“Who does this sonofabitch think he’s talking to?” Swan said, addressing himself to Bo. “Who said you could invite him? Did Sherry say it? Did I say it? We said you could invite Jill, not him!”
“Be a shade less imperial, if you don’t mind, Mr. Bunting,” Bo said. “You’re not my social arbiter. I still retain the privilege of chosing my own luncheon guests.”
“Not if you want to make a deal with us,” Swan said. “I don’t go for this shit, not at all. I don’t even like the restaurant, much less this asshole. What the fuck kind of thinking went into this?”
Toole Peters grinned. “Ever since he learned how to talk to pricks and pussies he’s been a little vulgar,” he said.
“You keep the fuck out of this, Toole,” Lulu said. “I can’t stand such animosity. My throat is closing up already. I won’t be able to eat a bite.”
“Maybe Swan will spoon you some gruel,” Toole said, blinking his soapy little eyes.
Swan snapped his fingers loudly and the maître d’ came bobbing over. “Phone,” Swan said. “Sherry’s gonna hear about this right now.”
“No phones, Monsieur,” the maître d’ said nervously.
“No phones?” Swan said. It was the worst shock yet.
“There’s a pay phone in the men’s room,” the maître d’ said.
Swan shook his head is disbelief. “Man, this is the worst,” he said. “You brought me to a place where I can’t even get a phone? Sherry’s not going to believe this.”
“Merci, Jean,” Bo said, waving the maître d’ away.
“That’s it, we’re leaving,” Swan said, getting up. “Universal can fucking’ kiss ass.”
He stalked off without a backward glance and was all the way across the restaurant before he realized that Lulu and Toole were still sitting at the table. “Hey, you two, let’s move it!” he yelled, startling the TV types almost out of their vests.
“I hate it when he’s loud,” Lulu said. “I just hate it.”
Toole Peters simply ignored Swan and continued to study his menu. He blinked while he studied it. Maybe that was why I didn’t like him. He was always blinking.
“Isn’t it about time Sherry got a new boyfriend?” Bo asked. I had been thinking along that line myself.
“Oh, she likes ’em loud,” Lulu said. “If they’re not loud, she forgets they’re there, and you know she can’t stand to be alone.”
Swan went out the door but in about two minutes he came stalking back to the table.
“You probably hired this goon to insult me so you could work out the deal with Lulu,” he said. “Your little trick isn’t going to work.”
“If your problem’s cab fare, I’ll loan it to you,” I said.
He looked like he wanted to hit me, but I’m very big and he didn’t. “ARE YOU COMING?” he yelled at Lulu, and stalked out again.
“I think I’ll have the trout almondine and have them scrape off the fucking’ almonds,” Toole said. “I can’t stand almonds.”
The restaurant had gotten very quiet while Swan was roaming around, but in a few minutes, when it became obvious that he wasn’t coming back, everybody started talking again. The maître d’ approached Bo. He looked a little guilty.
“Monsieur Brimmer, there is a phone in the men’s room,” he said.
“Ce n’est rien, Jean,” Bo said. “Ce n’est rien.”
AFTER THAT, WE ALL had a nice meal. There was some general talk about Jill directing a picture written by Toole and starring Sherry Solaré, and I made agreeable sounds, but it was all just general talk. Toole said he might write it, and Lulu said Sherry might star in it if she could get about three million up front, and I said Jill might be interested. Bo even said he might know just the story. Lulu managed to put down a healthy chunk of veal, despite her throat, and Toole picked around on a trout for about an hour.
On the drive back to the studio Bo was quiet. I guess he was out of pencils, because he nibbled on the earpiece of his glasses. The bald-headed Slav once again went through the studio gate without touching his brake pedal.
“Come up for a minute,” Bo said. Carly was still there, alone with her bosom.
“Switch that driver to the lawnmower crew or something,” Bo told her. “We can’t have drivers just ignoring the sentries like that.”
