Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

  After a moment of anxiety over his job. David began to feel, while having all these gossipy conversations, that he wouldn’t really care if he had to leave Newstime. He could be hired by almost anyone. The Times, the Journal, Business Week, they would all be willing to hire him. Syms was sure to be hired elsewhere if he were fired, and Syms would certainly hire David. To be worried was idiotic. He had over twenty thousand dollars saved up in the profit-sharing plan, there was unemployment insurance, he would be free to do nothing for more than a year before getting a job could become an urgent financial problem. How many thirty-year-olds could make that boast?

  What finally did begin to stick in his mind was Patty. Her mouth gliding up and down his penis—that took over, with mixed results. He hadn’t sat at a desk with an erection since junior high school, but the excitement below seemed divorced from his thoughts about Patty. She was just a blond girl. Silly and with great tits. Of course, she was accepted by everyone: the men wanted to look at her. But could he date her seriously? He imagined Patty accompanying him to a Newstime function. David, the classic smart Jewish boy walking in with a breast-flouncing chippie. The Marx Brothers would certainly snicker. And heart failure (at least) would strike David’s parents.

  But the rigidity in his pants was unimpressed. Last night was, if not the best sex of his life, certainly the most carefree and explosive. The last of the senior editors had casually wandered in to whisper in hushed tones about the rumor. David kept his own counsel and pretended no interest in any possible promotion that might come his way. While he listened to the senior editor’s anxieties over his own job, he kept seeing Patty’s head move up and down with relentless mastery of his organ.

  David was so unresponsive that the senior editor left him after a few minutes. David kept his eye on the door—he didn’t dare close it on a Monday with rumors turning sedentary writers into talky nomads; that would be suspicious—and squeezed his right hand underneath the belt of his gray pants, stretched the elastic band of his Jockey shorts, and got his cool fingertips to the head of his hard and frustrated penis. The constricted circumstances made any manipulation difficult, but he tried, his eyes watering from the effort of staring at the door and attempting to anticipate someone entering. He began to succeed in his fingering and the pleasure made his surveillance more difficult.

  The phone rang.

  Startled, David sat up abruptly, his swivel chair sliding toward the desk, banging his trapped wrist against the edge. He pulled his hand out of his pants and picked up the phone.

  It was Chico, the managing editor. “David. I need to speak to you. Can you come up?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come up without mentioning it. Okay?”

  Dutifully David took the stairs, assuming this would make his trip to Animal Crackers less obvious. You never knew who was in the elevators. David even went so far as to peer down the hallway from the stairway entrance toward the reception area of Animal Crackers to check whether it was clear before making his appearance. Chico’s secretary told him to go right in, and Chico, standing nervously at the window, told him to close the door. All this secrecy might mean nothing: Chico loved melodrama.

  “You’ve heard, of course.”

  Pretending would be dumb. “Yeah.” But on the other hand, maybe David hadn’t heard the right rumor. “If what I’ve heard is what you’re talking about.”

  “Steinberg is gone tomorrow. Syms will also be asked to leave. The last is a big secret. Everybody knows about Steinberg. With Syms out, we’ll have problems in Nation. We’re thin, especially in writing. And a number of our writers couldn’t possibly take over as senior editors. Bill Kahn couldn’t handle Nation.”

  David, for the first time that day, began to realize that this shift in power might be wonderful for him. What if they made him Nation senior editor? Was that possible? Nation was the most prestigious senior-editing position on the magazine, the traditional stepping-stone to Marx Brother status and presumably the ideal background for editor in chief. David had always assumed that if Syms left, Bill Kahn would succeed him. Besides, David was very young to be made a senior editor. This notion so dominated his mind that he had trouble appearing at ease, and the trouble made him more nervous, as if his being caught thinking such an ambitious thought might make Chico change his mind. What was he thinking? Such a change wouldn’t be up to Chico alone; all the Brothers and Mrs. Thorn would have to agree on a promotion to senior-edit Nation.

  “You agree, don’t you? About Kahn?”

