Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

  He found himself up against Sam in the hand he dealt, as if a writer were controlling the events. As he raised and was raised back at the climax. Fred convinced himself that he would win simply because Wasserman had been unfair. But he didn’t win, and Sam let him know he thought Fred entirely merited his bad luck.

  “I’m showing a boat, I’m betting a boat. Haven’t bluffed a hand all night. What the hell you doing staying in—and raising at that?”

  Karl spoke softly. “All right, Sam. You won the hand. That’s plenty. A lecture isn’t necessary.”

  “Let him go on,” Tom Lear said. “Maybe it’ll be his next column.”

  “Don’t you know,” Sam said to Fred, “that you don’t raise a possible lock hand? You shouldn’t’ve been in there, but if you were in there, you shouldn’t’ve been raising.”

  “Yeah,” Paul Goldblum said, “you got some nerve, Fred. Making Sam’s winning hand really pay off. He was actually trying to let you win.”

  “Look, don’t listen to these assholes,” Sam said. “I’m trying to help you out a little bit. It’s basic poker. You don’t raise a possible lock.”

  “Okay,” Fred said earnestly. “Thanks for the advice.” What he didn’t say was that he didn’t understand Sam’s terminology, didn’t know what a lock hand was, or what he was supposed to avoid in the future. But he behaved contritely, hoping to make himself so docile that Sam would feel he was too pathetic to attack. Fred knew he couldn’t face him down directly, but he swore to himself that he would someday. Get a book contract, write a bestseller, a bigger bestseller than Sam’s was.

  The game ended at twelve-thirty. Goldblum forced Sam to agree to stay an extra half-hour and Fred went along, embarrassed to be the only one to leave at midnight. When they totaled up and Fred found himself writing two checks—one to Sam, one to Karl—for a total of three hundred and fifteen dollars, Truman asked, “That’s a record loss, isn’t it?” and the others smiled to themselves.

  It was then that Fred swore to himself that at the very least, he would learn this stupid game and beat the shit out of Sam. Hell, out of all of them.

  Patty and David spent Sunday together. She kept him busy advising her while she got started on her sample chapter for Shadow Books. She had half of it written by Monday morning when they separated for the first time in thirty-six hours.

  By then they were so intimate Patty felt as if they had been a couple for a long time. David hadn’t repeated his “I love you” of Saturday night, but he hadn’t withdrawn either. Indeed, his desire that they be together seemed intense—he didn’t want to go out for a walk, or to a movie, or even for dinner. To her delight, he went to the supermarket and cooked her a suprisingly good meal. He made her take seconds, claiming (the first time a man had ever said this to her) that she was too skinny.

  He wasn’t her romantic ideal. He showed signs of a middle-aged potbelly. His curly black hair was receding, and baldness by forty seemed inevitable. His skin was white and puffy, his eyes beady, his lips thick. But somehow the overall impression was better than the parts: he dressed well and carried himself with confidence. And his voice was pleasingly resonant; a calm fatherly tone came naturally to him. But most of all, what mitigated his physical ordinariness was his intelligence and his genuine interest in her. He listened to her hopes, her opinions, her reminiscences, with pleasure; taking part in her inner life as if it had become his own. He was a partner, discussing his career problems not with a mind to impressing her, but with a desire for advice and support. When she commented on the magazine, he weighed what she said carefully, never dismissing her perceptions as being ill-informed or silly.

  That was not to say he didn’t fuss and fondle her body like other men. Indeed, it was the combination of his sexual and intellectual interest in her that pleased: they were usually divided. Since her college romance, men had either wanted her as a lover or as a friend. It had been integrated with her college boyfriend for the first year, but slowly his sexual interest waned. Or did it? Maybe her sexual interest waned. Could that happen with David? After a while, would she notice only the stomach and the disappearing hair and not the respect for her?

  This debate went on in a distant whisper in her mind while they played house together—writing her chapter, cooking, cleaning, screwing, and watching television in bed. For the first time in a long while she felt at home in New York.

  She called Betty fifteen minutes after David left for work.

  “You’re up early,” Betty said.

