And then I sit back and wait.
Which is what I’m doin’ now.
9 August – NYC
A guy can die from waiting.
After sending those packets I’m really glad I didn’t splash out on a radiopager ’cause to be absolutely frank my phone has not been ringing off the wall. At first I think maybe they don’t like the subject matter, it’s kind of ghoulish although there is what you’d call a subtext on the human condition, and the subtext is the reason for doing it.
I mean Dracula’s been done to death, backwards, forwards, male, female, black, white, straight, gay, musical, comedy, soap, kid’s stuff, and every version available on tape, CD, LP, VHS or Beta. See, I got this theory. Times have changed; we don’t die in the bosom of the family no more, we die in the arms of efficient strangers. It’s ’cause we’ve become scared of death. And the more scared we get, the more sanitized we make the process of decay, the more we sugar up the Dracula legend to give us a palatable handle on dying.
So Dracula’s been turned into some kind of upscale Eurotrash salesman, and he’s everywhere, soft drinks, breakfast cereal, you name it. New York has vampires up the wazoo, but the Undead have been totally emasculated. They’re clowns now, an’ that sure takes the sting out of death.
So my script, my own Legend of Dracula, puts that life-draining shock of mortality back where it should be. It returns physical gravity to the material, provides us with a fear of death so real and deep and strong that we have to embrace it, and through catharsis allow it to exist in our lives once more.
Listen to me, I’m sitting on the john thinking my script is gonna change the fucking world and the truth is I can’t get a network executive to read it. Not one reply so far, can you believe that?
Time for me to shit or get off the pot. So I ring around, try and get to speak to these guys.
Now, I ain’t so naive to think I can just zip through the chain of command and reach Mr Key-Decision-Maker straight off the bat, but I figure that sending out the script gives me a talking point, an edge even, and out of twenty-three packages one must have eventually landed on the right desk. I start at the top of the list an’ I call each one: NBC, ABC, CBS, HBO, Ted Turner, Cable, and not only can I not reach the busy-busy PA bitches with the English accents, I cannot get beyond the fucking switchboards of these places.
I presume my script reached one of your readers, I hear myself saying, to which some girl wearing a plastic headset asks me if it was a solicited manuscript, and if it wasn’t can I come and collect it ’cause they don’t get returned no more on account of so many being received and cluttering up the place.
I just thought I’d start at the top. Start with the Big Guns, y’know? I never really expected it to get picked up at that stage. Time to move down the list to the smaller independent companies, people who handle specialist material. No need for somethin’ like this to have big names in; it’s the idea that counts. I sit and compile a new list and do the same thing again with the photocopies and the mailings, ’cause if I give this up I sure as hell ain’t got anything else to look forward to. Only it used up all my money, and I’m still lookin’ for a job. So I go to see Frankie at the AcuPak Night Storage way down on 3rd, but it don’t pan out. I thought you said you’d always have a job for me, Frankie, I say, but he grinds his cigarette on the floor of the stockroom and looks dumbly at me. Everywhere’s cuttin’ back, John, he replies. There’s a recession on, ain’t you heard?
Yeah, I heard all right. Which is why I just left Queens for this unair-conditioned shithole apartment on Bleeker that’s cheap on account of the guy who owns it is a total burned-out fuckup and his lover needs someone there to keep a watch on him and stop him from sticking stuff in his arms every chance he gets. So now each night I have to close the bedroom door to block out the sound of Tina Turner singing “Break Every Rule” for the four millionth time before I can concentrate on getting the script out. This time I will get it to the right people.
I have faith.
Probably ’cause that’s all I have.
20 September – NYC
What is it about Robert De Niro’s name? I cannot believe this shit. Once again, no replies through the mail but then I can’t be sure if Mr Manic Depressive Disco-Dolly don’t reach the mailbox before me and set fire to the post. (I empty uppers and downers out the bathroom cabinet as fast as he puts ’em in, but I can’t always be sure what he’s taking ’cause he lies about it. Right now he’s dancing around in the next room to some old Diana Ross album. He’s not happy-it’s a high. It’s 11:00 a.m. By my estimation he’s peaking about twelve hours too early.)
