by Joe Keenan
“I said excuse me. You’re in my seat.”
She affected not to hear this and a passing flight attendant asked what the problem was.
“This woman’s in my seat and she won’t move.”
Aging Hollywood Actress looked up and removed her sunglasses, blinking strenuously in an unpersuasive show of surprise.
“I’m sorry, were you addressing me? I get so engrossed when I’m working!”
“I’m sorry,” said the attendant after verifying the man’s claim, “but this isn’t your seat. May I see your boarding pass?”
“There’s no point in my showing it to you. It’s a mistake. It says I’m supposed to be at the back of the plane.”
“Did you purchase a first-class ticket?”
“I didn’t purchase it. The producer of the play I was doing— fabulous production, raves everywhere — bought it for me. I’d made it quite clear to him after my horrible flight east that I wanted first class going back. He said he’d see to it, but then the lady at the counter — dreadful woman, I’m fling a complaint—claimed to know nothing about it and stuck me in the back. Can you imagine!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to return to your original seat.”
“Sorry. Quite impossible. I was recognized by the man next to me. He began asking one question after another so I had to get as far away as possible!” She laughed ruefully. “The price of fame!”
“I see,” said the attendant, who clearly hadn’t an inkling who she was. “Look, I’m sorry for the mix-up —”
“Ah!” said the actress triumphantly. “So you admit there was a mix-up?”
The attendant said she’d instruct her cabin-class neighbor to respect her privacy but she had to return to her seat immediately as she was holding up the flight.
The actress gasped dramatically. “Holding up the flight!” She turned and addressed the whole cabin, hoping to rally support. “ ‘Holding up the flight,’ she says! As though I’m some sort of terrorist! Me!! ” She gestured to her seatmate, a young Donna Karan–clad woman who’d been staring wretchedly out her window through the whole contretemps. “Perhaps this young lady — or someone, ” she added, pointedly eyeing the rest of us gawkers, “would be kind enough to change seats with me. I’d be immensely grateful.”
This request inspired a sudden cabinwide fascination with the in-flight magazine. The actress cast her eyes at the unchivalrous souls around her, shook her head in disgust, and addressed the attendant.
“Send more champagne back to me. It’s the least I am owed.” And with that she rose and, donning her shades, indignantly withdrew.
There are few things so wounding to a young homosexual’s self-esteem as finding himself unable to identify a bejeweled Hollywood actress over seventy, however obscure. Claire too found her vaguely familiar and we bandied names for a moment before turning to the more pressing question of what films we should watch on our personal DVD players.
My savvier readers are no doubt stroking their chins and thinking, “This mystery woman—she’ll be back.” And of course she will or I’d have left her out entirely. But our bizarre entanglement with Lily Malenfant (for that was her name) was still, like so much else that lay before us, happily beyond our power to imagine. I didn’t think about her again for the rest of the flight. I was too busy savoring the wine, the warm mixed nuts, and my frequent and pleasant chats with our handsome steward, who somehow managed to coax from me the news that I was bound for Hollywood and cinematic glory.
GILBERT, TRUE TO FORM, arrived at the terminal ten minutes after we’d retrieved our bags. I didn’t recognize him at first. His tan was very deep and his chin now sported a Hollywood hipster goatee. He wore a tight, navy short-sleeve shirt and de rigueur Hollywood sunglasses, a choice I took, incorrectly, to be satiric.
“Darlings!” he cried, embracing us both in a single hug. “Welcome to my town!”
“You’ve been here three weeks,” said Claire.
“Work fast, don’t I? Oh, Dimitri!”
A short, stocky man wearing a dark suit and an unfortunate ponytail materialized at our side wheeling a luggage cart.
“Dimitri, these are my dear friends and writing partners, Philip and Claire. Dimitri works for Max.”
