Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

  “Is Lon OK?” Perry asked.

  “He will be. Right now he’s taking it hard. He’d counted on this series going. Put the kids through college—that’s what everyone hopes for.”

  “Wow. It’s rough. He’s not sick, though? He just wants to lie down?”

  Ned sighed and rubbed hard at his forehead.

  “He said he just wants to ‘get close to the earth.’”

  Close to the earth. My God. Perry felt little prickles along his arms, as if an electrical current had passed. He imagined himself lying that way on the ground, brought low, feeling desperate. There was a grown man over there, an accomplished and talented man, driven to such a state. It might happen to anyone out here, anyone on this roller coaster of a business. It might happen to Perry himself. He tried to shake off the thought.

  “Oh well,” he said, “listen, Ned. About that story. I kind of forgot about it. I mean, you didn’t mention it again. And since we didn’t have anything in writing, well, when Vaughan Vardeman got interested, and he gave it to Harrison Ford, well, I just thought—it would be OK.”

  “I see,” Ned said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Perry.

  “I wish you’d have let me know. I thought we had a deal.”

  “Well, hell, we’ll do something else. Really. I really want to.”

  “Sure,” Ned said. “If you’ll excuse me?”

  He went to talk to some of the other guests.

  Perry felt rotten. He downed his wine and then got some more. He noticed Lon Ridings had taken off his shirt. He was now removing his trousers. A few people glanced over at him but no one said anything. He was wearing jockey shorts. Perry went over to him.

  “Can I get you a drink or anything?” he asked.

  “All I want,” Lon said, “is to get close to the earth.”

  He lay down, flat, on the ground, digging his fingers in the dirt.

  Perry turned away. There were tears in his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling sad for Lon or for himself. He wanted to get out of there. He didn’t want to feel this way. He wanted to feel strong and hard and upbeat, like a real hyphenate should, a successful writer-producer. He put down his glass and fled, without even saying good-bye or thanking anyone.

  It was a new day, a new beginning. Perry was rested, fresh, eager to get to work.

  “Come in, come in!” Archer Mellis called with a welcoming wave. “I want you to meet your new producer!”

  Perry threw back his shoulders and smiled, looking around the office to see who it was Archer wished him to greet. When he walked in he hadn’t noticed anyone, but now he saw, hunched in a corner, a large form, a massive hulking shape that stirred, moved, stood, and came slowly toward him.

  It was a man. A large, bulky, hirsute man with wiry, tangled, gray-black hair that cascaded over his ears and grew wildly below his nose and around his mouth, bristling down his chin in the form of a great Brillolike beard.

  Archer stepped out from behind his desk and clapped an arm on the hairy man’s broad back, seeming to help guide and propel the creature’s slow, tanklike progress across the room.

  “I want you to meet your producer!” Archer said in a tone of jubilation, reaching for Perry’s arm that was already moving outward and bringing it forward like a referee uniting two contending fighters before a match. Perry took the man’s hamlike hand, bracing for some bone-crushing squeeze, yet he felt only a slight, bloblike tremor.

  “Perry Moss, this is Donn Gunn!” Archer announced, as if to a cheering crowd.

  “Glad to meet you!” said Perry, trying to match Archer’s enthusiastic demeanor.

  The blank gray eyes of the man called Gunn seemed to roll away from Perry’s gaze, and he made a sound without moving his lips, a kind of half gurgle, half grunt.

  Perry wondered who the hell the guy was, and what in the world he was going to do on the show. Maybe he was some kind of stuntman. He could have passed for a walking special effect all in himself. Well, whatever, Archer seemed to want to impress the guy, and Perry wanted to live up to his new role as producer with full flair.

  “Welcome aboard!” he said, and the man made his grunt again, then turned and went back to arrange himself in the corner.

  “Donn here is practically a legend in the Industry,” Archer said. “Been with some of the best shows of their kind—from ‘Badge 465’ to ‘Krako, Special Investigator.’”

