Hot Properties (43 page)

Nelson was a middle-aged man, a corporate retainer, just above a level of incompetence that would provoke firing, but well below true value. He was joked about regularly, “floated” from section to section, usually dumped on the newest senior editor, the least able to defend himself from being given an albatross. David had Irked Nelson (his relentless pleasantness was an essential reason for his long survival) and did nothing to remove him from his sections because David could assign Nelson stories David himself cared about and then freely rewrite them in his own style without the fuss and hurt feelings that caused the writers who had vestiges of self-respect and ambition still in them.

But this time Nelson didn’t even do a good job of culling the bureau reports. David couldn’t make a landscape out of the flatly written facts because even they were absent. Besides, the story had come in late, leaving little time for David to request the files himself and go through them, if he also hoped to edit his other sections. “I’ll have to kill the piece,” he said aloud, staring at Nelson’s blues. He thought of how that was going to sound to the Marx Brothers. They had said all along that Disney having problems which hadn’t really surfaced was going to read dull or, worse, incomprehensible, and Nelson’s story was both. But David knew it could be wonderful. People didn’t think of Disney as a business. few knew how white-bread and religious its organization was, what an anomaly it was in the modern world, a feudal empire built by a bizarre man whose death had left it bewildered, an immensely profitable institution whose inner workings were at once silly and spooky. It was the kind of stuff that made him want to be a journalist, revealing the odd and weird nature of things that people took for granted. It was “soft” reporting, despised somewhat, certainly not respected in the way “hard-nosed investigative reporting” is, but it was the kind of writing that it seemed to David was more likely to say something worthwhile, precisely because the information wasn’t startling. Had America really learned anything from Watergate? Hadn’t its monstrous excesses allowed people to take it out of the realm of politics-as-usual and escape its implications about the real nature of government?

His Power Phone buzzed. “How we doing?” Chico’s voice blared into the room.

“I got a problem,” David said. Talking to this device on his desk was like speaking to a deity, as though Chico’s spirit inhabited the walls and David was on a mountain pleading for guidance.

“Come up.”

David’s relationship with Chico had become so relaxed that he prepared no speech, nor made any attempt at gloss. “Nelson’s story on Disney is a mess. I could redo it—I want to redo it—but it won’t make this issue.”

“Let’s kill it. Nation can use the space.”

“I don’t want to kill it forever—”

“David, it’s a boring story. Don’t aggravate yourself. Lose it.”

“It’s not. Nelson is a hack. I don’t know what he’s doing here. What the hell
is
he doing here? Why hasn’t he been fired?”

“Costs too much. Fucking Guild. Too much bother. Anyway, he’s all right—”

“He’s totally incompetent! What do you mean? I have to rewrite
every
word.”

“Not
every
word,” Chico said with a smile, amused by David’s anger.

“Every
fucking word!”

Chico frowned. He cleared his throat, swiveled his chair away from the desk, and leaned back thoughtfully. David sighed wearily and sat down. “We’ll move him out of your section,” Chico said at last.

“Yeah? Who’ll take him?”

Chico laughed. “Somebody’ll take him.”

“I don’t want to lose the story.”

“We’ll see if it fits next issue,” Chico said in a dismissive tone and then shifted to his favorite topic: Rounder’s ineptitude. The effects of the new editor in chief’s indecisiveness about cover stories was beginning to be noticed by Mrs. Thorn. The business side had showed her the escalating costs since the new administration took over, overruns caused by closing the magazine late. “The profit margin for the last quarter is a disaster,” Chico said in a hushed voice.

“Want me to do a story on it?” David asked with a smile.

“I hear the
Journal’s
preparing one,” Chico answered, gloating. “It won’t be long now,” he concluded.

That vision, of their coup d’état’s approaching culmination, soothed David’s dismay at losing the Disney story. He let out some of his anger by calling Nelson on the phone—a trip down the hall would have been the polite way—and saying curtly, “Jeff? We’ve killed the Disney story. It’s dull.”

“Oh.” Nelson’s fear and shock were palpable in the one word, despite the relative anonymity of the phone. “You don’t want me to try a rewrite?” It was barely a question, and not at all a protest.