The chauffeur nodded deferentially and, displaying surprising strength for a wee fatty, hoisted our bags onto the cart. He murmured an order into a scarcely visible headset, then wheeled the cart outside, reaching the curb just as a limousine long enough to bowl in pulled up. An assortment of onlookers stared at it, eager to see what celebrity it had come to fetch or disgorge. Gilbert, never one to waste an opportunity for drama, made us hang back in the terminal till Dimitri had opened the rear door for us. Then, shielding his face, he dashed from the terminal and into the car with a fleetness meant to suggest years of paparazzi dodging. Claire and I, relegated to the role of entourage rolled our eyes and sauntered behind, passing the rubberneckers just in time to hear a teenage girl say, “No way! Brad Pitt’s much cuter — and he’s not gay. ”
We settled into the car’s luxurious interior, noting the bar, flat-screen TV, and buttery soft black leather.
“Isn’t this fun?!” laughed Gilbert, bouncing in his seat like a toddler.
“Oodles,” deadpanned Claire. “So, what’s the job?”
Gilbert put a warning finger to his lips and jerked his head back to where Dimitri stood loading our luggage into the trunk.
“We can’t talk in the car,” he said. “Dimitri has big ears and he’s very loyal to Max. We can’t risk him ratting us out.”
“What don’t you want Max to know?” I asked.
He smiled impishly. “Let’s just say it wasn’t easy getting you two in on this. I had to fudge a few things.”
“We’ll contain our astonishment,” said Claire.
“Chateau Marmont!” exclaimed Gilbert once Dimitri had taken the wheel.
“And lay on the speed. My guests need to change for dinner.”
It was maddening that the one topic we burned to discuss was off-limits, but the luxury had a certain lulling effect and we contented ourselves to sit back and watch the palm trees glide by while listening to Gilbert rhapsodize about the joys of LA. Knowing that Dimitri was listening, he reserved his highest praise for the man who was subsidizing his stay and who might, if properly buttered, refresh the linens indefinitely.
“You’re going to adore Max. He’s an absolute prince. Charming, generous—and talk about smart!”
This last at least I had no trouble believing. I knew from what little I’d read of Max Mandelbaum that he was, if not quite the town’s richest mogul, widely considered its shrewdest. He’d managed to turn a small record company into a media behemoth, comprising TV and radio stations, magazines, theme parks, and, most famously, Hollywood’s second-oldest studio, Pinnacle. His zest for acquisition had caused him to be so often caricatured as an octopus that people’s first response on meeting him was to marvel at how well his tailor had concealed the extra arms.
When we reached the hotel, Dimitri saw to our luggage while Claire and I followed Gilbert into a small elevator that brought us up to the reception desk. The clerk apologetically informed us that our rooms were not ready, as the previous occupants had been a rock band and untidy even by the standards of their profession. Gilbert ordered champagne, then asked the bellman to have Dimitri wait while he discussed key creative matters with his colleagues. He then led us across the lobby to a cozy corner far from prying ears.
Like most people who only knew the Chateau Marmont as the place where John Belushi’s demons yelled, “Checkmate!” I half expected to see a chalk outline on the carpet. What I saw instead was a large, lovely time warp of a room, decorated in the grand Hollywood Spanish style of the twenties. It had a high-beamed ceiling and soaring arched windows giving onto a lovely vaulted portico and garden. So completely did it evoke the silent era’s languid glamour that it would not have surprised me to turn and spot a young Gloria Swans
on sipping bootleg hooch from Joe Kennedy’s hip flask before retiring to walk her ocelot.
We settled onto a plump sofa next to an arched alcove hung with richly brocaded drapes. Gilbert plopped his feet on the coffee table and spread his arms like a genie taking a bow after delivering on a particularly tall order.
“Not too shabby, huh?”
“Not too,” I agreed.
“First-class travel, limos, legendary hotels! Stick with me, kids!”
“From what I gather,” said Claire, “we’re pretty well stuck. You’ve told people we’re writing partners?”
“And so we will be!” he said cheerfully. “I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am. I’ve often wondered what the result might be if you two pooled your talents with mine.”
I sensed that Claire did not consider “pooled” quite the mot juste and would probably have chosen the more straightforward “diluted,” but she just smiled dryly and asked how our happy union had come to pass.
