Selling Out (31 page)

“Still, that's no excuse for doing what they did to you,” Perry said righteously.

Ned patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey, when this thing's over we'll work together on something civilized. I haven't forgotten about that option we talked about on your beautiful story. ‘The Springtime Women.'”

Perry flushed. He had somehow hoped that Ned would forget about their little informal agreement. He had never told him he had actually signed a deal for it with Vaughan Vardeman.

“Ned,” he said, screwing up his courage, “I've been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“Sure—just let me check on Lon for a sec. I'll be right back.”

Ned got up and strolled over the little strip of earth that ran along the patio at the side of one wing of the house. There was a border of assorted flowers planted there but none of them was in bloom now. Lon had gone over and lay down there, on his stomach, his head resting on his arm. It was a sleeping position but his eyes were open and he had a wineglass next to him that he picked up and sipped from. Ned bent down and spoke to him, and then came back and sat down again with Perry.

“Is Lon OK?” Perry asked.

“He will be. Right now he's taking it hard. He'd counted on this series going. Put the kids through college—that's what everyone hopes for.”

“Wow. It's rough. He's not sick, though? He just wants to lie down?”

Ned sighed and rubbed hard at his forehead.

“He said he just wants to ‘get close to the earth.'”

Close to the earth
. My God. Perry felt little prickles along his arms, as if an electrical current had passed. He imagined himself lying that way on the ground, brought low, feeling desperate. There was a grown man over there, an accomplished and talented man, driven to such a state. It might happen to anyone out here, anyone on this roller coaster of a business. It might happen to Perry himself. He tried to shake off the thought.

“Oh well,” he said, “listen, Ned. About that story. I kind of forgot about it. I mean, you didn't mention it again. And since we didn't have anything in writing, well, when Vaughan Vardeman got interested, and he gave it to Harrison Ford, well, I just thought—it would be OK.”

“I see,” Ned said.

“I'm sorry,” said Perry.

“I wish you'd have let me know. I thought we had a deal.”

“Well, hell, we'll do something else. Really. I really want to.”

“Sure,” Ned said. “If you'll excuse me?”

He went to talk to some of the other guests.

Perry felt rotten. He downed his wine and then got some more. He noticed Lon Ridings had taken off his shirt. He was now removing his trousers. A few people glanced over at him but no one said anything. He was wearing jockey shorts. Perry went over to him.

“Can I get you a drink or anything?” he asked.

“All I want,” Lon said, “is to get close to the earth.”

He lay down, flat, on the ground, digging his fingers in the dirt.

Perry turned away. There were tears in his eyes. He wasn't sure if he was feeling sad for Lon or for himself. He wanted to get out of there. He didn't want to feel this way. He wanted to feel strong and hard and upbeat, like a real hyphenate should, a successful writer-producer. He put down his glass and fled, without even saying good-bye or thanking anyone.

It was a new day, a new beginning. Perry was rested, fresh, eager to get to work.

“Come in, come in!” Archer Mellis called with a welcoming wave. “I want you to meet your new producer!”

Perry threw back his shoulders and smiled, looking around the office to see who it was Archer wished him to greet. When he walked in he hadn't noticed anyone, but now he saw, hunched in a corner, a large form, a massive hulking shape that stirred, moved, stood, and came slowly toward him.

It was a man. A large, bulky, hirsute man with wiry, tangled, gray-black hair that cascaded over his ears and grew wildly below his nose and around his mouth, bristling down his chin in the form of a great Brillolike beard.

Archer stepped out from behind his desk and clapped an arm on the hairy man's broad back, seeming to help guide and propel the creature's slow, tanklike progress across the room.

“I want you to meet your producer!” Archer said in a tone of jubilation, reaching for Perry's arm that was already moving outward and bringing it forward like a referee uniting two contending fighters before a match. Perry took the man's hamlike hand, bracing for some bone-crushing squeeze, yet he felt only a slight, bloblike tremor.

