This is the worst of it, the worst part, 9:50 p.m. and the waiting outside the supervisor’s office for your assignment and your key. You don’t know where they’ll send you, to a place where it is civilized and the tips are bountiful, or to a place where it is cold and full of the buses, Zones 12 and 14, usually reserved for me, depending on the supervisor. You have as much say over your destiny as a leaf in the wind.
But that’s not the worst part, not yet. The worst part is just waiting in line with about 20 of them, all of them younger than you, except for one or two and sometimes three, but most of them younger and full of gusto and plugged into hip-hop, like Humberto Valdez, who is tall and thin and restless and full of mindless wisecracks, and I think I dislike him the most, for all that, and I think I dislike them all, right now, right here, when I find myself so different and so out of place, so wrong.
They’re rapping and you don’t even have the same memories as they do. We are all in uniform. We are an army of slot attendants.
So this night I’m waiting with the rest of them and am in a hurry to get this over with, get the assignment, get the key, and get downstairs and lose myself in the job, and then start liking these people, these kids, all over again, when we’re all in the same boat – but it’s never that quick, this part. There’s always dithering among the supervisors, confusion as to who made up the schedule and who marked an assignment for a slot attendant who’s on his day off.
I’m trying to think of something, something else, as that’s the trick, for now, think of something else, be in another place, and what comes to mind is F. Scott Fitzgerald saying, “No one is reading me; what’s the point of all this writing?” When I turn the corner into the office I trade some patter with Flint Odesso and Bob Michaelson, we’re about the same age and we speak English, and I’m glad it’s Maggi Holt on duty, Horny Maggi.
She says, oh, there is no assignment for me, no key and just when I think it’s over, I’ve been fired, and begin calculating what unemployment benefits are due me, and worse, the loss of Medical Benefits, when you’re sure to need root canal, Maggi says that there’s a message for me from the Executive Offices. Someone in Marketing wants me. In fact, the Director of Marketing wants me, Shelly King.
“Whoa,” says Gabe. “Big time!”
Maggi asks if I know what this is all about.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I’m only a supervisor,” Maggi says. “We’re nothing to them. They don’t tell us a thing.”
She doesn’t even know where the Executive Offices are located. That’s another world. That’s where they start at $100,000 a year.
That’s where they have real offices, with carpeting and secretaries.
Maggi is impressed.
“Is this the start of something?”
“I swear I don’t know.”
Can’t be trouble. That’s another department and I’ve already been there, and will probably be there again.
No, this is different, and quite astonishing.
“She wants you right away,” says Maggi.
The secretary, Shelly King’s secretary, asked what shift I was in, and was surprised that it was graveyard. But anyway, Shelly King was staying late just for me.
I take the staircase down to the casino floor and haven’t a clue where to begin, where the plush offices begin. I pass by Zone 10, the Hot 7s, and here’s Carmella, busy, at a machine, some customer complaining about the coins, dollars, that keep getting stuck. “Nothing works around here. I’m never coming back.” Carmella asks for my help, but I have no belt, no equipment, so we both tell the player she’ll have to wait for a supervisor. “Oh you people,” says another satisfied customer.
“I need to talk to you,” says Carmella.
I explain I have to be someplace. She doesn’t know anything about Marketing, but she knows it’s something big.
“Good luck,” she says. “Gaucho.”
“What does Gaucho mean?”
“Means handsome,” she says.
“Carmella, you’re such a tease.”
“Oh? Are you sure I’m teasing?”
Mark the guard is standing post by the mid-escalators, and I ask him if he can accompany me to Marketing. The guards know every inch of the place.
“Sure.”
He calls in for permission and when his replacement arrives he says, “Let’s go.”
We snake our way to the northern edge of the casino, enter a storage room, then a suite of secretarial offices, and then take an elevator up to nine. Before he drops me off he says he knows my fear of elevators – must be something from a previous life. Yes, Napoleon. “Weren’t you once a war hero or something?” Mark says.
