He sat in the late-afternoon cool of his room, glancing through the shutters at the rose-light on the mountains, and dialled Adela's hotel number. He could already feel how intensely she would listen. The hotel number was engaged and after three successive attempts he decided to have a bath. He set the taps running and sauntered around easing off his clothes, entering into pensive nudity. He stood in front of the mirror considering his angular shoulders and pale arms and the flurry of hair on his chest.
He must disappoint her and then prepare her. It was almost impossible to convey the hazards of the meeting without alarming her, and yet hard to brief her without pre-empting Hilldyard. Hilldyard's reasons were for him to convey. Michael would just tell her that the answer was no, the reasons were personal, and that the author, as a courtesy, had invited her for a drink. He would invoke her tact discreetly. Too much information and she would become curious, and whilst he wanted to do justice to her curiosity, he wanted her to take the hint. The difficulty was that in his relationship with Hilldyard he wanted everything to succeed. He had stood up for Adela, and the onus was on him to deliver to the author's scrutiny a woman of intelligence and discretion whom he would find it impossible to dislike. Adela must be that person; and she must be it because that was her nature, not because Michael had warned her.
He strolled naked across the floor tiles to the balcony. The light had shifted its tint. The upper reaches of the sky were indigo. The suddenness of dusk brought cool smells into being. He folded his arms and breathed in the sea air and with the inhalation came relief. He had the piercing sense that life was OK. While he could stand here beholding the fairy-lit mountains and the partnered mauve of sea and sky, all human worries could be resolved. He wanted to remain in the afterspell of his lunch with Hilldyard, to set things down as if fresh from a vision. He had written in the past, but never considered himself a writer. Perhaps he could come to it late. And perhaps writing was a question of necessity rather than talent. Certainly, in this setting, working with this novelist, to write was a natural extension of things. He had begun to crave the intimate connection that language could give him to his own past. He wanted to commit himself to paper, and he had to accept that Adela's disappointment and Hilldyard's irritability would soon be water under the bridge. If he felt a final concern for her, it was really a desire to be good to someone still in the world, pitting her desires and ideals against the grinding commercial machine, trying to have a career and a value. He wished her well, and he wanted to be remembered kindly, as part of an experience not entirely futile. In that frame of mind he picked up the receiver and dialled again. The tone rang and he was put through instantly.
She was dignified when he broke the bad news. If the result were a disappointment, at least it was final.
He was impressed. She was obviously upset but her self-control was instant. Perhaps their first conversation had prepared her. Despite her former impatience she was suddenly accepting, wise enough to know this would be it.
She was puzzled to be invited to drinks. He painted it as a courtesy, and this half worked, but he detected some reserve. They arranged a time, Michael noting his secretarial function. Somehow he'd been assigned the role of factotum, which meant that she had taken his report as definitive, but also that she was somehow at arm's length from him. Drinks with the author would be fine, but it was not what she had come for.
Michael wondered whether she would renew her offer of dinner. The call was winding down, and as the final cadences approached he was tempted to prompt her. But Adela was the one who had made the suggestion, had insisted on it, and if she quite forgot when the time came, what was the point?
She thanked him, looked forward to seeing him at Hilldyard's, and then rang off. He replaced the receiver and gazed for a moment at the bedspread.
He eased himself into the bath. He wondered whether he felt used. He stared at the clammy ceiling and doubted whether he cut any kind of figure with women these days. He wondered whether he was bypassing women, or they were bypassing him. He felt it as a slight; but there was no slight. Nothing had happened. No expectations had been aroused. He had been nice to her, and she had been grateful to him, and that was that, and back to business as usual.
