by Gwen Davis
The lawyer then described the circumstances that were so extenuating in Larry’s life: that he had fallen into bad company, gambled, gotten into debt, run through his personal wealth, accrued from … at this point, the lawyer gave a list of Larry’s best-known pictures, including a glittering name or two who had starred in them. The judge looked not just impressed, but enthralled. By the time the lawyer got around to the fact that Larry had started using a little cocaine to get over the sorrow of his wife’s now terminal illness, and had probably been suffering from a kind of temporary insanity, the judge had already softened. He sentenced him to two years probation, mandatory attendance at a narcotics support group, another for compulsive gamblers, plus public service, which would involve making two short features about the evils of gambling and cocaine, starring a well-known actor who was in a nearby courtroom pleading guilty to possession.
Larry made the movies. The judge visited the set.
* * *
Abby died shortly after. All who had been at the wedding came to the funeral. In addition there were foreign dignitaries who were friends of her father’s and had been unable to attend the festive ceremony, but knew the importance of being at the sad one. Plus members of the press who had covered Larry’s trial, been taken with his manner, and become his friends. Abby had been genuinely adored by the women of the community, as for all her privilege she had never been other than loving and generous to everyone, totally lacking in the competitiveness that characterized even the soft aspects of the town: clothes and mentions in Joyce Haber. Abby had given freely of her time and energy to charity, and unendingly of support and affection to her friends. So even those who thought Larry a swine came to the service out of respect for her, and considered revising their opinion of her husband because of her respect for him. Also present were a few new candidates from the fresh list of the world’s wealthiest men, compiled by Forbes magazine, to whom Larry had written to find out if they were interested in investing in movies. And although he had resigned as the head of the studio from which he’d embezzled, he’d been offered the same job at Cosmos. “There is more than one Teflon president,” Zack Arnold muttered to his wife, who still spoke to Larry although Zack did not.
* * *
So he was back on his feet again. The great men of the town came to make up the minyan that sat shivah. Their wives brought casseroles and pastries so that grief wouldn’t weaken Larry after all his other troubles. As soon as a decent period of mourning had passed, he took a flying trip to New York to check in with Lila. Although she didn’t read the trade papers, news of his conviction had made the national press, and there was a big story about the whole scandal in Vanity Fair, to which he’d bought her a subscription.
“You should never have started with those people,” she said, cutting up celery for the tuna salad. “They made you have delusions of grandeur.”
She pronounced it “grandoyer,” but he didn’t correct her. He considered that part of what was dear about her, just as he wasn’t bothered by the radical change in her appearance. The deliciously upstart little blonde he’d married long ago was lost in her somewhere, like Livingstone in the Congo, her old features indistinguishable, except for her pretty mouth, and the straight-ahead words that fell out of it. Her once-bright blue eyes were nearly obscured by the flesh that heavy-lidded them. But she still saw truth, and spoke it, and he’d had enough sleek women.
“They’re not delusions,” he said, softly, but with some contention. As sharp as he considered her, she still didn’t have a clue how big a man he was. There was nothing that could stop him now, except maybe a good deed.
* * *
He did one. In the beginning of Zack Arnold’s career as an agent in Hollywood, Larry had taught him how to be a hardnose. Zack was a gentle man by nature, as Larry represented himself to be when the occasion called for it, or when he genuinely loved, as he did Lila. “You have to hang tough,” he’d told Zack, the first time Zack had blown a deal. The expression had not yet come into popular usage. In fact, Larry considered he might have invented it when he found out from Tim McClure that hanged men got erections. At the time, Larry was having a problem getting one of those, since McClure and his women had shown him so much that was fancy he could hardly get excited by plain. So he had said, “That’s really tough,” meaning it seemed a terrible waste. Later he was to tell the titillating fact to Jason Stone, and Jason would agree to do another picture with him, playing a man who gets unfairly sentenced to death in the old West, but only if he could dangle with a visible hard-on.
“The condemned man ate a hearty beaver,” Jason was to say.
But on the day Zack blew his first heavyweight deal, Larry helped him to totally revamp his thinking and, more important, his behavior, teaching him to “hang tough.” They were meeting that afternoon, the two of them, with an actor who had just broken through as the number one box office attraction. Larry wanted him for a movie, Zack as a client. “We got to play good cop, bad cop,” Larry said. “You bully him, I make you be gentle.”
“I am gentle,” Zack said.
“You can’t show that to an actor, or he’ll have no respect for you. You got to make him think you’re capable of killing for him, like a woman likes to imagine. And then you kill him with a laugh. It’s like est. They beat you up, starve you, don’t let you piss, then tell you you’re wonderful, and you belong to them. After you give him a really hard time, you make him laugh.”
“I’m not funny,” said Zack.
“I’ll make you funny,” said Larry.
They met with the actor. As they’d rehearsed, Zack came down on him very heavily, telling him he was blowing his future with lousy choices in scripts and lousy representation.
