Frolic of His Own

by William Gaddis

  —Well if he doesn’t he’ll be more polite about it than you are Christina, is that why you finally came all the way out here? just to criticize whatever I . . .

  —You’ve been begging me to come out for days, for weeks haven’t you? telling me you were having a seizure and the house was on fire? While you’re simply sitting here with your Pinot Grigio putting on weight like a, sitting here behind this barricade of books and folders and papers it looks like you’re running a little store here like you wanted to when you were seven and made me buy those horrid shreds of coloured ribbon on safety pins you said were badges because I couldn’t tell a penny from a dime, at least you’re almost sitting up like a human being and not rolled in like a fish on a platter, at least you’re getting your money’s worth from this therapist aren’t you?

  —I got rid of the therapist.

  —You get rid of the one person who’s doing you any good, I should have guessed shouldn’t I.

  —Well you guessed wrong. Ilse’s been doing my, those things, handling those things she . . .

  —Handling what things. Does it ever occur to you to simply try to get up and walk, Oscar? Where is she.

  —She’s gone to do the shopping.

  —You still have her riding around in a taxi to order your groceries? There must be a less extravagant way of buying a bunch of carrots. There is such a thing as the telephone.

  —Well you don’t have to eat them Christina! I just thought Mister Basie might like something a little diff . . .

  —He’s not coming all the way out here to eat carrots is he? I thought all these court papers were filed and you were just waiting for a decision.

  —We are, but we, but he has some things he wants to talk to me about and, and he said he thought the two of us should sit down together.

  —Well there is such a thing as the telephone, Oscar. For the two of you I mean, maybe you’d rather I didn’t join you?

  —I didn’t say that did I? I just meant that I, that sometimes when I’m trying to . . .

  —Well you do seem to get things rather muddled sometimes and need someone to step in and move them along, I’m sure he keeps the clock running even when he’s eating carrots. I’m going for a walk, I’ll be back for lunch. I wouldn’t think of missing it.

  Swans, a whole fleet of them, rumpled the still surface of the pond where she came down to follow the sandy edge of it, giving way finally to reeds and mud sending her up to the road past one silent hulk of a house well beyond a stone’s throw from another closed, most of them, for winter, leading her on to the dunes, the shock of a wind borne in from the restless waves out there urging her down the empty beach all the way to the cut where the sea turned the pond brackish, harassing her every retraced step to the road till by the time the driveway led her in under those mangled pines she brought the chill right into the house and stood there shaking it off. —Oscar? Voices reached her rising on a tide of garlic and olive oil.

  —Only problem there Oscar, see your only problem is you’ve got right there in your original complaint where you’re alleging professional distress for your second cause of action.

  —I’m sure that’s not his only problem Mister Basie, how are you? She waved off a handshake across the room, —please don’t get up. What has he done now.

  —Just talking about this letter he’s writing to the . . .

  —It’s nothing Christina, it’s just, give it back to me!

  But she’d lifted it lightly from his hand, coming round behind him, —this? scanning it, —is it a joke?

  —I said give it back to me!

  —Who in God’s name is Sir John Nipples.

  —He’s none of your, he’s a director, he’s the prominent British theatre director who . . .

  —Surprised you never heard of him Mrs Lutz, he’s put on some of these great productions from the Elizabethans. Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Webster, did a Marlowe’s Tamburlaine there two years ago knocked them out of their seats.

  —There! you see? You see Christina? How he could bring out the pure poetry in my battlefield scene at the end of act two? and Thomas? my character Thomas torn between his demands for justice and his destiny being stolen from him by, the whole last act, and the curtain, when John Israel comes back and . . .

  —He hasn’t even read it has he?

  —That’s what this is all about, this letter, he wants to read it. How many people do you think get a letter from Sir John Nipples asking to look at their play, to see the whole thing up there on the stage just the way you imagined it and the whole . . .

  —That’s a good question isn’t it, how he happens to write to you of all people at a moment like this?

  —What do you mean of all people! He probably, he may have read my interview in the paper when I set the record straight on the vulgar desecration of the great passions and paradoxes of man’s existence that have been the very heart of theatre since the Greeks to bring them down to the . . .

  —Oscar?

  —to the cheap appetites of the movie, what.

  —See when she says at a moment like this, only way he’d even hear about your play is from this lawsuit in the papers.

  —That’s what I just . . .

  —Where you’re asking these triple damages there for your second cause of action?

  —And it ought to be quadruple, quintuple, profaning the ideas and passions in a thing like this it ought to be ten times the . . .

