Temptation

by Douglas Kennedy

  Stop! That’s a completely paranoid fantasy. Anyway, Fleck and Martha were virtually separated, weren’t they? So why would he even care if we got a little too affectionate down by the beach.

  But he obviously did care – because why else do this to me?

  Unless . . . unless . . .

  Remember the movie he insisted on showing you? Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom. Remember how you kept wondering, long afterwards, why he subjected you to this gruesome little experience. Remember as well his defence of the film:

  ‘. . . what Pasolini was showing was fascism in its purest pre-technological form: the belief that you have the right, the privilege to exert complete control over another being to the point of completely denying them their dignity and essential human rights; to strip them of all individuality and treat them like functional objects, to be discarded when they have out-served their capability . . . ’

  Was that the point of this entire malevolent exercise? Did he want to act out his belief that he had ‘the right, the privilege to exert complete control over another being’?Did Martha factor into this equation as well – convincing him that her passing affection for me made me the obvious target for his manipulations? Or was it envy – a need to destroy someone else’s career in order to assuage his own evident lack of talent? He had such deranged amounts of money, such deranged amounts of totality. Surely, boredom must set in after a while. The boredom of one Rothko too many; of always drinking Cristal, and always knowing that the Gulfstream or the 767 was awaiting your next move. Did he feel it was time to see if he could transcend all those billions by doing something truly original, audacious, existentially pure? By assuming a role that only a man who had more than everything could assume. The ultimate creative act: Playing God.

  I didn’t know the answer to this question. I didn’t care. His motivation was his motivation. All I did know was: Fleck was behind all this. He strategized my downfall like a general laying siege to a castle: attack the basic foundation, then watch the entire edifice crumble. His hand controlled all . . . and, in turn, me.

  Alison spoke, snapping me out of my reverie.

  ‘David, are you all right?’

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘I know this is a lot to take in. It is pretty damn shocking.’

  ‘Can I ask a favor?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Could you get Suzy to make Xeroxes of all the documents the PI dug up?’

  ‘What are you planning to do?’

  ‘I just need the documents . . . and that original copy of my script.’

  ‘This is making me nervous.’

  ‘You have to trust me.’

  ‘Give me a clue . . . ’

  ‘No.’

  ‘David, if you fuck this up . . . ’

  ‘Then I’ll be even more fucked than I am now. Which simply means: I have nothing to lose.’

  She reached for the phone and buzzed Suzy.

  ‘Honey, I want you to copy everything in this file, please.’

  Half an hour later, I collected the file and the script. I also made a fast smoked salmon and schmeer sandwich, and shoved it in my jacket pocket. Then I gave Alison a peck on the cheek and thanked her for everything.

  ‘Please don’t do anything stupid,’ she said.

  ‘If I do, you’ll be the first to know.’

  I left the office. I got into my car, putting the bulging file on the seat next to me. Then I slapped the pockets of my jacket to make certain that I had my address book. I drove into West Hollywood, stopped by a bookshop, found the volume I was looking for, and continued on to a cyber café I knew from driving down Doheny too many times. I parked out front. I went inside. I sat down at a terminal and went online. I opened my address book and typed out Martha Fleck’s e-mail address. In the space marked From, I typed the bookstore’s address, but deliberately failed to include my own name. Then I copied out the following lines from the book I’d just bought:

  My life closed twice before its close –

  It yet remains to see

  If Immortality unveil

  A third event to me.

  So huge, so hopeless to conceive

  As these that twice befell.

  Parting is all we know of heaven

  And all we need of hell.

  . . . and, by the way, it would be wonderful to hear from you.

  Your friend,

  Emily D.

  I hit the send button, hoping that it was her own private e-mail address. If it wasn’t – if Fleck was watching her every move – then I was banking on the possibility that he might consider this an innocent missive from a bookshop . . . or, at the very worst, that she’d get in touch with me before he intercepted it.

  I lingered for a little while in West Hollywood, drinking a latte at an outdoor café, cruising by the apartment house where Sally and I lived, thinking how quickly I had stopped longing for her . . . if, that is, I had ever longed for her at all. Since our split, she’d never once made contact. No doubt she had put a message on our voice mail, stating: ‘David Armitage doesn’t live here anymore.’ But passing by our building, once again that fresh scab was torn away. Once again, I silently repeated that oft-heard rumination of many a middle-aged man: what was I thinking?

  And once again, I had no answers.

  I accelerated out of West Hollywood, out of the city limits, and back up the coast. I reached Meredith by six. Les was behind the till. He seemed surprised to see me.

  ‘Don’t you like days off?’ he asked me.

  ‘I’m just expecting an e-mail. You didn’t notice if . . . ?’

  ‘Haven’t checked the damn thing all day. Go on ahead.’

  So I went into the little office, and powered up the Apple Mac, and held my breath, and . . .

  There it was.

  An Epistle for Emily D . . . .

