Hot Properties (54 page)

He let his ice cream melt while Holder went on about the idea he had suggested to Fred to write. “Fred’s great at doing contemporary stories. And he’s done great sportswriting, You know,” he said, gesturing to the
Town
editor for whom Fred was supposed to do his interviews, “I want to get inside the head of a top woman tennis player. Do a novel about, say, Billy Jean King’s life. What a great story!” Holder slapped his leg as though these thoughts were just now coming to him.

There were murmurs of agreement, again the rumble of worry and envy from people who once wouldn’t even have known Fred was there.

“You should do it,” the wife of a bestselling novelist said to Fred. He nodded back at her. Now it was established that it was Holder’s idea. If Fred did it, no matter how well, it would forever be Bob Holder they’d think of as the force that made him. The news brought to him before the party, the utterly amazing information that the Book-of-the-Month Club had picked his novel, that in one swoop his advance had been paid back, that obviously not only would his novel have an ad campaign, but it would be big, all of the various implications that added up to the fact that
The Locker Room
would make money, guarantee him another contract, probably many more, that he had a real chance to have a bestseller, that he was there at last, out of the dark waters onto the main deck of the luxury liner, strolling in first class— this great moment in his life was sickening, churning in the stomach like rich food wolfed down by a starving peasant.

“He’s hard to take,” Paula Kramer whispered to Fred over the sound of Holder listing the new idea’s commercial potential.

Fred nodded at her stupidly. He couldn’t open his mouth to complain about Holder, afraid somehow he would be caught at it. He felt so grateful to her, that she paid attention to him, that she seemed to be on his side.

“I’d love to read your book,” she said.

“Really?” he blurted out.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Do you have a copy you can spare?”

He nodded at the house. “Inside.”

“Great. May I take it before I go?”

“Sure,” he said, and glanced guiltily in Holder’s direction—as though by agreeing he was cuckolding his editor.

“Terrific,” she said, and winked at him like a conspirator.

Fred straightened and breathed deeply, glancing at the purple rays of the dying sun. He felt someone watching him and turned his head away from Paul to meet Marion’s eyes. She was staring at him like a stranger—an enraged, murderous stranger.

Tony laughed. Every few minutes he’d burst out laughing. He prowled the apartment with more and more energy, fed by pleasure at contemplating the wonderful farcical payoff to his life. First Garth had called. Tony had been seated sullenly in his study staring at the last scene of his play, hating it, hating it fiercely. His life, for months, had been nothing. He sent Betty off alone to the publishing cocktail parties she now attended with increasing frequency. He spent virtually all his time in the apartment trying to work on the play, taking out comic scenes and replacing them with hard drama. He hated it, he thought it read like a television movie, but he was furious at the world, convinced no one had any taste and that this sort of obvious, heavy-handed dialogue would be praised. He read Sherlock Holmes mysteries over and over, delighted by their comfortable predictability. He watched the television talk shows faithfully, staring at the parade of second-rate actors and pompous authors with slow-burning rage. Into this well of lonely despair Garth phoned, and the first sign of a rope to lift him up and out into the blue sky appeared: “Tony? How ya doin’?”

“Hi …” He had been slumped in his chair, glowering at the words on the page stuck in the typewriter. He sat up, at attention, as though the principal had walked into the classroom.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” Garth on. His voice was excessively cheerful, hurried. “Guess I was too upset that you didn’t want to continue with the project.”

“Uh, that’s okay. How’s it going?”

“Not going at all. That’s why I’m calling. I reread your draft last week—been meaning to call. There’s a lot of great stuff in it, Tony. I think we underrated it.”

“I
didn’t. I overrated it.”

Garth laughed, a quick, studied chuckle, and then hastened on: “I mean Jimmy and me. I’d really like ya to come back on—do a rewrite. Do it your way. Just give me a little more resonance, try to play down the politics. Maybe give me a friend in the script that I can play off—express some of my confusion about Meryl’s character.”

