by Joe Keenan
I pointed toward the door to ask if I should leave but she shook her head, wanting an audience for this as much as I yearned to listen.
“Glad to hear that,” she said warmly. “There’s no one I’d rather be missed by.”
“Drunk?” I whispered.
“Very.”
“Crying?”
“He will be.”
Things went back and forth for a bit, Marco offering sloppy promises and Claire asking, in the sweetest possible tone, what species of idiot he imagined her to be. “Lunch tomorrow?” she cooed. “Well, that’s a terribly tempting offer, but as you may in a less drunken state have gleaned from the area code and hotel operator, I’m not in town just now.”
She went on to explain that she’d accepted a commission to write a screenplay for the producer Bobby Spellman and would not be returning to New York for at least two months, though possibly much longer, as one high-profile job did have a way of leading to another. She wished him luck with his ceramics career and assured him that, despite his behavior toward her, she would keep him in mind for all her earthenware needs.
“Brava!” I cried. I applauded loudly, then, feeling this was insufficient, whistled a bit.
“God, that felt good.”
“Whoo-ee,” I said in my cowboy voice, “that was some fancy knife-twistin’, ma’am.”
Claire sank onto the couch, gazed out the window at the twinkling lights of the strip, and gave a little laugh of disbelief.
“I never dreamed I’d say this but —thank God for Gilbert!”
“He certainly came through, didn’t he?”
“So it appears.”
“We always knew he would someday.”
“No, we didn’t.”
She announced her intention to order up some coffee and to read as much as she could of A Song for Greta before morning. I said this sounded like a sensible plan and retired to my room to do the same.
After calling down for coffee I settled into a chair with the slightly battered old paperback Gilbert had provided.
I was six pages in when I called room service to cancel my order. It was already painfully clear to me that there was no point in consuming coffee while trying to read A Song for Greta late in the evening. If you’re reading it for pleasure, no amount of caffeine will stave off slumber. And if, God help you, you’re reading it because you’ve agreed to adapt it for the screen, staying awake is not the problem.
It’s ever sleeping again.
Four
Greta, her kind, gray, sensitive eyes puffy from the sleepless night she had passed listening to the fearsome explosions and heartbreaking cries of sad despair that had pierced the cobblestoned serenity of her lovely, beloved, now war-ravaged city, watched intently as General Snelling, his arrogant belly straining the buttons of his gestapo uniform, thrust his fork viciously into the yielding surface of the rich moist Schwarzwalder kirschtorte she had made from the recipe handed down to her by her mother, a great beauty, now dead.
His cold black eyes glittered with hungry, rapacious greed as he brought the fork to his plump crimson lips and opened his brutish mouth, revealing his cruel teeth. He thrust the cake into his mouth like a stoker who was stoking a furnace, a greedy furnace that could never be too full or even satisfied. Greta watched nervously as he chewed the cake, sensually savoring the dark sweetness of its chocolaty richness.
“It is good, Mein General?” she asked.
“You have done well, Greta,” he replied, his insatiable jowls quivering with pleasure.
“Ach,” she thought to herself, not for the first time, “you would not like my cake if you knew my secret!”
SO BEGINS A SONG FOR GRETA, the 370-page novel that one Prudence Gamache unleashed upon the world in 1955.
As this excerpt illustrates, it is set during World War II and is so badly written that had Hitler survived the war, his punishers would have consigned him to a Spandau cell with a copy of the thing and a jackbooted thug who had ways of making him read. Subtitled A Tale of Hope and Heroes, it’s one of those ruthlessly sentimental books that make you feel as though your heartstrings are being plucked with a lug wrench. On page after page it strives to achieve uplift and, in the case of my dinner, damn near succeeded.
The plot revolves around the double life of the book’s title character, Greta Schumman, a woman so virtuous she makes Maria von Trapp look like a Kit Kat Klub girl. Greta keeps house for the brutal gestapo general Ernst Snelling and his handsome son Heinrich. Heinrich, raised by Greta after his mom died in childbirth, is in the gestapo too but, thanks to Greta’s tender influence, is a kinder, gentler Nazi. As Ms. Gamache puts it, “His twinkling eyes sparkled with a gentle light and in his heart there burned a fragile flame of goodness that not even the brackish tide of evil washing over this once green and hopeful land could drown or otherwise extinguish.”