This time I figure why wait longer and start calling around almost immediately, and now I get a new kind of standard reply. I mean, it’s obvious that small TV companies can’t afford a fancy Upper East Side address, but just because De Niro put TriBeCa Films in a street full of warehouses don’t mean every two-bit TV exec in town should evoke his name like a fucking talisman. Well, they say, we’re small but we’re very selective, situated near Bobby (Get this, Bobby De Niro, as if the exec goes over his place for cocktails) De Niro’s place.
I’m thinking listen, you could be workin’ out of eastern Turkey for all I care so long as you read the goddamn script, and this is the crunch – for all the talk they give out, usually about themselves and the saintlike regard the industry has for them, for all the smooth dialogue it emerges that none of them, not one, has read the damned thing. There’s too much stuff coming in all the time. Too much loose paper around. Every dickhead with a desktop and an hour on his hands thinks he’s got a script inside.
An’ you know, maybe that includes me, but I still have faith in the script. That’s what I tell myself as I type out the “C” list and set about borrowing more postage money. My name is John Harker and I was born to battle the Prince of Darkness. And that’s what I’m gonna do.
27 September – NYC
Well, the Disco Diva took a dive.
Yes, my room-mate managed to set fire to himself while enjoying the intoxicatin’ effects of several noxious substances, which means he’s in the hospital and I’m out of my watchdog job and out on the street. I think his lover was more pissed that the sound system got burned up than anything else. I don’t even have the money to phone around the networks, ’cause these companies keep you on call-waiting systems for fuckin’ hours, so I just did something I said I was never gonna do and that was, I sold a pint of blood. Under the circumstances, it seems appropriate.
It’s hard conducting business from a call box, but it’s paying dividends. I start early, catch ’em before they got a chance to think. And guess what, someone has read the script and likes it. Two people, in fact. Both of them say they’re interested. I got me a pair of meetings to take. Oh, I like the sound of that. Priorities first, though. At the moment I got nowhere to sleep, and no good clothes. It’s still hot at night, I can rough it for a couple of days until something turns up, take the meetings – after all, they’re interested in the quality of writing, not whether I shop at Armani – and maybe get an advance.
Round Two to the Harker family.
Good shall prevail.
2 October – NYC
I should know better by now.
The first meeting’s at a place called Primetime Product, situated, natch, near Bobby’s building, and is taken in an office the size of a basketball court by a guy who’s coping with premature baldness by growing a ponytail. He gives me the once-over, wrinkles his nose as he lets me sit down and hunts out the script. Then he asks me how I’d feel about turning it into a half-hour sitcom featuring Dracula as a funny superhero. I give the idea careful consideration, then tell him I don’t think it’ll work, and remember, I say this with an image of me sleepin’ on a park bench in mind. But he wants the bones without the meat and it really won’t work, a child of five could see that. End of meeting, shown to the door, thanks for comin’ in – and I have to ask for the fuckin’ script back because he’s
returning it to the shelf behind his desk even as he’s talking me out.
Sleepin’ in the park is okay because the cops don’t run you in anymore – these days there’s too many people an’ nowhere to put us all. I could have done without some drunk puking his guts up on the next bench all night, but right now it don’t pay to be fussy, and besides I’m already thinkin’ of the next meeting. I got two shirts, one pair of sneakers and one pair of shoes, one T-shirt and a pair of ratty jeans, plus a nylon backsack containing a shave bag, a blanket and the scripts. There’s other stuff at my Ma’s but she’s in Atlantic City underneath some loser and I don’t got the keys to her apartment.
Next day’s a real hot one, so I go for a swim an’ use my last five bucks to get my shirt laundered so maybe I won’t look like a total bum.
I get to PowerVision (I’d like to meet the guy who sits in a room thinkin’ up these names) at twenty before the meeting, an’ I’m still sittin’ there at twenty after. The woman who sees me is dressed so severe that first of all I think she’s wearin’ a grey cardboard box. She looks at me funny even though I don’t smell and my shirt looks great. Then she tells me she hasn’t read the script but she’s been instructed to buy it. Although I’m gettin’ excited this alarm bell is goin’ off inside me, and I ask what she would like to do with it.