God, they were still talking about Streep, as though she would ever play this part now that she had become a box-office star on her own. She’d never play second fiddle to this shrimp. “Uh, I … I haven’t thought about it. I really thought you hated the script—”

“No, no! Look, I’m famous for being a scumbag to writers. Ask anybody.” Garth laughed. No doubt he suffered from the delusion that admission of a fault meant it wasn’t a serious one. “Your draft is better than anything we’ve gotten. By a long shot. It’s just a tough story to get right, but the great ones always are. You have to understand this business is a collaboration. Maybe you were a little too sensitive about taking notes. You gotta consider that possibility too. We’ll try harder—both of us—this time to communicate more and argue less.”

“What about Foxx? Does he want me back on?”

“Uh. It doesn’t … well, Jimmy is—”

Tony laughed. “You don’t sound too sure.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s important. Jimmy’s a producer. He wants the project to work. He wants a go. He doesn’t care who he steps on in the process.”

“Yeah, but …” Tony sighed. “Look, I don’t want to work in a situation where one of my bosses—”

“We’re not your bosses, Tony. We’re your partners.”

“Bill, my mommy taught me that when somebody can hire and fire, that makes him a boss.”

“How is your mom? Do you think there’s a part for her in this?”

“You mean if Meryl doesn’t accept?”

Garth really laughed at that one. His first relaxed, genuine laugh. “I was just thinking it would be great if we could fit her into a great cameo.”

“Maybe. It’s an idea.”

“Will you help me out, Tony? There’s nobody else who can pull this off for me. I’d love to fly you out, talk some, and maybe you can stay at my house in Malibu. Do the rewrites there. We can talk out the pages each night. I’ve already discussed this with Gloria—I’m sure International will renegotiate your contract to give you some more money. What do you say?”

Tony smiled. He could feel the oppressive madness of the last nine months lifting. At last, someone had admitted to being wrong, that he did have talent, that he did know what made a good story and what didn’t. “Let me think about it, okay?”

“Sure, sure. I really hope you do it. This movie can really work. For both of us, it can be a breakout project.”

Gloria Fowler called minutes later. Tony’s relief had become exhilaration. “I can’t get over it, Gloria. He’s practically begging me.”

“I know,” she purred. “It’s wonderful. So you’re going to do it.”

“I’d love to tell him to go fuck himself. He put me through hell. My confidence has been shot for almost a year!”

“Well, that shouldn’t have happened. I wish you had called me. Writers have trouble on movie projects all the time—they’re fired, they have to rewrite. It’s nothing to beat yourself up over.”

“I know. I was a fool. But this is a great payback. Garth on the phone asking me to stay at his house! Incredible!”

“I think you should say yes. He’ll be a pussycat about this rewrite. He wants to do this picture desperately. He’s got nothing on the boards, everything else has collapsed, and you know he hasn’t been up there on the big screen in three years. They could be shooting this in the late fall.”

“All right. Fuck it. I’ll say yes—I mean to the deal. About staying in his house in Malibu, I don’t know.”

“Garth’s serious about that.”

“Really?”

“Really—and frankly, it’s a good career move.”

Gloria asked about his play. He had told her, when he declined to do the first-draft rewrite, that he would be busy on a play for a while, and though she hadn’t sounded enthusiastic then, she now seemed genuinely interested in his progress. Finally she asked an odd question:

“How are your folks?”

“I guess they’re okay. I spoke to Mom last week—she was her usual self. Complaining about her scripts.”

“And your father?” Gloria said, her tone strangely loaded with significance.

He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should admit the truth, but caution didn’t suit his temperament. “I almost never talk to my father. I see him maybe twice a year when he comes through New York.”

“Oh …” Gloria said in a voice that suggested this was surprising. “I heard he was in town last week.”

“Really? Well, he didn’t call. But the coolness between us is because of me. I … you know, he wasn’t very good to my mother and I think he senses my disapproval of him.”

“Oh. I see.”

Tony laughed. “Gloria, you sound absolutely crushed.”

“I’m sorry, I got a little distracted by something on my desk … uh, but you don’t hate each other?”

“Hate? No, no. I don’t like to see him—I think he would love to change that.”

“Ah,” she said, sounding quite relieved. “Well. I’d better get back to Garth—he’s quite hot about closing this. Speak to you soon.”