“Oh, hell, you must have got Gregor,” she said. “I told them not to give you Gregor. He was a stunt driver, you know. He’s the one who drove the car off the building, in Scrap Happy.”
Bo’s swivel chair had a motor in it that raised him to whatever height he wanted to be. He raised himself about a foot and looked me in the eye.
“We come and go, we men of ambition,” he said. “We make mistakes and fail, or we get too rich and atrophy. Between the two, failure and atrophy, I think I would prefer failure, but maybe not. One thing I do know is that I’d hate to end up with my immediate peers as my sole companions. How would you like to go to Rome?”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’re from Texas. You know those two Texans, don’t you? Elmo and Winfield?”
He meant Elmo Buckle and Winfield Gohagen, a supposedly crack screenwriting team. They lived out in Tujunga Canyon, with a retinue of rodeo hands, jocks, dope people, guitar-pickers, and stringy-haired ladies. The retinue was so large that the area they lived in had come to be known as Little Austin. I had known them for years, not well, but well enough. They spent money like water and were very genial, except when they got violent.
“I know them,” I said. “I get along with them fine.”
“Well, they aren’t really the problem,” Bo said, “although it wouldn’t hurt if they’d finish the script. Tony Maury is the problem. That old turd is ineradicable, or unflushable, or something. He’s over there wasting ten million dollars of our money because he likes to watch people chase one another around in chariots. He likes to see horses run and buildings fall down, and he likes to make people throw knives and have them jump through windows.”
He thought about it for a minute. “Of course they’re all just alike,” he said, “all directors. That’s what they all like. Shit, I don’t care, Bergman, Truffaut, I don’t care who you pick, give them unlimited money and they’ll make Ben Hur.”
“So what would I be supposed to do?”
He looked at me with his little head tilted to one side. I think he was about to feed me a line of bullshit but he changed his mind. “You’re supposed to take Jill,” he said. “She probably needs a vacation. Just lead her to him and turn them loose together. If anybody can persuade him to finish the picture, it would probably be her.
“You may not know it, but you’re fortunate in your woman,” he added.
“That’s all?” I said.
“Not quite,” he said. “I’ve thought of a little backup idea. I’m sending a couple of kids over there to do a little documentary on the shooting of this epic. Maybe just videotape, I don’t know. That kind of thing is big right now and we could maybe use it as a trailer. You want to be a producer—start by producing that. Who knows? It might make more money than The Doom of Rome.”
“The timing’s a little funny,” I said. “Now’s the time Jill ought to be making a deal on her next picture.”
“I’m not sending you to Rome to live,” he said. “I very much hope to see that picture wrapped in no more than six weeks. You can nudge those Texans and oversee the kids, and Jill can work her magic on Tony Maury. I doubt either one of you has anything better to do.
“Besides, maybe I’ll have something shaped up with Sherry by the time you get back,” he added.
“I’ll have to talk to Jill,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Don’t study it too hard,” Bo said. “It’s just a spot of work. I want you over there quick, before that runaway elephant gives old Tony any ideas. He’ll make those Texans write in Hannibal, and haul ass for the Alps, if we don’t hurry.”
Five minutes later I paused respectfully at the studio exit, and the
side of beef, as friendly or friendlier than my gran-dad, waved me out.
3
I DROVE THROUGH LAUREL CANYON AND WENT DOWN TO Hollywood Boulevard and had a couple of slow drinks. Hollywood Boulevard is a strip of sleaze, but I found it ideal for relaxing. Nobody from movies ever shows up there any more, which makes it a good place to have a drink.
I don’t think Bo Brimmer gave a shit about movies—it was the brain game he enjoyed. He loved to set up those deals. I couldn’t blame him. As a profession, what he did was about as precarious as wheat farming. He might raise a great crop of films, over there at Universal, and then watch them all wither in the theaters. My grandad shot himself because he finally got tired of watching wheat crops wither in the Texas sun, but Bo was a lot quicker on his feet than Grandad.