He felt the heat of the water bring tiredness around his eyes. He turned on his side, immersing a leg, the water lapping at his chin and mouth. He felt like a foetus in an enamel womb. He lay sideways in the bath with a melancholia that had touched him before, disappointment becoming torpor. It was a torpor that made him see the water with sluggish eyes, like an alligator about to submerge. He wondered, in this bathroom, who he was and what he would represent to a woman. There was the intimate sense of his own immersed body; but what was the body in itself, its limbs prone and unflexed in level water? Who would want this long-jointed shape in a bed, a body so similar to others in its properties and desires? Who out there would desire him in particular?
Desire was dormant in Michael.
In the past six months he had hardly looked at a woman. Erections had deserted him. The area between his legs felt fallow, bland, as if there were some deep recoiling of his potency. And he made the connection easily enough, because the slow collapse of his business, the out-of-controlness of debts, the meltdown of first this and then that project had deflated him. When Michael's company began to die, desire withered inside him. He could no longer project himself with any sense of fundamental balls. He had passed the age when good looks in a man mattered. He was thirty-five, and at thirty-five you had to be more than a set of sensitivities. Your antlers had to be locked with the world. You had to be alive with the current of applied values. Otherwise what were you that people could subscribe to? What sense of purpose, or mastery, or good terms with life could he present to a woman?
He had walked past the top shelves in newsagents', looking at the jigsaw body parts with a dim curiosity, vaguely hoping that the flesh cartoon would trigger some figment of lust. He had stared at bottoms and breasts and felt alien, not of this world.
Gradually, as work got worse, he stopped noticing the lack of lust. He noticed instead a more general failure of wit and acumen, a slowing down of essential reactions. He experienced psycho-motor retardation, the loss of spontaneity, memory lapses. Even conversation began to elude him. In his stew of worries he mislaid the ability to empathise, to think laterally. He was disconnected from insight. Exactly how he might 'be' with a woman deserted him. And of course, in this state, certain women were intrigued by his self-effacement – rare in a handsome man – which was actually despair on hold. Michael had not even been able to satisfy their curiosity, so that eventually they were bored; as bored as he was with himself.
He shut his eyes, feeling the soap bar melt between his fingers. When the phone rang he was already gone, asleep, and had to come back from a world away. He jetted out of the bath, took a towel and forced himself into wakefulness. He sat on the bed, blinked, grasped the receiver.
'Afternoon, Michael.' The voice from nine thousand miles away was loud and clear.
'Hello?'
'Have I got news for you!'
Adamson was talking from his LA office. He had a huddle with his partner at ten, a day of meetings beyond that. Speaking to Michael Lear was number one on his agenda.
Michael tried to interrupt. Adamson was on heat, flowing all over him.
He had done the research, found a mole in Coburn Agency. Paul Chapman, English, twenty-five, an aspiring screenwriter who subsidised his writing by penning reader's reports for Weislob's department. Chapman liked Adamson's girlfriend and was prepared to be bitterly indiscreet about anything to do with Coburn Agency. Chapman sucked up to Weislob for work, read nights and weekends covering literary material for him, and was in the loop on house projects. He loathed Weislob from the tips of his toes, and needed to discharge contamination by slagging him off when anyone would present a listening ear. He had done a report on The Last Muse.
'He's our stethoscope, Michael. Through him we can listen to the heart of Coburn Agency. The sound of atrophy, straining arteries, sclerotic valves. You're going to love this.'
He had asked for the information. For courtesy's sake he would have to hear him out.
Adamson set the scene with loving attention to detail. To appreciate the low-down Michael needed context.
