Patty lay on her bed staring at the stuff from Shadow Books. It had been too good to be true. Sure, as Betty had predicted, they did pay five thousand for a romance novel, the plots and characters were all a matter of formula, but Patty would have to write something on spec in order to land an assignment. Joe McGuire, the top editor (“word processor” might be more accurate) of Shadow Books, had been sweet. He said normally they asked for an entire novel before making a commitment, but all he would ask of Patty—since Betty thought so highly of her—was a sample chapter and an outline.
So now she lay on the bed surrounded by titles like Dark Harvest, clutching a guide sheet from Shadow Books on what elements ought to be in a romance novel.
But it wasn’t so bad. She felt excited, like the first day of school. The formula was so rigid that the task seemed easy, and a sample chapter would mean no more than twenty pages. Surely she could do that in a few days.
Her phone rang and she picked it up expecting that it would be Betty—widowed by Tony’s trip to the Coast and curious about Patty’s reaction to the material. It was David.
“Hi. I’m sorry.”
“Hi,” she said with genuine surprise and enthusiasm. “What for?”
“Tuesday night. I was a lousy date. I’m sorry. The office was in turmoil—”
“I know! Do you still have your job?” Patty asked with naive seriousness.
David laughed. “I guess so.”
“Do you like this guy Rounder? Who is he?”
“You’re really up on this.”
“I love page six! Read it every day.”
“Well, I haven’t met him. I don’t think anybody has. It was a real mess this week. I was writing the cover and there were all these rumors. I know I was grumpy.”
“You sure were.”
David laughed. “That’s right. Don’t spare my feelings.”
They both laughed. Patty remembered David had started to talk about the changes at Newstime when they met for dinner Tuesday, but she had assumed it meant little to him personally and hadn’t really let him talk. Maybe the stalling conversation and bad sex of the evening were due to her lack of attention. She had been very self-concerned lately.
“Let me take you out to dinner to apologize,” David said.
They met at a bar between her sublet and his loft. He was fun this time. He quickly ordered and put away three drinks while explaining his week. Patty found the names and various alliances confusing, but the general impression, that David was a dynamic force in the midst of a power struggle for control of one of America’s most important magazines, was exciting. She was glad she had her romance novel to discuss when he was done talking about his job. She suspected he thought she was flighty and at loose ends (I am, she thought), but having Shadow Books alleviated that worry.
Indeed, David was interested. He insisted on going back to her sublet—thank God I washed the dishes before leaving, she thought—to look at the guide sheet. He was charming about the whole thing, sufficiently irreverent to read the empty and gaudy prose aloud and yet not snobbish about her plan to write one. “It’s great money,” he said, “if you knock them out in three or four weeks.”
“And if they’re popular, you can be rich!” Patty said in a tone of absolute trust that life could have dramatic and happy changes of fortune.
“You mean it can be more than just a flat fee of five thousand?” David asked. They were on the bed, Patty sitting with her legs under her, David lying down, his head propped up by pillows, his legs stretched out behind her back. He seemed relaxed, friendly. There was little of the judgmental and therefore cautious atmosphere of a date. He behaved like an old friend or lover would. It seemed so long since she had felt this at ease. When she broke up with her college boyfriend five years ago, she had told him that she wanted romance and adventure: their quiet intimacy had become too fraternal. She believed, from their perfunctory and routine sex to their dull social life of seeing movies and going to dancing parties, that their life together was more teenage than adult, and their closeness more a fearful need for company than a desire to be intimate. But in the years since, the loss of that safety had become frightening. Patty often felt desired by men, but rarely loved in the way that her family of two brothers and a sister made her feel. David was prepared to share her fantasy of writing these romances and becoming rich. It was a simple exchange of trust and interest—but it had been a long time since a man had been willing to make the bargain.
“Yes!” Patty said, unafraid to expose her greedy scenario. “If the first two I write are popular, then I can negotiate for royalties. Elizabeth Reynolds makes over a million a year writing them.”
David picked up Dark Harvest. He had read aloud from it earlier, sarcastically intoning the puffed-up prose. He opened it to the middle and silently read a paragraph.
“Foul, isn’t it?” Patty said. “Can I stand doing it?”
“For a million dollars a year? You sure can.” He read another paragraph with a serious and studious air. When he was finished, he put the book down and looked at Patty. His eyes had a distant, thoughtful look. Then he laughed. “It’s not any different than what I do.”