“Yes, but most wars take place on the ground floor.”
He’s thinking of making his move on Clara, that hot dealer who’s got the hots for him.
“Don’t tarry. If not you, somebody else.”
“That’s right,” he says. “There’s always somebody else. See ya.”
Now I’m all alone up here and follow the sign that says Marketing. It’s quiet, as you’d expect this time of night. There’s no graveyard for executives, unless there’s a banquet or some other function. Or they’re up there on the top floor in the Golden Player Lounge. That’s where Bob Foster, our president, hangs out when he stays late, schmoozing up the premium crowd.
So I’m walking the long, thick-carpeted hallway and remember that some time back I walked an even longer hallway to meet the president of Alliance Pictures. Then I knew what it was, and I knew that it was good, but now I don’t, I don’t know what it is. Must be good, though. Or maybe not. You never know what they want. You never know what you did. At some point in life, you don’t want anything, not bad news, certainly, but not even good news. You’ve had it to the brim.
Years before, Melanie’s mom was upset when Melanie phoned her to give her the news that Alliance Pictures was buying and coming up with big money for the The Ice King. Melanie said, “Mom, I’ve got good news.” Her mother said, “What’s wrong?” Even after Melanie straightened it out, and expected congratulations, her mom was still upset and begged her not to startle her like this again. She had reached that stage where she simply didn’t want any news. That’s how it gets and now even I usually answer the phone with, “What’s wrong?”
Usually nothing is wrong, but sometimes it is, and it’s always about health, someone’s health. We are defective units. We were created with so many parts that can go bad, like used cars. Never mind what’s waiting for us on the outside, but our very own bodies keep trying to kill us. Usually it’s someone from Melanie’s side of the family, or Melanie’s friends from high school or college. Some, still relatively young, have come down with serious defects, and one or two have even died. I’ve quit responding to my friends, so they’ve quit bothering, most of them, though I do get e-mails from friends I made in the newspaper business, the horseracing business and the boxing business. Boxers and jockeys and thoroughbred horse trainers are the finest people around. I respond to them. Boxers are very gentle people, outside the ring. I have few friends in the movie or literary world. That’s fair, on both sides.
But Sharon Glazer was okay, Sharon, president of the Motion Picture Unit for Alliance Pictures, said – that time in Hollywood, “We’re making this picture for YOU!”
She said that I had written a fabulous novel. The Ice King will be sensational as a movie and will do boffo box office. (Which it did.) She was so effusive, when we first met and during the filming, that I thought she loved me and wanted to have sex and that before you know it, we’d be an item. The slight matter of being married, from both ends – well, that’s show biz. That’s Hollywood.
But someone else was going to write the screenplay, and this was perfectly acceptable. I am no screenwriter. That’s a different skill. What do I know from angles?
Strangely, though, people keep referring to me as a screenwriter, the screenwriter for The Ice King.
Out there, a book is but a precursor to a movie. No wonder Salinger said no to Hollywood. “Holden wouldn’t approve,” he said.
Kathy Lynn Boyer wrote the screenplay and I didn’t mind it when in all those interviews she never once referred to the novel.
I didn’t mind because I got the check and when you sell to Hollywood, well, it’s sold, gone with the wind. It’s not yours anymore. That’s a different medium. So I didn’t mind when the director, Monty Rogers, and Kathy Lynn Boyer, kept the concept and kept much of my dialogue, but combined to change the locale of my novel and even the ages (younger) of my characters because you cannot insert one art form into another. Beethoven would not dare tell Picasso how to paint his Third Symphony.
Even the ethnics in my novel were changed to yuppie white breads.
So I was okay with all that because it’s nothing personal, it’s beezness, and with or without a movie, a novel breathes and lives onward upon its own two feet.
