Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

“This is all back story,” Foxx said.

  Garth smirked. “He says that ’cause it scares the shit out of the studio. Like I’m gonna make a movie in which I blow up the President.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Tony said.

  “Yeah.” Garth winked at him. “You get the idea. It’s all back story, and he’s sorry he ever had anything to do with making bombs—”

  “Why did he stop?”

  “Ah!” Garth leaned forward eagerly. “This is how the movie begins. It’s 1968. We see a quiet town house in Greenwich Village. I’m in the basement with Meryl. Quickly establish I love her while I argue with her that we shouldn’t place the bomb—which we see her making along with two other characters—in a situation where anyone could be hurt. She’s very hard-line. Finally, I say we need milk, or they want sandwiches for lunch—”

  “He goes out for lunch,” Foxx said impatiently. “He can’t go out for milk.”

  “Whatever,” Garth said. “Doesn’t matter. I go out. I’m about halfway down the block—”

  “Town house blows up,” Tony said for him. “You’re doing the Eleventh Street incident.”

  “Exactly. You see?” Garth said to Foxx. “Tony knows what I’m talking about. The other writers had never heard of the Eleventh Street town house.”

  “That’s great that you know about it,” Foxx said with a big smile at Tony.

  “So,” Garth said, again running a hand through his hair, “the town house blows up. Cut, dissolve, fifteen years later. I’m an establishment guy in a real conservative law firm. You find out that Meryl was presumably killed in the explosion, that I’ve never gotten over her, that I was totally turned off politics by her death, and so on. And then, Nyack happens.”

  “This is great,” Tony said. “It’ll be like Vertigo, only it’s the sixties coming back to haunt him.”

  Garth leaned back with a big smile and gestured toward him, the star asking the audience to acknowledge the presence and talent of his costars. “You’ve got it.”

  Foxx, however, was frowning. “Nyack?” he said with distaste, as if someone had asked him to move there.

  “You know, the terrorist bank robbery,” Garth said.

  “In the script?” Foxx asked.

  “Yeah,” Garth said patiently. “That’s based on a real incident. The Nyack thing. You didn’t know that?”

  “I thought that was invented. Is there going to be a legal problem?”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Do we need it?” Foxx said. “I don’t think it works. Can’t Meryl’s character come back as something else? I don’t like her killing cops and being a bank robber.”

  “But she hasn’t actually done the robbery!” Garth said, his tone so aggrieved that Tony knew this was a point that had been argued many times.

  “That distinction is unimportant,” Foxx said. “All the audience will know is that she’s a terrorist. Saying she’s innocent of a particular act of terrorism won’t change that. She won’t be sympathetic. Meryl would never play the part!” Foxx burst out with abrupt impatience.

  “Why make it clear?” Tony asked.

  They both stared at him. Their looks were blank, as if they had forgotten he was there. “What do you mean?” Garth snapped.

  “Hitchcock wouldn’t make it clear. Our hero, after the flashback, would be sitting at home watching the TV news coverage of the Nyack robbery with a look on his face that’d tell the audience it frightened him, and then there’d be a knock on the door. And Meryl, beautiful and distraught, would be there, telling a breathless and confused story of how she was being set up, of her years underground, and so on. A story whose truth we wouldn’t know until the end of the picture. We’d have a hero who intellectually thinks she’s guilty, but emotionally needs her to be innocent.” Tony turned to Foxx. “Meryl, if the part was written properly, might want to play it because it would allow her to simultaneously play a villain and the romantic lead. The best of both roles in fact.”

  Foxx listened. He looked Tony in the eyes while nodding agreement: his eyes were suspicious, however, searching doubtfully for a catch, a hidden trick to Tony’s explanation. At the finish they flickered, and Foxx leaned back, looking up at the ceiling.

  Garth, meanwhile, reached across the table and rubbed Tony’s head—an affectionate big brother. “That’s brilliant,” he said.

  Tony knew it wasn’t brilliant. But he loved Garth saying so. He flushed at having his hair tousled: he knew his ego was being seduced; but he didn’t care; it felt too good to protest.

