“We want you back, Beau.”
“Excuse me?”
The welcome that met him seemed Japanese, ritualized and tense. Only Will spoke. The fifty-six other agents had all offered handshakes and hugs, but now maintained a ceremonious silence.
“We want you to come home,” Williams repeated. “It’s not necessary to stay in New York. You’ve done your job.”
Beau watched him. This was unexpected. He would go back tomorrow morning, had sent Severin ahead so he wouldn’t miss the first day of school after vacation.
“I’ve done my job? Gee, thanks, Will.”
He set his briefcase down, that same battered leather rectangle with the solid gold clasps he’d owned since 1967. He scanned the room. He wanted to come home, in his heart. But Williams Farquarsen had somehow caused that heart to secede from him.
“I’d prefer to stay through the school year. Severin loves Dalton.”
Or maybe Beau simply hated being told what to do. Around the room the agents sat with their plates, filled with green cubes of honeydew, and luminous columns of water. Laura Nyde, in her tan skirt and spike-heeled boots. Wanda Pearlman—who was soon going to marry Rick Lepke, another agent, a bare-knuckled New Yorker Beau particularly liked—smiling up in her ditzy blonde innocence.
“I’ll come in the spring.”
“Come now. We’d prefer it.”
Were these people privy to Will’s perfidy? Or was there such? Perhaps Beau was making a mistake. Outside the skies were that radiant shade that follows a week’s worth of rainstorms. You could see the white-tipped mountains in the distance.
“I’m sure you’d prefer it,” Beau said. “But I might not.”
“How come? You didn’t want to go in the first place. Marty might be happier knowing you were here to kick a little ass on his behalf.”
“What does it matter? My legs are longer than they look.”
No one else spoke. Once upon a time, these meetings had been genteel anarchy. Beau might belly surf the conference table, be lying on his back when Will came in. What are you, the Venus of Willendorf? You sitting for a portrait, Beau? Running a company was once the most fun they’d ever had.
“I’ll come home in June.” Beau crossed the room, poured himself decaf from a silver thermos.
“Is this about what happened before Christmas, Beau? Because we’re OK there, you know.”
“I know. This has nothing to do with that.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“Freedom. It’s about freedom.”
“Beau—” Teddy Sanders stood up to intercede. Bob Skoblow came forward too, and might’ve reminded him that this was just another word for nothing left to lose, although I doubt that, since it isn’t true.
“I—I think we should b-be cool,” Milt Schildkraut said, and everyone turned since he controlled the purse strings. “We don’t need this argument.”
“There’s no argument,” Williams said. He was calm and level, as bracing as the January light. “All mankind is of one author and is one volume. The same poet said, Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
“Right.”
“So if you want to stay in New York, Beau, stay. Stay and take care of Marty and Bob and we’ll see you in six months. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
Here, as always, Williams had chosen irreconcilable masters. John Donne and Aleister Crowley weren’t exactly the most probable bedfellows either. Yet the truth was, Beau never understood Williams even if he could—still—practically read his former best friend’s mind.
“Look, asswipe, I don’t need your permissions.”
“Excuse me?”
This wasn’t a contradiction after all. You can read your own mind, but can you understand it?
“I said, you piece of shit, you dog turd, you rat-fucking excuse—”
Beau strode forward without raising his voice, so for a moment people thought he was just being himself, the ribald fat man.
“I don’t need your fucking permission.” Then he lifted his voice. “I shit where I wanna shit and eat what I wanna eat and if they happen to be in the same place—”
Bob went for him. Milt too. But before they could get there, Beau lunged at Williams. The latter, who practiced tae kwon do, merely stepped aside. Beau went crashing and clattering into his chair.
“Do you need help?” Will bent down with one hand on the small of his friend’s back. “Do you?”
Beau knelt, panting and embracing the black ergonomic chair. Understand, he was crazy. He had been from the beginning. Who pisses on another man’s floor? But understand, too, how strong was his grip on reality. He knew Williams was gaslighting him. Wasn’t he? There was never any need for him in New York, never any need for London or Albert Finney, nor any for him to come home. Wasn’t it clear that when Will visited Chicago he was sneaking around with Beau’s client? Paranoia does strange things to a man, but even Milt Schildkraut, whose reality hunger was stronger than anyone’s, had seen it. Had Williams paid for John Belushi’s hooker, were those his drugs at the Chateau? You were in deep water if you thought John Belushi was assassinated by anything other than his own lack of impulse control, but you were in deeper water still if you failed to understand the treachery, the ugliest truths to be found upon the human scene. Williams wanted everything for himself. We all do. The fact that he didn’t know it, that his “generous” behavior was secretly a bid for control, might have been dark to Williams, but Beau knew exactly what he was up to. The big man understood ugliness too implicitly. Having been born, after all, with so much of it.
He pushed up off the chair. He turned to face his partner, his tormentor, his—let’s call it what it is—love.
“We’ll get you anything you need,” Will pleaded. “Any kind of treatment at all, we’ll pay for doctors, rehab. Anything.”
