Another Thing to Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

dumped Flip’s mother, moved to fucking Taos, and started a second family. A second family that enjoyed the true big money, while Flip and his mom had struggled to get by on a mere fifty thousand a month.
    Ben scrolled through the other messages stacked up on his Treo. Morning had been second-unit stuff, so he had been within his rights to sleep in, yet Flip was out there, raring to go. He probably just wanted to pull a head trip on Wes, the director on this episode, one of the eight hacks that the network had foisted on them, the same way they had shoved Lottie down their throats. “You two guys know words, these guys know visuals,” the network types had said. You couldn’t call them suits anymore because most of these losers didn’t wear suits, with the exception of the lone female executive, who looked as if she should be playing the male lead in some Edwardian-era drama. The network, Zylon, aka Plan-Z — God help them, their wizened corporate owner thought the name was hip, as opposed to a ready-made punch line for television critics everywhere — was struggling, trying to find a toehold among the other not-quite networks, the FXs and USAs and Spikes of the nonpremium cable world. The buzz was that Plan Z was a vanity project, that its billionaire owner would become disenchanted with the money drain, and the network would probably disappear before a single one of its shows even aired. But hadn’t they said the same thing about Fox once upon a time?
    Then again, Fox had come along before all the buzz about platforms, before it was possible to download a television show on your phone, before iTunes and, worst of all, YouTube, which had convinced half the sentient world that they, too, were filmmakers because they could point and shoot. Ben and Flip were only thirty-five, way too young to be playing the “back in my day” game, but that’s how he felt, the Ancient Producer, with the albatross of new technology and old expectations weighing him down. In fact, his back hurt and his knees creaked a little as he got out of bed, but he blamed that on the subpar hotel mattress.
    Selene had a Tempur-Pedic bed in her rental apartment. She had Tempur-Pedic beds in every room, for the phantom family that never showed up. Lottie had shared that with Ben in a rare burst of camaraderie, assuming he resented Selene as much as everyone else. He had before he slept with her, but he supposed it would be hypocritical now. Instead he resented her for not sharing the penthouse-condo-Tempur-Pedic wealth with him.
    Not that he had ever lost too much sleep over being a hypocrite. That was Flip’s side of the street, being all earnest and lovable. Ben had no problem smiling in someone’s face, taking his money, all the while raking him over the coals behind his back. Even Flip.
    He pulled on last night’s clothes, but he wasn’t a pig enough to stomach yesterday’s smells, which carried a faint whiff of Selene, so he rooted around for something fresher to wear. Eau de Selene wasn’t the light flowery fragrance that one might expect, more like cigarettes and Red Bull and Kahlúa. In fact, the whole room smelled of her. He’d go out, instead of having his usual room service breakfast, which was pretty ordinary fare anyway, although he enjoyed torturing the kitchen with special requests, such as fresh chives on his omelet. They had tried to get away with dried once and he had sent it back, if only to keep them on their toes.
    But today — which, now that he had the curtains open, looked pretty nice — he was going to venture into the city, and not just his usual Starbucks. He was going to find some cool little diner, eat whatever people ate in Baltimore. Pancakes? Scrapple? Flip kept encouraging him to try scrapple, swore by the stuff, but Ben sensed he was being punked. Whatever he ended up eating, he was going to sit at the counter and inhale all the cholesterol and trans fats and scorched caffeine that the city had to offer,