and tried nosing his way into the takeout containers.
“Sorry, guy,” Perlmutter said. “Things will be changing soon and you’ll eat better then.”
He placed the bowl on the floor. Orson sniffed it and then followed Perlmutter to his computer desk where he ate his meals. Perlmutter looked inside one of the cardboard boxes, and Seung-hwan hadn’t been kidding about it being an assortment. Mixed inside were dumplings, short ribs, and spicy pork with cabbage. Table scraps. Seung-hwan wasn’t even pretending any more that he was selling him takeout food that hadn’t been picked up, but was now rubbing it in Perlmutter’s nose that he was scraping leftover food off of plates. Perlmutter decided it didn’t matter. He had suspected that for a while, and so what? The food was still good.
Orson jumped up on him and sunk his claws into Perlmutter’s belly as he tried to nose his way toward the open container. Perlmutter grimaced as he pulled the cat off of him and placed him on the floor.
“Okay, okay, I’ll give you some.”
He brought the container over to Orson’s bowl, added one of the dumplings and some of the spicy pork, and mixed it in with the foul-smelling cat food. Satisfied, Orson nibbled at what was in his bowl.
Perlmutter returned to the computer desk and wiped the back of his hand across his brow. The worst part of living above the restaurant was how hot it got thanks to the grill and stoves they had working down there all night. He needed a new window air conditioner; the one he had barely did anything other than make a lot of noise. Soon things were going to change, but for the time being he would have to continue to make do. The price of being a budding filmmaker. Not that the studio apartment was all bad. It might’ve been cramped, and made even more cramped by the piles of film scripts, old videos, and DVDs that Perlmutter had stacked on the floor, and it might’ve smelled, and was noisy a lot of evenings, but he loved the K-town location, which made him feel as if he were part of the Hollywood scene. The studio was also cheap, which was important since the money he had inherited from his mom was almost gone. He still had enough to cover this month’s rent and to pay the minimum that he needed to on his maxed-out credit cards. He was going to have to get a couple of more cards so he could max those out also. But none of that mattered. Things were going to be changing soon. He had no doubt about that anymore, although he did have a moment of crisis yesterday when Jane told him that he was no different than the losers he hung out with.
That stung badly, no question about it, and it left him doing some serious soul-searching for the rest of the day, at least until he remembered the glint he had seen in Getzler’s eyes. That glint was real, and it guaranteed Perlmutter would be able to make this movie as long as he could come up with a killer treatment and an equally killer script, and he knew he could do both. Jane had no clue what she was talking about, and was simply flapping her gums. Perlmutter might’ve fallen in with a crowd of loser wannabes like Sammy Bloom, but that didn’t mean he was one of them. He’d seen their attempts at screenwriting and knew they were hacks, just as he knew he not only had what it took, but that he was on the verge of making it big. He all but had Getzler’s go-ahead, which was something none of those losers had, or would ever have.
Orson finished his dinner and padded over to Perlmutter so that he could jump onto his stomach. Perlmutter gritted his teeth as the cat once again dug his claws into his flesh. After Orson had settled down, Perlmutter stroked the cat’s fur while he finished off the assortment of table scraps that had been dumped into two of the takeout containers; the second one consisting of seaweed salad, garlic fried chicken, and barbecued beef tongue. A bite had been taken out of one of the pieces of fried chicken, but he didn’t let that bother him. He picked up the third cardboard container, thought about opening it, but instead decided to store it away for another night.
“Things are going to be changing real soon,” he promised Orson as he absently stroked the cat from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The cat purred contentedly in response.
“Jane can go to hell,” he said, and Orson again purred. “She thinks she’s something special, huh? Well, there are plenty of women in Hollywood hotter than her, and I’ll hook up with one of them. Someone smart enough to recognize my talent and know that I’m going places. Once I get Getzler’s blessing, I’ll give my new squeeze the juicy role I was going to give Jane, and that rotten bitch can spend the rest of her miserable life waiting tables for all I care.”
Orson purred again as he stretched his legs.
“As far as Morris Brick goes, let’s see if he’s still so damn smug once he realizes he lost out on an easy million bucks.”
Orson closed his eyes and went to sleep.