Hollywood Read Online Free PDF Page B

booze.
YOUNG MAN
Yep.
LUKE
O.K., look, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or nothing but like maybe this shit don’t lead nowhere.
    YOUNG MAN
That’s all right, Luke, don’t worry about me. Just keep them coming.
LUKE
Sure, kid. But ain’t there another part of you somewhere?
YOUNG MAN
Hey, Luke, you ever heard this one? What’s the difference between a chicken’s asshole and a rabbit’s asshole?
LUKE
I don’t want to hear no jokes, man. I want to know: Isn’t there another part of you somewhere?
YOUNG MAN
Well, shit. I was in the 6th grade, I think. The teacher asked us to write something about our most moving experience. And I don’t mean like moving to Denver.
LUKE
Yeah.
YOUNG MAN
Anyhow, I wrote about this frog I found in the garden. He had one of his legs caught in a wire fence. He couldn’t get away. I got his leg out of the wire fence but he still wouldn’t move.
LUKE
(yawning)
Yeah?
YOUNG MAN
So I held him in my lap and talked to him. I told him that I was trapped, that my life was caught in something too. I talked to him for a long time. At last he hopped out of my lap and hopped across the lawn and vanished into some brush. And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.
LUKE
Yeah?
YOUNG MAN
The teacher read it to the class. Everybody cried.
LUKE
Yeah. So?
YOUNG MAN
Well, I thought that someday I might be a writer.
LUKE
(leaning forward)
Kid, you’re nuts!
    I decided that was enough screenplay writing for one night. I just sat by the typer and listened to the music on the radio. I didn’t remember going to bed. But in the morning, I was there.

8

    Vin Marbad came highly recommended by Michael Huntington, my official photographer. Michael snapped me constantly, but so far there had been no large call for these efforts.
    Marbad was a tax consultant. He arrived one night with his briefcase, a dark little man. I had been drinking quietly for some hours, sitting with Sarah while watching a movie on my old black-and-white TV.
    He knocked with a rapid dignity and I let him in, introduced him to Sarah, poured him a wine.
    “Thank you,” he said, taking a sip. “You know, that here in America, if you don’t spend money they are going to take it away.”
    “Yeah? What you want me to do?”
    “Put a payment down on a house.”
    “Huh?”
    “Mortgage payments are tax deductible.”
    “Yeah, what else?”
    “Buy a car. Tax deductible.”
    “All of it?”
    “No, just some. Let me handle that. What we have to do is build you some tax shelters. Look here—”
    Vin Marbad opened his briefcase and slipped out many sheets of paper. He stood up and came toward me with the papers.
    “Real estate. Here, I’ve bought some land in Oregon. This is a tax write-off. There are some acres still available. You can get in now. We look for a 23% appreciation each year. In other words, after four years your money is doubled...”
    “No, no, please sit back down.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t want to buy anything that I can’t see, I don’t want to buy anything that I can’t reach out and touch.”
    “You mean, you don’t trust me?”
    “I just met you.”
    “I have world-wide recommendations!”
    “I always go by my instincts.”
    Vin Marbad spun back toward the couch where he had left his coat; he slipped into it and then with briefcase he rushed to the door, opened it, was out, closed it.
    “You’ve hurt his feelings,” said Sarah. “He’s just trying to show you some ways to save money.”
    “I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.”
    “He wasn’t smoking a pipe.”
    “Well, he looks like a pipe smoker.”
    “You hurt his feelings.”
    “Don’t worry, he’ll be back...”
    The door flung open and there was Vin Marbad. He rushed across the room to his original place on the couch, took off his coat again, placed the briefcase at his feet. He looked at me.
    “Michael