Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [44]
As I park, I realize that I’m incredibly exhausted and jittery. But the thought of giving in now—going home, getting in bed, and sleeping this whole thing off—doesn’t seem within the realm of possibilities so instead I go inside and tell a guy who works there that I want gray paint.
He starts bringing out little paint cards with all those different shades on them, asking me if maybe I want a silver-gray or even a greenish gray, and I want to snap his neck. Doesn’t he understand that the exact nuances of color don’t matter, that people only debate between mauve and taupe and baby blue because they don’t have anything better to do?
“I just want gray,” I say, with barely simmering rage. He eyes me nervously, then says he’ll go and mix the paint for me. As I wait for him, my nose starts running and I reach into my purse for one of the wads of Kleenex that I thankfully stashed in there this morning. I wonder if the guy knows I’m high and isn’t in fact “mixing color”—what the hell does he need to mix if I’ve just picked a solid gray color anyway?—but calling to report me somewhere for something. I pick at my cuticles and then file them down with a nail buffer I keep in my purse for this very purpose until he returns—it could be twenty minutes later or it could be two hours—with a can of the paint.
“Do you have paintbrushes?” he asks, and I feel certain this is a test. I shake my head and he picks a paintbrush off the shelf behind him and places it next to the can of paint on the counter. He rings everything up and I pay him with as businesslike a demeanor as I can muster. I dare you, I think as he hands me my change, to think I’m crazy or weird or on drugs. But he just smiles and tells me to have a nice day.
Both painting and writing get put off for the next week or so as I fall into a routine of sorts—going to Holly’s, walking Tiger, picking up his shit and pretending it’s not happening, then coming home and doing some Alex while I figure out my life. I keep telling myself I’ll start my script just as soon as I finish reading Us Weekly, but somehow I never seem to finish reading Us Weekly or, if I do, I’m too high by then and need to do something else to come down, like take a bath or a shot or a ride on the Magic Wand.
Finally—I think on a Thursday but it could actually be a Friday—I get fed up with myself. I glance at my laptop, which is on my bookshelf lying on top of my Hollywood biographies, then walk over and get it out.
Even though I’ve read only a few scripts and don’t really have any idea what I’m doing, I just start writing. I already have Final Draft software on my computer so the dialogue I’m coming up with looks so much like an actual script that I’m instantly motivated. I start crafting a character named Melinda who’s misunderstood and unappreciated and fired from her magazine job. I smoke and do lines and write and think that if I keep going and don’t go to sleep for the next week or so, I could have my script completed and dropped off at Holly’s office in under a month. I have this vague notion that I should probably plan out an actual story but decide that it’s better to just go with the flow and see where it takes me. I can imagine my quote in Variety about it. I started typing and the story just flew out of me, I would say in the article that would detail the bidding war that had ensued over my script.
And there’s no denying the fact that I am flowing. I’m on page fifteen when I hear my next-door neighbor leave for work the next day and when I take my midday break to go to Holly’s, I’ve written almost thirty pages of what I’m convinced is snappy, smart dialogue. Why, I wonder, doesn’t every Hollywood screenwriter just use coke as a