Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

  The sound of Jane’s voice restored his balance.

  “I love you, I miss you too,” she said.

  Perry relaxed, lay down on the bed, stretching and feeling the tension flow from his body.

  He dreamed Jane had been lost in a blizzard, and, with the help of Ned Gurney, Kenton Spires, and Alton Saxby, Perry conducted a nationwide search to find someone to play her part in his life. The leading role. But no one was right. They might even nearly look the part, but they kept doing things that Jane wouldn’t do—laughing at the wrong time, speaking ostentatiously, moving awkwardly across a room.

  “We still haven’t found her,” Ned Gurney said the next day.

  “Don’t worry, we will,” Kenton said with quiet assurance.

  “We’ve just begun to look,” Alton Saxby added.

  For a moment, Perry thought they were speaking of Jane, that his dream of the night before was continuing into the day.

  But of course they were speaking of Laurie.

  Perry took a deep breath and, with a sense of relief and responsibility, exiled himself to his office cubicle to work on the second hour of the script. There were hurrying footsteps in the hall outside his door, and through the thin walls he could hear phones ringing—phones being answered by secretaries saying, “The First Year’s the Hardest!”

  Concentrate. He had to remind himself that if he didn’t finish this script for the second hour, the whole thing would come tumbling down around him, the walls collapse, the phones stop ringing. In several hours, he managed to squeeze out a couple of pages of sizzling dialogue and decided to take it down to Ned, rewarding himself with a break.

  “Still looking at Lauries,” Kenton reported, and Ned sighed and handed Perry the glossy 8 x 10 photo with credits on the back that announced the next candidate. Perry sat down, deciding he’d indulge in watching just one reading before pressing back to work.

  Bad luck. He could tell just by looking at the photo this one was wasting their time. Melinda Margulies may have done Shakespeare in the Park and had a lot of fancy New York stage credits, as well as a good secondary role in a TV miniseries, but she simply wasn’t Laurie.

  Laurie was pert, perky, and preppy. The Margulies girl was big at 5 feet 10 inches, 135, not fat but certainly hefty and decidedly broad-shouldered. A female linebacker, at least from her photo.

  In person, even more so. She chewed gum with loud smacks, shook hands with a crusner grip, and spoke in a Hat, anonymous tone.

  “Ya want me to do it now?” she asked, slumping in her chair before Ned even had time to ask the few polite questions whose purpose primarily was to put the actress at ease.

  “Please,” Ned said, nodding.

  Melinda first reached in her mouth and pulled a wad of gum from the back recesses, examined it critically, then stuck it under the chair. She closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and pulled herself up so straight her spine was like a rifle placed against the chair’s back. When she opened her eyes they were suddenly alert, excited. She smiled, and looked delighted by life, as if she found every aspect of it fascinating. When she spoke, her voice was warm, winning, energetic, not quite breathless but spirited, the voice of someone who was not only interesting but interested, and it was edged with that unmistakable, slightly nasal, r-softened sound that signals “preppy.”

  Perry recognized this voice at once, though he had never heard it before, except in his imagination.

  It was the voice of Laurie.

  By the end of the reading, this magical person had somehow so transformed herself that she even looked like Laurie—not the way the character was described in the words of the story, but the way it now seemed she ought to look, in living flesh and gesture.

  When the reading was finished and Ned and Kenton thanked the actress, she slumped back down in her seat, reached to pull the wad of gum from beneath it, popped it back in her mouth, and shambled out of the room.

  “How about that?” Kenton asked with a grin.

  “Well, author,” Ned said to Perry, “you should know—was that Laurie?”

  “How did she do that?” Perry asked in a stunned voice. “What happened?”

  “You just saw an actress,” Ned explained.

  Melinda Margulies was Laurie.

  The next day Ned invited Perry to come down to hear a second reading for the part of Jack by an actor named Ronnie Banks.

  A bit offbeat and quirky, Banks possessed great quantities of natural boyish charm as well as a wicked, spontaneous wit. He was obviously perfect for Jack, except for one hitch. He was short.

