Chapter Twenty

He was visible now, fully in view, and he felt like a high-noon cowboy striding over the beach towards the wooden stilts of the restaurant. The sky was grey, the sea dark. There were no witnesses, just a deckchair that some optimist had abandoned, an overturned fishing boat, and way off, in the shrunken distance, the crow-black figure of Weislob doing calls on the beach. Michael pressed onwards, his heart in his mouth. At least they had come, and as Adamson said to him during a fast phone call, that was proof. They had to do business; their mere attendance gave him the edge. Though now, of course, Frank Coburn knew his man, had taken stock, and would be super psyched up. Michael had meanwhile realised that to have any honour in the matter he had to control the film artistically. An impossible condition for Coburn.

Adamson was pleased by the venue. 'What is it? Shanty caff, bare boards and chemical toilet?'

The Marinella was a platform of wood extending on struts to the water's edge. It hugged the boulder that stopped the beach, and its planks and bamboo canopy were cured by the salt breeze and summer sun; as was the owner, a rough old boy with a maestro's glower and an artificial leg that he cranked around tables as he took orders and brought food. He would lay out a tablecloth, clip down its corners, and recite in a drone the meal of the day, as if satisfaction were simply unquestionable if you went with the flow and let him get on with it. Michael had lunched there before, once on his own and once with Hilldyard, and had sat each time on the deck, mesmerised by the sea light and the taste of parsley on sardines, and the coppery rosé in his glass.

'Eat well,' said Adamson.

'I'm not hungry.'

'Be psychological. Nothing you can say will make a bigger statement of control. You'll need a main course, two side orders and a glass of wine. It's the European mode: business as a subset of lifestyle.'

It was 4 a.m. in Los Angeles.

He mentioned Coburn's toy gun.

'No bite, loud bark.'

'I think it's pretty tasteless.'

'Coburn is a player. Players play with you.'

'You don't think he was trying to tell me something?'

'Look, he's steaming because you nicked the rights and dropped him in the shit bucket. He's going to use every prop in the book before taking the strain on your position. Insult, intimidation, flattery, menaces. You put a top agent on the warpath.'

'I've certainly fucked with his pride.'

Adamson hesitated, computing pride. 'Coburn's bottom line is keep Hammond, and the route to that is bend over.'

He could hardly believe this. 'I just force the deal?'

'Like nutcrackers on a cashew. He'll fume and rant, but it's soundtrack, because you've got one mother of a crow-bar under that guy's butt, and without the authority of a client behind him he'll come off his position like a hinge out of balsa.'

Michael had not been reassured, because Adamson had no certain way to know Coburn's resourcefulness at full tilt. If Coburn was good, it was because he thrived in tight corners.

'Michael, you've got him cheeks wide over a barrel and you can cram every clause in the book up his bottom line.'

'It doesn't feel like that.'

'Hey, you're in hell's kitchen with a mad butcher.'

'I think he takes it personally.'

'He hands it out. He can take it. These guys swivel on client shit all day. Their sphincters are Teflon-plated.'

Michael laughed unhappily. 'So what do I do?'

'Coburn's come to hear terms. Soften him up. Don't go between him and the client. Be his solution to a client problem. Stress collaboration, shared goals.'

'Then rip off his packaging fee?'

'It's your greed versus theirs.'

'I should be taking the moral high ground!'

'Do unto Coburn what he'd do unto you, and do it sooner.'

Michael was going to ask Coburn for five hundred thousand dollars. That's what he was going to do unto him.

The restaurant seemed empty from a distance. The season had come to a close; perhaps this was its last day. He wondered whether the owner would be there, waiting to serve whatever solitary diners presented themselves at half-past one.

The beach stones were hard walking, adding weight to one's feet, pulling on one's stomach muscles.

Adela's news ate into him. There was additional instability in the scheme of things, more variables to keep in control. Acute vulnerability went with high stakes. He was opened up inside, holed in some intimate place, had no choice but to push on.

Rick stayed on the beach as Michael walked up the concrete ramp to the dais of the restaurant. Up on the boards a tourist in a tennis shirt sat at a table, waiting to be served.

Coburn was sitting at the end of the platform. He had freed a chair from its table and placed it by the rail so that he could rest his arm and stretch his legs while looking out to sea. He wore a roomy suit and buckled loafers. A chunky watch dangled on his wrist. Even the smooth back of his bald head held body language: tough-guy forbearance.

