Also, movies paid better than books.
And so Shane decided to take his talents to Hollywood. He started by contacting his old writing professor, Gene Pergo, who had tired of being a teacher and ignored essayist and had written a thriller called Night Ravagers （hot-rodding zombies cruise postapocalyptic Los Angeles looking for human survivors to enslave）， selling the film rights for more than he’d made in a decade of academia and small-house publishing, and quitting his teaching job midsemester. At the time, Shane was in the second year of his MFA, and Gene’s defection was what passed for scandal in the program—faculty and students alike huffing at the way Gene shat all over the cathedral of literature.
Shane tracked Professor Pergo down in LA, where he was adapting the second book of what was now a trilogy—Night Ravagers 2: Streets of Reckoning （3-D）。 Gene said that in the last two years, he’d heard from “roughly every student and colleague I ever worked with”; those most scandalized by his literary abdication had been the first to call. Gene gave Shane the name of a film agent, Andrew Dunne, and the titles of screenwriting books by Syd Field and Robert McKee, and, best of all, the chapter on pitching from the producer Michael Deane’s inspiring autobiography, The Deane’s Way: How I Pitched Modern Hollywood to America and How You Can Pitch Success Into Your Life Too. It was a line in Deane’s book—“In the room the only thing you need to believe is yourself. YOU are your story”—that had Shane recalling his old ACT self-confidence, honing his pitch, looking for apartments in LA, even phoning his old literary agent. （Shane: I thought you should know, I am officially done with books. Agent: I’ll inform the Nobel Committee.） And today it all pays off, with Shane’s first-ever pitch to a Hollywood producer, and not just any producer, but Michael Deane himself—or at least Deane’s assistant, Claire Somebody. Today, with Claire Somebody’s help, Shane Wheeler takes the first step out of the dank closet of books into the brightly lit ballroom of film— As soon as he figures out what to wear.
As if on cue, Shane’s mother calls down the stairs: “Your dad’s ready to take you to the airport.” When he doesn’t answer, she tries again: “You don’t want to be late, honey.” Then: “I made French toast.” And: “Are you still deciding what to wear?”
“Just a minute!” Shane calls, and in a burst of frustration—mostly with himself—he kicks at the pile of clothes. In the ensuing explosion of fabric, the perfect outfit seems to float in midair: whisker-washed boot-cut denims and a double-yoke Western snap shirt. Perfect with his double-buckle biker boots. Shane dresses quickly, turns to the mirror, and rolls his sleeve so he can just see the right cross of the T in his tattoo. “Now,” Shane Wheeler says to his dressed self, “let’s go pitch a movie.”
Claire’s Coffee Bean is crowded at seven thirty, every table sporting a sullen white screenwriter in glasses, every pair of glasses aimed at a Mac Pro laptop, every Mac Pro open to a digitized Final Draft script—every table, that is, but the small one in back, where two crisp businessmen in gray suits face an empty chair meant for her.
Claire strides over, her skirt drawing the eyes of the Coffee Bean screenwriters. She hates heels, feels like a shoed horse. She arrives and smiles as they stand. “Hello, James. Hello, Bryan.”
They sit and apologize for taking so long to get back to her, but the rest is just as she imagined—great résumé, wonderful references, impressive interview. They’ve met with the full museum planning board, and after much deliberation （they offered it to someone who passed, she figures） they’ve decided to offer her the job. And with that James nods at Bryan, who slides a manila envelope forward on the little round table. Claire picks up the envelope, opens it a bit, just enough to see the words “Confidentiality Agreement.” Before she can go further, James puts out a cautioning hand. “There is one thing you should know before you look at our offer,” he says, and for the first time one of them breaks eye contact: Bryan, looking around the room to see who might be listening.
Shit. Claire riffles through worst-case scenarios: The pay is in cocaine; she has to kill the interim curator first; it’s a porn film museum— Instead, James says, “Claire, how much do you know about Scientology?”
Ten minutes later—having begged the weekend to think over their generous offer—Claire is driving to work, thinking: This doesn’t change anything, does it? Okay, so her dream film museum is a front for a cult—wait, that’s not fair. She knows Scientologists and they’re no more cultish than the stiff Lutherans on her mother’s side or her father’s secular Jews. But isn’t that how it will be perceived? That she’s managing a museum full of the shit Tom Cruise couldn’t unload at his garage sale?