  His bio said he was 5 feet 7 inches, but even that was a slight exaggeration. That was all right when they first had him in to read, but that was before they knew Melinda Margulies, the 5 foot 10 inch linebacker, was going to be Laurie.

  Ned thanked Ronnie for coming in again and said they’d be in touch. When the hopeful young actor left the room Kenton Spires said softly, ruefully, “Shit.”

  “When Melinda wears heels, he won’t even come up to her chin,” Ned sighed.

  “We can put him in lifts,” said Alton Saxby.

  “And stand him on orange crates during love scenes,” Kenton said. “We’ll never be able to shoot their feet.”

  “We’d look like the goddam ‘Muppet Show,’” Ned groaned.

  “I think they have feet now, too,” said Perry, wanting to make a contribution, adding as the others turned to stare at him, “the Muppets, I mean. Have feet?”

  “We got the right people of the wrong heights,” Ned lamented, evidently ignoring Perry’s observation.

  Alton stood up and began to pace in an opposite direction from Ned.

  “If we put him in lifts,” Alton said, “maybe even cowboy boots, and kept her in flats all the time …”

  “Why would a woman wear flats all the time,” Ned asked, “unless she’s got a gimpy leg?”

  Perry cleared his throat and, fearful he might make a fool of himself, spoke in a rush.

  “A woman might fall in love with a man even though he’s shorter than she is, and if that were the case, she might simply want to wear flats to make him feel more comfortable about their difference in height. I imagine it happens sometimes.”

  The others turned to Perry and this time looked at him as if he’d just invented the light bulb.

  “That’s it!” Ned said, snapping his fingers.

  “Beautiful,” Kenton said. “Gives a whole new dimension to the relationship.”

  “And it’s true to the two of them,” Ned said excitedly. “It’s almost symbolic of their love—kind of awkward, offbeat, giving, considerate …”

  “I’ll get them both back in tomorrow morning,” Alton said, “and we can see how they look together. How they play off each other.”

  “Perfect,” Ned said. “We’ll know right away if it works.”

  It was magic.

  “The network didn’t go for it,” Archer said flat out. “They think a tall wife and short husband is strictly sitcom stuff.”

  Kenton moaned, putting his head in his hands.

  Ned exploded, rising off the floor of Archer’s office like a rocket.

  “The frigging Neanderthals!” he screamed.

  “Besides,” Archer said, “they’ve got Hal Thaxter under contract and they want to see him in this part.”

  Hal Thaxter was a burly blond macho type with a toothpaste ad smile and a high “TVQ.”

  Perry had just learned that a TVQ was a significant computerized personal rating of how popular an actor was with the American television audience. By virtue of his appeal as a mindless lifeguard in “Beach Bonanza,” the long-running series of a few years before, Thaxter had a high TVQ and was thus regarded as a valuable element for a new, untried show.

  “You ought to be pleased that the network wants him in your pilot,” Archer said. “It means they’re behind it.”

  “It also means they don’t get the point,” Ned Gurney yelled. “And it further means you let us d
own when you said you were all for Ronnie Banks and you’d back us on him all the way!”

  As Ned’s face grew redder, Archer’s grew whiter. Perry for a moment wondered if the younger man was going to shrink before the older man’s fury, but Archer Mellis became almost frighteningly rigid and frigid, a major of military bearing and command whose voice came out in saber strokes.

  “I put myself on the line for you with Kenton, and I won that battle. I did the same with Ronnie Banks, and I lost. This is not Broadway, this is network television. If you don’t like the way it plays, I recommend you look for more congenial action elsewhere.”

  Perry held his breath. Kenton Spires closed his eyes. Ned Gurney, his face not only red but puffed to the point of explosion, exhaled, then nodded.

  “I hear you,” he said.

  “And that’s the bottom line, amigo.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  Ned extended his hand to Archer, who gave it a quick grip.

  The meeting was over.

