The Player

by Michael Tolkin

  “I’ll call you back,” said Griffin. “I’m in a meeting with Aaron Jonas.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Aaron, do you know Andy Civella?” Aaron shook his head no, but of course knew who he was. Griffin continued talking to the Civella who had never been there. “Aaron’s a good guy. I should get the two of you together.” With that needless charade, Griffin put down the phone.

  Aaron talked on about the kind of job he wanted, a creative department job in a studio, a job that would lead to independent production, he didn’t want to stay in an organization, which was why he was leaving the agency. Griffin listened to his voice. Griffin tried to separate the sound of Aaron’s voice from the words, tried to compare this voice to the Writer’s. It was a winner’s voice, not so much rich as solid, each word was said quickly, but not clipped, there was no hesitation, and none of those little squeaks that betray conflict, unhappiness, and fear. It was a voice Griffin heard every day, lawyers, agents, directors, free of deprecation, sometimes conveying arrogance but usually only as a negotiation tactic. It was the voice of the Players of the Game. The Writer did not have this voice, this successful voice. The Writer was not a Player. How had he said, “impossible for you to work”? With a whine he acted the sentence. Griffin heard the rehearsal in the delivery, and there was a sneer, a sound of self-satisfaction, inappropriate because he assumed power. He had no power … well, only the power to kill Griffin, or to embarrass him, perhaps.

  Did the Writer know that men like Aaron, who he would surely despise for his smugness—and Aaron was a bit smug—were sometimes not satisfied with their successes? Griffin’s private defense of Aaron, against the Writer’s contempt, made Griffin, who until now had never thought of Aaron as someone of whom he could expect great things, suddenly wish the best for him. Griffin told Aaron he would keep his ear to the ground, and he meant it. He saw that Aaron knew that Griffin would look out for him, and when they shook hands, Griffin was glad to see his friend’s confidence and excitement. Aaron had such an easy way with himself. To be superior without contempt! Tonight Aaron would tell whoever he was having dinner with that Griffin Mill was on the case.

  Later that afternoon Jan told him it was Andy Civella on the line. He thought of picking up the phone and immediately screaming at the Writer, but what could he say to scare him? It was the real Andy Civella.

  “We’re ready,” said the producer. “When can we come in?”

  Griffin looked at his book. “How ready are you?” he asked.

  “Come on, Griffin, Tom Oakley and I are ready to say that if you don’t give us a meeting this week, we go to another studio. And you know I don’t want to. Because, because … I love you, Griffin.” Civella laughed. Griffin recognized the rhythms of other people in Civella’s humor, there was a lot of Eddie Murphy, and sometimes a maniacal screech that was someone else’s trademark, and currently popular among comedians who worked the comedy clubs.

  Griffin looked at his schedule for the next two days. “How about tomorrow afternoon?” He heard Civella’s breath change, it registered defeat, he had to say yes, but it would mean he now had to make a difficult call to cancel something important.

  “Five o’clock,” said Civella with a casual lilt, as though he were echoing Griffin.

  “I’ll see you at four,” said Griffin. “And really, I can’t wait.” He didn’t care if Civella thought he meant it, and he wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter.

  He watched the lights on his phone. There were five lines, all for him, so that no one calling would get a busy signal; he wished he understood the circuitry. How did a call coming to one number get bumped to the next number if the first one was busy? How did the hold button work? What is hold? he asked himself. You have a caller on line one. Then a call comes through on line two that can’t be left hanging, so you push in the hold button when you excuse yourself to the person on line one, and then that light blinks while you talk to the person on line two, and anyone studying the lights on another extension on the circuit can tell by the pattern of blinking and clear lights which lines are on hold and which line is engaged. There’s even more mystery to the circuitry. Griffin counted all the phones on his line. There was one on the desk, one on either end of the sofa, and one in Jan’s office. Four phones, five lines, all connected to one number, with supplemental numbers that made it possible for each phone to be used independently, four people could make calls out of the office at the same time, and still one person could get through, and all four calls could be put on hold while the four callers could each talk to the call coming in. How? Some people knew exactly. Somewhere brilliant people, electrical engineers, computer geniuses, mathematicians, physicists, too, probably, had, over the course of a hundred years, added the increments of knowledge and research and surely even some luck and intuition to create this immense circuit. This was the kind of thought Griffin wished he could share with Levison, without making a meal of it, to mention, idly, how wonderful and complicated the phone system is, how we take it for granted. Maybe they could then move on to the broader implications of this small, admittedly obvious discovery. And what’s wrong with the obvious? thought Griffin. How much that we call obvious have we really stopped seeing? Maybe it was obvious once, but since then it’s changed. What would Levison say, that Griffin sounded like he was talking about the need to stop and smell the roses? Well, Griffin knew he could say yes to that, without apology. What we love are patterns, flowers, phone circuits, familiar stories. Griffin knew he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t even think about the phones the next time he was with Levison, in case his whole tortured elegy came out compressed as, “Phones, pretty amazing.”

  He wanted to call June Mercator. He wanted to see her, to impress her. This came to him as a desperate longing, and he saw that this call from the Writer made him need the woman he had made a widow; he wanted June Mercator.

