Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

Fred was smiling and nodding throughout all this, as if he loved it, and agreed. Agreed so heartily that he was on the edge of his chair, almost ready to leap into Holder’s arms. “Un-huh,” he said, not wanting to say anything, because he didn’t know what he thought, he just wanted to encourage Holder’s enthusiasm.

  “See what I mean? Starting it in the present focuses it. Makes it an advocate for your statement. And that gets us a tight narrative and”—he winked cynically—“maybe on the Phil Donahue show.”

  Fred nodded solemnly and looked thoughtful. However, his only thought was: I have to rewrite the whole outline. Nothing has been accomplished.

  “I know that makes the book shorter, but that’s good, I think,” Holder went on.

  “Definitely,” Fred said.

  “So basically you’d start the novel about halfway through your outline.”

  “Okay,” Fred said, bobbing his head like a doll.

  “Okay. Now that’s settled, I’ll tell you my plan. We usually submit proposals to the ed board—which I’m on, along with five other editors and Tom Paulson. But I can go to Paulson directly if I tell him we only have your outline exclusively for twenty-four hours. That’s what I’m gonna do. So you should have an answer by tomorrow morning. How’s that?”

  The Resurrection of Christ, Bobby Thompson’s home run, the Parting of the Red Sea—no reversal of fortune in history could compare with the shock, followed by delight, in Fred’s heart at this statement. He said, “Great,” with his first natural smile of the meeting, and floated out back onto the street feeling as if he had never lived before, never seen the intense beauty of real life, never known true respect for himself.

  Finishing the chapter excited Patty. She calculated that if she were able to type it quickly, she could deliver it before five to Joe McGuire, the editor in chief of Shadow Books. She was a fast typist, the only skill she possessed that her old boss Gelb never found fault with, and even going slowly (to be sure there was not a single typo), she had the twenty pages done in an hour. It was two-thirty.

  A pause of insecurity slowed her progress to McGuire’s office. After all, Betty knew what he would want, and she was on the floor above, so Patty called from the lobby extension and got Betty, asking if she could read the pages immediately.

  “Sure. But what’s the rush?”

  “Don’t we want to get it in and over with? You know how we hate suspense.”

  “We sure do,” Betty agreed, laughing. “Okay, I’ve got a meeting at three. So let’s do it.”

  Patty went upstairs and paced restlessly back and forth past Betty’s window while she read. Twice Betty told her to sit down and once she burst out laughing at something in Patty’s chapter. “Whoa, that’s hot,” Betty said toward the end of the chapter, and Patty knew she must have reached the moment where the heroine was roughly kissed by the dark, handsome, and possibly brutal love interest.

  At last Betty swiveled in her chair and said, “It’s great! I knew you could do it.”

  “Okay. But what should we change? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing! Absolutely nothing. It’s fine.”

  “Come on,” Patty said, frowning. “I need this to come through. I can’t start a relationship with a man and be broke. I don’t want to depend on him for money.”

  “It’s that serious?” Betty asked, not concealing her amazement. After all, only last week Patty hadn’t even discussed David with her. To Betty no weekend, no matter how magical, could be that dramatic.

  “I told you I was in love. I don’t know. Am I crazy?” Patty’s eyes looked big and forlorn, like those of a misbehaving dog approaching head down, asking for reassurance from its owner.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Betty hurried to say. But she did.

  “I feel like it’s serious,” Patty said in an unusually somber tone.

  “That’s terrific.” Betty said, and felt moved for Patty. In all the years she had heard Patty discuss men, never before had she allowed herself to speak so simply, to make it clear that she was vulnerable. Several times Betty had concluded that Patty was incapable of real feeling, of being in love unselfconsciously, without burlesque. It had made Betty think less of her, and so this moment was impressive. “Well, I think Joe will give you a contract on this.”

  “Really? ’Cause if it needs work, tell me—”

  “I think it’s fine. You should give it to him. Does he know you’re bringing it up?”

  Patty blinked, confused.

  “You didn’t call ahead and tell him you were delivering it?”

