The next day all hell broke loose, and the thing is I should have seen it coming.
ROBERT WARD, Red Baker
Max had known he’d hit it big in L.A.—’cause he hit it big wherever he went—but he hadn’t known he’d hit it, like, this big. His life, alas, had been like a fairy tale, and like a trip to the VIP room at a strip club, it had a happy ending.
It was like he and Angela had dreamed it up, years ago in Manhattan, when she was his secretary and he was CEO of a computer networking company. He’d thought all they’d have to do is off his bitchy wife and they’d live happily ever after, and okay, okay, things hadn’t been exactly happy, and they’d left dozens of bodies in their wake, but they were here happy now, living the dream, and that was all that mattered, right? Fuck the past. Didn’t the Buddhists say that?
Bust had been picked up by Netflix, who’d already greenlit three full seasons of the show. Paula had written a great pilot and early buzz was that the series would be a surefire hit. Max and Angela, still known to the world as Sean and Brandi, had been taking meetings with executives. Thanks to years of hiding out, watching TV shows and movies, Max was like a fookin’ natural in the movie biz. As it turned out, dealing PIMP and making television had lots of similarities. It was about the product, all about the deals. And he knew as much as these studio fucks about dealing. Maybe more.
On the first day of principal photography, Max and Angela were on the set, holding hands and getting goosebumps, while hearing the director, Bryan Singer, scream, “Action!”
The set was the pizza place in Manhattan, where Max hires the hit man, Thomas Dillon, to kill Max’s wife. Ah, memories. Colin Farrell was Dillon and Paul Giamatti was Max. Max had thought George Clooney would be more of an aesthetic fit but he had to admit Giamatti had him down cold.
Angela—still known to the world as Brandi Love—had been cast as Angela. Max thought Angela looked the part, and those tits looked better than ever, but in her first scene with Giamatti, in a recreation of Max’s old office in Manhattan, she delivered her lines in such a stilted way everyone winced. The fucking gaffers, even. It didn’t get better as the day wore on. It was obvious that Giamatti was frustrated with her and that everybody thought she was awful.
During a break, execs from Lionsgate and Netflix met with Max in private, telling him that they all thought Angela had to be taken off the show.
“We already have a yes from Lindsay Lohan’s people,” the Lionsgate exec said, “and Colin refuses to work with Angela anymore.”
“I hate to put it so bluntly,” the Netflix exec said, “but Brandi sucks. Either she’s off the show or we can’t continue with the production.”
Max didn’t like the disrespect from the Netflix exec, or the threat, and made a mental note to hire somebody to kill the guy’s dog or cat at some point to send a message. But he told them he agreed that Angela had to go and he’d break the news to her tonight.
Max waited till later that evening when they were home at their new estate in Beverly Hills. After their nightly routine of sex and P—he had taken to calling the drug P, a single letter like some stars just used a single name, like Madonna or Rihanna—he broke the news to Angela that she was off the show.
He cut to the chase with, “You’re gone, girl.”
Okay, okay, so Max had done perhaps a wee bit more P than he’d intended and was bumping in his mind from elation through paranoia to outright delusion. He was dressed in a pair of white chinos, a white T with the words YOU GOTTA KILL THE FLING YOU LOVE, and a white windbreaker with gold trim, not unlike Elvis before he bought the farm on a toilet seat. He looked in the mirror and what P showed him was Tony Manero. The reel of Saturday Night Fever looped in his head. He said, “TCB.” If Elvis hadn’t quite left the building, he would soon.
Max was so out of it he failed to remember that Angela was right along with him on the P train. If the shit made him crazy, it wired Angela to a whole new level of batshit nuts.
“Gone girl?” Angela said, scratching herself like a gorilla with jock itch. “Who’s gone girl?”
Max, under a giant disco ball, said, “You, you’re off the show. Lindsay Lohan’s replacing you.” He flashed back to his time as a CEO and said, “You’re terminated, my sweet bitch.” Then he was at a pub in Galway and Angela was the shite-slow barmaid, and he went, “Ya old cunt, get me like, double Jameson on the rocks and you know, like, maybe before the fooking sun sets,” and he snapped his fingers.
Even off in the stratosphere on P, he knew he’d made a huge mistake. Not by firing her, but by snapping. He’d forgotten the golden rule of never, ever snap at an Irishwoman.
Sure enough, Angela moved right in his face, went, “Hey, cocksucker, have a drink of this,” and Max felt the jolt in his head, his neck snap back, and knew the cunt had shot him.
He emitted a tiny, “Duh?” and, like a deflated balloon, crumpled to the floor.
* * *
The P said to Angela, It is what it is. And she answered, “Ah, shit the fook up.”
She had the double Jameson, her mind a mix of utter blankness and fierce practicality, urging, Get….get….get rid of the body.
She answered aloud, “Okeydokey.”
In a purple haze, she got Max in the front seat of her car, propped him up like a passenger, blood only slightly leaking down his jaw. But some Dark Gods were minding her, it was dusk and she got him to the L.A. River, humming, Drop kick me Jesus tru the goalposts of life.
A fuck of a tune to hum.
Then in a P-fueled surge of energy, humped him over the bridge and into the river, where he made an almighty splash, something he’d always wanted. Then she dumped the gun she’d used, the dainty .22 she’d bought for protection and been carrying strapped to her thigh—’cause you always gotta watch your back in this town—in there with him.
As she drove off, she crooned, “He got the goldmine and I got the shaft.”
The moon played out over the surface of the water and later Angela realized if she hadn’t been so far gone on P, and had been playing real close attention, she might have seen the slight bubbles hitting the surface and easing out like sad credits on a sadder movie.