Michael sat down at the next table. No pleasantries could be executed. The maestro came out of the kitchen cabin and made his way over to the table. He brought cutlery, oil and vinegar and the morose disposition of a man who lives only for the changing light and a few bikinied bodies (in short supply today). Michael listened to the menu whilst regarding the agent's profile.

Coburn sat in bulky self-containment. He gazed into the distance and allowed the energy between them to purify and condense, as if he were testing certain instincts for manoeuvre or attack. It was impossible to read him. He had the advantage of such self-knowledge in the realm of brinkmanship that his every move scrambled prediction.

'Hello, Michael.'

The tone was concessionary.

He stood up suddenly and swung his chair over to Michael's table.

'Mind if I join you?'

Coburn was massive across the table, bull's shoulders and neck filling out the view. He smiled with his eyes, smoothed his moustache thoughtfully.

'You're a great poker player.' He nodded. 'Rick and I dig your style. Ballsy English types are rare.'

It was a man-to-man approach and it explained Rick's demotion to the beach. 'We've shot a few rounds into the sky, checked each other out and, from where I stand, you got what it takes.'

He raised the flat of his hand, a cease-fire gesture.

'Let me give you a perspective. If Shane Hammond, bless him, wants to leave us, he'll go. Clients come and go, and that's the reality of agenting. We've been in business ten years before Shane, and I figure we can stay afloat with or without him. He's a star. But we have our pride. And we don't believe that if Shane quits folks are gonna think the worse of us. Let me tell you, Hollywood is a psychological war zone, a crucible of total competition. What counts in the end is not this deal or that deal, not execution on any terms, but the humane way of putting talented people through the grief of Tinseltown. That's as much as we can do. Luck makes the rest. Everybody knows that. Say this here deal flunks, and Last Muse ashes out, I don't think Shane's gonna walk on us. He knows we're doin' our damnedest. Hey, we're right here, talking to you. And if we can't fix it, nobody can. See, I'd tell him the facts. Like Michael Lear's a man of taste and manners. But Shane's a star, and stars need to move with senior talent, not rookie producers. And when Shane tells me you got the rights, I say not because you want to make the film, because your company's going bust and you're desperate. And when he says Michael Lear's a friend of Adela Fairfax, I say Adela's great at socialising but she's not a qualified head-hunter. And when he says he's unhappy, we say here's a ninety-million-dollar movie for him to walk into and while he's doing that we'll talk to Ike Petersen and Felipe Garcia Gonzalez about creating another vehicle, for him and Adela, which he can direct. And if he says something else, we will too, because actors are our business, and we can make them listen to their own best interests.'

Michael nodded neutrally. Coburn's depiction was not unsustainable. Things could be made to look like that and it was in his interests to know how an agent might report the situation to a client.

'So maybe we can forget the coffee break this morning and talk business?'

He shrugged assent. Silence was his ally.

'Michael, this is one hundred per cent good faith.' He raised a finger. 'You'll not get a better deal this side of Hollywood. And I think you deserve it. One: ''Produced by'' credit. Two: a seat at the table. We'll consult you on script, cast and other creative decisions. Three: real money. We'll arrange thirty thousand dollars to assign the option and assume all financial responsibilities to James Hilldyard. We'll get you a retainer payment off of the development package. Forty thousand dollars phased to the script schedule. We'll give you two hundred thou bucks additional to the option budget and retainer. You're looking at a round trip of two hundred and sixty K, which for a first-time Hollywood outing is rich in the extreme and damn near guaranteed. You want the bad news? You're not the only producer. You got an exec, Babe Hogan, client of ours, and a co-producer, Jonathan Drake. Babe controls the money. Drake is boss on set. Without this support, the bread won't touch you. But, you get visibility and kudos. You learn bags from Babe and Drake. And you're in great money for less sweat.'

Coburn looked at him far-sightedly as though the deal he had sketched would be music to the ears of Michael's agent, if he had one. When the trance was over he cocked his head and pouted realistically. 'Hey, I never say take it or leave it, but if you turn that one down, there ain't much I can do.'

Michael gazed into the agent's brown eyes. The offer was now balanced, rounded out, calculated to seem reasonable to a party acting in good faith. It was a deal generously proportional to the role he would have played in ordinary circumstances and a wise man might be grateful for that much concession. He almost wanted to please Coburn by accepting and reward him for the respect he had shown. Coburn, once co-operative, was the kind of man you wanted to appease. Honour was involved and to say yes was to endorse Coburn's assertion of good faith. Here was a Hollywood player paying his dues and stretching his pragmatism to the absolute limits.

