Easy to Like
Page 20
What was Lloyd reading in there this quieter day in Toronto? According to Queeney? Whatever it was, it generated enough mental enthusiasm that Lloyd was unconsciously sort of chewing as he read. Was that ever an unfuckable look. In the end, here was Lloyd Purcell without a pot to piss in, writing plays, having grown old, his gums flapping involuntarily as he read from a page held four inches from his face. That’s what happened. Elliot kept going.
The Indiana reshoot was a further ten-minute walk.
It appeared Toronto was under occupation. The line of trucks and trailers for the production ran the length of three city blocks. Elliot’s name had been left at a temporary security gate, one watched over by an armed guard. Elliot was directed to a numbered trailer.
On his way he saw the greensmen hoisting, by crane, a large tree from the back of a truck. Once the tree was in position, an animal handler brought a basset hound alongside to piss on the base of its trunk. Elliot recognized the dog from a billboard that had hung over Sunset Boulevard last year. Big picture, that one.
Elliot knocked. Mike’s assistant Blair opened the door. “Come in,” he scowled. The trailer’s interior was comfortably appointed with couches and chairs, a small wet bar, and a couple of large-screen monitors. Mike was standing, talking on a cellphone. On the floor between Mike’s feet, as if guarded, was a leather Coach cabin bag — containing, no doubt, the dozens of fresh cellphones Mike would need on the trip.
“Look, I’m sorry, I have a meeting that I really must . . . Okay, I, or maybe Blair, will get back to you. It’s truly brilliant.” Mike closed the phone and pointed the device at Blair. “This is what happens when shit gets to me without coverage.” Now the phone was pressed against Blair’s temple. “You read every script we are supposed to be looking at! Every one!”
It occurred to Elliot that this was the first time Mike had ever terminated a phone call when Elliot arrived for a scheduled meeting.
“Elliot,” said Mike. His arms were open, cunt was coming in for a hug. “You look handsome in that suit.”
“Thank you.” Elliot looked down. Yes, he was always in a suit now.
“I’ve been in Toronto before, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“No, neither did I. Blair reminded me. For the TIFF. I was at that once.”
“The film festival?”
“Yeah . . . but plane, hotel, screening, reception, dinner, hotel, plane. I coulda been anywhere. Many positive developments to tell you about, Elliot. Blair, can you get me a coffee?
“There’s coffee in that Thermos,” said Blair.
“I want a soy latte.”
Blair made a face and left the trailer.
“I enjoy good news,” Elliott said.
“Lucky Silverman is going to be named president of the Motion Picture Association of America.”
“Why is that a positive development?”
“Not directly for you, but . . . we are all on Lucky’s team now. That position, it’s a Washington position, not a Hollywood position. It’s got incredible power. Jack Valenti had more pull than most members of the Reagan cabinet. And, in case you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of a culture war. The enemy has mobilized their hillbillies, they’re coming down from their mountains, we’re in deep shit. We need friends inside the Beltway.”
“By ‘we’ you mean the liberal Hollywood, drugs-and-sodomy-positive crowd?” asked Elliot.”
“Yes.”
“When I left Canada, many years ago, there was an ambivalence about arts and culture. That’s been replaced by open hostility. The barbarians may have already closed the gate behind them, Mike.”
“I’m not willing to concede defeat. The thought of having to live in Europe is too much for me to bear. I’m a patriot, goddamn it, and my America includes drugs and sodomy. And please don’t include film and television in arts and culture, it’ll just make the situation worse.”
“I need you to ask Lucky to get me out of this CBC job.”
“What? You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your job was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“In what regard?”
“It’s secure? You think it’s secure?”
“If it were an American network I guess I would be judged on the success of the upcoming television season. Here, I don’t think it matters. It’s more like a government department than a real network. Why?”
“Speaking of government departments, ever hear of a Jasper Crabb?”
“Jasper Crabb? The name is familiar, I . . .”
“Are you aware that there is an active investigation into your vineyard by the U.S. Department of Agriculture?”
“Who told you that?” What the fuck was this? Elliot wondered.
“Lucky Silverman. Elliot, this guy is connected like no one you know.”
“Why does he care about the USDA and the vineyard?”
“While there is no way you, a witness but not a co-conspirator, could be compelled to return to the States to testify about the wiretap, if you had broken laws by illegally importing rootstock to the U.S. . . . you could face extradition.”
“I thought you said this was good news.”
“Lucky is in your corner.” Mike retrieved his bag and took it to a couch, where he sat. “He’ll watch out for your interests. Lucky is with a group that has discreetly funded the protection of the Sixth Amendment.”
“The Sixth Amendment, remind me.”
“Rights of the accused. This is progressive stuff.”
Mike unzipped the bag. Elliot assumed he was getting a fresh phone with which to call Lucky, but instead he withdrew two loaves of bread. They were hollowed out. Mike bent down and began untying his Bruno Maglis.
“Bread?”
