Get Real (7 page)

“You’re probably like most guys,” Babe Tuck told them. “You got no idea how lucky you are to be inside an American prison.
Except for the rapes, of course. But the rest of it? Heated cells, good clothes, regular food. Not even to talk about the
medical care.”

“I wish I’d looked at it that way,” Kelp said, “back then.”

Tuck grinned at him. “Make the time pass easier,” he suggested. “Do you know the longest life expectancy in America is in
our prisons?”

“Maybe,” Kelp said, “it just seems longest.”

Tuck liked that. His eyes lighting up, he turned to Doug, gestured at Kelp, and said, “Keep a mike on this one.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Well,” Tuck said, “I just wanted to see our latest stars, and now I’ll leave you to it.” Nodding toward Doug, he said to
his three latest stars, “You’re in good hands with Doug.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dortmunder said.

Walking off toward the platform elevator, Tuck said, “I’ll send it back up.”

“Thanks, Babe.”

No one said anything until Tuck reached the platform, crossed it to the control panel on the building wall, and pressed the
down button. He was patting his pockets, frisking himself like Dortmunder, as the platform descended, leaving a startlingly
large rectangular hole.

Doug now turned to the last introductions. “Fellas, this is Roy Ombelen, he’s your director.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” said Roy Ombelen, a tall man thin enough to be a plague victim, dressed in a brown tweed jacket with
leather elbow patches, bright yellow shirt, paisley ascot, dark brown leather trousers, and highly polished black ankle boots.
On a gold chain around his neck, outside the shirt, hung what looked like a jeweler’s loupe.

Kelp gave this vision his most amiable grin. “And charmed right back at you.”

Ombelen looked faintly alarmed, but managed a smile. “I’m sure,” he said, “we’ll all hit it off just famously.”

“You got it.”

“And this,” Doug said, “is our designer, Manny Felder.”

Manny Felder was short and soft, in shapeless blue jeans, dirty white basketball sneakers large enough to serve as flotation
devices, and a too-large gray sweatshirt with the logo
Property of San Quentin.
He peered at them through oversize tortoiseshell glasses taped across the bridge with a bit of duct tape, and, in lieu of
“hello,” said, “The most important thing we gotta consider here is setting.”

“Setting what?” Dortmunder asked.

“
The
setting.” Felder gestured vaguely with unclean hands. “If you got your diamond, and you put it in the wrong setting, what’s
it look like?”

“A diamond,” Stan said.

Ombelen said, “Why don’t we all sit, get comfortable? You—John, is it?”

“Yeah.”

Pointing, Ombelen said, “Why don’t you and Andy slide that sofa around to face this way, and Doug, if you could help Manny
bring over those easy chairs…”

Following Ombelen’s brisk instructions, they soon had an L-shaped conversation area and sat, whereupon Ombelen said, “What
Manny was talking about was mise-en-scène.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dortmunder said.

“The setting,” Felder insisted.

“Yes, Manny,” Ombelen said, and told the others, “what we’re looking for is places you frequent, a background to place you
in. For instance, do you lot have a lair?”

The three latest stars compared bewildered looks. Dortmunder said, “A lair?”

“Some place the gang might gather,” Ombelen explained, “to plan your schemes or—what is it?—divvy the loot.”

Kelp said, “Oh, you mean a hangout.”

“Well, yes,” Ombelen said, “But not, I hope, a corner candy store.”

Stan said, “He’s talking about the OJ.”

“Ah,” Ombelen said, perking up. “Am I?”

Dortmunder said to Stan, “We can’t take these guys to the OJ. That blows everything.”

Ombelen said, “I understand we’re dealing with a certain delicacy here.”

“No matter how good your boss thinks American prisons are,” Dortmunder told him, “we don’t want to be in one.”

“No, I can see that,” Ombelen said, and frowned.

Doug piped up then, saying, “Roy, we don’t have to use actual places. We’ll make sets.” To Dortmunder and the others, he said,
“For this show, because of the special circumstances, we won’t have to use authentic
places.
Just the guys in them and what they’re doing, that has to be authentic.”

“Well,” Ombelen said, “the site of the robbery, wherever that is, that can’t be a set. That has to be the real place.”

“Of course,” Doug said.

“I’d wanna see this OJ,” Manny Felder said.

Stan said, “Why? If you’re not gonna use it.”