'No thanks.'

Coburn inhaled deeply, against the surprise.

Michael felt a line of power, as if it were something he could hold on to.

'Not in the ballpark.'

'Michael!' Coburn raised imploring hands.

'I'd like more money and more control.'

'You got lots of money and lots of control.'

'I have terms to suggest.'

Coburn exhaled, shaking his head. 'My friend, be real!'

'I'm feeling dead real.'

'Rick,' he shouted.

There was a moment.

'Would you like to hear my terms?' he said.

Weislob was in position in seconds, chair drawn up, mobile on the table, palms wedged between his thighs. He looked around and about him, all eyes and ears for the state of play. He was ready to ride in on the details of tense argument.

Coburn barrelled forward. 'You're seeing one and a half per cent of final less contingency out of a zero-slack budget. We're jammed on money, and as for control, not even Shane caps out on that.'

'D'you want to hear my terms?'

It was necessary to do this, he thought.

'Why should I hear your terms?'

'Because you want to close the deal.'

He received Coburn's anti-British look.

'You're in good faith, Frank?'

'I'm up to my neck in good faith.'

'Good faith listens as well as talks.'

Coburn shook his head.

'Let him shoot, Frank.' Weislob had the adolescent baritone of the eternal shorty.

The waiter approached, tray in hand. Weislob watched the array slide on to the table, tomatoes and mozzarella, white bread, red wine.

'Would you care for some lunch?'

Coburn's eyes were flat.

Earlier, Michael had noticed that they were sitting at the table where, only a week ago, he and Hilldyard had lunched together. They had tucked into a plate of fritto misto, and Hilldyard had talked about Italian light and the quattrocento sensibility of landscape whilst attentive Michael had raised morsels to his lips and gazed at the sea's fluttering aquamarine and the cathedral of a cliff at the end of the beach and tried to pinpoint the centre of his unearthly elation. And it came to him then, in the listening trance, that consciousness held infinite connections, was woven in dimensions of time and space radiating from the sensory present. One lived on a meniscus of experience, one thrived on subjective flux, and yet this kaleidoscope of transient life, the more one submitted to its vivid beauty, the more depths were stirred, connections realised, as though the absolute present contained the code for all layers of meaning; layers which Hilldyard automatically perceived because his channels of experience were so extraordinarily dilated. And this thought, of the latency of revelation, its immanence in the palpable present, had moved Michael. Everything was there, if one cared to look: all explanation, all meaning.

'I want full producer status. You can give me back-up. Call it what you like. Everybody in the food chain defers to me. I account to the money. I argue with the money. I call the creative shots in collaboration with Shane. If Shane and I see eye to eye, his authority will pass through me to everyone else. If we disagree, the project won't even start. I asked you to give me your coverage on the book but so far haven't received it. As far as I'm concerned any deal is dependent on there being an overlap of approach to the task of adaptation and that's something that has to be squared with Shane as a pre-condition to all this.'

'We haven't given you the coverage because you haven't shown us the option agreement,' said Weislob reasonably.

Coburn sat with crossed arms and dark eyes.

'If you're still hung up on the option agreement, call Curwen.'

Rick hesitated.

'Go on.'

'Frank?'

'He'll tell you. Call him now.'

Weislob picked up his phone.

'Go ahead.' He was not himself. 'Double zero, double four . . .'

'What else, Michael?'

Weislob held the phone aloft.

Michael gazed hard at Coburn. 'A hundred thousand dollars on signature.'

Coburn scowled.

'Plus five hundred thou or half your packaging fee.'

There was silence.

'Whichever is the greater.'

Michael looked at the dead quick of Coburn's eye. 'On first day.'

Weislob seemed not to hear the figures. His face was mild, almost abstract, as if nothing of significance had been said.

Coburn's face had creased up with distaste. Now he shrugged, shook his head. 'No can do.'

'Think about it.'

'Nothing to think about. It's not right you should have that money. And there's no packaging fee on this pic.'

'Then add one.'

Coburn laughed harshly. 'If only movies were like that.'

'It's a budgetable item,' said Michael coolly.

'Oh yeah. But this film's different. This money's tricky money.'

'You better talk to the money then.'

'Michael, you're in over your head. Take the offer while it lasts.'

'Those are my terms.'

'Hey.' Coburn was sudden. 'Don't hardball me!'

Michael held his eye.

'Easy, guys.' Weislob raised a hand.

There was a curious pause.

'Michael, if we stand up and walk, that's the last you'll hear of Last Muse.'