“Yeah, Barry’s a Farinist, so . . .” Mike put them on. “They’re actually not that uncomfortable, but you don’t get much wear. Lucky says he’s grooming Barry for politics but he’ll have to be born again. A Farinist might get elected in California, but Barry’s got better chances in Texas. He was born — the first time, that is — in Corpus Christi.” Mike stood and walked a circle, trying out his bread shoes. “So I can report that you are happy being home in Canada, giving back to the country you were born in, leader in public service, blah blah?”
“No. This is temporary and getting more so quickly. I want to go home.”
“Canada is your home.”
“My intention, all along, was to get out of show business and live full-time in my vineyard.”
“That place, the CBV . . .”
“The CBC.”
“Whatever. It’s not really show business, is it?”
“Well, no, but . . .”
“And I thought you said that wine you make is lousy.”
“I never said that.”
“Somebody did.”
“I really don’t know what point you are trying to make to me, Mike.”
“Lucky Silverman, a man who is much more powerful than you seem able to grasp, needs you to stay out of Dodge. This wiretap business has the potential to . . . People in Los Angeles, a few people, would like nothing better than if you permanently relocated.”
“Permanently, never.”
“Don’t mess with these people, Elliot.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No. It’s advice.”
From: lucy@kinokind.com
To: matou@aol.com
Subject: Mark
Not answering your cell. Mark in a dust-up in Soledad. Broken index finger and some bruising. Dreadful for his parole.
From: matou@aol.com
To: lucy@kinokind.com
Subject: Re. Mark
Was in meeting. Can’t reach you. What happened?
An hour and six calls later, after a single ring, “Hello?” It was Lucy, finally.
“What happened?”
“He got in a scrap. Something to do with his conversion to Islam. The atmosphere
is extremely tense — there are over six thousand inmates in a place built to hold twenty-five hundred.”
“Is he hurt?”
“He’s not a fighter.”
“Jesus. We have . . . There has to be something . . . Can’t we have him transferred to a better facility?”
“They are all bad, Elliot. It’s punishment.”
“Is he in danger?”
“I don’t think it was that big a deal, words exchanged, a couple of punches thrown. And I understand that there is some protection from his community.”
“What community?”
“Muslims,” said Lucy.
“Right, Muslims . . . Lucy, I should come down there.”
“There’s nothing you can do. He’s in solitary confinement now, but just a week.”
“Oh god. Tell him I love him.”
“I do, every time I visit.”
“I . . . the thing . . . the thing is . . . I feel . . . Jesus . . .”
“Are you crying? Don’t cry, Elliot.”
“No, I’m nasal . . . humidity here, goddamn lake. There has to be something we can do.”
Elliot listened. There was cycling static, the pops and pings of outer space raining on the line, but silence from Lucy.
“I’m doing everything we can,” she finally said.
“LOCURA CANYON,” Bonnie answered.
“Hi, Bonnie. Is Walt nearby?”
“Elliot, long time no see.”
“I have made several efforts —”
“Elliot, listen to me. Nobody is going to extend us credit. Walt’s telling me you’ve got the best grapes he has ever seen out there and you won’t even have bottles to put it in.”
“The best he’s ever seen — he said that?”
“That wasn’t my point. As it stands the bank is going to own the first decent vintage of wine this place has produced.”
“I’ll sort it out.”
“From up in Canada?”
“I’ll try to come down. Don’t say anything to anyone. But I’ll try. Is Bill Diehl still the branch manager in SLO?”
“He’s called me personally,” said Bonnie.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Sure you will.”
“I’ll refinance.”
“Again?”
“It’s the American way, Bonnie. Where’s Walt?”
“He and Miguel are in the vines, he’s got his cell.”
“Best Syrah I’ve ever seen grown in California,” said Walt.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. And because their sites were coolest and they had a longer hang time, something about the pace of ripening, they’re more northern Rhône in characteristic, but the sunny side, you know, Côte Brune . . . those kind of tannins and iron too, shows as blueberry ink, but fresh ink, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do.” Elliot adored the fresh ink of the northern Rhône but placed it farther south, at Cornas.
“Grenache is a few weeks off but the fruit is spectacular. I mashed a bunch up the other day, no colour but terrific juice. The Mourvèdre got the occasional lick of fog, which worried me first, but with the exposures there and the daytime heat it seems just the trick. I picked at Pradeaux, in Bandol, in 1990, that’s what it reminds me of . . . You there, Elliot?”
“Yeah. This is . . . it’s wow.”
“I’m looking at Miguel right now and he’s doing a dance . . .” Walt laughed and then said something in Spanish that Elliot couldn’t quite make out. “He just tasted the Counoise and, you know, it’s tart. It’s got serious zip, Elliot. It’s all sort of coming together. I mean it won’t be anything like a Châteauneuf, anything at all . . . but it’s gonna be a good wine.”
“I’m coming down soon.”
“Good idea. Bonnie’s freaking out.”
“I know. Thanks, Walt.”
