Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

  In the darkened room, there was no way to read the network people’s reactions. Every so often Amanda LeMay would emit a little giggle that was always followed a split second later by a hearty horselaugh from Todd Robbie. At other times, when nothing on the screen was supposed to be funny, a sudden guffaw would break forth from Harry Flanders. There were also moments that Perry considered hilarious, the height of wit, scenes that had simply cracked him up and practically sent Ned and Kenton rolling in the aisles, but now were witnessed by the network people in deadly quiet. Sometimes, in those awful stretches where music should have been, Perry could hear heavy breathing, and wondered with itching anxiety if any or all of the network people had fallen asleep.

  Though this version of the film was almost a half hour shorter than the rough cut, it seemed interminably longer, and instead of producing the aura of power and massive meaning of the Russian novels, as it had before, at this viewing Perry felt his precious story must seem to the outsiders who were sentenced to watch it simply tedious and boring. He shifted in his seat, feeling as if battalions of tiny, invisible ants were skirmishing up and down his legs and under his rump. Suddenly, he realized he needed to take a pee. Why the hell hadn’t he done that before the screening started? He couldn’t go now, or it might seem like his movie couldn’t even hold the attention of its own author, much less a national audience of millions of viewers!

  At last, the lights went on.

  Perry scrunched down in his seat, not even wanting to look at Amanda, not wanting to go through the agony of trying to read and decipher her expression. But any such apprehension was quickly ended, as Amanda’s voice rang out loud and clear through the room.

  “This,” she declared, “is what television should be!”

  “I wouldn’t go out and buy a new cabin cruiser yet,” Ned advised.

  Jane laughed.

  “Thank God there’s a voice of reason around,” she said. “I think Perry was thinking of a somewhat larger purchase—Cape Cod.”

  “Now, now,” Perry said, “I only mentioned a house on Cape Cod. I had in mind something modest—like the Kennedy Compound.”

  He joined in the laughter, sinking back in the pillows with his goblet of wine, his mood matching the sultanlike surroundings of Akbar, the new “in” Moroccan restaurant where he had taken Ned and Kim to dinner with Jane to celebrate the glowingly enthusiastic reaction of Amanda and the West Coast network people to the screening of “The First Year’s the Hardest.”

  “Just keep in mind,” Ned said, continuing his friendly caution, “the East Coast network brass may not necessarily go for ‘what television should be’—they may just like it the way it is.”

  “That’s always safest, you know,” Kim added.

  Perry shifted a bit uneasily on his cushion.

  “Seriously,” he said, “are you guys telling me you think they won’t buy the pilot?”

  “I think they’ll probably buy the two-hour film,” Ned said. “It can always go on and stand by itself as a quality made-for-television movie—something that’s bound to get good reviews, and they can brag about.”

  Perry sat up now, leaning forward.

  “You don’t think they’ll commission the series?”

  “I doubt Archer will get them to order thirteen hours, not in these times,” Ned said. “I think six would be more like it. Or maybe they won’t take the gamble at all. There’s no way to know.”

  “For heaven sake, Perry,” Jane said, “be glad you have a wonderful movie that’s going to be on television—probably.”

  “Hey, I am glad,” Perry said. “And I’m grateful too.”

  He raised his goblet toward Ned, and went on.

  “I’m grateful I got an executive producer who is so ‘civilized’—”

  He paused as they all chortled at Ned’s trademark word, and then continued his salute:

  “—he has become not only a trusted colleague, but also, I hope, a friend for life.”

  “Thank you,” said Ned, raising his own goblet to Perry. “Not only for your kind words, but for your terrific script!”

  “Here, here!” Kim called out, and Jane, beaming, reached across her pillows to hug her talented and happy husband.

  Ned took a sip of his wine and then leaned forward saying, “All right—‘amigo’—now that the love fest is over, let’s get down to business. How about writing another script I can produce?”

  “Don’t you dare tempt him,” said Jane. “He’s promised we’re going back home the end of this month.”

  She grabbed Perry’s hand protectively.

  “I know you’re pretty far up in the wilds,” Ned said with a wink, “but I thought you had phones and a mailbox. In fact, I thought Perry was going to serve as our story consultant in absentia when you went back—no?”

  “Sure, that’s the deal!” Perry enthused. He relished the thought—sitting up in his remote command post, watching his show on the tube and jotting down notes, calling up Ned the next day and hashing it over, getting the latest gossip from the front lines.

  “I had presumed you might even scribble in a few sparkling phrases of your own to add a little class to the scripts we ship you?”

  “Absolutely,” Perry grinned.

  In his own study he would pore over scripts, strike out awkward bits of dialogue, roll a fresh sheet of paper in his typewriter, and knock out a brilliant scene that he would mail off from the post office in town, stopping off afterward at the very diner where he’d gone for coffee after the historic mailing of his book to Archer a million years ago, last fall.

  Ned raised his hands, palms up, as if he had demonstrated some point of logic.

  “Therefore, it follows,” he said, “that you could also write a new script of your own, working with me on it by mail and phone, and—”

  Ned turned to Jane.

