Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

“Okay, changing the subject,” Larry jumped in, “Cal, go get your beer. Em, I want you to tell Helen about your movie idea.” Larry was hovering over his third beer, sitting beside his wife while leaning back. Beside him, Helen’s interest lifted with the mention of a movie idea. Moffat stuck his finger in Larry’s ear, much to Larry’s surprise and feign of annoyance, and then removed himself to fetch a beer.

  “Which one?” Emery asked.

  “The one with the chimps,” Larry said.

  “Oh, it’s just a story I’m sort of playing around with. I didn’t write it; it’s a book I read last year called The Passing of the Hand. By Didier Lisle, a French author. I just want to script it for film. Pacific wants their third script by September, so I’m trying this one. I’ve got the whole summer to flesh it out more.”

  “You read French?” Helen asked.

  “It was written in English,” Emery clarified.

  “Yeah, but the characters. Tell her about that,” Belmont returned.

  “I see. Well, it’s a whole world populated by primates. Almost the entire movie would be actors in bulky costumes. They’d have to be in costume the entire shoot.

  “So the characters really are chimps?” Helen asked.

  “Apes, actually,” Emery said.

  “But that’s what they are? The whole movie is apes?”

  “Uh-huh,” Emery replied, feeling his rather foul-tasting martini gestate in his stomach. It was proving a mistake to have switched from wine during his previous order.

  “What kind of movie is it? A funny?” Helen asked. Beth yawned and blinked a moment, trying to keep alert. She was getting tired.

  “No, it’s an action-drama. A scientist lands on a planet that’s ruled by apes. He’s human, by the way. The protagonist. But the apes talk and have armies and fight with one another and whatnot. And there are people on the planet, humans, like us, but the humans are all enslaved. Most are too stupid to wear clothing. The roles are switched, see? Apes are in charge. Men are the animals. But our man is from Earth, where it could be said that men rule over apes. So he’s out of his element. It’d be like an ape landing on Earth in a flying saucer and being able to speak and escape and do everything we can. Maybe even a little smarter than us.”

  “Emery, that’s just absolutely bizarre. Is it in Darwin’s evolution?”

  “Well, evolution has occurred, yes. But it’s not purposely Darwinian, or connected to that particular man. The story is about people, or apes, being unwilling to accept their heritage, or that it could ever change. Stubbornness and egocentrism. You should read the book. I’ll get your worse half a copy and have him bring it home sometime.”

  “For stubbornness and ignorance, maybe you should do a planet of mules,” Beth threw in, joking.

  “Or network heads,” Belmont added.

  “Naw, mules would be too hard to costume, and network executives couldn’t run a planet without sponsors, and I don’t feel like writing about an entire civilization built by Sears.” Belmont found this idea amusing.

  “Wait, wait. You could have a story where companies and stores run for office, you know, like whoever wins gets to run the U.S. economy for a term. And the states are all separated by allegiances to different competitors. Like Macys runs the east coast, but Sears runs the west coast.”

  “Well then you’d end up with the east coast being better dressed, but the west coast having nicer lawns,” Beth said, picking up her energy a bit and joining the conversation.

  “Oh god, where’s my tape recorder when I need it?” Emery asked, raising his hand and getting the attention of the cocktail waitress, beckoning her over to order another.

  “It’s on the kitchen table at home,” Beth said with mischief. Emery looked at Belmont with a slow nod.

  “The reason she thinks that’s funny is because I promised I’d leave it at home,” he said.

  “I don’t know how you can use that thing,” Belmont said, “Paper and ink, Asher. Worked for Shakespeare. You need to get back to your roots.”

  “Sure, Larry. You go ahead and toss out all your pens and make yourself a quill, buy yourself a jar of stink and some paper about as thick as a car-door, and I’ll admire you for your poetic sensibility.”

  “I think if I did that, I might respect what I wrote more.” Emery laughed at this.

  “All right, from now on, Larry only writes with the quill.”

  “Where does a guy go to get a quill, anyway?”

  “I think you have to yank one out of an actual turkey.”