  Tony looked at Foxx. He knew now that Foxx was the impediment to his being hired. He had also realized that Gloria Fowler’s sudden inspiration to be his agent had come from her certain knowledge that Garth wanted to hire him. She had been dishonest, pretending that she had picked him out of the haystack of off-Broadway theater; but the credit for that belonged to Garth. I’m too naive, Tony said to himself while he waited for Foxx’s eyes to come back down from the ceiling. He knew Foxx wanted the political background out of the script, and therefore he would see Tony as a step backward. Tony had made it sound like he would only use it as a Hitchcockian veil of suspense: if Foxx bought that, he’d get the job.

  “Well … ?” Garth said to Foxx. “What are you doing? Checking the sprinkler system?”

  Foxx lowered his eyes. They brightened at something. A smile came over his face and he seemed to straighten in readiness. Garth followed his gaze and also smiled. Tony, still waiting for Foxx’s judgment, felt hands come around his head and cover his eyes. He smelled a perfume he had known all his life.

  “What’s the matter? You never write. You never call.” said a guttural female voice. Laughter lay only an inch below its deep surface; an amusement that had cued audiences in the subtle way only a great comedienne can that a joke was being played, and thereby got even bigger laughs than the lines deserved.

  “Hi, Ma,” Tony said, playing the comedy in the harassed voice of a teenager.

  His mother released her blindfold and then he was hugged violently, pressed into her substantial breasts, suffused by her familiar odor. Out of the crush, he could see with one eye that surrounding tables were looking on with self-conscious delight.

  “What have you been doing to my boy?” Maureen demanded of Garth in a melodramatic tone while still crushing Tony.

  “I’m innocent,” Garth said. “The producer made me do it.”

  “He comes to town.” she said, releasing Tony and slapping him on the shoulder. “Doesn’t phone, doesn’t tell me where he’s staying. Is this a son or a viper?”

  “Neither, darling,” Foxx said. “He’s a screenwriter.”

  Maureen pushed at Tony. “Let me in, you louse.” Tony slid over. Maureen got in, saying, “You making a deal with my boy, or just jerking him off?”

  “Around, darling, not off,” Foxx corrected, while Garth convulsed with laughter.

  “I always get idioms mixed up,” Maureen said, winking at Tony. Her double entendre, disguised as naïveté, was an old joke between them. “Well, which is it?”

  Garth smiled. “That was the question I was going to ask Jimmy. But I was going to wait until Tony left.”

  “Since when are you diplomatic?” Maureen said to Garth.

  Tony kept waiting for an entrance into this banter—and praying that his mother would stop just short of totally humiliating him. She usually did, but there had been miserable exceptions.

  “Maureen, I’m hurt,” Garth said, and looked it too.

  “Of course we want to hire him,” Foxx said. “But the studio has to approve.”

  Garth smiled.

  Tony wondered.

  Maureen said, “That’s bullshit, darling. If Bill Garth and Jimmy Foxx tell a studio they want a writer, the studio hires him.” She turned to Tony and kissed him full on the lips. “You’ve got the job. Stick it to them on the negotiation. They’ll pay your price.”

  Garth roared, throwing his head back and slapping Foxx on the back. Even
Foxx couldn’t control his face, beaming at Maureen.

  Tony, stunned, the exhaustion of his trip and the long night of talk returning through the anesthesia of adrenaline, looked away from the group and scanned the Polo Lounge.

  Most of the tables were looking at him.

  Wondering.

  Who was that kid with the famous actor and actress? Who was that masked man seated with Jim Foxx? Should we know him?

  Yes, Tony answered silently, while the others laughed.

  GARLANDS DEAL MEMO

  re: Fred Tatter novel. The Locker Room. $20,000 advance. Payable: $5,000 on signing; $5,000 on delivery of a mutually satisfactory one hundred pages; $10,000 on delivery of a mutually satisfactory completed manuscript. Bart Cullen, agent. Robert Holder, editor.

  NEWSTIME INTEROFFICE MEMO

  John Syms will be detached from senior-editing Nation to Future Projects for six months. Jim Daily will senior-edit Nation during his absence. David Bergman will fill in to senior-edit Business.

  SHADOW BOOKS DEAL MEMO

  Patty Lane, flat fee, $5,000 for untitled romance novel.

