Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

  “He brought it up.” Tony crunched an ice cube, the cold radiating through a tooth and sending a frozen bolt of pain to his brain.

  “Pity we have to wait for him to write the damn thing.” Foxx smiled nastily.

  “Poor Fred,” Tony said sardonically. “No one here has any respect for his talent.”

  “Talent?” Foxx said as though he had never heard the word. He laughed. “Don’t pity him. He’s done great for himself.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tony answered.

  “Say!” Foxx said, and grabbed his arm. “I just heard from some guy—theater producer …” He pointed toward a small man huddled in a corner with an overweight woman.

  “Ted Bishop,” Tony supplied the name.

  “He said he’s doing a new play of yours in the fall.”

  “Yep,” Tony answered, and crushed another cube, enjoying the hurtful cold.

  “How come you didn’t tell me about it? He says it’d make a great movie.”

  Tony grunted.

  “When did you write it?”

  “While I was rewriting the script for the eighteenth time.” Tony put his empty glass down. “I’d better find my wife.” He started to move away.

  “Can I read it?” Foxx called after him.

  “I don’t know,” Tony called back. “How are the remedial courses coming?”

  Foxx’s obscene answer was drowned out by a hubbub coming from the windowed end of the room. There, shouting for quiet, stood Tom Lear. He was on a chair, holding a glass aloft to make a toast, while next to him Sam Wasserman. Bob Holder, and Karl Stein were shushing the crowd.

  “We come to praise Fred,” Tom called out. “Not to break his eardrums.” After some laughter, he had their attention. “We all know why we’re here,” Tom Lear said in a solemn, hushed tone. The room became piously silent. “To tell Fred to please get his damn book off the bestseller list and make room for one of us!”

  Hoots of laughter. Scattered applause. And then, shocking the crowd into a wild outburst of hilarity, Fred let out a wet, loud Bronx cheer. “Never!” he shouted.

  “No, seriously,” Tom Lear said. “No one deserves this success more than Fred.” Tom lowered his head—to keep from snickering, Patty Lane thought to herself—and the crowd returned to the enforced reverence of a school auditorium. “Success, especially when it happens to someone who’s young, usually spoils them. They start to believe their reviews—”

  “Not me!” Fred called out, and everybody laughed, relieved that the author had been the one to point indirectly that his reviews had been either very mixed or outright pans.

  Lear pressed on, holding a hand up for quiet. “They forget their friends, lose interest in the struggle to write well, and only care about the interest on their money. It’s ruined more than one brilliant young American writer. Fred has too much good sense and good feeling for that. More than anything, that’s what I love about him.” Tom lifted his glass: “To another year on the list. Fred.”

  “To another year,” most of the crowd mumbled, and there was scattered, desultory applause. Fred felt the urge to cry. Bart and Marion flanked him while he listened. Indeed, the town house contained the sum of all his relationships: all of his New York friends, even the old gang from Long Island; his parents were standing shyly in a corner with their best friends; his brother and sister were over by the hors d’oeuvres stuffing their faces. He loved them all. Even Tom and Sam and the other writing boys who had treated him like a piece of shit—the struggle to win their admiration had only made it a more valued prize.

  At his worst moments he suspected none of them would care about him if he hadn’t made it so big, but tonight he felt, in the warmth and noise of this room, that it wasn’t so. They had all helped, after all. Even if sometimes they had been reluctant, or envious once things began to go well, despite all the insults, they had taken him to their hearts. Marion kicked him out, but she took him back. Holder asked for a lot of rewrites, but he never lost faith in Fred’s ability to do them. Bart was cold and bossy, but he sure came through on his promises.

  At times Fred had felt as though his heart would break, like a child wandering in the cold, unable to find his way home. But the villains had all turned out to be benevolent under their dark mustaches, and the brightly wrapped packages beneath the glowing Christmas tree in that distant window were for him after all. He leaned drunkenly on his wife and felt his eyes moisten. I love these people, he said to himself.

  Holder’s blustering, mostly self-congratulatory speech followed, embarrassing the group. People shifted restlessly from one foot to another, a few deserted to the bar, until Bart, correctly judging the limits of the party’s endurance of honoring The Locker Room, interrupted to say the buffet on the second floor was ready. There was ecstatic applause and a stampede upstairs on the old staircase that rumbled in the frail house’s chest like a death rattle.

