and halfway to the Georgian they passed a pair of interested call girls. Keith and Chase never
made eye contact.
“Have you thought about where this could go? I mean with Ben Adams behind us, and if we get picked up by a few of the festivals?”
Keith tempered his voice. The wind off the ocean was stronger now, and he had to talk loud to be heard.
“I try not to.” Chase shrugged. “I mean, it’s exciting. But almost none of it’s in ink.”
The conversation faded until they’d climbed the green-painted steps to the hotel and walked up to their suite on the second
floor. “You aren’t convinced it’s going to happen, are you?” Keith tossed his things on the small table near the television
set.
“I believe in contracts.” Chase flopped onto the sofa with a long sigh. “Look, I’m not trying to be difficult. Kendall’s full
of great ideas. The LA festival director wants us to submit our film. Stephanie Fitzgerald wants us to produce
Unlocked
. Brandon Paul wants to star in it. I’m having a blast, and everything sounds great … but none of it’s in ink. We still have
a long road ahead.”
“Reminds me of something I heard a director say once.”
“What’s that?”
Keith smiled. “’Movies very badly do not want to be made. It’s the nature of the business.’”
“Exactly.”
“Either way we have a great film.”
Chase took a paperback from his bag and tossed it onto the coffee table.
Unlocked: A Novel
, by Stephanie Fitzgerald. “See?” He grinned at Keith. “I think it could happen. With God all things are possible, right?”
“You’re gonna love the book.”
Unlocked
centered around an autistic boy miraculously changed by the power of music, a boy whose life changed everyone around him
— especially his older teenaged brother. It was a story destined for the big screen. Keith had finished the book a week ago.
“The whole time, I could see Brandon Paul as the boy’s older brother.”
“It’d be huge.” Chase smiled, but he didn’t look excited. “All we need is an option from the author, an A-list screenplay,
a meeting with Brandon Paul’s agent — vice president of the top talent agency in town — and about ten million in the bank.”
“Right.”
“Makes teaching jungle tribes about Jesus look like a picnic.”
Keith laughed and fell into a chair adjacent to the sofa. “Same God.”
He took the remote and flipped on the TV. On the way to ESPN a news story caught his eye and he stopped clicking. Ten high
school kids caught on camera playing drinking games.
“This one’s for YouTube,” one of them shouted out as the shots were poured.
“Yeah, YouTube!” One of the guys grabbed a glass and raised it high. “Winner’s gonna be famous.”
The anchor cut in and explained that before the end of that night one of the kids had died, and another stopped breathing
and suffered brain damage. When the first two teens passed out — with one kid’s video camera still rolling — the other teens
merely laughed and clanked their shot glasses toward the forms on the floor.
Keith pictured Andi, his precious daughter, getting drunk at a frat party last quarter, and he felt suddenly sick to his stomach.
He clicked the Power button and turned to Chase. “Knocks the wind out of you.”
Chase was still staring at the dark TV screen. After a few seconds he leaned back in his seat and exhaled hard. “Saddest story
I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Makes me think of Andi.” Silence fell heavy between them, the story, the reality of it, hitting its mark. Andi still hadn’t
shared all the details of her drunken night, but what if that had been her? Stepping up to the challenge of her peers, downing
one shot glass after another? The boys who had fallen to the floor didn’t look like particularly bad kids. Just kids. Teens
giving in to the culture around them.
“Sometimes I need to remember —” Chase leaned forward, his elbows on his