Marcus checked the address on the slip of paper in his hand and looked up at the house sitting at the end of a steep flight of flagstone steps bordered by red-and-white-striped petunias. Yep, this was the place, all right.
His birthday party had been like Garden parties of old: an all-nighter that ended with a patio chair in the pool, someone’s bra in the treetops, and a six a.m. run to Greenblatt’s for egg bagels.
When his head had finally cleared, his thoughts turned to the oddball he’d met at that bar near Columbia. Even though he came across like a whimsical comic foil who’d wandered out of a Noel Coward play, he did appear to know what he was talking about. But could he be trusted?
Kathryn, Gwennie, Doris, Monty, and Nelson had all agreed that nobody was ever going to make Horatius at the Bridge while it sat discarded in his desk. Certainly, he ought to exercise caution, but maybe this was a chance worth taking.
When Marcus had called him, Windermere needed little prompting. “What an unparalleled delight to hear from you. I would be honored to take a look at your work, but keep in mind that I shall be utterly ruthless with my critique. If you think you have what it takes, darken my doorstep at noon on Friday.”
Windermere’s home stood at the peak of a Whitley Heights hill. It was part Spanish Mission, part Mediterranean Italianate villa, with a bay window and a front door painted Pepto-Bismol pink.
Windermere opened it wearing a floor-length robe of orange silk, a cross between a smoking jacket and a kaftan stolen from Yvonne de Carlo back when she was playing Scheherazade at Universal.
Windermere spread his arms wide. “Twelve o’clock on the dot. How very professional.”
He led Marcus down a central corridor and into what Windermere referred to as “the parlor.” It was a hexagonal room, crowded with hefty brass urns that held unusual ferns whose branches arched eight feet high. On a table in the corner, a thin stick lay on a dish. It was like those Turkish cigarettes Marcus had seen around, but twice as long and half as thick. One end burned orange, sending a pungently musky thread of smoke curling into the air.
“This is quite a place you’ve got here,” Marcus said.
“It once belonged to Francis X. Bushman before the public discovered he had a wife and five kids stashed away and his career went to shit overnight.”
“He was the first movie star I met when I came to LA. He was at the Garden of Allah’s opening night party the night I moved in.”
“Garden of Allah, huh?” Windermere gave him a fresh once-over. “I bet you have a story or two up your sleeve.”
Marcus smiled as enigmatically as he could and changed the subject to a painting of the Colosseum hanging over an ornamental fireplace. “You’ve been to Italy?”
Windermere poured muscatel into a pair of delicate crystal goblets. “That’s the Roman amphitheater at El Djem in Tunisia. The biggest of its type outside Italy. Chariot races, gladiator battles—the whole bit. Now, that is a place where Cinerama could set a widescreen extravaganza.” He fluttered a heavily beringed finger at Marcus’s briefcase. “I don’t suppose your movie has a chariot race in it?”
“My story takes place five hundred years before they started happening.”
“Pity. Or perhaps not. I hear MGM is planning a spectacular one for their Ben-Hur remake.”
“Why do Ben-Hur again if you’re not going to do the chariot race?”
“Exactly!” Windermere handed Marcus a glass of muscatel. “Here’s to the future, whatever it may hold.” He flopped onto a Victorian sofa with spindle legs and three large doilies along the top. “This story of yours, what’s it called?”
“Horatius at the Bridge.”
Windermere stroked his chin. “I can see it on a poster but that name—Horatius. I wonder if the great unwashed American public will be able to get their tongue around it.”
“They managed okay with Demetrius and the Gladiators.”
“True, true. Now, I want you to pretend I’m a studio exec with less brains than a Pez dispenser and simply tell me the story in your own words.”
Marcus had already pitched this idea to Darryl Zanuck and Harry Cohn with a zero-for-two batting score to show for it, so this time he used a different approach. Instead of jumping from one action sequence to another, he focused on the journey of his main characters and highlighted how the stakes at risk for Horatius and the Roman Empire were the same.
“And so, you see,” he finished up, “he is the personification of the empire that, without him, would have perished.”
Windermere clapped his hands like a society matron at the opera. “I love it! Please tell me there is a finished script inside that briefcase.”
“There is.”
“Tell you what I’ll do. My whole life right now is centered on launching Around the World in 80 Days. Mike Todd makes the sort of plans that would give Alexander the Great an inferiority complex. We’re doing separate launches in twelve different cities. It’s organized bedlam!”