  My God, maybe he was the cop! The actor who the network wanted to play the role of Jack’s cop father! But surely not. Surely they could get at least a charming cop, an Irish cop with a lilting brogue instead of a Neanderthal with a grunt! Jesus, with this guy playing the part they’d even have the policemen’s unions down on them, protesting the portrayal of decent men in blue!

  He must be some sort of stuntman after all. Or maybe he was an ex-con who served as a technical advisor for TV cop shows in marten relating to theft, extortion, murder, and general mayhem.

  “Well, I’m delighted to have someone of your experience,” Perry said cautiously.

  “Beautiful!” Archer exclaimed. “That’s exactly the attitude I expected you to bring to this.”

  Like a proud teacher showing off his best student Archer turned to Gunn and said, “Didn’t I tell you what Perry’s reaction would be? He’s a team player, all the way.”

  Gunn shrugged and belched.

  “Long’s he knows who’s the boss,” he mumbled.

  Boss?

  “Excuse me,” Perry said with a forced smile, “but I’m afraid—not being a veteran in the business—I really don’t know what it is, exactly, you do.”

  “I do it all,” grumbled Gunn. “That’s the only way it gets done.”

  “Perry, you must have been daydreaming,” Archer said with a nervous laugh. “When you walked in the room, I said I wanted to introduce the producer.”

  “I heard you,” Perry said impatiently.

  “Well—if I have to repeat myself—he’s your producer.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought you meant he had to meet me. I’m the producer. I just signed papers that said so.”

  “Of course you are!” Archer assured him.

  Perry stood up, felt his head beginning to ache, the room starting to tilt.

  “If I’m the producer, how can he be the producer?”

  Archer came and clapped a hand on Perry’s shoulder.

  “Amigo, he’s the executive producer.”

  Gunn hefted himself to his feet, and said, looking past Perry, “Like the man said, I’m the boss.” Then he lumbered out of the room.

  “You’re kidding,” said Perry.

  “You’re going to learn things from Donn that it would otherwise take you years to learn,” Archer said. “He’s the best. We were lucky to get him.”

  “I thought this was my show.”

  “Of course it is. You want it to succeed, don’t you? Donn Gunn’s the man to make it happen.”

  “Holy God.”

  “You’re a writer-producer. You’ll learn from him. He can carry the burden. You can make it sing.”

  Perry opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  Sing, hell. He couldn’t even speak.

  Perry was going to hang tough. He was not going to let Archer Mellis, or Max Bloorman, or even that incredible hulk who was now his immediate boss, Donn Gunn, keep him from the sole purpose of making his show a hit. That was his only concern.

  “Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole,” he recalled from the wisdom of his childhood. Right.

  For the role of the cop who was Jack’s father they cast a terrific, magnetic actor named Shaun Farragan, the charming type with the Irish brogue who Perry himself had hoped for in that awful moment when he imagined Donn Gunn was going to play the part.

  Shaun Farragan was perfect as Dan, the likable cop father proud of his teacher-son, Jack, and his daughter-in-law, Laurie, and pleased as punch to be able to move right in with them.

  Shaun, in fact, was s
o good that when the network tested the audience reaction of the first episode he played in at Preview House, Lou Simmell called up to report enthusiastically that he tested higher than any other actor on the show!

  “We want him in every scene,” she happily told Perry.

  “In every scene? That doesn’t make sense!”

  “It does if we want good numbers,” she said.

  “I mean, in terms of the story. It won’t be about a young married couple any more. It will be a show about a cop. Is that what you want—another cop show?”

  “We want a show we can keep on the air,” Lou Simmell said.

  So “The First Year’s the Hardest” became a cop show.

  All right, goddam it, it would be the best cop show that TV ever saw, the best one, anyway, that Perry Moss could make it.

  He wrote the first script that was built around Dan himself. He even wrote a car chase. Hal Hagedorn, who had done this kind of thing many times before, helped show him how to do it. He gave it proudly to Donn Gunn, who probably didn’t believe he could do it. He not only did it, he gave him the best cop show that was in him.

