Til the Real Thing Comes Along (48 page)

“Billy,” Farley said—which was his rebellious way of referring to his father, whom he always called “father” when he was present.
“For seven hundred million bucks. And a lot of it is going to be his own money, the asshole. That’s the perfect business for
him to get into. Full of phony bullshitters just like him. I mean why do people go into show business? To get their name in
the paper? He already has that every day. To get laid? He swears that he’s madly in love with my mother.”

“How about to make more money?” David asked, and ran his teeth over an outside leaf of the artichoke, then discarded it into
the bowl at his right hand which had been placed there for that purpose.

“How much more money does the asshole need? You see, that’s what I mean about him.” Farley’s burger arrived and he lifted
the bread and examined it with a discerning eye. Then he made a paste of some Dijon mustard and a little bit of ketchup, smeared
it generously on the back of the bun, picked up the burger, took a bite, which he chewed and swallowed, and then said to David
with a twinkle in his eye: “Don’t you just hate airplane food?”

* * *

Kate Coburn walked across the tarmac toward them with a leggy stride that held so much self-confidence, it was hard to believe
she was Farley’s sister.

“Look at the gazongas on this broad,” Farley said to David, who remembered how the last time he’d visited the Coburn family,
Kate, then seventeen, had rubbed her bare foot over his loafered one all during dinner. At nearly twenty, what had been her
pent-up little-girlness was in full bloom.

“Class,” she said. “My brother’s got real class.”

“At least he has enough to bring
me
home with him,” David joked.

“True.” Kate grinned, and gave David a hug that offered him higher hopes for the weekend than he’d had on the airplane.

“No bags?” Kate asked her brother, who carried only a small shaving kit, compared to David’s fine leather carry-on.

“No clothes,” Farley answered.

“Tonight’s black tie,” she told him.

“Thank God I got six of ’em in my closet,” Farley said, “and that I don’t wear underwear.”

“You’re gross. Billy’s having this party for you, you know. In honor of your graduation.”

“Ahh, fuck Billy.”

Farley nodded to the chauffeur as the three of them climbed into the back of Bill Coburn’s long white limousine.

“Freud notwithstanding,” Kate said, “I have no interest in fucking Billy. Let’s watch
Days of Our Lives.”
She turned on the television in the back seat of the car. “I love
Days of Our Lives,”
she said. “When Billy buys the movie studio, I want him to invite the whole cast to the first party he has, so I can meet
them.”

David sat between the two siblings. As the car sped toward the Coburns’ estate, he was amused.

To call the party a
party
was an understatement. It was an extravaganza, with too much food and too many flowers and women who wore too much jewelry,
and David was having the time of his life, dancing with Kate Coburn, who wore a pale pink strapless dress and no jewelry,
and was so exquisite that if he hadn’t felt her warm body close to his, he would have thought she was a vision.

“I’d like to raise a congratulatory toast to my son,” Bill Coburn said from the bandstand, raising a glass of champagne. Everyone
tried to pretend not to notice that Farley wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the huge party tent that had been built over the
outdoor tennis court. Instead, they all raised their glasses, too, as Coburn went on: “Who will be graduating from the Wharton
School of Finance in two weeks, if I pay his library fines.” Everyone laughed. “And to his best friend, a fine young man who
will also be graduating and who honors us with his presence, David Malcolm.”

“Fars is in his room smoking a joint,” Kate said between her teeth to David as she squeezed his arm, and the guests all raised
their glasses and drank the toast. The music started again.

“We’ll probably be moving to Los Angeles,” she told him, as they spun back onto the floor. She brushed a chestnut-brown curl
away from her eyes, where it had fallen when they twirled. David remembered thinking how stupid strapless dresses were when
some of the girls at school wore them. On Kate, a strapless dress was a work of art.

“Will you show me around when we do?”

“Gladly,” David told her.

“I hate the thought of making all new friends….”

“You’ll do it easily,” he assured her.

“And dating…” She looked into his eyes.

“Some very lucky man will probably fill your dance card the first day you arrive,” he said.

“I want it to be you, David,” she told him.

“That’s very sweet,” he said.

“Not sweet. I do,” she said. “My brother loves you and my father thinks the world of you, and… do you like me at all?”

Oh boy, what a question, with the love songs playing and that pale pink dress. Strapless.

“Kate…”

“Come for a walk,” she said. In a moment they were on their way out of the party tent. A walk. He let her lead him across
the floor to the exit. Just before they stepped out through the flap of the tent, David was sure he caught a glance exchanged
between Kate and her father, who was on the far side of the crowd but managed to catch her eye
nevertheless. There was something about the exchange that unnerved him, though not enough to make him let go of Kate’s hand,
which pulled him toward the swimming cabana and the dressing room, where dressing was not what she had in mind.

