Ragged Point: Death on the Rocks

We exchanged cell numbers and promises to check in with each other to make sure Linda was not Lester's next sacrificial victim.

"TTFN Artie! Keep in touch. And I mean that!" and then she was gone.

She'd left me with a lot to think about.

{?}

By the time that we got home from the party, Linda was feeling pretty frisky and I was in the mood to accommodate her, so we had a rather late night of it. But we both had smiles on our faces when we finally gave up on having any more big "O"s and fell asleep.

So it wasn't until breakfast the following morning that I remembered what Barbara had told me. I was not one of those passive guys who was unwilling to advise his wife of threats to their marital bliss.

"Hey, sweetie, I did want to mention something to you from the party last night," I started.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Lester's wife sat down with me to warn me that she was of the impression that he had the hots for you and that I should keep an eye out," I related to her. Of course, like all wives who feel confident in their abilities to ward off unwelcome suitors, she scoffed at the notion.

"HAHAHA! Oh, Les isn't like that at all. He's never tried to put any moves on me or any of the other women at work. That sort of thing would get around you know. Like the way EVERYBODY knows about... well, some of the other slimeballs.

"And to be honest, Barbara is very possessive and jealous about Les. She must have some terrible insecurities about him. She goes around telling everyone how she 'keeps him on a tight leash," she said, rolling her eyeballs.

"Yeah, she said that to me as well," I confessed. "But she seemed to think that his wandering eye had been particularly been focussed on you lately."

"Hmmm. Well, I'll keep that in mind and let you know if anything changes. I just think that she's wrong about him."

"Is it true that one of the big boys is retiring soon?"

"There's been rumors that Marvin may decide to spend a few of his golden years with his wife instead of at work, but my personal take is that they will have to carry him out feet first before that happens."

It was far past time that I should have asked this question, but I'd never considered what Linda's view of her future at the company was.

"Would you be interested in getting his job if he did retire?"

"Oh sure," she laughed, "but I'm not holding my breath. There are a lot of the other assistants who would try for it too and Les might not even replace him. They could just distribute his work load over two of three of the others instead. That would be more money for them and would prevent a future competitor from getting their foot in the door.

"If you don't mind, though, why do you ask?" she asked, looking rather seriously at me.

"That is what Mrs. Lester said would be the sort to thing he might try to tempt you with if he is pursuing an affair with you. Kind of like Satan tempting Jesus, 'All this I will give you if you bow down and worship me.' Although I suspect if he got you on your knees in front of him, I suspect it wouldn't be the same kind of worship that he would expect," I said with a grin, letting her know I wasn't serious.

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" she laid on me, grinning back at me, "I can play the Bible Quotations too. And I'm not going to take any chances on losing my wonderful husband, lover and friend even if I would gain the whole world!"

On that note, we kissed and got on to some of our weekend chores. I put my worries out of my mind, knowing I could count on my wife to stay out of trouble.

I wondered, after the fact, how many husbands are lulled into a false sense of security by wives reassuring them that they could never be tempted?

{?}

So by now, we all understand the 'motive' factor — greed and power.

The peons at the bottom are manipulated using their greed for money, fame, or status. The guys (and usually it's 'guys') at the top are driven by power. Sometimes it's getting women to put out for them — to show their power over them by sexual, or even physical abuse. And towards other men, it's getting them to kiss their asses in one way or another. (The gays do the same things, just reversed.)

And in all fairness, it's not just Hollywood that's like this. Politics, Corporate America, Sports — you name it, anywhere there is a heirarchy that involves a lot of money and power. Hollywood is just more blatant about it.

But Hollywoodland also creates an environement of 'opportunity.'

Hollywood is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job sort of place. Work is done in fits and starts, in which people sit at home not knowing what to do with themselves for long periods of time, and then find themselves working 15 hour days, sometimes for months when they are actually employed on a project.

It's probably one of the reasons why there are so many divorces in Hollywood. For example — one spouse is working and on set (maybe not even in the same country) while the other is sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. Would it be easy to get bored, go out to lunch with some 'friend' and end up at home screwing each other's eyeballs out? You betcha! Heck, in old Hollywood, some of the top names from the Golden Age had bungaloes on the lot where they could bring back some young star or starlet to boff between scenes!

