Selling Out (8 page)

VARDEMANS TO HOST LUAU FOR LEUKEMIA

The story said top directors' agent Pru Vardeman and her producer husband, Vaughan, were generously offering their Bel Air estate for this charity event which was being backed by the top people in the industry.

Perry grinned and shook his head in affectionate amusement.

“I can't wait to put them on about this,” he chuckled.

“You may have to wait,” Jane said. “I doubt they'll have time for their poor country cousins.”

“Now, now, let's be fair. They took us to Locke's the last time they were in Boston.”

“That was before they made their millions on that vampire movie. Besides, what was the alternative? A stroll down the Freedom Trail? Hang out at Quincy Market?”

“Darling, love of my life, as a big favor to me, do you think while we're out here you could try to just accept the Vardemans the way they are, maybe even enjoy them a little bit?”

Jane pulled down her chin, squeezed her nose with her fingers, and did an imitation of Pru Pinchel Vardeman's Radcliffe accent.

“Oh,
Lord
sies, why don't we all get 'faced and go skinny-dipping?”

“Why don't you think of them as your very own field anthropology? Something like ‘At home with the Dippy-dos.'”

“Okay, touché. But promise me you won't go fishing for an invitation to their cozy little mansion. I don't want to have to plead to be invited anywhere.”

“Darling, we're inviting
them
.”

“For a tuna melt at the Hamburger Hamlet?”

Perry grinned, pleased with his plan.

“I'm going to invite them to be our guests at Spoleto. We'll take
them
to the hottest new restaurant in town.”

Jane pinched her nose.

“Oh Lordsies,” she said.

Archer Mellis was impressed with the ten pages Perry brought him. He said it was just what he hoped it would be—natural, fresh, charming; sad and funny at the same time.

Archer was even more impressed that Perry was such good friends with the Vees (as the Vardemans were popularly known around town) that they had agreed to go to dinner with him and Jane at Spoleto.

Archer knew them himself, of course. “If I didn't know the Vees I might as well be living in Tulsa,” he said. He had met them around town, at screenings and parties, but he didn't go way back with them, like Perry did. At any rate, he was more than happy to ring up Dom and make sure Perry was welcomed with honor at Spoleto and given a choice table when he hosted his important friends.

Archer said to give the Vees his best, and tell them they were welcome on his lot anytime if they wanted to see their old
amigo
's first pilot in production when it got under way.

“The Vees talking up your show won't hurt us a bit,” Archer said with a wink.

Spoleto was all aglitter. It was, as Vaughan Vardeman observed, “ass-deep” in stars the evening he and Pru joined Perry and Jane there for dinner. All the stars stopped by their table to say hello and pay court to the Vees—and, as was only natural, meet their dear old friends Perry and Jane Moss.

It was a long way from Haviland, Vermont.

The satisfying part of it for Perry was that he was not just sitting there like an outsider, listening to the in stories of Hollywood from the Vees like some visiting hick from the sticks—hell, he was talking
shop
with them.

“Tell me frankly,” Perry said, sipping his Napa Valley Chardonnay, “what would you think of Renna Greaves as a bright, fairly kooky, recently married graduate student?”

Earlier that very day, when Archer Mellis had posed the same question to Perry, he had never even heard of Renna Greaves. Now he could hardly imagine
not
knowing she was the hottest new overnight sensation in town by virtue of raves on the Industry grapevine for her knockout performance in the new remake of “Streetcar,” which wasn't even released yet.

The Vardemans didn't at once respond, looking at each other with curious glances, and Perry's heart leaped, pulsing with the wild hope that by some miraculous lapse the Vees had not yet heard of Renna Greaves. That meant he would be one up on them about the hottest new sensation in their own backyard!

Jane, evidently sensing another reason for their lack of response, quickly said, “Perry means can you see her playing the part of Laurie, the young wife in “The First Year's the Hardest.'”

Pru finally spoke, in her heaviest, most nasal Radcliffe accent.

“You mean hypo
the
tically, I presume, since she surely wouldn't actually
do
it?”

Perry smiled.