  “I’m in love!”

  “Really?” Betty lost all her usual reserve—abandoned for the thrilled joy of a teenage girl.

  “I spent the weekend with David. We had a fabulous time.”

  “That’s great!” But now Betty’s reserve, her inherent skepticism of anything extreme, had crept back into her tone.

  “Is it real?” Patty asked her pleadingly. “Or am I just boy crazy?”

  Betty laughed. “Don’t ask philosophical questions. Enjoy. You’ve just met him.”

  When Patty hung up, she felt the ease and calm in her body. Her confidence radiated steady warmth. She straightened the apartment quickly, not resenting the task, and settled at her desk to finish the sample chapter.

  It flowed from her as if she had waited her whole life to write the life of a demure virgin who longed for a dark, handsome, and possibly brutal man to awaken her passions. She wrote through the morning and early afternoon and found, to her surprise, that she had finished a rough draft.

  She read it over, only occasionally wincing at the florid language and cartoon characters. In fact, most of the time she was proud of her work. Just that she had written twenty pages impressed her. And that it seemed right, as professional as the books she had sampled, was thrilling.

  She reread the pages, wondering at her heroine’s wild shifts in mood, riding a crest of hope like a surfer, covered with the spray of vigor and romance, only to crash ominously on the shore as the chapter ended, so the reader would turn the page eagerly … so Shadow Books would hire her to write the rest.

  Maybe it isn’t such bullshit, Patty told herself, thinking of the past week. After all, she had paddled out into life’s ocean, stripped naked, and trusted herself to cold waves, been slapped and rebuked by them, only to rise glorious and young at last, commanding nature to carry her safely to the sun-blessed shore of love and work and happiness.

  Tony Winters returned to the Beverly Hills Hotel at five-thirty in the morning still innocent of adultery. Only their talk had progressed to intimacies: Lois told him about her one-year marriage to a TV producer who went from taking cocaine once a week to a restless snorting that left him hopping with enraged incoherence by two o’clock every afternoon.

  She asked a lot of questions about his mother, and he answered them honestly, not worried that to tell Lois (the producer of his mother’s series) such things might be indiscreet. Lois was too vulnerable, obviously scarred by her marriage, bluffing toughness; for Tony to believe she was capable of misusing such information.

  But when he got back to the hotel, drunk with fatigue, his legs aching, his eyes watering, suffering from what felt like a broken back, his sinuses clogged and his throat sore from too much smoking, and stood himself under the shower, he abruptly lost his confidence in her. I’m a rube, he thought. She probably went out to dinner with me to get precisely that kind of gossip. He could vividly imagine her at work tomorrow telling the gang all the scandals, laughing at the pretentious, ignorant New York writer with two parents in show business who didn’t know a thing about movie deals.

  He ordered coffee from room service to keep himself up until the eight-o’clock breakfast with Bill Garth and … and whom? He sat on the bed and realized with dread he had forgotten the producer’s name. One of the few powerful independent producers in the business, Lois had called him, claiming he, rather than Garth, would probably decide whether to hire Tony.

  Room service arrived looking as sleepy as he, with the pin
k-and-green linen motif of the hotel, and he drank his coffee, his stomach rumbling angrily at its arrival. There was a wave of nausea moments later, so severe that Tony thought he was not only about to vomit but also that he was fatally ill. Could he cancel? he wondered, writhing on the bed while fighting off the queasiness.

  But that passed.

  What was that producer’s name? His cheek lay on the rough bedspread, and he felt warm about his eyes. He closed them and remembered being on the plane—the steady hum of the motor, the keen promise he had felt about the trip. It seemed like weeks ago, but it was only yesterday afternoon, a little more than …

  There was ringing. Lots of ringing. Shut up. Shut up. I’m sleeping.

  He gasped and sat up. There was bright sunlight all around him, so bright the sun seemed to be inside the room. He had overslept!

  He grabbed the phone. He said something into it. It was supposed to be hello.

  “Tony?” a female voice said doubtfully.

  “Yes!”

  “Hi, it’s Lois. I just wanted to make sure you were awake. Did you fall asleep?”