  INTERNATIONAL PICTURES DEAL MEMO

  Tony Winters hired to write first-draft screenplay on Concussion. William Garth. Jim Foxx producers. William Garth star. $50,000 draft and set against $175,000. Contracts to follow.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 7

  For nine months Fred had lived a life once only dreamt of: he was a writer under contract for a novel. The legal agreement itself was precious. He kept the thirty-five-page document at the front of his file drawer. He saw the edge of its nineteenth-century typeface at the start and finish of each work session, when he would remove and replace that day’s writing. Sometimes, late at night, he would get out of bed and surreptitiously sneak into his study, quietly pulling open the drawer, and gaze at the contract: a teenage boy enjoying a stash of pornography.

  At first the glances were passionate, their purpose to reexperience a thrill. But after two months, bogged down in the second chapter, feeling inadequate to the task of actually producing a novel, he made the nightly excursions for reassurance. A confirmation that he, in fact, had a contract.

  After nine months, Fred started to read the legal agreement. By then he was close to finishing the first one hundred pages of his novel. Now he worried that his prose was bad, that Bob Holder would reject the novel when he handed it in. He knew, from Marion among others, that the five-thousand-dollar portion of the twenty-thousand-dollar advance he had received on signing the contract would have to be returned only if another publisher wished to accept Fred’s novel. Nevertheless, late one night he read through the document to confirm this fact.

  The quest was pointless, in a way. If his novel were rejected by Holder, and then by every other publisher, not having to return the five thousand dollars would hardly compensate Fred for such a devastating failure. Better never to have gotten a deal than to have had one and blown it. He would rather have died of thirst in a desert of mediocrity than have had his lips cruelly wetted by a few drops of the rain of success.

  Still, he read through the clauses, looking for the legal reassurance that, even after a hurricane of rejection, he would be left clutching his five thousand dollars. He never got there. His eye was caught by an earlier clause: “$5,000 payable on signing. $5,000 payable on delivery of a mutually satisfactory one hundred pages. $10,000 payable on delivery of a mutually satisfactory completed manuscript.”

  What did “mutually satisfactory” mean? For a moment he thought, illogically, it meant that Holder would have to accept his novel if he, Fred, found it satisfactory. Then he absorbed the phrase. The only protection it gave him was that if Holder liked his novel and Fred didn’t, Fred could prevent Holder from publishing it. This notion delighted Fred, and not simply because of its obvious improbability: the chance that he might dislike his own work while others approved of it was fundamentally unsound. The suggestion that his opinion of his work needn’t be in tow to the world’s was as absurd to Fred as the possibility that he might be granted the ability to fly while the rest of humanity remained earthbound. To be a yo-yo jerked up and cast down by an unseen and whimsical giant, spinning on a string of hope, seemed an immutable natural law to him, a fate no one could escape.

  He phoned Karl Stein first thing in the morning to chat about that silly clause in his contract, ignoring Karl’s request, made to all his friends, that they not interrupt him before noon. Since the disappointing publication of Stewardess, Karl had had trouble writing his next book, and he liked to keep his mornings free of distractions. Fred had been ignoring Karl’s injunction from the day he got his deal for The Locker Room. Fred justified his violations by telling himself that Karl wasn’t serious. For although Karl would say, “Fred, I can only talk for a few minutes,” at the start of the conversation, it was almost always Karl who would end up telling a story or worrying over a plot point in his new novel, thereby extending the call for an hour.

  That morning Fred was startled when he had heard Karl’s voice blare loudly in the phone with the telltale whoosh of a tape recorder, saying, “Hello. This is Karl Stein. I’m not in right now. But if you leave your name and number when you hear the beep, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “What!” Fred said, after the beep, with mock outrage. “A phone-answering machine! I can’t believe it! And I certainly don’t believe that you’re out at nine-thirty in the morning!” Fred guffawed into the receiver. “I was just calling to tell you something I found in my book contract …” Fred paused and waited. He knew Karl would be monitoring the machine, listening to Fred talk. Fred thought that the suggestion he had something interesting in his book contract, keeping in mind that Karl was also being published by Bob Holder and Garlands, might provoke Karl—

  There was a clattering sound. “Fred?”