  “This scene where he catches the kid who robbed the laundry?” Gunn said.

  “Yes?”

  It was one Perry was specially proud of—tough but poignant.

  “This sucks,” said Gunn.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Any good cop would kick this kid’s ass about now.”

  “This cop is our hero—he’s a decent cop.”

  “He’s a bleeding heart if he doesn’t cuff this hood around a little here.”

  “You don’t know your ass from your elbow.”

  “I know I’m the boss ground here. You know what you are?”

  “Yes, I know exactly. I’m the writer-producer on this show, and I’m also the creator.”

  Gunn belched.

  “That’s a lot of horse hockey. What you are is, you’re a serf. You work for me. You do whatever I say, whether you like it or not. I say write tough, you write tough. I say the cop kicks ass, you write he kicks ass.”

  Perry went straight to Archer Mellis.

  “I’m afraid Donn Gunn is the boss,” Archer said.

  “I am not going to write stupid violence, especially when it makes our hero look like a jerk.”

  “I was hoping you could learn from Donn Gunn.”

  “He’s a slimy sonofabitch. He’s the dregs.”

  “He’s your executive producer. That’s the bottom line.”

  “Fuck you, Mellis. That’s the bottom line.”

  “I think you’ll be happier in the classroom, when all’s said and done.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not running back to Vermont. I’m leaving this lousy show, and this lousy studio, and now I’m free to do some quality kind of stuff out here—the kind of stuff you promised instead of this junk!”

  Archer stifled a yawn.

  “Lots of luck, amigo.”

  XII

  The Christmas trees on Hollywood Boulevard were blond. Kind of a peroxide color.

  Perry smiled, shaking his head in wonder and appreciation. The amazing thing about this crazy, fabulous place was that you couldn’t honestly satirize it, even in your imagination, because before you did, it always beat you to the punch, coming up with something so flagrant that it parodied itself far more effectively than any outsider could manage to do.

  Peroxide blond Christmas trees!

  He loved it.

  He still loved Hollywood, even after the ugly battle with Donn Gunn, the pain of leaving the show, his feeling of being betrayed by Archer Mells, and, even worse, his own betrayal of Ned Gurney.

  All that was over now, past, done, finito. Not only that, but better still, in the incredible time trick of Southern California, the superacceleration of everything, yesterday was already prehistoric. An hour ago was dust. The present was already passing, before your startled eyes; only the future seemed real, glittering just ahead, promising and vast as the great Pacific.

  The future was the deal with Vaughan Vardeman to make “The Springtime Women” a feature film, a modern classic. Harrison Ford in his first heavy dramatic role, maybe Meryl Streep and Teri Garr as the women. Of course the women in the story were older, more drab, but this was a film translation, a romantic dramatization. Not only the gold of the box office but also the gold of Oscar statuettes glinted off the project in Perry’s imagination. As soon as the holidays were over Vaughan planned to try to get the whole thing launched; in fact, one of the top executives of Unified Films, where Vaughan had done his last movie and wanted to pitch this one, would be at the Vardemans’ annual wassail buffet on Christmas Eve and Perry would meet him. The seed would be planted. This was how the real magic was worked. Informally. Casually. Among colleagues and friends.

  Deck the peroxide Christmas trees!

  Perry thought it might be a gas to get one of these evergreens dyed blond for his living room, but he feared Jane wouldn’t appreciate the joke. No, he was playing this safe, traditional. He found a lot on Melrose Avenue with fir trees as green as Vermont, and bought the old-fashioned kind of colored lights and ornaments at Bullocks Department Store. He wasn’t even taking a chance on getting any glitzy, expensive decorations in Beverly Hills, he was sticking with down-home values.

  Gifts, though, that was something different. He really wanted to lay it on. For the first time in his life, he had the money (the power!) to give his beloved wife the finest, the best, without stint, to shower her with everything he saw that he thought would please her.