As it happens, Linda and I generally didn't have that big a problem.

I actually worked from home most of the time, and since I was a full time employee, I was working most of the time — with a couple of extended breaks, like a month or six weeks, each year. Linda, generally, but only GENERALLY, had pretty regular hours as well. Office work most of the time. We also worked close enough that we could have lunch together a couple of times a week.

But there were still the times when meetings went late and there were long periods of time that weren't really accounted for, except by what we told each other.

Some days I did have to go into the office (about 5 miles away from our house) for meetings to go over the scripts, for approvals. During the off-season, we even had offsite retreats where we brainstormed the basic themes and plots for the upcoming episodes and divvied up who would write each episode.

Linda also had some late evening meetings and times when she had to be 'on location.' For example one time she was out late every night for a couple of weeks because the series they were filming was using an 'A-List' star for several episodes during the season. But the big name star only had a month in between other film projects, so they had to get all of his scenes filmed, for the three or four episodes that he was going to be in, during that short time. That meant 15-16 hour days for the entire production team — Linda included. Luckily, that was being done on a sound stage locally and Linda was home every night, exhausted from work.

Still, my point is that couples who work in Hollywood have to have a lot of faith in each other for a marriage to survive.

One thing that I didn't know about was that some of the 'meetings' Linda was having during the day, were one-on-one lunches with Les at fancy, but out of the way, bistros with quiet secluded booths.

No, she wasn't having an affair with him, but he was prep'ing her by getting her comfortable and accustomed to being around him without feeling threatened. Of course she was flattered by his attention — asking for her 'special' input on different aspects of the shows she was working on and starting to hint that she was being groomed to move up in the organization. What she was being groomed for was something else entirely.

It was clever, too. 'Don't tell anyone —even Art, about our meetings. I don't want any rumors to get around that might make people nervous about their positions in the company." Yeah. Did I mention that sometimes Linda was a little gullible.

I did keep in touch with Mrs. Lester — Barbara — though, every now and then we'd call each other and chat. I hadn't bothered for a while, since there didn't seem to be any reason to worry.

Then she called me.

"Art, I'm not sure it's Linda, but Les is acting the way he has before when he is trying to seduce someone."

"Hmmm. I'll keep my eyes open, just like you told me, but I've haven't seen any sign of anything out of the ordinary. Linda has been acting completely normal," I explained.

"Truthfully, Art, I don't know for sure that it is Linda. He may have someone else on his line, but I thought I'd tell you. I'm sorry. I suppose I could spend a bunch of money on a P.I., but eventually Les would see the bills and that would NOT be a good thing!"

We chatted about other things for a couple more minutes before ringing off, but as unlikely as I thought it might be, that night after dinner I decided to talk to Linda.

"No, nothing unusual has been going on," she answered to my question, "Meeting, meetings, and more meetings. But THAT is the normal at this stage in the cycle." She smiled at me and returned a question, "Why do you ask? "

"Oh, no special reason. Just kind of checking in with you. You hadn't mentioned what was going on at work for some time, so I thought I'd ask. By the way — hear any more about Merv possibly retiring?"

"His name is 'Marv'. No, not really, although all of those guys play their cards close to the vest, so even if he was thinking about it, he wouldn't talk about it at work. I do wonder about that though, because when we've been having a staff meetings they've been asking me for more input than they used to. But maybe that's just a sign that they are beginning to trust my judgement now that I've been there a while."

Staff meetings. This was a sin of omission. If she'd told me that these were two-person staff meetings with just her and Lester, my antenna would have gone up. As it was, it sounded benign.

"Oh, by the way, Honey," I remembered to tell her, "next week we have one of those annual retreats to go over the writing plan for next season. Thank heavens — at least we have a 'next season'. The network cut about half the shows down for next year. A lot of unemployed writers on the streets."

"I read about that in the 'Reporter'. Where are you going and when?" she asked.