  “Oh God,” Patty said, looking distraught.

  Betty couldn’t help smiling. “It’s not a problem. Call him from here. Just give him a little warning.”

  McGuire took her call right away and sounded delighted that she had finished. “Jesus! You could probably write a whole book in two weeks. Bring it on down. I’ll read it tonight.”

  His friendliness puffed her up with confidence. She breezed into his office and tossed her manila folder with the chapter inside on his desk.

  “I’m telling ya. I should pay you by the hour. Save me a fortune.” McGuire got up and moved around his desk, heading for her. He was short, five-six, only a few inches taller than Patty. He had a plump face, with benign red cheeks and small twinkling eyes that seemed to think everything was funny. He wore jeans and a wrinkled white dress shirt with a narrow tie that looked too small for him, as if it belonged to a prep-school boy’s uniform. He had thin bloodless lips that now kissed her full on the lips, staying only a fraction of a beat longer than was polite. She smelted Scotch on his breath and backed quickly into a chair to make sure nothing more happened.

  “God, you look great!” he said loudly, as if he were only a drink away from throwing all caution to the winds. He reminded Patty of her alcoholic uncle who, by the end of every evening, would tell rambling, incoherent stories with punch lines that would cause him to go into gales of laughter and leave his listener frozen with a mystified and embarrassed smile.

  “Thanks. I’m in love,” she said, to prevent a repetition of that slobbering kiss.

  “Oh,” he said with a puzzled look, as if he were smelling something bad but didn’t know its origin.

  She felt despair, realizing that Betty was with her when she met McGuire and that he might have decided to give her a chance with a quickie in mind, and hadn’t made that clear because they weren’t alone. His reaction to her announcement seemed to confirm this fear; and that meant he would turn her chapter down now. “Isn’t that great. Joe?” she said, looking at him slyly. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said, encouraged by her teasing manner. “At your age, I fell in love every afternoon. Didn’t mean a thing.”

  Patty crossed her legs. She was wearing a light blue skirt, slit up the right side, so that her action showed her thin and graceful leg. McGuire’s amused eyes went to it and focused. Patty did this without reflection, although, if she had thought about it, she wouldn’t have lied to herself about what she was attempting. Sometimes, with men, it was possible to let hope spring eternal without letting them actually do any springing. She didn’t reflect because she would have disapproved of herself; and her disapproval might not have been sufficient to stop her from flirting. Better to do it without allowing any self-criticism. “And now you don’t fall in love every afternoon?”

  “No, no,” McGuire said, not bothering to conceal his stare at her bare leg.

  “What a pity, Joe. How unromantic. Especially for a romance-book editor.”

  This reminder of his job—which Patty assumed was a bitter fact for him (Betty had said being made editor in chief of Shadow Books was considered being kicked upstairs)— seemed to kill his sexual drive. His eyes left her leg and drifted boozily up to the shelves behind her chair. “Right! I only sell the stuff. Don’t buy it.”

  “You must buy mine. I’m desperate.”

  “Ah. I like desperate women.”

  “Oh
, Joe. You’re so cruel.”

  It went on like this for what seemed an eternity to Patty. An unpleasant, forced, and silly flirtation that made her so irritable she almost wished he would simply unzip his fly so she could hitch up her skirt and let him get it over with. At least that would be the end of it. Sitting there and having to fake interest was sickening and quite difficult. But she lived in dread of not playing the game. She had lost one job because she didn’t have the brains to go along. If an hour of imbecility with Joe was going to get her a contract to write this romance novel, then why not do it?

  There was one reason to prolong the foolish chatter. Ending it meant Joe had another opportunity to kiss her. So when his secretary entered with some papers, Patty got to her feet and said, “I’d better go.”

  But McGuire was more brazen than she thought. He said when she moved to the door. “What? No good-bye kiss?” winking at his secretary, who looked bored, as if she also knew that he was not only repulsive but also inffectual. McGuire got up, walked to Patty, and when she moved her head to give him her cheek—despite the presence of his secretary—he put his arms around her; and under the guise of giving her a big hug, put his hands on her buttocks and gave them a hard squeeze, allowing a quiet but ridiculously intimate moan to escape his lips.