Beau opened his mouth. And began to laugh. He just couldn’t help it. In his beautiful salmon-colored shirt, with the sleeves rolled; a pair of John Lobb brogues he’d had made in England; his gold Rolex, which was standard-issue for the better-heeled men in this room.
“You think I need doctors, Will? You think this is something to fix?”
“I think you need something.”
He scanned the room, the faces of the men and women all twisted with shock and horror. How backward that was, truly. Who should’ve appalled whom, here? There was a word for this, one that Sam or Abe or Williams, certainly, would know: cathexis, catharsis, one of those Aristotelian or analytic terms. But Beau just shook his head.
“I need something. But I won’t find it here.”
He bent down and picked up his briefcase, having come straight from the garage. And then he strolled out, whistling, with his jacket over his arm and his stride light and even.
“Personal difficulties.” That was the euphemism. Beau wasn’t “in rehab,” nor was he on vacation: there was no tacit understanding that he’d “gone skiing” for six weeks, the way Bob Skoblow did when he needed to quit cocaine. Beau Rosenwald was away from his desk because of “personal problems,” the one thing Hollywood—where the problems were always social or chemical or even mental without ever being truly private—couldn’t forgive. If he’d punched a photographer, if he’d been found naked and shivering in somebody’s backyard, if there had been an authentic humiliation of any kind at all, he would’ve been forgiven. Instead he’d attacked his business partner without provocation, inside a confidential company meeting. The employees of American Dream Machine wish to extend our sympathies during our colleague’s time of trial. These words appeared in an advertisement in Variety during the third week of January. That’s how big a bastard Williams actually was. Why not tar Beau with a brush, Will, and dip him in feathers? Way to further a guy’s career. “Our colleague.” What a fucking snake!
“More tomato juice, sir?”
I would never forgive Williams this, myself. As he had haunted me all my life, my other father, I would hau
nt him from beyond the grave. But Beau flew home that night. “Home” it was, for now. He needed Severin, not just since this was his life’s remaining actuality, but because he knew if he told Sev what had happened, he’d be believed. Severin would get it. Who understands power struggle, the battles and the sly bullying, better than a teenage boy?
“Thank you.”
The stewardess poured him his drink. He was in the first-class cabin, under a tan cashmere blanket. He had enough money in the bank to last him for years. Williams would have to buy him out, if it came to that.
“Would you like vodka?” The stewardess was touching his wrist with two fingers.
“No, thank you.” He returned her smile. “Maybe some peanuts?”
Why did women like him, he wondered, watching her straighten up and deliberately turn just enough so he could enjoy a view of her ass in its blue skirt? Was it because of kindness, charm? Not quite. Money? No. It was because he was genuine, and in some sense had always been, although before he’d gained the other things it was never quite so simple. He’d stayed unlaid until he was twenty, and then of course had needed to pay for it. Now, things were different, and yet it took all that experience, so much raw humiliation, to become real.
“Sir? Sir? Club soda?”
He’d spilled tomato juice on himself. The stewardess was leaning over him with a napkin.
“Thanks.”
To become real. The plane hummed, hissed, and as they soared away from twilight and into the dark, Beau wondered if this was even available to many people, if someone like Williams—privileged from the day he was born—understood that you needed to suffer? Probably not. Then, what did he know of Will’s suffering? If Will had a weakness, some vulnerability—anything Beau would’ve recognized—it might’ve saved them, given the men a chance to reconcile. Blotting his shirt furiously at thirty thousand feet (Out! Out!) he thought of that part of his partner that was dark to him. Williams had no mistresses, no chemical dependencies, and every day of the week he ate his half grapefruit at his desk at 7:45 AM sharp. Behind that unflagging discipline lay something else, but Beau would never guess what it was.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign . . .”
If Williams had a weakness . . .
By the time his plane landed, whatever had occurred earlier seemed unfathomably far away. Los Angeles could’ve been the moon, and this morning could have been the Pleistocene. He called Will from the hotel. It was 8:30 PM in LA, but his partner was still at his desk. Of course.
“Will, it’s Beau. I’m deeply sorry about what happened.”
“Don’t mention it.” Williams drew a breath. “Actually, I’d like to say don’t mention it.”
“Why?” Beau shifted the receiver.
Severin was in the room watching Hill Street Blues on the big TV. Silver room-service trays lay in front of him as he nested on the couch.
“It’s going to be in Christy’s column tomorrow.”
“What? Who told George?”
“People talk.”
“Who talks? There wasn’t anyone in there except us.” Beau sighed. He stared at the carpet’s slate-gray patterns. He supposed expecting this to remain off the radar was ridiculous. “Never mind. Look, Will, the point is, I’ll get whatever I need. Treatm—” he looked at Severin across the room—“I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction.”
Severin was eating a bowl of frosted Mini-Wheats with peaches. No matter how big he got, no matter how ridiculous his hairdo, he was still a kid in some sense. Those angular elbows and knees jutted in three different directions while he spooned up bits and stared, transfixed, at the TV.
“You’ll need to take an absence. If you come in here next week, they’ll say we have problems. If you take time off, then you have problems. It’s just for the good of the company.”