"Next Thursday, staying overnight Thursday and Friday, but not finishing until Saturday before dinner. They're wrapping it up before dinner so they don't have to buy a bunch of writers all the fancy food and wine that we normally order." I scoffed. "It's going to be a some resort place in Ventura. I'll get you the name to write down in case you need to get a hold of me. Remember that during the days, we turn off the cell phones so they don't interrupt our working sessions. What about you? Do you have anything special scheduled?"

"Not that I know of. Although that isn't really saying much because if anything comes up and we go into 'crisis mode' we could be working half the night. But I don't think that we have anything on the horizon."

"That's good. Say, Honey, you know it's still pretty early and you're looking damn fine? You up to a little messin' around?"

Linda hit me with one of those million-dollar smiles of hers and replied, "Sure, sailor. So what are we waiting for?"

It was off to the races the rest of the night until we fell, mutually exhaused but satisfied with smiles on our faces, to sleep.

I would call myself a clueless husband, except I don't think that at that time there was a clue to be had. It wasn't until the following week that the story began to move towards its tragic end.

— Thursday A.M. — Office of Lester Holder Productions

"What did you say, Linda?" Lester the predator asked when he encountered Linda talking to the blond bimbo receptionist.

"Oh, nothing. I was just telling Alice that Art has one of his periodic 'off-campus' retreats this week."

"Oh really? What is that about?"

"At least once a year all of the script writers for his show go off to some resort and sort out the logistics of who will be writing which episodes, what the plots are — you know, the usual. They take off for a couple of days, turn off their phones, and fight it out amongst themselves," she laughed at the whole notion of Art slamming a fist into another writer over who gets an episode to write that they both wanted.

Lester looked at her as if he had just had a sudden inspiration.

"You know, that's not a bad idea. Thanks for mentioning it. Maybe we should have one, just to try it out some time."

Linda left to return to her office feeling upbeat because she had impressed Les with another idea.

— Thursday A.M. — Ventura, California

I reluctently packed for the short trip up to Ventura — maybe an hour and a half each way in so-so traffic. Reluctently because I hate sleeping in any bed except my own. I had no feelings forshadowing doom or anything. Everything between Linda and me was copacetic as I headed towards my ten-year-old Honda my mind already firmly entrenched in the work ahead of me. I already knew which episodes were 'right' for me — action, violence, murder. Oh yeah! My kind of stuff.

But while my mind was on work, a shit named Les had his mind on play — specifically playing around with my wife.

He didn't make his move until Friday, when I was thoroughly enmeshed in the season ahead of crime and punishment.

— Friday Late Morning — Offices of Lester Holder Productions

Linda's phone rang at about 11:00. So it started.

"Hey, Linda. Les. Remember that suggestion you had about doing a company retreat?"

Linda was pleased that he had made it 'her' idea, when all she'd done was relate what Art's group was doing.

"Sure. Why?"

"Let's meet for an early lunch. I want to discuss it with you."

"OK. Give me 15-minutes to clear off my desk."

Knowing I was out of town, ol' Les picked a place not far from Linda's and my house — one that got you fed and out fairly quickly as well.

After all of the preliminaries were out of the way, Les got to his plan.

"Tell you what, Linda. Why don't you go home and pack an overnight bag, then you and I can run up the coast to a place I'd like to look over as a possible venue. I'd really like you to look the facilities over and give me your opinion on it. Let Art know you'll be working late tonight — but you'll be back before he gets home tomorrow."

OK, so this sounds a little suspicious to you or me, but it really wasn't so completely unusual for something like this to come up and after all, Les had never tried to put the moves on her, right? The wily old man had bided his time, only now, with me out of the way at least temporarily, was the time to strike.

Needless to say, about 30 minutes later, Linda was stowing her overnight bag in the trunk of his BMW and climbing in to check out a resort hotel up north at Ragged Point. From Studio City it is more than a four-hour drive north, so getting a room and staying overnight made sense. But Linda was thinking one room for her and another for Les.

A bunch of the other writers smoked, so we had to take smoking breaks every so often. I would take advantage of that break to check my texts and make any calls that I needed to, before I had to turn my phone off again. A little after one o'clock the nicotine addiction forced us out of the rooms we'd been meeting in for a 15 minute break. That was when Barbara finally got through on my phone.