Maybe I would have appreciated a mention or two when all of them got on TV and the host raved about the movie and about the concept and the audience kept on applauding each time another clip was shown. The actors and the director and Sharon Glazer herself forgot to mention where it all came from, and the screenwriter, taking bows, kept forgetting to name her source. Melanie, slamming the refrigerator door much too hard as all this is going on over the TV, and refusing to watch the rest of the show, and later vacuuming four times around the house as she does when she has bad energy to burn, asked me if I’m surprised at being omitted and I said no I’m not surprised, my name’s in the credits, they even spelled it right, and the check cleared, didn’t it?
The second time I met Sharon Glazer, over in Hollywood, it was different, a different hello and a different goodbye. The Ice King had already made all that money and I was here, this time, at my own expense, to pitch a concept, also high, as high, I thought, as the first. That first time, all expenses were paid to bring us on the set; we were given First Class Tickets and set up at The Four Seasons. Room service is especially satisfying when it’s on the studio tab. “This is heaven,” said Melanie, so radiant that she outshone even the movie stars on the set.
The concept that brought me to Hollywood again, now without fanfare, was simple: Joe saves Marty’s life. It’s a highway accident and Joe reacted swiftly and heroically. Marty is grateful, but how much does he owe this Joe, this man who saved his life? For Joe has been coming around making demands. He wants more and more in payment. He even wants Marty’s job, then even his wife. He wants everything. Joe, this one-time Good Samaritan, has turned into a monster, inflicting holy terror upon Marty and his family. So, when someone saves your life, how much do you owe that person? That’s the WHAT IF…the High Concept.
Sure, towards the end there are Stephen King elements here, but still, high concept, and original, I thought – and still think.
So the second time I went out there to meet Sharon Glazer, it was on my money and second class. Her assistant, Sandy, a guy, was pleasant, but not quite as before, and said it would be awhile as Sharon is on the phone, and who could miss that, for all the shouting, no, absolute hysteria. Sounded like a relative she was talking to, possibly a daughter. But Sharon Glazer was in there, in a room with thick walls, going berserk and using R-rated language. This lasted for about an hour. I asked Sandy if my timing was bad, and he said no, be patient.
There was no choice but to assume that this was routine, normal behavior, as here, in the outer office, among the five administrative assistants, no one winced. I had not seen, or rather heard, this side of Sharon Glazer during the filming of The Ice King so maybe things were not going so well since then. Back then it had been all flattery and charm.
This time, when I went in, when she was ready for her close-up, Sharon greeted me warmly (as if there had been no tantrum a moment earlier), but then seated herself atop something like a throne. I was sunk into a sofa with deep cushions and kept sinking lower and lower, near to drowning and gulping for air. She was up, I was down, she was big, I was small.
She is a big woman, tall, broad at the shoulders, and lucky for her, she’s brunette, not blonde, as blonde wouldn’t go for someone so formidable.
I gave the pitch and she said it would have to go through the system. She sent me to another part of the building where I pitched a man I still call Dr. No.
Actually, I don’t call him anything, not anymore. You get the hint.
Dr. No just sits there at the far end of the Admin Building and listens politely, never adds, never subtracts. He’s here to listen and say no, and it does not impress him that once you built a railroad, that once you built a movie that most likely is still paying his salary. You are starting from scratch. Every concept is not quite right for us, or has already been done. We want something that is original…but also derivative. A good story? Yes, we’re always after a good story, but we’re after demographics. That’s the story. The young. The kids. But (I protest) we still have old people. Yes, but the young make Box Office. Our Focus Groups can’t be wrong. Light, crazy comedies, you know, where guys make love to pies, and where guys get their penises caught in the zippers of their pants…I wonder, though, if he’s so smart, how come there’ve been so many flops from Alliance, straight to DVD?
Lately, they arrive at a trend when it’s already over. Alliance released Spoiled Brats after four other studios had already cleaned up with their versions of American High.