“Well, it all started when—oh, good, just in time!”
A darkly handsome tray bearer was approaching with a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Gilbert beamed at the sight and I wasn’t sure if this was just his usual delight in champagne or if he felt that now would be an excellent time to start addling our brains.
“Cheers!” he said, raising his glass. “To the Oscar we’ll win for this!”
We offered our dubious toasts, then Gilbert said, “So! This restaurant we’re going to tonight’s the most exclusive in town, but thanks to good old Max —”
“The project?” Claire said firmly.
“Oh, right.”
His eyes swept the lobby as though to make sure Dimitri wasn’t skulking behind a potted palm. Then, satisfied that our privacy was sufficient, he leaned toward us with a conspiratorial smile and unfolded his improbable tale.
Three
TTRUTH TO TELL,” HE BEGAN, “I’VE been planning this ever since Mom let drop ever so casually that the old fart she’d met at a party and who’d sent her roses the next day was none other than Max Mandelbaum. I mean, talk about your lucky breaks! I think, Philip, that I may have said something to you at the time about how perfect it would be if they really clicked.”
I said that yes, he’d mentioned the blossoming romance frequently over the last months and had seldom failed, when requesting a loan, to cite it as proof of his future solvency.
“Well, I was right, wasn’t I? Anyway, I did my best to help things along, you know, encouraging her to go for it. She liked him well enough, but she found his weight a bit off-putting. I mean, her last husband was an absolute hunk, but Max—you could tear him down and build a stadium. But I kept pointing out what a romantic he was, which, thank God, he really was. Between the daily flower deliveries and the packages from Tiffany’s, the old blimp finally wore her down. I mean, Mom’s no gold digger but if you keep the bracelets coming, well, c’mon, she’s only human.
“Once they got engaged I played things pretty carefully, y’know, not wanting to seem too eager. I waited two whole months to come visit and even then I didn’t mention my work to Max or ask him to introduce me to his big-shot friends. No, I went completely through Mom. I encouraged her to throw dinner parties—she loves entertaining— and helped her draw up all these ‘fun’ guest lists. I knew if she threw enough A-list dinners with me there piling on the charm that lightning had to strike eventually. And it did!
“It was last week and there were just twelve of us at table. I’d fiddled with the place cards and snagged myself a seat next to Bobby Spellman. You know, the producer?”
“Lucky you,” Claire said sardonically, and I snorted in agreement.
“I can’t stand that asshole.”
“You might try to be a little nicer,” chided Gilbert. “He paid for your plane fare and hotel.”
“Bobby Spellman? ” said Claire, stunned.
“ That’s who we’re working for?”
“He’s the man! So you can see we’re not talking low budget here!”
Bobby Spellman, I should explain for those rarefied souls whose nights out are confined to opera and stimulating lectures, is Hollywood’s leading purveyor of those noisy, extravagantly budgeted action films that the press cannot seem to describe without recourse to the phrase “high-octane.” I’ve seen three of them and found each more unstomachable than the last. I’ve nothing against the genre, mind you, having passed many a happy hour watching attractive stars outrun fireballs. It’s just that Spellman’s films are, like the man himself, filled to bursting with snide machismo. His heroes are all cocksure bad boys whom we’re invited to admire not for their courage or heroism but for their unfailing flippancy under pressure. Their response to mortal danger is sarcasm and they’re never more snarky than when they’ve just been shot, which is always in the shoulder or thigh, no villain in these films ever possessing the good sense to aim for their hearts or, better still, mouths.
“Bobby Spellman? ” I repeated, aghast.
“Wants us to write a movie?”
“Isn’t it great?! Of course, this won’t be his usual sort of picture.”
“Let’s hope so!” said Claire.
“What sort is it?”
“I’m getting to that. So anyway, we’re at dinner and he starts talking about this book his aunt sent him. It was written back in the fifties and he put off reading it forever, but he finally did and was blown away by it. It’s called A Song for Greta and you’re going to love it.”
Claire asked if it was a comedy.
