Teddy had no one to be other than Mark Weldon that night, so he elected to stay at Mark’s apartment just to keep up the illusion that he was living there. He even gave the super a thrill, sitting out on the stoop with him drinking beer and telling Hollywood war stories, only some of which were apocryphal.
“How’d you make your break?” Paco Alvarez wanted to know. “You’re working as a stuntman, suddenly you’re winning awards. That doesn’t happen. It’s like winning the lottery, am I right?”
“Exactly right,” Teddy said. “Just being in the right place at the right time.”
“And having talent.”
“Everybody’s got talent or they wouldn’t be there. Getting a chance to show it is something else.”
“So what happened?”
“I’m working as a stunt double for a well-known character actor. I’m not going to say which one, for reasons that will be obvious. The guy was one of those actors everyone loves, whatever he’s in. So the director’s delighted to get him in this part.
“Only the guy’s a fall-down drunk. He goes off the wagon the night before shooting and gets in a bar fight, and the studio has to pull strings just to keep him out of jail. They manage to hush it up, but the guy’s a mess. He’s so hungover he can hardly stand. He’s lost a tooth, and one eye’s swollen shut.
“They’ve got me in costume ready to step in for the stunt sequence, so they just roll the scene and shoot me, figuring some of the footage will be usable if it’s from an angle where you can’t see my face. But they watched the footage they shot, liked it, and decided it made more sense to go on shooting without a drunk pain in the ass. Which they do, only his agent threatens to sue and they wind up paying his salary anyway. So the guy winds up making a hundred times what I do for not playing the part.”
“Son of a bitch,” the super said. He laughed heartily and pounded Teddy on the back. “Son of a bitch!”
Teddy finally escaped the super’s clutches. He went to bed a little tipsy, and resolved never to get caught on the front stoop again.