“No. Gotta run,” David said quickly, embarrassed by Nelson’s lack of spunk. He hung up and closed his eyes. He felt so old and inhuman, as though he were a decorative angel on the
Newstime
building, his smooth white face now lidded by New York’s dirt, the disembodied head yearning for mobility.

One of the pornographic magazine covers he saw on the way to work came clearly to mind: a tall dark-skinned woman, her long black hair shining, pulling back a kneeling young man’s hair and holding a whip in front of his mouth. Her teeth were gritted, almost in a snarl. The young man’s face was calm, patient, and rapturous, staring into her angry face with the baleful eyes of a faithful dog.

The memory aroused him. No image or picture of naked women had that effect anymore. He knew it was only a matter of time before the grip of this perverse fascination tightened on the throat of his timidity and strangled it. He flipped his
Newstime
appointment book to the last page, where he had scrawled Mistress Regina’s phone number. Why wait? Why pretend he could defeat this lust?

He got up to close the door to his office and moved quickly back to the phone, punching the numbers in fast, hoping to outrun his fear. But his hand froze after the sixth number. Couldn’t his secretary accidentally pick up in the middle of the call? True, he could call on his private line, but the capability for her to listen in still existed. He could wait until she went to lunch.

His heart was pounding, his face felt hot, the last number on the phone stared at him, challenging. Finally, out of fatigue of balancing on this high-wire of indecision and terror, he let his finger fall, as though gravity made the choice, on the final button.

He put his finger on the cradle knob to leave himself the option of cutting off the connection instantly while it rang. By the third ring, he relaxed, convinced there would be no answer (always in the back of his mind he had the conviction that Mistress Regina didn’t actually exist), and then she picked up.

“Hello,” the unmistakable voice said, throaty and angry.

He swallowed. He had no idea what to say.

She sighed, irritated. “Well, are you going to talk?”

Scared out of his wits, he pressed the knob down and then dropped the phone on the cradle like a hot coal. He breathed deeply, a man surfacing from underwater, gasping at life. He must have been holding his breath because he inhaled air quickly, as though he had been severely deprived.

He carried the sound of her voice home with him. He heard her contemptuous challenge over and over: “Well, are you going to talk?” Was he? He sat silently throughout the dinner Patty had arranged with Tony and Betty. David’s morose condition matched Tony’s sullen mood. The women did most of the talking—a lot of it, to David’s annoyance, about Patty’s novel.

He managed to ask Tony about his movie project, and though the answer sounded optimistic—(“They’re happy with it. But of course they want changes and I’m doing them.”)—David knew something was wrong. A few months ago he would have been happy to see Tony get his hair mussed and take a fall. But his own disgust and obsession were too powerful.

He took a kind of pride in his desperation and sorrow. The worries of these people seemed so trivial compared to his. They were like children still, worrying over their grades in school. He was in a battle for his soul.

Over the weekend, he thought constantly of her, but he stopped watching the cable show and never attempted another call. The moment of real contact had at once deepened his curiosity and increased his timidity.

On Monday, Rounder asked him to drop by his office after lunch. A private meeting with Rounder was rare and David had no clue as to what it might be about. He tried to reach Chico, but couldn’t. When he arrived at the appointed hour, he was surprised to find Chico also present.

“Hi, David,” Rounder said cheerfully. “We’ve been discussing your problem with Nelson and, uh … uh, we’ve decided you can replace him. It’ll be expensive, but it’s time to make a change, bring in a new face.”

“But—” David stopped himself. It had never occurred to him that Chico might act on his complaints.
Newstime
never took decisive action so quickly. He was appalled that something had been done.

“That’s what you wanted,” Chico said, frowning at him. He had been beaming before, as though he were presenting a Christmas gift.

“Yes,” David said. “I was … surprised, that’s all.”

“My advice is to tell him quickly,” Chico said. “Get the figures from Hal Bunting, you know, his profit-sharing and all of that, to soften the blow.”

“You mean
I
tell him?”

The two Marx Brothers both laughed, not spitefully, but with elderly sympathy. “Welcome to the joys of responsibility,” Rounder said.

“Yeah, you tell him,” Chico said. “Don’t feel bad. Remember, later on you get to tell some hopeful out there that he’s got his big break—a job at
Newstime.”