“I think you guys know me well enough to realize I don't go around tooting my own horn. But I gotta tell you, this script is something special. I mean, I'm only a little more than halfway through, but I'm really excited about it. So, who knows? Maybe even Renna Greaves will go for it.”

“Oh Lordsies, I didn't mean any reflection on your script. I'm sure it's charming. I only meant I couldn't imagine now that she's hot she'd want to do
television
.”

Vaughan burped and shrugged.

“For big bucks, Renna Greaves would hump a horse,” he said.

Pru turned quickly to Vaughan and spoke in such a sharp, sudden manner it seemed as if she were spitting the words at him, through the slit of her thin smile.

“Since when do you know about Renna Greaves's humping habits?”

“Oh, for shit on a stick,” Vaughan groaned, tossing his napkin up in the air.

Perry had to stifle a laugh, not of enjoyment over the Vees' little controversy, but really from affection at how little they had changed. Vaughan was still the raunchy little cock of the walk, enjoying his farts and belches just as he did back at Cronin's bar in Cambridge, and Pru was the stiff, horsey type, the eternal image of the Eastern socialite snob. They were an unlikely pair, physically as well as in personality, but somehow if you knew them they
went
together, an odd but credible combination. Perry wondered, though, if Vaughan's being—as he no doubt would put it himself—“ass-deep” in sexy young actresses in the line of duty as a producer was really causing trouble for them.

“By the way, I think you both know Archer Mellis,” Perry said quickly, hoping to shift to neutral terrain.

“Mellis?” asked Pru. “Isn't he the real estate lawyer who fronted for those Iranians—the ones who wanted to buy the Santa Monica Mall?”

“No, no,” Vaughan corrected her, “you're thinking of Arnold Melman. Archer Mellis is the new boy at Paragon.”

“You must be mistaken,” Pru shot back. “Rick Stutz is the new boy at Paragon.”

“He's
features
,” Vaughan explained. “Mellis is Paragon Television.

“Oh,
tele
-vision,” Pru said, as if chewing on a prune.

“Anyway, Archer Mellis is the guy I'm working with over there,” Perry said. “He told me he knew you guys, met you at parties, I guess.”

“I'm sure,” Pru said, looking blank. “We must have.”

“Yeah, yeah, Archer Mellis,” Vaughan said. “Long drink of water with aviator glasses.”

“Lots of gold chains?” Pru asked.

“No, no. Only chains he'd have would be for his dog tags,” Vaughan said. “Dresses like Che
before
coming down from the Sierra Madre.”

“Ah,” Pru nodded. “Sort of a Rodeo Drive Sandinista look?”

“Bulls-eye,” Vaughan nodded.

“Is that where you shop, Pru?” Jane asked. “I've heard about Rodeo Drive on Johnny Carson.”

“I still buy at Bonwit's, in Boston. But Rodeo is fun to browse. I wish I had time to take you some afternoon. Can we see what Dom's doing with the veal this evening? I'm afraid I have to take a meeting in the Valley tomorrow morning at an absolutely uncivilized hour.”

“Whatever Dom's doing with the goddam veal, I hope he can grill me a decent sirloin,” Vaughan grumbled. “I'm starved.”

Perry grinned as he leaned back in the booth, enjoying the moment, the whole scene. Vaughan's grumbling made it seem like old times, and Perry thought how far he and Vaughan had come, from a couple of disgruntled grad students with literary dreams, wolfing down sandwiches from Elsie's in Harvard Square, to men of substance in the world of entertainment, partaking of a gourmet meal in a fashionable Beverly Hills watering place, surrounded by stars. Vaughan and Pru were among those few who had proved that Ivy League intellect, taste, and style could not only survive in the tinsel of Hollywood, but actually succeed. Perry Moss seemed fated to be the next of those rare birds whose talent could bridge the gap between East and West. He picked up the menu, happily scanning the impressive array of choices. The wise thing seemed to be to put oneself in Dom's hands as far as the veal, and, in terms of appetizers, Perry found the
Canastrelli Trifolata al Spoleto
intriguing, perhaps because he hadn't the remotest idea what it was.