'Coburn's like number ten in the charts, right. Not one of the behemoths. But dynamic. They want to break out. And now is their chance. Remember the plane that pancaked last year? Three honchos from Interstar. Three ten-per-centers slam into a mountain. Pilot sneezed. Heavy litigation. That was Interstar's chief exec Mart Korea, plus Abe Golden and Naim Johns, three lynchpins totally smudged on this low-grade mountain in Arizona. OK. And what's happened? Every agent in town is hitting on Interstar's clients because everybody in town knows that without Korea Interstar isn't Interstar. Nobody who's living in that agency can hold it together. A feeding frenzy. Talentscope is in there. Creative Artists Management are picking them off. The little guys are pitching in. It's like the baker's window's smashed, and there's tits and robins on the counter and fucking great eagles airlifting whole loaves. To begin with Talentscope had it pretty good. Fifteen of the top thesps at Interstar were biding their time, waiting to see how the balance of power moved. Interstar's strength derived from its packaging abilities, right, and the stars on their list didn't want to fragment the powerbase by leaking all over Hollywood. But they had to go somewhere. Well, Sam Calloway signed with Talentscope. He's big. With him you'd expect to get Michael Morton, cos they work together. And Morton is friends with Rex Polanski, etc, etc, a fat string of sausages crossing the road to Talentscope. But Calloway split after six weeks. He fuckolaed them, slouched off to his manager, and God in Christ knows what's happening, because if those bloodsuckers at Talentscope couldn't keep Calloway sweet, why would Morton and Polanski and Dolores Black sign on? Hammond repeated the formula. He signed with Talentscope and pissed on their chips five months ago. There's a bad smell in that agency. Dog turd in the boardroom.' He cleared his throat. 'So Hammond pulls out, Callo-way's in limbo, and apart from a few B-string defectors Interstar's intact. This is like six months ago. Before Thinking Time. Before Hammond was in the top five. Enter Frank Coburn.'
Michael lay in his towel on the bed, powerless to interrupt but strangely fascinated.
'Let me give you Coburn. He's a middle-aged guy with a strong jaw and a bald head. He wears a walrus moustache and a string tie. He's one of the most physically arresting people you've seen. Hypnotic. Oozes protective power. The guy mesmerises talent like headlights freeze bunnies. Somehow Coburn got to Hammond. And he didn't do a one-man pitch. He co-presented with Tom Mahler, who's like number four in the pecking order. Mahler has perfect manners, he's literate, wears a tie-pin. He reps Clarice Burnaby, and if the man can eat her shit he's gotta be good. What Coburn was proposing was total service: packaging, tax advice, estate agency, procuration, you name it. Three agents for the price of one. Three disciplines: Mahler as lead agent, attorney Gloria Sabbatini for deals, tax; and our favourite person in the world Rick Weislob on project co-ordination, script shit. Meanwhile Coburn does the politics, the overview, the Caesar thing.'
Michael arranged himself for the elongating monologue.
'Now see it from Coburn's perspective. Hammond's friends with all kinds of talent at Interstar: Vidal Sorenson, Jasper Phillips, Barry and Omar Cazenove. Same tune. If Coburn can get these guys under his wing, he can begin to crank up for the big time. It's a confidence trick, a momentum thing. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but if just one fish stays hooked he can reel in plenty more. And don't think he hasn't started. His footsoldiers are out there tickling people's balls. They're saying, We got Hammond. We want you, too. Meanwhile, suck on this. Mahler is learning Shakespeare by heart – to pillow-talk Hammond. And some cute secretary is doing Hammond's shopping for him.' Adamson whooped with laughter.
'First months went well. Hammond's a loner, aloof, morose. Mahler reads his moods, listens for the subtext then feeds it back to the star. So Hammond lays a project on them. The Last Muse. He wants to act and direct. Can they set it up? Well, let me tell you, those geniuses went out and collared twenty million dollars on the strength of a letter from Hammond and their in-house coverage. Champagne all round. That was tiptop professional stuff. Except for a minor misunderstanding. When Hammond presented the project they thought he controlled the rights. How they got that thought, whose thought that was, history will decide. Maybe Curwen gave them the glad eye. Because it wasn't hammered down. It was an elementary question, a spec of detail that escaped three pairs of eyes. Sabbatini has sweaty sleepless nights. Somehow Mahler contained the embarrassment, turned fallibility into a bonding opportunity. The agent serviced his client's dismay. What he couldn't service was measlespot Weislob calling Hilldyard and doing the hard sell.'