“This junk?”
“Yeah. It’s a formula. Take the heroine to an exotic place so the frustrated housewife feels she’s taking the trips that she knows her husband will never be able to afford. Newstime and the Weekly create the feeling for their readers that they’re in the know. I write my stories about the President and the government in a confidential tone, like the reader is getting inside dope nobody else gets. And it’s bullshit. I’m taking bureau reports from reporters who, for the most part, get handed briefings. To be sure, sometimes some of our better reporters get a real story, but always because someone inside has decided to let the cat out of the bag, and our guy just happens to be there.”
Patty put her hand on his leg and stroked him soothingly. “No, David. Don’t be hard on yourself. What you do is really important.” She pointed to Dark Harvest. “This is trash.”
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to reassure me. I’m not depressed about my work. I just meant …” He stared off and didn’t continue.
Patty moved her hand up his leg, heading toward his groin. Her eyes were wide open and attentive, waiting for David to finish his sentence. But he said nothing. She reached his penis and rubbed.
His eyes focused on her.
“Yes?” she said with a smile, the knowing smile of a seductress.
He smiled. “You’re beautiful.”
She silently mouthed “thank you” and continued her massage of his erection.
“Mmmm,” David said, closing his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, he looked into Patty’s eyes. She watched her effect on him proudly.
“You like this?” she asked.
“Un-huh,” he said, feeling helpless. Happily, warmly helpless.
“What were you going to say?”
David laughed. “I don’t remember.”
“Good,” Patty said with a triumphant look.
“Good!” David laughed.
“That means,” she said, opening her mouth wide and leaning in to kiss him, “that I’m doing a good job.”
After his meeting with Bart and his purchase of several new Brooks Brothers shirts, Fred went home and called Marion at her office. He breathlessly told her the story.
She burst out laughing when he mentioned spilling the coffee.
“I’ve seen that white rug. Bart must have shit a brick.”
“No, no. It didn’t bother him. Anyway, listen! Stop laughing.”
“Sorry.”
“He’s given the outline to Bob Holder, who he says is already interested.”
“Holder’s already interested?”
“Well,” Fred said defensively. “Bart said that Holder thought it was a good premise. And he insisted that he get it exclusively.”
“Un-huh,” Marion said.
“What?” Fred said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Oh, sure. It’s just that …” She hesitated.
“What?” Fred demanded.
“Don’t get your hopes up, okay, Freddy? Holder likes to make a fuss. He wants everything exclusive. Doesn’t mean he’s gonna buy it.”
“I know that,” he snapped. “You don’t have to tell me that. I was just telling you what Bart said. Of course I know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. Listen. I’d better get back to work.”
“Sure. Look. Let’s go out tonight. To a movie or something?”
“Uh, I don’t know. The nouvelle cuisine book is due to—”
“We’ll go to an early movie. Come on.”
“Okay, Fred. Call me later. I got to go.”
And she hung up. He looked at the receiver in his hand as if it had spat in his face. She had no faith in him, he decided. She thinks I’ll never be a novelist. He thought back to her reaction when he announced that he was going to turn down American Sport magazine articles for a year and try to get a contract for a novel.
“Fred, you won’t get a contract for a novel from outlines,” she had said with a tone of absolute knowledge about publishing. “First novels, unless they’re by people who are very famous for some other reason, are always written on spec.”
“That’s bullshit,” Fred had said. “What about Karl?”
“Fred, Karl had written six books on spec!”
Fred guffawed and jiggled his food. “If his publisher had read any of those manuscripts, he wouldn’t have given him lunch, much less a contract.” She had no answer for that. He told her: “Bart got Karl his contract, and if he takes me on, he’ll get me one.” She hadn’t argued, but he knew she didn’t believe it, despite the evidence of Karl and his stewardess novel. Fred knew why. Marion had once said about Karl, “I don’t know if Karl’s a good writer, but he looks, talks, and thinks like a novelist.” She didn’t believe that about Fred. He was merely a nice Jewish boy to her. Maybe she doesn’t want me to succeed, he said to himself. Maybe she’s scared if I become a rich famous novelist, I’ll leave her.
He clicked down the buttons of the phone, got a dial tone, and called Marion back.
When he got her, he burst out, “What do you mean Bob Holder always asks for an exclusive look?”