And she says I want to give it to our writers to see what they can do. I ask her what she means. 7m the writer. I mean, if they like what I’ve written, why get someone else to fuck with it? I guess I’m not supposed to speak at this stage ’cause she looks at me as if I just took a shit in her fruitbowl. Well, she says, the piece is way too downbeat. It can be Gothic, but it’s got to be fun. We could liven up Dracula by giving him a wacky sidekick. I point out that there’s one in the book we can use, and I see her flinch at the word we. Renfield, I say. He’s an interesting character. What’s he like? she asks. He’s insane, I explain, and he eats flies. Not on television, she replies, not if we want a family audience. Also, the title has to go. We’ve already got a new title. Fangs A Million.
You can figure out the rest. At least this meeting lasted longer than the first one, mainly ’cause she was late gettin’ it started.
On the way back I gave blood again, which gives me some ready cash, but I gotta tell you this is depressing the hell out of me. Tomorrow I’ll maybe try to tap some guys I know for a loan. Then I guess I’ll start calling again.
It’s a setback for the Harker family as the Lord of the Undead goes into the lead. Where the hell is Van Helsing when you need him?
19 October – NYC
In the last couple of days the weather has turned. Central Park never looks fresh at the best of times. Even in spring the greenery has a kind of dusty look about it, an’ now it’s just brown. There’s nothing lyrical you can write about autumn in this city. New England maybe but not here. I can’t believe I’m still sleeping rough. It’s gettin’ too cold to stay out all night. I did one smart thing while it was hot – I kept out of the sun. You get a tan in New York, you automatically look like a bum unless you’re wearing good clothes.
Nobody I know has any money to spare, but I ain’t going to panhandle for it. That’s what I told CeeCee, you offer a service or no deal. I was always taught that nobody rides for free. He laughed an’ said that’s exactly what he believes. CeeCee used to work at the coffee shop on Bleeker, but he got canned and now he’s started hustling again, which I figure you have to be pretty fuckin’ desperate to do these days, and I ain’t that desperate. Yet.
Trouble is I can’t get welfare ’cause I ain’t been out of work long enough, and in theory my Ma can still help. Of course, she’s in a garter belt on her knees in some motel workin’ off her blackjack bill at the Trump Casino, but try finding a sympathetic ear for that one. I been workin’ on some revisions to the script, some improvements I think they’ll go for. Trouble is I got no access to a typewriter. It’s all written longhand, and the networks won’t read longhand.
I got the blood thing down to a fine art by loaning out my card to a rota system. See, they won’t let you give blood again until you’ve made it up fully, and they date-stamp your card, but a bunch of us go to different clinics with each others’ cards. It shaves off a few days and don’t harm you none so long as you keep eating.
I guess this is the low point of my life right now. It can only get better from here. I even called around to my Ma but there was no one home. I’ve walked my ass off going to every single goddamned company on my list tryin’ to get to see someone, anyone who could help. That’s it; I’ve tried them all except the pornos, and out of the whole shebang I got me one decent new lead: I read that some rich NoHo gallery just financed a new TV company to develop independent projects for the cable nets, so I dropped a script around to them, called them back a week later and they want to see me tomorrow. I’ll go along, but I ain’t expecting a miracle. It’s starting to get dark out here, and the park is looking more and more like Transylvania to me.
23 October – NYC
Max Barclay has the same number of letters in his name as Van Helsing, and the same powers. I feel like he just jumped on the refectory table and pulled down the drapes, blasting pure morning light across the prostrate figure of the Count. And in a way, that’s what he’s done. He’s saving my fuckin’ life is what he’s doing. Let me go back three days.
WorldView TV turns out to be a pretty snappy joint, located in an area where the only thing that separates power-dressed corporate executives from bums lying in doorways pissing their pants is a foot of concrete and a window. Their receptionist is hip enough to once me over without calling security, which is a relief as I am sporting that “just attacked in the park” look, then this beefy guy who may be a pro-football player comes up and shakes the bones outta my hand and tells me how he loves the script.