  “Hey, there’s a farm just off the highway. That’s it, then. I’ll do it. You will now address me as a bard. Wait no: Scribe,” Larry said.

  “Done. And for every story you can finish the traditional way, I’ll show you the thirty I finished with my tape-recorder and typewriter.”

  “Hell, you probably would, too.”

  “Keep the horse-and-buggy; I’ll stick with the jetliner any day.”

  “There’s a metaphor. I’ve been waiting for you to rattle off a few of those. Took what, three drinks?”

  Moffat was following the cocktail waitress, attempting to talk to her, but this ended up bringing him back to the table of his coworkers.

  “Uh, bourbon on rocks,” Emery said to the waitress.

  “Just a chardonnay for me,” Beth said. Helen didn’t order anything and Belmont thought it over a moment before deciding he was finished with alcohol for the night. Moffat was most decidedly not.

  “Two greyhounds. Stiff,” he said. The waitress gauged him a moment.

  “How about one at a time, sport?” she offered. Moffat waved his hand with a look of frustration that broadened into characteristic charm.

  “Whatever you say. I’m in your hands.” The cocktail waitress made her way to the bar, unable to hear Moffat’s next statement:

  “I’d prefer it if you were in mine, though.” Helen chuckled and batted a light fist at him. The writer put his arms up defensively.

  “Well, I haven’t met the right girl yet. Only the wrong ones. You wouldn’t believe how many wrong ones there are, too. Los Angeles is overflowing with the wrong ones. I’m swingin’ wild, here.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to keep swinging wild if you’re only looking in bars, Calvin,” Helen said.

  “That’s true. Maybe I should try church. Girls still go there, right?” Emery laughed at this.

  “So what religion would you decide to affiliate yourself with?” Emery asked with a smile.

  “Uh, hell. I don’t know. Who’s allowed to drink?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Yeah, okay. Then those. I’ll do those.”

  “All at once, huh?” Belmont chuckled.

  “A guy tryin’ to sell a script goes to as many studios as he can, right?” Everyone laughed at this.

  After settling and approving the arrival of their drinks, the group sat back and fell into small talk. For the benefit of Helen and Beth, the three men tried not to devolve into talk of the show and the studio, but this was as if trying not to bother soil while driving a plough through a field. Very little time passed before they were palavering over the nature of Jamison’s grim moodiness, the pratfall Nina had taken during the shoot for Steadfast that knocked one of her teeth out, and the fistfight Mike Hardy, the set manager, got into after a minor automobile collision with a plumber while leaving the studio earlier in the season. Moffat finally put his hands up and introduced a new topic, regarding the three writers.

  “All right, all right. Here we go: Best episode so far. Which one?”

  This was a tough question. None of them wanted to pick a show they themselves had written, but there was much more to the idea of ‘best episode’ than the writing. Emery reached his conclusion first.

  “Okay. Back Story,” he said. Moffat nodded with enthusiasm on this answer.

  “Yeah yeah, that was a good one. Brian Coulter can act. He can really act.”

  “I liked that one,” Belmont interjected, “but I ha
ve to say, I think, overall, the best of everybody went into Losing Streak.”

  “That’s your own!” Moffat said with a smirk.

  “I know, I know. I just mean that Bob Keith was top form in that one, and the cameraman was… psychic. It’s like the show filmed itself. The lighting, the sets, everything was just good. Really sold the whole thing. And James Vance? Damn that looked good. He hit every line like he made ‘em up himself. Yeah, I wrote it, but even there, I think it’s better than my other scripts.”

  “Really? You think it’s better than Cypher?” Emery asked.

  “Well yeah, don’t you?”

  “No. Privacy for the Cypher was a home run. I think you’re at your best when it gets dismal in there.”

  “Oh. Well thanks. That rather surprises me, then. You know how I am about horror.”

