Justify My Sins

by Felice Picano

  “He’s here!” Jim announced from the window.

  The others stood up and went to the window. So did Vic, joining them in looking down at the street, where a canary yellow Rolls Corniche convertible pulled slowly up to the garage entry. From two floors up, and because it had its canvas top down, one could make out the top of the head of the driver, which was reddish, and the exposed shining marbled wood and blood red leather interior (surely it couldn’t be Corinthian, could it?).

  They all returned to the table and from out of nowhere attache cases were produced, colored paper folders were removed, scattered on the table, and opened, and two more battered copies of his second novel were suddenly, magically, also presented.

  “So, Victor, may I call you Victor?” Stan announced as though they were all on radio. Vic nodded: Sure. What else? Adolf? “Well, Victor, we were all incredibly impressed by Justify. Just an amazing piece of work, we all thought. Right, guys? And utterly unprecedented, really.”

  Vic wondered suddenly if they were being audio-taped.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit that I came to the book kind of late. All the women in the office had passed around a copy and read it when it caught my eye. And when I mentioned it to someone I sometimes see, well, she said everyone at her yoga class was talking about it.”

  “A real page turner,” Jim allowed. “And that ending. Just stunning.”

  “Breathtaking ending,” Sam agreed. “Believable, but it just . . . knocked . . . the breath . . . outta me.”

  Which, Vic thought, was the same thing as saying breathtaking.

  Oh-kay!

  That was when they all heard, and even more so, felt Ed Trefethern come into the outer office. He made some kind of low greeting to the receptionist, and then sidled directly into the conference room, signaling to them to stay seated and continue the “discussion” while he all but tiptoed behind Vic, whose shoulder he touched lightly, and went to sit at the far end of the table.

  “When my niece from Wisconsin visited a month back,” Sam was saying, “Cindy, she’s eighteen, and well she was reading it too, well, I knew Stan was onto something.”

  “It’s a national bestseller, Sam,” Vic attempted to say it with no overtones at all in his voice (such as, “Hey stupid! wake up!”). “That means that many people all over different parts of the country are reading it.”

  “Right!” Sam said in a way that strongly suggested that he’d never really thought the term through to reach that particular conclusion before.

  “It also just came out in Spanish, titled La Justificacion!” (Vic said in his superb, Madrid-accent.) “Or simply, The Justification. Published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and for sale all over the Hispanic world, and in one of those big paperbacks from Germany, with a title I won’t even attempt to pronounce.” (Little laughs from the others.) “So those, along of course with the British Commonwealth hard-soft and book club editions that came out twelve, ten, and four months ago, means that it’s also an international bestseller.” Would he have to spell out what areas were covered by the Commonwealth market? He hoped not.

  “In fact,” Vic decided to take a chance at chipping away at a few of the remaining Alaska-sized ice-fields remaining around the table, “last week I got on an IND subway in Manhattan, going uptown, and there were four people on that one subway car reading the book. Mostly the paperback.”

  In short, guys, in case you didn’t get the hint, it’s a best seller.

  “Right,” Jim now jumped in, looking at Ed for approval, “But it’s not only that excellent commercial element, terrific as that is, that attracted Silver Screen Films to your book, Victor.” He paused, dramatically. “It was the human element of the story you told.”

  Oy! Gott! Victor thought. Don’t! Please! Do not open your mouth and continue!

  Alas, Jim did continue, managing to spout four in a row, count ’em, of the most mealy-mouthed, say-nothing statements Victor had ever heard from a single person in a single room at a single time.

  Worse yet, Sam and Stan agreed, loudly and vociferously reiterating and weaving in even more ghastly variations upon these supposedly complimentary effusions.

  Vic felt as though he’d been afflicted by the most virulent case of crotch-itch and hot-foot ever, only all over his entire body while wearing white coat and tails, attending a chamber recital as part of a memorial service for a very beloved older person at someone’s penthouse, and thus completely unable to scratch anything.

  “I thought the novel was mean!” Ed Trefethern suddenly said.