Marion laughed. “That’s what you called me back about? You’re gonna drive yourself crazy—”
“How do you know that? You don’t know Holder.”
“I’ve met him. I don’t really know him. But Betty works at Garlands. She makes fun of Holder doing stuff like that. He thinks he’s a hotshot, so—”
“He is a hotshot, honey.”
“Okay, so he is a hotshot. And he likes to act like one.”
“But Betty didn’t say, specifically, that Holder always asks for an exclusive look?”
“Fred,” Marion said in a gentle but thoroughly contemptuous tone, “everybody would ask for an exclusive look if they thought they could get it. What’s the harm? If you don’t like it, you can still say no. If you do, then you don’t have the pressure of competing interest. Maybe Bart made it sound like a great thing, but an editor getting an exclusive look just gives the editor leverage. It doesn’t help the writer.”
Fred stared out the window at the traffic and people below. He only noticed them when he felt like a failure or a fool. They went on with their lives, ignorant of him.
“Fred?” Marion said tentatively into his silence.
She had made him see that his excitement was over nothing. His conviction that Bart could somehow manipulate an important editor into buying his outline was a fantasy; he had sat in Bart’s office and listened to him pitch the elixir of success, and bought it, only to discover it was simply the plain water of uncertain promises. “Do you think Bart’s a bad agent?” he asked suspiciously, as if she had been keeping a secret.
Marion grunted. It sounded like a startled laugh. “No, I didn’t say that. He’s flattering Holder by giving it to him exclusively. And he’s letting him know that Bart really thinks it’s a hot idea. That’s great. I was just trying to get you to calm down. Not to expect too much. Holder hasn’t read it. Until he has, it doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I don’t need that, you know. I realize I may get turned down. I know I may be a failure. I don’t need you to remind me.”
“Fred.” Said very sternly: a warning not to continue. “I don’t want to talk about this. You’re paranoid. I’ll call you later.” And she hung up.
He let the hand with the receiver drop to his side, as if the dismal emotions of the conversation had made it too heavy to hold up. He leaned his head against the wall and looked again at the people below. A delivery truck with the New York Post had stopped at a corner news kiosk to unload an edition. Two boys of about fifteen, coming home from school, passed the stacks of newspapers. They were short and probably Jewish. One of them was fat. His wrinkled white shirttails were hanging outside his pants. The other was skinny and wore thick black glasses. They stopped and peered at the back of the Post. It would be a sports story that caught their interest. Fred at their age looked like them and also would have peered at the headline with total absorption. In those days, it never occurred to him that writing served any purpose other than graduating from school or proving that Mickey Mantle was a better hitter than Willie Mays. That dumpy kid with his shirttails hanging out was innocent. He had yet to learn, as Fred had, that his appearance would cut him off from most of the fantasies that men have: he would never be thought of as glamorous, as sexy, as profound. No one would look at him and say, “There are a poet’s eyes, a sculptor’s hands, an actor’s voice, or the tall inspiring body of a leader.” That kid, gawking with happy concentration at the Post’s sports headline, hadn’t been faced with the certain knowledge that no tall, beautiful blond would go to bed with him—unless he paid her. “Money,” Fred said aloud, as if he were hurling a curse down at the boy below. “Money and fame are the only things that will help.”
He turned, despairing, and returned the receiver to its cradle. It rang instantly.
“Fred?” said a deep but tentative voice. “It’s Karl.”
“Hi.”
“How did the meeting go?”
“You knew about it?”
“Yeah, Bart told me he read an outline of yours. He said he liked it. Thought he could sell it.”
The poison of Marion’s pessimism left Fred’s system, as if wiped out by a miracle drug. “He did?”
“Yeah,” Karl said. ‘Didn’t he say that to you?”
“Yeah. He did. I’m crazy. You know, it happened three hours ago. I was high as a kite. But just now I was really feeling down—”
“Why? Isn’t he sending it out?”
“Yeah. He’s sending it to your editor.”
“Oh.” Karl sounded taken aback. “You mean Holder?” he asked idiotically, as if hoping against hope that Fred had made a mistake.
“Yeah. Does that bother you?”
“No, no,” Karl said so quickly that it was obvious he was disturbed.
“It shouldn’t,” Fred said almost pleadingly. It flashed in his mind that Karl might speak to Holder during the next few days (Karl’s novel was due out in five months and contact between them was probably frequent) and say something denigrating about him. Point out that Fred has never written a novel, that his experience as a writer was limited to twenty pieces on sports—and most of those were interviews, which hardly put great demands on Fred as a writer.