  What horseshit, Tony thought to himself, draining another glass of Scotch while he watched the eager faces go by. Keep it to yourself, he said as a reminder, going over the long list of vows he had made on the fateful drive back from his father’s office to Garth’s Malibu house a year ago. This party was a sore test of his fidelity to the new Tony. No carping at the success of others. No discussion of his own projects, no predictions of either success or failure. He had slipped twice already, allowing sarcasms about Fred to escape. Sarcasm was worse than an outright complaint. He had taken a swipe at Foxx, probably undoing a year of studious politeness. Sarcasm—the consolation prize of failed talent. His mother, now the ultimate symbol of a loser to him, used it often. And then he had been sexual with Patty, breaking another of his monk’s orders. Learn to be a good bit player, Tony, he ordered himself. Don’t step into the center spot; stand aside in the shadow and do your work. Do your work and one day the brilliant light will find you.

  “Jim!” he called, spotting his producer edging toward the stairs

  Foxx looked at him, his mouth tight. “Yes?”

  “I’d love you to read my play, but … come here.” He gestured. Foxx, still wearing the cool look of a hurt parent awaiting an apology, stepped out of the flow. “I’m very insecure about it—especially being read cold in script form. There’ll be a reading in about six weeks—for me to discover what else needs to be done. I’d love you to come and help suggest revisions.”

  Foxx’s face relaxed. “Sure. I’ll be in town for the sneak in Long Island.”

  “That’s right!” Tony snapped his fingers. “Terrific. Will you really come? I’d appreciate—”

  “Definitely! Why did you act so weird about it?”

  “I’m scared … you know. It’s been a while since—”

  “I understand.” Foxx put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t explain.”

  “Hi!” Betty said, appearing. “You want to have some food? Or can’t you stand any more?”

  Tony looked shocked. “What do you mean? This is terrific. Are you feeling all right? Can you stay?” he asked with nervous concern.

  “Yeah, I’m starving!” she said. They joined the slow mass moving up the stairs to the buffet.

  Patty had spotted Tony and Betty a few moments before and now pushed her way toward them. She had looked forward to spending the party with them—Tony had been so wonderful during the past year, so full of calm good sense; he seemed to be losing it in the face of Fred’s triumph. It was hard to bear.

  While they toasted Fred, Patty had looked idly at the men in the room. She didn’t envy the women their male possessions. Most of the men talked away to other men, interrupting their women’s dialogue, joking whenever the subject of their wives’ or dates’ work came up, only to resume babbling nervously about their work, their hopes for promotion, and to indulge in graveyard humor about the failures of rivals. She had no desire to capture them with her cunt, soothe their restless yearning for a flattering all-encompassing embrace. She knew she was better than them. And she no longer planned to conceal it.

  �
�Hey!” she called out to Tony and Betty. “Wait for me!”

  “Patty!” a cheerful Tony called down, waving his hand to urge her up. “Sorry I bitched at you,” he said, sounding like his good self.

  “Don’t worry,” she called back with a brilliant smile. “It’ll happen to us too.”

  “Well, anyway,” Tony said with a sad look, “let’s eat his food.”

  Patty squeezed in next to them and they continued their ascent on the rickety staircase, feet stamping, a herd in synchronous movement. Together, among the anonymous others, they continued their climb up—up to their only nourishment: the feast of success.

  A BIOGRAPHY OF RAFAEL YGLESIAS

  Rafael Yglesias (b. 1954) is a master American storyteller whose career began with the publication of his first novel at seventeen. Through four decades of writing, Yglesias has produced numerous highly acclaimed novels and screenplays, and his fiction is distinguished by its clear-eyed realism and keen insight into human behavior. His books range in style and scope from novels of ideas, psychological thrillers, and biting satires, to self-portraits and portraits of New York society.

