Hot Properties (11 page)

Bart was still talking: “… we need something sharper for you, with greater—”

“I have another idea,” Fred blurted.

Silence. Then, “Uh-huh.”

“Would you like to hear it?” Fred asked, not sure whether Bart would say yes.

“Yeah.”

“I want to write a male version of
The Women’s Room.
I want to show that men aren’t shits. There’s all this talk about monogamy and men fucking around when they hit forty. All that. The truth, and what no one is saying, is that men aren’t able to be monogamous. Women can be. Men fall in love and they’re horny, but those are two different things.” Fred blurted this out and then suddenly had nothing to say. He waited. This was his last flare. Either Bart slowed his huge liner and rescued him from his waterlogged lifeboat, or steered past and left Fred to die of thirst in an ocean of water.

“Well,” Bart said after a moment. “That could be interesting. But I need to hear a plot, something more.”

“See, I want to follow two people my age from their romance in college up to now, show all the stuff, the political years, the drug years, becoming professionals, the touchy-feely psychology of the seventies. You know I want to do all the junk that is on Phil Donahue and in the Living Section of the
Times,
and then show how it’s all down to this one basic difference.”

“Mmmm.” Bart fell silent, then spoke as if startled. “I think this has potential. Can you come up with enough of a story to write a proposal?”

“Sure!” Fred said happily.

“All right. There are several editors I can think of who are right. Bob Sand at Flanders, Carrie Winston at Ingrams. I’ll light a fire under them while you get started on the proposal.”

“How long should it be?”

“With this kind of story, don’t get too involved with plot details. Focus on how it’s a response to the feminist novel. That’s the hook. I have to go … get this in quickly, Fred, it could be very exciting.”

“Right. Thanks. Good-bye.”

He was saved! Spinning out of the darkness, from the towering deck of the luxury liner, landing with a plop in the waters of obscurity, came Fred’s lifesaver. He stopped only to pour a cup of coffee before he was at his typewriter. Nothing delayed or dismayed him as the pages appeared, blackened with his ideas, littering his desk while he invented effortlessly. It had never been like this before—he knew this story by heart. After all, it was the story of his marriage. And when a doubting voice wondered how Marion would feel about her life being thus exposed, Fred reminded himself that no great writer had ever hesitated to make a sacrifice of his life. At last, it had happened. Fred was in that great company of geniuses and artists. He was struggling to get over the railing, still soaked by the brackish water—but the liner had stopped and was ready for boarding.

David Bergman felt very much in demand. Writers from every section either dropped by or phoned. Two senior editors from the back of the book asked him to stop by their offices, and when he did, they too discussed the rumor. This sort of thing was general in the building that day. No one seemed to be working on the magazine.

None of the talk implied danger for David. Someone even suggested David might be promoted because of all the shifting around that would necessarily result from firing the editor in chief and replacing him from within, namely the managing editor. Someone would have to replace him, and someone the person he had replaced, and so on, in a complicated series of moves.

After a moment of anxiety over his job. David began to feel, while having all these gossipy conversations, that he wouldn’t really care if he had to leave
Newstime.
He could be hired by almost anyone. The
Times,
the
Journal, Business Week,
they would all be willing to hire him. Syms was sure to be hired elsewhere if he were fired, and Syms would certainly hire David. To be worried was idiotic. He had over twenty thousand dollars saved up in the profit-sharing plan, there was unemployment insurance, he would be free to do nothing for more than a year before getting a job could become an urgent financial problem. How many thirty-year-olds could make that boast?

What finally did begin to stick in his mind was Patty. Her mouth gliding up and down his penis—that took over, with mixed results. He hadn’t sat at a desk with an erection since junior high school, but the excitement below seemed divorced from his thoughts about Patty. She was just a blond girl. Silly and with great tits. Of course, she was accepted by everyone: the men wanted to look at her. But could he date her seriously? He imagined Patty accompanying him to a
Newstime
function. David, the classic smart Jewish boy walking in with a breast-flouncing chippie. The Marx Brothers would certainly snicker. And heart failure (at least) would strike David’s parents.