“Of course.”
“And our clients. Yours will understand. You think Marty and Bob have never wanted to hit each other before?”
Beau chuckled. “Good point.”
“So don’t worry about this. Don’t. Worry. Take the time to get straight. Go to Hazelden, if you want to, or McLean.”
“I’m from Queens, Will. Those places are a little upmarket.”
“Go to Switzerland. Go to a peep show on Forty-Second, for all I care, if it helps you get straight.”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
Williams laughed. They were back on the same frequency. “Do what you need to do, Beau. Our door is open.”
One thing you must know about Hollywood. Slow fucking is what they do best. All these men who probably cum in about eight seconds—why wait for anything, after all?—can screw each other over for years. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Yes. It’s just more fun to brutalize someone across time, and torture isn’t torture unless you really draw it out. You think I’m paranoid, that, like Beau Rosenwald, I’m misinterpreting Williams’s gestures? Our door is open. Get what you need. This is the vocabulary of business, the tenderness with which we punish one another every day.
“Beau, it’s Marty.”
(We had a great run, says the deposed studio chief in the press release announcing his firing, and I look forward to making movies here at Blankiversal, and to working closely with Peter and Ed. To which the boss’s boss’s boss responds, Jeremy has fantastic taste, and we expect him to be a major supplier for us these next three years. Read this in Variety, over and over again, and know these are three years in which Jeremy Vana can’t get Williams Farquarsen’s second assistant on the phone, let alone get a movie made, from his opulent offices on the lot. If you’re going to castrate someone, do it with love.)
“Marty!” His favorite director had visited him in the hospital, twice. Beau had gone through an outpatient program for alcohol—never mind that drinking was never his problem—and was now diagnosed as bipolar. Yet like many diagnoses, this was only a guess. “How are you, sweetie?”
“I’m good. Listen, Beau, I have a problem.”
“You have a problem with who? The studio? Is there a problem with publicity?”
This conversation took place on the fifteenth of February. That week, Beau resumed work at the ADM offices in Century City. It was important that people see him here, know that he was back in town, out and about, negotiating. He and Williams had lunch at Jimmy’s on Monday. This was important too. The two men at one table, telling jokes. Beau looked healthy and relatively slim, but this was nothing like the pallid cadaver who’d emerged into the light after his daughter died. This was him at fighting weight, fiercely lucid and ready to kick some ass.
“You want me to call Marvin Davis?” The King of Comedy was opening on Friday.
“Different problem. Beau,” Marty sucked his teeth, “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Where you going, Chicago?”
“I’m leaving the agency. This is difficult.”
“Leaving the—Marty, where the hell you gonna go? Williams and I take care of you!”
“I’m going with Mike.” You know how Marty talks, the nervous darts of his speech. “This is very difficult for me, Beau.”
“I’m sure it is. Mike?” Mike! CAA! They’d seen Mike at Jimmy’s that day, too. “No one likes Mike.”
“Everyone likes Mike.”
“They’re afraid of Mike. Marty, why are you doing this?”
There in his office, Beau had the first apprehension that things were not going to go as he’d hoped. It was like coming down off anesthesia. The flowers were browning; gift ribbons had been piled in the trash. The welcome notes and compliments, too, were fading. You look fantastic, Rosers.
“I understand.” Beau stared at the red pistils of some calla lilies in a glass. “No, Marty, I hear you. I get what you’re saying, but shouldn’t we have another chance?”
You know, too, how stupid a man sounds when he’s pleading. Forget business. Don’t leave, one spouse tells
the other, and we’ve all said it—or wanted to say it, or wanted to want to say it—at some point. Don’t go, don’t go! Please!
“Marty, this breaks my heart. I knew you when you were with Roger!”
“This isn’t easy for me.”
Beau rubbed his fists into his eyes. Am I dreaming?
“What does Will say? You talked to him?”
“Not yet. I needed to talk to you first. You’re my friend.”
“And is this because”—Beau had no choice but to ask—“because of my difficulties?”
“We’ve all got difficulties. I get up in the morning and can barely shave with a steady hand.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Both men laughed, the one more ruefully than the other.
“Stay in touch, Beau. Stay in touch.”
Beau was in touch. Nothing makes you more in touch than loss. But when he hung up the phone and began those breathing exercises he’d been prescribed—he was prescribed something for everything—all he felt was the ceiling starting to crumble over his head. You lost an actor, even one as talented as Albert Finney, and it was understood to be part of the game, what you paid for signing someone else and offering the new client more attention. You lost an award-winning director like this? You were halfway to being a schlepper all over again.
“Beau?” His assistant, Linda, was at the door, leaning in and fixing him with her usual tender tolerance. Maybe he should marry her and flee; she’d already seen the worst of him. Not so bad-looking, needing better hair and less makeup and fifteen fewer pounds. Easy enough. “Will, on one.”
Beau sighed. As if he could escape his fate, as though the die for this, every last bit of it, hadn’t been cast long ago.
“Beau”—Teddy Sanders stood in the doorway of his colleague’s office, a few weeks later—“I just got a phone call.”
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