But I have no regrets about the whole thing. It really was great when The Ice King was happening. I don’t get it when writers gripe about The Industry. Hooray for Hollywood. Nobody has it good there or anywhere, so what’s the complaint? We lunched and dined with movie stars, and that is enough. The sentry manning the famous gateway to Alliance Pictures recognized our names without checking his clipboard, and that is enough. Melanie had that operation and recovered just in time to fully enjoy the opulence of the premiere, and that is enough.
The director of The Ice King, Monty Rogers, was eccentric, a Brit. He walked out on his own premiere. He is temperamental. Well, he’s an artist. Well, I am also an arteest.
We crossed paths several times on the set, or rather we didn’t, directly. We kept to ourselves, actually avoided any sort of contact. The first time I showed up on the set he asked the script girl who this was, and she told him, and he gave me a snort and a nod. I’ve never figured that out. The last person they want on the set is the writer. They want no part of him. I understand.
Actually, Sharon Glazer wasn’t all that warm the second time around. The warmth lasted for about eight seconds when she remembered that The Ice King brought in half a billion dollars for Alliance Pictures and made her personally very rich. Then she forgot and she was up on her throne and down to business. “Okay,” she said, “show me what you got.”
I had been warned, by more than one producer, how swiftly she flashes from hot to cold. Snap she’s on, and snap, she’s off. She was doing me a favor, she said, by hearing me out, for as president, now, she only takes pitches from producers, but in my case, she was making an exception.
So I made the pitch but pitching is an art, but not for me, and I knew that I was bombing because I felt as if I were lip-syncing. I did bomb.
The entire meeting with Sharon Glazer lasted maybe ten minutes. I thought we’d do lunch.
* * *
But is it any wonder that so much wife-swapping goes on once people get together to make a movie? That’s no surprise. There is so much (fake or real) effusiveness going around that you are bound to get sucked in. Happens all the time. It happened on the set of Basic Instinct and it still requires a scorecard to remember who ended up with whom. Strangers are thrown in together and snap, they’re family. Love happens, and of course it usually fizzles once it’s a wrap and it’s onto another set and another family. I saw up close how easily you can get seduced, and it wasn’t just Sharon Glazer.
In proselytizing circles that’s called love-bombing where, to snare you to convert, they overwhelm you with adoration.
I keep thinking that one day I’ll do a novel or a screenplay based on what happened to Edmund Purdom who starred in The Egyptian back in the 1950s and was ready for above-the-title billing. I think it was Edmund Purdom who shared a garage with his wife who worked cleaning houses as he made the rounds. He finally hit stardom and did what comes naturally; left his wife for someone who doesn’t do windows. The public got a hold of this, back when scandal was bad, and finished him off.
That’s what I think I will do, one day, I mean write a novel or a screenplay about a down-and-out screenwriter, a near hick from the Midwest, who finally gets to principal photography and dumps his loyal wife in favor of the starlet, who has promised him love everlasting. This lasts until the next movie. She moves on and there he is, humbled and alone, and what a sucker!
Something like this was already done in the Kevin Bacon flick The Big Picture, but there’s always room for more, and they’re always making remakes anyway, and there is no such thing in the movie business as plagiarism; it’s homage, pronounced French as in frommage. We’re always borrowing from something past. The concept for Planet of the Apes had to come from Kafka’s A Report to an Academy. Though what I’ve got, I’m pretty sure, is original, and derivative.
* * *
So how do I approach this, this meeting with Shelly King, director of Marketing up here on the casino’s ninth floor, me in my green slot attendant uniform? Suddenly, I agree with Melanie. It is disgraceful walking around in this when not on duty. It is degrading and disgraceful, makes you like a soldier in the wrong army. So…what does this woman want?
Shall I dominate? In this outfit?
Strange, you fought in a war, combat house to house, hand to hand, and NOW you get the heebie jeebies?
The door is open and I hear someone talking, on the phone obviously. I knock but no one answers. I step in, and it’s Shelly King, and she is on the phone, and now I recognize her. I’d seen her on the casino floor, usually with Bob Foster, our president. I thought she was his secretary or something. But she does have that title – Vice President of Marketing, or Director. She is important.
