Hot Properties (63 page)

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll put Patty right on.”

There was hardly a pause. “David?”

“Hi,” he said, his voice drained of life. “I’m okay. I just wanted you to know I—”

“Have you been to the loft?”

“No, we came straight—”

“Oh …” she said in an interrupting tone, but nothing further came out.

“What is it? Something wrong?”

“I left,” she said, and then sighed. “I found the things— I couldn’t stay. Probably wouldn’t have …” She ran out of energy to speak. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s bad …” She laughed, almost hysterically. “I guess it’s bad timing, but there’s no point in lying about it.”

“Things?” He had been standing, anticipating a quick conversation, eager to obey and appear before the tribunal next door. Now he sat down in Chico’s chair. When his automatic reaction to bow before the power structure flicked a warning light on, he coolly reminded himself he was through anyway. There was a kind of relief in that: lonely and flat though his landscape had become, at least there were no more cliffs to fall off. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Hang on for a second.” she said nervously. He heard Patty speak in a muffled voice to Betty. “Hi,” her voice came back loudly. “I asked Betty to leave.”

“Are you staying there?”

“Yes. Look, I would have left anyway. Probably it was my fault too. I just didn’t want you to come home after”— again her energy depleted into a sigh—“and find them.”

“Patty, I’m tired. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“The magazines,” she intoned dramatically. He heard her catch her breath as though she had frightened herself.

He shut his eyes hard, hoping to visualize what she meant. All he could see was the black covers on the airline magazines. The
Newstime
logo. And then he realized. “Oh …” escaped him into the phone.

“And the other things. I got nasty and left them out for you to find.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying—”

“You can’t leave me because of that,” he begged. He felt short of breath, and bent over, covering the mouthpiece with his free hand, feeling as though he could hold her through the electronic line. “If that’s all it is—I can explain—I got obsessed with it. I can stop. Please, not over that. That’s not me, Patty,” he said, and found himself weeping. “It’s really not who I am,” he blubbered.

The Power Phone whooshed into the room. Chico barking: “David! Come in here!”

He looked up furiously at The Phone and saw that he had left the office door open. In the reception area one of the writers, Kyle Stebbins, a young star writer in the Nation section, was seated in line with the open door. He was looking down at some copy, but David knew he had been watching. Watching him plead and weep on the phone.

The Power Phone filled the room with sound: “David! Are you there?”

Patty’s voice, pitying, timid, spoke into his ear: “You have to go? Why don’t you call me when your meeting is over?”

The Power Phone honked: “David!”

“I’m coming!” David shouted, so angrily that Kyle Stebbins couldn’t help but look up. “What the fuck are you looking at?” David shouted at him. He brushed his wet cheeks with his hands. Kyle stared for a moment and then hopped to his feet, startled, and dashed out of sight. “Why did you do it, Patty?” He spoke into the phone, dabbing at his eyes, knocking his glasses askew with his sleeves. “It was stupid and nasty.”

“I know. I’m sorry, but it shocked me—”

“I’m sick and tired of what shocks people!” David yelled. “The whole fucking world is sick, Patty. Pretending it isn’t doesn’t make it the sweet sensitive world that you want. I’m glad you found it. Yeah, I had a better time paying for my ass to be whipped than I ever did with you!”

He slammed the phone down. His chest was heaving with despair and rage. He pushed his hands underneath his glasses and rubbed. “Fuck it,” he said aloud, knowing that nothing could conceal his red eyes. He walked into the reception area—Kyle Stebbins was practically hiding behind a plant—and walked into Rounder’s office.

All the Marx Brothers were there, the president, its two top lawyers, and Mrs. Thorn. Chico paused and said. “Ah! I got worried. I was telling them about Janet Halston’s outrageous question at the airport.”

The president, Mark Logan, spoke quietly: “Between the Jews who are outraged we are willing to pay Gott, and the people who believe we are responsible, in one way or another, for his assassination, we’ve got nowhere to hide.”

“Hide from what?” Chico said. He actually believes we’re all right, David thought, astounded. “Surely we don’t have to defend agreeing to pay for a story to CBS, or to New York
Times,
or anybody else. They’ve all done it.”

“Not a Nazi criminal,” Mrs. Thorn mumbled. The bitch, David said to himself. She approved this goddamn thing.

