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Betty rubbed Artie’s back in an up-and-down motion as he read the new script the studio sent in for him to potentially direct. She skimmed it as well, grimacing at how repetitive and dull the dialogue was.
“Yeah, I doubt this is going anywhere.” He shook his head.
Betty chuckled and stood up. “Agreed.” She walked over to the mirror, checking to see if her hair looked socially acceptable to go out with. “I think we should go out today. The beach?”
“We went last week,” Artie half-smiled. “We could just stay home for today.”
“Yeah. Sure, that sounds fine.” Betty nodded, kissed his cheek, and walked out of the room, pointing in the direction of the bathroom.
She had gotten used to this routine. About five years ago she had followed Artie to Tennessee.
to marry the man she had planned to. They stayed there for a week before moving back to Los Angeles. This time in Malibu. No kids yet despite how much Artie begged. Betty wanted to be completely sure that she was mentally and physically ready to carry a child for nine months.
But, honestly. Betty liked Artie well enough to stay. Sure, he didn’t have the attention span for long, deep conversations and barely cared about the symbolism in her writing, let alone read any of her work.
That wasn’t too much of a problem though; her best piece hasn’t seen the light of day in years.
Artie was trustworthy, good-looking, and dedicated to her. What more—or who more—could she ask for? Any other studio hack would bore her to pieces.
Betty spat the minty toothpaste out of her mouth and capped the tube before walking out to join Artie on the couch.
“Have you written anything recently?” Artie sipped on the tea that was previously placed on the coffee table.
“Well, just a few poems.” Betty folded her arms. “I’m not good with metaphors. I’m too direct apparently. Poetry is challenging for me.”
“Mm.” Artie hummed, “Can I read?”
Betty pushed her hair back. “If I can find anything.” She stood up, smirked, and was glad that Artie at least pretended to care about her writing.
She marched over to the kitchen. Opening the drawer and skimming through the notepads searching for a poem that wasn’t all scribbled over and messy. Eventually, she found one she actually was decently proud of.
Send it to the Angels was a short poem she wrote about the time when she and Artie had gone to a local bar close to the beach. There was a blonde boy who looked no younger than twenty-five sitting in the back, ignoring or rather being completely clueless towards the older woman making advances at him. Batting her eyes, playing with her hair, and practically gnawing at his shoulder. And the whole time he just sat staring at the bartender in her black suit and quick hands. Wow!
It was crazy how such small things inspired her to write self-proclaimed masterpieces. That boy was awfully familiar with his sunken angry eyes, rolled-up jacket sleeves, and rings. She would pay more money than she possessed to just get a peek into the older woman's mind. Betty recognized the boy's thoughts a little more for some reason.
She also knew the bartender too. She looked at the blonde a lot more than he looked at her.
“Here, found one.” Betty plopped herself back on the couch. Handing Artie the notepad.
“Send it to the Angels; I yearn for your gaze, I yearn to return.” Artie read aloud. She always got embarrassed when he did that.
“Send it to the Angels; bestow me with the opportunity to charm you another night.
Send it to the Angels; I wish for control to break free of these chains and run freely into your arms.
Send it to the Angels, kiss me with few regrets, and visit me again.
Send it to the Angels; don’t leave me alone with a heart that's not worthy to hold me ever.
The angels will one day remind me of you, and I will feel ounces of regret.” Artie finished, clearing his throat.
Betty stared at him. “So?”
“Betty, it’s great.” Artie put his hand to his head, chuckling. “It’s deep. I like it. Is it related to anything?”
Betty tensed; there was no secret. It was just about people from the local bar. “Made up. Based on a dream.”
“They should turn your dreams into screenplays because you're amazing!” Artie beamed. “Have you written any other poems? I’d love to read.”
“The majority are probably locked away in the attic for good.” Betty joked, “I can go look. It might take a while, though.”
“I haven’t got anywhere to be.” Artie winked.
Betty chuckled, “Alright, I’ll be back.” She walked out of the living room and up the stairs. The attic was on the third floor, and the room was big, with boxes of stored-away money and supplies that the two didn’t find use for yet.
