Manhattan Is My Beat

Indies. What do you need to know?”
    “I need to find the screenwriter.”
    “What studio made it?”
    “Metropolitan.”
    He nodded. “Good old Metro. Why don’t you just call ‘em up and ask?”
    “They’re still around?”
    “Oh, they’re like everybody else nowadays, owned by some big entertainment conglomerate. But, yeah, they’re still around.”
    “And somebody there’d know where the writer is now?”
    “Be your best bet. Screen Writers Guild probably won’t give out any information about members. Hell, I were you, I wouldn’t even call; I’d just go pay ‘em a visit.”
    Rune paid. He charged her a nickel for the pie. She winked her thanks. Then said, “Can’t afford to fly out to L.A.”
    “Take a subway, it’s cheaper.”
    “You need a hell of a lot of transfers,” Rune said.
    “The Manhattan office, darling.”
    “Metro has an office here?”
    “Sure. All the studios do. Oh, the East Coast office wants to rip the throat out of the West Coast office and vice versa but they’re still part of the same company. They’re that big building on Central Park West. You must’ve seen it.”
    “Oh, like I
ever
go uptown.”

     
    Awesome.
    The corporate office building of the Entertainment Corporation of America, proud owner of Metropolitan Pictures.
    Forty stories overlooking Central Park. A
single
company. Rune couldn’t imagine having twenty stories of fellow workers above you and twenty stories below. (She tried to imagine forty stories of Washington Square Video, filled with Tonys and Eddies and Frankie Greeks. It was scary.)
    She wondered if all the Metro employees ate together in a single cafeteria? Did they all go on a company picnic, taking over Central Park for the day?
    Waiting for the guard to get off the phone, she also wondered if someone would see her and think she was an actress and maybe pull her onto a soundstage and throw a script into her hand….
    Though as she flipped through the company’s annual report she realized that that probably wouldn’t be happening because this wasn’t the
filmmaking
part of the studio. The New York office of Metro did only financing, licensing, advertising, promotion, and public relations. No casting or filming. But that was all right; her life was a little too busy just then for a career change that’d take her to Hollywood.
    The guard handed her a pass and told her to take the express elevator to thirty-two.
    “Express?” Rune said. Grinning.
Excellent!
    Her ears popped in the absolutely silent, carpeted elevator. In twenty seconds she was stepping off on the thirty-second floor, ignoring the receptionist and walking straight to the ceiling-to-floor window that offered an awesome view of Central Park, Harlem, the Bronx, Westchester, and the ends of the earth.
    Rune was hypnotized.
    “May I help you?” the receptionist asked three times before Rune turned around.
    “If I worked here I’d never get any work done,” Rune murmured.
    “Then you wouldn’t be working here very long.”
    Reluctantly she pried herself away from the window. “This is the view you’d have if you flew to work on a pterodactyl.” The woman stared. Rune explained, “That’s a flying dinosaur.” Still silence. Try being adult, Rune warned herself. She smiled. “Hi. My name’s Rune. I’m here to see Mr. Weinhoff.”
    The receptionist looked at a chart on a clipboard. “Follow me.” She led her down a quiet corridor.
    On the walls were posters of some of the studio’s older movies. She paused to touch the crisp, wrinkled paper delicately. Farther down the hall were posters of newer films. The ads for movies hadn’t changed much over the years. A sexy picture of the hero or heroine, the title, some really stupid line.
    He was looking for peace, she was looking for escape. Together, they found the greatest adventure of their lives
.
    She’d seen the action movie
that
line referred to. And if the story had been their greatest adventure, well, then those characters’d been leading some totally bargain-basement lives.
    Rune paused for one last aerial view of the Magic Kingdom, then followed the receptionist down a narrow hallway.
    Betting herself that Mr. Weinhoff’s would be one totally scandalous office. A corner one, looking north and west. With a bar and a couch. Maybe he’d be homesick for California so what he’d insisted they do to keep him happy was to put a lot of palm trees around the room. A marble desk. A leather couch. A bar, of