about this milestone age. “So many candles on the cake,” she laughed sarcastically, but I could hear her thoughts: I haven’t accomplished enough yet, I haven’t done enough yet, I haven’t put my mark on the world. I knew because I had the same thoughts, five months ago, when I turned thirty-three.
Allison was the sister of one of Wendy’s friends. She claimed she was dragged to this party, her sister insisted she get out and meet new people. She had just returned from two tours in the Middle East, stationed both in Afghanistan and Iraq. She was Army.
I was taken with her. She was tall, fit, with piercing blue eyes and a pointed jaw. Blonde hair pulled back in a tail. She had the best posture I had ever seen on a woman, and I knew that was the Army. She was twenty-seven.
She gave me her number and I played the rules and waited three days to call her. “Took your time, Mr. Thompson,” she said. She agreed to meet me for dinner that night.
We had Italian in a small cozy joint I knew in West Hollywood. I told her I was a screen and TV writer, that I had two independent films under my belt and had sold a pilot that never made it test on the air.
“They paid you for it,” she said, “but it was never shown?”
“Paid well,” I said; “that’s the nature of the business.”
“Tell me. I have no idea how it works.”
I was more than pleased to talk about my world. “Every year the networks and cables buy, say, 80-100 TV ideas. You go in and pitch the idea, write a three-to-four-page proposal, what they call a leave behind. If the execs like it, they buy it, you write the pilot before Christmas. Over the holidays, these execs read the 80-100 pilots they bought anywhere from $50-100,000 each, and decide which ones to go forward with and shoot the test pilot. Which will be, say, eighteen or twenty. These get shot, using non-union actors, and go through meetings, and more meetings, and focus groups, and more meetings, then focus groups, then screenings by Madison Avenue suits, and more meetings. The ad guys determine what kind of ads they may sell to match a show, based on what they think the mass public out there wants to watch when they sit in from of the glass teat. Perhaps eight or ten of these will get lucky, the pilot re-shot with union actors, a few known faces and names, and then aired. Numbers of viewers and audience reaction are analyzed. Of those eight or ten, one or two will make it to a full season and go on to season two.”
“How far did yours go?”
“Focus groups. Two million spent, down the drain.”
“Seems like a waste of money.”
“Like I said, nature of the business.”
“I don’t know why my sister wanted to get into the business. She’s a costumer, like your friend Wendy, but she really wants to be a producer of some sort. Doesn’t everyone want to be in the entertainment biz here in L.A.?”
“Of course.”
“Not me.”
“I bet you have some great stories of your Army service that would make a good show,” I said, my head going to story production and life exploitation.
“Not really,” she said with a smile. “I saw no action. I was behind the scenes.”
“You’re still a hero.”
“Oh, please,” she laughed, “do you really think a line like that will get me into bed?”
She was in my bed on the third date, like the rules dictate. She liked it vigorous and rough, the way I suspected a soldier would.
“Hold me until I sleep,” she said.
She didn’t sleep well. She tossed, turned, and hit me in the face, and screamed out a set of numbers that didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry,” she told me.
“It’s okay.”
“I lied when I said I didn’t see any action,” she said. “I was in some pretty hairy battles and lost some close friends in my unit. I was taken hostage for three days by insurgents and a Delta Team rescued us.”
“Wow,” was all I could say.
“I can see it in your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“You’re writing a pilot for a TV show.”
She had me.
“That’s all right,” she said. “It might make an interesting program.”
I kept seeing her. I enjoyed the rough sex, bruises and scratches and bitten lips. Each time we got together, she opened up more, felt comfortable enough to tell me about seeing her friends killed when they drove over improvised explosive devices or their HumVees were hit with RPGs. She told me how many enemy combatants she had shot and killed, and how they had roughed her up while she was a prisoner, and came close to being gang-raped if the Deltas had not burst in.
“I’m thinking of enlisting for a third tour,” she said. “My sister will freak out, but I’m serious.”
“Why? After all that happened.…”
“Because it’s real over there,” she said seriously. “Is it ‘real’ here in Los Angeles? Hollywood? It’s all make-believe; it’s all bullshit illusion, people living fantasies and virtual lives. I don’t want that. I grew up here, I know that life, and it’s not for me. I don’t know what I want, but I never felt more alive in war than I ever have. Here, it is all ‘reel’—spelled like the spool is moving pictures.”
Yet three weeks later, she informed me that she was now having second thoughts about reenlisting because she was officially in love with my sorry dreamer’s ass. I didn’t know how to respond to that; you never do when someone says, “I love you,” and you do not love them back. “No need to answer, TV boy,” she said, fingers on my lower lip, “what I feel has nothing to do with what you feel, and I can wait.” Wait for what? I was fond of her, she was great to talk to and have sex with, but I had only known her for seven weeks and I was more occupied with getting a staff writer’s job on a new hit science-fiction show than getting involved; if I landed the job, I wouldn’t have the free time to see her as I did as an unemployed writer.
Then we had our first big fight. It was about a camping trip she and her sister had planned, a week in Big Bear; her sister was bringing her fiancé and Allison wanted to know if I would join them.
“A week?” I said. “A weekend, maybe, but Allison, I’m sorry, I can’t do a whole week out of the city.”
She wasn’t pleased with my response. “Why not?”
“I can be called into a meeting last minute,” I told her. “I have pitches out there, I’m up for this staff position. I have to be in the city.”
“Company town,” she said with distaste.
“You know how it is. Look, I’ll go two days, Saturday and Sunday.…”
“And leave me alone with my sister and her future husband?”
“The best I can do.”
“Is it because of what I said?” she asked. “Confessing I love you?”
“What? No.”
“I can see it in your eyes.”
“See what?”
“I don’t expect you to love me back yet, but I expect you not to lie to me and pull bullshit!”
“Allison,” I said, and then I got it: her flattened palm into my nose. I felt the blood flow. I don’t know what happened; it was in her eyes: she was not the same person, she was a mad woman, or a soldier, and she had a serious intent to hurt me. She used whatever hand-to-hand combat training she had been given and did some serious damage to my body, hiding her hands and feet, kicking and punching and chopping and screaming, calling me every name in the book.