The Wisdom of Perversity (31 page)

The Test

February 2008

BRIAN CALLED THE
producer's office. After a long wait, Grace came on with a chilly greeting: “This is a surprise.”

He didn't bother with a hello either. “I want to adapt
The Ice Pond
for Jeff. Of course I want to. It's an honor to be asked.”

The line went dead. Muted? Was Jeff in the room with her? That seemed confirmed when Grace's voice, along with a background hiss, returned—her words sounded chosen for an audience other than him. “Brian, I'll be blunt. Your attitude at breakfast turned me off. I thought your being an old friend of Jeff's was an asset, but there seems to be a lot of bitterness on your side. Not on Jeff's. Frankly, he was hurt. And I was offended for him at how slighting you were about his extraordinary talent and incredible achievements. It was disrespectful.”

“Jeff is the greatest director of my generation. I know that. I don't merely respect his talent—I'm in awe of it. And of course, I'm dying of envy. Believe me, Grace, it's not so easy to have a genius for your best friend as a child. Especially when you've been in the business for thirty years and he never asks you to work for him. I was hurt and I acted out. I apologize to you, and if I get the chance I'd like to tell Jeff face-to-face how flattered I am by his thinking of me at all, and how much I would like to be part of his next great film.”

His abject speech was greeted by absolute silence on her end, the line dying again. Then an abrupt whoosh of background noise and Grace's voice returned, its temperature a little warmer. Without asking whether Brian was available, she said Jeff was going to drop by Brian's apartment for an hour at three to discuss the project. He said, “Great. I'll see Jeff at three.”

When Brian lowered his iPhone, he saw Julie's husband looking at him with an appalled expression. “You really preferred groveling to telling her what I got from the AG?” Julie was standing beside her pompous husband. She smiled slyly. She understood the value of a plausible lie. Jeff would arrive smug, his tender white belly exposed.

They took a cab from Gary's office building to Brian's apartment. Gary and Julie waited in the lobby while he checked on Danny and how he was getting along with the day nurse Brian had hired. Yesterday the tests had come back and confirmed the doctor's preliminary diagnosis of congestive heart failure. He was also suffering from fatty liver disease. The combination meant Danny wasn't a candidate for a transplant or any other radical procedure. Drugs might keep him going for a year or so, Brian had been told. The doctor had chosen to be vaguer and more optimistic when talking to his father, offering him the solace of “a few years, nobody knows.” By dinner, Danny had converted a few years into ten. The new meds, started last night, were keeping him docile and sleepy, which was good because Brian didn't much care for the dim-witted day nurse. Her shifts, and the night nurse whom he was told he would soon need, were going to eat up all of his production bonus on
Sleep of the Innocent
and a hunk of his savings. If he wanted to keep Danny out of a Medicare nursing home, he needed a job. A pity he was lying to Jeff about writing
The Ice Pond.

Brian waited in the shadows of the awning for Jeff's limo. Its lumbering approach gave him plenty of time to prepare his move. He got a bit of luck there. The driver didn't come around to open Jeff's door; he was sufficiently self-sufficient to do that on his own. Brian hurried over before Jeff's feet appeared. “Hi, Jeff. Excuse me,” he said as he climbed in, forcing Jeff to the other side. He ignored Jeff's “I thought we were meeting in your apartment.”

Julie and Gary appeared from the lobby. Brian left the door open for them, shifting to the seat facing Jeff to give them room to get in.

The driver was alarmed. He lowered the partition. “Mr. Mark, is everything all right?”

Jeff looked at the trio. He didn't react except to ask his driver, “Can we park here?”

“It's No Standing, sir.”

“Drive around the block and then ask me again where I want to go.” Jeff raised the partition while he surveyed Julie and Gary. Gary unwound a string sealing a legal file. He produced three depositions, offering them to Jeff.

Jeff asked Brian. “What is this?”

“Just read them.”

Gary was less hostile. “These are the full statements from the kids Klein and Rydel molested and raped.”

“Look, I won't lie to you,” Jeff said. “I've talked to my lawyer. He's made a few calls about what's going on. He says the statements are useless. They retracted them.”