'You can't afford to walk away.'

'That so?'

'You have to deliver.'

'You're stopping us delivering.'

'Hammond won't believe that.'

Coburn's face masked hard feelings.

'Go on then,' he said. 'Walk away.'

Coburn exhaled harshly; his voice was like gunsmoke. 'Don't push me.'

'Unless you deliver, Hammond'll quit your agency.'

'OK, Rick. We're out of here.'

'What's a client worth?' He was getting into it. 'Two hundred? Three hundred? Half a million?'

'Rick and I are cabbing to the airport right now.'

'Don't lose the only star you ever had!' His heart pounded.

Coburn leaned on the table. 'Thanks for your time, Michael. Sorry we couldn't close a deal.'

Weislob rose, too, fastened the button of his jacket. 'Best of luck with the movie.'

The agents exchanged glances.

Coburn took off first, gliding past tables and chairs towards the steps at the back of the restaurant. Weislob attached his wraparounds, took the mobile and gave Michael a goodbye nod. They gathered at the back near the cash register and then pushed off up the ramp.

He watched Coburn's meaty fist progressing up the banister and Weislob's dorsal profile rising in its wake.

'I'll give Shane your regards,' said Michael.

His heart leapt. He tensed in his seat.

The agents stood on the ramp, staring at him across the length of the restaurant.

'When I see him tonight.'

Coburn maintained an expression of scepticism for a second longer than disbelief might suggest. Rick clutched the mobile in both hands, as if compressing the truth of Michael's statement from its shell.

'There'll be a message at the hotel,' Rick told his boss.

'Call the hotel,' said Coburn.

Rick stood aside, dialled, waited.

'I know more about your client than you do,' said Michael.

Coburn's eyes were bruised with ire.

'Hey, Frank! You're on the way out.'

'You're on the way out, motherfucker!'

Coburn covered the ground fast and his fist came down hard on the table, bouncing wine out of the glass and cutlery on to the floor.

'Nothing at the hotel.'

'If you're lying you're so fucking dead.'

Michael hated these men; he hated them with rich anger. He wanted to see them go down, as he knew they would, because he had the leverage and it was only a question of nerve.

'Shane's coming because he'll deal with me.'

'We'll tell him not to.'

'If he wants your opinion, he'll ask for it.'

The rage in Coburn's eyes was fathomless, helpless, and Michael saw instantly the glaze of tactical confusion.

'Shane likes results, not opinions. He wants to believe that when big Frank Coburn gets going deals are cut, not fucked up.'

'You trying to blackmail me?'

'Cool it, Frank.'

'You fucking jerkoff!'

Coburn lunged at him, pulling a handful of air from in front of his face. Michael lurched sideways. A fist came down on the side-rail, sending a vibration around the edge of the structure. A finger came up like a blunt spike.

'Listen, cocksucker. I busted my guts ten years turning Coburn Agency into a top-talent outfit. I spent six months on Hammond's ass persuading him we were the best place in town. We hooked Grade A talent because we're a fucking Grade A agency. And for longer than you can imagine we've been everywhere trying to raise twenty million dollars of very oh-so complicated weirdo money to let Shane make an uncommercial movie that no friggin' studio would touch with a toilet brush. If there's a packaging fee on this film we earned every cent of it and we are not going to be ransomed out of nothing by a free-loading limey cunt.'

This was it, Michael thought, the distance, and he knew he had to go it. 'You raised the money but blew the rights, Frank. You can sweet-talk fund-holders, but when it comes to writers, you're grease monkeys. And that's the truth about your agency. You don't have the class to handle real talent, because if you did you wouldn't ask turd bullet here to hustle Hilldyard. Oh sure. Rick blew your deal right out of the water. You didn't have a prayer after that.'

Coburn glanced at Weislob.

'No novel, no package. No packaging fee. You can bribe and bully with the best of them but you can't understand men of genius like Hilldyard because, bottom line, you've no respect for writers. And when Hammond quits, Hollywood will know you can't handle thoroughbreds. You'll be written off as boutique merchants. Little Caesars doing movie-of-the-week deals for superannuated starlets. Fringe hucksters. Showbiz parodies. If that's what you want, fine. Otherwise, put your brains back in and think this through. I've got the rights from Hilldyard. I've defused the anger he felt on dealing with Rick. I'm bringing to the table the last link in the chain. If you agree my terms you can take the credit for resolving the problem. You can portray yourselves as white knights. I'll back you up. But, gentlemen, if you think I'm going to do all that for less than top dollar, think twice.'