His offer was about the first thing in the way of a break that I’d had since I left the tractor company. So what if I only got it because I happened to be fucking Jill—or because I knew Elmo and Winfield? At least it was better than selling tractors. Being a PR man for a tractor company means going to every fucking county fair in the Midwest—for six years that was all I did. I hated the ugly, squareheaded, shapeless people, in their poor clothes. There must be more shiny green suits in the Midwest than anywhere else in the world. I hated the airports too—all of them full of fish-faced salesmen drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups. If it hadn’t been for a bad tendon, I could have spent those years in the pros. All the time I was bouncing around in the air, from ugly airport to ugly airport, wishing I hadn’t had the injury, I was reading magazines. Magazines are always full of good-looking people, nothing like the boneheads you run into selling tractors. All Lubbock did for me was sharpen my poker. At least some real poker playing gets done in West Texas.
Now maybe I was finally going to get somewhere. All I had to do was talk Jill into going to Rome. It wouldn’t hurt her, and after that she wouldn’t have to do anything else for me, if she didn’t want to. After that I could make my own breaks. I paid for my drinks and left.
Naturally she wasn’t to be found. She had been to her bungalow—her purse was on the couch, with the nightgown still sticking out of it—but she wasn’t there. I got myself a drink and looked through some of the scripts piled on the floor, but I soon got bored with that. Probably she was up at old Percy’s, telling him what a prick I was. I suppose I should be grateful to the old fart, for drawing off so much of her yapping, but I wasn’t. The better thing would be for her to learn to shut up. It was a little revolting, all that talk. I hate people telling me what they feel. All that squirming is sickening to hear. Squirming for money is one thing, money or recognition, but squirming for love is stupid. Nearly anybody can have love, only they don’t know what to do with it once they get it. It’s a worse waste of energy than jogging, or some tooty game like racquet ball.
I walked up the street. Old Joe was sitting on his front porch, looking at one of his shoes. He had taken it off his smelly old foot. It was one of those shoes with the big gum soles.
“I thought these damn shoes would be good for my arches,” he said. “God, they’re ugly.”
“Seen Jill?”
“Saw her on the tube last night,” he said. “I guess she’s been too drunk with success to make it up the hill.”
“Aw, she probably went out to Anna’s,” I said. I went back down the hill and looked through the scripts some more. They were all rotten scripts. About eight, she finally came in. She was wearing tennis shoes—I didn’t hear her until the front door shut.
“You certainly took your time,” I said.
She came into the study without answering and sat on the window ledge.
“Owen, do you think you could not be belligerent just this once?” she said.
“But I am belligerent,” I said. “It suits me. I like it and you like it.”
“Don’t tell me I like it,” she said. “It’s cute once in a while, but you’re not just belligerent once in a while. You’re always belligerent. It’s childish and I hate it.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Walking,” she said. “Where would I be?”
I didn’t care to get into where she might have been. Whatever she said was the truth, so there was no point. Jill was brainwashed about honesty. She made a fetish of it. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that honesty can be just as bad as dishonesty.
“Lulu called to say I should hustle your ass over there and put you in her stable,” I said.
“I don’t want to be in her stable,” she said.
“No, you want to be stubborn. You want to be the one who doesn’t compromise. You’re the girl who intends to beat the system, only you won’t because you’re not good enough.”
She left the room, went out the back door. In a few minutes I went out and found her on her patio, looking at the sky. When I reached for her hand she yanked it away.
“I might surprise you, Owen,” she said. “I might be good enough.”
“Nope,” I said. “You’ll be the girl who made one picture and was never heard from again. The feminists will write stories in all their magazines about what happened to you.”
She shook her head quickly. “If the feminists knew I was sleeping with a prick like you, they wouldn’t come within a mile of me,” she said. “My only use to them would be as a bad example.”