  “Oh, God. Thank you. Yes. What time is it?”

  “Seven-forty-five. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay! Bye!”

  “Call me,” Lois said eagerly. “Let me know what happens.”

  “Sure.” He started to hang up and then caught himself. “Where?”

  “The number is—”

  “I don’t have a pen—”

  “Call the network at Studio City. Ask for the show. Then ask for me.”

  He shaved as quickly as he could, given that the floor seemed, every once in a while, to buckle and wave beneath him. He wondered if it was an earthquake, but his puffy and pale face and his bloodshot eyes told him otherwise. When he bent over to rinse off, he almost pitched into the sink. He rubbed hot water into his skin and then stared into his eyes. “You’re a mess,” he told himself. “If you can’t handle a breakfast, how the fuck are you going to write a screenplay?”

  He groaned and rested for a moment, trying to settle his erratic breathing and his uncertain stomach. When he looked back in the mirror, he had an answer:” ’Cause it’s the breakfast that’s really tough.”

  He laughed at himself, as if he were in an audience, not feeling his anguish and tension, but merely observing how childishly he was overreacting.

  That’s what you’ve got to do. Play this like it’s a part. A role you’ve written.

  Tony walked out of the room, his back straight, and ambled casually toward the stairs, his feet moving silently on the thick green-striped carpet. You’re smart, modest, pleasant, and sure of yourself, he said as he appeared in the lobby and turned toward the elevator banks.

  You’re smart, modest, quite pleasant, and impossibly sure of yourself, he told himself as he approached the narrow arched entrance to the Polo Lounge. A woman dressed in a silk blouse and a tweed skirt came up to him.

  “Reservation?” she asked languidly.

  Only then did he realize she worked there. “I’m meeting Bill Garth.”

  “Yes,” she said with anxious eagerness, “he’s here.”

  Tony ignored the glances—evaluating ones, he was sure—as they walked toward the back, heading for a bank of booths against one wall. Garth was there along with the producer (his name! what was it?), and as Tony approached they broke off what appeared to be a serious discussion. Garth’s face, that famous but relatively ordinary face, with his slightly bent nose, high forehead, and darting clever eyes, looked up at him.

  You’re very smart, very modest, extremely pleasant, and utterly, totally, eternally sure of yourself, Tony said to himself.

  David Bergman tossed his yogurt into the black plastic wastebasket under his desk and stared at his typewriter. It was an old Royal, a rattling gray manual that writers at the magazine insisted on, believing it created more than a superficial kinship with the great journalists of the past. David had gone along with the tradition, just as he had adopted their style of dress, their drinking hours, and their political attitudes. He had become a member of the club, body and soul, but now that he was recognized as a top writer, a power hitter who could win the ballgame in the late innings, he wanted out.

  For a day, he thought he had crossed the line from the playing field to the front office. The weekend with Patty had overwhelmed such thoughts. But when he entered the building that morning, walking past the huge blowup of that week’s cover, the disappointment of Chico’s promise falling through made him sag unhappily. He loathed the routine: carrying his paper bag with coffee and yogurt, reading the competition, admitting to himself that their story was very similar, indeed almost identical to his, and waiting for orders from above as to what his subject matter for the week would be.

  He picked up his phone and dialed Chico’s extension. He hadn’t decided what he would say—a unique approach for him, normally he mentally rehearsed every conversation with a boss—but he felt there was nothing to lose by complaining. His job was secure and his chances for a promotion, if they had been scuttled by the hiring of Rounder, couldn’t sustain any further damage.

  “Hi, Linda,” David said. “It’s David Bergman. Is he there?”

  “He’s in a meeting with Syms and Rounder. He’ll get back to you.”

  “Syms and Rounder?” David said. He had—he made a point of having—a good relationship with all of the Marx Brother secretaries. “What’s going on? A triple suicide?”

  Linda laughed sharply and quickly caught herself. She whispered: “I don’t know. But it’s something.”

  “Hmmm. Well, get your boss to call me back. Tell him I’ve taken poison and unless I get his call within a half-hour, the antidote won’t have enough time to save me.”