“Perry Moss, this is Donn Gunn!” Archer announced, as if to a cheering crowd.

“Glad to meet you!” said Perry, trying to match Archer's enthusiastic demeanor.

The blank gray eyes of the man called Gunn seemed to roll away from Perry's gaze, and he made a sound without moving his lips, a kind of half gurgle, half grunt.

Perry wondered who the hell the guy was, and what in the world he was going to do on the show. Maybe he was some kind of stuntman. He could have passed for a walking special effect all in himself. Well, whatever, Archer seemed to want to impress the guy, and Perry wanted to live up to his new role as producer with full flair.

“Welcome aboard!” he said, and the man made his grunt again, then turned and went back to arrange himself in the corner.

“Donn here is practically a legend in the Industry,” Archer said. “Been with some of the best shows of their kind—from ‘Badge 465' to ‘Krako, Special Investigator.'”

My God, maybe he was the cop! The actor who the network wanted to play the role of Jack's cop father! But surely not. Surely they could get at least a
charming
cop, an Irish cop with a lilting brogue instead of a Neanderthal with a grunt! Jesus, with this guy playing the part they'd even have the policemen's unions down on them, protesting the portrayal of decent men in blue!

He must be some sort of stuntman after all. Or maybe he was an ex-con who served as a technical advisor for TV cop shows in marten relating to theft, extortion, murder, and general mayhem.

“Well, I'm delighted to have someone of your experience,” Perry said cautiously.

“Beautiful!” Archer exclaimed. “That's exactly the attitude I expected you to bring to this.”

Like a proud teacher showing off his best student Archer turned to Gunn and said, “Didn't I tell you what Perry's reaction would be? He's a team player, all the way.”

Gunn shrugged and belched.

“Long's he knows who's the boss,” he mumbled.

Boss?

“Excuse me,” Perry said with a forced smile, “but I'm afraid—not being a veteran in the business—I really don't know what it is, exactly, you do.”

“I do it all,” grumbled Gunn. “That's the only way it gets done.”

“Perry, you must have been daydreaming,” Archer said with a nervous laugh. “When you walked in the room, I said I wanted to introduce the
producer
.”

“I heard you,” Perry said impatiently.

“Well—if I have to repeat myself—he's your producer.”

“I don't get it. I thought you meant
he
had to meet
me
. I'm the producer. I just signed papers that said so.”

“Of course you are!” Archer assured him.

Perry stood up, felt his head beginning to ache, the room starting to tilt.

“If I'm the producer, how can
he
be the producer?”

Archer came and clapped a hand on Perry's shoulder.

“
Amigo
, he's the
executive
producer.”

Gunn hefted himself to his feet, and said, looking past Perry, “Like the man said, I'm the boss.” Then he lumbered out of the room.

“You're kidding,” said Perry.

“You're going to learn things from Donn that it would otherwise take you years to learn,” Archer said. “He's the best. We were lucky to get him.”

“I thought this was my show.”

“Of course it is. You want it to succeed, don't you? Donn Gunn's the man to make it happen.”

“Holy God.”

“You're a writer-producer. You'll learn from him. He can carry the burden.
You
can make it sing.”

Perry opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Sing, hell. He couldn't even speak.

Perry was going to hang tough. He was not going to let Archer Mellis, or Max Bloorman, or even that incredible hulk who was now his immediate boss, Donn Gunn, keep him from the sole purpose of making his show a hit. That was his only concern.

“Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole,” he recalled from the wisdom of his childhood. Right.

For the role of the cop who was Jack's father they cast a terrific, magnetic actor named Shaun Farragan, the charming type with the Irish brogue who Perry himself had hoped for in that awful moment when he imagined Donn Gunn was going to play the part.

Shaun Farragan was perfect as Dan, the likable cop father proud of his teacher-son, Jack, and his daughter-in-law, Laurie, and pleased as punch to be able to move right in with them.

Shaun, in fact, was so good that when the network tested the audience reaction of the first episode he played in at Preview House, Lou Simmell called up to report enthusiastically that he tested higher than any other actor on the show!