  I opened it. The message read:

  To wait an hour – is long –

  If Love be just beyond

  To wait Eternity – is short –

  If Love reward the end –

  . . . and I think you know the poet. Just as I think you also know that this correspondent would be delighted to make your acquaintance again. But what’s with the bookshop address? I’m most intrigued. Call me on my cellphone: (917) 555.3739. Only I answer it, which makes it the best channel of communication, if you catch my drift.

  Call soon.

  Bestest,

  The Belle of Amherst.

  I shouted out to Les: ‘Mind if I use the phone?’

  ‘Work away,’ he said.

  I shut the door and dialled the cellphone number. Martha answered. And curiously, my pulse jumped a beat or two at the sound of her voice.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said.

  ‘David? Where are you?’

  ‘At Books and Company in Meredith. You know Meredith?’

  ‘Up along the Pacific Coast Highway?’

  ‘The very place.’

  ‘You’ve bought a bookshop?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I can imagine. Listen, I should have called you a couple of months ago, when all that crap was breaking around you. But let me say this now: what you did . . . what you were accused of . . . was such small beer. As I told Philip myself: if I had a dime for every script I’d read with a line borrowed from somewhere else . . . ’

  ‘. . . you’d be as rich as he is?’

  ‘Nobody’s that rich – bar five other people on the planet. Anyway, all I wanted to say was: I am so sorry for what you went through . . . especially all the vilification from that shit, McCall. But, at least, Philip was able to give you a nice cushion with the price he paid for the script.’

  ‘Right,’ I said tonelessly.

  ‘By the way, I love the script. It’s so smart, so street, and so truly subversive. But when we meet, I want to try to talk you out of giving Philip sole writing credit . . . ’

  ‘Well, you know how it is . . . ’ I said.

  ‘I
know. Philip explained your fear about the bad publicity that the film would attract if your name was attached to it. But I do want to convince him to leak the fact that you were the original author after the film’s release . . . ’

  ‘Only as long as the reviews are terrific.’

  ‘They will be – because, this time, Philip’s starting from a fantastically strong script. And you heard about Fonda and Hopper and Nicholson.’

  ‘It’s my dream cast.’

  ‘And it is so nice to hear from you, Mr Armitage. Especially as I wondered afterwards . . . ’

  ‘We did nothing particularly illegal.’

  ‘Sadly,’ she said. ‘How’s your lady friend?’

  ‘I have no idea. It was one of the many big things that went south when . . . ’

  ‘I’m sorry. And your daughter?’

  ‘Great,’ I said, ‘except that, since my photographed run-in with McCall, her mother has had me legally barred from seeing her . . . on the grounds that I am an unstable misfit.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, David, that is horrible.’

  ‘That it is.’

  ‘Well, it sounds like you need a good lunch.’

  ‘That would be nice. Anytime you’re ever in the Meredith area . . . ’

  ‘Well, I’m at our place in Malibu for a week or so.’

  ‘Where’s Philip?’

  ‘Scouting locations in Chicago. The first day of principal photography is just eight weeks away.’

  ‘Everything okay with you guys?’ I asked, trying to maintain the same casual, nonchalant tone.

  ‘For a little while, there was a pleasant interlude. But that ended rather recently. And now . . . same as it ever was, I guess.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Comme d’habitude . . . ’

  ‘. . . as they say in Chicago.’

  She laughed. ‘Listen, if you happened to be free for lunch tomorrow . . . ?’

  And we agreed to meet at the bookshop at one.

  As soon as I got off the phone, I came out of the office and asked Les if I could find someone to cover for me for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon.

  ‘Hell, it’s a Wednesday, and the town’s dead. Take the afternoon off.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  It took three Tylenol PM to knock me out that night. Before I finally succumbed to sleep, I kept hearing her say: ‘I want to try to talk you out of giving Philip sole writing credit . . . Philip explained your fear about the bad publicity that the film would attract if your name was attached to it.’

  I now understood the ruthless logic Fleck applied to making his billions. When it came to war, he was a true artist. It was his one great talent.

  She showed up promptly at one. And I have to say that she looked radiant. She was dressed simply in black jeans and a black tee shirt and a blue denim jacket. Yet despite the Lou Reed clothes, there was something so resolutely East Coast patrician about her. Maybe it was her long brown hair tied up in a bun – and the long slender neck and high cheekbones – that put me in mind of one of those John Singer Sargent portraits of a Boston society woman, circa 1870. Or maybe it was the traditional horn-rimmed glasses she insisted on wearing. They were an ironic counterpoint to the biker chick clothes, not to mention all the money she now represented. Especially as they were the sort of frames which probably cost less than fifty bucks, and which currently had a small piece of Scotch tape holding their left side together. I understood what that wad of Scotch tape exemplified: an insistence on her own personal autonomy, and a wily intelligence which, all these months later, I still found so deeply attractive.

  As she entered the shop, she looked right through me – as if I was the Dead Head clerk whom the owner employed.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said. ‘Is David Arm . . . ’

  Then, in mid-sentence, the penny dropped.

  ‘David?’ she said, sounding genuinely shocked.

  ‘Hello, Martha.’

  I was about to kiss her on the cheek, but I thought better of it and simply proffered my hand. She took it, staring at me with a mixture of bemusement and amusement.

