The Player (15 page)

There were other executives to mimic, but Griffin saw that those newcomers who copied the more flamboyant styles looked obvious. Griffin hated shaving, but he knew he would never grow a beard. Some very rich men in Hollywood were bearded, but most of the assistants and vice presidents who wanted to look like rich producers with beards only looked like those assholes with license plates frames that say
MILLIONAIRE IN TRAINING
or
MY OTHER CAR IS A PORSCHE
. The bearded producers were only copying the bearded directors. The bearded directors were all copying Francis Ford Coppola. And Coppola, Griffin told himself, was too busy to shave, or didn't like the shape of his chin. Levison encouraged a casual style at the studio, which his executives appreciated, because this slight contempt for expensive, impeccable grooming gave them a feeling of belonging to the team. From a distance Griffin watched Levison and admired him. Levison, before his promotion, had let it be known that he liked Griffin's script reports and had, a few times, asked him into his office to talk to him about movies, about casting, about directors. Griffin knew he was being scouted for a position, and one day, after his promotion, Levison asked him to sit in a meeting with him, when a director whose fee was three million dollars came in to pitch a story. After the pitch Levison turned to Griffin and asked him what he thought. Griffin had said, “This is not a finished idea.” Levison said nothing, the meeting ended, and when the director was gone, Levison told Griffin he was now a vice president. At that moment Griffin had fallen in love with Levison; the feeling of relief and pride had overwhelmed him.

Then he understood that Levison's cultivated eccentricities were not without purpose, that he used the bits and pieces of his personality as weapons. After he was hired, Griffin always walked away from
the crowd when people did Levison impressions, the head cocked just so, the brow furrowed before asking a difficult question, the repeated phrase, “I submit …” As in, “But I submit that you could shoot these three scenes in one location, and if you could, then why do you need the second two?” Griffin hoped that people made fun of his own manner, but he knew they probably didn't. If they do, he thought, then I probably have a better chance of being head of production someday. It was, he knew, too late to develop a trait for the sake of attention and power. He wished he was marked, or scarred in some way. He reconsidered something. Of course, there was a Griffin Mill impression, and it went like this: “Let me think about this for a few days. I'll get back to you.”

Griffin was in a meeting with Aaron Jonas, an agent who wanted to move into production, when Jan called him on the intercom to say that Andy Civella was on the line. Griffin excused himself and took the call.

“So, are you ready to pitch?” he said, trying, with his humor raised, to anticipate Civella's attack of confidence.

“I already pitched. I'm waiting for your response.” But this wasn't Civella.

“Andy?” Griffin asked, but it wasn't Civella. Who knew he had seen Civella? He knew it was the Writer.

“I think I'm just going to haunt you. I want to make you uncomfortable. I want you to be so distracted that it's impossible for you to work.” Then he hung up. When the Writer was at the Polo Lounge, he saw him with Civella, had recognized Civella. Why be surprised at that? Civella was a little bit famous.

“I'll call you back,” said Griffin. “I'm in a meeting with Aaron Jonas.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Aaron, do you know Andy Civella?” Aaron shook his head no, but of course knew who he was. Griffin continued talking to the Civella who had never
been there. “Aaron's a good guy. I should get the two of you together.” With that needless charade, Griffin put down the phone.

Aaron talked on about the kind of job he wanted, a creative department job in a studio, a job that would lead to independent production, he didn't want to stay in an organization, which was why he was leaving the agency. Griffin listened to his voice. Griffin tried to separate the sound of Aaron's voice from the words, tried to compare this voice to the Writer's. It was a winner's voice, not so much rich as solid, each word was said quickly, but not clipped, there was no hesitation, and none of those little squeaks that betray conflict, unhappiness, and fear. It was a voice Griffin heard every day, lawyers, agents, directors, free of deprecation, sometimes conveying arrogance but usually only as a negotiation tactic. It was the voice of the Players of the Game. The Writer did not have this voice, this successful voice. The Writer was not a Player. How had he said, “impossible for you to work”? With a whine he acted the sentence. Griffin heard the rehearsal in the delivery, and there was a sneer, a sound of self-satisfaction, inappropriate because he assumed power. He had no power … well, only the power to kill Griffin, or to embarrass him, perhaps.