  Finally! A mind in this room had been exposed in the process of actually thinking!

  “It was pretty mean.” Victor looked at Ed now.

  Ed faced him off. “I thought the author had a really bad experience in romantic love and he wanted to get revenge with this book.”

  “Could be. Maybe.” Victor admitted, eye to eye with Ed. “I wouldn’t totally deny that. In fact, down with love! Romance doesn’t work! It never did! It never will!”

  “It’s a crapshoot,” Ed modulated.

  “And the house, not you, always has the best odds,” Victor concluded.

  “It’s downright brilliant,” Ed said. “And hearing you now, Victor, I see that much of the book’s strength is due not only to its great plot and believable characters and terrific writing, but also to its author’s honesty.”

  Jim all but wailed, “But Theo and Anna-Marie are made for each other!”

  Victor faced him now and ruthlessly declared, “And that’s why it works—for a while!”

  Jim couldn’t see, but Vic sure could, one of Stan’s eyebrows go up, and Sam’s face tilt down.

  “They’re each other’s soul mates,” Jim argued.

  “And that is why Theo alone is privileged enough to see Anna-Marie out of her flawed and miserable existence!” Victor punched the lesson home.

  “And poor Theo is left . . . With his whole life ahead of him, except now. . . . it’s totally emptied out!” Jim sputtered on. “Knowing that . . . “

  “Theo was weak!” Victor stated. “And Theo was foolish! Theo deserves nothing better!”

  Jim’s face got a near-purple red, his eyes bulged. Little veins stood up along his temples. Even his hair seemed electrified, flying away from his scalp. But he was speechless.

  Stan, meanwhile, coughed the fakest cough Vic ever heard, and Sam was looking down in his lap with an intensity that suggested he might have located the fabled Northwest Passage there.

  “So we’re all on the same page here!” Ed asserted. “This will be a coup for Silver Screen, a very classy project, Book of the Month Club, yet popular too, a real feather in our cap. But—and there’s always a but, Victor—but finding the best possible form for your wonderful story is essential.” He turned to Vic and stretched a big hand (not that of an artist) sprinkled with combed red hairs, to tap Vic’s outstretched fingers. “And that’s where we all come into the picture. Fellows!” he addressed the others. “Victor here has done all the work so far. What do we have for him?”

  Sam began talking about his preliminary conversations with some of the television network execs and program people, which sounded hopeful, and then it was Stan saying something about amortization figures, which was completely boring to Vic but which they all seemed to comprehend, then Ed, who was what, the executive producer? is that what Marcie had called him? was saying, “Tim, why don’t you tell us some of your ideas for locations, sets, and costuming for this.” So oops! it was Tim not Jim, and as Tim began talking, Vic listened, interested in what he had to say, but also thinking, Listen to them, so into themselves! And me, I’m a Johnny come lately, the new kid in town.

  Finally at the end of Tim’s discussion, Ed, apparently the boss, turned to Vic and asked if he had any questions.

  “Yeah, I kinda of do, although they’ll probably sound stupid. From what all of you were saying just now, I gather that what’s the next real step is that you all want me to go
back to the hotel and write out a five or six page precis of my novel stressing the characters and dramatic elements, right? So someone will buy this as a television movie of the week.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Ed said, with a fatherly smile. “We don’t even have to tell him what to do, Victor’s so brilliant. So . . . Where’s the problem?”

  “Well, to begin with, I’ve never written anything like that before.” Leaving hanging the rest of the sentence and I don’t have a clue how to do it.

  “Look, Victor. You know this story inside out. No one knows it better than you,” Stan said. “You can do it easily.”

  Tim added, “And of course, once that’s done, you show it to us, we give you notes on it, and then join us three in pitching it.”

  “Notes? Meaning what? Queries? Edits? Ideas?”

  “Exactly,” Ed said. “Simple as can be.”

  “And then we pitch it?” Vic added, repeating a word he’d heard the others already use, and which he also didn’t completely understand.

  “At the networks,” Jim said. “Actually we’re focusing in on one network. But of course the other two, also.”