“No, of course not. I was thinking whether I should speak to him, tell him I know you—”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Fred said anxiously, but as he spoke, he looked at the situation the other way. Holder obviously admired Karl; if Karl spoke well of Fred to Holder, perhaps it would add to the favorable impresssion of Bart’s recommendation. “Unless—do you think it would bother Holder?”
“Bother?” Karl said in a bewildered tone.
“I think you shouldn’t. He’d think I put you up to it.”
“Okay. I won’t say anything.”
“So,” Fred said, clearing his throat. He wanted to keep Karl on the line. Talking to Karl—Karl the novelist—made him feel his ambitions were real, answered the worry inside him that he was a victim of a delusion. But there was nothing in his mind other than talk of the outline, talk of the meeting with Bart, worry over what Holder would think.
“I was calling to invite you to a poker game. Do you play?” Karl asked.
Fred was delighted. He had heard Karl, on the social occasions they had spent together, refer to his weekly poker game, whose members were all established writers. Several times Fred had mentioned to Karl, rather awkwardly, how much he liked to gamble (Marion would always exclaim, “You do?” incredulously, humiliating him), hoping to provoke an invitation, but his comments were returned with blank looks from Karl, and, more ominously, after a while Karl stopped even mentioning his poker game.
“I’ve told you I play poker,” Fred said, to let Karl know that he knew this invitation was a symbol of a change in their relationship.
“Well, you know,” Karl said, “usually we’re full up. We have seven regulars. But one of them’s dropped out. It’s tonight. Can you make it?”
“What time?”
“Seven. And you have to play until at least midnight. It’s a house rule.”
“Even if I’m down a hundred dollars, I gotta stay?” Fred asked, laughing, as if that was an absurd idea.
“Yes,” Karl said. “Even if you’re down a hundred dollars. Nobody ever limits their winnings, so we don’t let people limit their losses. I don’t care if you just end up anteing every hand and folding, but you gotta stay until midnight.”
“Sounds pretty serious,” Fred said.
“It is. It’s really serious poker. No kibitzing or stuff like that. So if you don’t like that, you shouldn’t come.”
“No, no. That’s fine. Tell me, how much money should I bring?” Fred asked, hoping in this way to find out what the stakes were without implying that he was frightened of losing too much.
Karl’s voice was matter-of-fact: “Biggest loser we’ve ever had was three hundred dollars. The average losing night is about one hundred and fifty to two hundred. And, also, you should know, we play a lot of high-low games—”
“I’ve never played them.”
“Oh,” Karl said, as if that were a big blow.
“Don’t worry. I’ll learn fast.”
“Well …” Karl sighed and paused.
Schmuck, Fred said to himself, why did you say you’d never played them? You could have announced that at the game. “Don’t worry,” Fred said again.
“I think you’d better come at six. I’ll teach you some high-low games … the guys aren’t real patient about explaining while the game is going.”
“Great. Okay. I’ll be there at six.”
“All right, see you—oh, you’d better eat before you come. There are no snacks. That’s another rule.”
Fred rang off ecstatic and nervous. He had wanted into that game for almost a year. Tonight would be like an audition. If they liked him he would become a regular. He dialed Marion once again.
“Fred?” she said with despairing impatience when her secretary let him through.
“Listen. Karl just called and invited me to play poker tonight. So you can edit your nouvelle cuisine book.”
“His weekly game?” she said. “But that’s a very expensive game. Karl’s always talking about how much money people lose—”
“Honey,” he said with great confidence, “don’t worry. I’ve played plenty of poker on the road with the ball teams. I’m sure a bunch of writers aren’t that tough, okay?”
“All right. As long as you know what you’re doing. So do we have to eat early?”
“I can’t eat with you. I’ve got to go over early so Karl can teach me how to—” He caught himself. He stopped talking and closed his eyes in frustration at his slip.
“Teach you what? I though you knew how to play.”
“No, no. You wouldn’t understand. They play some silly games—kid stuff, like wild-card games—and they don’t like to slow things down to explain, so Karl wanted me to come early. I don’t think that’s the real reason. He heard from Bart about my outline. He probably wants to chat about that.”
“Why? Wouldn’t he just say he wants to talk about your outline?”
“Forget it. It’s not important. Go back to work.”