Did the Writer know that men like Aaron, who he would surely despise for his smugness—and Aaron
was
a bit smug—were sometimes not satisfied with their successes? Griffin's private defense of Aaron, against the Writer's contempt, made Griffin, who until now had never thought of Aaron as someone of whom he could expect great things, suddenly wish the best for him. Griffin told Aaron he would keep his ear to the ground, and he meant it. He saw that Aaron knew that Griffin would look out for him, and when they shook hands, Griffin was glad to see his friend's confidence and excitement. Aaron had such an easy way with himself. To be superior without
contempt! Tonight Aaron would tell whoever he was having dinner with that Griffin Mill was on the case.

Later that afternoon Jan told him it was Andy Civella on the line. He thought of picking up the phone and immediately screaming at the Writer, but what could he say to scare him? It was the real Andy Civella.

“We're ready,” said the producer. “When can we come in?”

Griffin looked at his book. “How ready are you?” he asked.

“Come on, Griffin, Tom Oakley and I are ready to say that if you don't give us a meeting this week, we go to another studio. And you know I don't want to. Because, because … I love you, Griffin.” Civella laughed. Griffin recognized the rhythms of other people in Civella's humor, there was a lot of Eddie Murphy, and sometimes a maniacal screech that was someone else's trademark, and currently popular among comedians who worked the comedy clubs.

Griffin looked at his schedule for the next two days. “How about tomorrow afternoon?” He heard Civella's breath change, it registered defeat, he had to say yes, but it would mean he now had to make a difficult call to cancel something important.

“Five o'clock,” said Civella with a casual lilt, as though he were echoing Griffin.

“I'll see you at four,” said Griffin. “And really, I can't wait.” He didn't care if Civella thought he meant it, and he wasn't sure, and it didn't matter.

He watched the lights on his phone. There were five lines, all for him, so that no one calling would get a busy signal; he wished he understood the circuitry. How did a call coming to one number get bumped to the next number if the first one was busy? How did the hold button work? What is hold? he asked himself. You have a caller on line one. Then a call comes through on line two that can't be left
hanging, so you push in the hold button when you excuse yourself to the person on line one, and then that light blinks while you talk to the person on line two, and anyone studying the lights on another extension on the circuit can tell by the pattern of blinking and clear lights which lines are on hold and which line is engaged. There's even more mystery to the circuitry. Griffin counted all the phones on his line. There was one on the desk, one on either end of the sofa, and one in Jan's office. Four phones, five lines, all connected to one number, with supplemental numbers that made it possible for each phone to be used independently, four people could make calls out of the office at the same time, and still one person could get through, and all four calls could be put on hold while the four callers could each talk to the call coming in. How? Some people knew exactly. Somewhere brilliant people, electrical engineers, computer geniuses, mathematicians, physicists, too, probably, had, over the course of a hundred years, added the increments of knowledge and research and surely even some luck and intuition to create this immense circuit. This was the kind of thought Griffin wished he could share with Levison, without making a meal of it, to mention, idly, how wonderful and complicated the phone system is, how we take it for granted. Maybe they could then move on to the broader implications of this small, admittedly obvious discovery. And what's wrong with the obvious? thought Griffin. How much that we call obvious have we really stopped seeing? Maybe it was obvious once, but since then it's changed. What would Levison say, that Griffin sounded like he was talking about the need to stop and smell the roses? Well, Griffin knew he could say yes to that, without apology. What we love are patterns, flowers, phone circuits, familiar stories. Griffin knew he wouldn't say anything, wouldn't even think about the phones the next time he was with Levison, in case his whole tortured elegy came out compressed as, “Phones, pretty amazing.”