“I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”
“Of course, dear chap. I told you I would and I’m not one to break a promise if I can possibly help it. Fortuitously, your timing couldn’t be better. I’m off to New York tomorrow but I’m not a calm flyer, so I’m taking the train. By the time I get to the East Coast, I’ll know better how to proceed.” He stood abruptly, the glossy folds of his robe snaking around his legs.
Marcus had assumed Windermere would read the script while he waited, and hadn’t counted on leaving without it. Nor did he have a carbon copy. His ritual had always been to burn the previous draft when the current one was finished—a sort of a burn-your-bridges quirk. And he certainly wasn’t comfortable handing over his only typescript to someone he’d only met once and who was about to leave the state.
But just as pressing, he had burned through almost all of the Metropolitana money he’d smuggled into the States, as well as his 34th Parallel paycheck. He’d lived as parsimoniously as he could, but that was more than a year ago and now he was running low.
“How long will you be gone?”
“Until 80 Days comes out in October.”
Even at his most frugal, he had maybe a month of living expenses left. October was five months away.
“Do you have a money problem?” Windermere asked.
Marcus nodded. “I came here today hoping for a miracle.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Nor that quickly.”
Marcus pictured Horatius sitting in his desk drawer doing nothing. At least in Windermere’s hands, there was a possibility. He deposited the script on the coffee table and followed Windermere to the front door. “I’m in villa fourteen at the Garden of Allah. You can cable me there.”
Windermere’s handshake was limp as an old rag but his face had lost its feathery wistfulness. “If it’s money you need, I know someone who might be in a position to help you out.”
“I’m listening.”
“His name is Ty Sheppard, and he runs a little publishing house called Capulet Books. I ran into him the other day at the Moulin Rouge. He told me he’s always on the lookout for a decent novelist.”
“I’m more of a screenwriter,” Marcus said. “I’m not sure that—”
“He pays five hundred for a fifty-thousand-word manuscript. Better than starving, wouldn’t you agree?”
Marcus hadn’t planned on driving straight to Capulet Books on Pico Boulevard, but Windermere’s warning looped over and over in this head.
Better than starving. Better than starving. Better than starving.
Capulet’s offices were two rooms whose combined floor space wasn’t much bigger than Marcus’s apartment. But they were neat and orderly, and Ty Sheppard was a pleasant-faced redhead in horn-rimmed glasses and an open-necked Hawaiian shirt.
He interlaced his fingers behind his head. “They sure broke the mold after Windermere came along. Did he tell you the sort of stuff we publish here?”
“I figure Capulet Books comes from the Capulets and Montagues, as in Romeo and Juliet, so I’m guessing romance?”
Sheppard let out a barking laugh. It wasn’t mean-spirited, but he managed to imbue it with a smidgen of deprecation. “My name is short for Tybalt. So you were close, and yet so very, very far off.” He reached into a drawer in the filing cabinet behind him and pulled out two paperbacks.
The top one featured a pair of tanned, lean surfers wearing brief swimming trunks. They were laughing as the blonde dried himself off with a purple towel. My Purple Summer. The other cover featured a huge semi-trailer outside a roadside café. A shiny black motorbike was parked in front of it, and in the window of the café, two rough-looking men sat facing each other. Truck Stop Secrets.
“You publish pulp.”
“Of a very specific sub-genre.”
Marcus thought about the negligible amount in his bank account; about the length of time Windermere would take to get back to him; about how writing The 34th Parallel had helped him find the bounce in his typewriter again; and about how he knew he could knock off a story like My Purple Summer inside a week.
“Windermere mentioned five hundred dollars for a manuscript.”
“Fifty thousand words, give or take.” Sheppard pointed to My Purple Summer and Truck Stop Secrets. “Take those to familiarize yourself with our house style, such as it is. If you think you’re up for it, write me a chapter. It doesn’t need to be the first one, and I don’t need the whole story; I just want to see if you can write this sort of stuff. If I think we’re a good fit, I’ll give you the first half of the payment and a deadline. You’ll receive the rest when you deliver the manuscript.”
“Sounds fair.”
“The one unbreakable rule is that when I set you a deadline, it’s imperative that you stick to it. No excuses. Our production schedule allows for no extensions. Not even one day.”
“Title? Setting? Characters?”
Sheppard cocked his head to one side. “Surprise me.”
Marcus thanked him for his time and wandered back to his car. He was still driving his ’49 Buick. It had been factory fresh when he got it, slick and shiny, bold amber yellow. But now it was battle-scarred from seven years on LA’s increasingly congested roads. He jumped in behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. The Roadmaster shuddered; the engine refused to turn over. He tried again. No go. The third time was the charm but Marcus didn’t care. If he could rattle off two of those books a month, he’d be able to afford a new set of wheels by the end of summer.