The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  “And I’m feeling sorry for you, Annie,” he said. “And that’s no way to say good-bye either. So let’s just agree that we’re not the same people we once were and leave it at that. Two people loved each other once, and now they’re gone.”

  “Thank you,” Annie whispered. She touched his cheek for an instant and then darted away toward the woods.

  Weller watched her recede in the distance for a long moment; then he turned his back on everything and boarded his getaway flight to the Coast.

  Epilogue

  Jack Weller paused at the threshold of the Shumways’ big sunken living room, swirling the ice cubes in his half-finished drink, listening to them tinkle against the glass and watching writers, agents, studio executives, minor acting talent, and assorted hangers-on dance the Beverly Hills Pavanne, a/k/a the Hollywood Hustle.

  These days, what with Bob into writing features and angling toward the idea of producing, Shumway parties were on the way to becoming a minor industry institution, though to Bob’s annoyance, they were not yet deemed worthy of notice in the trades.

  Don’t be snide, Clyde, Weller told himself. You’re playing the same game yourself. And don’t forget you owe a lot to this guy.

  For Bob Shumway didn’t forget his friends from the old TV days now that he had hosted his way into upward mobility. Bob, bless his goldfoil heart, had been his guardian angel Hollywood style every since he got off that plane from his previous incarnation. Bob hadn’t given him time to think about his blighted personal life and possibly twisted head. He had pulled strings somehow and gotten him four cop shows, a hospital show, and a schlocko TV movie about surfing to direct before he could catch his breath. He suddenly found himself working in prime-time TV which was a craziness all its own. Which led him to the satori that the despicable old Hollywood game was fun to play once you detached yourself from the matrix.

  When you detached yourself from the house rules and played by your own scenario, you could also maintain an Olympian attitude about the crap you had to work on to survive.

  At this level of irony the game was played against itself. You didn’t chase after any more crummy TV episodes than you needed to make your nut. A reasonable man could live on four episodes a year. If the stuff you did do was of decent weekly TV quality, you got plenty of chances to turn down TV assignments with lordly disdain. This gave you Instant Mystique by creating the illusion that you were in such hot demand that you could pick and choose. Once word got around, you were in hot demand.

  This career strategy had driven his agent screaming up the wall on several occasions, but when it got him the TV movie, Mort saw the light and was even beginning to use the scenario with other clients.

  And on the phone Bob had muttered something about someone being at this party who wanted to talk to him about a feature-film project. Bullshit or not, that was the next higher level.

  Weller took a sip of his drink and stepped back into the chum and swirl of the living room stock-exchange floor. Where the hell was Bob?

  “Jack! Over here!” Bob was waving his arm over the mob scene from the vicinity of the bar. Weller followed this beacon through the sea of knees and elbows, but when he reached the bar he did a classic double take. Oh shit!

  For sitting at the bar with Bob was … was Morris Fender. Morris Fender, the wormy son of a bitch who had been his producer on Monkey Business! The dirty little creep who had fired him without even giving him a chance to tell him to go fuck himself! A face he had dreamed of punching for years, the archetypal no-talent balding cartoon producer prick!

  “I believe you and Morris know each other,” Bob said dryly.

  Weller stared at Fender not knowing what to say. Fender laughed. He seemed almost human. “We drove each other crazy on something I think we’d both rather forget about,” he said. “We share a tragic past.” He smiled at Weller. Suddenly he didn’t seem like such a prick any more. Against his will Weller found himself almost liking him.

  Bob did an imitation of a bleary drunk. “I’ll just leave you guys here to reminisce about the good old days,” he said with an evil stage chuckle. And he snaked-danced away through the crowd and disappeared.

  What the fuck is this? Weller wondered. Morris Fender? Is this who wants to talk to me about directing a feature? Morris Fender making a feature film? Morris Fender thinking of hiring me?

  “The last time I saw you, you were telling me I’d never work in this town again,” Weller finally said, by way of attempting to bring their relationship up-to-date.

