Hot Properties (48 page)

“I’m not gonna have a party,” Patty said. “I’m gonna stab the
Times Book Review
editor in the stomach and get some decent publicity.”

Fred frowned. Betty and Gelb laughed. They said goodbye to him and he felt keen resentment toward them while he walked to Holder’s office. He had been worked to the bone by Holder, had had to rewrite every page, while his advance was drained by the studio apartment he had sublet, his expensive social life, and his share of the couple’s therapy. Increasingly he felt financial pressure to return to Marion, which would automatically reduce his costs and restore access to her income. Life seemed so easy for these women. If they got into trouble, like Patty had a couple years ago, they banded together, found a man, a place to live, and even a career. He had struggled his whole life to get a novel published and Patty just got one handed to her on a feminist platter.

For once, Holder was wearing a sweater with no holes in the elbows. “I’m real excited, Fred. This book is terrific. I love the story …”

Fred nodded, smiling sheepishly while Holder went into this now familiar litany. The plot was Holder’s, and it seemed to bear a remarkable similarity to the progress of Holder’s life, with a few exaggerations, which were probably fantasies—mostly the hero’s sexual prowess. It was awkward and embarrassing to listen to his editor praise what were basically his editor’s ideas as though they had originated with Fred. If he accepted the compliments he would be a fraud, to refuse them might seem ungracious and resentful of Holder’s editing.

Instead, he changed the subject. “I just met your boss, Gelb, out in the hall. With two friends of mine.”

“Oh yeah?” The mention of the publisher’s name had Holder on the alert. “With who?”

“Betty Winters and Patty Lane.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Holder said. Whatever had worried him was gone. “Yeah, Betty’s nice. She’s doing her first novel with Patty. It’s exciting for her.”

“Patty? Or Betty?” Fred asked, not archly, but out of confusion.

“Both, I guess. I mean for Betty. Gelb has helped open things up around here—used to be so uptight, so scared to take risks. I really like him. Do you know him?”

“No,” Fred said, unable to conceal his irritation that Holder didn’t listen carefully. “I told you. I just met him.” Holder made Fred feel he was barely in the room, his words merely a string interlude between Holder’s orchestral crescendos.

“Oh. Yeah, he’s a great guy.”

“They were going to lunch together,” Fred mumbled.

Holder looked at him curiously. “That bother you?”

“What?” Fred maneuvered in his chair nervously. “No, no. Patty used to work for Gelb.”

“Oh!” Holder drew the word out, leaning back with a smirk on his face. “So that’s why she got a book contract.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Fred said, frightened somehow to admit to his opinion.

“Going to lunch with him doesn’t mean a thing, you know.” Holder leaned forward and raised his hand high in the air, his index finger pointed down, swooping through the air and landing on the title page of Fred’s manuscript. “
This
is going to be a big book. I haven’t started lobbying in the house. I was waiting for the whole book. But you’ve done great work. And this book is going to be big.” Holder fixed Fred with his eyes and nodded solemnly. “Believe me,” he said.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Chico said, feverishly pulling David into his office and closing the door. After a wait of two hours David had been summoned by the Power Phone to Animal Crackers, Chico’s voice rasping anxiously, so that David guessed the news wasn’t good.

“What?” David asked, the word spoken in dread— though of what, he couldn’t imagine.

“You know why Thorn came here? Because of him! This is the most diabolically brilliant maneuver, or he’s an idiot, I don’t know which. What difference does it make?” Chico cried to the ceiling. “Either way, he’s saved himself.”

“What did he do?” David asked, panicked, the suspense unbearable.

“He resigned!” Chico spread his arms out, laying out for David his incredulity like a map. “Can you believe it? She’s ready to fire him and he resigns! Says he’s wrong for the job. Doesn’t like it!” Chico grabbed the sides of his skull as though to close in the bursting fury of his mind.

“But … but …”

“She said no! She’s so arrogant—she can’t allow him to resign!
She
has to fire him! The minute he said it, she was against it! It’s an abrogation of her power. Brilliant! Fucking brilliant! The guy’s an idiot savant!”

“Maybe she wasn’t ready to fire him.”