She motions for me to have a seat. She sits behind a semi-circular half-moon shaped butcher wood block oak desk. She’s actually tucked in, as if she’s been here forever and will remain forever. I admire such nesting. To the side are vinyl desks with advertising posters scattered all over, even along the floor and around her desk. Busy, busy, busy. “Get Hot With Our Slots,” is our current campaign. Bob Foster has made the claim that our slots pay off at a higher rate than any other casino in Atlantic City.
Business has picked up, especially among the nickel players. I’d be among the first to notice.
Shelly offers a smile as she’s still on the phone, a business smile. I smile back, same kind, business, neutral and neutered.
There’s a photo of some family on her desk, but I don’t think it’s hers. I think it’s her sister’s, for some reason, and for some reason I don’t think she’s married, not anymore. There is something joyless about her. You spot that right off. She was once quite okay, that too is obvious, and I measure her as being in her mid-thirties and as a girl who was runner-up for Prom Queen and runner-up for everything else, always coming in second. She’s still not bad, but the legs are a bit on the chubby side, though she has not let herself go. You can’t if you’re a woman and want a career in business. You sure can’t flaunt it and come on sexy. You can hint but you must not flaunt, and Shelly King doesn’t, doesn’t flaunt. You can tell she’s made it a habit to connect with her male side. She’s done the work, probably beginning in college, where she probably took Marketing, or Business Administration.
I’ll bet, early on, she probably also took some Lit, and maybe even wrote some poetry, love poems. That’s all over. That’s done. Down to business.
“So you’re Jay Leonard,” she says after she’s finished on the phone. “What a pleasure to meet you.” We shake hands, firmly.
I am not surprised when she says she never saw me before. They don’t see your face when you’re down there on the casino floor. One green uniform is the same as another. Then again, all players, all customers, are alike to us as well. We can hardly tell one from another and when someone says, “Don’t you remember me, you paid me my last jackpot,” you say you do, but you don’t. It all blurs.
Well, she says, she did not know – WE did not know – that we had a celebrity in our midst.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Nothing to tell.
“You’re a famous author.”
“I’m a slot attendant.”
“Oh,” she says.
She doesn’t even know what that is. I have to explain. She explains that everything that’s done in the casino falls under Marketing.
“Oh,” I say.
She sits there unsure of what to do with me, or with my attitude, for I am not being forthcoming. I feel resentful but don’t know why. Is it that I know she can fire me in a snap? Is it that we both know this? We are both uncomfortable. I seem to have her frozen. So, she can have me fired, at a whim, or, she can move me up. Up or down, she can do whatever she wants with me, and this possibly is what I resent.
She shifts uneasily in her chair and says, “I won’t ask all the reasons that brought you here, I mean as a slot attendant.”
I thank her.
Now she gets up and plants herself on the sofa and as she does this, her skirt moves up; up, up and up until her legs are on full display.
Do women know that practically everything they do is a turn-on? We (men) are all such horn-dogs.
“Though it is strange.”
“I agree.”
She lets that sit for a while. I am not about to volunteer. You never want to answer questions that are not asked.
“Frankly,” she says, “I’m baffled.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean…we’ve never had an author. You understand?”
“First time for everything.”
“Never a famous author.”
“I’m not so famous.”
“You had a very big hit, didn’t you?”
“Six years ago.”
She shakes her head. She’s beginning to understand.
“That’s not so long for an author.”
“It’s still six years.”
“We do have great Benefits,” she says reflectively.
“Yes you do.”
She smiles, and this time a real smile, actually a defensive smile, and says, “You know, one of our lawyers is quite nervous about you.”
“Huh?”
“Phil Kraut. He’s suggested that you may be a plant.”
“Not so.”
“Some sort of spy.”
“Not me.”
“Well you know lawyers.”
