“I don’t happen to bet that way,” Harry said, “emotionally. I like the Pistons this time ’cause they’re at home, twenty thousand screaming fans on their ass. Also the fact they beat the Lakers four zip in the finals last year.”
He had the guy’s attention; no question about it, waiting to hear about a basketball game that was played more than two months ago.
“You know how I bet it?”
“You went with the Pistons and the Lakers won.”
“I went with the Pistons,” Harry said, “and the Pistons won.”
Right away Chili said, “The point spread.”
Harry sat back in the director’s chair. “The Pistons by three and a half. The score was one-ohtwo to ninety-nine. They won and I lost.”
Now Chili sat back. “That was close. You almost did it.”
The guy showing sympathy. Good. Harry wanted him to get up now, shake hands and leave. But the guy was staring at him again.
“So then you go through your credit line playing blackjack,” Chili said, “chasing what you lost, going double-up to catch up. But when you have to win, Harry, that’s when you lose. Everybody knows that.”
“Whatever you say,” Harry said, tired of talking about it. He yawned. Maybe the guy would take the hint.
But Chili kept at it. He said, “You know what I think? You went in the hole on some kind of deal, so you tried to bet your way out. See, I don’t know anything about your business, Harry, but I know how a guy acts when he’s facing a payment he has to make and he doesn’t have it. You get desperate. I know a guy put his wife out on the street, and she wasn’t bad looking either.”
“You don’t know anything about my business,” Harry said, showing some irritation, “but you don’t mind sticking your nose in it. Tell Dick Allen I’ll cover the markers in the next sixty days, at the most. He doesn’t like it, that’s his problem. First thing in the morning,” Harry said, “I’m gonna call him, the prick. I thought he was a friend of mine.”
Harry paused, wondering whether or not he should ask the guy how he got in the house, and decided he didn’t want to know. The guy says he broke a window—then what? Harry waited. He was tired, irritable, not feeling much of a glow. He said, “We gonna sit here all night or what? You want me to call you a cab?”
The guy, Chili, shook his head. He kept staring, but with a different kind of expression now, more thoughtful, or maybe curious.
“So you make movies, huh?”
“That’s what I do,” Harry said, relieved, not minding the question. “I produce feature motion pictures, no TV. You mentioned Grotesque, that happened to be Grotesque, Part Two Karen Flores was in. She starred in all three of my Slime Creatures releases you might’ve seen.”
The guy, Chili, was nodding as he came forward to lean on the desk.
“I think I got an idea for one, a movie.”
And Harry said, “Yeah? What’s it about?”
4 
At first, all Karen heard was Harry’s side of whatever was going on. As soon as she came out of the bedroom she heard his voice, Harry saying, “Jesus Christ!” and it gave her goose bumps standing in her T-shirt and panties, one hand on the railing that curved around the open upstairs landing. Her eyes held on the foyer, directly below: dark except for a square of light on the floor, coming out of the study. A few minutes passed. Karen was about to step back into the bedroom to call the police when she heard Harry’s voice again, Harry saying, “What people?” and then repeating it, “What people?” With an edge this time, Harry acting tough. A good sign. He wouldn’t use that tone with a burglar. Little Harry Zimm, with his perm, his frizzed hair, loved to act tough. But then Karen began to wonder if Harry could be talking to himself. Harry into the Scotch again.
What people?
Meaning the people he wanted to get out from under, his investors, the undesirables. Harry trying to convince himself there was no problem.
What people?
As if to say, What, those guys? Seeing if he could make the mess he was in seem trivial.
It was possible. He used to talk to himself sometimes when he was loaded, or rewriting dialogue in a script, look at the line and recite it to her aloud, when they were living together. She liked the idea of Harry boozing, trying to reassure himself. She liked it a lot better than thinking someone had broken in and was still in the house. Harry talking to himself made sense.
Until his voice, raised, came out of the study again.
“You heard me.”
Karen listened, holding on to the railing.
That was it. You heard me. Then silence.
Would he say that to himself? She didn’t think so. Unless he was acting out his own kind of scene, imagining what he would like to tell his money guys. You heard me. Harry hating to be controlled, especially by outsiders, people not in the movie business. Harry called investors a necessary evil. Talking to him earlier he had sounded okay . . .
But looked awful.
In the past ten years he’d become a fat little sixty-year-old guy with frizzy hair. The same guy she once thought was a genius because he could shoot a ninety-minute feature in ten days and be looking at a workprint two weeks later . . .
Harry doing the first of the Slime Creatures in Griffith Park when she read for him in bra and panties, he said to give him an idea of her figure, and she got the part. Karen asked him if he did horror or T and A and Harry explained to her the philosophy of ZigZag Productions. “Zig for the maniac, escaped lunatic and dope-crazed biker pictures.” No vampires or werewolves; she would never get bitten or eaten. “Zag for the ones featuring mutations fed on nuclear waste, your slime people, your seven-foot rats, your maggots the size of submarines. But there’s nothing wrong with showing a little skin in either type picture.” She told him if he was talking about full frontal nudity, forget it, she didn’t do porn, hard or soft. If she had to go to bed with him, okay, one time only, but it would have to be an awfully good part. Harry acted insulted. He said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, I’m old enough to be your uncle. But I like your spunk and the way you talk. Where you from, somewhere in Texas?” She told him he was close, Alamogordo, where her dad was a rocket man and her mom was in real estate. Karen told him she left to study drama at New Mexico State, but since coming here had done nothing but wait on tables. Harry said, “Let’s hear you scream.” She gave him a good one and he gave her a big smile saying, “Get ready to be a star.”
Karen was slimed to death within twenty minutes of her first appearance on the screen.
Michael, who had also read for a part and was turned down, told her she was lucky, not have to hang around the set. It was where she first met Michael, when they were casting Slime Creatures fifteen years ago, saw him a few other times after, but they didn’t seriously get it on until Michael was a star and she was living with Harry . . . tired of it, saying mean things and arguing by that time, picking at dumb lines that had never bothered her before. Like the one Harry threw at her in bed, out of nowhere . . .
“Maybe it’s only the wind.”
Knowing she’d remember it.
Instead of giving him a look, she should have said, “What’re you up to, Harry? What can I do for you?”
Make him come out and say it instead of trying to take her down memory lane. It was so obvious. Harry wanted her to use her influence with Michael to set up a meeting. But wanted it to be her idea, happy to do him this favor because she owed him, theoretically, for putting her in pictures, making her a ZigZag Productions star.