Free West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan Page A

neck. The man realizes that the rope attached to the noose runs across the room and out the door of his apartment and down the stairs of his building, so he gets up and follows it in his pajamas. Outside, the man sees the rope goes to all the places he frequents—the newsstand, the grocery, the tavern—crossing and recrossing the street so cars and buses and trolleys run over yet never sever it. The rope wraps pythonlike around light poles and fire hydrants and mailboxes. So far that was all he had, but the possibilities were legion, and driving to work, he happily searched La Cienega for details to use.
    His second week at Metro his car had been towed. Eddie Knopf had neglected to tell him parking was a privilege of the stars. Since then he’d found a dirt lot across the boulevard for fifteen cents which the day players used, entering the side gate each morning with the hopeful hordes. Unlike all of his hall mates except Oppy, who never seemed to leave, he was punctual. Eddie’s door was closed, but as he walked past he liked to believe his diligence was being tallied toward some future reward. In his Frigidaire of an office he lifted a brace of Cokes out of his briefcase and set them next to the air vent, then sat down at his desk with pencil and paper to ply his trade, shivering like Bob Cratchit.
    A Yank at Oxford
was a patch job. A simple fish-out-of-water conceit with high-toned scenery, the original novel had been improved upon by a succession of writers responding to producers’ notes, adding larger and larger climaxes to satisfy some crude concept of drama. It was all fistfights and mistaken identities, an insult to the most casual moviegoer, let alone the dons of Oxford. Beyond the problem of Robert Taylor trying to play twenty years younger, who would buy, for instance, that any student, no matter how drunk, would be fool enough to sucker punch the dean of students at a party, then accuse his rival and, merely because he was English, be believed? Or that our hero’s girl, who knew he was innocent, would break off with him, only to return, cheering him to victory during the big finale of the track meet? It made no sense, yet because it was his first assignment, he threw himself at these absurd scenes, trying to find a hidden inner logic that might knit them together.
    â€œYou can’t spin gold out of shit,” Dottie said, leveling a scathing look at Alan, and though it wasn’t lunchtime, Scott wondered if she was drunk.
    â€œWhat did they ask for?” Alan asked.
    Eddie had told him to punch up Robert Taylor’s dialogue, make it tougher, snappier.
    â€œThen do that,” Alan said.
    He did, slowly going through the whole script, pacing, playing Taylor’s scenes to the boulevard and the pictures on the wall, and gradually it began to take shape. The story didn’t need to be consistent, only the hero. Everyone and everything else existed merely to reveal his true character, which, at the end of the picture, after the obfuscating plot, proved to be that of the star himself.
    â€œWe need more of the girl,” Eddie said during their first story conference. “Forget the set-up, forget him—it’s a romance. That’s gotta come first. We don’t got that, we got bupkis.”
    Because he saw Sheilah as the girl, he thought it already worked. He studied the scenes between them coldly and discovered he was wrong. She was shy and bookish, a don’s daughter despite her good looks. She had none of Sheilah’s charm or elusiveness, none of her toughness. To remedy that, he made her a fencer, introducing her in a new scene. Now they met cute in the gym. Walking along, the hero snared an errant foil she’d struck from an opponent’s hand. He noticed her raven hair fanning out behind her visor and waited, as she disarmed her opponent again, to catch a glimpse of her face. When he’d finished the scene, he was pleased. The delay would make