  Yglesias was born and raised in Washington Heights, a working-class neighborhood in northern Manhattan. Both his parents were writers. His father, Jose, was the son of Cuban and Spanish parents and wrote articles for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Daily Worker, as well as novels. His mother, Helen, was the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Russian and Polish immigrants and worked as literary editor of the Nation. Rafael was educated mainly at public schools, but the Yglesiases did send him to the prestigious Horace Mann School for three years. Inspired by his parents’ burgeoning literary careers, Rafael left school in the tenth grade in order to finish his first book. The largely autobiographical Hide Fox, and All After (1972) is the story of a bright young student who drops out of private school against his parents’ wishes to pursue his artistic ambitions.

  Many of Yglesias’s subsequent novels would also draw heavily from his own life experiences. Yglesias wrote The Work Is Innocent (1976), a novel that candidly examines the pressures of youthful literary success, in his early twenties. Hot Properties (1986) follows the up-and-down fortunes of young literary upstarts drawn to New York’s entertainment and media worlds. In 1977, Yglesias married artist Margaret Joskow and the couple had two sons: Matthew, now a renowned political pundit and blogger, and Nicholas, a science-fiction writer. Yglesias’s experiences as a parent in Manhattan would help shape Only Children (1988), a novel about wealthy and ambitious new parents in the city. Margaret would later battle cancer, which she died from in 2004. Yglesias chronicled their relationship in the loving, honest, and unsparing A Happy Marriage (2009).

  After marrying Joskow, Ylgesias took nearly a decade away from writing novels to dedicate himself to family life. During this break from book-writing, Yglesias began producing screenplays. He would eventually have great success adapting his novel Fearless (1992), a story of trauma and recovery, into a critically acclaimed motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez. Other notable screenplays and adaptations include From Hell, Les Misérables, and Death and the Maiden. He has collaborated with such directors as Roman Polanski and the Hughes brothers.

  A lifelong New Yorker, Yglesias’s eye for city life—ambition, privilege, class struggle, and the clash of cultures—informs much of his work. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are often primary characters in Yglesias’s narratives, and titles such as The Murderer Next Door (1991) and Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil (1998) draw heavily on the intellectual traditions of psychology.

  Yglesias lives in New York’s Upper East Side.

  Yglesias with Tamar Cole, his half-sister from his mother’s first marriage, around 1955. He was raised with Tamar and his half-brother, Lewis.

  Yglesias sits atop his half-brother Lewis Cole’s shoulders around 1956. As adults, Yglesias and Cole worked together writing screenplays for ten years. All of them were sold, but none were ultimately made.

  Yglesias at age ten, in a car with his mother in his father’s hometown of Ybor City in Tampa, Florida. Around this time, Yglesias lived in Spain for a year, an experience that proved formative in his young life.

  Georgia Yglesias, Rafael’s paternal grandmother, is shown here relaxing in Central Park with Rafael and his father. Yglesias’s relationship with his grandmother was an important part of his childhood.

  Pages from a travel book that Yglesias and his mother wrote together, dated from Paris in early October 1964. Though his mother did most of the writing, Yglesias considers this to be the first thing he ever wrote.

  Yglesias typed and signed this letter in 1969, just months before beginning work on his first novel, Hide Fox, and All After (1972). The letter references Yglesias’s decision to drop out of school and begin writing fulltime, a biographical detail that is paralleled in Hide Fox.

  A photo of Yglesias taken by his late wife, Margaret, in the early 1970s, the first summer they were together as a couple.

  Yglesias with his parents at their summer house in Maine.

  Yglesias and Cole on the front steps of Yglesias’s parents’ house in Maine in 1976, a short time before they began their decade-long writing collaboration.

  Yglesias and film producer Paula Weinstein on the set of Fearless, a movie based on his book of the same name. The film, which starred Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and Rosie Perez, was adapted for the screen by Yglesias and was hailed by critics upon its release in 1993.

  Margaret and Yglesias with their two children, Matthew and Nicholas, shown here on a very happy vacation on Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, around Christmas of 1993.

  Yglesias and Matthew in an outtake from Jerry Bauer’s 1996 photo shoot with Yglesias before the publication of Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil. Matthew had come home from school in the midst of the shoot.

  Yglesias and Margaret with their sons Matthew and Nicholas in September of 2003. After Margaret’s two-year battle with bladder cancer, she and Yglesias had to break the news that doctors considered her condition terminal. Margaret died in June of 2004.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © by Rafael Yglesias

  cover design by Jonathan Sainsbury

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-0508-2

  This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com