“Come on out, you sonofabitch,” he was yelling to somebody. By now, if the movie had been working, the audience would have been yelling and screaming, wild with blood-lust. But despite the over-amped soundtrack, nobody was yelling, because nobody gave a damn. The movie was dying on its feet.
Another wave of nausea rose up in him. He reached out to catch hold of something so that he didn’t fall down and his outstretched hand knocked over a cardboard cut-out of Tom Cruise, which toppled backwards and hit a cardboard Titanic, which in turn crashed against a cardboard Mighty Joe Young, and so on and so forth, like a row of candy-colored dominoes, stars falling against ships falling against monsters, all toppling back into a darkness so deep they were an indistinguishable heap.
Luckily, the noise of his vomiting was covered by the din of his own movie. He puked again, twice, until his stomach had nothing left to give up. Then he turned his back on the vomit and the toppled idols, and stepped away to find a lungful of dean air to inhale. The worst was over. He lit his cigarette, which helped settle his stomach, and rather than returning inside, where the picture was two minutes from finishing, he walked along side of the building until he found a patch of street-light where he could assess himself. He was lucky. His suit was unspattered. There was a spot of vomit on his shoes, but he cleaned it off with his handkerchief (which he tossed away) and then sprayed his tongue and throat with wintergreen breath-cleanser. His hair was cropped short (that was the way it was in the movie, and he’d kept the style for public appearances), so he had no fear that it was out of place. He probably looked a little pale, but what the hell? Pale was in.
There was a gate close to the front of the building, guarded by a security officer. She recognized Todd immediately, and unlocked the gate.
“Getting out before it gets too crazy?” she said to him. He smiled and nodded. “You want an escort to your car?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
One of the executive producers, an over-eager Englishman called George Dipper, with whom Todd had never worked before, was standing on the red carpet, his presence ignored by the press, who were standing around chatting to one another, or checking their cameras before the luminaries reappeared. George caught Todd’s eye, and hurried over, dragging on his own cigarette as though his life depended on its nicotine content.
There was scattered applause from inside, which quickly died away.
The picture was over.
“I think it played brilliantly,” George said, his eyes begging for a syllable of agreement. “They were with us all the way. Don’t you think so?”
“It was fine,” Todd said, without commitment.
“Forty million, the first weekend.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“You don’t think we’ll do forty?”
“I think it’ll do fine.”
George’s face lit up. Todd Pickett, the man he’d paid twenty million dollars to (plus a sizable portion of the back-end) was declaring it fine. God was in His Heaven. For a terrible moment Todd thought the man was going to weep with relief.
“At least there’s nothing big opening against it,” Todd said, “So we’ve got one weekend clear.”
“And your fans are loyal,” George said. Again, the desperation in the eyes.
Todd couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.
“I’m just goin’ to make a quick getaway,” Todd said, glancing towards the theater doors.
The first of the crowd were emerging. If the expressions on the first five faces he scanned were an omen, his instincts were right: they did not have a hit. He turned his back on the crowd, telling George he’d see him later.
“You are coming to the party?” George said, hanging on to him as he headed down the carpet.
Where was Marco? Todd thought. Trusty Marco, who was always there when he was needed. “Yes, I’ll pop in later,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at George to reassure him.
In the seconds since he’d turned away the audience spilling from the theatre door had jumped from five to a hundred. Half of them saw him. In just a few seconds they’d be surrounding him, yelling his name, telling him they loved this and they hated that, touching him, pulling on him —