Selling Out (4 page)

Perry's interest grew as he read further that Mellis's aim was to produce “entertainment that holds the mind as well as the eye,” and to achieve this, his first goal was to enlist “writers of quality.” Mellis vowed to look beyond the tired old “Hollywood hacks” and bring to the airwaves America's treasury of living fictional talent, those writers “whose powerful work is known only to a handful of readers of little magazines and hardcover books because no one has ever tried to present their vision to a vast public that would appreciate and welcome it.”

Perry put down the magazine and stood up.

“Well?” Jane asked.

“He talks a good game,” Perry said.

Obviously, this Mellis character was full of himself and no doubt enjoyed the sound of his own fine rhetoric. Still, Perry couldn't help feeling a bit of a tingle, the hint of a deep-down thrill, at the possibility the brash young man had articulated. He walked to the window, then back to the chair.

“The funny thing is, I've been thinking that sort of thing myself for years,” Perry admitted.

Like most of the writers he knew whose work was appreciated by a small, discerning audience, Perry believed that it would be equally enjoyed and esteemed by the millions if only the archaic, expensive system of book sales, promotion, and distribution in America were designed to meet the needs and realities of the twentieth century.

Like most everyone he knew, whether writers, teachers, politicians or plumbers, he believed that if given half a chance he could, while blindfolded and with one hand tied behind him, create better entertainment than the drek that was served up to fill the hours of prime-time television.

“Didn't I tell you?” Jane asked. “This Mellis character is looking for
you
.”

Perry laughed, nervously.

“How the hell is he going to find me?”

“Easy,” said Jane. “You're going to send him a copy of your last book.”

That night Perry went to his study after dinner and wrote a brief, businesslike note to Archer Mellis at Paragon Films, attaching it with a paperclip to a copy of his last collection of stories—the one that included the O. Henry Prize winner, two others that had been selected for
The Best American Short Stories
of their particular year of publication, and another that won an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Just in case Mellis was not impressed enough with those honors, the jacket was resplendent with quotes from noted critics and fellow authors extolling the virtues of the author and his work, flattering tributes studded with the glittering names of great writers whose tradition he was said to be carrying on with distinction: Cheever, two O'Connors (Flannery, Frank), even the great Papa of all twentieth-century American writers, Hemingway himself!

Perry wore the brim of his hat pulled down and the collar of his coat pulled up when he went to the town post office to mail his package to Archer Mellis in Hollywood. He felt skittish, as if he were doing something unsavory, like sending off for tapes of pornographic movies, or dispatching semiclassified documents to a foreign government. He knew his embarrassment was silly; still, he did not plan to mention this matter to his colleagues, not even to Al Cohen. He had thought about consulting some old friends he knew out there in the movie business about the whole thing, but was afraid they would laugh and put a damper on it. He was keeping this strictly to himself and Jane.

After making his drop at the post office, Perry went to the town diner for coffee and a blueberry muffin. He felt a sense of calm, as if he had finally plugged in to a waiting connection.

From the moment he mailed the package, his life felt different. He was no longer bored. He went about his duties, his classes and committee meetings, with efficiency and courtesy; if anything, he was more polite and gracious to students and colleagues than he ever had been in the past. He felt kindly toward them, yet a bit removed, knowing he carried a wonderful secret they had no way of suspecting, a dream they couldn't possibly share. He no longer felt confined by their concerns or judgments. He was still among them, but not of them.

Perry started watching “Entertainment Tonight,” the television program that reported from Hollywood on the latest doings in show business. The first time Jane came in the den and caught him watching it (he felt like a schoolboy masturbating in secret) he quickly said, “I just thought I might see that Archer Mellis character on here some night being interviewed about the future of television or some such bullshit.” Jane smiled and said yes, she wouldn't be at all surprised.

After that neither Jane nor Perry said anything about his watching “Entertainment Tonight” but simply took it as a matter of course, as if he were watching “Monday Night Football,” to which he was harmlessly habituated, or another rerun of “Brideshead Revisited,” his all-time favorite TV drama, or simply the eleven o'clock news from Boston's Channel Five, with the anchor team he found most reassuring (perhaps because he knew they were married to each other and had a baby daughter), Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson.