  Now this question from Chico seemed loaded, and with deadly bullets. David tried a traditional escape maneuver: “You mean Kahn is more interested in writing?”

  “No. Kahn would love to be made senior editor. I mean, he couldn’t handle it. Isn’t that obvious?”

  Bang, it was back in David’s court. Can I agree? he nervously questioned himself. I shouldn’t be hesitating. Senior-editing Nation wouldn’t allow hesitation. “I only know Bill as a writer. I mean, as a writer knows another writer. I read his stuff, that’s all. I have no idea how he might edit or develop ideas. He doesn’t seem interested in other people’s work, so perhaps he wouldn’t be a sympathetic editor. He would establish a tone.” Was any of that true? David wondered. Probably, he decided.

  “Oh, Bill’s a superb writer,” Chico agreed. “But I don’t think he can handle people. That’s at least as important as editorial skills. That was Syms’s problem. He was arrogant.”

  Chico citing Syms for arrogance? Chico was the most arrogant man in the world. Everything that came out of his mouth was a pronouncement, an absolute judgment, calmly delivered, with the self-assurance of a monarch. Chico could be chilling. David thought all this and noticed Chico’s use of the past tense when discussing Syms.

  “You liked working for him, though,” Chico added, and sat down, his eyes—beady little things that seemed too small for his large body—peering at David.

  “Yes.” David stared back. To lie about that would be thoroughly pointless. David had flourished under Syms, drawing more and more cover assignments in Nation (and away from Kahn) because of Syms’s support.

  “But I get the feeling you can work with anyone,” Chico said.

  Was that a compliment? Or was Chico accusing David of having no taste?

  “That’s an important quality,” Chico continued. “To put out this magazine, we need as little tension and scraping of egos as possible. Good senior editors can work with anyone.”

  Bingo. Something David had not expected for years was about to happen: senior editorship. And of Nation at that!

  “I wanted to give you Nation to senior-edit,” Chico said, “but others feel you’re too young to be moved immediately, as a senior editor, into the most important and pressured position. They want to ease you into senior editing. As a compromise, you’ll be offered Business.”

  David had had only a second to relish the hope that he might senior-edit Nation, but that moment was sufficiently captivating to make getting Business instead a disappointment. He knew that was an absurd feeling—to be a senior editor at his age, no matter what the department, was extraordinary. Besides, Business was the second-most-important position in the rank of senior editor, in fact the job that five years ago, when he first came to Newstime, he hoped he would someday hold. Meanwhile, he had to respond to this surreptitious and unofficial job offer, if that’s what it was.

  “What happens to Jim?” David asked, referring to the current senior editor of Business.

  “Well …” Chico grabbed a paper clip and began to unravel it, almost angrily. “You understand none of this is definite.”

  “Of course.” So he couldn’t celebrate—yet.

  “Presumably Jim would move to Nation.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I agree. He’s not right for it. I don’t think he’ll be there for long.”

  There was a loud buzz from the red intercom resting next to Chico’s phone. A disembodied voice boomed from its open speaker
—in Newstime this intercom system, which provided the Marx Brothers and all the senior editors with direct lines to each other, had been nicknamed the Power Phone—and to David’s surprise, the harassed and irritable voice belonged to the owner, Mrs. Thorn. “Bill, can you come by now? I think we’re ready for a decision.”

  “Be right there.”

  David got to his feet immediately, noting the tension and expectation in Chico’s face. What was Chico waiting to hear? That he had been chosen to succeed Steinberg?

  “I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” Chico said.

  “Right.” And David turned, leaving this exalted floor, the home of the Animal Crackers, certain, for the first time in his career that he would one day work there. He smiled to himself, once alone in the back stairway, thinking of himself in college, not quite bright enough to be at the top, not handsome enough to dominate the coeds, not angry enough to be a radical, not talented enough to be an artist. But if tomorrow’s promise came true, he would be at the head of his class.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tony took a seven P.M. flight to Los Angeles a week after his meeting with Gloria. He had signed a twenty-page contract with her agency. Creative Artists International, and fired his sweet-tempered but lax theatrical agent, Boris. “I knew someday you’d go with the big boys,” Boris said in a resigned but friendly tone. “They may make you money—but they won’t love you like I have. They won’t notice that your scripts don’t have peanut butter on them anymore, or that your wife likes to fluff the hair around your ears.”