“Oh, she was ready. Came in dressed like the Black Widow Spider—ready to suck his brains out. Then he comes up with that he-doesn’t-want-the-job! No fun eating a prey that’s already dead. She ended up wooing him, begging him to stay, and she appeals to me to back her up—”

“Why were you there, anyway?”

“
He
asked for me!” Chico almost shrieked this. “He’s so brilliant! We’re amateurs! Amateurs!” He flung himself into his desk chair and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling.

David waited, hoping Chico’s silence would lead to a more articulate explanation. He felt relieved, to his surprise. There was something comforting about the lack of change, especially since it didn’t mean a true reversal. His position hadn’t become precarious, it was unchanged.

“We ended up,” Chico said, his voice hoarse. He paused to clear it. “We ended up asking him to stay for another year. She said she’d allow him to experiment some more with the magazine.”

“It’s just a delay.” David said with confidence. “Your insight is exactly correct—she wants to do the firing herself. She’ll wait till he’s back into the job and then yank the rug out.”

Chico brought his small infuriated eyes to David and nodded at him, a lost soul wanting to believe in the prophet. “I keep telling myself that.”

“There’s no doubt. One incident will break his back.”

“All right.” Chico sat up. “We’d better go back to normal operations.”

David smiled. “Right, chief,” he said, and saluted with mock formality before leaving.

Tony met Hilary for a late breakfast the day after his reading. She had called first thing in the morning to suggest the meeting, her voice cheerful and encouraging. The long night he had spent worrying over the play—he had read it through twice, hating it—had left him weak and willing to concede that it wasn’t ready.

Hilary began by chatting, complaining about the recent cutback in funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, saying that it would mean two fewer productions in the next season. To Tony this sounded like a preliminary of backing out of her partial commitment to putting him on the schedule.

He was too tired to wait. He interrupted. “So I suppose you won’t be able to do my play.”

She looked surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, the funding being lost and so on—I thought …”

“I wouldn’t tell you like that!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and felt rage at her, because he knew he was correct.

“We want to do your play. I’ve told you that all along. But I do think the questions about the thematic content raised last night have to be considered.” Tony nodded. “Didn’t you feel some of what was said was helpful?” she pressed when he stayed silent.

“You want me to be honest?” Tony asked in a tone that implied she sure shouldn’t.

Hilary seemed startled, but she answered, “Of course.”

“Until Hal brought it up, no one mentioned that they thought I had left deeper questions unanswered. I took what he said very seriously. I think I made that clear.
Then
everybody jumped on the bandwagon.”

Hilary frowned. Despite the fact that his comment wasn’t overtly insulting, in truth it was. She had been consistently complimentary until Turner’s comments. “Well, it often does take an experienced playwright—I mean, we are talking about one of the major writers of our time—to express for an audience an uneasiness that they can’t articulate. I know I didn’t mention my reservations until last night, but I felt when reading the play—and it’s one of the reasons having a play read is so important—”

Tony lost it. Whatever brake he had on his speeding fury at the world lost its resilience: his foot slammed to the floor and his heart raced as caution flew by the window. “Come on, this is bullshit. I’ve heard this over and over. Sure Turner’s questions are valid. I have valid-criticisms
of Hamlet!
My play probably isn’t one of the great works of art of this century, but frankly, Hilary, if that’s the standard you use before mounting a production, then your theater should have been dark for the last twenty years!”

“Tony”—her thin face seemed to squeeze itself, narrowing—“all I’m suggesting—”

But his vehicle was racing on, the freedom of releasing his contempt and rage like a sexual liberation: “I’ve been coming to readings for four months regularly. Not one can compare to mine! Not one!” he shouted, and noticed the movement of heads at nearby tables.

She did too and looked down at the table while putting her right hand up, like a traffic cop. “Please,” she said. “There’s no need for us to quarrel.”

