Authors: Louis Begley
This could be your big chance, observed Schmidt.
Never, replied Gil. I will never be unfaithful to Elaine again. We’ve always had a good marriage, but now when I’m with her I feel actively happy. There is no other way to put it. My heart ached though when I heard Kat on the telephone. The woman won or the woman lost—nothing changes in that department. Let’s get back to your new best friend.
Please, he isn’t.
We will see. Anyway, when we did my last movie, he asked to be named as coproducer. That was a bombshell. I must
admit Eric Holbein was a big help because all he cares about is money so that he can be objective about this kind of nonsense. He also saw the risk for Mike—for his Life Centers. Hey, you know about that foundation shit? Actually he does a good job with it. Also the threat to his vanity, and so forth, because the film was bound to be controversial. Of course, Eric was proved right. For a while, we thought the ACLU, Anti-Defamation League, and Jerry Falwell were all going to come out against us. So Eric and I found a formula that I thought made everybody happy.
You know, I hardly read movie credits.
That’s all right, nobody expects you to. The film I’m about to make—he doesn’t only want to have a production credit. He wants to be an executive producer! My first instinct was to tell him on the spot to take his money and stick it up you know what. I restrained myself, naturally, because it’s really quite a lot of money and we can use it, and besides we’ve done business together for such a long time. So I asked what this was all about. He had the nerve to say he feels he is ready to give me real creative input. To move my work to a higher plane! The first thing I was supposed to do was to hire Omar Sharif as a consultant. I was eating a chef’s salad and almost choked. Really, I asked. He replied, Really, really. To make a long story short, he laid out for me how he had never failed at anything he really wanted to do and had already accomplished everything that could be accomplished in business—by the way I stopped myself from asking whether he had measured himself against Microsoft—but he still doesn’t feel he’s reached his potential. He wants to fulfill himself through
art. Cinematography! At that point I could no longer hold back and asked whether he had ever considered the need for talent in making art. What makes you think you have any, I added, just in case he hadn’t gotten it. In all honesty, I thought he would slug me—you’ve probably noticed there is muscle under that envelope of fat—or anyway get up from the table and leave. Not at all.
Pas de problème.
He said he had always felt he could have been an artist, it was only the need to rescue the family business when his parents got into that accident that put a crimp in his style, and he had already proved himself by backing me and giving me advice. And he went on to recite, in detail, all the suggestions he had made over the years that I had followed. Nine times out of ten: utter rubbish.
Extraordinary! Where do you stand?
I’m talking to Holbein—he’s my new best friend. That’s also where you come in. You have to realize that Mansour is one of the real world-class—ugh! why did I use that expression?—manipulators of people, not only money. I wouldn’t put it past him to think that if he lures you in with his entertainments and flattery (the subtext being you’re a WASP idiot, but he sees in you something special he loves)—I know he’s feeding you that stuff—you may just possibly agree to lobby me. Because he knows what you mean to me, he probably thinks it’s not impossible that I’d give in. You have to understand that he wants me to do this for him very badly. He knows he can’t make me do it by threatening to withhold the money if I say no, because he knows I can get financing elsewhere. Anytime. The thing is he believes there is no
other place he can go. Got it? I have an alternative, and he doesn’t! He’s determined to be an executive producer for me, and not for just any schmuck he can buy in Hollywood. He wants class. In this money is secondary to him, though not to Holbein.
No, it wasn’t a dream. Gil had actually said, quite naturally, as though the words had simply slipped out, and perhaps they had, that he, Schmidt, was important to him, had a meaning, therefore, a value in those regions where Gil’s real life was played out, regions from which Schmidt had always thought he had been excluded, dwelling but in the suburbs of affection that Gil visited when the desire to gossip with an old roommate about the times gone by, children, and sex overcame him. Like a sudden yearning for a pastrami sandwich.
I would never do such a thing, Gil. To tell you the truth, I can’t imagine his asking. It’s inconsistent with the way he has behaved—quite recently.
Aha, he’s made a pass at Carrie!
No, not quite.
You don’t have to tell me. Let me tell you something. I don’t know what went on between him and Judith—in these matters I am always in agreement with the last speaker. The husband tells me
A:
fine, it’s
A.