“I gotta get the feel for it,” Felder said. “Whatever I make, I gotta make it so when you’re in it it’s the place that looks
right for you.”

“This OJ,” Ombelen said. “What is it, a bar?”

“We use the back room of a bar,” Dortmunder told him. “It just looks like the back room of a bar, with a table and some chairs.”

“But Manny’s right,” Ombelen said, as across the way the elevator/platform rose noisily into view, and stopped. Once its racket
ended, “We would need,” Ombelen explained, “the feel of the entire place, the ambience, the bar itself, the neighborhood,
the customers. There must be a bartender. He’s an important character.”

Kelp said, “That doesn’t work. We can’t let you have Rollo.”

“That’s the bartender?” Ombelen shook his head. “Not a problem. We’ll cast that.”

Doug said, “Maybe a good spot for some comic bits.”

“But,” Ombelen said, “we’ll have to see what the original looks like, so we know how to do our casting.”

“Agreed,” Doug said, and turned to the others. “We’re not gonna use anybody’s real name, or any
thing
’s real name, so your OJ will stay private, it’s yours. But Manny’s right, we’ve got to see it.”

The three exchanged glances, frowns, minimal head-shakings, and then Dortmunder said, “All right. This is what we do. We give
you the address and you go there—maybe tonight, it’s better after dark—and you look around, maybe take a picture or two. But
not suspicious or sneaky, not like you’re from the state liquor authority. No conversations. You go in, you buy your drink,
you drink it, and get outa there.”

Felder said, “What about this back room?”

“You do it, only by yourself,” Kelp told him, “You can take all the pictures you want back there.”

“That’s good, Andy,” Dortmunder said.

“Thank you.”

“All right,” Felder said. “How do I get to this back room?”

“The johns are down the hall from the left end of the bar,” Dortmunder said. “Nobody can see you back there. At the end of
the hall is a door on the right. That’s us.”

“Easy,” Felder said.

Stan said, “But only one of you guys goes. We don’t want everybody running into the men’s room together, it isn’t that kind
of joint.”

Doug said, “Understood. We’ll probably go tonight. I take it you won’t be there?”

“Absolutely not,” Dortmunder said.

Doug looked around at his creative team. “Is there anything else?”

Felder looked unsatisfied. He said, “Any more settings?”

“Manny,” Doug said, “I don’t think so. Just generic Manhattan streets, apartments.” To the others he said, “You all live in
apartments, right? In Manhattan?”

Again they exchanged troubled looks. This time, reluctantly, Stan said, “I live in Canarsie.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Doug said, and Ombelen too lit up in a way that the name “Canarsie” doesn’t usually evoke.

Stan said, “You can’t use it, it’s just where I live, it doesn’t have nothing to do with nothing.”

“But you come to Manhattan for the heists,” Doug said, eyes bright with pleasure. “Stan, you commute!”

“Yeah, I guess. I never thought of it like that.”

“But that’s good,” Doug said. “Gives us another demographic. The burglar who commutes to his job.”

“I like it,” Ombelen said. “I could do some very nice visuals with that.”

Doug peered at them all with his freshest, most bright-eyed face. “Anything else? Any little details I should know?”

“I don’t think so,” Dortmunder said. “In fact, I know so. No.”

“Well, this has all been very good,” Doug said, and actually rubbed his hands together. “We’re moving along here. I’ll be
back in touch when we’ve got something to show you. And meanwhile, see if you can decide what exactly you’re gonna steal.
That’s Manny’s other setting, and he’ll need to know it pretty early.”

“One little favor,” Felder said.

They looked at him. Dortmunder said, “Yeah?”

“Nothing too dark, okay?” Felder spread his hands, looking for understanding and assistance around here. “Somewhere where
we can see what you’re doing.”

Kelp laughed, mostly in amazement. “You know,” he said, “usually, everything we do, what we’re trying for is just the reverse
of that.”

D
OUG FELT BUOYANT
all the way uptown from Varick Street, cheered by the meeting with
The Roscoe Gang
(tentative), cheered by the way Roy Ombelen and Manny Felder had immediately seen the potential, and cheered by Babe’s genial
manner when he’d left them. Then, the instant he stepped into the office, he sensed something was wrong, and all his mellow
mood was instantly flushed away.