Greta, who’s secretly Jewish, risks all by smuggling food to her sister, who’s hiding in the basement of a bombed-out bakery along with her four children. The children, in ascending order of grisliness, are Lisabetta, a beautiful and spirited eighteen-year-old, Rolf, a manly little fellow of ten, and the twins, Hilda and Heidi, two revolting moppets whose every lisping utterance is crafted to extort tears. When they’re not pretend-phoning Daddy in heaven, they’re staging puppet shows about brighter tomorrows, and after three chapters of this I was rooting for the snipers.
The general, his suspicions inflamed by a missing roast beef, orders Heinrich to follow Greta. He obeys and discovers her double life. He denounces her treachery to the Reich and vows to turn her in to Dad but finds, in a dinner scene staggeringly devoid of suspense, that he cannot bring himself to do so. Before you can say “Oskar Schindler,” he’s smuggling food along with her and falling hard for pretty Lisabetta, who’s a feisty one and takes some wooing.
Little Hilda falls gravely ill and Heinrich, who by this point is practically sporting a yarmulke, frees a Jewish doctor from a work camp. Hilda rallies briefly before dying in a deathbed scene so excruciatingly maudlin that only the promise of her eventual demise kept me turning the pages.
“One down, one to go!” I thought, pouring myself an altogether necessary scotch from the minibar. But I soon found that in the world of Prudence Gamache saintly tots do not quit the stage simply because they’ve expired. No, their dear little ghosts linger on, watching over their families, snuffing out candles when danger looms, and generally pitching in. The nadir of this gambit comes when Hilda’s ghost blows a kiss to two Jew-sniffing Dobermans who whimper contritely and lead their masters away. By that point I’d just about had it and only skimmed the rest to get the gist of the story.
I could at least see what had attracted Bobby to the material. Amid the schmaltz there was no shortage of action and preposterous heroics. My question vis-à-vis Bobby was not “Why Greta? ” It was “Why us?” The answer clearly lay with Gilbert, and I resolved to track him down come morning and, if need be, throttle it out of him.
I PHONED HIM THE next morning and left a message sternly demanding he call the moment he woke. I then tried Claire’s room and, getting no answer, dressed and went downstairs, hoping to find her in the dining room. She was there, sitting at a corner table and looking as morose as you’d expect a girl of her taste and discernment to look on finding she’s been hired to rewrite The Diary of Anne Frank as an action film.
I joined her as our waiter arrived.
“Just coffee for now,” I said.
“Black,” intoned Claire. The waiter withdrew and she went on, “Black—like the black, pitch-dark heart of General Snelling, a heart never pierced by the radiant light of love or the sunshine of kindness or even a faint tender ray of —”
“All right. You finish it?”
“Yes. I decided to just read the verbs and it flew by. Have you by chance spoken to our collaborator this morning?”
“I left a message.”
“When he calls back tell him please to swing by. And ask if he’d be s
o kind as to bring a garrote.”
Our coffee came and we consumed several cups as we probed the mystery of our hiring. Everyone insisted we’d been chosen on the basis of our brilliant spec, a script Claire and I had confidently assumed to be our own Mrs. McManus. This now seemed decidedly less likely. Why would Bobby, seeking to adapt this brutally unfunny book, hire a team whose spec was a lighthearted comedy? We wondered if perhaps Gilbert hadn’t been lying and the spec really was his, a notion we swiftly rejected as too preposterous to entertain.
Claire opined that it might just be flat-out nepotism, Max asking Bobby to hire Maddie’s son in exchange for some favor from Max. In that scenario Bobby wouldn’t much care what the spec was and might not even have read it. I said I didn’t see what good it did Bobby to hire writers he didn’t believe in.
“Oh, darling,” she drawled with maddening condescension, “you don’t think Bobby plans to actually film what we write? You know how it works out here. Nothing makes it to the screen until at least a dozen ink-stained wretches have had a whack at it. So if we agree to actually do this—”
“‘If’?” I repeated, startled. “What do you mean ‘if’?!”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I want any part of this.”