  “You wouldn’t object to coming out here again for a little visit, would you, while Perry and I molded our latest masterpiece into shape?”

  “As long as I can live in my own house, and have my own garden,” Jane said, “I wouldn’t object to anything at all.”

  Kim smiled and touched Jane’s arm.

  “I’d love to see New England,” Kim said. “Let’s make the men agree to have this be a ‘home and home’ working arrangement—for every time you two come out to L.A., we have to go to Vermont!”

  “It so happens Vermont is one of my favorite places in the world,” Ned said. “I’d rather ski Stowe than the Alps.”

  “This is perfect,” Jane said, genuinely delighted now. “We’ll have a marvelous time!”

  Of course. Perry could picture the very scene he knew Jane had in mind. The four of them sharing a hearty stew. Hot buttered rum by the fire. Surely back East it would be all right to drink something other than wine again. Especially something traditional, not for getting smashed but for observing the rituals of the region. Was it really a fantasy, too picturesquely ideal to be true?

  “Uh, Ned,” Perry said, clearing his throat, “were you thinking about this in general, us working on a script when I go back? Or did you have some particular idea in mind?”

  Ned smiled and eased back in the pashalike pillows.

  “I’d love to see a film of a haunting little story I happen to know and admire called “The Springtime Women.”

  It was one of Perry’s, a story he had published in Redbook and used as the title piece of his last collection. It was one of his favorites—two women in their forties leave their families in the Midwest and come to try a new life in Greenwich Village. Like most of Perry’s stories it worked more on atmosphere than plot; an evocation of the Village of the late sixties was its greatest charm.

  “That’s a compliment,” Perry said, “but I can’t really see something that soft for television.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of television.”

  “You mean a play? You want to go back to Broadway?”

  “I mean a feature film,” Ned said.

 
Jane squeezed Perry’s arm.

  “What a lovely thought,” she said.

  It was quite a tribute to Perry, not just because of Ned’s liking his story, but more importantly of his having confidence in Perry’s ability to write a feature. He had quickly learned out here that writers who worked in television were categorized—and even stigmatized—as being of a lower order of ability than was required for the more lucrative and prestigious realm of features.

  “I’m overwhelmed,” he said.

  “Well, I’m being a little premature,” Ned admitted. “We ought to keep our minds on ‘The First Year,’ but just between us, I think I’m finally going to get Spoons out of the starting block this year. It’s over at Hamlin Productions now, and they’re hot about it. If it goes, I’ll be able to seriously start thinking features.”

  Kim put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a loving squeeze.

  “This civilized guy has had some rough sledding in this town, but believe me, he’s going to own it before he’s through.”

  “Hey, this is all a bit premature,” Ned cautioned, “including Kim’s predictions of my rise to power in this town—but as soon as we see where we are with our TV project, I’d like to have my lawyer draw up an option for ‘Springtime Women.’”

  “It’s a deal!” said Perry.

  “Hey, hold on. I’m not in a position to lay out big bucks—this would just be a minimal thing, but if it went, you’d end up doing all right, I’m sure.”

  “Listen, the important thing here is your confidence in me. And the chance to work with you again.”

  Perry extended his hand, and Ned shook it warmly.

  “All right, it’s a deal then,” Ned said.

  Waitresses dressed as harem girls were bowing before them with steaming platters of lamb kebab. Perry picked up the bottle of wine, now empty, and waved it toward a sommelier wearing a red fez.

  “More!” he said.

  “More?” she asked.

  Her face hovered over his cock. It was still only partially erect. A “semi” they used to call the condition back in high school.

  Ha. If they could see him now. The old gang would never believe it. Perry Moss, the shy type, getting sucked off by his lovely, talented photographer wife in a hip hotel suite high above Sunset Boulevard, while he waited for a phone call from the other coast that might make him even more rich and successful. Not rich by Hollywood standards, of course, but certainly by Haviland standards. The Haviland College crowd would probably be surprised, too, seeing their tweedy literary man in his present condition—holding a glass of chilled Chardonnay in one hand, fondling the nipple of his wife’s ample breast with the other.

  “Perry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does that mean yes, you want more, or yes, you remember I’m still down here?”

  “Yes. I mean more. Please.”

  Jane sighed, then returned to her labors.

  Perry took his idle hand, the one that wasn’t fiddling with the nipple, and ran it through Jane’s hair, wanting to show he was with her in this enterprise, was appreciating her efforts. They were, as always, artistic, the quick little butterfly kisses of the cock, interspersed with light, quick licks that lovingly lolled and lengthened into a lush, wet suck. Yet now he could not keep his mind on it, could simply not focus full attention on what was happening between his own legs while he wondered when the phone call would come and what news it would bring.

  Even now, at this moment, while his wife’s thumb and forefinger made little nips at his partially swollen stalk and the tip of her tongue tickled its tendermost top, the network brass in New York might be making the final—fatal?—decision about his show. Was it to be or not to be a series? How many episodes would they go for? Twenty hours constituted a whole season in these perilous, do-or-die times. Would they get, as Archer hoped, an order for thirteen hours with a chance for a pickup of seven? Or eleven and nine? Or none? He felt little nibblings around the root, and tried to concentrate on rising fully to the occasion here and now, instead of some smoky hotel room in New York. It was said that Max Bloorman, who was rumored to be the real power at the network even though he wasn’t the president, smoked big black cigars; even in this day and age of health and pure air, he held fast to his habit, blowing smoke right at anyone who got in his way. So, the crucial meeting was no doubt muggy with the ash and fume of his fulminations.