“I know Phil Kraut.”
He came down once and chewed me out. I didn’t know who he was except for a suit. This was one of those rare nights when I had Zone 1 (Marty Glick was out sick) and some nasty high roller hit a jackpot for twenty thousand and so I did what I’m supposed to do, I congratulated him, him and his lovely daughter, except that it wasn’t his daughter, it was his wife, and this offended this man. He went ballistic on me. I apologized, but that wasn’t enough. I said it was a compliment; his wife so attractive and youthful as to be mistaken for his daughter, and this made it worse. He called for my supervisor. Roger Price came over and backed me up and then it got ugly. The man wanted Bob Foster, our president, who wasn’t in, and the closest thing available was Phil Kraut, the casino’s top lawyer. Kraut said that I was just a slot attendant, that I was nothing, and not to be taken seriously. Kraut asked the man if he wanted me fired. He’d be happy to do so, Kraut would. Right here on the spot. My insult was unforgivable. These slot attendants must be taught a lesson. The man said, no, not to go that far. He was okay now, now that a lawyer, such a high authority, had stepped in. Kraut took me aside and I thought he was going to say something nice, something like, you know I had to do this, you know, to cover your ass and my ass, otherwise it would get straight to Bob Foster, so I’m sorry for all those things I said about you. But that’s not what he said. This is what he said: “Watch yourself, boy. Watch yourself.”
So yes, I know Phil Kraut.
She leans back and she’s wearing a sweater and it’s getting tight on her and I’m wondering, the way you wonder. We always wonder. Do women know this?
“So what do we do with you?”
“We go on,” I say.
Obviously, that is not the right answer.
“You want to go on? How much do you make an hour?”
She knows, of course. She’s got my total history in front of her. Today, especially, it’s impossible to obscure yourself, what with Google and Search a touch away.
“Well I’ve been giving this some thought,” she says.
Would I care to advance up to slot host? I immediately say no. I half expected this.
“No?”
They wear suits and ties but boot-lick even more than slot attendants…and work mostly off commission. They practically shanghai high rollers from one casino to another and even backstab within the same establishment. They’re babysitters and I’ve heard them on the phones begging Mr. and Mrs. Smith to please come down for the weekend, we’ve got a fabulous room waiting for you and have already booked you into our Steak House. They keep a list of every birthday, every anniversary and even every funeral. All they do is suck up and they’re always on call. If a high roller steps in, no matter the hour, they have to get dressed and rush on over, like a doctor. No, even doctors don’t do this.
At least in my job, rough as it is on graveyard, once your eight hours are over, it’s over, unless you volunteer for overtime.
“I’ll pass,” I say.
She is not surprised.
Well, she says, she’s been talking to Bob Foster, our president – and she straightens up when she says this, when she mentions his name – so she’s been talking to Bob Foster and he, Bob Foster, favors offering me a special designation; celebrity greeter. She pauses for my reaction. I do not react. She goes on. All I have to do is stand around and greet, or walk around and greet.
“Will people know who I am?”
“Of course.”
I laugh. “I’ll wear a sign?”
“Sure.”
Not exactly a sign, but a tag with my name on it, my name plus this: Author of The Ice King.
That’s how I’d walk around greeting people, and Joe Louis flashes through my mind. Isn’t that how he ended up, only it was Vegas…and Willie Mays, here in Atlantic City?
Landing without a parachute.
I’m also thinking of Requiem for a Heavyweight, with Jack Palance, that terrific TV play written ages ago by Rod Serling. I always thought it was Paddy Cheyefsy, or Ben Hecht. But no, I just found out it was Rod Serling. But a terrific play, about a heavyweight champ and how he’s reduced to a laughable wrestler when his boxing career is done. He has to take it, he has no choice, but it does destroy him, as I recall. What a terrific drama. Rod Serling, prolific as hell, went on to write maybe 200 more plays or episodes, but nothing like this. Who cares? All it takes is one. Arthur Miller could have stopped with Death of a Salesman, and perhaps he should have because he never topped himself, never even equaled himself, but that, Death of a Salesman is the finest piece of literature of the 20th century, or right up there with anybody.