“I really do believe they meant it when they said they wanted to invite us out to their place before we go back,” Perry said while getting undressed for bed that night. “They
do
have a heavy schedule.”

“Frankly, I can live very well without another dinner with the Vardemans as long as I live, thank you.”

“Oh, come off it,” Perry said. “I know they have their pretensions, but can't you just relax and enjoy them? Enjoy the show they put on?”

“Not when part of the show is Vaughan Vardeman trying to feel me up during dinner.”

Perry let his pants drop.

“Are you
serious?
”

“I was squirming so much to try to keep his hand off my leg I couldn't even enjoy whatever it was Dom did with the veal.”

Perry shook his head.

“That lousy bastard. What a pal.”

Jane came over and slipped her arms around him, soothing.

“Don't be mad. It's sad, really.”

She kissed him on the neck and he relaxed, unclenching his fist.

“The poor guy is probably jealous, I guess,” Perry said. “There he is with Pru, who's getting bitchier and more unbearable all the time, and I have
you
.”

“Honey, it isn't me he's jealous of, it isn't me he really wants. It's what we
have
. The two of us. Together.”

“I know.”

He kissed her, lightly, thankfully, and her lips moved with his, that special response, so tender and intimate, that led them, together, as one, to bed.

It was magic.

You could tell that right away, just by glancing at it. There wasn't anything flashy or hokey about the presentation, just the standard Paragon Studio script covers, with the logo in the bottom right-hand corner. Archer had chosen a conservative pale blue, with the title in black italic print, a slight scroll effect giving just a touch of elegance, without ostentation:
The First Year's the Hardest
.

It was class.

It was more than that. It really was magic, not just to Perry, who of course would have been impressed by seeing his first script bound for reading, no matter what the thing looked like. Everyone else at Paragon sensed it, too, though none of them as yet had had time to read it. The scripts had just come back from the printer late the previous afternoon and Archer had immediately messengered a dozen copies to the network. This morning he proudly took not only a copy of the script but its author in to Zack Spackford, the president of Paragon, not just the TV division that Archer headed but, as he explained to Perry, this man they were going to meet was his own boss, everyone's boss, boss of the whole enchilada, feature films and all.

“I like it,” said Spackford, feeling the script, running his hands over the covers, then holding it gingerly on the upraised fingertips of one hand, as if balancing a serving platter.

“It feels good,” he said. “It has a nice weight to it.”

“Thank you,” Perry said.

It was the first time his writing had ever been judged by the texture and weight of what it was written on. This would be a good one to recount back at some faculty bash; it was a kind of one-upmanship for those who said, “You can't judge a book by its cover,” or those critics who had praised the jacket design of one of his books in the course of a review. Still, he was actually pleased at the mogul's positive response, and even sensed it was genuine; this was after all a world of signs and portents, of omens and fortunes, and he really believed there was something magical about the script, something Spackford sensed as he held it.

Terry Carver, the studio's young head of sales, didn't even have to touch the script to know it was a winner.

He sniffed it.

Carver, who looked like a surfer with skin that was tanned and jeans that were bleached by the sun, was lifting a dumbbell in each hand when Archer came into his office with Perry and laid the script on the edge of his desk. Carver approached it, and without putting down the weights, simply leaned over and sniffed at the crisp new document.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's got a good smell to it.”

Magic.

Perry wasn't surprised because the whole process of writing the hour script had been magic, too.

Fifty pages in three weeks!

It sometimes took him six months to write
ten
pages. Of course these were different kinds of pages, pages with a lot more white space on them, pages where complex descriptions could be done in a kind of shorthand (EXTERIOR—SUBURBAN HOUSE DRIVEWAY—NIGHT), but nevertheless, a real
story
was here, a drama with beginning, middle, end, a living, breathing creation of believable characters, dealing with real-life, adult dilemmas. This was no schlock sitcom stuff, this was
quality
, the sort of thing TV critics dreamed of seeing on network television.

Now it was up to the network to decide if they had the guts, the foresight, the imagination to put it on the air.