Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  She smiled back at him. “That reminds me, I’m hungry,” she said.

  So just to cheer things up I ordered lunch for us. I had a plain salad and Osano had an omelet and Charlie Brown ordered a hamburger with french fried potatoes, a steak with vegetables, a salad and a three-scoop ice-cream desert on top of apple pie. Osano and myself enjoyed the people watching Charlie eat. They couldn’t believe it. A couple of men in the next booth made audible comments, hoping to draw us into a conversation so they would have an excuse to talk to Charlie. But Osano and Charlie ignored them.

  I paid the tab, and when I left, I promised to call Osano when I got to New York.

  Osano said, “That would be great. I’ve agreed to talk in front of that Women’s Lib convention next month, and I’ll need some moral support from you, Merlyn. How about if we have dinner that night and then go on to the convention?”

  I was a little doubtful. I wasn’t really interested in any kind of convention, and I was a little worried about Osano’s getting into trouble and I’d have to bail him out again. But I said OK, that I would.

  Neither one of us had mentioned Janelle. I couldn’t resist saying to Osano, “Have you seen Janelle in town?”

  “No,” Osano said, “have you?”

  “I haven’t seen her for a long time,” I said.

  Osano stared at me. The eyes for just one second became their usual sneaky pale green. He smiled a little sadly. “You should never let a girl like that go,” he said. “You just get one of them in a lifetime. Just like you get one big book in your lifetime.”

  I shrugged and we shook hands again. I kissed Charlie on the cheek and then I left.

  That afternoon I had a story conference at Tri-Culture Studios. It was with Jeff Wagon, Eddie Lancer, and the director, Simon Bellfort. I had always thought the Hollywood legends of a writer being rude to his director and producer in a story conference were shitty no matter how funny. But for the first time, at this story conference, I could see why such things had happened. In effect, Jeff Wagon and his director were ordering us to write their story, not my novel. I let Eddie Lancer do most of the arguing, and finally Eddie, exasperated, said to Jeff Wagon, “Look, I’m not saying I’m smarter than you, I’m just saying I’m luckier. I’ve written four hit pictures in a row. Why not ride with my judgment?”

  To me this seemed like a superbly clever argument, but Jeff Wagon and the director had puzzled looks on their faces. They didn’t know what Eddie was talking about, and I could see there was no way to change their minds.

  Finally Eddie Lancer said, “I’m sorry, but if that’s the way you guys want to go, I have to leave this picture.”

  “OK,” Jeff said. “How about you, Merlyn?”

  “I don’t see any point in my writing it your way,” I said. “I don’t think I’d do a good job with it.”

  “That’s fair enough,” Jeff Wagon said. “I’m sorry. Now is there any writer you know that could work on this picture with us and could have some consultations with you guys since you already have done most of the work? It would be very helpful?”

  The thought flashed through my mind that I could get Osano this job. I knew he needed the money desperately and I knew that if I said I would work with Osano he would get the assignment. But then I thought of Osano in a story conference like this taking directions from men like Jeff Wagon and the director. Osano was still one of the great men in American literature, and I thought these guys would humiliate him and then fire him. So I didn’t speak up.

  It was only when trying to go to sleep that I realized maybe I had denied Osano the job to punish him for sleeping with Janelle.

  The next morning I got a call from Eddie Lancer. He told me that he had had a meeting with his agent and his agent said that Tri-Culture Studios and Jeff Wagon were offering him a fifty-thousand-dollar extra fee to stay on the picture, and what did I think?

  I told Eddie that it was perfectly OK with me, whatever he did, but that I wasn’t going back on. Eddie tried to persuade me. “I’ll tell them I won’t go back unless they take you back and pay you twenty-five thousand dollars,” Eddie Lancer said. “I’m sure they’ll go for it.”

  Again I thought of helping Osano, and again I just couldn’t do it. Eddie was going on, “My agent told me if I didn’t go back on this picture, the studio would put more writers on and then try to get the new writers the credit on the picture. Now, if we don’t get script credit, we lose our Writers Guild contract and TV gross points when the picture is sold to television. Also, we both have some net points which we will probably never see. But it’s just an off chance the picture may be a big hit, and then we’ll be kicking our asses in. It could wind up to be a sizable chunk of dough, Merlyn, but I won’t go back on it if you think we should stick together and try to save our story.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the percentage,” I said, “or the credits, and as far as the story goes, what the fuck kind of story it is? It’s schlock, it’s not my book anymore. But you go ahead. I really don’t care. I mean that.”

  “OK,” Eddie said, “and while I’m on, I’ll try to protect your credit as much as I can. I’ll call you when I’m in New York and we’ll have dinner.”

  "Great," I said. "Good luck with Jeff Wagon."

  I spent the rest of the day moving out of my office at Tri-Culture Studios and doing some shopping. I didn't to go back on the same plane as Osano and Chrlie Brown. I thought of calling Janelle, butI didn't.

  "Yeah," Ediie said, "I'll need it."

  A month later, Jeff Wagon called me in New York. He told me that Simon Bellfort thought that Frank Richetti should get a writing credit with Lancer and me.