  Patty wriggled out of his arms, saying with lilting cheerfulness—and yes, maybe a hint of promise—“Talk to you tomorrow. Joe.”

  Jim Foxx, Tony said to himself with a wave of relief. His name is Jim Foxx. He had slid into the booth with Garth and Foxx after they had transformed their solemn looks into radiant smiles when he appeared, and was now accepting Foxx’s offer of coffee, which he poured himself from a pot on the table. Tony judged from the empty juice glasses, half-empty coffee cups, and full bowls of fruit in front of the actor and the producer that they must have arranged to meet earlier. To discuss Tony? It didn’t matter. At least he had remembered Jim Foxx’s name, though what good it would do him, he couldn’t say.

  “How was your flight?” Garth asked. His tone was serious, compassionate almost, with the earnest tone Garth had had in his Academy Award-winning performance about the Legal Aid lawyer who successfully defended an innocent young black farmer accused of raping a white woman.

  “Good.” Tony gulped a sip of coffee. “But I guess I don’t travel well. I had terrible insomnia. Got less than an hour’s sleep.”

  Foxx nodded. “Happens to me too.”

  “You mean you never get over it? I assumed it was because I don’t do much traveling.”

  Foxx signaled to a waitress. “First night on the road, can’t sleep. I must travel”—he looked at Garth as if he had the answer—“hundred and fifty thousand miles a year. Probably more. Never get over it.” The waitress reached them. “Do you know what you want, Tony? We’ve already ordered.”

  Tony asked for French toast and bacon. “Okay, honey,” the waitress said, which struck Tony as being odd in an expensive restaurant. But it did make him feel more protected, in a strange way, as if she had let him know that he belonged.

  “Ah, to be young,” Foxx said about Tony’s order.

  “You don’t want any juice or melon?” Garth asked. “They have great melons here.”

  “I’ve always heard that about Hollywood. Lotta great melons.”

  They all laughed. Foxx, especially, was taken by surprise and enjoyed the joke. He assumes I’m a pretentious playwright, Tony thought to himself.

  The waitress hesitated.

  “But no, I’m fine.” Tony said to Garth, and she went. He felt slightly baffled but pleased that they treated him like a nephew they were taking out. There was no sense of the truth, or at least what Tony understood the situation to be, namely that this was an audition of sorts. The writer showing off his legs to the big producer and box-office actor.

  Garth looked at Foxx expectantly in the pause that followed. Tony, taking the hint, was silent, and also looked to Foxx to say something.

  “Did, uh …” Foxx spooned an enormous strawberry out of his bowl and held it near his mouth. “Did Gloria tell you much about the history of this project?” He ate the strawberry.

  “No. She said she thought it would be best to leave that to you. All she mentioned was that there had been a script written which you weren’t happy with.”

  “Five.” Foxx said. “We’ve been through five drafts and three writers. It’s tough,” Foxx added, looking off philosophically.

  “There’s something I wondered about.” Tony said. Both Garth and Foxx seemed surprised and curious that he wondered about anything. Maybe writers aren’t supposed to wonder, Tony wondered, but he pressed on. “How come you didn’t send me the latest script before this meeting?”

  “We want to totally throw them out,” Garth said in the tone of a betrayed lover speaking of the mementos of his ruined romance.

  “Even if you were to come onto the project,” Foxx said, “we wouldn’t want you to look at the earlier drafts. We’ve had a lot of meetings—”

  “Bullshit. All bullshit,” Garth said. His thin shoulders were hunched, his head hanging low, like a fighter’s. He had just taken a sip of coffee. He set his cup down on the saucer with a harsh clatter. He looked Tony in the eyes. It was transfixing to look into them: Tony felt as if he had become a character in a movie; or that he had been sealed in the front row of the theater. They were dark and suspicious. “It’s hard for me to accept, but you gotta leave the writer alone. Every draft, we’ve gone step by step. Giving notes, doing it page by page. Doesn’t work. All we want is to pick a writer we like, tell him—in general—what we want, and then leave him alone. Only thing that makes sense.”