  Vic had a single instant and complete thought: This is totally doomed to failure. Totally. I’ve written stories, novels, even bad little one-act plays, but I’ve never done anything like this before.

  One major problem was that not only was he the newbie here, sitting in on something they all knew everything about, but also he didn’t really give a shit. Yeah the money, the fame, all that crap. Now if one of the four were even vaguely, remotely fuckable. . . . Maybe the younger big guy, Stan. He was kind of a teddy bear, and those big guys had a way of lying back and just letting you do whatever you wanted, and that could be fun—sort of—for a limited while. But this other one, this Tim, tennis-playing-slim with his layer-cut hair combed over his ears and three hundred dollar sunglasses, with the heiress wife who was cheating on him with her pool boy, or Sam with his shiny I. Magnin shirts and pimped out trousers and his shoes in colors only otherwise seen in velvet sofa paintings—no, no, no, afraid not.

  And then they all supported each others’ last statements and Vic died inside yet again thinking How did I let myself get into this mess? And how can I possibly get myself out?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Leaving the office, Ed held Vic back, and clapped a hand over his shoulder: The Older Guy being nice to the Newbie.

  “Let’s have a drink. Just us two.”

  He let the others go talking away down the elevator (it was two floors for Chrissakes—who needed an elevator?). Then as they reached the vast underground garage, Ed gestured to Vic’s driver, Meade, who had just awakened, hearing other car ignitions being turned on: He was to follow the Corniche. Ed and Vic would drive together.

  The separate leather seats were deeply tufted, like those sofas in the Harvard Club Vic’s publisher had taken him to after Justify’s tenth week on the Times list. The car’s stereo system, he happened to notice, was MacIntosh, with Klipsch speakers. The telephone next to the transmission lever was the same over-polished burled walnut as the dashboard and door interiors.

  Victor thought, I’m riding in a car that’s more finely appointed and more expensive than my parent’s last house.

  “A phone in the car is a great idea,” Vic commented.

  “There’s one in your limo too.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re usually behind that little door right next to the bar.”

  “I’ll look for it.”

  “I’m in the car so much, I’d be lost without it,” Ed said.

  Gilbert was simply going to up and die when he told him about cars with phones!

  Ed did something, and a panel moved and a Nakamichi double cassette deck was revealed. “You know this singer named Midler?” Ed asked. “My wife got me some of her records. I like her.”

  “Bette’s great! I play her all the time,” Vic said.

  Skylark came on, and they listened as Ed steered left suddenly and they dropped down the steepest road that Victor had ever experienced outside of San Francisco. Luckily, in the Corniche, they merely floated down.

  In between songs, Ed mentioned the name of the place they were going to. “Kind of my hang-out. Hope you don’t mind too much.”

  “What kind of food do they have?”

  Ed looked confused then explained, “Everything! Anything! The chef will make anything you want.”

  Vic had never heard of that kind of a restaurant before, although now that Ed repeated the name, it seemed familiar: hadn’t Marcie hoped in their latest phone conversation that someone would take Vic there so he could report back?

  They were on Melrose Avenue headed west, when suddenly Ed veered directly into what looked like a little forest of enormous ginger and banana plants. He pulled up onto a graveled sidewalk and stopped. A Hispanic guy in a maroon uniform ran up to them and Ed tossed him the keys and stepped out.

  Suddenly they were within some sort of Mayan temple with knee-high carved-block canals featuring lily pads and birds of paradise. Netting swung from the quarter mile high ceiling, holding yet more flora. Vic scanned the roof for Mynah birds, prepared to duck. Could a blow-gun dart be far behind?

  A handsome woman with long chestnut hair and severe makeup wearing the same deep red color as the Roll’s seats and the valet’s uniform, greeted Ed, looking downcast.

  “I gave away your table,” she groaned. “No one from your office called. So I was sure you wouldn’t be coming.”

  “See what I get when I surprise you,” Ed pouted. “Don’t you have anything, Rina?”