“Why is telling the truth a quarrel? I could bullshit you. I’ve done it well enough in the past. I knew that I could’ve gone out for a drink with you and Hal last night and beat my breast and then worked for two weeks adding a couple of scenes like he writes, everybody announcing what the fuck their motivation is, get you to commit, and then dilute it during the rehearsals. And maybe I will!” Again he saw people glance at them. He felt as though he must be screaming. Hilary’s downward glance was becoming more severe; her body seemed to be trying to merge with the table. “Maybe I will rewrite it! But I don’t want you making that decision for me. I want a director. I want actors. I want a date. Then I’ll go into rehearsal and find out for myself. And decide myself! I may not be a great playwright, Hilary. I’m not sure how good I am, but one thing, one goddamn thing for sure, no one else around me is either! I haven’t met anyone in my entire life who knows more than I do about what works and what doesn’t. I understood what Hal Turner thought better than he did! It’s my problem! It’s my fucking play! Let me fix it or
not!”

She raised her head when he paused. The tearful look in her eyes, and the wounded, trembling movement of her chin and mouth, surprised him. He really didn’t know her very well—she had seemed no different from the dozen or so artistic directors he had dealt with over the years. They were obstacles, abstractions, infuriating people because he never understood why they took the jobs they held. Off-Broadway theater didn’t pay well; their role wasn’t really a creative one, despite the title; they had all the disadvantages of being put in a business posture in charge of artists, with few or none of the monetary rewards. Because of their lack of financial prestige, there was a kind of unspoken understanding that one didn’t treat people like Hilary as though they were Broadway producers or movie-studio executives. They were in the same leaky rusted boat with the starving character actors and the unwashed playwrights. Tony had torn up his part of the agreement and treated her like a boss, a philistine wearing the sackcloth and ashes of the holy.

“I came here …” she said, and the tremors of her lips made the words sound weepy. It flashed through Tony’s mind that to the others in the restaurant this scene probably looked like a romance breaking up. “… to suggest you work with a director on a rewrite …” She stood up, breaking off abruptly. “I can’t continue this …” She opened her purse, her hands shaky, and pulled out a mangled ten-dollar bill and let it drop on the table. “I’m sorry,” she added, and walked out on wobbly legs.

He looked straight ahead to avoid the glances of the waiters and customers. He remembered vividly, as though it had happened yesterday, going to lunch with his mother at the Russian Tea Room twenty years before, something he had loved to do because the waiters in their red tunics treated him like a young prince (indeed then he
was
a member of New York’s royal family: the child of a Broadway star), and enjoying the special dishes they brought for him while she talked with … whom? her agent? was it a producer? He was eating a dessert when he first noticed the shift in tone and heard the harsh sound his mother would make when the craziness began. The nonstop talking at someone, sentences looping out of her like snakes entwining their insults on the victim, slithering so quickly out of her mouth that there was little chance to escape and no hope for defense. She was always so charming, had won the affections of her eventual victims so completely, that they would be in shock as the long bodies of her rage wrapped around them and squeezed. The betrayal of her hatred, the utter lack of any hint prior to its release, was what so stung them. Whoever it was had walked out. Her yelling had caught everyone’s attention, and they were so well-known there, so many people were in business with her, that the embarrassment was profound. Indeed, they never went back. That night she got drunk. In his bed staring at a Superman comic by the weak light of the streetlamp outside his window, he had heard her retching. The choked gasping sounds weren’t that different from the noise her rage made at lunch. That was exactly the look her victims had—horror—as though she had vomited bile on their laps.

Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt a cold eye from the heavens turn his way and freeze him. He heard a deep voice intone: You are going mad. Just like your mother. Mad, mad, mad.

Patty listened to David tell his story. He was excited about this one. She marveled, when he was done, at the fact that nothing had happened. He was steeled for battle, talking angrily, vehemently, but nothing had happened. Mrs. Thorn had had a talk with his two bosses, and they decided nothing would change. And there David was, knowing this, and yet feeling it was all so thrilling, so important. She wondered if he would really make it in that world. Gelb wasn’t so foolish. She had learned from him that most things in business were much more simple and pure than someone like David imagined. What is, is. If Mrs. Thorn wanted to fire Rounder, she would have accepted the resignation. She didn’t want to. That she would someday was no daring insight on David’s or Chico’s part. Everybody at the top is eventually fired. And once a person reached the zenith, failure no longer existed. Rounder would go on to other jobs, either as well paid or better, his so-called failure at
Newstime just
last week’s snicker, not forever’s shame.