“So you’ll be gone by the time I get home?” She sounded petulant; suddenly a neglected child.
“Yeah, I have to be at Karl’s by six.”
“When will you be home?”
“Honey, I don’t know. It’s a poker game. It’ll probably go on till late.”
“Oh,” she said. A disappointed moan.
“What? What is it?”
“I’ll miss you. I wanted to see you tonight.”
“What? Earlier, when I asked if you wanted to go to the movies, you acted totally uninterested.”
“I did not! I said I would go.”
“After I insisted.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Good-bye. I’ll see you later—or I won’t. Good- bye—”
“Come on!”
But she had hung up. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled at the walls. “She’s gonna drive me out of my fucking mind!”
But his anger was quickly dissipated once he got down to the business of dressing for the poker game. Jeans, a black turtleneck, and sneakers were his choices: they made him look slim and tough, he thought, like a street-smart kid. And he felt like a kid, a happy kid, going over to the Upper West Side where Karl lived. Heading for a night out with the boys—the writing boys.
The Scotch tastes like metal. Cheap metal, Tony thought. He looked around the tacky dark-wood-paneled living room. Lois, judging from the decoration of her house, fancied herself a Spanish duchess. There were big ungainly chairs with elaborate carved wood designs and a big dark wood couch with thin cushions that failed to rescue its occupant from discomfort.
“Too megalomaniacal?” she asked, indicating the room with her eyes.
So she did think it was grand, he thought to himself, feeling despair. Not simply over the prospect of being alone with her, but being alone in this city, where ugly furniture could house pathetic delusions.
He smiled at her knowingly, as if to say, “I understand, I approve, but I’m too bright to take anything too seriously.” He looked out the big window behind her. There was a sweeping view of Hollywood and the valley. Lights lay below like a twinkling bed, bejeweled for a princess. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.
“A year. When I was made producer on your mother’s series, I started making so much money my manager told me to buy something. I couldn’t believe it. Felt weird. Being single and owning a house.”
“Your manager?”
“My money manager. Not a personal manager.”
“Do you have a talent manager also?”
“Well, I have an agent.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No. They’re different.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Your mother’s got all those things. An agent, a personal manager, a money manager, a lawyer—hasn’t she told you the facts of life?” Lois asked, laughing.
“Only the sexual ones. That’s why I’m happy but poor.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and looked off as if she had taken his comment to heart.
“So why don’t you tell me?” Tony said.
“Well. A manager gets you work.”
“Don’t agents do that?”
“Top agents have lots of clients and you have to fight for their attention. A personal manager will do it for you.”
Tony thought about this and then shook his head wonderingly. “Seems like a Rube Goldberg way of going about it. You hire somebody to watch somebody you hired. It’s bizarre.”
“Who’s your agent?”
“Gloria Fowler.”
Lois looked impressed. “She’s the kind of agent who’s got so many name clients that somebody like you might hire a manager to call her and bug her. Saves you the embarrassment. But it’s not something writers do. Actors do it. A writer only needs attention on one or two projects at most.”
There was a silence. Tony realized he had wanted to be with Lois to gather this sort of information. His mother and father could have supplied him with these details of the movie business, but he didn’t want to ask them, to give them the pleasure of playing at being his teachers. She had him here for sex. Or something. Maybe just company. But he wanted facts. He was scared to walk into that meeting tomorrow without knowing something, anything, about how Hollywood operated.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
“What?” she said with a smile. She looked different now. The hard angles of her high cheeks were softer here in the dim light of her Spanish living room.
“I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight. I don’t like strange hotel rooms …”
She smiled, her eyes opening wide. He realized she suspected he was going to proposition her. So he hurried on:
“… and I’ve got this big meeting tomorrow. I don’t know shit about this business. Maybe you don’t either. But I’d like to tell you about the meeting and if there’s any advice you could give me, I’d appreciate it.”
Lois looked him in the eyes for a moment. Searched earnestly for an answer to something. “I know the feature business. I haven’t worked in it, but I know a lot about it. A …” She hesitated. “A guy I went out with is a top executive at International Pictures. All he talked about was the infighting, the deals. I had it coming out of my ears.”
“And that wasn’t what you wanted to come out of your ears, right?”
She nodded wearily. “Right.” She got up and stretched. Tony looked at her thin body arch: her stomach hollowed and her ribs showed; her pelvis pressed against the fitted pants; she was lean like a racing dog or a long-distance runner. “But you knew that, didn’t you?” she said casually, like an interrogator playing a trump card.