“Yes, but in the retracted statements they name other children whom they saw raped. The AG is looking for them. Sooner or later someone is going to testify and it will all come out. Also, as you'll see in there, Mr. Mark, your cousin is named as a participant as well. At least as of 2004, he was still healthy enough to be molesting kids.”

Jeff starting reading. They completed circling the block before he had finished. Jeff ordered the driver to continue until told otherwise. When he had read the last one he said, “I don't know what you want from me.”

“We're going public with what Klein did to us and what we know about Sam,” Brian said.

“We want you to come forward with us,” Julie said. “You know more about Klein and Sam than both of us put together.”

“What we know isn't evidence of anything,” Jeff insisted. “It's past the statute of limitations. Anyway, Sam was a minor. He can't be held responsible for what he did with Cousin Richard back then.” He really had consulted his lawyer.

Brian began to answer, but Gary raised his hand to indicate he wanted to speak. “You know who I am?” Gary asked. “You know what I do?”

Jeff rolled his eyes. “Yeah. It's not a well-kept secret.”

“The state attorney general isn't ready to close these cases. I'm going to make sure he's never ready to. You can ask your lawyer what kinds of public pressure political elected AGs are under.” He fixed Jeff with a purposeful glare to make sure those words had had an effect. Satisfied by Jeff's expression, he tapped on the glass partition and signaled he wanted to be let out. As they lurched to a stop, Gary said to Jeff, “I'm an officer of the court. I'm leaving so you three can speak freely. Whatever Julie decides is what I'll do about this.”

“Thank you, Gary,” Brian said. Gary opened the door, saying to Julie, “I'm catching a cab home. I've got to get some sleep.”

“I'll call you tonight,” she said, an odd good-bye from a wife, Brian decided. And thus the childhood trio were alone for the second time in two days.

No one spoke right away. Jeff looked at Brian and kept shaking his head. “You're really an asshole,” he finally pointed out. “You didn't have to lie to me about why you wanted to see me.”

“Sure I did,” Brian answered. “You didn't want Grace to know what we were really meeting about. Unless you've told her more than I think you have.”

Jeff rubbed his face hard, as if washing all the dirt away. When he uncovered, he sighed. “Look, I don't get this. If the DA—”

“State attorney general—” Julie began.

“Whatever. If the cops are going to get them eventually, what's the point of our saying anything? Cousin Richard'll be dead soon. And Rydel's done. His school's stock is bleeding out. Huck Finn will be closed. Nobody's going to let him near kids—”

Brian slammed his hand on the leather armrest, startling Julie. “If Rydel is given any chance to slip out of this, he will! The stock can drop to zero, he's still personally richer than God from what he's taken out of it. He can buy them all off! Maybe your cousin is too fucking old to molest any kids, but Rydel's got years and the dough to ruin lots of children's lives. And that's your fault. You helped make him rich.”

Jeff resumed scrubbing his face with hands. He twisted his nose all the way to one side and ended up pressing his eyes as if he trying to push them out the back of his skull. “I didn't . . .” He stopped and groaned. “I gave him ten grand in 1983, for chrissakes . . .”

“You launched that school. You spoke at the first graduation. You were on the board. You gave it legitimacy.”

“I'm not proud of that any of that, but I wasn't doing it for Rydel.”

Julie cried out, “Why? Why did you do anything to help Klein?”

“That's irrelevant!” Jeff said angrily. “I spoke at that school twenty-five years ago, just once, in 1983. I had nothing more to do with it after '88. I didn't know what Rydel was up to. I swear to God I had no idea what he was doing. I didn't pay any attention to either of them after 1988.”

“Maybe you're as innocent as you say,” Brian said, “but when Julie and I go public with our story and Gary helps the state attorney general unearth more molestations that Klein and Rydel can't buy off, no one's going to believe there's nothing to the cozy relationship between you and your cousin. People are going tsk-tsk over who gave you that early start in showbiz. Will they remember you were talented enough to have made it all on your own? I don't know, Jeff. There's nothing that cheers up Americans more than being let down by their heroes.”

Jeff put the index finger of his right hand to his mouth and gnawed. All of his nails were bitten well below the rim of skin.

