Hollywood on the Danube

Frieda and Csaba were arguing on the balcony, trying not to be heard by the real estate agent and landlords of the apartment they were considering for the new writer coming to Budapest. 

"Why does he need a microwave?" Csaba cried, his voice gravelly and shrill. "And three bedrooms? I still don't know what was wrong with the last place." 

"It just wasn't suitable," Frieda said. "He's from Hollywood, for God's sake." 

"But all this space for just one person?" 

"Look, it's no bigger than my apartment," she said, which in no way convinced him she'd presented a clear argument, except that apparently Germans and Americans ought to live better than Hungarians. "Besides," she continued, "he's coming a long way from home. Isn't it better to keep him happy, considering we got him for a bargain?" 

He nodded, though not happily. As Executive Producer she outranked him. But the bargain Frieda referred to was more than twice Csaba's pay as producer of Hungary's first nightly prime time soap opera. 

He pranced back into the room, reverting to his customary takeover charm. "It's perfect, don't you think so, Frieda?" he said, and his boss simply smiled. It was important for Csaba to play this charade. With all its renown for hot-blooded women named Gabor, Hungary was still a bastion of male chauvinism. Frieda didn't care so long as she got what she wanted. And this way Csaba kept his manhood intact, in so far as he worried word might get out he was secretly gay. 

At exactly the same time Billy Jacobs cleared customs at Budapest's decaying terminal Ferihegy 1 and pushed his baggage cart outside. He quickly spotted the burly taxi driver, who held a sign that just read BILLY and, after determining the man spoke no English, followed him to his cab. 

In a little while Budapest was in sight and Billy smiled gazing at the wide boulevards and old European look. It was a poor man's Paris, made bleak by the communist era, but by 1998 was recovering rapidly. He was pumped, having taken to heart his shrink's plea that he accept and enjoy this turn in his fortune. It was still difficult to imagine his long famine had ended. 

Billy's life had hit the skids. Money tight, jobs scarce, two ex-wives, and a girlfriend who dumped him for a muscle bound lifeguard near the Venice pier. He was seriously thinking of giving Dr. Kevorkian a call. 

His friends were few. The fate of a declining career in the town of tinsel. Nobody cops to that, but suddenly the invitations slow down, the phone calls are rare, and there's a penchant for trashing the answering machine to relieve the aching sensation of coming home, expectations high, only to see the red light frozen still, nary a flicker to suggest someone called to find out how he was. Or that his agent called to offer him a job -- that is if he still had an agent, which he hadn't for awhile. 

Weekly trips to the Beverly Hills library to read the trade papers for free. Occasional temp jobs to pay the bills. Unemployment checks to get him through the weeks he wasn't even given the chance to demonstrate his prowess with MS Word. 

Billy was nonetheless determined to pursue a comeback at thirty-eight. If he couldn't get work in Hollywood, he'd ply his trade elsewhere. His credits, while ancient history in the States, were current news in the rest of the world. 

Which is why the ad jumped out at him.

Writers Wanted in Europe

to Edit and Train Foreign Nationals.

Billy thought he could do it. The money wasn't as good as on American soil, but one half or one third was better than zip. So he sent in his résumé and figured, like most things, nothing would come of it.