  Ned, Kenton—and Perry, too, of course—calmed down and came to the conclusion that Hal Thaxter would be just fine as Jack. There was no sense in being down on an actor because he was handsome and had a high TVQ.

  In fact, Ned said that casting the leads so well was cause to celebrate, and anyway, everyone needed to relax a bit, so he was having a little dinner at his house Friday night. Perry was of course delighted at the prospect of seeing the executive producer’s home, as well as meeting his girlfriend. The only disappointment was that Jane wouldn’t get back till the next day. He hated to have her miss this first social occasion with his new colleagues, and, in fact, he felt a bit uncomfortable about going alone. He realized it would be the first time in five years that he’d gone to a real party without Jane. He almost felt guilty, as if it were a small betrayal. He tried to call her just before going to Ned’s, but there wasn’t any answer. It was seven o’clock, which meant ten in Vermont. Where the hell was she? Should he try to reach her at the Cohens’?

  Hell, he told himself to relax and enjoy, which Jane would want him to do anyway. He poured a small glass of wine and drank it before leaving, feeling better and thinking he’d remember every detail of the evening so he could tell Jane all about it.

  As Perry approached Ned Gurney’s beautiful Spanish-style house in the Hollywood Hills, he thought it was a shame that it pressed so close to another one. But as he entered the interior courtyard he realized that what he thought was a second house was in fact a wing of the main house. He wondered if such grandeur meant the place qualified to be officially called a villa. He sure as hell wasn’t going to show his hick ignorance by asking Ned, but he looked forward to discussing it with Jane. He also wondered if she would agree with his theory that Ned didn’t have a swimming pool because it would seem too Hollywood, and that the elegant interior courtyard was more Eastern, even more intellectual than a pool would have been.

  Ned’s girlfriend matched the house.

  She wasn’t Spanish, but she was elegant and intellectual and, as opposed to the Hollywood type of woman, she was very Eastern. In fact, she was Far Eastern. From Thailand. Kim was small, with delicate features, and certainly young, early thirties, yet she had such assurance, such presence, she gave an impression of stature. Perry feared at first she might be aloof and formal, but in moments she had him laughing with her, relaxed.

  She not only conveyed an enthusiasm but an understanding of his script; she was in the same business herself, a film editor. It was hard to imagine a more appropriate mate for Ned Gurney—surely not the former wife, whoever she was, who common gossip said he split up with back in New York.

  Archer Mellis made a brief appearance, just for a glass of wine, with a girlfriend; she looked like the one he’d taken to Spoleto with Perry and Jane, but instead was fresh out of Yale Law School and working as an attorney in one of the prestigious entertainment law firms out here.

  Kenton Spires came with his chatterbox wife, Alicia, who kept interrupting people to complain of the lack of culture in L.A., and how hideously she missed Bloomingdale’s. When Alton Saxby arrived Perry was immediately curious to see if the casting director had brought some young sexpot he had plucked from the ranks of aspiring actresses, but instead he came arm in arm with a distinguished-looking gentleman who was a successful set designer.

  Perry had assumed that since the party was to celebrate casting the leads of the show, Melinda Margulies and Hal Thaxter would be there, but Ned explained that he didn’t think it wise to socialize with actors when you were working in a show with them.

  “You mean they’re too—uh, emotional?” Perry asked.

  “They’re too human,” Ned said with a smile. “Worse still, they’re artists. They want to tell you how it should all be done. As a writer, you have to be specially on guard. They’ll have you rewriting every line.”

  “Oh, thanks!” Perry said, storing up this new bit of show biz lore and wanting automatically to share it with Jane.

  Evidently it was all right to socialize with actors and actresses when you weren’t working on a show with them, since one was there as a guest.

  Perry did a double take when he saw her, not only because she was a striking-looking woman, but she also seemed familiar. He might have seen her on commercials, or minor roles in TV movies. She had short blond hair that glistened like a helmet, and tan, well-muscled legs, like a dancer. Her name was Liz Caddigan, and Perry found himself sitting next to her on a step of the courtyard terrace.