  “Is Eddie Lancer still with the picture?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” Jeff Wagon said.

  “OK,” I said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Wagon said. “And we’ll keep you posted on what happens. We’ll all see each other at the Academy Awards dinner.” And he hung up.

  I had to laugh. They were turning the picture into a piece of schlock and Wagon had the nerve to talk about Academy Awards. That Oregon beauty should have taken a bigger piece out of his balls. I felt a sense of betrayal that Eddie Lancer had remained on the picture. It was true what Wagon had once said. Eddie Lancer was a natural-born screenwriter, but he was also a natural-born novelist and I knew he would never write a novel again.

  Another funny thing was that though I had fought with everybody and the script was getting worse and worse and I had intended to leave, I still felt hurt. And I guess, too, in the back of my head I still hoped that if I went to California again to work on the script, I might see Janelle. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for months. The last time I had called her up just to say hello and we had chatted for a while and at the end she had said, “I’m glad you called me,” and then she waited for an answer.

  I paused and said, “Me too.” At that she started to laugh and mimicked me.

  She said, “Me too, me too,” and then she said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” and laughed gaily. She said, “Call me when you come out again.”

  And I said, “I will.” But I knew that I would not.

  A month after Wagon called, I got a call from Eddie Lancer. He was furious. “Merlyn,” he said, “they’re changing the script to screw you out of your credit. That guy Frank Richetti is writing all new dialogue, just paraphrasing your words. They’re changing incidents just enough so that it will seem different from your scenes and I heard them talking, Wagon and Bellfort and Richetti, about how they’re going to screw you out of your credit and your percentage. Those bastards don’t even pay any attention to me.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I wrote the novel and I wrote the original screenplay and I checked it with the Writers Guild, and there’s no way I can get screwed out of at least a partial credit and that saves my percentage.”

  “I don’t know,” Eddie Lancer said. “I’m just warning you about what they’re going to do. I hope yo
u’ll protect yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “What about you? How are you coming on the picture?”

  He said, “That fucking Frank Richetti is a fucking illiterate, and I don’t know who’s the bigger hack, Wagon or Bellfort. This may become one of the worst pictures ever made. Poor Malomar must be spinning in his grave.”

  “Yeah, poor Malomar,” I said. “He was always telling me how great Hollywood was, how sincere and artistic the people there could be. I wish he were alive now.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie Lancer said. “Listen, next time you come to California call me and we’ll have dinner.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be coming to California again,” I said. “If you come to New York, call me.”

  “OK, I will,” Lancer said.

  * * *

  A year later the picture came out. I got credit for the book but no credit as the screenwriter. Sreenwriting credit was given to Eddie Lancer and Simon Bellfort. I asked for an arbitration at the Writers Guild, but I lost. Richetti and Bellfort had done a good job changing the script, and so I lost my percentage. But it didn’t matter. The picture was a disaster, and the worst of it was Doran Rudd told me that in the industry the novel was blamed for the failure of the film. I was no longer a salable product in Hollywood, and that was the only thing about the whole business that cheered me up.

  One of the most scathing reviews of the film was by Clara Ford. She murdered it from A to Z. Even Kellino’s performance. So Kellino hadn’t done his job too well with Clara Ford. But Houlinan took a last shot at me. He placed a story on one of the wire services headlined MERLYN NOVEL FAILS AS MOVIE. When I read that, I just shook my head with admiration.

  Chapter 49

  Shortly after the picture came out I was at Carnegie Hall attending the Women’s National Liberation Conference with Osano and Charlie Brown. It featured Osano as the only male speaker.

  Earlier we all had dinner at Pearl’s, where Charlie Brown astonished the waiters by eating a Peking duck, a plate of crabs stuffed with pork, oysters in black bean sauce, a huge fish and then polished off what Osano and me had left on our plates without even smearing her lipstick.

  When we got out of the cab in front of Carnegie Hall, I tried to talk Osano into going on ahead and letting me follow with Charlie Brown on my arm so that the women would think she was with me. She looked so much like the legendary harlot she would enrage the left-wingers of the convention. But Osano, as usual, was stubborn. He wanted them all to know that Charlie Brown was his woman. So when we walked down the aisle to the front, I walked behind them. As I did so, I studied the women in the hall. The only thing odd about them was that they were all women and I realized that many times in the Army, in the orphan asylum, at ball games I was used to seeing either all men or mostly men. Seeing all women this time was a shock, as if I were in an alien country.

  Osano was being greeted by a group of women and led up to the platform. Charlie Brown and I sat down in the first row. I was wishing we were in the back, so I could get the hell out fast. I was so worried I hardly heard the opening speeches, and then suddenly Osano was being led to the lectern and being introduced. Osano stood for a moment waiting for the applause which did not come.

  Many of the women there had been offended by his male chauvinistic essays in the male magazines years ago. Some were offended because he was one of their generation’s most important writers and they were jealous of his achievement. And then there were some of his admirers who applauded very faintly just in case Osano’s speech met with disfavor from the convention.

  Osano stood at the lectern, a vast hulk of a man. He waited a long moment; then he leaned against the lectern arrogantly and said slowly, enunciating every word, “I’ll fight you or fuck you.”