  Fender shrugged. “The last time I saw you, you had lost me my income by driving my chimpanzee crazy, and we were both playing zoo keeper to Barry the Brat,” Fender said. “I’d just as soon not be reminded of the shit we were in together, wouldn’t you?” He toasted Weller with his half-finished drink. “So I drink to the day Scuffles went apeshit and got us both cancelled out of the monkey house, and I say let’s let dead dogs lie.”

  Weller laughed. He toasted Fender back silently, convinced that Morris Fender had gone through some changes of his own. Maybe in his present persona, Fender was a credible feature-film producer? After all, Weller, you’re after directing one, and you both shoveled shit in the same zoo together.

  Fender’s eyes circled the crowded room. He nodded outward, toward the glass doors that opened out onto the Shumways’ pool deck. “Now that we’ve got that stuff out of the way,” he said, “maybe we could talk a little business?”

  “Sure, Morris, let’s get out of this crush.”

  They slithered through the crowded living room and out through the glass doors onto the pool deck. The Shumways’ pool was sunk into a small shelf of land bulldozed like a rice-paddy terrace out of the hillside overlooking the city. The quiet summer heat was like a breath of the South Seas after the air-conditioned bedlam of the party. The city below flashed and shone like an electrified jewelry box. Weller rode a wave of confidence. Morris Fender, I can handle on this level. Besides, this guy has seen me at my lousiest, he realized. If he’s still interested after that, it must mean I’m for real.

  But now Fender, in this new environment, suddenly seemed a little more tentative. “You know, Jack, when this project began, you wouldn’t have exactly been my first choice to direct it,” he said half apologetically. “I mean, in the first place, bankable you weren’t, and in the second place you were not exactly my favorite person. Frankly it was one of the backers who insisted I look at some of your later stuff, and that TV movie convinced even me you were no longer a schmuck. ”

  “One ex-schmuck to another?” Weller suggested, not quite knowing how to take that.

  Fender shrugged. “So one ex-schmuck to another, I’ve got a sweetheart deal here,” he said. “My own independent production company. A script locked in. A five million dollar budget and a choice of three or four bankable stars. The day after I hire my director, we go into preproduction.” He smiled slyly at Weller. “I know what a busy man you are, but you think you might be able to rearrange your schedule?” Weller laughed in open glee. “I can see as how I might be able to squeeze in a feature-film project somewhere,” he allowed dryly.

  “Thought you might,” Fender said impishly. He grimaced. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’ve been having trouble finding a director who could sync with this script.”

  “Are you locked into a turkey, Morris?”

  “No, no,” Fender insisted. “It’s a winner of a script. But it’s got to be directed just right or it could bomb. And none of the directors I’ve talked to convinced me they could do it. It takes something special, something special it’s been pointed out to me maybe you have, something that maybe came through a little on that TV movie. Want to hear what the project is and then try to tell me how you would direct it?”

  “I’m all ears, Morris,” Weller said. This was really turning out optimally. Figure out a good line of directorial bullshit about what a great movie you see in this script, and it’s yours! If you can’t do that, you don’t deserv
e to direct a feature.

  Fender slowly began walking along the chlorine-smelling edge of the pool toward the far end of the deck. “I won’t lad you, this is going to be very commercial if it’s done right, or an artsy-farsty box-office disaster if it doesn’t have the right directorial touch,” he said. “It’s called The Conspiracy, and it’s the ultimate phone-company-runs-the-world fantasy, but it’s also got to be a kind of comedy to work right. You see the problem?”

  “You haven’t told me the story yet, Morris,” Weller pointed out coolly, keeping a pace ahead of Fender.

  “Huh?” Fender looked at him. He shook his head, and laughed. “I’ve told the story so many times lately, I guess I’m beginning to think I’ve told everyone in the world,” he said.

  Fender came to the low wall at the cliff end of the pool deck and leaned back against it. “Fade in on a crusading reporter, figure Redford or Reynolds at this stage, as he learns that his girlfriend has been kidnapped by parties unknown for purposes unfathomable,” he began, pitching it like a writer in a story conference.