  Victor saw at least a half dozen unoccupied tables. What was wrong with . . . ?

  A waiter in the same uniform glided up to Rina, whispered in her ear, and slid away again.

  “Eric says that Stacey and Jill at number fourteen are getting up right now. We’ll bus it in an instant.”

  “Fourteen?” Ed moaned. “It’s Antarctica! Victor here,” he took Victor’s hand and put it into Rina’s warm one, “is the best selling novelist in the country.” (Total lie!) “Vic’s from New York City for Chrissakes. The Big Apple. Fourteen is where you’re going to put him? Fourteen?!”

  She twisted her mouth repentantly, as though she’d suggested they should plotz on the floor between the outer kitchen door and the trash bins. Then she looked at her list.

  “Hold on a sec, Mr. Trefethern.”

  She vanished. Ed turned around looking smug and satisfied. He’d been putting on an act.

  Good thing, because for the briefest of seconds Victor thought he should say he didn’t really care where they sat. Then some instinct told him to hold that thought. Clearly something here at no name restaurant was, as Sherlock Holmes would say, afoot.

  Another waiter, short, sandy haired, muscular, yet recognizably tres gai, came by, greeted Ed and appreciatively checked Victor over. “Don’t tell me you’re waiting?” he asked Ed, as though an imminent execution were planned for them both.

  “I surprised her, Joel,” Ed said, little boy guilty. “What can I expect? I’ve got a big Macher from out of town. And Rina wants me to take fourteen.”

  All too apparent alarm twitched the waiter’s snub nose and dimmed his lightly freckled upper cheeks. “Fourteen? No way!” He looked at Victor once more, then, “A secret, Mister Tee? I’ve got total nobodies at thirty-one. They’re staying at the Bel Air and we did it as a favor for the concierge. I’ll get them out the door before you can say Tina Louise!”

  Ed and the Joel turned to look at another area of the restaurant deep inside some kind of bower.

  “Is that Laddie, there at thirty two?” Ed asked.

  “Laddie and Goldwyn Junior,” the waiter’s voice descended to unsuspected baritonal depths.

  “I guess that’ll do,” Ed admitted.

  “Momen-tee-no!” the waiter trilled and sailed off.

  “He’s a fruit, but a sweetheart, and he treats me well,” Ed explained.

&
nbsp; Hustled out of their seats, two well-put-together women in their thirties came up to say hello to Ed and be introduced to Victor. Jill turned out to be Clayburgh, even taller and more soigne in person. Stacey, Vic would later find out, was a talent agent with a famous mouth and a disputatious reputation.

  “You’re so young to be so cynical,” La Clayburgh said upon hearing his name, swanning an endless arm and ultralimp hand for him to touch. Her clever way of saying she’d read Justify.

  “No!” Stacey cried when she too heard the news from Ed. “How can that be?” She stared at Victor as though he had a minimum of three heads, none matching. “I was sure that author’s name was pseudonymous and that you were really a woman!” Now her eyes went gimlet. “I sure wouldn’t wanna’ date you! You know us gals far too well. I could never put anything over on you.”

  All four laughed politely.

  “So, Ed,” Stacey changed the subject with the adroitness of a walrus bedding down, “you never call me with roles for Jill.” Stacey pretended to be much aggrieved.

  “I’m mostly doing the little screen these days,” he admitted.

  “We’re not closed to the Tube,” Stacey looked to Jill for confirmation. “Right?”

  “Soon as something comes up, I’ll call. I’ll call.”

  “Too bad Anna-Marie is so young,” Jill said to them all. Vic wondered if she would ask him to rewrite the part right there in the foyer.

  “Not to mention kinda ethnic, too,” Stacey pointed out. The two of them kissed the air around the men and left.

  “Praise from Caesar,” Ed said, then, “as though you’d date her.”

  The maitresse d’ reappeared, “Table thirty-one” she announced in a voice so triumphant Vic expected trumpets and dancing girls to precede them, “is ready!” She acted as though she’d pulled two rabbits and a small locomotive out of a napkin before their very eyes.