that weird visit from my sister I had written off Enschede and all its ghosts once and for all. I left Holland in 2000, I didn’tfollow the news, had no contact with Dutch people, and after leaving Boudewijn and Mike didn’t even speak the language anymore. My links to the mother country had been severed. And I wanted to keep it that way.
So in that sense it was a good thing there was big news waiting for me on Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Even before I closed my office door behind me, reception put me through to Víctor Sotomayor’s assistant. What I was hoping for, what we all had been hoping for the past week, happened: the sale went through, there was a deal, for $16.3 million we could call ourselves the owners of the Los Angeles Barracks. Woohoo, party time.
Rusty stormed in and kissed me like it was New Year’s Eve, and five minutes later we were standing there in the old lobby, all fifty of us, drinking a toast to our new premises. Rusty, who had nudged me up the staircase a couple of steps, reached over to refill my glass at least three times from one of the gold bottles of champagne we’d been keeping chilled all week. “Here,” he roared in his nasal West Coast Irish accent, “in return for all the sleepless nights you’ve cost me.” Then he drew everyone’s attention to me. “Friends,” he declared nervously, “a toast to
us
. A toast to the success of the Barracks. A toast to future colleagues. But first and foremost, a toast to Joy. This amazing woman here”—he shook my hip with his free hand, so that I had to grab the wobbly wooden banister for support—“has put us, shall I say, on the cutting edge.”
He then nearly pulled me off the stairs and, in addition to two kisses, gave me the floor. Speeches still made him panicky, even after all his years as company director. It really was something, all those faces looking up at me. Cameramen, directors, make-up artists, the IT folks, a few actors in white bathrobes with half-made-up faces. Dedicated, loyal, eager, often decently educated loners, packed together into the wood-paneled lobby ofour creaking Victorian manor house in the middle of Studio City (which Rusty, ever since I wanted to leave and he didn’t, insisted on calling “Hollywood”). I explained to them one last time why the L.A. Barracks was going to make the difference. I repeated my promise that a year from now we would be the world’s biggest player. And I have to admit: it felt like a personal triumph, I had pulled this off single-handedly, and for a whole hour I didn’t give Aaron’s live grenade a moment’s thought. I was tickled pink that I had managed to get not one, but
two
pig-headed men—Rusty himself, and then Sotomayor on top of it—to listen to me.
Of course, the whole thing still gave Rusty pause; $16.3 million was, even for Rusty Wells, a shitload of money, tenfold his biggest investment ever. “Joy,” he would sigh when, at the end of a workday, I launched into my umpteenth sales pitch for the Barracks, “do you realize how much I love Hollywood? And do you have any idea what it means for a boy from Belfast to earn his living a stone’s throw from MGM?” “You want a tissue?” I would answer, knowing full well we were not hurting for money. This old pile, built in the late nineteenth century by British immigrants who for decades had run it as a family hotel, had charm; its twenty-four irregularly shaped rooms were spread over three uneven, staggered, moldy-smelling floors. Jade-green lampshades hung in the hallways like floppy turbans, the reception desk shone like a Steinway, the lobby gave you the impression that Paul Newman and Robert Redford were somewhere upstairs smoking cigars in a clawfoot bathtub. Rusty had shelled out a million bucks for it back in 2001 and brought in a motley nine-man crew who sort of knew how to put a film together. But that was then. Nowadays the gray-slate roofs and blue-painted bay windows nearly caved in when all fifty
So in that sense it was a good thing there was big news waiting for me on Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Even before I closed my office door behind me, reception put me through to Víctor Sotomayor’s assistant. What I was hoping for, what we all had been hoping for the past week, happened: the sale went through, there was a deal, for $16.3 million we could call ourselves the owners of the Los Angeles Barracks. Woohoo, party time.
Rusty stormed in and kissed me like it was New Year’s Eve, and five minutes later we were standing there in the old lobby, all fifty of us, drinking a toast to our new premises. Rusty, who had nudged me up the staircase a couple of steps, reached over to refill my glass at least three times from one of the gold bottles of champagne we’d been keeping chilled all week. “Here,” he roared in his nasal West Coast Irish accent, “in return for all the sleepless nights you’ve cost me.” Then he drew everyone’s attention to me. “Friends,” he declared nervously, “a toast to
us
. A toast to the success of the Barracks. A toast to future colleagues. But first and foremost, a toast to Joy. This amazing woman here”—he shook my hip with his free hand, so that I had to grab the wobbly wooden banister for support—“has put us, shall I say, on the cutting edge.”
He then nearly pulled me off the stairs and, in addition to two kisses, gave me the floor. Speeches still made him panicky, even after all his years as company director. It really was something, all those faces looking up at me. Cameramen, directors, make-up artists, the IT folks, a few actors in white bathrobes with half-made-up faces. Dedicated, loyal, eager, often decently educated loners, packed together into the wood-paneled lobby ofour creaking Victorian manor house in the middle of Studio City (which Rusty, ever since I wanted to leave and he didn’t, insisted on calling “Hollywood”). I explained to them one last time why the L.A. Barracks was going to make the difference. I repeated my promise that a year from now we would be the world’s biggest player. And I have to admit: it felt like a personal triumph, I had pulled this off single-handedly, and for a whole hour I didn’t give Aaron’s live grenade a moment’s thought. I was tickled pink that I had managed to get not one, but
two
pig-headed men—Rusty himself, and then Sotomayor on top of it—to listen to me.
Of course, the whole thing still gave Rusty pause; $16.3 million was, even for Rusty Wells, a shitload of money, tenfold his biggest investment ever. “Joy,” he would sigh when, at the end of a workday, I launched into my umpteenth sales pitch for the Barracks, “do you realize how much I love Hollywood? And do you have any idea what it means for a boy from Belfast to earn his living a stone’s throw from MGM?” “You want a tissue?” I would answer, knowing full well we were not hurting for money. This old pile, built in the late nineteenth century by British immigrants who for decades had run it as a family hotel, had charm; its twenty-four irregularly shaped rooms were spread over three uneven, staggered, moldy-smelling floors. Jade-green lampshades hung in the hallways like floppy turbans, the reception desk shone like a Steinway, the lobby gave you the impression that Paul Newman and Robert Redford were somewhere upstairs smoking cigars in a clawfoot bathtub. Rusty had shelled out a million bucks for it back in 2001 and brought in a motley nine-man crew who sort of knew how to put a film together. But that was then. Nowadays the gray-slate roofs and blue-painted bay windows nearly caved in when all fifty
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