'Why did he do that?'
'Weislob is totally LA. He talks like a gangster and gets foul-mouthed under pressure. But the guy has an English parent and he did some postgraduate bullshit at Oxford.'
'Oxford?'
'Probably Keele. Anyway, he thinks he can schmooze Brits and when Curwen gave up he tried to sweet-talk Hilldyard.'
'Curwen gave him Hilldyard's number?'
'So he must be persuasive. But not that persuasive. When Hilldyard told him where to get off, Weislob said he could stick his MS where the sun didn't shine along with the prickly-pears, pomegranates and other bits of Mediterranean fruit he was swivelling on.'
'God!'
'Which was premature. Because however intransigent Hilldyard seemed it wasn't Rick's call to blow him out with a stream of abuse. That was a tactical error.'
'And has Hammond quit?'
'Let me tell you, he's cheesed. If it weren't for Mahler he'd've walked. Mahler is trying a high-level approach to Hilldyard via an eminent Italian screenwriter-stroke-novelist. They have absolutely no choice but to redeem the situation. If Hammond walks, it'll be all over Variety. And Hammond will only stay if they collar the rights, which is looking like mission impossible. Weislob and Mahler are sweating like pigs in a Jewish sauna. If they lose Hammond, the whole agency will take a slug in the pips, everybody's careers'll be mauled shitless. That place is crapping itself.'
There was a lengthy pause while Adamson let the news settle in.
'Interesting situation, eh!'
Michael remained silent.
'You see the opportunity?'
He had some idea of what was coming, but he said nothing.
'Whoever gets those rights has Coburn over a barrel.'
Michael held the phone to his ear and felt his heart beating.
'You can negotiate anything. All you have to do is get between them and the film rights in Last Muse. Then you take them.'
Adamson allowed the line to remain open, as if to make way for Michael's thoughts.
'What exactly do you mean?'
'You option the rights off Hilldyard, then force yourself into their film. They'll hate it. Tough shit. They have to deal. You control the rights. Man, you're hijacking on to a pre-financed twenty-million-dollar flick starring Shane Hammond. You get a producer fee, front-end credit, but more important, you dictate the creative approach. You beat them with the Hilldyard stick. Make sure it's his kind of picture. And that's just for starters. The real steel is on their agency fee. Now listen to this, Michael. Coburn will be stiffing the budget for a ten per cent packaging fee. Two million dollars. One chunk of spons. You'll take half of it.'
'What?'
'They'll fucking hate you. They'll scream and yell. But they have to keep the client. Either they accept your terms, eat doodoo, or lose Hammond. And if they keep Hammond, they're going to be coining it back.'
Michael could not help chuckling. Adamson's chutzpah was out of control, his opportunism so disconnected from reality.
'You're looking at one point five million bucks.'
The computation was enthralling, meaningless. 'I don't think so.'
'Seriously.'
'Seriously, Nick. Hilldyard won't grant the rights.'
'That's where you come in.'
Michael shook his head. 'No I don't.'
'Have you asked for an option?'
'Of course not.'
'Then you don't know his response.'
'I do.'
'You can't know that.'
'We've discussed it!'
'What you're dealing with is a man's state of mind. Opinions and prejudices. So get inside his head and press some buttons. Find out what makes the guy tick and give it back with nobs on.'
Michael sighed. 'He has very good . . .'
'Bend over for him. Go down on the bard. Whatever it takes, get your hands on that option. It's a matter of persuasion.'
He laughed out loud. 'I don't want to persuade him.'
'You don't want to persuade him?'
'No.'
'You don't want to make one spot five million bucks?'
'Not this way.'
Adamson's voice grew rougher, as though an escalation of force were required. His tone met the revelation of Michael's attitude with direct incredulity.
'What's so terrible? Where's the great ethical hang-up? We're making a movie not the H-bomb.'
