Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

  She not only smiled, she glowed, with the pride of a loving and dedicated mother.

  Archer stood up.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He shook her hand and Ned and Perry followed suit, smiling and nodding as they filed out of her office. Just at the door Amanda called out “Gentlemen!” They whipped around to see her give them a big conspiratorial wink.

  “Watch the trades tomorrow,” she said.

  Not only the trades had the story, it was the lead piece in the Entertainment section of the L.A. Times. It was the highly regarded annual report of Dexter, Schuman, Glass and McGillicuddy, evaluating the networks’ new shows of the upcoming season, and predicting those that might be real winners in the race for the ratings.

  “The First Year’s the Hardest” was singled out as “fresh and appealing, the most original young domestic drama to come down the pike in many a moon.” The prognosticators especially praised the “crackling dialogue” of prize-winning story writer Perry Moss, the “sensitive, nuance-rich pastoral direction of former Off-Broadway firecracker Kenton Spires,” and credited the “mid-eighties aura” as well as the general high quality and production values of the show to executive producer Ned Gurney, another prestigious transplant from the East.

  “This should be the first big feather in the otherwise bare bonnet of young Archer Mellis, whose blasts at the Industry earned him the top job at Paragon TV. If he can keep together the talented trio that produced the summer’s smash-hit pilot, he might well have a long-running ratings-buster. It’s already rumored that network executives, pleased with the early series material, may up their order from the safe three shows to something more substantial.”

  Perry read the story to Jane as she drove him to work that morning, his voice sounding as profound and deep as a foghorn. When he finished, folding the paper on his lap and looking over at her, she said, without even smiling or looking over at him, “Oh shit.”

  “Hey! What is it with you? Can’t you stand to hear your own husband’s show may be a big hit? Is that so awful?”

  “They’ll want you to stay,” she said.

  “Don’t be paranoid. They know I have to go back in September. It’s all understood.”

  “If the show’s success depends on keeping the ‘talented trio’ together? You think Archer’s going to lose the ‘writer of crackling dialogue’? When his bonnet depends on it?”

  “Love, you really are paranoid. I’m going to touch up the scripts from home. I’ll still be officially Story Consultant, a part of the team. Hal Hagedorn will probably take over as story editor, and do the real day-to-day work out here. All the network cares about is that I’ll still be officially connected to the show. ‘Put my stamp on it,’ as Archer said.”

  “That was before this article.”

  “This article doesn’t change any of that. My arrangement is all arranged.”

  There was no time for the highly praised triumvirate to dawdle over their rave from the prognosticators, since the real news that Archer revealed when they arrived that morning meant that their efforts had to be accelerated at once.

  As the advertising seers had so uncannily predicted (and by the very act of that prediction helped insure that it would come true), the network already—this morning!—had commissioned another three episodes of “The First Year’s the Hardest,” thus doubling the original series order to a total of six hour shows following the pilot!

  This meant the already frantic pace and elaborate planning of the production campaign for the new show now had to be doubled, and, like World War II fighter pilots scrambling to get airborne, the three leaders rushed out of Archer’s office to get the logistics under way. But one of them was called back for a private high-level word with the commander.

  “Perry!”

  The writer turned, automatically straightening to attention.

  “Sir?”

  His young boss smiled, came forward, and gave him a comradely clap on the shoulder.

  “Since when did you start calling me ‘sir’?” he asked.

  Perry chuckled nervously.

  “I guess it just slipped out,” he said.

  “I know I’ve got to give orders sometimes, but remember, amigo—we’re in this together.”

  Archer was now hugging the writer so close to him, as he walked him slowly around the room, that Perry was dizzied by his after-shave cologne.

  “Let’s you and I slip away for a little lunch today,” Archer said. “Just the two of us.”

  “You mean—off the lot?” Perry asked, both flattered and confused. On this of all days there was little time for such Eastern-style decadence. Perry had counted on wolfing down a container of yogurt while in conference with Ned and the writers, if in fact there was even time to swallow while working out a strategy for a whole new set of story lines. So much had to be accomplished in so little time, not only with the new order for shows but with Perry only having another week or so before retreating back to his consultancy position in the East.

  “Sometimes we need to get away for a little perspective,” Archer said, giving him a squeeze and then releasing him. “Could you drop by at a few minutes after twelve?”

  “Yes, sir,” Perry caught himself, then laughed nervously, blushing at the same time. “I mean—muy bien, amigo. And—muchas gracias.”

  Archer winked.

  “Mon plaisir,” he said.

  The Bach Violin Partitas, as interpreted by Zino Francescatti, rang searingly, plaintively, through the quadraphonic sound system of Archer’s car as he drove Perry to lunch, moving at a steady, almost leisurely pace along Sunset Boulevard. To speak would not only have been acoustically difficult, but would also have seemed, against that music, uncouth, almost irreverent. The contrast between the soul-stirring music inside the car, and the zany, superhype billboards and marquees of the bars and rock clubs and restaurants, motels and movie houses, rent-a-car lots and T-shirt boutiques, the whole glitzy agglomeration of the famous thoroughfare, which seemed even more hallucinatory in the smoggy glare of midday, gave Perry the disorienting illusion of traveling inside some kind of space capsule that preserved the essence of an ancient civilization while it slid through the fantastic surface of an alien star.