  “Why would it surprise you that I like Cypher more than Losing Streak?” Emery asked, intrigued. Both were keen stories, but Privacy for the Cypher demonstrated a uniqueness of writing that Losing Streak did not. Larry Belmont was the sort of person who would recognize that, even in his own work. There were others who could have written Losing Streak, and each to their own flavor. Only Larry Belmont could have written Privacy for the Cypher. Emery waited as Belmont paused, the younger writer’s slight smile giving a twitch, thinking over his response. It was evident he had one, but was looking for the right way to phrase.

  “Uh, well, everybody knows you like the losers. You know. You kind of love ‘em.”

  “I like the losers?”

  “Well yeah, for a protagonist. The guy that nobody looks at. Just… down on his luck. A lot of your stories have that guy. You got these regular joes that are down low and they want to come up... like sometimes criminals in hiding, or soldiers that… they get on the edge of losing it, people that struggle with where they came from, or… or else where they’re headin’. That stuff.”

  “Do I?” Emery asked. He was no longer intrigued, but in a mode of self-inspection. This facet of his taste for protagonists had not occurred to him, and seemed unreal.

  “Yeah. I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. You just like what you like. It’s like an outsider thing. You don’t much write about the big man on campus, or the fat cat sorts of guys. The achievers. Or even the popular sorts.” Emery grinned at this.

  “You guys are having me on. Beyond the Fence was about a profit-headed banker. Everybody liked him. I have lots of stories about achievers.”

  “Yeah, but they end up with split personalities or… you know, fates worse than death, the just-desserts… they lose during the story, and have to doubt themselves and do things to be something else. People that are successful on the outside, sure, but warped on the inside. If you write a success story, you usually always have something awful happen to the guy.” Emery thought this over.

  “I do pick on those characters a little, don’t I?”

  “I love it. When you do like a retribution story, those are the best ones. Some sneak or a cheat getting what they’ve got comin’, made to fail, or even if you kill ‘em off. Well, and then you have the stories about the little guy being given a shot. Those are always endearing. That’s what we see with Losing Streak, a guy on the bad end maybe coming around and having something go good, for a change. Just once. I wrote that one, but I just figured you’d like that one more because you like those sorts of characters.”

  “Nobody writes a sad-sack like you, buddy,” Moffat threw in, patting Emery on the shoulder, “And also you have this thing where all of your male characters act like women, and all your female characters act like men.” Emery’s eyes widened and he gave a snort.

  “Oh, to hell with you guys. I absolutely do not do that.”

  There was much in the way of drunken mildness after this, with several producers milling against the table through the hour to come, dropping small greetings and mentioning good work that might be had, or good work that had been done. Dozier arrived late, did not drink, and needed to leave soon after. There was a moment when the network producer spied the three writers at their table, and he seemed on the verge of approaching, but chose not to, leaving the bar as quickly as he had arrived. While Dozier did not give anyone a reason for his arriving late, or for his hasty departure, most suspected he was having trouble at home. There had been rumors in the past year that involved Bernie Dozier and a series of rather public dates with a woman not his wife. A new rumor had begun only days ago, that this woman was now his fiancée and that divorce proceedings were underway.

  That Bernie was still married was a big part of the rumor’s natural climax. It was supposed by most that the woman was dense and being fooled, that outside of work, and quite plausibly during work, Bernie was somewhat of a louse, and that his wife was either oblivious or on the verge of leaving him, if she hadn’t begun this process already. Over the previous year, Emery had decided that Bernie Dozier was the sort of person no one truly liked, but pretended to for the sake of employment and ease of relation. It had been a productive year, and Dozier, despite his unpredictable demeanor and occasional misdealing, was someone to respect, not like.

  ***

  It was just after seven the following morning when Emery opened his eyes to the ceiling. The telephone had been ringing for an unknown duration on the nightstand. Slow from the sheets and warmth, a bit hungover, he slid his arm from the bed into the cold air, made his dazed, numb greeting after tepidly lifting of the receiver.

  “Nnn, hello?”