  “So like Clark Kent is out to rescue Lois Lane,” Fender continued. “That’s the basic premise. But instead of there being no clues or leads to the kidnappers, there are dozens of them, and they lead off in all directions at once. The CIA. The Mafia. Moonies. Transformationalism. The KGB. It all seems to be part of one vast conspiracy, the ultimate conspiracy, get it? And as he probes deeper and deeper, the thing seems to grow larger and larger. Everything seems to be part of it. The police. The phone company. NBC. Winos in the street.”

  Fender paused, waved his arms, grinned, and continued again, obviously pleased with himself. “Finally we have a tour de force climax scene where literally everything becomes part of the conspiracy, down to license plate numbers, restaurant menus and the cockroaches in his crummy apartment. Hard cut to him being found dead the next day in this filthy room full of tapes and papers and files, dead from a cerebral hemorrhage. Impact, right?”

  Down below them a dark overgrown ravine tumbled toward the city like a vein of darkness snaking toward the light. A cold wind seemed to seep up out of its hidden recesses though the actual temperature was pushing ninety. Oh fuck, Weller thought, this guy has a script about Richard Golden! It can’t be a coincidence! Or can it?

  “But we explain it to the less sophisticated audience in a final scene, if you’re worried about that,” Fender said, noticing that Weller looked a little uneasy. “His girlfriend finds the body and she tells the police she never was kidnapped. Our intrepid reporter went psycho when she gave him the ax.”

  Fender grinned at Weller as if he had just delivered a particularly juicy punch line, then wilted a little as Weller continued to stare at him dumbly. “Get it?” he said. “The guy was crazy from the opening shot. There never was a conspiracy. It was all in his head.”

  Oh my God! Weller thought sickeningly. This isn’t funny anymore. A crack seemed to open in his bright shiny new Hollywood reality revealing something he never wanted to have to look at again. If this weren’t the story of Richard Golden transmogrified into a cautionary tale against believing the ravings of such regressive paranoiacs, then he was one himself, just like the reporter in the script. Either way, the smell of Transformationalism was all over it.

  “That’s why I need a director with the right touch,” Fender said with forced brightness. “The movie has to be dead serious while we’re making the audience believe in the Conspiracy and then slowly fade into cuckooland till at the end they realize it’s black comedy that they’ve been believing in by the time he’s arguing with his stove and getting messages from outer space off freeway signs. Then you’ve got to pop them right back into a tough street realism scene at the end. So now you know what the problems are …”

  Oh man, do I see what the problems are! Weller thought. And I think maybe Steinhardt’s found out how to solve one of them. If this thing gets made and released, they can terminate Golden without an investigation. He’d be a joke, alive or dead.

  And so would I if I followed his vector, Weller realized. And here is this nerd offering me the script. Steinhardt certainly had a shitty sense of humor. He only hoped that was all it was.

  Fender finally saw that Weller’s attention was elsewhere. “You do want to see the script, don’t you?” he asked somewhat petulantly.

  “Who was it you said had told you to look at some of my later stuff?” Weller asked sharply.

  “One of the backers. A guy named Harry Lazio from some big conglomerate. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Do you mind if I ask you who wrote the script and where you got it from?” Weller said.

  Fender seemed irritated by the way this was turning into some kind of interrogation. But he also seemed to feel he had been pinned for something; under pressure, he became a little defensive. “Look, this will maybe sound not so kosher, but I don’t really know who wrote the script.”

  “You don’t know who wrote your five million dollar production?”

  “Yeah,” Fender said with a shrug. “The agent who threw it to me told me that the name on the script was a closed pseudonym for a real heavy who needed money strictly off the books due to an alimony hassle. The deal came with it, so who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  I wonder if Steinhardt wrote it himself, Weller thought; Or whether he had it churned out to order at the Colony.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance have gotten this deal from a little agency called Delta?” he asked Fender.