“But you can’t quit!” I said, panic and caffeine sending my already cantering heart into a brisk gallop. The task of adapting Greta would be hellish enough even with Claire’s help and unimaginable with no one’s “assistance” save Gilbert’s. “I mean, I’ll grant you it won’t be a picnic—but, God, hon, think of the money!”
“I have. I’ve thought of it a great deal. I’m just not sure if it’s worth spending the next few months writing adorable dead moppets and, what’s-his-name, Nazi with the Laughing Eyes.”
“I am begging you!” I said, clasping her forearms. “Do not consign me to everlasting Gilbert!”
“I don’t want to, dear. I’m just not sure I have the stomach for this.”
I whined, wheedled, and cajoled but to no end. Claire insisted she’d make no decision until we’d met with Spellman and ascertained how much of the book he was married to. I could only bow to this and pray that Bobby would not prove so insufferable as to obliterate all hope of keeping her on board.
I tried Gilbert again and once more got his voice mail.
“I wouldn’t bother,” frowned Claire. “He’s obviously gone to ground.”
I tended to agree. Gilbert had known when he’d dropped them off just what lurked in those envelopes. He would not, as such, care to face us again till we were seated in Bobby’s office and could smell the ink on the paycheck.
THE TAXI DEPOSITED CLAIRE and me at the famed main gate of Pinnacle Pictures promptly at two. A guard gave us directions to Bobby Spellman’s office, which we reached an acceptable five minutes late. Gilbert had not yet arrived.
The outer office was quite large, its walls predictably crowded with posters for Bobby’s shrill blockbusters. The absurdly beautiful woman behind the desk informed us that her name was — what else?— Svetlana and that Bobby was finishing a call. Would we care for something to drink? We declined and sat to wait for Gilbert, who showed up five minutes later carrying a briefcase.
“Have a seat, dear,” said Claire, her tone murderously cordial. Gilbert hung back, smiling nervously, but then, deciding we couldn’t dismember him in front of Miss Moscow, sat across from us.
“Can I get you something?” asked Svetlana. “Coffee, water, soda?”
Claire, shrewdly noting the lack of a coffee machine in the room, said she’d changed her mind and would love a coffee; could she warm the milk if there was a microwave on hand? Svetlana happily complied, disappearing into a small adjoining kitchen.
“So, kids!” began Gilbert, jabbering a mile a minute. “There are a few things you should know about Bobby before we go in let me run them down for you real fast for starters —”
“Can the flibuster!” barked Claire.
“You could have warned us what a shitty book it was!”
He regarded us with injured surprise.
“You didn’t like it?”
“You did? ” snorted Claire.
“Loved it! I laughed, I cried. Mostly cried of course. I thought you’d adore it too, but what can I say? Chacun à son goût. ”
“ ‘Goo’ is right!” snapped Claire.
“Thank you. Anyway, don’t bad-mouth it in front of Bobby. I already told him you both loved it ’cause I honestly assumed you’d—”
“Bullshit!” I hissed. “You knew we’d loathe it. That’s why you lied to us.”
“When did I lie?” he asked, his tone less defensive than puzzled, as though he’d lost track.
“You said it was a comedy!”
“I said it had room for comedy. And I stand by that. Why, think what fun Coward got out of an impish ghost in Blithe Spirit. And it should be even easier for us, our ghost being a kid and all.”
It was lucky for Gilbert that Svetlana chose this moment to return, as Claire and I had started advancing on him with defenestration uppermost in our thoughts. She gave Claire her coffee, said Bobby would see us now, and led us down a short hall.
Bobby’s office was a striking, somewhat futuristic chamber with gray suede walls and a curved brushed-steel desk I recognized as a prop from the planet-saving hero’s spacecraft in his asteroid thriller, Kingdom Come. The room couldn’t have screamed “power” more loudly if it had had a platinum throne flanked by twin dynamos with bolts of electricity zapping between them.