  He called Jan to set up a few minutes with Levison. She put him through to Celia, who put him through to Levison. “I just heard a pitch,” said Griffin, “and I think that if we don’t grab it, someone else will.”

  “Let’s hear it first.”

  “There’s this little kid—it’s 1957—a ten-year-old boy who’s totally obsessed with a kind of Hopalong Cassidy figure whose show gets canceled. The old Hoppy figure kills himself, but instead of going to hell, he goes to Cowboy Heaven.”

  Levison interrupted him. “A forty-year-old man and a ten-year-old boy, right?”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “And there’s a trip to the West, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forget it, I’m allergic to horses. Anything else?”

  “No,” said Griffin.

  “Well, all right, then.”

  Jan buzzed to tell him that Marla Holloway was on the line.

  “Hello, Marla.”

  “Oh, Griffin, I’m so excited. Isn’t Danny just terrific? And isn’t Cowboy Heaven the best idea you’ve ever heard? And I think giving it to Spielberg is a brilliant idea.”

  “Marla, Levison didn’t like it. I’m sorry. I’ll have to pass.”

  “Why not send Danny to see him?”

  “Marla, no. It won’t work. Tell Danny I’m sorry.”

  “He has some other ideas,” said Marla. “You should hear them.”

  “I’m busy right now, Marla, I’ll let you know when I’m free.”

  He had done his best, and Levison had passed, and that was his right. This lunch had taken time, he’d canceled with people who really counted. He had killed, too, and still the Writer plagued him. Well, then, forget the Writer, he thought. He would let him call or not call, write or not write, shoot at him or not shoot at him, but Griffin would not look for the Writer, send oblique messages to him in Variety, make mental contact through the ether, or let his thoughts dwell on him, even negatively, as in the children’s game when one says, “Don’t think about an elephant.” He could beat any child in that game, he knew how not to think about the elephant. It was
easy. All you had to do was work hard and think about what was at hand.

  He called June Mercator. Her machine answered. He had ten seconds to decide if he would leave a message or hang up.

  “This is Griffin Mill,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say, but he couldn’t retreat now. If the machine was voice-activated, and he didn’t say something quickly, then it would think he had hung up, and his message would sound wrong, cut-off. He had to be sure of himself with June Mercator, no hesitation, nothing awkward. “Call me at the office if you can, and if you can’t, here’s my home number.”

  When he hung up, he wondered if she would be excited by owning his home number, such an intimate gift. No, she would think he had some news about David Kahane, she would think he had spoken to the police. He had stumbled on the dance floor. When she called back, she would be thinking of the man he had killed. He hoped she would call late. The later the better; he would sound tired, a little sleepy, too comfortable in his bed to maintain the forward manner of the proper executive, he would speak quietly, with a little extra huskiness, letting her know that he brought luck to those who were near him; he would start to seduce her.

  Levison called him to a crisis meeting, a director had broken a leg and a replacement had to be found. Griffin got on the phone in Levison’s office and started calling the big agencies. He had a mission: find out who was good, who was available, who would go to work in three days, someone who would accept a fair price and not involve anyone in the usual negotiation quadrille. If Larry Levy had not been away, Levison would probably have called him, Griffin knew. Here was a chance to show off. With Levison watching him, Griffin was negotiating a director’s fee in ten minutes.

  Ten

  That night he went to dinner at Morton’s with an Australian producer. A few heads turned as Griffin walked to his usual table, by the wall. He shook hands, was introduced to a wife. People smiled at him. Andy Civella was at the bar, and when he saw Griffin, he came to the table.

  Griffin introduced him to the Australian.

  “Don’t forget tomorrow, Griffin, don’t cancel.” Then he turned to the Australian. “How many times did he set a date for this dinner?”

  “This is our second attempt, but I had to break the last one.”

  “Then you’re a bigger deal than he is. We should do business.”

  The Australian blushed. He was confused. Civella took charge.

  “Listen, I can get away with this because basically I’m rock and roll.”

  Levison and his wife came in with Ted Turner’s lawyer and took the table behind Griffin’s. Levison understood that Griffin’s dinner was business, so he skipped the usual two-minute chat.

  The Australian wanted the studio to help finance five movies over two years, and the studio was interested. It was Griffin’s job to talk about stories and casting, to make sure that the Australian wanted to make movies that a lot of people would like, that his characters were big enough for movie stars, that they would triumph absolutely, that there would be no ambiguity. Griffin thought about Larry Levy, who was coming back to a shop he was sure was waiting for him, and decided that he had to commit, now, to the Australian, and then, tomorrow, to Civella. He knew that Larry Levy expected Griffin to stop work until the dust had settled before starting new projects, and he also knew that the Australian would set up house somewhere else if Griffin didn’t start a deal with him. Did it matter if the deal never went through? Negotiations would likely take three months. The thing was to unsettle Levy.

  When they shook hands in the parking lot, the Australian knew he was in business. Griffin watched him drive away in his rented car, and then went home, thinking now only of his answering service and if June Mercator had called.