On one of its programs, “E.T.” (as Perry's new favorite TV show was popularly known) took its viewers on the set of a movie being filmed in the Andes. It was not the dramatic setting that Perry found thrilling, but rather the showing of some anonymous crew member slapping down the arm of one of those black-and-white slateboards used in filmmaking, while the voice of another person not even visible called out, “Scene forty-two, take seven!”

Like most everyone else, Perry had seen that little ritual portrayed in countless old movies (the kind with directors in jodhpurs barking commands through megaphones), and in numerous documentaries about the business, probably even on other TV shows reporting on some film in production, yet this time it electrified him.

Perry woke a little after dawn with the words ringing in his mind: “Scene forty-two, take seven.”

He got up and dressed and bolted down some orange juice and went outside, needing to swing his arms, to walk, to be in motion. He could hear the click of the slateboard through the still country air, and the magical words, the numbers of
scene
and
take
. He responded to the ritual words as he had since childhood to the language of endeavor and challenge, the stirring phrases that put men on their mettle, sent them into action: “Full speed ahead,” “To arms,” “On guard,” “Ready, set,
hup
,” “Gentlemen, start your engines …”

They all were lines from a child's dreams of glory, the standard repertoire of adolescent fantasies, American-style, enacted in games and daydreams later in life than most people cared to admit, mixed in with additions along the way that fit into more adult realms of sex and success: “Take me, I'm yours”; “Nominated for Best Supporting Actor …”; “I want to thank … without whose help …” And now, on this lonely road in rural Vermont, such words rang in Perry's mind from a world away, sounding like the bugle call of a more exciting life: “Scene forty-two, take seven.”

Perry stood on a ridge, looking down at the quiet houses scattered through the town and campus. He breathed deeply and went back down, invigorated and ready for coffee.

He was not really shocked when Jane walked into his study one afternoon a few weeks later, her cheeks slightly flushed, her eyes especially bright, and said in a casual tone, as if it were an everyday occurrence:

“Los Angeles is calling.”

II

“Is it real?” Jane asked.

Perry laughed, but he knew exactly what she meant. Stepping off the plane in Los Angeles was like arriving in some fictional foreign country. They had boarded in the icy reality of Boston, with wind whipping snow across the frozen harbor. Five hours later, filled and lulled with food and champagne, plugged into music and then a movie, the travelers woozily materialized into a bright new world of tropical temperature and color. Jane had been to San Francisco several times, but that was not as much of a culture shock—it might have been another version of Boston, but facing the opposite direction. Perry was in L.A. for a week eight years ago, but that was during summer-vacation break, so the weather was roughly the same when he landed as when he took off. The difference this time between departure and arrival was not only three thousand miles, but seventy-five degrees.

Warm air enveloped them, seeming to reach beneath layers of clothing and touch the skin all over, like a soft, lascivious kiss. Blinking, their eyes readjusted from the steely cold blues and slate grays of New England to the citrus glow of Southern California, the orange and lemony light of a constant sun. Bright-colored, lightweight clothing hung loose on the natives, and Perry had an immediate impulse to strip off his tie.

Jane nudged him and giggled.

“Look! That says how I feel,” she said, pointing to a large sign. Its three block letters simply spelled LAX.

It was, appropriately, the symbol of the Los Angeles International Airport.

Welcome to LAX.

Loosen your tie, strip off your coat, tilt your face up to the sun.

“Hang it up early tonight, hit the sack—it's the only way to beat the lag, for sure.”

Margo, the Paragon transportation person dispatched by Archer Mellis to meet Perry and Jane at the airport, piloted the beat-up studio station wagon through the freeways with such dramatic flair the newcomers felt they were in some TV adventure series.

“Check in, take a dip, go out for some Mex, maybe Thai—there's both in the neighborhood,” Margo advised, craning her neck back as she poured forth her helpful information, while Perry and Jane squeezed hands and wished their driver would establish eye contact with the freeway traffic instead of with them.

“Or order out from Greenblatt's—pastrami's kind of heavy on the fat but the smoked salmon's something else, even the New York deli freaks say it's outasight.”