He wanted to call June Mercator. He wanted to see her, to impress her. This came to him as a desperate longing, and he saw that this call from the Writer made him need the woman he had made a widow; he wanted June Mercator.

He called Jan to set up a few minutes with Levison. She put him through to Celia, who put him through to Levison. “I just heard a pitch,” said Griffin, “and I think that if we don't grab it, someone else will.”

“Let's hear it first.”

“There's this little kid—it's 1957—a ten-year-old boy who's totally obsessed with a kind of Hopalong Cassidy figure whose show gets canceled. The old Hoppy figure kills himself, but instead of going to hell, he goes to Cowboy Heaven.”

Levison interrupted him. “A forty-year-old man and a ten-year-old boy, right?”

“It's more than that.”

“And there's a trip to the West, right?”

“Yes.”

“Forget it, I'm allergic to horses. Anything else?”

“No,” said Griffin.

“Well, all right, then.”

Jan buzzed to tell him that Marla Holloway was on the line.

“Hello, Marla.”

“Oh, Griffin, I'm so excited. Isn't Danny just terrific? And isn't
Cowboy Heaven
the best idea you've ever heard? And I think giving it to Spielberg is a brilliant idea.”

“Marla, Levison didn't like it. I'm sorry. I'll have to pass.”

“Why not send Danny to see him?”

“Marla, no. It won't work. Tell Danny I'm sorry.”

“He has some other ideas,” said Marla. “You should hear them.”

“I'm busy right now, Marla, I'll let you know when I'm free.”

He had done his best, and Levison had passed, and that was his right. This lunch had taken time, he'd canceled with people who really counted. He had killed, too, and still the Writer plagued him. Well, then, forget the Writer, he thought. He would let him call or not call, write or not write, shoot at him or not shoot at him, but Griffin would not look for the Writer, send oblique messages to him in
Variety,
make mental contact through the ether, or let his thoughts dwell on him, even negatively, as in the children's game when one says, “Don't think about an elephant.” He could beat any child in that game, he knew how not to think about the elephant. It was easy. All you had to do was work hard and think about what was at hand.

He called June Mercator. Her machine answered. He had ten seconds to decide if he would leave a message or hang up.

“This is Griffin Mill,” he said. He didn't know what else to say, but he couldn't retreat now. If the machine was voice-activated, and he didn't say something quickly, then it would think he had hung up, and his message would sound wrong, cut-off. He had to be sure of himself with June Mercator, no hesitation, nothing awkward. “Call me at the office if you can, and if you can't, here's my home number.”

When he hung up, he wondered if she would be excited by owning his home number, such an intimate gift. No, she would think he had some news about David Kahane, she would think he had spoken to the police. He had stumbled on the dance floor. When she called back, she would be thinking of the man he had killed. He hoped she would call late. The later the better; he would sound tired, a little sleepy, too comfortable in his bed to maintain the forward manner of the proper executive, he would speak quietly, with a little extra huskiness, letting her know that he brought luck to those who were near him; he would start to seduce her.

Levison called him to a crisis meeting, a director had broken a leg and a replacement had to be found. Griffin got on the phone in Levison's office and started calling the big agencies. He had a mission: find out who was good, who was available, who would go to work in three days, someone who would accept a fair price and not involve anyone in the usual negotiation quadrille. If Larry Levy had not been away, Levison would probably have called him, Griffin knew. Here was a chance to show off. With Levison watching him, Griffin was negotiating a director's fee in ten minutes.

That night he went to dinner at Morton's with an Australian producer. A few heads turned as Griffin walked to his usual table, by the wall. He shook hands, was introduced to a wife. People smiled at him. Andy Civella was at the bar, and when he saw Griffin, he came to the table.

Griffin introduced him to the Australian.

“Don't forget tomorrow, Griffin, don't cancel.” Then he turned to the Australian. “How many times did he set a date for this dinner?”

“This is our second attempt, but I had to break the last one.”

“Then you're a bigger deal than he is. We should do business.”