“We want him in every scene,” she happily told Perry.

“In every scene? That doesn't make sense!”

“It does if we want good numbers,” she said.

“I mean, in terms of the story. It won't be about a young married couple any more. It will be a show about a cop. Is that what you want—another cop show?”

“We want a show we can keep on the air,” Lou Simmell said.

So “The First Year's the Hardest” became a cop show.

All right, goddam it, it would be the best cop show that TV ever saw, the best one, anyway, that Perry Moss could make it.

He wrote the first script that was built around Dan himself. He even wrote a car chase. Hal Hagedorn, who had done this kind of thing many times before, helped show him how to do it. He gave it proudly to Donn Gunn, who probably didn't believe he could do it. He not only did it, he gave him the best cop show that was in him.

“This scene where he catches the kid who robbed the laundry?” Gunn said.

“Yes?”

It was one Perry was specially proud of—tough but poignant.

“This sucks,” said Gunn.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Any good cop would kick this kid's ass about now.”

“This cop is our hero—he's a decent cop.”

“He's a bleeding heart if he doesn't cuff this hood around a little here.”

“You don't know your ass from your elbow.”

“I know I'm the boss ground here. You know what you are?”

“Yes, I know exactly. I'm the writer-producer on this show, and I'm also the creator.”

Gunn belched.

“That's a lot of horse hockey. What you are is, you're a serf. You work for me. You do whatever I say, whether you like it or not. I say write tough, you write tough. I say the cop kicks ass, you write he kicks ass.”

Perry went straight to Archer Mellis.

“I'm afraid Donn Gunn is the boss,” Archer said.

“I am not going to write stupid violence, especially when it makes our hero look like a jerk.”

“I was hoping you could learn from Donn Gunn.”

“He's a slimy sonofabitch. He's the dregs.”

“He's your executive producer. That's the bottom line.”

“Fuck you, Mellis.
That's
the bottom line.”

“I think you'll be happier in the classroom, when all's said and done.”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you? Well, I'm not running back to Vermont. I'm leaving this lousy show, and this lousy studio, and now I'm free to do some quality kind of stuff out here—the kind of stuff you promised instead of this junk!”

Archer stifled a yawn.

“Lots of luck,
amigo
.”

XII

The Christmas trees on Hollywood Boulevard were blond. Kind of a peroxide color.

Perry smiled, shaking his head in wonder and appreciation. The amazing thing about this crazy, fabulous place was that you couldn't honestly satirize it, even in your imagination, because before you did, it always beat you to the punch, coming up with something so flagrant that it parodied itself far more effectively than any outsider could manage to do.

Peroxide blond Christmas trees!

He loved it.

He still loved Hollywood, even after the ugly battle with Donn Gunn, the pain of leaving the show, his feeling of being betrayed by Archer Mells, and, even worse, his own betrayal of Ned Gurney.

All that was over now, past, done,
finito
. Not only that, but better still, in the incredible time trick of Southern California, the superacceleration of everything, yesterday was already prehistoric. An hour ago was dust. The present was already passing, before your startled eyes; only the future seemed real, glittering just ahead, promising and vast as the great Pacific.

The future was the deal with Vaughan Vardeman to make “The Springtime Women” a feature film, a modern classic. Harrison Ford in his first heavy dramatic role, maybe Meryl Streep and Teri Garr as the women. Of course the women in the story were older, more drab, but this was a film translation, a romantic dramatization. Not only the gold of the box office but also the gold of Oscar statuettes glinted off the project in Perry's imagination. As soon as the holidays were over Vaughan planned to try to get the whole thing launched; in fact, one of the top executives of Unified Films, where Vaughan had done his last movie and wanted to pitch this one, would be at the Vardemans' annual wassail buffet on Christmas Eve and Perry would meet him. The seed would be planted. This was how the real magic was worked. Informally. Casually. Among colleagues and friends.