  ‘That’s really you behind all that . . . ?’

  ‘The beard has gotten a big shaggy.’

  ‘Ditto the hair. I mean, I’ve heard of the “going back to nature” look. But “going back to the bookshop”?’

  I laughed. ‘Well, you look wonderful.’

  ‘I’m not saying you look bad, David. Just . . . I don’t know . . . you haven’t simply changed; you’ve transformed. Like one of those kids’ toys . . . ’

  ‘Where, with a few fast adjustments, GI Joe turns into a dinosaur?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘That’s the new me,’ I said. ‘A dinosaur.’

  Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘And one with a bookshop to boot,’ she said, glancing around the stacks and the assorted displays, running one hand along the polished wood shelves. ‘I’m impressed. It’s charming. And bookish.’

  ‘Well, the fact that it’s not in a strip mall and doesn’t have a Starbucks makes it something of a nineteenth-century curiosity these days.’

  ‘How on earth did you find it?’

  ‘That’s a bit of a story.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to expect you to tell me all over lunch.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I will.’

  ‘I was surprised when you e-mailed me. I thought . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . that you’d written me off as a fool after that night . . . ’

  ‘It was the best sort of foolishness . . . ’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good. Because . . . ’ A nervous shrug. ‘. . . because I felt pretty damn foolish afterwards.’

  ‘Join the club,’ I said.

  ‘So,’ she said, changing the subject quickly, ‘where am I taking you for lunch?’

  ‘I thought we’d go down to the cottage I’m staying in . . . ’

  ‘You’re renting a place up here?’

  ‘It actually belongs to one of my agent’s clients. Willard Stevens.’

  ‘The screenwriter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She looked at me quizzically, trying to piece this little fragment together. ‘So when you found this town and this bookshop, you also found a place to live that just happened to belong to Willard Stevens . . . who also just happens to be represented by your agent?’

  ‘That’s right. Well, shall we . . . ?’

  I spent a few minutes closing the bookshop down, explaining to Martha that, in honor of her appearance in Meredith, I’d decided to take the afternoon off.

  ‘I’m touched,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want you to lose any business on my behalf.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Wednesday’s a slow day. Anyway, Les wasn’t bothered about me . . . ’

  ‘Who’s Les?’ she asked, interrupting.

  ‘Les is the owner of the bookshop.’

  Now she really looked confused. ‘But I thought you said you were the owner?’

  ‘I never said that. I just said . . . ’

  ‘I know. “That’s a bit of a story.”’

  Martha’s car was parked outside: a big black shiny Range Rover.

  ‘Shall we take my monster?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll jump into mine,’ I said, motioning towards my geriatric VW Golf. Once again, she did a little double-take at the life-in-the-slow-lane style of the vehicle, but said nothing.

  We climbed inside. As always, the starter motor was acting faulty (one of the many little bugs I had discovered since buying the heap). But it finally fired on the fourth try.

  ‘Quite a car,’ she said as we pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘It gets me from A to B,’ I said.

  ‘And I suppose it all goes with the ageing undergraduate look you’re trying to foster.’

  I said nothing. I simply shrugged.

  We reached the cottage in five minutes. She was smitten
with the ocean view. She was smitten with the cottage’s designer simplicity; its white-on-white color scheme; its overstuffed armchairs and bookshelves.

  ‘I can see why you’re happy here,’ she said. ‘It’s the ultimate writer’s hideaway. Where do you work, by the way?’

  ‘At the bookshop.’

  ‘Very funny. I’m talking about the “real work”.’

  ‘You mean, “writing”?’

  ‘David, don’t tell me that ponytail of yours has dragged down your cognitive powers. You do happen to be a writer . . . ’

  ‘No. I was a writer.’

  ‘Don’t refer to your career in the past tense.’

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

  ‘But the thing is: Philip is about to film your script . . . with an amazing cast and guaranteed world-wide distribution by Columbia. Like I said on the phone yesterday . . . as soon as word gets around that it was your screenplay, you’ll be flooded with offers. Because Hollywood loves nothing more than a great comeback. Before you can say “seven figures”, you’ll be slaving over a laptop.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘I sold my laptop.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I sold my computer. Hocked it actually – at a pawn shop in Santa Barbara.’

  ‘David: this is a joke, right?’

  ‘No, it’s the truth. I knew I’d never be writing again for a living. And I also needed the extra bucks . . . ’

  ‘All right, all right . . . ’ she said, her voice suddenly agitated. ‘What are you playing at, David?’

  ‘I’m playing at nothing.’

  ‘Then why all the stuff about working in a bookshop?’

  ‘Because I do work in a bookshop – for $280 a week.’

  ‘There you go again, talking crap. $280 a week? David, Philip paid you $2.5 million for the script.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘He told me . . . ’

  ‘He lied.’

  ‘I don’t believe you . . . ’

  I walked over to the desk. I picked up the file containing all the xeroxed documents that Alison’s PI assembled, as well as the original 1997 first draft copy of We Three Grunts. I handed her the lot.

  ‘You want evidence? Here’s all the evidence you need.’