Wake Up and Dream (25 page)

Some of the security goons wore dinner suits, and some wore Liberty League trooper uniforms, but they were all big and broad; nothing like the Gladmont guy, but the sort you’d get to play background heavies in a feelie. They didn’t even ask to see Clark’s invitation cards, let alone ask them about who they were, although Barbara looked like she wanted to talk to them anyway until Clark drew her on. They followed a grass pathway between flaming sconces and a vast slew of expensive cars toward marquees, piping music, flags and marching soldiers. The flashing cannon and falling horses of an entire battle scene which was being enacted in a wide auditorium beneath the terraced lakes before the house.

“Dan, Dan, Dan. You
did
make it after all…” Resplendent in tartan necktie, coat and trews, Timmy Townsend came bounding up. “So, so great to see you.” Clark looked around for Barbara as Timmy pumped his hand, but she’d already vanished into the preening crowds.

“I thought I should make the effort.”

“And
here
you are.” Timmy took a snorting breath—half laughter, half disbelief. “And that news about your wife…” He looked jolly even when he made a serious effort to look sad. “So,
so
terrible. You
must
let my secretary know when and where the funeral is. Promise? Terrible business. And how about
you
, Dan? How are you feeling? Do you think you can face the next day and the next deadline and crack on?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I think I can.”

“That’s…” The look of sorrowful concern had once again lost its battle with the bonhomie which dominated Timmy’s broad face. “… good.”

“Can I ask you something, Timmy—I mean about my wife. You must have dealt with her, to sort out the
Wake Up and Dream
contract?”

“Just a couple of phone calls, I think.” The executive’s lower lip bulged in the manner of someone who wasn’t usually called on to reflect much upon the past. “After you’d sent the treatment in, and my secretary had shoved it across my desk, and of course I saw your name and I sat down and I read it and it was the most—”

“So
I
sent
Wake Up and Dream
in, and then April got in touch?”

“Well, Dan, I’d have to get my secretary to check. The way I remember, there was this brilliant treatment, and the next thing I know April’s calling me to ask if I’ve got it, read it, and what did I think?”

“So
I
sent it in, not April, and from my Bunker Hill address? And then she chased it up, and brokered the deal?”

“That’s the way I recollect it.”

“Sorry to go on about this Tim. But I’m like you—I’m a big picture man, and my recollection’s sometimes a little hazy when it comes to nuts and bolts. And of course I can’t ask April now.”

“A wonderful, wonderful woman.” Drums rattled. Cannon flared.

“Sure. But what did you reckon to her as an agent? I mean, what was she like when she sorted the deal?”

From puzzlement, Timmy Townsend’s expression was now shifting to alarm. “A deal’s a deal, you know, old fella. Doesn’t matter who’s alive or dead. And this really isn’t the time to be worrying about this sort of thing, Danny boy. You’re bound to be shook up. I mean, I had no idea—”

“You’re right. And neither did I. But I was just, I don’t know, curious about the sort of approach she took…”

Timmy Townsend laid a hand on his shoulder. His smile had returned. “Your wife was a decent person, Dan. Not some money-grabbing, over-ambitious, super-bitch—feel like you have to put on armored gloves before you shake hands with them, their talons are that fucking sharp—which,
entre nous
, is a kind of agent I’m having to deal with more and more these days. April Lamotte was not just a loss to you, Dan, but a loss to the whole industry, and to us all. I can honestly say that dealing with her was like a breath of fresh air.”

Understanding. Sensible. A breath of fresh air
… In other words, good though it was, she’d just taken what was on offer at first base. That didn’t sound like the work of any kind of agent, let alone April Lamotte.

“But you
must
let me show you some people…”

Even feelie executives had to be good at something, and this was surely Timmy Townsend’s star turn. The hand across the shoulder, the warm smile, the friendly
hey
, the promise of a quick chat saved for later, the peck on the cheek, the fuck-off turn of the head, the avoiding or beckoning wave, the flirtatious pat on the ass.