“Knew what?”
“About him,” Lois said.
“The guy at International?”
She nodded, closing her eyes angrily, as if she was disappointed that he pretended not to know her meaning.
“How would I know about him? I don’t get it.”
“From Billy.”
“Oh …” Tony nodded. “Boy, you are paranoid. You think I came here, pretended to be interested in you, because I knew you knew somebody at International.” Lois looked embarrassed but didn’t deny it. “Think about it,” Tony went on. “Does that make any sense? If I needed information that badly, wouldn’t I get it from my parents? Is this town that crazy? You want to know what’s really going on? Is my behavior confusing you?”
Lois stood still, obviously nonplussed. She thought she had him figured twice. First, he was a philandering husband; then, a scheming opportunist. Both times she was wrong. She looked as if that was rare for her. “I work in TV,” she said after a moment. “We’re used to very simple motivations.”
Tony laughed. He liked her a lot for that: it was clever, a quality he found sexy. “Okay, but I don’t know what my motivation is. I’m scared to be here. Not in your house. I mean in LA. This place brings up a lot of bad memories. I’ve been having a tough time with my plays. I haven’t had a hit off-Broadway. Never even been close to making Broadway. Gloria Fowler told me if I could cinch this deal, get this movie made, the studio might help finance my next play. Get some heat behind my name, maybe intimidate investors into backing me. I don’t know what she meant. It was vague. Maybe I’m a fool to believe her. I wouldn’t know. I don’t really know whether this Bill Garth project is a hot project or not. I don’t want to ask my parents. They’ll be too thrilled that I’m working in their business—I don’t want them to be thrilled about me. I didn’t know anything about you and this guy at International. I haven’t spoken to Billy in years. He drove me to Joe Allen’s and we talked about some episode he wrote for Mom’s show. He assumed I’d seen it. I hadn’t—”
Lois laughed. “What! You mean you haven’t seen the Emmy-winning car-wreck episode!” She burst out laughing again. “I love it. That’s great. Must have driven him crazy.”
“It did. Is it terrible of me?”
“No, of course not.” She moved to the uncomfortable couch and sat next to him. Not seductively. But like a close friend, unselfconsciously, leaning forward eagerly to pursue interesting gossip. “He thinks of you as a real writer. No doubt he had this fantasy when you called that it was because you knew about his success and admired him.”
“Oh.” Tony thought about this. “Well, I guess I’m too snobbish to ever admire somebody ’cause of TV writing. I mean, if theater didn’t have the compensation of making me feel superior, how could I stand the obscurity and poverty?”
Lois smiled. “Look, obviously I don’t know you very well, but I have gotten one thing straight about you. You think playwrighting is a calling, a religion. You’re not a snob. You believe in it.” She said this with frank admiration. Tony was pleased: he believed the compliment. “Anyway, tell me about the meeting.”
“Well, I’m supposed to have breakfast tomorrow morning at the Polo Lounge—”
She smiled. “Very good so far. Polo Lounge is good.”
“Is that more important than who’s at the meeting?”
“Probably.”
“I see. Well, it’s supposed to be with Bill Garth—”
“He’s actually going to be there?”
Tony hesitated. “What do you mean? Doesn’t he usually show up for meetings?”
Lois leaned back and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. “He has a reputation for committing to projects, then firing lots of writers, I don’t know for sure—my friend at International hated him. Claimed that Garth screwed up project after project by never being satisfied with the script.”
“But Garth makes movies—so obviously he’s eventually satisfied,” Tony reasoned.
“Yeah, but usually they’re not scripts Garth himself has developed. I asked if he would be there because I was hoping this was a project International was developing for him, rather than he developing it for them.”
Tony shook his head as if he were trying to clear it of confusion. “Jesus, I’d better get on the next plane home.”
“No, no. Don’t let me frighten—”
“I’m not frightened. I don’t even understand what you’re talking about. Whoever heard of an actor not wanting to get something on? It makes no sense! It’s the opposite of everything I understand.”
“It’s ’cause Garth’s on top. He’s won an Academy Award. He’s had hits. Every script in town is offered to him. If he decides he wants to work, he’ll work. If he doesn’t like the script, they’ll change it. He doesn’t like the director, they’ll fire him. It’s a position most actors never get to—so his psychology is turned upside down. Instead of the studio vacillating, he vacillates. His power, all of it, resides in making a decision to do a movie. Once he commits himself, he loses his power. The film editor and the director can cut his scenes—”
“What? He doesn’t get final cut?”