Elliot put the handset in the cradle. On the first two monitors hanging from the ceiling were talking heads, one newsy with affected gravity, the next chatty and smiley; on the third screen, forced jollity on a working kitchen set, easy-nutritious-low-cal-fun-for-the-whole-grain-family-entertain-at-home-Prozac cookies being baked; on the fourth, some brown people dancing around a downed jet fighter, cut to them dragging the barbecued pilot through the dusty streets of a faraway shithole. Daytime television. He spun his chair around and looked out toward Lake Ontario. Making genuinely good wine was an accomplishment. Rarer than most people supposed but not unprecedented on the Central Coast. Given what Walt was saying, Elliot’s viticultural practices were vindicated: he wasn’t a dabbler or a hobbyist. And if he could replace the Zin in the mix with Matou, he could make more than good wine — he could make great wine. He was trapped in his bullshit gig at CBC. It wasn’t on. If people got out of his way, if he could do things as he knew they should be done, if he didn’t have to forever take notes from morons. Someday a group of people, friends, would be having supper, the evening might be warm enough, even with the breeze, to eat outside, and the food would be good and the talk better and the stories funny and they would have wine, a twelve-year-old bottle of 303 Locura Canyon that Elliot had bottled ten years from now, and someone would taste it and say, “My, that’s lovely.” As urgently as he had needed to get out of Los Angeles, he now needed to get back to Enredo, to Locura Canyon Road and his vines.
Two
ELLIOT CHANGES HIS mind. It was wise of Rainblatt to throw a party on the first night of the new season. The alternative was to sit at home and watch, waiting for something to go wrong. (Technical hitches were commonplace at the CBC. Elliot had asked about this and was told there was a system of “fault reports” in place. These, it turned out, were kept in an archive maintained by three staff positions with no authority to do anything at all.)
The choice of venue was Rainblatt’s: the bar on the top of the Park Hyatt Hotel on Avenue Road. It was of a decent standard for a hotel bar, and possessed some personality. It was bursting and boisterous. Booking it for a private function, which was rarely allowed, was a show of Rainblatt’s pull, his Toronto bona fides.
It being an evening with his superior and many subordinates, Elliot guessed he’d be putting away the whisky in quantity, so he took a taxi. En route he saw a billboard for tonight’s premiere episode of 501 Pennsylvania and a poster for Reason on a bus shelter.
Hazel was pacing outside the front doors of the hotel, hauling on a cigarette.
“Camels?” Elliot recognized the scent.
“I suppose. I bummed it off some guy with an American accent. I’m going to have to buy a pack.”
“There’s not much that can be done about it now,” Elliot said. “It’s out there.”
“What is?”
“The season.”
“I’m not nervous about the season. It’s that bar up there.” Her vertigo. “The damn thing is open — the balcony, it’s open.”
“Have a quick drink.”
“You’d like that, Elliot, wouldn’t you?” Hazel said, looking him in the eye. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“It’s really your party, Hazel. You have to.”
Elliot presented his arm. Hazel crushed the last inch of cigarette beneath one of her snakeskin mules and, wincing, let Elliot lead.
Most of those filling the room had only a passing association with the production of the new slate of shows. They’d bought those bus-shelter ads or signed off on some payments to the production companies. Nevertheless, they were claiming ownership, which Elliot reasoned was a good thing.
Rainblatt was anchored to the bar. He beckoned Elliot to join him. Hazel’s breathing had become irregular as soon as they’d stepped into the elevator; now, looking across the room to its celebrated balcony, its view over the sparkling downtown and the great lake beyond, she was a clattering flag of tiny gasps. Her fingers were boring into his muscle. He dragged her along.
“Hazel,” said Rainblatt. “Get you ahhh a drink?”
“Double bourbon,” said Hazel.
“Are you sure you want a bourbon, Hazel?” asked Elliot.
“I thought I said a double.”
“I dare say you’ve spent the odd evening h-here, eh, Elliot?” asked Rainblatt.
“Once or twice.” Elliot sniffed the house red, supposing he had to drink it out of courtesy. Why did people assume that, being in the business, he must have wine?
“C-come, really?” Rainblatt grinned as though he was privy to some secret of Elliot’s.
“I think so.”
“I would have thought it was one of the last refuges.”
“How’s that, Victor?”
“The smoking. Out on the balcony. Isn’t this the last venue in Toronto?”
“Is it?”
“Yeah,” said Hazel, who looked to be weighing whether it was worth going out there to have one. She consumed the first half of her whisky in one draught. “Bartender?”
“I suppose you are even a greater pariah in Cah-California than here in Toronto. Don’t worry, I smoke too, love a cigar.” Rainblatt leaned in, stage-whispered. “When you ahhhh snuck out for one during that dinner party at our house I was desperate to join you.” Rainblatt recounted several other occasions when, during meetings, Elliot had absented himself. Elliot supposed he would have to puff on a cigar later so as to continue to prop up the plausibility of Rainblatt’s reasoning. In every instance but the one at Rainblatt’s house, he’d merely been avoiding the man.
“And, ahhhh,” said Rainblatt, “I thought this might be a half-pack evening.”
“I’m not worried,” said Elliot. “The promotion hasn’t been the best, but the return to the core mandate bought us all kinds of free press.”