Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

  Listening, hearing only the tones, David loathed them. Their self-satisfaction, their absorption in trivialities, disguised by an ironic self-satire which sounded hollow and insincere, was revealed by the sounds of their voices, abstracted from leavening smiles and gestures. And he loathed himself, because he knew he was so much like them. The loft, with its classy hypermodern design, had impressed Rounder and Chico, adding a layer of sophistication to their image of David. And he had said nothing to contradict their reaction, didn’t admit that he would never have volunteered to live that way. That if it weren’t his brother’s handiwork, he would have ripped it all out.

  Patty served dinner, forgiving David for the carrying to and fro, the clearing, and so on, because of his blinded state. Tony dominated the dinner conversation. They asked endless questions when he dropped the fact that his mother was Maureen Winters. The hopelessly star-struck fascination of the Marx Brothers with show business never ceased to amaze and disgust David. Here were people who had dined with presidents and kings, oohing and aahing over stories of foolishly extravagant Hollywood: listening to Tony describe meetings with Bill Garth as though he were allowing them a peek at the lighter side of God.

  And then, pathetically, Rounder tried to match Tony’s stories, telling of his encounters with stars. Rounder’s tales were of formal dinners, charity banquets, secondhand information from stories his reporters had filed. In short, they were boring. At least Tony’s stories were alive with absurd details, from the point of view of someone who knew these people when they were relaxed and off-guard.

  David was sipping his coffee and squinting through his pounding headache while Rounder fumbled through a pointless anecdote about a charity banquet with Norman Lear as master of ceremonies when he put his coffee cup down and Patty did a double take and then burst out laughing.

  Rounder stopped talking.

  David stared at Patty, wondering if she’d lost her mind.

  One by one the others looked at David. And laughed.

  David quickly looked down at his shirt, expecting to find that he had spilled coffee all over it. But there was nothing there.

  “Want a little sugar in your coffee. David?” Rounder said, and triggered another round of amusement.

  David followed their eyes to his plate. He had shoved his chair back a foot and had to lean forward to see what they saw.

  He had placed his coffee cup squarely on top of his German chocolate cake. The white china cup was sinking into the cake, a gentle coffee-fall washing over the tilted rim and making his dessert into a muddy mess.

  He watched them laugh while Patty explained that David had broken his glasses. She described the scene in the kitchen vividly and the sight gag of the coffee cup was a perfect illustrated page. Their laughter increased.

  The whole idea of the evening was in jeopardy. David had wanted to present himself, his life, as evidence of being adult, serious, responsible. He bore the burden, as well as the glamour, of being the youngest senior editor in Newstime’s history. To make himself a Marx Brother, he thought, required that he seem mature. David stared at them coldly. Faced with the collapse of his plan, he felt fatalistic. He had been a fool, anyway, to arrange the evening, he thought to himself. He deserved this exhibition. To try to make it through socializing—it was disgusting and merited humiliation and failure.

  “I don’t know why you’re all laughing,” he said coolly.

  They quieted, unsure of him. He wasn’t certain of his own mood, either. He had, for a moment, felt hurt. But the sight of the plate was amusing.

  “I think it’ll make a great cover for our Health in America feature. You know—Can We Give This Up?” He pointed to the caffeine and sugar mixing: “I carefully arranged it for maximum effect, don’t you think? I mean, that picture says: heart attack.”

  They relaxed and enjoyed his response. Chico winked at him. “You’re right. David. I was against that cover, didn’t think it had enough drama. But that sure persuades me.”

  “I told you.” Rounder said to his wife, “he’s our most innovative senior editor.” They all smiled, but Rounder’s voice had an earnest tone.

  “He is,” Chico said, now completely serious. “You’ve being doing terrific work. David. You made the Weekly look dull on the Conoco takeover.”

  “Would have been even better if,” David said quickly, “you’d let me get that shot of their chief executive officer doing a pratfall into a vat of oil.” David turned to Tony Winters, chic Tony with his glib talk and winning smile, and said. “I have a slapstick view of the world.”