“I’m getting two hundred thousand a picture,” the actor said, the sum at the time being monumental. The joke of the twenty-million-dollar salary for a star was still a Star Wars galaxy away.
“You should be getting four. What if you lose your hair?”
“Don’t scare him like that,” Larry said.
“He better be scared. He better be good and scared.”
“You’re talking about me like I’m not here,” the actor said.
“You’re not here. You’re not here unless I tell them at the studio you’re here. You’re the Invisible Man. They don’t care who actors really are. To them, you’re whores. They bang you, and when they finish and you’re all used up, unless you’ve got a great pimp, they don’t even leave the money on the dresser.”
“How can you talk so ugly to such a sweet guy?” Larry said.
“Sweet counts for shit, and you know it. You, as the great producer you are, don’t offer a guy a script because he’s sweet. You offer it because you think he’ll deliver tickets.”
“That’s true.”
“I deliver tickets,” the actor said.
“And I deliver iron-clad contracts, so even if you slip, even if you don’t show up, even if they don’t make the movie, you still get your money.”
“Is that true?” the actor asked Larry.
“He’s the one who started that policy,” said Larry, which was a lie, easy enough to check, but actors rarely did homework unless it was learning their sides.
“Okay,” the actor said, finally. “I’ll sign. There’s only one thing that bothers me…”
“Yes?” asked Zack.
“I heard about your agency having connections to the mob.”
“That’s a vicious thing to say,” said Zack, who knew that rumor was out there. “How could you think such a thing?” He unbuttoned his jacket. Hanging on the front of his shirt was a holster, holding a .45.
They all cracked up laughing. The actor sent a letter of dismissal to his agent and signed with Zack, becoming his first major client. After that there was Jason, and a raft of box office stars. And after that, Larry kept his promise to make sure Zack had no more bad days. When he became studio president, he appointed Zack European production head.
Zack
outlasted him, keeping the post past Larry’s disgrace, his seeming expiation, his move to another studio. And then Zack had a heart attack.
Larry flew to London. He had buried his second California wife, and he wasn’t about to lose the best friend he had, even though they weren’t speaking.
“I’m finished,” Zack whispered, his arm connected to a network of machines, monitoring the life ebbing out of him.
“You aren’t finished,” said Larry. “I’m taking you to New York. I got the best heart doctor in the country waiting for you. We’ll get you a transplant. If I have to, I’ll give you mine.”
“You don’t have a heart,” said Zack.
“Fuck you,” said Larry.
“Up yours,” said Zack.
Larry took him back on a hospital plane, chartered for the occasion, charged to his old studio, the one Zack worked for now. Larry was set to pay it if anyone made an issue, with a check he’d already written himself from Cosmos.
“I don’t know if my insurance covers this,” said Zack.
“Shut up and keep breathing,” said Larry.
Zack needed and got a four-way bypass. “They took the veins from my legs,” he said afterwards. “Can you imagine?”
“I offered them mine,” said Larry.
“You got lousy legs.”
“That’s what the surgeon said. But I gave you some blood.”
“Did they check it for HIV?”
“In your ear.”
“How will I ever repay you?” Zack said, and started to cry.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Larry. “Who’s asking for anything?”
“But I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. The studio sent me a basket of flowers, with a notice my contract is up and they’re not renewing.”
“I hope somebody embezzles the fucks,” Larry said.
“Who’s going to give me a job? I’m damaged goods. I’m old.”
“You aren’t old,” said Larry. “You’re younger than I am.”
“How old are you, anyway? You got a picture in the closet?”
“I’m making a picture. It’s about this silly fart who thinks he has no future. And then this ghost comes to him on Easter Eve, and gives him visions, and he sees that he is the same as Christ, and he can rise again.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m kidding. But I am making a picture. And I’m making you associate producer. You’re getting a hundred and twenty-five thousand.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Zack, and started to cry again.
“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” said Larry. “I know what I have to do.”
The only problem was he forgot to pay him.
* * *
When the process server came, at first Larry thought it was a joke. He had Fletcher McCallum call the lawyer whose name was on the subpoena as representing Zack to ask him what the hell was going on. Larry was too upset to call Zack directly. He couldn’t believe it.
“Apparently you had a deal and you reneged,” Fletcher McCallum said, his big jaw slightly receded, held with a carefully conscious underbite so his own clients wouldn’t feel under attack.
“I didn’t reneg,” Larry said. “I forgot.”
“It’s three years ago,” said McCallum. “With interest, that’s—”
“Interest? I saved his life! He never even came to the set! I threw the salary to him, like a mercy fuck.”
“But you didn’t pay it. You had a deal.”
“I saved his fucking life!”
“Maybe that was a mistake.”
“You bet your ass it was a mistake.”
“You better pay him.”
“Over my dead body,” said Larry.