Coburn raised his eyebrows in ironic appreciation of Michael's sang-froid. Anger still lurked about his broad mass and heavy hands, but the anger was not directed.

'Frank, those allegations are totally false.' Weislob crossed his hands, licked his lips perfunctorily.

Michael could feel the give now, the hinge raised and loosened. Coburn had heard him and there was a sense of completed exchange in the air, all rhetoric spent. He wondered how Coburn might shift gear without losing face.

Rick watched his master with apprentice curiosity. He had seen him confronted, faced up to, coolly countered. He must have wondered what extra resources Coburn would summon.

Coburn flexed his fingers and turned round to face Michael.

'Make a note, Rick.'

Rick produced pen and pad.

'I want a deal memo for tomorrow. Memo to include Michael's conditions. Michael to fax us a résumé of terms. Two fundamentals. That you and Shane are in synch. And that we have sight of an option agreement by eleven tomorrow morning. The option assignment will not be operative till Michael's received one hundred thousand in a designated account.'

Rick dotted his pad and replaced it in his pocket.

It was Michael's turn to look admiringly at Coburn. These agents were extraordinary. Huge, puffing pistons of theatrical rage one moment, glib pragmatists the next.

Coburn held his stance. His face was empty-eyed. 'Before we split, one thing. We sign off tomorrow and the lawyers'll draw long-form. That's the deal. I'd like to shake on something else.' His eyes were dead. 'If Shane leaves us now, I'm makin' you a promise.'

Michael waited.

'It's like this,' said Coburn, raising his hand as if to shake Michael's.

'Bye bye, my friend.'

Coburn pushed his hand forward.

Michael could not refuse the gesture.

The grasp was forceful, sudden, a consummation of hatred, horribly personal; and in his palm when Coburn let go was a bullet.

Michael regarded the thing coldly.

'When you least expect it.'

He set the long, bevelled shell on the table. He felt a thud of fear but knew the threat was theatrical, a cowboy bluff for Rick's benefit. Coburn could not lose face.

Coburn nodded actorishly. The hate was real but not of the moment. He had lost the plot of his own machismo and was now wiped and lumbering, an American agent pitted against uncool dynamics in an uncool environment.

They took leave of the restaurant unmomentously. In Weislob's eye there was the parting look of reproach for Michael's attitude and the unfairness he had inflicted on professionals. Coburn strode lightly, his bearing watered down by defeat. He did not look over his shoulder but walked up the ramp that joined the restaurant to the footpath along which picturesque and overgrown seaside route the two men would return, no doubt silently, to the first beach, the restaurants, the domed church, the tessellated paving of Via Murat with hibiscus peering down at them through the overhead trellis.

Michael nodded at the proprietor, secreting the bullet in his fist as the weathered man approached to clear the table.

He asked for the bill and resumed his seat by the rail. While he waited he tapped the bullet on the table. The metal was smooth, pleasant to weigh between fingers, the point nicely tactile, like an executive toy. He squinted at the white light of the sky. It was good to put oneself through these moments. Daring gave one edge, renewed daring. Men were designed to do battle and exert nervous energy. That's whom Hollywood was for: acrobats of chance, men of rapacity and wrath, scurrying overlords of the animal kingdom. The rage of it might be addictive, a person's way of clambering above the froth of anonymously competing lives and trouncing one's rivals.

He drew fingertips over his eyesockets, rubbed the stubble on his jaw, and grimaced all-achingly at the blanched band of the beach and the inexorable press of the sea. The form of the mountain, treading into the water from on high, occupied vision so completely that, when he stopped thinking about everything and looked at what lay before him, it sent through him a surge of joy which raked his tear ducts.

He knew he could do it now. He had the passion of his own identity. He would push that all the way against Adela and Shane Hammond and whatever problems came to him next. All this, tightly seized, would get him a life back.

He paid up and made his way as fast as he could across the lurch and crunch of the pebble beach. Exhilaration powered him up the zigzag of steps so that soon, without pain, he found his throat throbbing and skin moist. The metal tube rail vibrated with the force of his grasp. He came on to the alley near his hotel and did not think of the place where he and Adela had kissed for the first time.

The banked levels of the town were like a citadel of villas, linen white against the grey sky. The houses rose in shuttered somnolence above the street on which he walked, so electrically full of his future. Positano moved around him as he strode down the road past the stores and bars and the tourists taking their seats outside the caffè, adjusting sunglasses and looking up at the afternoon sky.

According to the waiter a storm was coming in.