Hot Properties (16 page)

“So you’ll be gone by the time I get home?” She sounded petulant; suddenly a neglected child.

“Yeah, I have to be at Karl’s by six.”

“When will you be home?”

“Honey, I don’t know. It’s a poker game. It’ll probably go on till late.”

“Oh,” she said. A disappointed moan.

“What? What is it?”

“I’ll miss you. I wanted to see you tonight.”

“What? Earlier, when I asked if you wanted to go to the movies, you acted totally uninterested.”

“I did not! I said I would go.”

“After I insisted.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Good-bye. I’ll see you later—or I won’t. Good- bye—”

“Come on!”

But she had hung up. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled at the walls. “She’s gonna drive me out of my fucking mind!”

But his anger was quickly dissipated once he got down to the business of dressing for the poker game. Jeans, a black turtleneck, and sneakers were his choices: they made him look slim and tough, he thought, like a street-smart kid. And he felt like a kid, a happy kid, going over to the Upper West Side where Karl lived. Heading for a night out with the boys—the writing boys.

The Scotch tastes like metal. Cheap metal, Tony thought. He looked around the tacky dark-wood-paneled living room. Lois, judging from the decoration of her house, fancied herself a Spanish duchess. There were big ungainly chairs with elaborate carved wood designs and a big dark wood couch with thin cushions that failed to rescue its occupant from discomfort.

“Too megalomaniacal?” she asked, indicating the room with her eyes.

So she did think it was grand, he thought to himself, feeling despair. Not simply over the prospect of being alone with her, but being alone in this city, where ugly furniture could house pathetic delusions.

He smiled at her knowingly, as if to say, “I understand, I approve, but I’m too bright to take anything too seriously.” He looked out the big window behind her. There was a sweeping view of Hollywood and the valley. Lights lay below like a twinkling bed, bejeweled for a princess. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

“A year. When I was made producer on your mother’s series, I started making so much money my manager told me to buy something. I couldn’t believe it. Felt weird. Being single and owning a house.”

“Your manager?”

“My money manager. Not a personal manager.”

“Do you have a talent manager also?”

“Well, I have an agent.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. They’re different.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Your mother’s got all those things. An agent, a personal manager, a money manager, a lawyer—hasn’t she told you the facts of life?” Lois asked, laughing.

“Only the sexual ones. That’s why I’m happy but poor.”

“Yeah.” She nodded and looked off as if she had taken his comment to heart.

“So why don’t you tell me?” Tony said.

“Well. A manager gets you work.”

“Don’t agents do that?”

“Top agents have lots of clients and you have to fight for their attention. A personal manager will do it for you.”

Tony thought about this and then shook his head wonderingly. “Seems like a Rube Goldberg way of going about it. You hire somebody to watch somebody you hired. It’s bizarre.”

“Who’s your agent?”

“Gloria Fowler.”

Lois looked impressed. “She’s the kind of agent who’s got so many name clients that somebody like you might hire a manager to call her and bug her. Saves you the embarrassment. But it’s not something writers do. Actors do it. A writer only needs attention on one or two projects at most.”

There was a silence. Tony realized he had wanted to be with Lois to gather this sort of information. His mother and father could have supplied him with these details of the movie business, but he didn’t want to ask them, to give them the pleasure of playing at being his teachers. She had him here for sex. Or something. Maybe just company. But he wanted facts. He was scared to walk into that meeting tomorrow without knowing something, anything, about how Hollywood operated.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“What?” she said with a smile. She looked different now. The hard angles of her high cheeks were softer here in the dim light of her Spanish living room.

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight. I don’t like strange hotel rooms …”

She smiled, her eyes opening wide. He realized she suspected he was going to proposition her. So he hurried on:

“… and I’ve got this big meeting tomorrow. I don’t know shit about this business. Maybe you don’t either. But I’d like to tell you about the meeting and if there’s any advice you could give me, I’d appreciate it.”

Lois looked him in the eyes for a moment. Searched earnestly for an answer to something. “I know the feature business. I haven’t worked in it, but I know a lot about it. A …” She hesitated. “A guy I went out with is a top executive at International Pictures. All he talked about was the infighting, the deals. I had it coming out of my ears.”