  And oh, he wanted to please her, surprise her, make her smile and glow, atone for all the hurt he had unintentionally caused her by steering this new course in his career that even temporarily set them apart, put them against each other. One of the positive side effects of the break with Gunn and Archer was that it allowed him again not only to think about other aspects of life but even to experience emotions about matters other than the show. As he’d poured himself heart and soul into the series, spent every mental and emotional asset he had on it, he had simply put his other feelings on hold, especially the ones concerning Jane.

  The only flaw in this practical if cold-blooded solution had been that Jane kept intruding into his consciousness. The most disconcerting part was the whole business of hearing her voice—that is, imagining he was hearing her voice—telling him what to do or not to do, what to think or not to think. The voice was so clear, so immediate, Perry had to take a moment or so to reorient himself whenever he heard it—dammit, when he had the illusion of hearing it. And after those occasions there was a kind of lingering sense of her, like a trail of perfume, an ineffable presence. He had to fight it off, close his mind against it as best he could, simply because the aura of Jane was too distracting, it got in the way of what he had to do here to achieve his goals.

  Then almost the moment Perry freed himself from what had become—as Gunn himself called it—his serfdom, the feelings about Jane he had struggled to hold at bay came flooding back, with all the force of a dam breaking. In a way, the timing was perfect, coming as it did just before Christmas. He’ still didn’t want to go back to Vermont, afraid it would break the spell he was in, the concentrated effort to succeed in this new scene.

  Shopping for Christmas presents for her was a fabulous high, a joy, a tangible way of expressing in action the powerful love he felt for his wonderful wife, the woman who, he now remembered with electrifying force, was the one he had felt from the first was his preordained, predestined mate for life.

  He was clever enough to restrain himself, of course, respecting her taste for simplicity, her natural aversion to the very sort of treasures that spilled so seductively over the velvet displays of the exclusive shops and stores of Beverly Hills. He wished he could buy her something gold, something lavish, but knew it would only turn her off, so in the field of jewelry, he held his flagrant instincts in check and purchased for her only a simple
string of pearls, whose elegance was in their very purity, the unadorned naturalness of their beauty, as opposed to any sheen or shine of flash and glitter.

  He tried to keep that principle in mind in all his selections of other-type gifts as well—the softly beautiful but practical quilted bathrobe, the elegant but plain white silk blouse, the long, chocolate-brown, Italian-made leather coat, the stunning but simple three-piece fawn suede suit, the sporty Swiss watch designed for outdoor use, the powerful German binoculars she could use to intensify her viewing and appreciation of nature on her hikes and camping trips, the good telescope of a kind she had always wanted for studying the stars.

  He spent a little something more than $7,000 on Jane’s presents, signing the slips with the power of the new Gold American Express card his accountant had secured for his greater convenience. It would simply come out of his money-market funds and soon be replenished with the flow of new fortune that would soon be flooding in from the sale of the “Springtime Women” project as soon as the holidays were over.

  The presents, gift-wrapped by the stores in glorious colors set off by bright silken ribbons and glorious bows, further spangled with bells and stare and decorative toy figures of reindeer and elves and angels tied on for extra, dramatic effect, were artistically stacked cornucopia-style beneath the tree, looking like some ultimate symbol of lushness, largesse, the plunder of love.

  Staring down at them, Jane looked out of place in the picture that Perry was about to flash with the new fully automatic camera he had given himself for Christmas. Holding her small armful of home-wrapped presents, bending down and placing them tentatively against the glistening flood of the others, she seemed like some Parisian match girl brought into a wealthy home to share Christmas.

  She looked good, but a little gaunt, though maybe it was just her new hairstyle that produced that effect. It was hard to get used to—the shorter trim, cut straight at the chin line, parted in the middle, and combed straight down on the sides. It looked nice, damned attractive even, but it didn’t look like Jane. It didn’t look like the woman he had fallen in love with on the spot almost six years before, the woman who became his wife, mate, best friend, and lover, all rolled into one. He was disappointed with the subtle but significant transformation, and felt in some vague way he’d been duped, yet he tried to concentrate on the main, the real point of wanting her to come here: renewal of love, reconciliation of differences.