  His heart began to thump again in his chest while they laughed and turned to him, warming his chilled soul back to the world and the things of it. The cold abstraction from them, the self-hatred of his own intentions and desires, melted back into the comfortable mush of life: the messy sugared world of acquisition and ambition.

  Betty looked at her husband. He was a few feet away, sitting at a large round table next to the passageway that led to the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the unchic back room of Elaine’s Restaurant—New York’s best-known literary and show-business hangout. She had emerged from the small, cold, and rather dirty ladies’ room. A fat, unshaven fellow whose bottom button on his ‘shirt had popped off, exposing his navel, was standing in her way.

  “Okay, Paulie. No problem,” Tony’s father, Richard Winters, was saying to the plump man.

  Paulie had a small thick hand on Richard’s shoulder, massaging it while he spoke in a nervous voice, its tone alternating between loud joshing and low, secretive intensity, the shifts made abruptly, and not always with apparent cause. It was now intimate, suggestive: “’Cause, ya know, it’s no fuckin’ problem for me. I don’t like the guy. Jesus!” he said explosively into the air. “I’m exhausted. I was up at five to see my shrink!”

  “Five in the morning?” Richard said, catching Betty’s eye and winking, as if apologizing for his participation in this conversation. “That’s when you see your psychiatrist?”

  “Six. If I didn’t have him first thing in the morning.” Paulie said in an intimate whisper, and then burst out: “I’d never get out of bed!”

  “This is my daughter-in-law. Betty,” Richard said, gently moving Paulie’s body aside so she could pass. “Paul Friedman.”

  Paul Friedman had his hand out, ready to shake even before he knew where Betty was. As a result, he almost shook hands with the wall, since Betty went around him while Paul turned to where she had been standing.

  “This way, this way,” Richard Winters said, turning Paul around. The hand stayed out until it caught up to Betty.

  “Who are you?” Paul said when they at last made contact.

  “She’s my daughter-in-law,” Richard said.

  “My wife!” Tony called from the other side of the table.

  “My name is Betty,” she said mildly, not wanting to make a feminist point, simply trying to give him a name to remember, rather than a category. Betty knew that to be identified other than as an attachment to Tony or his father at Elaine’s was hopeless, and she didn’t squirm or struggle against that indignity. At her blackest, she told herself that someday she would publish a wild-eyed and brilliant young novelist, and then she’d be identified as his—or her—editor, presumably a more worthwhile secondhand fame than being a wife. It is, it is, she assured herself.

  But the restaurant made her feel inconsequential. Within the ten feet surrounding her were two of the most important writers in the country. One of them was eating with the best-known woman editor; the other was pawing a model. The editor, someone Betty admired enormously, was smiling girlishly and adoringly while her author pontificated; the model was doing the same at the next table. Was there a difference? Betty wounded herself with the question. There must be, she decided.

  Paul Friedman, meanwhile, had decided Betty was inconsequential. He had turned back instantly after hearing she was someone’s wife—by now he couldn’t have said whose—and said to Tony. “How’s the
script coming?”

  “Fine,” Tony said. He sounded self-conscious. He was. He knew he was within the hearing of world-famous writers. He felt fraudulent discussing his own work in the same room, and hoped, by his one-word answer, to discourage Paul from asking more questions.

  “Who’s doing it?” Friedman asked. His eyes wandered the moment the question was out, scanning the room for other people whom he needed to say hello to.

  “International,” Tony answered, furious that Paul wasn’t paying attention, and humiliated that he couldn’t think of a graceful way to deflect the questions.

  Tony’s father slapped Paul on the back. “Okay, Paul. Our food’s getting cold. Get back to your table.”

  “Yeah …” Paul said, staring off absently. “I’m with great people,” he added, his voice drained of enthusiasm. He then wandered off, stepping sluggishly, as though he were sleepwalking.

  Richard Winters looked at Tony and Betty with a sarcastically raised eyebrow, and they laughed.