"Oh for god's sake, Art. Where have you been? Why didn't you pick up your phone?"

"Hold on, Barbara. I'm at a writer's retreat. We keep our phones off when we're working. But enough of that — what's the big emergency?"

"Remember I've warned you about Les wanting to 'do' Linda? Well, they took off a little after noon and are driving up to that resort hotel at Ragged Point! It's about 30 miles north of Cambria..."

"Barbara — I know where Ragged Point is. But what the hell is going on?"

"You and your retreat gave him the idea. He's taking Linda to 'look over' the hotel as a venue for a company retreat. They're going to be overnight — but he only has one room reserved. A suite, with an outdoor hot tub, right on the top, overlooking the ocean."

"How the hell do you know this stuff, Barbara?"

"Simple. I bribe his P.A. to spy on him. She always knows where he is. He had her make the reservations and told her not to expect him or Linda back today before quiting time. Oh yeah, and he made early dinner reservations at 'Coeur de la Côte' in Cambria."

"Christ!"

"So you got any ideas?"

"No. But I'll think about it on my way up there. If nothing else I'll barge in on them and try to stop anything before it begins."

"Not a great plan, but better than nothing. OK, Art, you should get going ASAP. And keep me in the loop, OK?" Barbara plead.

"Sure. I'll let you know what happens."

Boy, how plans change.

I grabbed my boss as everyone was going back into the meeting room.

"Phil, I hate to ask this, but I'm feeling like I'm about to die. I think I should go home before I get too sick to drive. I think it may be the flu that's been going around."

"Your kidding, Art! The flu? Keep away from me. Yes, go home. I'll update you on Monday. Just pray you haven't given whatever you've come down with to the rest of us. We've got long memories and we hold grudges!" And with that he turned and joined the others.

I returned to my room and shoved my clothes and toiletries into my bag and checked out in about 10 minutes. Then I got in my car — but I didn't turn south towards L.A. and Studio City. I turned north towards San Luis Obispo.

— Friday 5:00 P.M. — Cambria, California

The drive from L.A. had been pretty good for the most part. Traffic in all of the usual places, but by getting out as early as they did, Linda and Les had made good time.

As they stopped in Cambria at the restaurant, Linda was confused.

"Les? Why are we stopping here? Why don't we just go up to the resort, take a look and get it over with? It was still fairly early, around 5:00 PM, so early for dinner, but it was going to get too dark to see the grounds if they waited much longer.

Less looked at Linda before answering, "A couple of reasons. First, this is my favorite place to eat up here, bar none; second, because I want to discuss a few things with you before we arrive there; and finally, we don't have to rush, because we can stay up there and see the outdoor facilities in the morning. This evening, we'll stick to checking out the meeting rooms.

They got out of the car and walked up onto the sidewalk and into the restaurant.

Linda had to admit the the 'Coeur de la Côte' lived up to it's hype — with great food and service. She and Les started off with a cocktail and when they ordered their prix fixe dinner, they also ordered a flight of wines that the chef had selected to go with each dish. Five courses, no less.

By the time that desert had arrived, Linda was pleasently buzzed, but by no means drunk or out of control. Les had put off talking business until they were finished eating.

"OK, Linda, now down to business.

"There is going to be an open slot to replace Marv as a producer and partner in the firm. Are you interested?"

"Absolutely, Les," Linda stated firmly.

"I mean to ask, are you totally committed to getting this spot? Or are you just another half-assed kid who feels entitled to be a power player in Hollywood. Because, understand that whoever gets this job will be a power player — a mensch. Someone who, when they talk, eveyone in the room listens. There are literally thousands of people around Hollywood who would kill for this opportunity," Les continued.

"Yes, I'm as committed as I can be. I've proven myself and worked my way up, and I think that I can be the person to fill this role in the firm," she replied.

"To be honest," Les said in a low tone, "I'm just not sure that you are willing to be a grown-up and see the world the way it is. A world where sometimes you do what you have to; and that includes what you have to do to get the job in the first place. I'm not sure that you've got that kind of ruthlessness."