“And that wasn’t what you wanted to come out of your ears, right?”

She nodded wearily. “Right.” She got up and stretched. Tony looked at her thin body arch: her stomach hollowed and her ribs showed; her pelvis pressed against the fitted pants; she was lean like a racing dog or a long-distance runner. “But you knew that, didn’t you?” she said casually, like an interrogator playing a trump card.

“Knew what?”

“About him,” Lois said.

“The guy at International?”

She nodded, closing her eyes angrily, as if she was disappointed that he pretended not to know her meaning.

“How would I know about him? I don’t get it.”

“From Billy.”

“Oh …” Tony nodded. “Boy, you are paranoid. You think I came here, pretended to be interested in you, because I knew you knew somebody at International.” Lois looked embarrassed but didn’t deny it. “Think about it,” Tony went on. “Does that make any sense? If I needed information that badly, wouldn’t I get it from my parents? Is this town that crazy? You want to know what’s really going on? Is my behavior confusing you?”

Lois stood still, obviously nonplussed. She thought she had him figured twice. First, he was a philandering husband; then, a scheming opportunist. Both times she was wrong. She looked as if that was rare for her. “I work in TV,” she said after a moment. “We’re used to very simple motivations.”

Tony laughed. He liked her a lot for that: it was clever, a quality he found sexy. “Okay, but I don’t know what my motivation is. I’m scared to be here. Not in your house. I mean in LA. This place brings up a lot of bad memories. I’ve been having a tough time with my plays. I haven’t had a hit off-Broadway. Never even been close to making Broadway. Gloria Fowler told me if I could cinch this deal, get this movie made, the studio might help finance my next play. Get some heat behind my name, maybe intimidate investors into backing me. I don’t know what she meant. It was vague. Maybe I’m a fool to believe her. I wouldn’t know. I don’t really know whether this Bill Garth project is a hot project or not. I don’t want to ask my parents. They’ll be too thrilled that I’m working in their business—I don’t want them to be thrilled about me. I didn’t know anything about you and this guy at International. I haven’t spoken to Billy in years. He drove me to Joe Allen’s and we talked about some episode he wrote for Mom’s show. He assumed I’d seen it. I hadn’t—”

Lois laughed. “What! You mean you haven’t seen the Emmy-winning car-wreck episode!” She burst out laughing again. “I love it. That’s great. Must have driven him crazy.”

“It did. Is it terrible of me?”

“No, of course not.” She moved to the uncomfortable couch and sat next to him. Not seductively. But like a close friend, unselfconsciously, leaning forward eagerly to pursue interesting gossip. “He thinks of you as a real writer. No doubt he had this fantasy when you called that it was because you knew about his success and admired him.”

“Oh.” Tony thought about this. “Well, I guess I’m too snobbish to ever admire somebody ’cause of TV writing. I mean, if theater didn’t have the compensation of making me feel superior, how could I stand the obscurity and poverty?”

Lois smiled. “Look, obviously I don’t know you very well, but I have gotten one thing straight about you. You think playwrighting is a calling, a religion. You’re not a snob. You believe in it.” She said this with frank admiration. Tony was pleased: he believed the compliment. “Anyway, tell me about the meeting.”

“Well, I’m supposed to have breakfast tomorrow morning at the Polo Lounge—”

She smiled. “Very good so far. Polo Lounge is good.”

“Is that more important than who’s at the meeting?”

“Probably.”

“I see. Well, it’s supposed to be with Bill Garth—”

“He’s actually going to be there?”

Tony hesitated. “What do you mean? Doesn’t he usually show up for meetings?”

Lois leaned back and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. “He has a reputation for committing to projects, then firing lots of writers, I don’t know for sure—my friend at International hated him. Claimed that Garth screwed up project after project by never being satisfied with the script.”

“But Garth makes movies—so obviously he’s eventually satisfied,” Tony reasoned.

“Yeah, but usually they’re not scripts Garth himself has developed. I asked if he would be there because I was hoping this was a project International was developing
for
him, rather than he developing it for
them.”

