Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 17

"They should have," Shane grumbled.

"Well, you know, this is the real world," Carmen said. "Much as I hate to admit it. But Hollywood is a company town, and its business is making and selling movies and TV shows and music. You know how many TV pilots are made every year? Hundreds. And when they die, when they get cancelled, there's no announcement, no press conference. What this town does is it lets bad movies and bad TV shows die very quiet deaths, if they can get away with it. And that's what happened to Lez Girls. The project died, and they let it, and there was no funeral. That's Hollywood. That's just the way it is. Happens every day, and ten times a week. 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.'"

"Huh?" Kit said.

"Sorry," Carmen said. "It's a line from a movie."

"Oh, right. I should have known, you being the movie gal," Kit said. "Speaking of which, was Jenny's movie really that bad? Tina worked on it really hard."

"I know she did," Carmen said. "The thing is, we'll never know. From what I understand, they never got to the editing stage. All the stuff in the cans, they were the dailies, all the unassembled pieces. For all we know, maybe some editing genius could have cut it together and made a half decent flick out of it. At least until we come to the problem of the ending being different. But who knows? Maybe it's brilliant. Shane, do you know if they ever shot Jenny's original ending?"

"I don't have any idea," Shane said. "Jenny and I walked out the day Adele took over, so I don't know what they shot afterward. I never paid much attention to what they were shooting, anyway. I came in, did hair, hung out, and went home."

Lauren glanced at her watch. "Kit, we've taken a lot of your time already, and I'm very grateful. But before we go, I have to ask you the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Given a lot of new information you may still need to process on top of a couple of years to think about it, who do you think killed Jenny? Tell us what you think."

"What do I think? That ain't too hard. Not Bette, not Tina. Not Alice. Not Shane. Not Helena. I can't say about Max, but I admit I didn't care for her much. Him. Whatever. That's about all the ones I know. I never met this Adele at the studio, or the other studio people. I don't think I ever met Niki, but everybody say she cray. So if I had to say somebody who was there, my money'd be on Max. But still, coulda been somebody else. Sorry if that's not helpful. Oh, I just remembered, one other person."

"Who's that?"

"Me. But I didn't do it, either.

"Well, I hate to tell you this, Kit," Lauren said, "but you were never high on our list in the first place."

"I suppose that's good news," Kit said. "We outta here now?"

"Yep, soon as you bring us the check," Lauren said.

"Check? You be jokin', right, white girl?"

"I thought you said the only things free at The Planet were hugs and your good advice."

"I did say that, and you girls better git on the road 'fore I change my mind and Colleen brings you back a check for hunnert and ninety-seven dollars and fifty-four cents. That's food, gratuity and advice."

They laughed, got their hugs and left.