Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard Page A

didn’t have to, but the head of production at Tower had offered her a part. Chili asked if it was a horror movie. A mistake. Karen gave him a look saying she hadn’t screamed since leaving ZigZag and was never going to scream again, even in real life. Chili had noticed the title on the cover of the script, Beth’s Room.
    â€œWhat’s it about?”
    This was what opened her up.
    â€œIt’s about a mother-daughter relationship,” Karen said, already with more life in her tone, “but different than the usual way it’s handled. The daughter, Beth, leaves her yuppie husband after a terrific fight and comes home to live with her mom, Peggy.”
    â€œWhich one’re you?”
    â€œThe mom. I was in high school when I had Beth and now she’s twenty-one. I did get married but the guy, the father, took off right after. So for the next twenty years I devoted my life to raising Beth, working my tail off—but that’s all in the back story, it’s referred to. The picture opens, I’m finally living my own life. I own a successful art gallery, I have a boyfriend, an artist, who’s a few years younger than I am . . . and along comes Beth, wanting to be mothered. Naturally I’m sympathetic, at first, this is my baby . . .”
    â€œShe act sick?”
    â€œShe has migraines.”
    â€œI can hear her,” Chili said. “ ‘Mom, while you’re up, would you get me my pills off the sink in the kitchen?’ “
    Karen was staring at him. She looked back at the road and had to crank the wheel to swerve around a parked car.
    â€œ ‘And bring me a glass of milk, please, and some cookies?’ “
    â€œWarm milk,” Karen said, “with a half ounce of Scotch in it. Did you look at the script?”
    â€œNever saw it before. The daughter, she have a whiney voice?”
    â€œIt could be played that way. It’s a young Sandy Dennis part. You know who I mean?”
    â€œSandy Dennis, sure. The daughter blame the mom for her marriage going to hell?”
    Karen gave him another look. “She accuses me of talking her into getting married before she was ready. And that, of course, adds to my sense of guilt.”
    â€œWhat’d you do you feel guilty about?”
    â€œIt’s not anything I did. It’s more . . . what right do I have to be happy when my daughter’s miserable?”
    â€œYou know the kid’s faking?”
    â€œIt’s not that simple. You have to read it, see the way Beth works on me.”
    â€œYou got a problem.”
    â€œWell, yeah, that’s what the picture’s about.”
    â€œI mean feeling guilty. I think what you oughta do, either give little Beth a kick in the ass or tell her go see a doctor, get her head examined.”
    â€œYou don’t get it,” Karen said. “I’m her mother. I have to come to grips with my maternal feelings.”
    Turning off Doheny, Karen shot through an amber light to swing into the traffic crawling along Sunset.
    â€œPeople have guilt trips laid on them all the time and they accept it, the guilt. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s the way people are.”
    â€œAnywhere along here’s fine,” Chili said, thinking of times he had been asked if he was guilty and not once ever having the urge to say he was. Real-life situations, even facing prison time, were never as emotional as movies. Cops got emotional in movies. He had never met an emotional cop in his life. He liked the way Karen sideslipped the BMW through a stream of cars to pull up at the curb. He thanked her, started to get out and said, “What happens, the kid goes after your boyfriend and that’s when you finally stand up to her?”
    â€œYou’re close,” Karen said.
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    What he liked best, thinking about it, was not so much guessing the ending but the look Karen gave him when he did. The eye contact. For a