Salinger knew when to stop.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she says. “Bob Foster is expecting us.”
This catches me off guard.
“Upstairs?”
“He really wants to meet you. He’d be honored.”
So up we go to Floor 19 – I’m okay in this elevator as it’s got somebody at the controls – and step into the Golden Player Lounge, busy with loud alcoholic voices. This is the limo/butler set. Limos and butlers are always at the ready for them. Some gamble as much as $100,000 a night…some much higher. It is a lounge but more plush than the usual, and all drinks and snacks are free, of course. There’s no entrance to the room, or even to the floor, without a key, and the key is that you must be a whale. Bob Foster comes over and introduces himself and says it’s an honor. I say, likewise.
He’s average height, average build, much younger and much less imposing than a casino president ought to be. He’s pleasant and has a kindly face and easy smile.
He’s the only one in here who isn’t drunk or loud.
We sit down, the three of us, and Bob Foster starts it all over again, about what a surprise it was to find me, someone like me, working for him.
He doesn’t mention my specific job, even though I am still in my green uniform. But that subject seems to be put aside.
We are not talking about that anymore. Decisions have been made. I can tell. I can tell much talking has been done about me, what to do with me.
“I admire writers and I just don’t know how you guys do it,” he says.
He graduated from Loyola and took Lit as a minor. His favorite author is Faulkner but he’s also a big fan of Elmore Leonard.
Faulkner is okay, if you have the time to follow him, but on Elmore Leonard I totally agree.
Obviously, stereotyping is out, as far as getting judgmental about what a casino boss should be like. They were not like this in the old days, in Vegas.
“I think,” he says, “you should give this serious consideration.”
There’d be more than just greeting the high rollers. There’d also be book parties for my books, book signings and much publicity in the media.
“We do it all the time for singers like Tony Bennett and we just had that guy in from the old Sopranos. We’ve never promoted a writer. But wouldn’t that be new and different?”
He says that the casinos could use some class, some culture, and why not start here and now. I quite agree. I remember, I tell him, when to be called a gambler was to be called a degenerate and that now something like 47 states have lotteries and casinos so that we’re a nation of degenerates. He laughs about the rap, and how it still needs changing. I also remind him that in my religion, when it was practiced to the full, a gambler’s testimony was unaccepted in court just for his being a gambler, and that whereas only about a generation ago virtually all gamblers were men, at the racetrack or in smoke-filled backrooms, now more than half of this nation’s gamblers are women, at the slots. Bob Foster laughs and agrees. That’s even more reason to instill class and culture.
Shelly asks how many books have I written.
I do the math. “Published? Five. Written? Twenty.”
Bob Foster catches on. He likes me. I think I like him.
“I think book parties sound like a terrific idea,” says Shelly King.
“Give the man some time,” Bob Foster says slowly, offering me a wink. “Writers think carefully.”
“Nobody comes to book signings,” is what I say.
I know this from experience. People don’t show up, unless it’s Dan Brown. At one Barnes & Noble, in King of Prussia, after two hours of me sitting there at that table and no sales, the store manager urged his clerks to buy some copies (this was before The Ice King caught on) so that I wouldn’t be fully humiliated and perhaps kill myself. Hemingway killed himself. Writers are known for this.
Some people do stop by and flip through the pages of your book, set it down, and go on browsing in the Self-Help section.
Does anybody really get helped?
“I’m thinking,” says Shelly, “that we might do something else as well.”
She’s thinking we might form a class for employees, teaching English, me the instructor, given all the foreign people we have working for us.
“Hey,” says Bob Foster. “What do you think?”
“Something to think about,” I agree.
“I’ve been approached by people, especially our Indian employees, who’d love something like that,” says Shelly King.