And on the far left side of the room was the box dedicated to Betty's work or abandoned concepts she had thought up. None really got anywhere, barely close to becoming a real picture. Betty promised herself not to be fooled by the negativity that surrounded her in Hollywood. But, Christ. Land of the Pharaohs, The Island Earth, and King Dinosaur were some of the worst movies she had laid her eyes upon. It was like writers these days had no care for being truthful, let alone careful. Writers thought that their audiences were teenagers, while really teens couldn’t care less about a good picture anymore. Full-grown adults barely care now.
Betty unfolded the box and coughed at how much dust flew into her face. She doubted any new poetry would be in there, but it could be nice to relive the last few years of her true motivation.
Shark Eyes and Forward Stopped were two screenplays she had given up on halfway through. In romance movies she had watched, she would always get mad that the lead girl would choose a boy who's more secretive than a trained detective. A boy who you couldn’t read at all. So she wrote her thoughts onto the paper, and Shark Eyes was created. She tried to finish the script, but her brain just shut off. Something about her writing wasn’t truthful. Luckily she was a good enough writer to know that.
Forward Stopped followed a young woman in her first picture. A technicolor film that was practically guaranteed to be groundbreaking. Only, the woman wasn’t as young as she thought. She was pushing thirty, and apparently the directors thought a woman aged twenty-eight had no right to play a twenty-seven-year-old. The woman had been promised the role and rightfully argued, but at that point she had been blacklisted and thrown out. Left with no purpose other than to stare at her wrinkles and sunken skin alone in her manor. It was too dark and extremely anti-Hollywood, so Paramount rejected it. She actually had a lot of faith in that script.
Betty didn’t bother showing them to Artie; he would be as bored as ever.
She looked through the other pieces, nothing catching her eye. She frowned. The one time Artie had paid attention to her passion in months, and she couldn’t find anything she deemed worthy.
She kicked at the box and fell into a coughing fit once again at the dust particles flying up.
She crouched back down to close the box and blinked when she spotted the small fairy door behind where the box previously was placed.
Betty's brows creased. She had lived in that house for five years and hadn’t seen that door before. Did Artie install it when she wasn’t looking?
She pulled open the door handle, and a bunch of papers and binders came spilling out.
“What the—“ Betty mumbled but quickly shut her mouth when a newspaper rolled out of the door and the headline facing upwards read “Young Writer Found Dead in Swimming Pool.”
Betty felt like she was going to vomit. She hadn’t even thought of his name in sixty months. In her eyes, he was thewriter. Metaphors and puzzles for days. He could turn a simple sentence into deep paragraphs of longing, betrayal, and emotions Betty hadn’t even heard of. His only flaw was that he catered to what he thought the audience would want. If only he'd used his own feelings and written about what he saw. But clearly he didn’t get out and see a lot.
The paper, though. She had never read the contents. She heard about his death through Artie a week later while in Clinch. She had hidden in the bathroom sobbing for two hours, claiming she had food poisoning from the seafood they had eaten the night before, but the truth was that the guilt was far more intense than it had been before. She had left him with a crazy woman and expected him to just be fine. Living a life of luxury for the rest of his days.
But, no. She had never figured out his cause of death. She doubted he had killed himself. He preached about his pride countless times, but he could very much be a coward and hurt himself for an easy way out of the movie business. But Betty just never questioned it; it hurt too much to do so.
She picked up the newsletter and read past the headline into the first paragraph.
“A young writer by the name of Joe Gillis was found in the pool of a broken-down mansion on Sunset Boulevard. The man's body had three bullet wounds, two on his back shoulder and one in his abdomen.”
Betty had a sick idea about the person that shot her past lover. She read on.
“Norma Desmond, a silent film star from the late twenties, seems to be the owner of the gun that caused Gillis’ demise. Her bodyguard—an ex-husband and past director—made a statement in her place. He claims that Desmond made a rash decision to protect her career. Norma is set to star in Salomé. An upcoming silent picture that Gillis co-wrote.”
“Oh, Joe.” Betty whimpered, bringing the newspaper to her chest and shutting her eyes. She dropped the paper and looked through the short door again. In the back, there was a white binder. A sense of dread welled up in the bottom of Betty’s stomach.
She picked up the binder and opened it. Tears filled her eyes the second she read the title on the top of the first page.
Dark Windows. Betty's greatest accomplishment. Her best piece. The first and last screenplay she pitched that had actually gotten considered was the script she worked on with Joe. It was all too familiar. She read the first line, and a single tear fell down her cheek.
—
“Boy meets girl.” Joe had said, taking a sip from his diet coke. “That’s a safe beginning.”