“In parts. And there’s room for lots more. But it’s got everything! Great plot, amazing characters, romance, intrigue. It’s a lost classic, which is why Bobby’s dying to make it —it’s his bid for respectability. He wants to show people he can do something besides make money and maim stuntmen.
“So anyway, I asked who was writing it and he said no one yet. And that’s when Mom, bless her, piped up about me — how talented I was, what wonderful scripts I wrote. And I knew then and there the job was mine!”
Claire and I exchanged a baffled glance. We couldn’t imagine anyone, even Bobby Spellman, putting much stock in the literary judgments of Gilbert’s mother. Maddie Cellini is a warm, thoroughly delightful woman, but even her fondest admirers will concede that her brain is 90 percent meringue.
“He took her seriously? ” marveled Claire, adding hastily, “I mean, she is your mom.”
“Hell, no,” smirked Gilbert. “But what could he do? He can’t blow Mom off without insulting Max, and he’s the last guy anyone in this town wants to offend. So he said, ‘Great, send me a writing sample and I’ll send you the book.’ I said, ‘Fine,’ then I sent him Imbroglio. And that’s how we got hired!”
“Imbroglio?” I asked, confused.
“Oh, right, I haven’t mentioned that. I just wrote a new spec script.”
Claire and I exchanged a second goggle-eyed glance as I mopped up the champagne spill from the flute I’d just knocked over.
“You wrote a spec script?”
“Yes.”
“And finished it?” asked Claire, whose astonishment could not have been greater had he claimed to have licked cold fusion.
“Yes. Just last week.”
We exchanged a third and still more mystified glance.
“And Bobby liked it?”
“Yes!” he said, getting peevish. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“No!” I said, flabbergasted.
You might have assumed from Gilbert’s references to his “work” that there exists somewhere a set of actual completed texts of which Gilbert is the author. There does not. There are many things Gilbert likes about being a writer. He enjoys the drinking, the convivial shoptalk with fellow scribes, the sense of superiority to less creative beings. The one thing he does not like about being a writer is writing. Every project he embarks on soon falls prey to his fatal lack of perseverance, and his longest completed work to date is a haiku. For him to claim now that he’d dashe
d off a spec script brilliant enough to win him a fat Hollywood contract did not merely strain Credulity; it beat the crap out of Credulity and sent Credulity’s next of kin scurrying to its bedside.
“When did you write this?” I asked.
“I started it, oh, about a month ago, and I was done by—stop that!”
“Stop what?”
“Every time I say something you two look at each other. It’s very annoying.”
Claire replied diplomatically that we were merely wondering how we ft into all this. Gilbert assured us he was getting there and ordered more champagne. He then explained that Bobby had sent a messenger to deliver A Song for Greta and pick up Gilbert’s spec. He paused here and his tone strained for poignancy.
“I saw him, the messenger, standing on the doorstep — this morose, badly dressed fellow. Naturally I thought of you, Philip.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. It broke my heart to think that’s what you’d been reduced to—a genius like you, schlepping packages around midtown.
And you, Claire, scraping by as a rehearsal pianist, flogging your songs in grimy little cabarets. The more I thought about it the more unfair it seemed. Why should I be out here getting rich and famous while my two most gifted friends were back east, toiling fruitlessly away in their squalid apartments? So I decided if Bobby wanted me he’d have to hire you guys too.”
“And how’d you manage that?” asked Claire a bit coolly, as her apartment was not remotely squalid.
“Easy. I just typed up a new title page and put your names below mine. As far as Bobby knows we wrote it together, which is good news for you because he loved it! Called it the best spec he’s ever—what did I say about not looking at each other?”
The impulse had been impossible to resist. Credulity-wise we were now at the memorial with Credulity’s best friend belting out “Time Heals Everything.”
“So,” said Claire evenly, “you just decided to cut us in out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Now please! I know what you’re going to say—you feel funny about riding my coattails. Well, don’t. I can’t think of two people who deserve a break more than you guys and it thrills me to be the one who can give it to you.”