  The hall reverberated with boos, catcalls and hisses. Osano tried to go on. I knew he had used that phrase just to catch their attention. His speech would be in favor of Women’s Liberation, but he never got a chance to make it. The boos and hisses got louder and louder, and every time Osano tried to speak they started again until Osano made an elaborate bow and marched down off the stage. We followed him up the aisle and out the doors of Carnegie Hall. The boos and hisses turned to cheers and applause, to tell Osano that he was doing what they wanted him to do. Leave them.

  Osano didn’t want me to go home with him that night. He wanted to be alone with Charlie Brown. But the next morning I got a call from him. He wanted me to do him a favor.

  “Listen,” Osano said. “I’m going down to Duke University in North Carolina to their rice diet clinic. It’s supposed to be the best fat farm in the United States and they also get you healthy. I have to lose weight and the doctor seems to think that maybe my arteries are clogged and that’s what the rice diet cures. There’s only one thing wrong. Charlie wants to come down with me. Can you imagine that poor girl eating rice for two months? So I told her she can’t come. But I have to bring my car down and I’d like you to drive it for me. We could both bring it down and hang around together for a few days and maybe have some laughs.”

  I thought it over for a minute and then I said, “Sure.” We made a date for the following week. I told Valerie I would be gone for only three or four days. That I would drive Osano’s car down with him, just spend a few days with Osano until he got set, then fly back.

  “But why can’t he drive the car himself?” Valerie said.

  “He really doesn’t look good,” I said. “I don’t think he’s in shape to make that kind of drive. It’s at least eight hours.”

  That seemed to satisfy Valerie, but there was one thing that was still bothering me. Why didn’t Osano want to use Charlie as his driver? He could have shipped her out as soon as they got down there, so the excuse he gave me about not wanting her to eat rice was a phony one. Then I thought maybe he was tired of Charlie and this was his way of getting rid of her. I didn’t worry too much about her. She had plenty of friends who would take care of her.

  So I drove Osano down to the Duke University clinic in his four-year-old Cadillac, and Osano was in great form. He even looked a little better physically. “I love this part of the country,” Osano said when we were in the Southern states. “I love the way they run the Jesus Christ business down here, it’s almost like every small town has its Jesus Christ store, they have Mom-and-Pop Jesus Christ stores and they make a good living and a lot of friends. One of the greatest rackets in the world. When I think about my life, I think only if I had been a religious leader instead of a writer. What a better time I would have had.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just listened. We both knew that Osano could not have been anything but a writer and that he was just following a private flight of fantasy.

  “Yeah,” Osano said. “I would have got together a great hillbilly band and I would have called them Shit Kickers for Jesus. I love the way they’re humble in their religion and so fierce and proud in their everyday life. They’re like monkeys in a training den. They haven’t correlated the action to its consequence, but I guess you could say that about all religions. How about those fucking Hebes in Israel? They won’t let the buses and trains run on holy days and here they are fighting the Arabs. And then those fucking Ginzos in Italy with their fucking Pope. I sure wish I was running the Vatican. I’d put a logo, ‘Every priest is a thief.’ That would be our motto. That would be our goal. The trouble with the Catholic Church is that there are a few honest priests left and they fuck everything up.”

  He went on about religion for the next fifty miles. Then he switched to literature, then he took on the politicians and finally, near the end of our journey, he talked about Women’s Liberation.

  “You know,” he said, “the funny thing is that I’m really all for them. I’ve always thought women got a shitty deal, even when I was the one handing it out to them, and yet those cunts, they didn’t even let me finish my speech. That’s the trouble with women. They have absolutely no sense of humor. Didn’t they know I was making a joke, that I would
turn it around for them afterward?”

  I said to him, “Why don’t you publish the speech and that way they will know? Esquire magazine would take it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Sure,” Osano said. “Maybe when I’m staying down the fat farm I’ll work it over so it will look good in print.”

  I wound up spending a full week with Osano at the Duke University clinic. In that week I saw more fat people, and I’m talking about your two-hundred-fifty- to three-hundred-fifty-pounders, then I have ever seen in my whole life together. Since that week I have never trusted a girl who wore a cape because every fat girl who is over two hundred pounds thinks she can hide it by draping some sort of Mexican blanket over her or a French gendarme’s cloak. What it really made them look like was this huge, threatening mass coming down the street, some hideously engorged Superman or Zorro.

  The Duke Medical Center was by no means a cosmetic-oriented reducing operation. It was a serious endeavor to repair the damage done to the human body by long periods of overweight. Every new client was put through days of all kinds of blood tests and X-rays. So I stayed with Osano and made sure he went to restaurants that served the rice diet.

  For the first time I realized how lucky I was. That no matter how much I ate I never put on a pound. The first week was something I’ll never forget. I saw three three-hundred-pound girls bouncing on a trampoline. Then a guy who was over five hundred pounds being taken down to the railroad station and getting weighed on the freight-weighing machine. There was something genuinely sad about that huge form shambling into the dusk like some elephant wandering toward the graveyard where he knew he had to die.