Our Indian employees, my buddy slot attendants, many of whom move on quickly to become dealers, are motivated, educated, and cultured. They are clannish, but aren’t we all. Though I have become part of their group. I once complained to a roundtable of them that when they speak their language I don’t know what they’re talking about and that makes me think, sometimes, that they’re talking about me. They were very upset about this, that I felt that way, and apologized, and it never happened again. At least they stop it as soon as I join them and learn from them as they learn from me. They’re very cultured. I’ve discussed their history with them, that is, their British history, and it is a sore topic. I have also discussed the shame of Indian bride burning and that is also a sore topic.
“I think this would work,” says Bob Foster about my teaching English, “in addition to Plan A.”
“He makes a good appearance,” Shelly informs Bob Foster, speaking about me. I make a good appearance.
“You do look like an author,” he says.
“He has the look,” says Shelly.
“What look?” I ask.
“Distracted,” says Shelly.
“Well writers are always thinking, aren’t you guys?”
“Yes we are.”
“Always coming up with something,” he says, and then asks Shelly if she’s read my Big Book. She’s flustered.
“Not yet, but I’ll get it out of the library.”
“Writers don’t like that,” says Bob Foster. “Writers need sales. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” I say.
Bob Foster leans back and I take it to be over. It’s back to downstairs – but I’ve been made an offer, and surely a raise in pay is in the offing.
But I do not ask.
“You have a lot to think about,” says Bob Foster.
“I know.”
“Do you like this?” he asks, pointing to my green uniform.
“It’s a job.”
“Right,” says Bob Foster. “Every job here is important, but…”
“It’s a paycheck,” I add, “and Benefits.”
“We’re the best in town when it comes to Benefits,” says Bob Foster.
“That’s what attracted me.”
“I really like that book party idea,” says Shelly King. “I’d love to get started on a campaign, the AC Press, Philly Inquirer, radio, TV.”
“You can dress as you like, you know,” says Bob Foster. “I mean on the floor. Wouldn’t have to wear a suit. Writers don’t wear suits, right?”
True, a writer in a suit and tie is a loser. He’s obviously not writing or getting published, no, he’s job hunting.
“But I’d wear that badge?”
“Oh yes, people would have to know who you are.”
“So I’d be walking around with a sign that says I’m an author.”
“Sure, the author of The Ice King. Everybody saw the movie. I see this as great for our business and a terrific boost for you. A real career move.”
“No downside,” says Shelly. “Win win.”
“You’ll have to talk with Carl Giddings.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Advertising,” says Shelly.
“We could start a whole campaign around you,” says Bob Foster.
“Advertising, PR, could be so exciting,” says Shelly.
“What do you say?” asks Bob Foster.
“I’m overwhelmed.”
“Are you happy?” he asks.
“It’s something to think about.”
Shelly doesn’t care for my drift.
“Does your book have sex?”
“Only where necessary.”
“Of course it has sex,” says Bob Foster. “You gotta have sex.”
“Sex sells,” says Shelly.
I could say yes right now. But I can’t. I just can’t. I only want to escape, get down there at my zone. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Something’s wrong. I’m like the cheap thoroughbred who wants no part of the starting gate, unseats the rider, and makes a dash back to his barn where it’s nothing much but it’s familiar and he knows it’s where he’ll be fed.
Hey, I’ve been discovered, like Lana Turner at Schwabs, or Alain Delon at Cannes. So this is good. But it isn’t. It is not quite the same.
“So what do you think?” says Bob Foster.
“I don’t think you have a choice,” says Shelly. “You don’t belong…”
“Listen, can I think about this?
“Sure,” says Bob Foster. “Sure. Think about it and let us know.”
“By the way,” says Shelly, “you’d be answerable directly to me. You wouldn’t have to go through anyone else.”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” says Bob Foster.
“That’s a real plus,” I say.
“You’ll let us know, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Foster.”
“Call me Bob.”