He’d been to parties pretty close to this back in the old days, and not much seemed to have changed, apart from the hems rising higher and the cut of the necklines swooping lower. But the whole industry had moved on—if was the same industry at all. People like Thalberg, Goldwin, the Meyers, the Wallaces, and the studios they’d founded had all been gobbled up, and gone. Now, it was Senserama, and Arc-Plasm, and TLL, and even the Paramount part of Paramount-Shindo was just a name that the Japs had used so people wouldn’t think they were Japs. Most of the big players back in Clark’s day had been Jews, of course. Not that the Hebes were now being treated over here the way they were said to be back in Europe—not even in cutting edge California. No siree. Far from it. They could hold down jobs and open bank accounts and run businesses just like anyone else, as long as they were properly registered and didn’t exceed the designated quota for their scientifically categorized ethnic group. Just like the Mexicans, Chinese and blacks, they could sometimes even use the same bus benches, schools, drinking fountains and public toilets as the white Caucasians; it was all just a question of sharing out limited resources in the fairest possible way. Get over it, get on with it, or leave our fucking country was the underlying message. This, after all, was the Land of the Free.

Just like at the studio, part of him was still waiting for someone to shake their head after he’d introduced himself and say—no
you’re
not Daniel Lamotte, but, if you took off those science professor glasses, wouldn’t you look a fair bit like that guy who nearly used to be famous called Clark Gable…? He needn’t have worried. These people weren’t like Mary at Edna’s Eats, or some of his sadder clients, or the people who still occasionally gazed at him oddly on the street. Here, everything which had or would ever happen was changed and refracted through the dazzling prism of the eternal now. As he was introduced and moved on, he soon realized that the vague
don’t I know you
? expression with which he was most often greeted—and the warm nod which followed when Timmy explained who he was—was simply the standard way people at a party like this dealt with anyone they didn’t recognize. Obviously, you wouldn’t be here at all if you were nobody. Then Timmy, who could work this kind of thing the way Karajan had worked his orchestra in the recent Berlin Philharmonic tour, would come in with the terrible fact of his recent loss. Dan was fine, Dan was coping; Dan was the sort of writer who took this sort of thing and turned it into box-office gold—that was the message they all got from his warm tone. Women hugged him and murmured soft things into his ear. Men looked tearful and held on extra long as they shook his hand. He was given cards by lawyers, new agency proposals—
just give me a call soon as you’re settled; better still, I’ll call you
—someone even offered him the use of his yacht. He felt like he was the star of every crowd for the moments he was standing there with them, and knew that he’d be forgotten as anything more than some or other writer whose wife had taken a wrong turn into thin air the moment he was gone.

He remembered again that yellowed guestlist; the names, the people—dead successful, or simply dead. And here was the guy who now ran the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, and hadn’t he been one of them? And hadn’t this guy in the red frock just been Father Gerald of something, and now he was Bishop of Los Angeles? And this fat Liberty League apparatchik who was apparently the California Supreme Court judge who’d sentenced more prisoners to execution than any other—hadn’t he been on the list as well?

Clark was drinking Champagne like everyone else, and it was all becoming a golden blur. Men who tossed back their heads and showed their perfect teeth to laugh. Women so invariably thin and blonde that they seemed likely to dissolve into pure aura. Under the chandeliers, within the mirrors and caught in all the silver trays and the melting iceberg sculptures and the shimmering crystal meadows of cut glass, everything was magnified and multiplied, and yet it all seemed so inescapably real that it was like a dream made of something more solid than mere flesh and effort and money, or even life itself.

“This is the place, eh?” Timmy Townsend was saying. “This is all that I’ve been telling you about! Herbert’s just had this ruined castle moved over from Scotland and put up in the grounds stone by stone. Tonight at midnight, we all get to see it—I’ve heard there’s even a genuine, verified, old-fashioned ghost. I’ve been nagging my secretary about getting this tartan suit made for weeks. I sure am glad I did—I mean, who wants to look an oaf?”

A bagpipe band was playing somewhere. A jazz band was playing somewhere else. If you stood mid-way between the two, you could hear them both. Timmy’s main quest in hauling Clark through the swirls and intersections of the party was Herbert Kisberg himself, but the guy was elusive. Everyone had seen him. Everyone had spoken to him, or claimed to have spoken to someone who had. But he was never quite there.