  Foxx nodded gravely, but Tony saw that he really wasn’t paying attention to Garth, like a wife who has heard her husband tell a particular anecdote over and over. “Yeah. This is a special idea. It needs originality. And you can’t get originality writing a script by committee.”

  “And you can’t get originality from a Hollywood writer.” Garth said. “They’ve spent their lives writing to suit other people. They have no idea how to be their own man. That’s why we wanted a playwright. You know, in the theater you guys have the final say. So”—Garth smiled, and his famous boyishness abruptly took the curse off of his cranky tone— “that’s what we want. Someone who’ll go off, write us a great script while we lie in the sun.” He banged his fist on the table. “No more script conferences until there’s a script to confer about.”

  Tony laughed. Garth smiled mischievously. “Okay.” Tony said to him. He felt completely at ease with Garth. He seemed bright, accessible, and reasonable. “So how do I convince you to hire me?” Tony said. He didn’t know if it was too bold a remark. But it was what he wanted to know, and Garth’s honesty made him feel that truth was the best approach.

  “You don’t have to,” Foxx said.

  “Let me tell you why you’re here,” Garth said. He ran a hand through his straight black hair, another gesture straight out of his roles. “I saw your play last year in New York—”

  “Youngsters?”

  Garth smirked. “Yeah. Did you have more than one play on that year?”

  “Yes,” Tony said quietly.

  Garth looked abashed. “You did?”

  “I had two one-acters on at the Quest Guild right after Youngsters.”

  “I didn’t know that. I wish I’d seen them. I guess I wasn’t in town—”

  “You might have been. They were only on for four weeks. It was a limited run.”

  “Anyway, I did see Youngsters. You know, I’ve seen a lot of stuff about the sixties, the antiwar movement, the sexual revolution—nobody got it the way you did. There were no preachy monologues, you snuck in the politics painlessly, you made terrible fun of all of us, and then you turned it around beautifully. I cried at her speech …” He turned to Foxx. “You know, the druggie who yells at her kid sister about how it was worth it, no matter how badly they failed.”

  Foxx nodded throughout gravely, but
again with that abstracted look of someone who has heard it too often.

  “Thank you,” Tony said. He was astonished that Garth had been to his play (and surprised that he hadn’t known it; usually the presence of a celebrity in an off-Broadway theater doesn’t go unnoticed) and intensely flattered by Garth’s vivid recall and detailed praise. Why he should so value Garth’s admiration—hadn’t the Times said he was “touched with genius”?—he didn’t know, but he felt himself suffused with a happy warmth.

  “Anyway, I had just read the fourth, the fifth, I don’t know what draft of Concussion—”

  “Is that the title of this project?” Tony asked.

  “Working title,” Foxx said hastily. “We need something—”

  “Less medical!” Garth said impatiently. “Anyway, I’m sitting clapping at the curtain, tears coming down my face, and I think: Why the fuck didn’t we hire this kid to write Concussion?”

  Tony smiled. “So why didn’t you?”

  “ ’Cause the studio wants people with credits, as if that proves something. Concussion’s a thriller, that’s what’s gonna sell it to the public. Like a Hitchcock movie, it’ll mostly be a glamorous chase picture. But—and it’s a big but—what gives it resonance, some depth, is this: we take a guy in his mid-thirties, he’s in Washington, he’s made it, he’s a partner in a firm that does a lot of antitrust work, basically fighting the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, all the regulating bodies of the Justice Department. So, he’s an establishment guy. But in the sixties, he was a radical. And a real radical. Fell in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman—”

  “Meryl Streep,” Foxx offered.

  Tony smiled involuntarily, but then he remembered who these people were. If they wanted Meryl Streep for a part, they could get her.

  “Yeah, I’d love to work with Meryl again,” Garth said. “She’s terrific. And she’d be perfect for this. Anyway, she’s very radical, and part of the reason he went along with going underground, making bombs, was that he was in love with her.”