  She had called a little after nine, and the message from her was to call whenever he got in. So he had alarmed her. This made him think about the Writer, the next association after a quick stop on David Kahane, but he let the intrusive thought slide into the same memory chute that he’d put some random image of a building he hadn’t seen in twenty years, or a particular day at school, one of those pictures that come back sometimes in idle moments and then disappear.

  It was now ten-thirty. He began to dial her number, then put the phone down. He took a shower, started to shave before he realized it was night instead of morning, but finished the job, anyway, got in bed, turned on the television, watched a few minutes of news, and then, a little after eleven, he called her. She answered the phone knowing it was him, there was no panic about a late-night call. Maybe she stayed up late, maybe she and her friends called each other at midnight all the time. He doubted it.

  “I was out all day,” she said. “Some friends took me to the museum and then dinner. Do you have news?”

  He was ready for this. “No, I’m sorry. I was wondering if you had heard anything.”

  “No.”

  He had to move quickly, he had to fight feeling like an ugly fifteen-year-old calling the prettiest girl in the class. “I just wanted to tell you that whenever you feel like it, give me a call, just to talk.” If he said any more, he’d sound nervous. Until she gave him a clear signal, he would ask for nothing more. It was strange enough what he was doing, from her point of view. Was he a leech taking advantage of her tragedy? Or did she think that this was dangerous and thrilling? With an undeniable current between them, could she give in to it now, with David Kahane only recently dead, and open up a new territory of desire and permission?

  “I will. Thank you.”

  He went in for the kill.

  “Where did you go, the County or the Contemporary?”

  “Just the regular collection at the County. They have some nice paintings from the Hudson River school.”

  It was time to show off. “I don’t know if it’s politically correct, but I’m a real sucker for nineteenth-century landscape.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” she said.

  It was time to probe. “Have you been back to work?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t stay away. It’s been good. Everyone’s been incredibly nice to me.”

  Griffin put the phone on the pillow and rested his head on it. He was sleepy. “What are your plans?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Look, I’d like to see you. I don’t know if that’s possible, I don’t know you, I don’t know what your life is like, I’m sure you’ve got good friends who can help you through this a lot better than I can, but I think there’s a connection between us and—” He stopped, to give her a chance, to let her finish his sentence.

  “It’s difficult. I don’t know exactly how I feel right now. But there is a connection, and I would like to see you. The night you called, to speak to David, I had a feeling about you, that I’d hear from you again. I suppose that’s awful to admit, but I’ve learned a lot from this”—she meant the brutal murder of her lover—“and it’s important to say what you feel. You can’t find out what you really feel until you just start admitting all your feelings. And those feelings change. Oh, God, I’m running at the mouth, aren’t I? Well, I’m not going to apologize.”

  He thought he should turn the tables on himself, make himself a victim of this situation, try to say that it would have been easier calling her behind David Kahane’s back than over his dead body. He tried it this way: “It would have been easier calling you if he was alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I called you, anyway.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “It’s easy talking to you. Is it easy talking to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a lot we aren’t saying. But I’m proud of our restraint.”

  “It has a certain elegance, doesn’t it?”

  He didn’t want to go any farther yet. “Good night,” he said.

  “You too.”

  Whose move was it now? He would call her in a few days and make a date for the next weekend. He had forgotten what she looked like. He would know her if he saw her,
but he could not describe her. Dark hair, sad eyes. He turned off the light, and out of the pulsing darkness of his room he tried, but failed, to create a picture of June Mercator. All he could conjure of her was a shape, arms reaching out to hold him. He closed his eyes, and in his own darkness the shape defined itself a little more; now it had long hair. It hovered, waiting for him. He could stroke her thighs. The shape would not come closer. Maybe I’m just blind with desire, he thought. I can touch but I can’t see. He knew that in her room June Mercator was playing with a projection of him. He rolled onto his stomach to tease the shape closer; he didn’t want to stare at it and frighten it away.

  He expected to find a postcard with his newspaper in the morning, but there was nothing. He had breakfast at the Bel Air Hotel with a director.

  As soon as Griffin settled into his office, Larry Levy knocked on the door with a hard cast on his wrist. The sun- and windburn on his face stopped around the shape of his goggles. Griffin knew Levy wanted to talk about the broken arm, how he’d hurt himself, what the doctors had been like, so he didn’t ask about it when he invited him to take a seat.

  “Welcome back,” he said. “Your office is finished?”

  “They did a beautiful job. I’m very happy.” He took an emery board from his pocket and scratched inside his cast. “It’s time to get to work. Levison is giving me a few projects. A couple of books they’ve bought, and a few ideas for remakes. He showed me his writers list, and I told him I didn’t like it. I don’t want to be confined to the writers he trusts.”

  “If you like someone, you can always argue his case.”

  “And directors, too. We need more interesting people. We shouldn’t do business with anyone who’s ever directed a Neil Simon movie, for example, and there’s three of them on the directors list.”

  “Who do you want to put on it?”

  “Well, that’s the point,” said Levy. “We have to find them. Young directors, hip directors.”