  They did not pull into the parking lots of any of the restaurants along Sunset, nor did they sweep on around the curve into Beverly Hills and the hip, show biz oasis of the Polo Lounge of the famous pink hotel, but rather, Archer guided them up into the hills, on winding streets, climbing to a pinnacle topped by a quaint-looking Japanese restaurant.

  Through the glass walls, the view was fabulous, even though hazed by the smog. In fact, that element perhaps even served to glamorize the prospect, adding as it did a filmic glow of unreality, like looking at the world through a brown filter that perhaps was after all a glimpse of how all life would look in the future. This was the future. It lay before them, fascinating in its variety, a dizzying display of sparkling glass towers and raw, scrubby hills streaked with ribbons of roads, alive with metallic movement.

  “Well, there it is, amigo,” Archer said, raising the tall, cool glass containing the drink he had recommended for them both, the Sayonara Sunset. Perry took a sip and nodded, momentarily choking on the emotional lump in his throat as well as the tangy concoction of citrus, saki, and Triple Sec. Hoarsely, he whispered, in affirmation:

  “Hollywood.”

  “Magic,” said Archer.

  Perry felt a shiver, a thrill.

  “It’s impossible to explain,” he said. “Isn’t it? To outsiders.”

  “Exactly. Either you get it, or you don’t. The funny thing is, I had a feeling all along that you would. Most writers—especially distinguished literary artists, like yourself—are afraid of it, so they simply take on the easy, condescending pose.”

  “Hell, I was too naive to be afraid. And then I guess I lucked out, getting on the air and all.”

  “And getting renewed, before the first show of the series even air
s? That’s more than luck. You’ve got the touch, the magic.”

  “You got it out of me. And put me with the right people. Ned. Kenton. It’s like we’ve been working together all our lives. A team.”

  “It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime things.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I know. I also know it’s a shame to break it up.”

  “But we’re not! I’ll probably be on the phone with Ned every day. We practically communicate in code now, anyway.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “Archer, you know I’d love to keep right on doing what I’m doing, right here, but I can’t.”

  “Perry, I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you to just keep on doing what you’re doing for the three new shows.”

  “Well, thanks. For not trying to tempt me.”

  “It would be an insult.”

  “Not at all. But I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Of course not. Postpone your obligations back East, just to continue as story consultant?”

  Perry, relaxing, took a larger sip of his drink.

  “You deserve a more important role in the show now,” Archer said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I am offering you the position of executive story consultant, starting with production of the three new shows just ordered.”

  “I’m honored,” said Perry, “but I can’t.”

  He took a large gulp of his drink, then asked, “But what would it mean, exactly?”

  Archer shrugged.

  “More money. Another five hundred a week.”

  “I’d be making three thousand a week, then,” Perry said.

  “I know it’s not much of a difference. The important thing is, once you’ve held an executive position on a series, you’d always be involved at that level, on any show you worked on in the future.”

  “The future?”

  “It could be whatever you wanted to make it. Once you’ve held an executive position, in your own series, and seen it through, you would write your own ticket on anything you wanted to develop next. You could take a break, go back to teaching, then come out and get a new show launched.”

  “Archer, if I don’t go back for this fall semester, I could lose my tenure.”

  “Your academic tenure.”

  “What other kind is there?”

  “Well, in the sense that ‘tenure’ means security, I’d say that having a prime-time series on the air, with royalties coming in from every show, not to speak of reruns, is about as nice a ‘tenure’ as a man could want.”

  Perry finished off his drink. Archer ordered another round, plus the luncheon special sushi platter.

  “Don’t give me an answer right now,” Archer said. “Play with the whole idea. See how it feels.”

  “I’d have to discuss it with Jane, of course.”

  “Of course. And remember—it’s not a matter of you or her choosing this life and work out here and giving up the life you had before. The beauty of all this is, you can have both. You can be bi-coastal.”

  Perry, feeling giddy now, began to giggle.

  “We could have our sushi and eat it, too. Or our Boston scrod.”

  Archer smiled, sweeping his hand toward the vista that lay below them.

  “You can have it all,” he said.

  Perry brought home a dozen red roses for Jane that night. He wanted to take her out to dinner, maybe even up to the Japanese place with the fabulous view—it would surely be dramatic in the evening, a fairy-tale vista, fired by the million lights clustered in the flatland and flung through the hills. But Jane had already prepared a special favorite. The basil she had planted in her tiny, improbable garden had grown, and she had made her wonderful pesto with it to serve with linguine, along with a crisp green salad, fresh bread, and one of Perry’s specially selected fine California wines. She had even lit candles, as she used to do at home, not for any special occasion, but just to make things intimate and nice. She was cheery as she hadn’t been in some time, thinking now about preparations for going back home. She was in such a loving, accommodating mood, she even agreed to go sit in the hot tub with Perry after dinner and sip some more wine—not just on her lawn chair outside the tub, but right in it, sharing the experience with him as he liked her to do.

