It Chooses You - Miranda July [19]
RON
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SIXTY-SEVEN-PIECE ART SET
$65
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WOODLAND HILLS
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Around this time it was kindly suggested to me that what I really needed was not a two-hundredth draft of The Future, but a movie star in a lead role to reassure potential investors. This was troubling because I already had people in mind for Jason and for Marshall, the man my character has an affair with. They were incredible actors who had had small parts in big movies and big parts in movies no one had seen. I tried to point out that I hadn’t cast stars in my first movie either, and that had worked out fine. But it didn’t matter, because that was 2005. You wouldn’t be able to make your first movie now, they said ominously. Which made me feel like the recession might be able to go back in time and take apart Me and You and Everyone We Know, un-finance it, un-shoot it, un-edit it.
I began trying to think of middle-aged TV and movie stars to play Marshall. I felt most comfortable with the thought of a “comeback,” so I tried to remember who the leading men were when I was a child, and then I looked them up to see where they were now. Generally speaking, it was a motley demographic. These men had swelled up; often they had abused their wives or drugs, many had mug shots, and very few of them seemed like they would “get me.” Which was appealing, because it was what the role called for – someone unlikely, almost unthinkable. And meanwhile I continued calling PennySaver sellers; in fact I became more resolute about my interviews, more rebelliously determined to continue them now that I had “real” meetings, with actors.
Ron tried to convince me to interview him over the phone; he said he had his reasons for not wanting me to come over. But then he suddenly changed his mind and gave me his address. As I knocked on the door I braced myself for facelessness, or no head, or a head but no body, a head on wheels. But Ron had a body with a head and even a baseball hat. He was the most average person I’d ever seen. In preparation for our meeting, he had laid out items all over the bed and floor, brand-new books and DVDs and a sixty-seven-piece art set. They were mostly for children – Mrs. Doubtfire was in attendance, as was Hop on Pop – and they all seemed vaguely ill-gotten. The apartment was small, and he sauntered around setting up chairs for us.
Ron:
I went through a little bit of trouble to take some stuff out of my closet and throw it on here for you.
Miranda:
Yeah, thank you.
Ron:
Not much trouble. Just a little.
Miranda:
Well, I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time. What did you say you do for a living?
Ron:
I’m a corporate owner.
Miranda:
Okay. Can you elaborate on that?
Ron:
I run a financial-investment corporation. I use margin – I use the money from the banks, and then I take the money from the brokerage room at eight or nine percent only for each day that I use it. If you borrow it for a day and you sell the stock the same day – this is what people don’t know – if you have ten thousand dollars, you can borrow ten thousand dollars from the brokerage firm, and then that’s twenty thousand dollars. You can use that twenty thousand dollars that day and sell it the same day, and the ten thousand dollars you borrowed from the brokerage firm, you don’t pay any interest.
Miranda:
Okay.
I’m not especially terrific with numbers, so it was as if he’d just thrown some confetti in the air and called it words. I tried to listen harder – maybe I would really learn something here. Maybe he could explain taxes to me later.
Ron:
If you hold it overnight, you owe them that money for one day, nine percent interest for just a day divided by three hundred sixty-five. So it’s almost like pennies.
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
It adds up if you hold it for weeks and months.
Miranda:
Right, I see.
Ron:
You see what I’m saying?
Miranda:
Yeah.
Ron:
I’m a numbers person. I’ve always been good with numbers.