  Jane was tickling his testicles now. Nice, but still no cigar. Sometimes when it was fully erect his cock reminded him of that. A sort of cigar. He wondered what kind Bloorman smoked. Smuggled-in expensive Havanas no doubt. Damn! He had to get his mind off the show, on to the sex. That was one of the whole points of starting this up in the first place, to try to get his mind off worrying over what he had no way to control. Hell, he couldn’t even control his own cock.

  Perry suddenly switched tactics and positions, pulling Jane up beside him, kissing her wet on the mouth, with thanks, like saying hello, then sliding down, making stops at the breasts to deliver a few quick licks so as not to let them feel neglect, then continuing on below to his true target, burrowing in between her legs to pay back respects for her own arduous efforts and also to lose himself in this dark and lovely lair, forget his fears about the fate of the show, which now he saw as his own fate too, flee from those worries, and in so doing, not only give his wife pleasure but raise his own sex to the occasion of coupling, that occasion that recently was all too rare.

  Kissing these other lips as affectionately as the ones above, he tried to forget about his business in New York. This really turned him on, kissing her down here. He had never kissed any woman like this before. He had licked his share, yes, sloppily slurped away as he thought was his duty, neither hating it nor enjoying it, just carrying on like a trouper in hopes of being good in bed, of getting a good rating.

  Were there sexual Nielsens?

  Perry lifted his head slightly and drew his hand to gently part her legs a bit more, then gently bent down and sought the exact spot with his tongue, the little protuberance in the hot center, touching and, tasting it at the same time, sweetly giving moisture back from his own mouth. He had never taken this care before with a woman, never loved this dark, luscious place between the loins, and it was all tied up with loving her, Jane, wanting to make love here because it was her, hers, and so it was special, sacred almost, and that was how he approached it, treated it, felt it within his own experience.

  The trouble with rating something, whether it was lovemaking or television, was that you couldn’t measure quality. The fact that Perry had given head to other women before he met Jane could no doubt be charted in the numbers of women and amount of time spent in the exercise, but there was no way to compare that with the feeling of intensity and arousal and near reverence for life itself that came from his doing it with Jane. In terms of television, though of course it was possible to measure, for instance, the share of the audience and the numbers of people watching “Brideshead Revisited,” it was certainly not possible to measure the depth or quality of the experience of those watching it from, say, their viewing of “Dynasty” or “Good Morning, America” or the local six o’clock news. There was no way Max Bloorman and the network honchos could measure the quality of experience, then, of something unique and special like “The First Year’s the Hardest” as they judged its potential against all the ordinary, run-of-the-mill contenders it was no doubt competing against.

  “Ooooooooh—aaaaaaaaahhhhh”

  Jane’s gentle moan brought him back again to where he was trying to be. He raised his head, placed his fingertips on the protuberance, and ducked down to move his tongue in deep below it, searching and sucking, feeling at the same time his own sex stiffen beneath as it hadn’t yet in this whole session, thinking maybe now he was getting it, forgetting what was going on in New York. He wished now he’d have gone, though nobody asked him; he’d have loved to just hang around the hotel lobbies during the crucial week that all the networks declared as
the “selling season,” when all the studios and production companies brought their pilot films before the councils of judgment, like medieval peddlers bringing their wares to the market, to see what would be purchased—in this case not by the multitudes but for them.

  “Please, now—”

  She was pulling him back from New York again, where he kept slipping off—the very act of trying not to think of it made him think of it—pulling the hair of his head, tugging him upward to be on her and in her—

  “Inside, I want you inside me now—”

  And he thrust himself there, stiff and throbbing, and pulled the upper part of his torso up on his elbows to gaze down at his beloved and begin the real rhythm of his love, when, from the living room of the suite, the phone rang.

  “That’s it!”

  “Owww!”

  He yanked himself up and out and was hurtling toward the living room with his right arm already reaching for the phone and his cock like a magic wand pointing the way to glory as Jane yelled from the bed, “Screw you and screw your goddam television show!”

  “Hello? Archer? What happened?”

  “Congrats, amigo,” the young executive’s voice snapped smartly back, “You’re a series.”

  “Wa-hoo-hoo-hoo-yah!”

  Ecstasy. At least for a whole second until, the triumph absorbed, the victor wondered at once the extent of the victory.

  “How many?” he asked. “How many episodes did they order?”

  “Three.”

  Jane walked into the living room, nude.

  “What?” Perry asked.

  “Tres. A trio.”

  Jane knelt down on the floor in front of Perry.

  “That’s all?”

  “With script commitments for three more if the show catches on.”

  Jane took Perry’s cock in her hands.

  “What the hell do you mean ‘catches on’? How can only three shows ‘catch on’? It’s crazy!”