Julie spoke in a low, grief-stricken voice. “What happened to me . . .” She nodded at the wheel well of the limo. “You saw my husband. He's a good man. But I'm going to have to leave him because I can't love him. He deserves to be loved.” Jeff's eyes glistened as he looked out the window on his side, so darkly tinted that a ghostly reflection of him, rather than the city, filled it. “And I can't love him. I can't love anyone,” she said hopelessly. Brian offered a tissue from one of three boxes in the limo—evidently the rich were often in tears. Julie dabbed at her eyes.
She's lovely in her heartbreak,
Brian thought. The nakedness of her pain was irresistible. “Klein ruined my life,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sam too. They both ruined my life,” she repeated.

Brian played his last card: “Taking advantage of Klein's money and connections, that was your mother, not you. That's why you cut yourself off from his school after 1988, right? That's the year Harriet passed. Until then, you were being an obedient son by not blowing the whistle on Klein. You were still a victim. But this—protecting Klein and Rydel now—that'll be your sin. And yours alone.”

“Good line for the trailer,” Jeff mumbled, then put his right index finger in his mouth, chewing on the skin. He produced an indeterminate sound, a low moan or a thoughtful grunt. “I don't know,” he said, not really to them. He removed his iPhone from a dark brown suede jacket, too thin for February in New York, and checked the time. “I've got to get to the test. I need to think about this and I've got this screening and I can't think about this while I'm worrying about that.”

“We can't wait,” Julie said firmly.

“Tomorrow,” Jeff said. “Let me get through the test tonight, okay? I'll think about it tomorrow and we'll decide by tomorrow night, okay?”

“After tomorrow, Jeff, we're not going to wait for you,” Julie said. She looked at Brian, a request he back her up.

“We don't hear from you by five o'clock tomorrow,” Brian said, “we tell the world what we know: irrelevant, pointless, doesn't fucking matter, we tell.”

Jeff nodded. “Tomorrow at five,” he said.

“Okay.” Brian shifted to open the door.

Jeff hooked Brian's wrist. “Stay. Come with me to the test. Okay?” He said to Julie. “I can't bring you. You're a civilian. They'd ask questions. Brian, he's there for reshoots or something.” That was a lie. Jeff could bring anyone he wanted. Why did he want to separate them? Another bribe rising in the oven?

Brian looked at Julie for permission.

“You go,” she said, kissing Brian on the cheek while she lay a caressing hand on his arm. It seemed like a marital farewell. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered as if he were in danger alone with Jeff. Maybe he was. She opened the door. New York's car horns, a fire engine's siren and the laughter of pedestrians invaded the hush of the limousine.

“We'll decide tomorrow, Julie,” Jeff said. “I promise.”

She looked at him steadily, a cool survey, then slid out and onto the sidewalk without another word. When she shut the door behind her, New York left too. A tomb's hush enveloped the old boyhood friends. Jeff pressed intercom, ordering the driver, “Okay, let's go to Jersey.”

As they lumbered into the traffic's flow, Brian asked, “Isn't the test later tonight?”

“Yeah, I got to check the sound and projection. No point testing it with a green tint and no bass.” Jeff sighed. “You know, a year from now I'd have to make this thing in 3D? Fuck me. A comedy in 3D.”

He was quiet as they slithered downtown. He became deathly still while they moved swiftly underneath the river. When daylight and Jersey appeared Jeff spoke as if they'd been talking all along: “It's funny. The Horror was always scared you'd do something like this.”

“The Horror?” Brian asked, but he knew who was meant.

“Ma,” Jeff said. “She read a review of your first play that said there was something in it about a child molester, and she got worried you were writing about Cousin Richard.”

“Everything I write is about Klein.”

Jeff shifted to face him. The weak chin, puffy pale skin, worried bug eyes at last seemed to notice Brian. “Really? I don't see that. In your films, anyway. To be honest I've only seen one of your plays.”

“Yeah, in some way if you go Freudian enough, you'll find the wisdom of Klein in everything I write. He taught me my own desires can betray me. I learned from his lies, his seductions, his self-delusions, his entitlement to pleasure, and the corrosion of trust in anyone who shows me affection. Especially people who claim to love me. Worst of all Klein taught me that anyone”—Brian looked at Jeff—“even the person you love and trust the most will betray you.”