  Emery clenched his jaw as Bernie quietly related the cancellation. The writer woke completely then, stood in his underwear, and did not try to stave off his sudden anger. When Dozier paused long enough to catch his breath, Emery expelled a great amount of grief and obvious vitriol through the receiver of the telephone. It seemed Dozier was a no-hoper, after all, a bankrupt executive clown with no power or degree of value. Emery and the others would not stand for the cancellation. Not again. The show was a huge success, and this was obvious. The actors were calling. The directors were keen to take a shot at a story. Jamison would fight tooth and nail for a third season, and Emery would be right there next to him. So would the rest of the production. If this failed, Emery would take his show elsewhere, somehow, anywhere. He could buy out the rights; change the name, whatever needed to be done. He would be rid of the unscrupulous impotency of all the Bernie Doziers and all their back-stabbing tactics. Emery promised this in a series of shouts through the telephone. Bernie took it with little qualm.

  “And beyond that... goddamn it, Bernie, it’s seven in the damn morning. You call me with this garbage at seven in the morning? This should have been handled in person, you louse. Is that why you left the bar last night without coming over? Because you knew about this and just wanted to call me at a more inconvenient time, you inconsiderate ass? Have you already called Jamison or is he next?”

  Beth was now awake, put off by her husband’s shouting. Once she understood the nature of the phone call, however, she understood and quickly left the room. Dozier lessened his tone and began to explain the truth of his quick departure the previous night. There were two reasons for the telephone call. Relaying the cancellation was the lesser of them. The executive explained, neither with his usual defensiveness, nor the clear, brass-tacks approach of executive decision, but in a voice that came unexpectedly, riding an almost shameful tone.

  “Em, they found Sol Jamison dead last night. Just before the Emmys. He was in his garage. He uh… he hung himself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The eulogy was stark and simple, but contained in it those sparse details one accounts as the summary of a life. Solomon Jamison had been a man whose existence was peppered in certainties. For Emery, there was a chilling effect in hearing the course of this producer’s life, as it mirrored his own in many ways. Beyond fighting in the war, Sol had boxed a bit, though before going into the ARMY, which Sol had done in his early twenties as a draftee. Sol had written two manuscripts, but had only shown
them to his nieces. He had produced. He had gone to college and done well. Sol had no parents or grandparents remaining, just like Emery.

  Unlike Emery however, Sol had married before shipping out for the war, had no children (though there had been a miscarriage). He had no living siblings. Emery underwent a longstanding shudder while the course of Jamison’s life was laid out for the reminiscence of people who did not really know him. The manner by which the eulogy was given was brief, but effected heavily the sensation of the funeral and internment to follow. Sol had been right: The dam had broken utterly, over the course of many, lonely months, and the man had chosen to go with it.

  She was not present. Sol Jamison was a married man, but no wife attended the funeral. This, to everyone present, was highly upsetting and somewhat scandalous. It came out shortly before the funeral, when talk of Jamison’s suicide hit the crew and began to cascade from rumor into post-mortem fact, that Sol’s wife had left him about four months before his death. He had been alone, a man that worked hard and yet personally stayed to himself, as much as one could on a busy production, and then returned home each evening to an empty house and what Emery could only discern to be an overwhelming isolation, shadowed in guilt and grief. Why had she left? Why was she not present for, at the least, the man’s funeral?

  No one knew why the marriage had faulted, or what had happened. Sol Jamison had not been the sort for extramarital shenanigans, and his temperament made him seem a person who would have valued loyalty and vow with much scrutiny. It was doubtful he would have had an affair. Had he been abusive?

  There was a small parcel of information that came along toward the end of the funeral. This bit of story on why Mrs. Jamison was not present was given by Jamison’s uncle, Ethan, an old and yet warm man who seemed quite accustomed to funerals, or at the least, un-phased by the accoutrements of them. This man seemed emotionless. The uncle relayed the information regarding the still legally bound Mrs. Jamison: No one could find her. She had left Sol and moved to Oklahoma, to be with a sister. Sol had not known of this, and instead had been told the two were going on a vacation for a week. Shortly after, the husband’s calls to Oklahoma went unanswered, and the only way Sol had learned that his wife had left him came in a single, short letter wherein she explained that she would no longer be with him. There had been no return address, but the postmark had indicated Oregon. There was no family in Oregon, however. Where had they gone? No one knew.