  “What does he do?” Betty asked, having trouble believing that Paul could be competent at anything.

  “PR,” Tony answered quickly. He sounded impatient, as if knowing what Paul Friedman did was an obviously essential bit of information.

  “He’s good at it,” Richard said solemnly. “Crazy job. Demands a crazy person.”

  “You were saying that you’ve heard there’ll be changes at International Pictures?” Tony said intently.

  “Well …” Richard looked down at his plate. He sighed. “You know, rumors of management changes at the studios or the networks are constant. But I have reason to believe these are true. Shouldn’t concern you, Tony.”

  Then why did you bring it up? Betty wondered. She had gone to the bathroom when Richard did because she felt Tony tense beside her. It was unpleasant feeling his worry. When they were courting and getting married, one of the qualities she loved in Tony was his easy manner, his sense of accomplishment, so unlike other young men. True, he had a material reason for his self-satisfaction: his first play had been produced successfully, at least by critical standards. With each production failing to accomplish anything more, not winning him money or greater praise, his cheerful attitude had worn thin, and with this movie deal, desperation seemed to have crept in. She had got up from the table to avoid hearing him worry over management changes, something that in the past Tony would have joked about, sure that only his own work and worth mattered, but apparently Paul had stalled the talk until now.

  “I don’t care about who it is,” Tony said. “As long as it doesn’t fuck up International’s relationship with Garth.”

  “If Garth wants to do your script,” Richard said, “you don’t have to worry who’s in charge at the studio.”

  Tony heard the dismissive impatience in his father’s tone. He dropped the subject. Richard looked young for his age; tall and elegant in his pin-striped suit, his tanned face relaxed and open. He cut an impressive figure of strength and reliability, qualities that were not reflected in the distant mirror of his past.

  Producers, agents and writers began to drop by their table, greeting Richard like an old friend. They were the lesser lights of Elaine’s, contacts befitting a business-side network executive. Woody Allen remained aloof at his table, the world-famous novelists flanking them didn’t notice, this year’s Academy Award-winning actress fluttered past, her fur coat brushing against Tony’s back when she squealed and opened her arms to hug someone. Tony took a malicious delight in observing his father’s second-rung status. At least in New York. TV was still TV, something you watched but didn’t talk about in intelligent company.

  When they left, Tony and Betty were outside alone for a moment while Richard was held up inside, collared once again by Paul Friedman. Betty looked tired.

  “Are you okay?” Tony asked.

  “I’m tired.” She moved into his arms, burying her face in his chest.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like having two dinners a night?” He felt alive, looking uptown at Second Avenue. A pack of taxis, freed by a green light, bolted, driving with menacing speed, riding the cracked, uneven road like surfers, their headlights bobbing, turn signals flickering a brief warning before they hurled in front of each other, competing for customers or the next free lane. Their machines were shameless incarnations of the city’s will to win at any cost. Tony felt their delight in the loss of moral constraint, of their triumph over law and good sense: the city is ours! their rattling chassis proclaimed.

  Richard swung open the door and stepped down onto the street, breathing deeply. “Ah!” he exclaimed. His overcoat blew open in the wind, exposing his pink Brooks Brothers shirt. “Remind me never to go there again,” he said to Tony.

  “Why does anybody go there?” Betty asked.

  “To be seen,” Tony snapped, as though having to give the answer was an imposition.

  “Sure ain’t for the food,” Richard said. “Well, do I put you kids in a cab, or would you like to stop at the hotel for a drink?”

  Betty felt Tony’s body tense. He moved away from her to see her face. “Can you stay up, honey?” he asked with a strained note of consideration.