He had no desire to convey Hilldyard's intimate reasons to Adamson. There was no guarantee that the most personal and private scruples would register with him. 'I know his views and I respect them. If I attempted to hustle him I'd ruin the friendship.'
'What kind of friendship sets you back a million bucks?'
The question was too stupid to answer.
'If the guy rates friendship he'll loosen up. Fuck sake, this is just a book.'
'It's a novel and it's his lifeblood.'
'Brief Encounter meets Love Story. Wouldn't harm a fly.'
'He finds it painful.'
'He can take a pill. He can think seven hundred and fifty thousand bucks. For Christ's sake, he's got to be human!'
'He's very human.'
'This is not human. Some highly talented people want to turn his book into a film. The human thing would be to accept the money and enthusiasm with good grace. Jesus Christ, he should be so lucky.'
'Look -' He was feeling browbeaten. 'He's not a commercial animal. He's a novelist, and he's sensitive to things that don't bother other people.'
'Sensitivity's going to cost you an entry into Hollywood.' Adamson sighed deeply. He lowered his voice, appeared to calm down. 'I understand what you're saying.'
'No you don't.'
'What d'you want out of life, man? A few principles? Snow-white dealings with the nerve-endings of egocentric authors? Let me tell you. If this film is any good you'll be walking tall on Sunset Boulevard. You'll be right inside Hammond's world, rubbing shoulders with a braful of talent. The films you want to make will happen, and instead of being a UK indie pissed about by the BBC, you'll be cruising in the fast lane. You'll look back to the English days with total contempt. I mean, here's where it's happening, man. You want girls, the city is bulging with pussy. You want Beverly Hills palm trees and swimming pools, they are here for the taking. Because this is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. And if you throw away a chance like this you might have a nice life in Hampstead or Barnes, but you won't have happened. And I don't mean the money or the profile, I mean you. You won't have lived to the full extent of your talents. The current is strong here, Michael. It galvanises people. You could walk all over this town doing what you do best. Do you hear me?'
Michael had heard Adamson's creed. It appalled and fascinated him. 'Loud and clear.'
'And can you honestly tell me there's a principle at stake worth the sacrifice?'
'I can.'
'Think big, Michael. Seize the day. You throw away an opportunity like this and you've wasted your whole life.'
He rubbed his eye. Adamson could explain himself to Michael. He doubted he could ever explain himself to Adamson. Nick was a sworn enemy of that kind of thinking. It made the conversation one-sided, but in reality, Michael had no desire to convert him. It would take too long. 'What do you care, Nick?'
'Aha. Thirty per cent of your fee.'
He smiled: the shamelessness.
'You want to take on Coburn and Weislob alone? You'll be tucked up by the end of clause one.'
He adjusted the towel. There was gooseflesh on his shoulder.
'Twenty-five per cent up to a ceiling of three hundred K?'
He lay back on the pillow and allowed himself to think just once of his bank manager's face. All he needed to save his house was eighty thousand pounds.
'Opportunities are never handed to you, Michael. There's always a challenge. But you've put yourself in the right place at the right time. You've earned the chance. Don't let yourself down.'
He could sense Adamson's view of him: a slowcoach, a late starter, someone held up by his Britishness, a rookie in need of commercial hot-wiring; and he realised that in American terms he looked totally soft. American producers worked the system, operated in a metaphysical vacuum. That's why they were so good. They lived in a cold universe and respected its laws, money laws.
'All you gotta do is persuade one old man. It's not exactly building the wall of China.'
'Sorry, Nick.'
'You will be. If they option it without you. A total disaster.'
'Not for me.'
'Hey, Michael. You'd be sick as a dog.'
'Nobody's going to persuade him.'
'You'd better be right. Hollywood has a way of getting to people.'
'It's certainly got to you.'
'And if Hilldyard's principles change, don't be the only person missing the boat. No point having more integrity than the author, eh!'
The remark disgusted him.