Tony shook his head as if he were trying to clear it of confusion. “Jesus, I’d better get on the next plane home.”

“No, no. Don’t let me frighten—”

“I’m not frightened. I don’t even understand what you’re talking about. Whoever heard of an actor
not
wanting to get something on? It makes no sense! It’s the opposite of everything I understand.”

“It’s ’cause Garth’s on top. He’s won an Academy Award. He’s had hits. Every script in town is offered to him. If he decides he wants to work, he’ll work. If he doesn’t like the script, they’ll change it. He doesn’t like the director, they’ll fire him. It’s a position most actors never get to—so his psychology is turned upside down. Instead of the studio vacillating, he vacillates. His power, all of it, resides in making a decision to do a movie. Once he commits himself, he loses his power. The film editor and the director can cut his scenes—”

“What? He doesn’t get final cut?”

Lois hesitated. “You know, you got me. I don’t know. If he demanded it, especially of a studio that needed a hit, he’d probably get it. See that?” she said with a smile, turning to him and putting her hand on his arm. “You stumped the expert.”

He smiled at her. Her hand felt warm and friendly. They looked into each other’s eyes. Tony’s contempt and distrust of her was gone. She seemed human now: the hard-angled leanness of a Hollywood bitch had softened in the dim light of her Spanish fantasy. His suspicion that she was a dull, opportunistic, and selfish woman had evaporated in the dawning of her kind interest in his worry and her desire to advise him well. There was nothing of the one-upmanship toward Billy, nothing of the cynical pose at dinner of someone who believes that Copernicus was wrong: that the earth actually revolves around money. Once he had made it clear he didn’t want sex from her, she had relaxed and become ordinary. And, of course, now he had to admit it to himself: now. as their eyes searched each other’s, he
did
want to make love.

David moved carefully, lifting Patty’s arm off his waist. She had gone to sleep with his wet penis in her hand, her body pressed against him, their legs entwined, and her head resting in the crook of his arm. It was as if she wanted to merge with his body, melt into him; there was something forlorn about her clinging to him. She had serviced him, her mouth loving his prick until he climaxed. There had been no complaint that he brought her to orgasm lackadaisically with his hand. She had acted grateful for his presence, as if she felt lucky even to have him there.

David got her arm off him and then slowly disengaged his leg. She stirred at that and turned around, her slim silky buttocks angled into him. She has a beautiful body, he told himself wonderingly. Wonderingly, because it was the kind of body that he had lusted for in high school and college and had never succeeded in getting. Now he had it and there was no sense of triumph or delight. The fantasy was no better than the reality—Patty was fabulous in bed. Her golden-haired vagina was moist and pink, her breasts firm, her stomach fiat and yet soft, her hips smooth but flowingly curved.

And she was so yielding! Her mouth was a willing slave, opening abjectly for his tongue, his penis, swallowing whatever he chose to inject. Why didn’t this thrill him? Wasn’t it his dream?

He couldn’t claim, as he tried to convince himself after their first and second dates, that she was merely a dumb blond, a mind and soul too numb to feel deeply or understand his life. Patty was bright, maybe not intellectual, but he had never liked that in women or men. She exuded cheerfulness and wit, qualities he not only enjoyed but also considered rare. Why weren’t these additions to her delicious body a cause for celebration? He ought to be madly in love, he told himself. To have this beautiful and charming woman cling to him was a great piece of good fortune. But he felt lonely in her presence. Lonely and false, as if he weren’t really experiencing the sex and the conversation, as if he were in disguise, reaping rewards that justly belonged to someone else.

This thought frightened him. He felt a chill of horror, as if his soul was about to break out and spin into the black universe, divorced from human life.

David moved and hugged Patty’s back, putting his arms around her waist. She moved and hugged his arms to her, saying, out of a half-sleep, “Mmmm.”

He put his cheek against her smooth back and pushed out any thought, absorbing her warmth. His fingers stroked her soft belly. He brushed her pubic hair and she arched up, catching his hand in her pelvis.

He moved quickly, in the dark, down, pushing his face in her buttocks. She opened her legs and rolled on her back, moaning in a sleepy voice as he put his mouth to her vagina.