And how he wants to make it.
Just the way it is.
An’ that’s where we are right now. It’s gonna take a while to sort out the contract, but it’s gonna happen. The bad news is, no loan until it does, but hey, it’s always darkest before the dawn. That script is my stake, and now I’ve found someone with a hammer. Together we’ll nail the son of a bitch.
27 October – NYC
No news yet.
Called Max today and we talked over problems with the script, all minor. He says he may be able to get some upfront money soon. I don’t want him to know I’m still living in the park. It could fuck things up between us; he’ll think I’m some kind of nut. I want this to be right. One day I’ll be mixing drinks in my seventeen-bedroom adobe-style Bel-Air ranch house telling kids how tough it was to break into showbiz, and at least I won’t be lying.
My dawn will break.
11 November – NYC
I called Max and told him about my cash-flow problem. It took a certain amount of pride swallowing, but I can’t live like this much longer. He breezily suggested meeting over a drink but I can’t let him see me, it’s just too fuckin’ humiliating. I got no clean clothes and no money. It is so fucking cold that even the seasoned park bums have all moved on, God knows where. Maybe they just froze up an’ got covered over with leaves. Maybe that’s what’ll happen to me if I don’t get a few regular meals soon.
Max says there’s something he forgot to mention before, and that is he has to present the script to his board. There’s no chance they’ll turn it down so long as his recommendation stays, but it delays things. It ain’t his fault, he doesn’t know what I’m goin’ through here. And I ain’t about to tell him any more than I have to.
18 November – NYC
Just when I thought my “income” couldn’t get any lower, some attitudinous dude at the clinic finally figured out what we’ve been doing with the donor cards. A few days back, the temperature went out the bottom end of the thermometer, so I moved down into the subway. The smells here are warm and bad. You can taste disease in the air. But the people are worse. Dangerous, like regular laws don’t apply to them under
ground.
CeeCee says I can stay with him, it’s a nice place, he can get me some duds an’ a spending roll. All I have to do is take a couple of the extra johns from him. He says I got a good body, I could earn two, three hundred bucks a night. I told him things are bad but I’m just not ready for that kind of stuff.
I tell myself I’m the one with the moral strength. A Harker. A defender of the faith. So instead of waking in a soft bed, I look up at the city through a fucking grating.
30 November – NYC
I know the number so well I punch it out in my sleep: Wait. Give the extension. Wait. Max Barclay, please. Wait. Last Tuesday I spoke to the PA again, Stephanie from London. Very polite. Max is in Hawaii for two weeks, didn’t he tell me he was taking a vacation?
No, he fucking didn’t.
I try to explain I’m not badgering her, all I want is some reassurance, a sign of faith. I had – I have – faith in my script. Max says he has too but he don’t ever prove it. It seems the board weren’t entirely happy. There have to be a few small changes made. Okay, I’ll wear the changes but let’s get the contract through first, then we’ll talk changes.
Changes. Dear God. I’m at CeeCee’s apartment. When it started to snow an’ the subway filled with crazies, the cops threw us back on the street an’ I knew the time had finally come. I got no more blood to give. My weight was down to 120 pounds. I looked like a peeled stick. CeeCee’s been good, at a price. I take no more than one john a night, and nothing too wild. If they won’t wear a rubber they’re out on their ass. I do it without thinking. I daren’t let myself think. This is one part of my biography that’s gonna stay in the drawer.
There’s a new scene in the script.
By the dying light of the chamber’s fire, the Count can be seen stepping forward. He stands a full head taller than the librarian. Gently, he takes Harker’s face in his pale, tapered fingers and studies him, a spider examining a new kind of fly. The chill from his dead eyes sinks into Harker’s bones. The young man is truly face to face with death. He feels the vampire’s gaze killing off the cells in his body, and his brain starts to grow numb. He knows that if, at this moment, the Count chooses to let him die, he will indeed die. The numbness rapidly spreads. His will is drained away like blood leaking from a deep wound. Reason fades, to be replaced by a thrilling new sensation far beyond fear, an awakening ecstasy as Harker finally understands the night, the eternal night . . .
The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books) Page 18