Lois hesitated. “You know, you got me. I don’t know. If he demanded it, especially of a studio that needed a hit, he’d probably get it. See that?” she said with a smile, turning to him and putting her hand on his arm. “You stumped the expert.”
He smiled at her. Her hand felt warm and friendly. They looked into each other’s eyes. Tony’s contempt and distrust of her was gone. She seemed human now: the hard-angled leanness of a Hollywood bitch had softened in the dim light of her Spanish fantasy. His suspicion that she was a dull, opportunistic, and selfish woman had evaporated in the dawning of her kind interest in his worry and her desire to advise him well. There was nothing of the one-upmanship toward Billy, nothing of the cynical pose at dinner of someone who believes that Copernicus was wrong: that the earth actually revolves around money. Once he had made it clear he didn’t want sex from her, she had relaxed and become ordinary. And, of course, now he had to admit it to himself: now. as their eyes searched each other’s, he did want to make love.
David moved carefully, lifting Patty’s arm off his waist. She had gone to sleep with his wet penis in her hand, her body pressed against him, their legs entwined, and her head resting in the crook of his arm. It was as if she wanted to merge with his body, melt into him; there was something forlorn about her clinging to him. She had serviced him, her mouth loving his prick until he climaxed. There had been no complaint that he brought her to orgasm lackadaisically with his hand. She had acted grateful for his presence, as if she felt lucky even to have him there.
David got her arm off him and then slowly disengaged his leg. She stirred at that and turned around, her slim silky buttocks angled into him. She has a beautiful body, he told himself wonderingly. Wonderingly, because it was the kind of body that he had lusted for in high school and college and had never succeeded in getting. Now he had it and there was no sense of triumph or delight. The fantasy was no better than the reality—Patty was fabulous in bed. Her golden-haired vagina was moist and pink, her breasts firm, her stomach fiat and yet soft, her hips smooth but flowingly curved.
And she was so yielding! Her mouth was a willing slave, opening abjectly for his tongue, his penis, swallowing whatever he chose to inject. Why didn’t this thrill him? Wasn’t it his dream?
He couldn’t claim, as he tried to convince himself after their first and second dates, that she was merely a dumb blond, a mind and soul too numb to feel deeply or understand his life. Patty was bright, maybe not intellectual, but he had never liked that in women or men. She exuded cheerfulness and wit, qualities he not only enjoyed but also considered rare. Why weren’t these additions to her delicious body a cause for celebration? He ought to be madly in love, he told himself. To have this beautiful and charming woman cling to him was a great piece of good fortune. But he felt lonely in her presence. Lonely and false, as if he weren’t really experiencing the sex and the conversation, as if he were in disguise, reaping rewards that justly belonged to someone else.
This thought frightened him. He felt a chill of horror, as if his soul was about to break out and spin into the black universe, divorced from human life.
David moved and hugged Patty’s back, putting his arms around her waist. She moved and hugged his arms to her, saying, out of a half-sleep, “Mmmm.”
He put his cheek against her smooth back and pushed out any thought, absorbing her warmth. His fingers stroked her soft belly. He brushed her pubic hair and she arched up, catching his hand in her pelvis.
He moved quickly, in the dark, down, pushing his face in her buttocks. She opened her legs and rolled on her back, moaning in a sleepy voice as he put his mouth to her vagina.
He knelt on the bed and quickly, in desperate and frightened movements, licked her. Almost immediately she was wet, with that ferocious moisture her body could summon instantly. He pushed his mouth and nose and chin up and down, from side to side, obliterating the terrible memory of that vision of spiritual death.
He had no idea how long it took. It seemed only moments before her body kicked and heaved, her mouth making sounds of release. He felt intense pleasure at her pleasure, at letting her squeeze his head between her thighs.
After her climax, she pulled him up and kissed his mouth, wet from her sex. He looked into her eyes and said with great feeling:
“I love you.”
He was astonished that her reaction was to hold him close, hugging him as if he were a long-lost savior. He glanced at her face and saw there was the beginning of tears in her eyes.
Seeing her happiness, he felt the dreaded emptiness return, and regretted that he had spoken.