The wife tells me
B:
all right, it’s
B.
But I’ve seen enough of Mike in New York and in L.A. to have a pretty clear idea that he’s a one-night-stand mechanic—though of a rather unusual sort. He zeros in on some woman, and bingo she thinks she’s Cleopatra. He will give her a kingdom, make her wonky kid a satrap. What goes
with the goodies, I’ve often wondered. Something, I suppose. Maybe nothing much. It seems to end no sooner than it has begun, and yet it doesn’t end. There are these curious reappearances of women you think have dropped into a black hole. They show up in the restaurant where you’re meeting him for a meal; he calls you up to get their sister a walk-on part in some sitcom series; you get on his plane because he’s offered to take you to Paris or London, and there is one of them playing gin rummy with the security man. It happened to me once when I brought Elaine along. You should have seen her face. She was good friends with Judith, you know. The point is that there’s nothing simple or wholesome about the way this guy operates with women. A kid like Carrie is vulnerable. I’ve got to say though that usually he goes for married women—some of whose husbands hang around his place! Come to think of it, that almost fits your situation. Shit, Schmidtie, I hope I didn’t go too far.
Don’t worry about it. Carrie’s strong. Stronger than you think.
Perhaps.
Schmidt listened to his messages the moment he got home, too impatient to go to the bathroom first. Hey, I’ve eaten with Mike. In a Japanese restaurant. They give you twenty little dishes and you have to guess what you’re eating. The way they treat him he’s got to own that place. Surely, thought Schmidt, in a private room, no shoes, tatami mat, feet and legs meeting under the table. My folks are real glad
to see me. I’ll call you tomorrow. Fuck it, Schmidtie, I love you and I’m thinking about you. You know what I mean? She laughed. The other voice on the answering machine was Bryan’s, whining, promising to visit tomorrow, as early as he could make it.
E
ARLY
in the morning, between sleep and waking, he understood how it would have to be. Unbearably familiar, Bryan puts his backpack and the tube in which he transported his paintings on the square table in the pool-house kitchen—in Florida he had taken again, with wild hunger, to covering four-by-six sheets of wrapping paper with poison green, magenta, purple, and pink acrylic paint, the colors he had liked the most back when he painted at his buddy’s place in Springs, yes, he has decided to work on paper, canvas and stretchers being a real hassle—and also a tool kit made of shiny metal, the contents of which, although unknown, fill Schmidt with dread. The boy has changed. A yellow goatee complements the long yellow ponytail, and he is fatter and dirtier, particularly the hands, and those horrid fingers that end in nails he has chewed off. In fact, they end in suppurating scabs. But, under the fat, the same marine boot camp muscles, only he has never been a Marine; he’s the kind of guy who can twist your arm out of the socket while puffing on a joint, without giving it a thought. Stronger than
Michael Mansour. You bet he is, this is the real McCoy. Sure, he says, he’s staying. He’s come home. Home is where if you have to go there they have to take you in, isn’t that right, Albert? Holy cow, thinks Schmidt, let me out of here, the son of a bitch is quoting poetry, I’ve got to call someone. But it’s difficult for Schmidt to get to the telephone, because Bryan sticks very close to him, first in the house and then in the garden, and probably the only way to shake him loose is to say he’s calling to order pizza. Then when the pizza truck is already in the driveway he’ll go out to pay with his credit card and plead with the driver to get him out of here, straight to the Southampton police station, that is if Bryan hasn’t followed him to the truck, which he will certainly do if he isn’t in the john. Definitely, Schmidt should have called the police the moment he heard Bryan was on his way, but how would that work, since he doesn’t know the date and number of the warrant that is out for him in Florida, so it’s all the hospital director’s fault unless it’s Schmidt’s fault because he hadn’t asked him. Only nothing’s been lost, it isn’t too late because Bryan will never take a taxi from the bus stop; he will call to ask Schmidt for a ride, and that will give Schmidt his big chance.