  There was a Santa Ana wind, the dry, mysterious wind off the desert that supposedly spooks some people, causing migraines and melancholy, but Perry and Jane had both found the phenomenon to be enjoyable, romantic. Stray leaves and tiny sticks blew around the yard, and the air was cleansed of smog, made sharp and penetrating. You could even see some stars.

  Jane said she’d like to have a little party before going back, just Ned and Kim and Kenton and his wife maybe, a closing out, a rounding out of the time together, a gracious end to the era.

  That was when he told her about Archer’s new offer.

  She listened in silence, sipping from her wine, her expression unchanging. He told her all the implications, what it would mean to be an executive, as well as the extra money, and his obligation to see the show through to success. He explained how it didn’t mean giving up the East for good; it meant they could go back for the spring semester, and then come back to L.A. the following summer perhaps. It would mean they could be bi-coastal, have the best of both worlds.

  Still, she remained silent.

  “Don’t give me an answer right now,” he said. “Play with the whole idea. See how it feels.”

  She didn’t say anything, but slowly pulled herself up out of the tub and toweled off. Then she went inside.

  Perry sat out a while longer, wondering if this was going to be a terrible scene. Finally he decided he’d better face it, whatever it was.

  When he went in the bedroom, Jane was lying on the bed, nude, staring at the ceiling. He sat down beside her and put his arms around her.

  “I love you,” he said.

  He feared she might turn away but she kissed him, fiercely, then holding his face in her hands she stared at him, intently, as if she were seeing him for the first time, or had discovered he was a stranger or some kind of schizophrenic maniac, but before he could protest or question her, she was kissing him again, pulling him to her, and wildly, ferociously, she made love to him, leading, pulling, encompassing, enveloping, smothering, leaving him drained and dazed. He dropped, blank and mindless, to a deep maw of sleep.

  Perry woke a little after dawn, revitalized and ready to roll into action. Jane was obviously zonked, curled into the fetal position, and he didn’t want to wake her. He was full of ideas and energy, and wanted to go in early to the office and dash off some memos for the new story lines to discuss with Hal and the other writers. He had to stifle a pleased chuckle at the little idea that was developing now in his teeming brain—Jack secretly goes to cooking school, and he and Laurie fight over who gets to make the meal for a party! Anyway, the important thing was to get as much work in as possible since he would have to spend a lot of time today on getting his other plans in order, now that he knew Jane was amenable to staying on for the next leg of the journey. He left her a love note, suggesting they go out to dinner that night, at the dramatic restaurant on the hill, to celebrate.

  California, here I come,

  You’re so tasty, yum-yum-yum

  He sang as he drove to work, beating his palm on the steering wheel in time to the music.

  Perry picked up a chilled bottle of Schwamsberg champagne on the way home from the studio, and was already undoing the foil as he swung in the door, calling to Jane on the way to the kitchen.

  “Come and get it!” he crooned happily as he popped the cork, pouring the bubbly elixir into two of the tulip-shaped glasses, but there was no answer. He took a tantalizing taste from his own glass, and called again. Still getting no reply, holding the bottle by the neck, he went outside, wondering if Jane was working in the garden, but there wasn’t any sign of her. He went back in the house, swinging the bottle along at his side, wondering if
maybe she had taken a walk or gone to the market or resumed the photography of Santa Monica Boulevard she had once given up as too depressing. She wasn’t in the study, or the bathroom, and finally, he found her, in the bedroom.

  She was packing.

  “Hey!” he said. “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t even look up, much less answer.

  “I asked you what you’re doing.”

  She continued neatly taking her clothes out of drawers, folding them, and placing them in her big suitcase, which was lying, open on the bed, already half filled.

  “Jane?”

  She acted as if he wasn’t in the room, or maybe didn’t exist at all.

  “Jane, I’m talking to you,” he said patiently.

  He had never seen her like this before. She seemed perfectly calm and composed, her movements were sure and steady, yet she continued to ignore his questions as well as his presence. It was as if she were in a trance. For a moment he wondered if she was under the influence of some kind of drug.

  “Please, love,” he said gently. “Won’t you answer me? Won’t you tell me what you’re doing?”

  She didn’t look at him, she continued her activity, but at least she made a response, she uttered a word.

  “Packing,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  He was still holding the bottle of champagne in his right hand. He looked down at it, as if he wondered how it had got there. A few wisps of the frosty potion were still curling out of the mouth of the bottle, like smoke from a gun. He set the bottle down on the dresser, and leaned against the wall, trying to brace himself. His heart was pounding wildly, but he tried to speak calmly, without letting his voice go quivery.

  “Are you leaving me?” he asked.

  “I’m leaving here.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re the one who’s left. I want to go back to where we were.”