“What about Speer?” Chico pleaded.

“He was an architect, not a torturer,” the more senior of the lawyers observed with a dry smile. “Incidentally,” he said to David, “I assume you didn’t know her or tell her.”

“No,” David said. His voice was hoarse. Mrs. Thorn seemed to notice him for the first time. She squinted skeptically in his direction, almost as though she were wondering how someone like that could possibly be in her employ.

“The only approach to this is that we have a terrific story,” Chico pronounced with great confidence. “An exclusive eyewitness account of Gott’s death.”

“We’ll sell out.” Rounder said, nodding.

“But at what price?” Mrs. Thorn asked dramatically. “How long will it be before we’re thought of as responsible journalists again?”

“But we weren’t irresponsible …” Chico mumbled.

“That’s not the perception in Washington,” Mrs. Thorn said. The mention of Washington was always used to close any disagreement.

There was a silence. At least four of the men in the room knew their careers at
Newstime
were over: that the mark of this event would be there on their foreheads for any of the initiated to see—a lifetime of snickering behind the back. David looked down at the gray industrial carpeting, worn by the nightly vacuuming. He heard Patty’s pitying voice. It was then that he decided. His landsape had now flattened even more—squashed horribly. But there would be no more precarious wanderings. No more decisions. No more shame.

Garth returned and watched anyway. He stood in the door, his arms folded, his face expressionless, and stared with dull eyes while Helen, sitting astride Tony’s genitals, bobbed like a rocking horse on his prick. Tony ran his hands roughtly up and down her breasts, her belly, gathering the top rim of her pubic hair and tugging slightly, pulling on a nipple, watching it distend before he released it. He ignored Garth and stared angrily at her face. She averted her eyes or closed them most of the time. Neither of them felt much passion, although Tony enjoyed it immensely. Toward the end, the swelling heat of his lower body, drenched and pulled by her motion, overwhelmed his rage. He climaxed painfully, groaning as though he were a man passing a kidney stone, not consummating passion.

He closed his eyes to avoid dealing with them. She got up. He lay there, his arms resting on his chest, a dead man displayed in a coffin. His eyes burned, his head felt huge, exhausted, unbalanced. He woke briefly when he felt blankets covering him, and caught a glance of her, dressed, tucking him in.

And then there was sleep. Sleep accompanied by loud, colorful dramas; cavernous rooms, echoing theaters, brilliant parties, looming faces pleading, shouting, mocking, praising—his life came together in a grand one-acter, a cast of thousands, all mixed up, childhood friends arguing with adult enemies, characters from Chekhov and Shakespeare bantering, Ralph Kramdon fighting to the death with Laertes, Maureen accepting a Tony, his father telling him in an airport coffee shop that he was going to remarry.

The brilliant light of California roused him from time to time, flowing through the skylights, the slanted windows buffeted by the sonic thunder of the surf. He closed his eyes each time, clutching the dreams like a woman he loved, returning to the wonderful stew everything he had experienced became, nourishing his scattered consciousness. He said things he had always wanted to, he remembered his triumphs, his youthful, exquisite talent blossoming, knowing how it should be done, seeing it happen, and hearing the happy welcome of the audience, laughing with him, crying with him, a mass orgy of shared fears and hopes.

Garth, all tentativeness gone, woke him finally with the news that it was one o’clock in the afternoon, and offering a cup of coffee. He sat on the bed and watched Tony sip it, neither of them speaking.

“We can finish today,” Garth said at last.

“Oh, we’ll never be finished,” Tony said. Hangovers must be good for me, he thought to himself. He felt totally in command.

Garth looked surprised. “Why not?”

“Come on. Bill. You people never finish. Even when you make the movie, you’re not finished. Only art forms can be finished—a can of tomatoes is forever being repackaged.”

Garth looked hard. Those chiseled cheeks froze, a statuary bust placed on a mountain, fiercely American. “If you believe that, you shouldn’t be writing movies.”

Tony nodded agreeably. “You’re probably right.”

“You know I get pretty sick of you New Yorkers. With your snobbery and your bullshit. You’re willing to take the money, you do sloppy work, and then you complain
we’re
only interested in money.”

Tony smiled. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

Garth frowned at him. He wanted to fight.