  Linda laughed. “Okay, but if I were you, I’d take the antidote.”

  He hung up and stood, walking to his one window with its view of Madison Avenue. The city looked gray, dressed for work in a law firm, presenting an unemotional face, a face that could look upon misery and greatness as one. He knew that the meeting upstairs would have a profound effect on his life. If they were firing Syms, that meant Chico was influencing Rounder’s decisions, and David’s promotion to senior-edit Business was likely. If they weren’t, then there would be no openings on the senior-editor level, and Syms, given a chance to toady to Rounder, would clog up things for a while, and probably insist on keeping David as a writer, knowing that to surrender a good writer would only weaken his section.

  It was all garbage, David thought with disgust. They dangle jobs and promotions as if they were cheese for experimental mice: to convince the poor trapped writers that the maze could be escaped someday. I’m here forever, he pronounced over himself, a judge delivering the sentence.

  “Good job, David,” a voice called at his door.

  It was Kahn. For a moment David didn’t know what Kahn meant, and then remembered he had written the cover story. “Thanks. I read Weekly’s. Seemed no different.”

  Kahn raised his eyebrows. This was the sort of criticism that, if someone else made it, would be considered insulting. “You’re selling yourself short. Your piece is much better.”

  David nodded and returned to his chair, sitting morosely.

  Kahn looked at him. “Something wrong?”

  David shook his head.

  “I liked your tag,” Kahn went on, as if David’s problem was that he needed more praise. He looked at David’s piece and quoted, “ ‘While the President lay on an operating table, Haig took the microphones at the White House to reassure the nation that “I’m in charge here.” Although the assassin’s bullet thankfully proved not to be fatal, Alexander Haig will not soon forget its deadly political ricochet.’ ”

  “That was Chico’s suggestion,” David said coolly. He didn’t believe Kahn’s praise. That tag was a routine gag, nothing special.

  “Oh,” Kahn said, taken aback. “Well, it’s good,” he went on lamely.

  David had never
been anything but polite to Kahn, who, after all, was his elder and for many years had been the heir presumptive to Syms. But he didn’t conceal his irritation now: “Give me a break. It’s crap. And you know it.”

  Kahn’s mouth opened to answer, but nothing came out.

  David smiled maliciously. “Yes?” he prompted. “Going to argue about it some more? There’s nothing in this magazine worth the paper it’s printed on. The only thing that separates you and me from them”—he pointed outside his office, meaning to indicate the less prestigious writers of Newstime—“is we process the crap faster.”

  Again Kahn opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, behind him Chico, Syms, and a tall blond appeared.

  Chico entered officiously. He introduced David and Kahn to the tall blond, who was, of course. Rounder, their new boss. David, rattled that the two most powerful Marx Brothers had entered so hard upon his critical remarks, got up awkwardly.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Rounder said to David. “Just finished reading your cover. Good job.”

  David glanced nervously at Kahn, momentarily fearing he would tell on him. But Kahn looked pale and apprehensive. David was dismayed at how little strength Kahn’s age and experience gave him to resist the uncertainty of this moment: meeting a man who controlled your fortune seemed to frighten everyone regardless of age or rank. Was there no escape, David wondered despairingly, from this craven insecurity? Even Chico, grinning like a court jester and nervously pretending that being with Rounder delighted him, was obviously eager to please the new editor in chief.

  David studied Rounder. He seemed alien. He was at least four or five inches taller than Chico, and Chico was over six feet. Rounder, however, had none of Chico’s stockiness. He looked trim and muscled, at ease with his body, and that, combined with his blond hair and brilliant blue eyes, gave an impression of command, of absolute self-assurance, and implied that he was judgmental, perhaps harshly so. But more than that, he was physically atypical. Not dark, or short, or pudgy, like most of the ethnic types. And not florid-faced or distracted like the usual magazine WASP. Rounder was an American. The talk had made fun of his image: former Navy pilot, all-American in college. But he looked the part, and his steady eyes, his coldhearted blue eyes, convinced David that Rounder was the part.