What was it? The atmosphere was somehow not its usual self; his antenna tingled with it. He headed straight down the hall
toward Lueen, to ask her what had broken down and how much it would spoil his day, but then he saw, in the production assistants’
room, Marcy and Edna and Josh, the three nonwriters, all huddled together, whispering, apparently in a state of shock.

Writers whispering together; never a good sign. Entering their room, Doug said, as though cheerfully, “Hello all. What’s up?”

The three young faces that turned to him were bleak. Marcy said, “It’s Kirby Finch.”

Kirby Finch was the younger son of the family running the farmstand, a strapping handsome boy, nineteen, known to the viewers
as a fun-loving cutup. This year he’d be finding a girlfriend, a warm little G-rated romance to keep the audience numbers
up. Doug said, “What about Kirby Finch? There wasn’t an accident, was there?”

“Worse,” Josh said. His eyes were wide, and his voice seemed to be coming from an echo chamber.

“He says,” Marcy explained, “he doesn’t want to do all that stuff with Darlene Looper.”

Josh said, “He just saw next week’s script, and he says he won’t do it.”

“Oh, come on,” Doug said. “Kirby
shy
? I don’t buy it.”

Marcy said, “It isn’t that, Doug.” She seemed reluctant to spell out what the problem was.

“I’ll tell you,” Doug said, “
I
wouldn’t kick Darlene out of bed.”

“Kirby would,” Marcy said, and the other two sadly nodded.

Doug said, “Does he have a
reason
?”

“Yes,” Marcy said. “He says he’s gay.”

“Gay!”
Doug made a fist and pounded it into his other palm. “No! We shall have no gay farm boys on
The Stand
! Who gave him
that
idea, anyway?”

Marcy, on the verge of tears, said, “He says he
is
gay.”

“Not on
our
show, he isn’t. In the world of reality, we do not have surprises. Kirby has his role, the impish younger brother who’s finally
gonna be okay. No room for sex changes. What does Harry say?” Harry being the father of the Finch family.

Josh shook his head, with a weak apologetic smile. “You know how Harry is.”

Not an authority figure; yes, Doug knew.
Whatever they want is okay by me, you know?
So far, that had been a plus, meaning there was never any argument with the producers’ plans for the show. Except now.

Marcy said, “I think Harry has the hots for Darlene himself.”

“No, Marcy,” Doug said. “We aren’t going there either. This is a clean wholesome show. You could project it on the wall of
a megachurch in the South. Fathers do not hit on their sons’ girlfriends. Come next door, fellas, we’ve got to solve this.”

Next door was the conference room. Once they’d settled themselves in there, Doug said, “This
is
our story line, you know. We’ve been setting it up for this. In the third season, Kirby gets a girlfriend, just when the
audience thinks they already know everything about the Finch family. And next season, the wedding, in sweeps week. Wedding
episodes
always
get the biggest numbers of the year. Kirby and Darlene, true love at last.”

Marcy said, “I’m sorry, Doug, but he won’t do it. I asked him if he could just pretend and he said no. He won’t kiss her,
he doesn’t even want to put his arm around her. He says her boobs are too big.”

“Oh, God.” Doug closed his eyes, in an attempt to leave the world behind.

But he hadn’t yet learned the worst. Speaking right through his eyelids, Josh said, “And now that Darlene knows what Kirby
thinks of her boobs,
she
doesn’t want to work with
him.
She says she wants off the show.”

“Which wouldn’t be terrible,” Marcy said, also talking through the wall of his closed eyelids. “You know, she hasn’t even
been introduced on the show yet.”

Doug opened his eyes to find the awful world still unchanged. “Well, it is terrible,” he said. “Are they shooting up there
tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Marcy said.

“I’ll have to go up,” Doug decided. “Marcy, you come along, just in case there’s some other throughline we can work out, put
it together on the fly up there. But for now, fellas, all three of you, I beg of you. Do not sleep tonight, not for a minute.
If we don’t have Kirby and Darlene, what
do
we have?”

Josh said, “Could it be Lowell and Darlene?” Lowell being Kirby’s big brother.

Doug squinched his face in pain. “No,” he said, “it’s too late for that. We’ve already established Lowell as the loner, the
gloomy genius going off to engineering college. He represents the life of the mind, which is why we’ve made sure nobody likes
him.” Doug smacked his palm against the table, making everybody jump. “
Why
didn’t that little pansy tell us before this?”