Clark noticed that there really wasn’t much talk of politics by these people for all the near-swooning that went on at the mention of Kisberg’s name. FDR might be “that cripple” and they struggled to even remember who the new Republican candidate was, but the idea of that they were actually supporting the Liberty League’s ideals by wearing these pins on their bosoms and lapels, or by casually tossing hundred dollar bills into the silver campaign support buckets which the servants were carrying around, seemed to be beyond them. After all, Herbert was a player, he was one of them. He’d made—financed, anyway—all those lovely feelies which everyone remembered so fondly, and he was in charge of California and his face was up on the billboards, and he was so, so good looking, and he’d invited them to this spectacular party and he knew them by name, or at least they wished he did. Above all, he was rich and he was famous, wasn’t he? And that was as good as being good. Nah, it was better. Clark could foresee the time when even one of those muscle-building, grunt-syllabled goons out in the car lot could easily make it as far as State Governor when Kisberg stood down. Maybe further still.

Timmy finally reached a smaller room with little more than a few antique Persian carpets and Ming vases to decorate its walls. A few men sat smoking cigars and talking in large leather chairs. A few others stood. A similar number of women had arranged themselves as further ornaments between the vases.

Clark thought for a moment that they’d reached some outer edge of tonight’s celebrations. But the way the men murmured to each other, and the measured way they turned to look at him, made him realize he was wrong.

One man in particular stood talking with a calm animation which seemed to hold the attention of the room. Even without that billboard outside the Senserama studios, Clark would have recognized the face. There was something about that kingly smile, those young-wise eyes, the almost boyish shock of dark blonde hair.

“Herbert, Herbert…” Timmy stammered in a flurry of gestures as Kisberg finished what he’d been saying and turned their way. “Here’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Of course.” It was hard not to feel privileged when you were taken in by that gaze.

“This is Daniel Lamotte. We’ve just bought his script for a Lars Bechmeir biopic.”

“Dan, how are you doing?” Kisberg shifted his tumbler of whisky and shook Clark’s hand. “Without
The Virgin Queen
, the feelies wouldn’t be what they are today.”

“Thanks, Mr Kisberg. And thanks for buying my new script.”

“You must call be Herbert. I wish I could be more involved in the creative process, but nowadays I have to let Tim here and his colleagues do all the hard work.”

Timmy snickered. If he was a dog, he’d have rolled over to show his belly.

“I do truly thank you for coming tonight. Especially in light of your recent tragedy. But I believe it’s better to get on with things, and I know that work can be a great comfort, especially in difficult times.”

Clark nodded. He was trying hard to remember the vigilantes, the goons, the burly nurses with their rubber hoses back at the Met, and all the dark things which had happened to him and so many others in the sunlit blackness of this strange new world. April Lamotte’s dead body on the Gurney. The names Barbara Eshel had shown him on that list.

“I’ve read
Wake Up and Dream
,” Kisberg continued, “and I want to tell you it’s the kind of work that makes me proud to be a part of this business. You’ve captured those times so well. I’m certain that the finished product will be a work of brilliance.”

“Well, thanks again. Although I’ve been wondering, Mr Kisberg, why Senserama felt now was the right time to do a feelie about Lars Bechmeir. I mean, the subject’s so obvious, there must have been other treatments and submissions over the years.”

“But there are times when something simply seems right. You, as the writer, must have felt the same.”

“Yeah. And there’s some people I’ve been trying to speak to. A woman called Penny Losovic, for instance. I imagine you know her?”

“Of course. Penny does a great deal of largely unrewarded work for the Bechmeir Trust. Without her, it wouldn’t be the organization it is, and a lot of people would be the poorer.”

“Not around tonight, though, is she?”

“I don’t believe so.” With those steely eyes, it was hard to tell what Herbert Kisberg was thinking. “Penny’s a private person. But if you’re finding her hard to get hold of, I’ll see what I can do…” He turned to Timmy, who was already nodding. “… or maybe you, Tim?”

“And there’s Howard Hughes,” Clark pushed on. “Truth is, that scene where Lars Bechmeir goes to the Hughes Corporation offices with his prototype device is one that I’m finding hard to sit right.”