  “Karl? Is this you? Or a robot?”

  “I was taking a shower, and I—”

  “Sure, sure,” Fred said. “When did you get the machine?”

  “Yesterday. Now that I’m doing more magazine articles, I’ll be in and out—”

  Fred laughed good-naturedly. “And in case the President calls, you don’t want to miss it.”

  “Fred,” Karl said, his naturally deep voice resonating even more with suppressed anger, “I need the machine.”

  “Hey, I was teasing. I know. I hate the machines, that’s all. I always think it’s a person at first. But the worst thing is, you have to have a reason every time you call somebody. Otherwise, you’re left listening to the beep and going: Duh … Most of the time, I call people just to chat.”

  “Or drive them crazy,” Karl said, with enough humorous coloration to soften his voice’s dark palette.

  “That’s right,” Fred said, laughing, but he felt stung, reminded once more that he wanted Karl’s frendship more than Karl wanted his. Every time Fred began to behave unselfconsciously with Karl, he was brought up short and made to feel that he had to start again, watching that his tone be deferential, careful, stepping around Karl’s ego as though it were shattered glass on a clear floor: the sharp pieces might be anywhere and they could cut deep.

  “So what’s new?” Karl asked, friendly again, now that he had Fred bleeding.

  Fred knew that Karl had heard him saying on the machine there was something interesting in his contract. He wanted to force Karl to ask what it was. “Oh, nothing. I’m stuck on the book. Is the game on this week?” There was a pause, a hesitating pause from Karl. Since Fred’s three-hundred-dollar loss, Karl had been obliged to invite Fred back several times. Besides, in Fred’s mind, he had a book contract now, so he belonged as much as anyone. But Fred was surprised that after three more visits, even though he had done better—not winning back what he had lost, but breaking even once, winning fifty dollars another time, losing a small amount—that Karl didn’t volunteer an invitation for the next week. And when Fred asked to come, Karl stammered that an old member of the game was in town and
they didn’t have room for him.

  Every week for a month and a half, it had been the same: Fred waiting for Karl to say something, finally asking himself, and then being given some excuse. Karl’s stammer would get worse and his ability to invent was taxed into bankruptcy. By the fourth week of noninvitation. Karl was saying that two caned chairs had been broken by a visiting overweight uncle and Karl couldn’t accommodate a seventh player. Fred, of course, offered to bring his own chair. Then Karl added to his poor invention by saying that he felt tired and wanted the game to end early and so preferred holding the number of participants down. Fred, naturally, said he would leave at eleven. Karl finally had to say no without rationalizing. But Fred was not to be got rid of by even that clear an answer. He said, “Okay, but I want to come next week. I’m still not even, you know.” And so Fred was back in and stayed for seven more weeks.

  But then Sam Wasserman complained to Karl about Fred. Sam said that Fred was ruining the game with his cheapskate style of play. It was true that Fred, since the three-hundred-dollar loss, had become a conservative gamesman, folding nine out of ten hands on the opening cards. Karl, bullied by Sam’s remarks and fearful of losing Sam, made another attempt at discouraging Fred from coming. He tried a direct lie, telling Fred that he had decided to give up playing and had canceled the game. Fred asked why. Karl said the arranging, the setting up of the table, the cleaning up afterward, all of it was too much hassle. Fred offered to take over. Since, in fact, Karl had not canceled the game, he could hardly say yes and permit Fred to call the others, who were under the impression that nothing had changed. That would work only if he included the other five players in his deception. Karl was embarrassed by his own actions, humiliated both by the fact that he was telling lies and that he didn’t have the guts to simply tell Fred he wasn’t wanted. He was forced to call Fred back and say the game was on.

  Karl had spent several nights unable to fall asleep, wondering why he bothered being friends with Fred. He told himself not to let Fred seduce him into long telephone calls, not to be frightened to tell Fred he was ruining the poker game, in brief, not to care about sparing Fred’s feelings. But every morning, no matter how many vows he had made, Fred would call and Karl would answer, tight and tense in the early part of the conversation, until he heard himself saying something insulting or demeaning to Fred, something he would instantly regret and feel he’d have to make up for by chatting longer.