  But it was precisely because Boris saw himself as a second mother, rather than as a businessman, that Tony wanted to fire him. He was signed with Creative Artists International for only seven days and already they had him flying first class on a 747 to LA, booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and scheduled for a meeting the next morning with Bill Garth, the actor, and Jim Foxx, the producer. All this was courtesy of International Pictures to discuss a project that was certain to be made. If Garth and Foxx liked his ideas, he would be perhaps a year away from seeing his name on the big screen. Sooner or later success in LA would get him to Broadway. That was Gloria Fowler’s love, and Tony preferred it.

  Tony had flown first class to LA before. His father, using his CBS expense account, used to fly Tony out and back for summer vacations and alternate holidays. He had stayed with his mother at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had met famous actors and producers before. But Tony had never been the object, the cause of spending, the focus of a Hollywood summons. While the stewardesses kept cheerfully getting him new drinks and extra dessert (only now, at thirty-two, did Tony finally treat the experience with the greedy enthusiasm of a boy), he realized: This is fun!

  He sat in the back of his limousine during the ride from LAX to the Beverly Hills Hotel and played with the bar and the temperature-control dial—he wanted to see if he could tell the difference between sixty-eight and sixty-six degrees—and said to himself over and over, this isn’t depressing, this is fun! And though the difference between his childhood visits and this trip was obvious—to see a father who has given your mother a nervous breakdown and blacklisted his friends is presumably of a different quality than being summoned by a world-famous actor and a powerful producer to “save the script”—nevertheless, the pure thrill of it, the preposterous treatment of him by the driver and hotel clerks as if he were the scion of royalty, the silly extravagance of first-class travel, all of it, was wonderful, perhaps his first real Christmas ever.

  Two messages were waiting for him at the desk, from his father and mother. Of course, their names didn’t mean that to the slavish clerk. She was the star of the number-one television sitcom and his father was the head of programming for a major network. As always their stature in television land amused Tony, but once upstairs, disappointed that his room was small (writers don’t get suites, I guess, he thought), the two names scrawled on the message-form slips depressed him, reminded him of the other LA, blew in to the air-conditioned room a Santa Ana of greed, cowardice, and disloyalty.

  He decided not to phone, his excuse being that it was late and he had an early meeting. But he couldn’t sleep and after unpacking with a meticulousness totally unlike him, he wanted to talk to someone. New York was out of the question; it was already late there. He was stumped for a while, until he thought of Billy Feldman, the son of a neighbor of his father’s, also a child of divorce, with whom Tony would play during his summers in Beverly Hills. Tony’s father had mentioned the last time they talked that Billy was in town working in the business. Tony found him through information, living in Hollywood.

  “Hey, man! How are you? This is incredible, I was just talking about you.”

  “I’m in town. I can’t sleep. I was hoping …”

  “Sure—where are you?”

  Fifteen minutes later Billy arrived at the hotel entrance and waved away the valet-parking attendant as Tony approached. Billy was driving a BMW sports car, wearing a pink T-shirt and white shorts and a pair of sunglasses pushed back onto the top of his head.

  “What’s this?” Tony asked, getting in. “The Hal Prince look?”

  Billy looked puzzled.

  “The glasses,” Tony explained.

  “Oh.” Billy seemed worried suddenly, as if he had committed a gaffe. “I forget I have them on, I’m sorry.”

  “I was teasing,” Tony said. He slapped Billy on the leg. “Thank you for rescuing me. I was so lonely in that hotel room.”

  “I know what you mean, man. They’re the worst. What are you doing in a hotel anyway? Between your mom and dad you’ve got forty-five rooms to stay in.”