Back in his office, once he had the information from Bunting about the compensations for being fired after fifteen years at
Newstime
—they were considerable—David knew that if he delayed the confrontation, it would become harder. He asked Nelson to come in right away.

Nelson was a small man anyway, but he looked more shrunken than usual. He came in apologizing: “Sorry about the Disney story. I couldn’t get a fix on it.”

David nodded. Now that he had the human being in front of him, he had no idea how to announce the facts.

“There wasn’t a real peg,” Nelson went on, encouraged by David’s silence. “I’m not sure—”

“Uh, I didn’t want to talk about that,” David blurted out to stop him from continuing a conversation that implied an ongoing presence at
Newstime.
“I have bad news,” he said, the only line he had prepared in advance.

Nelson tensed, his eyes scared. “Oh,” he said, and folded his hands in front of him, his mouth closed, his shoulders hunched, like a flower closing.

David starting talking, speaking vaguely at first about how valuable a change can be for someone who’s worked for many years at one place. Nelson looked away immediately, staring at David’s radiator. David said that he had been satisfied with Nelson’s work, but wanted to bring in someone new. “Maybe I’m insecure,” he said with a laugh, starting to feel comfortable, “and need to have only people I’ve hired working for me.” This like everything else, got no response. He started going over the details, how long Nelson could take before leaving, the fact that David and Chico would both provide excellent references, and he began to give the current status of his profit-sharing.

“I know what’s in there.” Nelson said. “Can I go now?” he asked, his tone angry, but his body, like his choice of words, sullenly childish.

“Sure. I’m sorry—”

“Un-huh,” Nelson said, and walked out.

Chico phoned later in the day to ask if he’d spoken with Nelson. “I’m impressed, very impressed, you did it so quickly,” Chico told him after David recounted the story. “Well, you’ve made your bones,” he continued, and let out a grim chuckle.

“It wasn’t too bad,” David said. “But I sure hope I don’t ever have to fire somebody again.”

“For your sake,” Chico said, laughing, “I sure hope you do.”

Tony made two resolutions when he awoke in New York the first day back. He acted on them immediately, first calling Gloria Fowler and frankly reporting how badly the script conference had gone.

She listened, interrupting him only to call out (probably to impress him with her concern) to her secretary to hold all her calls. When he was done, she said, “Do you want to refuse to do the rewrite?”

Tony hesitated. “I have that option?”

“Well, you wouldn’t be paid the outstanding amount on the contract.”

“Would I have to return what I have been paid?”

“Uh, not if it’s handled properly. You might … The worst that would happen is, the studio might ask you to write a different script. Move you to some other project.”

“Without getting additional money?”

“Right, but I think I could get around that. Do you want me to try?”

“Do you think I should?”

“No,” she said. “I think you should knock their socks off with a terrific rewrite. You know, people hating first drafts is very common. They give you a few suggestions, you add the little things they want, and suddenly your script is a work of genius.”

Tony laughed. “They can’t be that stupid, Gloria. They’d know I hadn’t made real changes. Garth really wants a complete rewrite.”

“Well, do you think you can give him what he wants? Did he give you good notes?”

“Yeah, I know what he wants. He wants his character to stand on a street corner in the pouring rain, the gutter swamped with water, and no matter how many Mack trucks pass by, not a drop can splatter him.” Tony laughed with pleasure at his metaphor of the star’s desire to have an unblemished character in the most dubious of circumstances. Just to have conceived of such an image restored his sense of power and control.

But from Gloria there was a puzzled silence. “I … It’s a clever sentence, but I don’t know what you mean.”

That his verbal picture hadn’t been clear reminded him of his lack of popular success. “Just that he wants his character to have been in the movement, in fact to have been in the underground making bombs, and somehow be somebody who can never be perceived by the audience as a terrorist. Well, to some people he’s going to be a terrorist, to some he’ll be a hero. No audience sees a character, a real character, the same way. People bring their prejudices with them to the theater, like their raincoats, but they don’t fold them on the seat and sit on them. The prejudices stay in their heads and you can’t be afraid to confront them. Not if you want to make exciting drama.”