  They had had fights over Tony’s willingness to keep a social evening going beyond Betty’s endurance of fatigue (and pretentiousness, she would have added). She knew he wanted to enjoy his father’s room service at the Pierre, that he hoped to grill him more about the International rumors or whatever else Richard might gossip about. Normally she took the position that if she wanted to go home, Tony should go with her. Her father had taken endless business trips, leaving Betty with the romantic notion that togetherness implied happiness; in her parents’ marriage, separation certainly hadn’t. But she couldn’t complain if Tony wanted to spend extra time with his father, especially since they rarely saw each other. What she resented, and what disappointed her, was that Tony’s desire to hang on to his dad had nothing to do with filial affection. “I’ll go home, sweetie,” she said. “You stay with your dad.”

  Once alone in the cab with his father, Tony felt free, at ease for the first time that evening. He had found the preliminary round of dining at David’s and Patty’s wearing, and the meal with Richard irritating because of the constant interruptions. He had also felt Betty’s impatience with every conversation he tried to have with his father. Why was that? She had always disapproved when Tony spoke slightingly of his father. Why was she bothered by his desire to get to know him better? Wasn’t that her sentimental notion of how he should behave? Betty always seemed displeased with him since the first script conference in LA. Did she know? Was that why? Or was it coming from him: a dissatisfaction he thought he had cleverly concealed?

  He looked at his father’s strong jaw, flashing yellow, red, amber, in the reflected glare of New York’s street and traffic lights. Richard had a distant look while he watched the streets go by. “I miss this town,” he said. He looked at Tony. “I guess you always miss the setting of your youth.” He looked back at the city. “I didn’t have a dime when I lived in New York. I still get a big kick out of being on expense account here: doing all the things I dreamt of when I was a kid.”

  “You sound like a play,” Tony said. From Tony, that was high praise.

  Richard laughed. “More like Playhouse Ninety.”

  “Did you do any work on Playhouse Ninety?”

  “No.” Richard shook his head and frowned. Tony felt abruptly self-conscious: he had placed his father back in the shameful fifties. Their cab pulled up to the carpeted sidewalk of the Pierre and a uniformed doorman with gold-braided epaulets moved to open the door. “The Golden Age of Television,” Richard said, leaning forward to give the driver money, “was mostly garbage, you know.”

  Tony laughed. “I know. They’ve been showing it on Channel Thirteen. Pretty hokey.”

  “It was the era of working-class drama. If it wasn’t set in a kitchen, it wasn’t art.”

  They moved through the lobby quietly. Tony felt you
nger with each step, more and more a child out with a parent. He kept his head down while in the wood-paneled elevator, like a shy little boy unable to meet the glances of strange adults. It all brought back vividly the discomfort he had felt when his father had had custody of him. Richard was a quiet, thoughtful, self-absorbed man whose conversational pattern with Tony was passive, waiting for Tony to begin lines of inquiry, and then supplying only the minimum amount of information necessary to satisfy. Tony had no recollection of his father ever showing any curiosity about his emotional life. There were merely the checklist questions: How’s Betty? Are you writing? Do you have enough money? Have you seen your mother lately?

  “What do you want to drink?” Richard asked once they were in the room.

  “A Remy,” Tony said, flopping onto the floral-patterned couch. He leaned forward and pushed at the low pile of magazines on the coffee table. He opened one of them to the theater guide, listing currently running plays with quotes from the major drama critics. He looked resentfully at the two comedies running on Broadway. One by a commercial slob, the other by an overrated feminist, he said to himself, and flipped the magazine closed.

  Then he felt disgust at this self-revelation of his bitterly envious feelings.

  Richard got off the phone with room service and slowly, thoughtfully started to take off his tie, while glancing at the square slips of phone messages he had been handed at the front desk.

  “I haven’t worked on a play in almost a year,” Tony said. He seemed embarrassed: a sinner confessing.

  Richard looked a little startled. “You’ve been busy on the screenplay.”

  “I have?” Tony laughed.

  “Well, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “Yes.”

  “Excuse me for a moment. I have to return a few of these calls.” Richard got on the phone and placed a series of calls to California. Tony marveled at his father’s manner while doing business. He sounded relaxed and confident, a pleasant man in his tone, but hard, unyielding in what he said.