* * *
By the time it got to court, it was four years later. Besides the additional interest that had accrued, there were the lawyers’ fees. Then there were the lawyers’ fees for Zack’s lawyers that he would have to pay if he lost. He’d been ousted as the head of Cosmos by the Japanese, who’d bought the studio as though it were a golf course and brought in their own man to head it, a bully recommended by a man just out of rehab. Larry had returned to independent production and made three pictures that sank without a trace. He’d had such a hard time raising money for the third one, he’d actually had to forego his production fee, throw in what little he’d saved, and borrow more. In the meantime, he had married an Israeli heiress whose family cut her off for marrying him. He was bound and determined to show them he could keep her in her customary style. As a matter of fact, he exceeded it. He owed a couple of million.
The judge found for Zack. It was not the same judge who’d tried Larry for forgery and embezzlement. But it was his nephew. The uncle was in the courtroom, with an angrier look on his face than Zack, and a more pugnacious set to his jaw than Fletcher McCallum.
“I’m sorry, your honor,” Larry said miserably. “But I don’t have any money. I’m tapped out.”
“Empty your pockets,” the judge said.
Larry reached into them. He took out a small wad of low-currency bills, held together with his good luck money clip.
“Now turn your pockets inside out,” the judge said.
Larry did as he was told. The key to his Mercedes fell to the floor.
“Is that a car key?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“Give it to Mr. Arnold,” the judge said. “With the money.”
“But how will I get home?”
“You have a home?”
“It’s heavily mortgaged,” Larry said.
“Are those rings on your hands?”
“This is my wedding ring, your honor.”
“You may keep that. What’s the other one?”
“My class ring from Yale.”
“Give it to him. You have a watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me see it.”
Mournfully, he rolled up his sleeve.
“What kind of watch is that?”
“A Rolex.”
“Take it off and hand it over.”
* * *
He ended up with a judgment against him for what he owed Zack, with a shitload of interest, the bill from Zack’s lawyers, court costs, plus a bill from Fletcher McCallum for three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars. He got another lawyer to sue McCallum for malpractice, and that lawyer ended up suing Larry for what he owed for suing McCallum. Larry’s wife died soon after; her family took her body back to Haifa. Darcy Linette let him make one more movie at Marathon, as a kindness; it was later deemed unreleasable. McCallum forgave him his debt and the insult of the lawsuit, because in spite of everything, he’d always liked the little fuck and was sorry to see him with no springs on his legs for a comeback. The lawyer also understood the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished, and saw that Larry was a victim of the one clear moment of absolute humanity he’d had. It was a story Fletcher McCallum did not pass on to his sons, whom he was raising with the credo that the paramount virtue was integrity.
Larry Drayco was last seen in public at a memorial service at Beth Israel, given by the women of ORT, the Beverly Hills chapter of the Israeli organization, in his late wife’s honor. No one at the temple spoke to him, and all those attending made a circle around him so wide it was as though Charlton Heston had come again to divide the Red Sea.
* * *
By the time the story was finished, Lila had had enough Merlot so she told Kate about the compromising tape Larry had left her. She hadn’t meant to go that far.
But Kate promised her secret was safe, just as Victor Lippton’s was, because she wasn’t the type who would blackmail anyone.
“Neither am I,” Lila said drunkenly. “He thinks I made a copy of the tape, but I didn’t. He has the only one.”
“Well, as long as he doesn’t know that, he’ll probably give you what you want.”
“A monument,” Lila said. “A monument to my Larry.”
“What kind of monument?”
“That’s what I’m working on,” said Lila. “Let’s open another bottle.”
In the end, Kate broke down and had some. So she stayed a lot longer than she meant to. By the time she got home and found the hysterical message on her machine from Wendy, she was afraid it might be too late.
* * *
Well, when Norman Jessup tried to make something up to you, he really did a first-rate job. Even though Tyler was ready to make the journey in his cutoffs and a T-shirt, just carrying his backpack and the box of ashes, there was a small, beautiful leather bag with his initials embossed in gold waiting for him in the limousine that took him to the airport.
Inside were some handsome batik shirts (“These are coals to Newcastle,” read the note from Norman that was pinned to them. “You’ll find much that you might want to wear in Bali itself. Although you’ll probably spend most of your time naked.”) There were also a pair of bathing trunks, shorts, some new underwear, cotton briefs, the kind Tyler wore that to the best of his knowledge Norman had never seen. Tyler realized now that he had probably gone through his drawers, looking at his drawers, or the choice wouldn’t have been so appropriate.
“What the hell, Algernon,” Tyler said to the box. “I can’t get mad at someone for loving me.”
“Are you talking to me?” the limo driver said.
“I’m talking to my box,” said Tyler.
The driver gave him a look in the rearview mirror.
Outside the limo was the dismal architecture of the buildings alongside the expressway. Redbrick, piled-on high-rises housing existences that Tyler considered probably never became lives. His grandparents on his father’s side had lived in such a place, and they’d just marked time till it was over, with no real concept of anything beyond, or probably even of anything during. He didn’t like being judgmental; that was one of the things Algernon had told him he needed to work on. But to go through days with only the highlight of big-screen TV and the occasional great meal was a depressing concept. Just as the notion of measured days with a paycheck at the end of them was depressing.