  He declared to her, almost compulsively, that his wife was in Vermont, she’d be back tomorrow, and he missed her very much. He could feel himself blushing when he finished, and wondered if he sounded like a rube. Liz smiled and said she understood; the man she lived with was doing a play in New York, and she had to be in California for the filming of a TV miniseries.

  There was some kind of wonderful curry for dinner, served buffet-style, and a young man in a red vest poured a nice white wine for everyone. Perry and Liz had something in common—absent lovers—so they struck up a friendly conversation. They enjoyed each other’s company.

  Later on, Alton Saxby said he and his companion were going to catch a nightclub act of a singer who was a friend of theirs, and asked if anyone would like to join them. Liz said she had to be home early, and Perry offered to drop her off. She had mentioned she was staying in an actress friend’s furnished apartment in West Hollywood, not far from the Marmont.

  When Perry stopped in front of her apartment building, Liz invited him in for coffee.

  Why not?

  There was cognac, too, if he wanted. He hesitated, then said no, thanks, just the coffee, black would be fine. He already had enough wine in him, and besides, the idea of a drink gave the casual occasion a little more intimacy, or the possibility of it. He wanted to be able to tell Jane all about it, and “she invited me in for coffee” seemed more accurately innocent than “a drink.” He started to sit on the roomy couch, then realized Liz might sit there too, so he chose a chair across from it with a low coffee table in between. He knew he was being compulsively proper, laughably so, yet this was the first time in more than five years he had sat alone in a room with another woman than Jane, with the exception of Rachel Cohen or some student or faculty colleague.

  His ears felt hot, and he wondered if that meant Jane was listening, through some psychic transcontinental transmission. If she was, he had nothing to feel guilty about. Liz came in with the coffee and sat on the couch, and Perry told her how wonderful his wife was, while she in turn sang the praises of her own man back in New York. She slipped off her high-heeled sandals and tucked her long legs up on the couch, simply getting comfortable. She smoothed her short skirt down as far as it would go, yet Perry couldn’t help noticing what looked like a tendon in her muscular thigh. It seemed to be pulsing or throbbing, and for some reason fascinated him. He looked away, and spoke even more extravagantly of Jane.

  A window was open, and there was a scent of impen
ding rain. It seemed as if Perry’s sense of smell had sharpened, as if there were odors, aromas, everywhere, that windows and doors were perpetually open—that everything was open, like the land itself, the vast spaces, connected by freeways. Freeways. Ways of freedom. Perry shifted in his chair.

  “It must be hard,” he said. “I mean, having to spend so much time on opposite coasts, you and Jeffrey. It must mean a lot of trust.”

  “Mmmm,” Liz nodded. “Also, we don’t ask questions.”

  She uncurled one leg, raising the foot, staring at the toes.

  “That’s the only way it can work,” she explained, lowering her leg again, curling it back underneath her.

  “Of course,” Perry said.

  He set down his coffee cup, trying not to let it make a rattling noise on the saucer and only partially succeeding. He realized now he could walk a few steps to that couch and spend the rest of the night with this lovely, appealing woman. It was something he had never even imagined since the day he met Jane.

  Would it matter, if it happened? Would it “count” if a man and woman made love to each other on one side of the continent while the man and woman they really loved were clear across the map on the edge of that other ocean? Did the barrier of continental distance, the difference of miles and hours, serve as a shield against the shattering of vows? Could fidelity bend instead of break in an arc of such enormous separation? Maybe there were different natural laws in operation in such cases; like gravity being suspended in space, perhaps fidelity was suspended in the warp of bi-coastal separation.

  That was a comforting, a light-headed thought, but maybe it was only like an optical illusion, maybe there was something that caught up with you later, some phenomenon like “sex lag,” in which what you did seemed all right at the time but three hours later boomeranged back and wiped you out, leaving you drained, disoriented, unable to sleep, groggy and aching.

  Perry drank down the last of his coffee and stood up.

  Liz uncurled from the couch.