Tony wondered about her interest in his family relations, but not for long. The sheer joy of replaying his conversation with Garth had transported him. He called Betty to chortle over it, spoke to several theater friends, mentioning it casually, saying it was another example of the movie business’s foolishness and that he would play along just for fun. But the dark truth was not hidden from him: he knew, no matter how embarrassing it might be to admit, that this single flattering phone call from a vain actor was enough to restore his self-portrait and repair ail the chips, tears, and fading of the last year.

David nodded at Rounder’s secretary as she said, “Go on in,” and opened the closed door to the office. Chico, Harpo, and Rounder paused in mid-sentence. They looked concentrated, their eyes blankly taking him in. “Close the door,” Chico said, unnecessarily, for David was already doing so. “Is your passport in order?” Chico asked like a border guard in a thriller.

David smiled. “Yes. The cover’s so bad we’re fleeing the country?”

Harpo laughed, but Chico and Rounder had no humor in them today. Rounder looked pale and tired. He had been on a seemingly endless tour of events with Mrs. Thorn, from Washington dinners to visits to far-flung bureaus, supposedly to boost morale. Chico had been left to run the magazine, deserted, so that he had to do a good job of it. Indeed, the commonly held theory within
Newstime
was that Mrs. Thorn, in her mind, had already fired Rounder and elevated Chico to Groucho. Naturally this muddy earth upon which both men stood made them irritable and insecure, Chico’s feet sticking unpleasantly as he tried to move to higher ground, Rounder nervously unsure as to whether the glop beneath him would harden or suck him under to drown.

“No bullshit,” Chico said. “Is your passport in order?”

“Yes, sir,” David said. “I’m compulsive about those things. Haven’t been anywhere in five years but I renew my pass—”

“Good,” Chico cut him off. “You may have to fly to Brazil tomorrow.”

“Really?” David consciously showed no excitement. It had become automatic not to respond with the predictable gee-whiz that was typical of young staffers. Although it seemed silly, he believed a substantial portion of his success was due to surface behavior of this sort. He sat down and looked interested—in a mild way.

“We may have our hands on a big story—” Rounder began.

“Exclusively. We have to keep this totally buttoned up,” Chico interrupted, though he spoke not as if he had talked over his boss, but rather as if no one had been talking. David noticed Rounder bow his head and lower his eyes when it happened, like a farmer patiently suffering the stubbornness of an animal he needed to reap a harvest, but wished he could instead slaughter for food. “So no gossiping, no sign that you might have to go somewhere. If you leave, we’ll simply tell people you’re out sick.”

“Okay. This sounds exciting,” David remarked. “What’s up?”

“We may have found Josef Mengele’s chief assistant— Hans Gott. He’s—” Rounder began.

“—willing to give us an exclusive interview!” Chico finished. “He was Mengele’s right-hand man. Stood there with a clipboard charting the experiments. Apparently he escaped with Mengele. He may have the whole inside story from gas chambers to drowning. Here are the files on Gott.” Chico handed David a folder. “You’re our choice to do the interview.”

“Uh …” David felt scared. He had a vision of himself seated in a jungle facing an ominous old man surrounded by savage bodyguards, a Jew facing a fiendish Nazi, armed only with a notebook. “Alone?” he asked.

“No,” Chico answered. “I’ll go with you.”

Rounder looked gravely at David. “He can’t know you’re Jewish.”

“What?” David said, stuttering with amazement and nerves.

“Because if he finds out, you’ll be carted off to Auschwitz,” Harpo said in a low sarcastic tone.

“That’s hilarious,” Chico said, frowning.

Rounder ignored their exchange, staying on David. “He specified no Jews.”

“Then why risk blowing the interview?” David asked, feeling a desperate desire (to his shock) to escape being assigned to this story, though no doubt it would be stunning—a spectacular that would make him: a news event with which he would always be linked.

“Because of the hook!” Chico shouted. He spoke quickly, thrilled by his vision of the magazine: “We want you to write what it’s like—as a Jew—to listen to this man talk about his experiments on your people. We’ll run a Q-and-A and then a personal essay from you on your reactions.”

“How come no one else has this?” David asked.

“He’s chosen us,” Rounder said.

“For a big fee,” Chico added.

“If it’s him,” Harpo said.

David looked sharply at Harpo. “You mean there’s some doubt?”