  —Asking money damages Oscar see that’s what you have to prove, you’ve suffered money damages. Say old Sir John here’d come along a year or two ago wanting to do your play, took an option on it, you’ve got grounds there to project your Broadway profits maybe a movie sale coming out of that, miniseries, merchandising, money, just plain money. Court doesn’t give a good God damn about desecrating these great poetic passions you’ve got. What you’re alleging in your complaint is this movie they made whether it’s a great movie or just a piece of, whether it’s any good or not that they stole it from you and shut you out of any chance of ever seeing a dollar on your own creation like it has it right there in Section 8 of Article 2, same thing if your play is junk and a movie turns it into Coriolanus there’s your constitutional right to protect a piece of junk, see that’s what these cases are mostly all of them about, protecting one piece of junk against another piece of junk and there’s your precedents. Sir John gets your play up there in lights and you blow your whole case because without this movie he’d never have heard of it. You don’t even want anybody to know you heard from him, they hear about it and they’ll come back suing you for a finder’s fee. That brings me to the next thing here. They just made us an offer to settle.

  —To, you mean my lawsuit? to settle my lawsuit?

  —Settle it out of court, clean up the whole thing. Two hundred thousand dollars.

  —That they’d, you mean they’d give me two hundred thousand dollars?

  —Thank God.

  —No now wait Christina I, two hundred thousand dollars!

  —Well my God Oscar what are you hesitating for! Take the money, forget about the movie and call up the great Mister Nipples, that’s what you’ve wanted all the time isn’t it?

  —Two hundred thousand dollars! Cash? in cash?

  —To clear up this whole mess of course he’ll take it Mister Basie, won’t you Oscar.

  —No but wait, wait . . .

  —Up to him Mrs Lutz. Help him out on these legal expenses here wouldn’t it.

  —No but, help me out?

  —See I don’t know right where you stand on our last statement there but they maybe haven’t got my trip to the coast in there yet, that whole deal going out to the coast, you got your last statement?

  —Well I, it’s here someplace but I, but the coast you mean California?

  —Well where is it Oscar.

  —Where is what. You mean you went out to California?

  —Had to go out there to take their depositions, the writers, Kiester, the whole gang,
sat around the Beverly Wilshire for two days waiting for Bredford to sober up to where he could spell his own name, couldn’t even remember making the picture.

  —Their statement Oscar. Where is it.

  —It’s right there, Christina! It’s, it’s probably over in that blue folder with some bills I haven’t had time to open yet but, now wait! Put it back!

  —Even bumped into an old buddy out there from when I knew him back in the, back in my little theatre days, plays the main house slave in the movie and . . .

  —Christina I said put it back! You have no business opening my . . .

  —My God.

  —Maybe didn’t get my trip south in there either, down there trying to register those old Historical Society letters. Turned out the old Judge was one step ahead of us, got in there and registered them in his own name.

  —My God Oscar.

  —Doesn’t hurt anything Mrs Lutz long as they’re protected, this law clerk of his told me the old Judge says as long as he’s alive this per stirpes stops right here at his door.

  —I mean this statement, my God. Well here Oscar, look at it!

  —See what I mean about this settlement they want to palm off on you, talking before taxes too probably just about eat it up.

  —Eat it up! and what about, look at them! paper tearing all the way —doctors, hospitals, x-rays, therapy here’s the one for mutilating our trees out there you haven’t even paid them yet? Trash removal, eighty dollars and a quarter? How long have you . . .

  —I just told you I, the battery in my calculator burned out and I haven’t had . . .

  —Haven’t had time to open them my God Oscar what do you do here all day, sit there with your Pinot Grigio and plan your little luncheon menus in the Spanish style? Now who’s this one, law offices of Kevin who’s he, that ambulance chaser she dug up for you?

  —Well that’s not, I haven’t seen it no that can’t be a bill, it was all a contingency arrangement that he said would be . . .

  —Hours, disbursements, filing your case with New York Supreme Court seventy five hundred dollars.

  —No!

  —You make a written agreement with him Oscar?

  —Well no, it was a, it was clearly understood that we . . .

  —Clearly understood! Oscar never even met him.

  —No, I simply won’t pay it that’s all. I won’t pay it.

  —Might have a problem getting your file back from him if you get yourself a new lawyer on it.

  —I’ve got a new lawyer.

  —Where did you get a new lawyer, Oscar.

  —Well I, never mind where I got him Christina I’ve already had a telephone consultation with them and they’re taking it, they’re specialists that’s what they specialize in, they specialize in personal injury cases like this one, in negligence, they . . .

  —They probably sent a request for your file to this Kevin so he sits on the file and signs off with a bill.

  —No well wait now listen, listen. I’ve been through this before, listen. He stepped in and took a divorce case for my, for a friend of mine from another lawyer who did the same thing, she wouldn’t release the file till we paid her off for the mess she’d made of it and I won’t do it again. I won’t pay him. It’s blackmail, I won’t pay him, isn’t it? blackmail?