'Sleep on it, Michael. You'll dream sweetly of Shane Hammond kissing your arse.'
'Sorry to disappoint you.'
'I'll talk to Weislob in a couple of days. We need to open channels.'
'The matter's closed.'
'The matter is wide open.'
Michael held on to his temper. 'James Hilldyard's soul is not for sale to Tinseltown and neither is mine.'
'Fine. I'll call you tomorrow.'
'Nick!'
Adamson put the phone down, and for a moment Michael wondered whether he had misheard.
For several minutes he remained on the bed. He switched on the table lamp. It cast a parchment glow across his skin. The walls of the hotel bedroom felt cold.
He stirred himself to get up and dressed and moved around the room listlessly collecting garments. His shirts had been washed and ironed and hung up in the cupboard by the chambermaid. His underwear had been filed in separate drawers. Since Hilldyard's intervention the quality of service had improved and cushions had appeared on the chairs and shampoo sachets in the bathroom.
He sat on the edge of the bed pulling on a sock. It struck him as a curious thing to be doing after that conversation, drawing a sock over one's foot. He examined the white skin of his ankle, attention wandering to a point in mid-space. Adamson had contaminated the air, the room.
He decided to start writing. He took out a pad of writing paper from the desk drawer. He drew a pen from his jacket pocket and seated himself, forearm on the desk, his right hand suspended above the sheet. He was determined to concentrate. He wanted to return quickly to an earlier mood. He pushed aside all thought of Adamson and tried to remember an emotion that had come to him after lunch. Experience was vital in him now, gathered; he simply needed to lean into it and words would come, words that he had not sought before. He was ready to write down what had happened to him and to find a form for impulses of sentiment he had never defined. It was not simply that something had eased, enabling unaccustomed contemplation, the perspective of recovery, it was more a gathering of feeling, a ripeness, an urgency, as if he were too full and needed to get this out because whatever it was, this need, it was too important to be wasted. It had to be harnessed and set down, formed, saved, because suddenly the thing that he might write, the cluster of promptings coming at him from every layer in memory, could redeem what had been lost.
He rubbed his eyes. It was 7.30 p.m., and the hotel was silent.
Later he lay on the bed and gazed unblinkingly at a white ceiling lined in the centre by a plaster crack. He had written three paragraphs in two hours.
He was quite stricken when the telephone rang. It went six times, and he stared at the receiver without moving.
He saw his hand reach out. He put the phone to his ear. 'Hello?' he said.
Michael sat upright as if to protect the receiver. Adela apologised for disturbing him.
'Not at all,' he said, not quite in his own voice.
There was something she wanted to mention when they spoke before; it slipped her mind when he told her about Hilldyard. The following day she was going to Capri. There was a boat and then a hydrofoil; one came back about four o'clock. She had no special plan, just a stroll around the island, a snoop in the shops, lunch somewhere. Would he like to join her?
He was surprised, almost taken aback. He accepted quickly. They agreed to meet at the dock at a quarter-past nine. Adela rang off, and he slowly replaced the phone, bearer of all manner of tidings.
He pulled himself up, displacing his energy with a stride around the room, until he came to the mirror. He stopped to consider his face as another might see it for the first time.
In due course he put the paper back in the drawer and decided to slip downstairs for a drink on the terrace. He would sit on an easy chair and think things over.
He collected a Cinzano from the bar and wandered out on to the terrace and felt as he sat down and gazed at the fading light on the peaks of the mountains that he was getting to know himself at last. Things were settling.
In staying on he had done the right thing. Now that he was here, safe from the world, he could see that what had happened to him was not quite accidental. Bankruptcy had perhaps been a choice, the wilful precipitation of a crisis, something that would force change. Perhaps he had not so much failed to make an accommodation with life as evicted himself from an area of meaninglessness. Everything had led, at least, to lunch with James Hilldyard and to the Cimbrone belvedere; and a life which led to such moments could not be without purpose.