Bobby, seated at his command console, rose to greet us. It was immediately clear that he was not one of those cunning Hollywood potentates who like to confound expectations by affecting a schlubby or innocuous appearance. Just as our lady friend on the plane had striven to make it apparent to all that she was a once-famous actress, so Bobby’s costume and grooming loudly announced his profession and status within it. His black Dolce & Gabbana suit was le dernier cri in Italian tailoring, as was the black open-collared shirt he wore beneath it. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed back above his long wolfish face, which sported a Mephistophelian goatee. His smile was as crooked and smug as those of his bad-boy heroes and his gaze held a calculated hint of menace as though to say, “I like you at the moment but reserve the right to crush you.”
“Bobbeee!” sang Gilbert, as though they’d been friends for years. “Love the suit.”
“Come in! Sit!” said Bobby, gesturing to a gray boar-skin sofa. “It’s not every day I get three geniuses in here. Which one’s Philip and which one’s Claire? Kidding!”
We laughed, piglets humoring the wolf, and seated ourselves. Bobby said he’d heard this was our first trip to LA and asked how we liked it. We replied, of course, that we liked it very much.
“I took them to BU last night,” said Gilbert, not mentioning Max so as to imply he’d gotten us in on his own.
“I love that place!” said Bobby with what struck me as unwarranted vehemence. I’d soon learn though that Bobby never made mere statements; he issued pronouncements, and no subject was too trivial to merit this stentorian intensity.
“BU is like my dining room. The crab cakes are fucking brilliant. You have the crab cakes?”
“No,” I said.
“Do not,” he said gravely, “go again without having the crab cakes.”
“They’re amazing,” said Gilbert.
“They’re a fucking rhapsody. ” A strained silence fell. Bobby broke it by saying, “So!” with great gusto.
“So!” I repeated, “A Song for Greta...”
“No,” proclaimed Bobby. “Shitty title.”
“I was just saying that,” remarked Gilbert.
“No, no — our picture will be called...”
He paused and swept his hand through the air as though conjuring a marquee. His voice dropped to a reverent hush and he said, “The Heart...in Hiding.”
It was clear that he couldn’t have been prouder if he’d picked up a legal pad that mornin
g and torn off A Streetcar Named Desire. I supposed the title did capture that majestic vagueness Hollywood aims for when christening films of high purpose suitable for December release. It was clear too that Bobby expected praise if not actual salaams for having thought of it. This we hastened to provide.
“It’s beautiful!” I said.
“Very apt,” nodded Claire.
“It’s like some perfect four-word sonnet,” said Gilbert.
“Fucking luminous,” agreed Bobby.
Gilbert gushed some more, then explained to Claire that the title referred not only to Greta’s hidden family but also to Heinrich, whose own heart is in hiding until Greta gently draws it out. Claire, who looked ready to draw Gilbert’s heart out and not gently, replied that she’d gotten that.
“This,” said Bobby, punctuating his words with little karate chops, “is going to be a phenomenal picture. Life changing. There’s only one thing I want you guys to fix.”
“The ghost?” said Claire hopefully.
“Exactly!” he said. “I LOVE it that we went straight to the same place. Very good sign. The ghost is all wrong!”
“Well, we’re with you on that,” I said, encouraged for the first time since reading the damned thing.
“Totally wrong,” declared Gilbert.
“It should be a boy,” said Bobby.
Gilbert turned excitedly to Claire. “What did I just say in the waiting room!”
“Fan tastic! ” boomed Bobby. “It’s like some fucking mind meld! I think you guys are the perfect team to write this picture.”
Why?!
“And I’m not just blowing smoke up your asses. The minute I finished your script, I knew you guys were it.”
“We’re glad you liked it,” I said.
“I. Fucking. Adored. It.”
“You know,” said Claire, smiling shyly, “this may sound like a dreadfully conceited question, but I’m curious — what was your favorite scene?”
“Now, Claire!” chided Gilbert. “I think our heads are swelled enough without you begging Bobby to stroke us even more. Let’s get back to Greta —excuse me, The Heart in Hiding — goose bumps!— what say we get Springsteen to write the title song?”