But the rigidity in his pants was unimpressed. Last night was, if not the best sex of his life, certainly the most carefree and explosive. The last of the senior editors had casually wandered in to whisper in hushed tones about the rumor. David kept his own counsel and pretended no interest in any possible promotion that might come his way. While he listened to the senior editor’s anxieties over his own job, he kept seeing Patty’s head move up and down with relentless mastery of his organ.

David was so unresponsive that the senior editor left him after a few minutes. David kept his eye on the door—he didn’t dare close it on a Monday with rumors turning sedentary writers into talky nomads; that would be suspicious—and squeezed his right hand underneath the belt of his gray pants, stretched the elastic band of his Jockey shorts, and got his cool fingertips to the head of his hard and frustrated penis. The constricted circumstances made any manipulation difficult, but he tried, his eyes watering from the effort of staring at the door and attempting to anticipate someone entering. He began to succeed in his fingering and the pleasure made his surveillance more difficult.

The phone rang.

Startled, David sat up abruptly, his swivel chair sliding toward the desk, banging his trapped wrist against the edge. He pulled his hand out of his pants and picked up the phone.

It was Chico, the managing editor. “David. I need to speak to you. Can you come up?”

“Sure.”

“Come up without mentioning it. Okay?”

Dutifully David took the stairs, assuming this would make his trip to Animal Crackers less obvious. You never knew who was in the elevators. David even went so far as to peer down the hallway from the stairway entrance toward the reception area of Animal Crackers to check whether it was clear before making his appearance. Chico’s secretary told him to go right in, and Chico, standing nervously at the window, told him to close the door. All this secrecy might mean nothing: Chico loved melodrama.

“You’ve heard, of course.”

Pretending would be dumb. “Yeah.” But on the other hand, maybe David hadn’t heard the right rumor. “If what I’ve heard is what you’re talking about.”

“Steinberg is gone tomorrow. Syms will also be asked to leave. The last is a big secret. Everybody knows about Steinberg. With Syms out, we’ll have problems in Nation. We’re thin, especially in writing. And a number of our writers couldn’t possibly take over as senior editors. Bill Kahn couldn’t handle Nation.”

David, for the first time that day, began to realize that this shift in power might be wonderful for him. What if they made him Nation senior editor? Was that possible? Nation was the most prestigious senior-editing position on the magazine, the traditional stepping-stone to Marx Brother status and presumably the ideal background for editor in chief. David had always assumed that if Syms left, Bill Kahn would succeed him. Besides, David was very young to be made a senior editor. This notion so dominated his mind that he had trouble appearing at ease, and the trouble made him more nervous, as if his being caught thinking such an ambitious thought might make Chico change his mind. What was he thinking? Such a change wouldn’t be up to Chico alone; all the Brothers and Mrs. Thorn would have to agree on a promotion to senior-edit Nation.

“You agree, don’t you? About Kahn?”

Now this question from Chico seemed loaded, and with deadly bullets. David tried a traditional escape maneuver: “You mean Kahn is more interested in writing?”

“No. Kahn would love to be made senior editor. I mean, he couldn’t handle it. Isn’t that obvious?”

Bang, it was back in David’s court. Can I agree? he nervously questioned himself. I shouldn’t be hesitating. Senior-editing Nation wouldn’t allow hesitation. “I only know Bill as a writer. I mean, as a writer knows another writer. I read his stuff, that’s all. I have no idea how he might edit or develop ideas. He doesn’t seem interested in other people’s work, so perhaps he wouldn’t be a sympathetic editor. He would establish a tone.” Was any of that true? David wondered. Probably, he decided.

“Oh, Bill’s a superb writer,” Chico agreed. “But I don’t think he can handle people. That’s at least as important as editorial skills. That was Syms’s problem. He was arrogant.”

Chico citing Syms for arrogance? Chico was the most arrogant man in the world. Everything that came out of his mouth was a pronouncement, an absolute judgment, calmly delivered, with the self-assurance of a monarch. Chico could be chilling. David thought all this and noticed Chico’s use of the past tense when discussing Syms.

“You liked working for him, though,” Chico added, and sat down, his eyes—beady little things that seemed too small for his large body—peering at David.