Then Schmidt remembers that he is in his bed and Bryan for the moment is God knows where, although, as sure as eggs is eggs, he’ll be turning up here, but later in the day, it being only six in the morning according to the alarm clock on the night table. So it isn’t too late to call the Florida state troopers, find out whether there is a warrant out for him, and, if the news is good, if the little prick has jumped bail,
put the Florida cops in touch with the Southampton cops and have him picked up before he knows what hit him. So long, it’s been nice to know you! Except it’s Bryan who’s got to be moving along. Mr. Schmidt will stay right here, in his comfortable house, everything going tick-tock like a Swiss cuckoo clock. Such are the rewards of virtue when it combines with wealth and impeccable standing in the community. He gives his name and address. The police dispatcher connects him to a Sergeant Smith or Sergeant Jones. Thank you, sir, for bringing this annoying matter to our attention. We will have a cruiser on standby, just give us a call. Yes, sir, no reason at all for you to worry. That’s what we are here for!
As always, there is a catch. Short-term, everything depended on there being a drug offense, jumped bail, an outstanding warrant, and so forth. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any Southampton or Suffolk County officers cuffing Bryan and handing him over to their Florida colleagues who have arrived here on the big fat airplane to return their fugitive to southern justice. What if Bryan has been fired simply because he was lazy or rude or because a telephone operator complained that he had felt her up. But long-term, even if Bryan is indeed carted off to Palm Beach, how long will he stay in jail? Not very long. He will cop a plea and be back here, on a plane or bus to Bridgehampton, within the year—all right, within eighteen months. For one purpose only: to kill Schmidt or hurt him so bad he would wish he had never been born. That is what the aluminum toolbox was for. The man who has made a specialty of detailing cars would know ways to detail his old pal Albert, with some of those pliers, cutters,
and gouges he always carries with him just in case. The present visit isn’t for that. All he wants now is money. Then give it to him, give it to him in installments payable somewhere far away. Or maybe he wants something kinky that has to do with Carrie. No problem! She’ll know how to deal with that, unless she wants it. Like with Mansour. How base! Once he had taken its measure, disgust with the ignominous thought, with its origin in his brain, drove Schmidt out of bed. He went to the bathroom, urinated, blew out the wind that had turned his stomach into a soccer ball, brushed his teeth, and went down to the kitchen. It was too early for the newspaper, hours before a croissant could be bought, so he had better make himself tea.
This business isn’t for the police, and it won’t be settled by his going down on his knees before Bryan. There must be bars, perhaps in Hampton Bays, perhaps in Riverhead, where certain locals hang out. Not those “fuck me I’ll never smile again” fatalistic jerks who are only too happy to pump out septic tanks, haul garbage to the dump, and hand dig with shovels holes for the foundations of rich men’s houses so that bulldozers don’t mess up the vegetation on their land. Killers. Guys with balls who own handguns. He’ll find one of those joints and be there, evening after evening, talking to the bartender confidentially but loud enough. It won’t be long before they get used to him. An old codger with money, stooped but still pretty big. Fancy car. Chain-smokes little cigars he’ll pass to you right away if you seem interested. By now the bartender has the old codger’s story down pat and thinks Schmidt’s been screwed. So do some of the other guys
who paid attention. One evening, pretty soon, when it’s slow, the bartender will have one of those bourbons Schmidt is always pressing on him and say, Al, believe me, you don’t need to take shit from this fuckhead. Be here tomorrow evening and talk to Vince.
At the appointed hour, Schmidt is there. The bartender greets him—The usual, Al?—and points with his chin toward a booth. Vince over there has the job figured out. It’s a pleasure to see that he’s the strong and silent type, neatly dressed, polite, in fact you wouldn’t be surprised if he were Michael Mansour’s security man. He explains the concept. Two guys I know will come in specially from the city, get into your house when you tell me you’re going to be out late, whack this fucker, and make it look like a regular burglary. All you’ve got to do is to make sure he’s there and it’s better if he’s alone. It gets complicated when there are other people. Like you tell him you’ve got a guest coming to spend the night and he had better be there to open the door and do the honors. Then the guys drive back to the city and that’s that. How much? Vince shrugs his shoulders and says, Hey, Al, you’ve got real class. Let’s say that I’ll let you decide. Only one thing: remember, it’s like when you go with a girl, you pay up front.