  “I’ve never seen Mom’s place. Think it’s big?”

  “I know it is. I was there last week.”

  “You were! For what? Don’t tell me she had a party.”

  “Script conference. Haven’t you heard? You haven’t!” Billy seemed slightly miffed. “I’m a writer on her series,” he continued, obviously proud of this fact, and hurt that Tony wasn’t aware of his accomplishment.

  “You are! No kidding. That’s terrific!” Tony said with conviction. Billy relaxed and told the story of how he landed his job as a “story editor” on Tony’s mother’s series. His account was given in a tone that implied the anecdote had the significance of legend, the way a war veteran might talk of his participation in the Normandy invasion. In telling how he got the assignment to write an episode, Billy seemed to discount that he had known Tony’s mother, as well as the executive producer, since childhood.

  “So they gave me a week to write the script. I didn’t fucking sleep at all. By the time I handed it in, I was sure it was shit. And I just felt—I mean, I’m sure I was overdramatizing—that this was my last shot. If this script didn’t go, I don’t know, I would have just given up. Gone back east or something.”

  “So after you wrote one episode, they made you a story editor?”

  Billy frowned. He seemed both confused and irritated. “Well, the script I wrote was the car-wreck episode.”

  Tony nodded and waited. Billy looked away from the road to glance at Tony and saw that his explanation had been insufficient.

  “You know?” Billy said, now a little doubt creeping into the tone of the war veteran: perhaps his listener had never heard of World War II.

  “The car-wreck episode,” Tony repeated. “That was this past season?”

  “Tony, your mom won an Emmy for the car-wreck episode. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen that show!”

  “Well …” Tony was about to say that he vaguely remembered seeing a few minutes of an episode about a car wreck, when he realized that such a comment would be more insulting than saying he had never seen it. Obviously Billy believed the car-wreck episode, if one saw it, would haunt the memory.

  “Here we are!” Billy announced, in time to prevent Tony from saying anything.

  “Joe Allen’s!” Tony exclaimed with genuine delight. “I forgot they have one in LA.”

  “I thought it might mak
e you less homesick,” Billy said.

  When they walked in and Tony saw the familiar brick walls and the long old-fashioned bar at the entrance, he said, “You’re right.”

  “Yeah, the first year I moved out here permanently, I ate here three times a week. I would’ve come more, except I was embarrassed. And broke.”

  Billy walked past the headwaiter and on into the back room, heading for a table with two young women and room for two others. Tony followed, dismayed at the prospect of having to meet people. Billy introduced the women as Helen, his roommate, and her friend, Lois.

  “As in Lane,” Billy added with a grin.

  “And you’re Billy, as in the Kid,” Lois answered in a quiet drawl. The response, and the vague suggestion of hostility in her tone, interested Tony.

  While they ordered drinks, and Tony, his stomach clock disordered, first decided he was hungry and ordered a hamburger, then had no desire for it on its arrival, they discussed their reasons for being in LA. All of them were New Yorkers. Billy, like Tony, was raised by his mother and had been visiting LA for years before he moved, but Helen and Lois both came to LA after college and worked as secretaries for movie studios. Helen was now a film editor (Tony eventually was able to determine without asking directly that she was still basically an assistant film editor, which could mean anything from being the real talent behind her boss to being the person who organized the loose strips at the end of the day—the lower end of the spectrum was more likely) and Lois had become a sitcom writer. Indeed, she had made it: she was the producer of his mother’s series, a title which meant that she supervised the assignments, acceptance, and final polishing of all the episodes, as well as writing four or five herself.

  They all knew Tony’s story, to his surprise, but it turned out his mother was fond of bragging about his plays and (when he guessed this, and asked them, they cheerfully admitted it) implying that they wrote garbage for TV while her brilliant son was a “serious writer.”

  Tony’s wringing this admission from them made them all great friends, especially when Tony laughed at his mother’s description of him as a “serious writer.” Tony said, “That means I don’t make any money.”