“Thanks,” Perry said. “We'll remember.”

“And remember you gotta take a network meeting in the morning. Dawnish. Archer should swing by at seven. Probably hit the Polo Lounge for breakfast before the Valley. Whatever fresh berries they got you can't go wrong, but you don't want to do any omelettes, not before you take your first network meeting. Believe me, I know you writers and your stomachs. Queaseville.”

Safe in their suite after a shower and swim, the smart thing seemed simply to take the beautiful basket of fruit Archer had sent, picnic from it in bed, and go to sleep. Except they were too keyed up.

The Château Marmont was a residence hotel that looked like a Moorish castle stuck in the side of a hill overlooking Sunset Boulevard. From their living room window they could see the lights of the city flung out below. It was pulsing, bright, enormous, alive.

Who could sleep?

They went out for Mex, complete with Margaritas and the house sangria, topping it all off with Fundador because Perry said that's the brandy Hemingway mentioned in his famous book on bullfighting,
Death in the Afternoon
.

“They came back from somewhere ‘washing the dust out with Fundador!'” Perry quoted. “Gave me a chill when I read it first, back in college. Still does.”

“Hemingway,” Jane said, smiling and taking a sip of the brandy. “We're a long way from Hemingway.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Perry asked.

“Nothing bad. Finish your brandy.”

Perry smiled.

“I bet he'd like it.”

“Fundador?”

“Television.”

“Tell me.”

Perry leaned across the table, trying to focus.

“Hemingway young man now might have written for it. Set new standard. Simple, understandable. His own prose. Show can be quality and popular, 'peal to all.”

Jane hiccupped.

“
Sun Also Rises
a series?”

“Sure. Can see it. Loni Anderson as Lady Brett.

“Who's she?”

“English girl they all fall for.”

“I know Lady Brett, dummy. Who's Lottie?”

“
Loni
. Beautiful blonde on sitcom. WKP-something-or-other. Saw on reruns. Clever.”

“You too. My genius.”

She blew him a kiss.

Perry grinned and raised his glass.

“Sun also riseth in West! The best!”

They clasped hands; somehow careened back to hotel home, to bed.

“The sun already rises, sweetheart.”

Jane gently prodded him at six the next morning.

“Hemingway,” he groaned.

He felt as if he'd been trampled by all the bulls of Pamplona.

“How in the name of God did we get on to Hemingway?”

“He was going to write for TV. Just like you. If you make it to your meeting this morning.”

“Thank God this one's just a formality.”

“Still, you have to appear.”

“Mmmm.”

With all the will he could muster, Perry made his legs move, feet touch floor. Wobbling, he took his first step toward making his mark on American television.

Even in his pained and disoriented condition, Perry had no fears about recognizing Archer Mellis when he appeared, though the two men had only met once, a month before. Waiting then at the bar of the Four Seasons in New York City, Perry had been on the lookout for some young Hollywood type, a flamingo-garbed sport with a beard and lots of gold chains. His preconception only proved how wrong the cliches about Hollywood were. Mellis had turned out to be an immaculate, clean-shaven fellow impeccably garbed in a three-piece suit of a hue so dark and a weave so heavy as to seem downright gloomy. He looked so reassuringly conservative and Eastern that his image went beyond even the establishment aura of New York and actually seemed more old-school English. His suit was reminiscent of the sort worn by the stuffy Brideshead himself.

There was no one resembling the elegant Mellis, however, among the few stray oddballs hanging out in the Marmont lobby at this excruciating hour. A stunning black woman wearing a silver cape was perched on the grand piano, while a bearded man in a velvet tux picked out a vaguely familiar show tune. A blond in a string bikini and an old felt fedora was draped on a couch reading
Variety
, and a fellow who was dressed like a Castro-trained insurgent guerrilla was pacing back and forth, evidently planning the next raid. Perry figured the whole group was left over from an all-night party, or perhaps was the cast of a small musical revue, gathered for an early morning rehearsal. He started to walk out the door and wait on the porch when he noticed the Castro guerrilla type was waving at him, and now striding purposefully toward him.