Betty eyed him with a sense of anger, not too intense; she was just pissed she had to wait so long at Schwabs that night when she could’ve been at home rewatching The Wizard of Oz with a nice cup of coffee. “It’s basically closing, Mr. Gillis. I don’t take lateness lightly.”
“I originally wasn’t going to show.” Joe folded his arms in front of his chest. “I would rather not be meeting here no matter the time. I’m a busy guy.”
“A busy guy who's over three hundred dollars in debt? You need work, Gillis.” Betty shot at him; she took pleasure in seeing him wince.
“You wound me, Ms. Schaefer.” He sighed, “Right. So, Dark Windows. Why? Why some throwaway play?”
“It’s one of the few things you wrote that shows promise.” Betty said.
“Nothing else. You liked nothing else.” Joe leaned forward, shaking his head like he was questioning any writing abilities he thought he had. “It’s not like I expected you to make me seem perfect like I had hoped.”
Betty blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the new up-and-comer. Every time I see someone—you in this case—hoping to write a well-reviewed masterpiece, I just want to throw them back to wherever they came from.”
“Luckily I was born here.” Betty leaned on her hand, her elbow on the table. “Anyway. Boy meets girl. They hate each other. Well, hate isn’t exactly the right word. He’s a reporter who likes truth and modern retellings; she's a teacher who teaches a subject full of old, outdated terms and ideas.”
“That's history for you.” Joe sipped his coke.
“Mhm. The right word is…” Betty stared at her glass of wine, twirling the straw in between her fingers. “Inverse.”
“Right. Though that’s not what I intended. But I like that better.” Joe admitted. “So they’re opposites. Opposites attract?”
“Precisely. But they don’t end up together.” Betty grimaced.
“Happy endings aren’t realistic. The audience prefers bad endings.”
Betty shook her head. “Realistic doesn’t matter in movies, Gillis. They’re fictional. Stop writing for what you think an audience would want; a bad ending doesn’t automatically make your story deep.”
“Who mentioned anything about deepness? An audience isn’t smart enough to read into a picture. They see it, and they like it; if they hate the ending, they rant about it for days, and the movie gets promoted. I’m not trying to go broke writing a story that's overly positive.” Joe insisted.
“Well. Mr. Gillis, I liked your story and disliked the ending. I mentioned it once, and automatically it’s what promotes the movie? That doesn’t seem right. Stick to the story that's more true than what you believe. The guy gets the girl, and the girl gets the guy. Great story.”
Joe stared into Betty's eyes. His blue gaze disturbed her a bit. She wished to know what he was thinking when he raised his hand and pointed to her.
“Alright. Ms. Schaefer, I give it to you.”
“What do you mean?” Betty blinked.
“Exactly what I said. You like the story, you have a clear idea of what you want, and it’s clear my writing isn’t on par with yours. So, you write it.” Joe shrugged.
“Oh no. I’m not good enough to write on my own. I’m not as experienced as you are. I thought we could write it together.” Betty frowned; she hated the idea of losing the chance to work with this broke writer for some reason.
“I can’t. I’m all…” He paused, “tied up.”
Betty ignored whatever implications hid in that sentence, “Could we not work evenings? Six o’clock in the morning? I could come to your place—“
“Look, Betty, it can’t be done.” She blinked at how much he insisted his house wasn’t available. “We could keep in touch through Artie if you need anything.”
Betty shook her head. “I can’t convince you to change your mind. But I can encourage you to not give up. Arties throwing a New Year's Eve party. I hope to see you there.” She stood up and pulled on her jacket. Leaving him there, eyeing her.
—
Betty looked over the script from start to end. And honestly, she couldn’t find any notable flaws that needed to change. She remembered how Joe sat back and let her write, then corrected any issues with the dialogue or character descriptions that didn’t fit his initial ideas.
It was probably a trick for her to get used to him not being there, sitting back and letting her work. He was probably preparing to run back to Norma at that point. Norma, who had killed him.
Betty pushed the script into the fairy door along with the newspaper. She was done reliving the past, especially since it was too heartbreaking to think of the what-ifs.
Artie was probably waiting for her to bring down some masterpiece poem. She would have to confess to him that she got too busy burying herself in nostalgia.
She couldn’t have Joe Gillis. So she would press her lips softly against Artie Green's. And that would be that.