Tony spoke casually. “Who are you going to get to rewrite it?”

“What?”

“Who are you going to bring in to rewrite my draft? I suggest you go for a good dramatic writer. The script’s structure is okay now and I’ve got you a couple of cute funny scenes, but you need somebody … oh, just a trifle pompous, not in a bad way, to really do the heavy stuff.” Tony sipped his coffee, studying the baffled look on Garth’s face. It was wonderful, silly and wacky, just like his dreams. “You know what I mean,” he argued. “Scenes with very few words, shot darkly, a lot of glistening tears. Meryl’ll play it then. You guys’ll walk off with dual Academy Awards.”

“What the
fuck
do you think you’re playing? A game? You think because I let you fuck her. I’ll take this crap?” Garth’s real anger wasn’t very different from his screen fury. His face seemed to widen with internal explosive force, his lips disappeared while he clipped his words.

Tony smiled. He had an idea for the next moment in the scene. He thought it would really play nicely. He sat up more, put the coffee down, and picked up the bedside telephone. He dialed the general number for International. “Hello,” he said to the operator. “Mr. Winters please.”

“Oh, for Chrissakes.” Garth got up nervously, his face scared, and made as though to leave, but predictably (Mike Nichols wouldn’t have permitted such an obvious bit of blocking) he stopped at the door when Tony told his father’s secretary, “Hi, this is Tony Winters. … Hi, how are you? … No. you’re right, I have been remiss. In fact, I wanna correct that. Could you tell my father I’m going to come by—Oh, I’m in Malibu, it might take me an hour or so to get it together.” Garth shook his head over and over with disgust. “Well, if he’s not back from lunch by then. I’ll just wait, okay? … Great, thanks.”

Garth didn’t turn to face him. He put a hand on the tall window and hunched over as though bowing to the endless expanse of the Pacific. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Tony?”

“Nothing,” Tony said, pulling the covers aside. He put his feet on the ground gently, testing the floorboards as though they might give way. “I haven’t had a good talk with my dad”—he stood up and smiled—“dear old Pops, in years.”

Garth pushed himself off the window, wheeling gracefully, a dancer pirouetting. The nervous look was gone. “We’ve still got the last scene to write.”

Tony laughed—it sounded shaky. “We,” he mumbled.

“Yeah,” Garth answered pugnaciously. “We.”

“After I talk to my dad,” Tony responded.

“You’re a big boy, Tony,” Garth warned, readying for his exit line. “Check your arithmetic. Don’t add this up wrong.” He fixed Tony with a glance for a beat, and then moved out of the room confidently.

Left alone, Tony was uncertain, feeling woozy and confused. He had had nothing particular in mind when he phoned his father’s office. He had done it as a prank, to throw Garth. But now it seemed like a good excuse to confront his father, to ask him the questions that he had spent a lifetime … avoiding? No. Asking himself. It was time to find someone with answers, not simply more questions.

In the end, Mrs. Thorn pretended they all still had their heads firmly attached to their necks. David was told to write his account immediately. He casually asked to be allowed to return home to change. Permission was granted, but they wanted him back within an hour or so, and expected a version by morning.

It was midnight when he walked out of the
Newstime
building for the last time. The radio cab was waiting. He took his carry-on luggage into the back seat and leaned on it while they drove down Fifth Avenue. He half-expected the city to look different, since he and his life had been so completely changed by the last two days. He wanted something in the architecture of New York to reflect the altered inner landscape of his mind. But, he realized, what made the town so majestic was its indifference. They passed a laughing couple on a corner, the sounds of their joy swallowed by the building’s hollows. A rag-covered woman moved, head bowed, under the public library’s lions—an ant crawling up an impossible stairway, liable to be stepped on by the giants who surely must inhabit such a building. Everywhere the stacks of lighted boxes suggested countless lives, at rest or restless, unaware of their insignificance.

Once he had looked at the city as a sight to conquer. He rode home from the magazine feeling the power and influence that surrounded him, certain his fate would be to move these people, to tell them what to think, what to do. Behind the mask of objectivity had lurked the even darker face of power. What a silly youthful dream. It could never have happened, it hadn’t been a dream that was coming true—he was simply another doll living in these endless rows of dollhouses. Toys for giants he neither knew nor understood.