“Yes.” David stared back. To lie about that would be thoroughly pointless. David had flourished under Syms, drawing more and more cover assignments in Nation (and away from Kahn) because of Syms’s support.

“But I get the feeling you can work with anyone,” Chico said.

Was that a compliment? Or was Chico accusing David of having no taste?

“That’s an important quality,” Chico continued. “To put out this magazine, we need as little tension and scraping of egos as possible. Good senior editors can work with anyone.”

Bingo. Something David had not expected for years was about to happen: senior editorship. And of Nation at that!

“I wanted to give you Nation to senior-edit,” Chico said, “but others feel you’re too young to be moved immediately, as a senior editor, into the most important and pressured position. They want to ease you into senior editing. As a compromise, you’ll be offered Business.”

David had had only a second to relish the hope that he might senior-edit Nation, but that moment was sufficiently captivating to make getting Business instead a disappointment. He knew that was an absurd feeling—to be a senior editor at his age, no matter what the department, was extraordinary. Besides, Business was the second-most-important position in the rank of senior editor, in fact the job that five years ago, when he first came to
Newstime,
he hoped he would someday hold. Meanwhile, he had to respond to this surreptitious and unofficial job offer, if that’s what it was.

“What happens to Jim?” David asked, referring to the current senior editor of Business.

“Well …” Chico grabbed a paper clip and began to unravel it, almost angrily. “You understand none of this is definite.”

“Of course.” So he couldn’t celebrate—yet.

“Presumably Jim would move to Nation.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I agree. He’s not right for it. I don’t think he’ll be there for long.”

There was a loud buzz from the red intercom resting next to Chico’s phone. A disembodied voice boomed from its open speaker—in
Newstime
this intercom system, which provided the Marx Brothers and all the senior editors with direct lines to each other, had been nicknamed the Power Phone—and to David’s surprise, the harassed and irritable voice belonged to the owner, Mrs. Thorn. “Bill, can you come by now? I think we’re ready for a decision.”

“Be right there.”

David got to his feet immediately, noting the tension and expectation in Chico’s face. What was Chico waiting to hear? That he had been chosen to succeed Steinberg?

“I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” Chico said.

“Right.” And David turned, leaving this exalted floor, the home of the Animal Crackers, certain, for the first time in his career that he would one day work there. He smiled to himself, once alone in the back stairway, thinking of himself in college, not quite bright enough to be at the top, not handsome enough to dominate the coeds, not angry enough to be a radical, not talented enough to be an artist. But if tomorrow’s promise came true, he would be at the head of his class.

CHAPTER 4

Tony took a seven
P.M.
flight to Los Angeles a week after his meeting with Gloria. He had signed a twenty-page contract with her agency. Creative Artists International, and fired his sweet-tempered but lax theatrical agent, Boris. “I knew someday you’d go with the big boys,” Boris said in a resigned but friendly tone. “They may make you money—but they won’t love you like I have. They won’t notice that your scripts don’t have peanut butter on them anymore, or that your wife likes to fluff the hair around your ears.”

But it was precisely because Boris saw himself as a second mother, rather than as a businessman, that Tony wanted to fire him. He was signed with Creative Artists International for only seven days and already they had him flying first class on a 747 to LA, booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel,
and
scheduled for a meeting the next morning with Bill Garth, the actor, and Jim Foxx, the producer. All this was courtesy of International Pictures to discuss a project that was certain to be made. If Garth and Foxx liked his ideas, he would be perhaps a year away from seeing his name on the big screen. Sooner or later success in LA would get him to Broadway. That was Gloria Fowler’s love, and Tony preferred it.

Tony had flown first class to LA before. His father, using his CBS expense account, used to fly Tony out and back for summer vacations and alternate holidays. He had stayed with his mother at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had met famous actors and producers before. But Tony had never been the object, the cause of spending, the focus of a Hollywood summons. While the stewardesses kept cheerfully getting him new drinks and extra dessert (only now, at thirty-two, did Tony finally treat the experience with the greedy enthusiasm of a boy), he realized:
This is fun!