Some women are always dying to forgive you. You don’t even need to apologize. Just give them any kind of opportunity to forgive you and they will, and then fuck like crazy. Not Jill, though—it was one of the things I admired about her. She didn’t make herself easy, not even with me—and she was in love with me. She couldn’t be tricked. When she was angry every move had to be gradual. She kept her head too well, even after she got back in the groove sexually. Normally I hate having to take the kind of pains I took with her, but I guess in a way she was worth it. Being up against her was like being up against Bo Brimmer—interesting. She would make ten of a cunt like Sherry Solaré.
“On the other hand, you’re getting a no-bullshit relationship,” I said. “Ain’t that what liberation’s all about?”
She took my hand and put it on her knee. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” she said. “I don’t know why I let you in my life, or what I’m going to do next. I don’t expect any real help from my sisters, nor do I expect any real help from you.”
“Bo wants us to go to Rome,” I said. A little of her kind of talk goes a long way. Better to talk about business.
“Why?”
“To straighten out the Tony Maury picture. I’m supposed to produce a documentary about it, and you’re supposed to make old Tony shape up.”
“No one can make him shape up,” she said, “but it would be nice to go to Rome. I lived there once, with Carl. I don’t know why Bo would send you, though. You can’t have charmed him because you don’t have any charm.”
I didn’t rush her. We played hands for a while. It got dark. The sky to the west was orange with the lights of the Basin.
“I feel sorry for Swan Bunting,” she said, after I told her about the lunch. “I know he’s awful, but the thing nobody understands is that he needs to be somebody so badly. He needs position, just like you do. It’s going to be hard for him to go back to being nobody again, after she dumps him. He’ll probably kill himself.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It’s true. Some people can’t stand to lose. They can only stand to win. It’s almost sadder when bad winners like Swan start to lose, because nobody feels the least bit sorry for them. Everybody will say” Well, the sonofabitch deserved it and now he’s got it, ha ha!’ ”
“He does deserve it.”
“That’s not the point, Owen,” she said. “We all deserve worse than we get. But when good people get hurt they still have their goodness. When someone like Swan gets hurt he has nothing to preserve him, no virtue, no character, no nothing. It’s just the end. Don’t you understand that?”
“So what about me?” I asked. “I’m just like him, you know. We’re both self-made punks. Is it going to be the end when I lose?”
“Maybe you won’t lose,” she said, keeping hold of my hand. “Maybe I won’t let you. Let’s go eat.”
4
JILL COULDN’T KEEP HER HANDS OFF SCRIPTS, IF THERE were any around. It didn’t matter that The Doom of Rome was just a garbagy spectacle movie: it was still a script. She spent most of the long flight to Rome reading it and worrying about it. I tried to read it but gave up. It read like pure garbage. Universal had paid Elmo and Winfield $300,000 to write it, and to my way of thinking it wasn’t worth eighteen cents.
When we landed Jill insisted on going to a part of town called Trastevere. The gofer assigned to meet us was so relieved to be able to recognize us that he practically pissed in his pants. He had missed some dignitary the week before and almost lost his job. He was so nervous that Jill made him eat lunch with us, which made him more nervous, and me angry.
The restaurant was in a little piazza—a lot of scruffy kids rode a motorbike around and around a statute in the center of the piazza while we ate. The fish was okay, but the noise was deafening. I would rather have eaten inside.
“What’d we do, come to Italy to listen to motorbikes?” I said.
But she was looking at the buildings. I don’t think she even heard the sound. She had a happy look, being there—it made her prettier. In her way she was a good-looking woman, just too skinny.
“It’s that color that makes this city so beautiful,” she said. “The color of the wall of that building—sort of umber.”
All the buildings were a kind of dirty yellow, except the church, which was gray. The gofer, a kid named Van, was trying to calm himself by gobbling some kind of green pasta.
“I’m glad you’re esthetic,” I said. “Just don’t talk to me about buildings. Talk to me about how to get the script straightened out. I might want to keep this job.”
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