  “Yeah! How the hell did you know that?” Fender exclaimed in surprise.

  I’ve got a little list, Morris. “I get around,” Weller said.

  Fender studied him owlishly. “If I’m supposed to be impressed, okay, I’m impressed,” he said. “Ted Morisey at Delta put the whole deal together, not me, I admit it. Some money people came to him with the script, if you can imagine that, ready to go with the financing as bankers to an independent production. I got the sweetheart deal thrown to me because I’m a talented charming fellow and also because I’ve been giving a lot of work to Ted’s clients.”

  “Lucky you, Morris,” Weller said. Good God, it seemed that Fender thought all this was on the level, that he had no idea of whom he was dealing with. Maybe he was still a schmuck after all. “Just out of curiosity, do you know who your financial angels are?”

  Fender inched away from the parapet and peered dubiously at Weller. “I don’t know if I like that question,” he said.

  “Well, do you know?”

  “What do you mean, am I involved with the mob or something?” Fender snapped, with some of the indignant pissantism that Weller had so known and loved in the dear dead days of Monkey Business. “Of course I know who my backers are, and they’re all legitimate people! A savings and loan in East L.A., a book publisher who owns the novelization rights, and the parent company of the publisher, Utopia Industries. That’s where this guy Lazio comes from who recommended your stuff. You think I’m involved in laundering money for the pom mafia?”

  Weller laughed hollowly. “Well, it w beginning to seem like an offer no one could refuse,” he said archly.

  Fender finally decided he was pissed off. “That’s not funny, Weller,” he snapped. “Maybe you’re still an asshole after all. You’re talking like you don’t give a shit about getting to direct this movie.”

  Apparently even the new improved Morris Fender was capable of being a prick. Weller leaned languidly against the parapet and wondered whether he should tell poor Morris that he was involved with three or four Transformationalist fronts. If he’s really what he seems, he won’t believe me; he’ll be sure I’m crazy. But if Fender did believe him, that would be worse. Because that would mean he was part of some Monitor operation designed to see if I’m still keeping my mouth shut. Or Steinhardt offering me one of his promised temptations. Or both.

  He wanted no part of it, whatever it was. He only hoped that he could persuade it that it no longer wanted part of him.r />
  “No offense, Morris, but I really don’t,” he said. “I’m sure you can find a director who can make a success out of this project, but it’s not for me.”

  “What?” Fender exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind, Weller? You’re turning down a chance to direct your first feature film without even looking at the script?”

  Weller wrapped himself in his artistic Olympian mystique. “I just don’t think I can get behind it conceptually,” he said patricianly. “I believe it’s important to select just the right vehicle for my feature-film debut. Perhaps your next project will be more my style.”

  “You are an asshole, Weller!” Fender snapped angrily. “Turning down a chance like this just to tell me to go fuck myself!”

  “Nothing personal at all, Morris,” Weller said, more or less truthfully. “I would really like to work with you on some other project someday. ”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath, Weller,” Fender said nastily, and he stalked off nursing his wounded feelings.

  Weller stood there alone in the darkness following the fault line of the deeply shadowed ravine as it crawled down the hillside like a black tentacle reaching for the city of tinsel and light. It seemed to him that something vast, amoeboid, and dark as the pit was insinuating its inky pseudopods into everything like the glob from outer space.

  Pure paranoia! Weller shuddered and shook the vision from his mind. But also purely true, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. And the best I can hope to do is keep out of its way.

  Mercifully Bob Shumway came out onto the deck, shaking his head and groaning as Weller knew he would.

  “Jesus, Jack,” he said, “Fender’s under the impression you told him to get stuffed! How did you manage to screw up like that?”

  “I just told him I didn’t want to direct his movie,” Weller said. “Don’t worry, it’ll just help my image.”

  “Help your image? But the reason you’ve been building your image in the first place is to get yourself a shot at doing a feature! Are you so into playing the game that you’ve forgotten why you’re playing it?”