The bubbling wall-to-wall tank of darting, diving tropical fish created a strange backdrop to the man as he sat on the white
sofa in his den across from David. David sat on an identical white sofa. The Giacometti coffee table between them held the
recently brought-in tea service, but neither of the men had any interest in the tea.

“David, one of the reasons I’m having this discussion with you at all is because experience has taught me that you speak the
truth, not to mention that your own relationship with your father seems to be exemplary. Now, would you like me to tell you
about my relationship with
my
father?” David said nothing. His mind wandered to his own father and how different Bill Coburn was from Rand Malcolm in every
way.

“Believe me, I made Farley look like a model child. I began carousing with prostitutes when I was eleven. Once, in anger,
I set fire to a building my father not only owned but was inhabiting at the time. Happily, my father’s will to change me and
his unerring patience prevailed and turned me around. When I was nineteen, I was in the South of France, about to marry a
French girl of fifteen, when he called to say he was making me a partner in his oil business. I left the girl and came home,
having no idea what that meant, but confronted with so much responsibility, I decided that maybe I ought to take it on. And
by the time I was twenty-one and my father died I was able to take over the business completely. The rest is history.” He
stopped speaking and looked at David as if to let him know it was his turn to say something.

“Sir,” David said, obliging. “I have this terrible suspicion that what you’re about to tell me is that you’re going to try
that method of instilling responsibility in Farley, and that’s why you’re buying a movie studio.”

“David, you’re a very smart young man. Smart enough to know that the reason I’m planning to buy the Hemi
sphere Corporation is because it’s a good deal. I’ll make a fortune, no matter what happens to the movies we make. That said,
we both know that my relationship with my son could use some shoring up, to say the least. And if the lengths to which he
goes to alienate me are any indication of the scope of his imagination, he has enormous potential as a creative force in the
film industry.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” David said, and then paused before going on, because he was stopped by how much he had just
sounded like his father when he said that.

“Mr. Coburn, forgive me. I appreciate your love for your son and your desire to do for him the kind of thing your father did
for you, but my experience of your son speaks to that effort’s being a colossal waste of time.”

“So does mine, David, so does mine.” Cobum sighed and stared thoughtfully, lower lip protruding, the way David had seen him
do on the nights Farley had run angrily from the restaurants in Philadelphia.

“My plan,” he said after a while, “would be to start him right at the top. Make him head of production. Darryl Zanuck did
that for his son, you know.”

“And then fired him,” David said. “Not to mention the fact that by the time his father hired him, Richard Zanuck had already
produced a few movies. Farley never
even goes
to the movies. If you give him that job, the studio will go under in a matter of months. Besides, I think it’s a moot point.
Farley won’t say yes to it. He just won’t show up.”

An intercom buzzed. Cobum ignored it.

“Maybe,” he said after a while. “But you could be wrong, David. Because I believe I have something going for me that Perè
Zanuck didn’t.”

“I’m sure that’s true, sir,” David said, smiling. He liked this “crazy bastard,” which is what his father would have called
Bill Coburn. Rand Malcolm’s advice to the man about how to handle Farley would have certainly been in his traditional five
words or less: Kick him in the ass.

“But specifically to what do you refer?” David asked.

“You.”

“Pardon? I was asking about your advantage over Darryl Zanuck.”

“And that was my answer. You. What I mean by that is that despite my son’s frequent rude behavior, I truly believe that the
reason he hasn’t overdosed or been institutionalized
or murdered in the last two years he’s spent in Philadelphia is largely because of his friendship with you.”

“You give me entirely too much credit,” David said, but he remembered how more than once during those two years he’d thought
to himself that having Farley as a roommate, all the time he required, all the attention he insisted on, was like having a
full-time job.

“Maybe,” Coburn said, “but you see, I believe if
you’re
there…”

“If I’m where?”

“At the studio as well. Let’s say as head of marketing? I have no qualms about that, David, mind you. I have a copy of your
stellar transcript in my desk drawer, not to mention the lessons you’ve certainly learned just by virtue of being your father’s
son.”

“I’m flattered,” David said, “but I—”

“Don’t be,” Coburn said, “it’s purely selfish.”

“Mr. Coburn—”

“Bill.”

“I thank you for your confidence in me, but your son and I, albeit clever, are two young punks right out of business school.”

“What makes you think you know any less about it than the geniuses who are running it now? In that business the only thing
that’s for certain is that nobody knows a goddamned thing.” Then his eyes lit up. “You know, the more I think about it, I
kind of like the idea of it. You kids take over and show those guys what-for.”

David smiled at the pictures that were running through his head. He and Pars in some plush office at a movie studio. Running
the place. The same studio where his mother had starred so many years ago. Wouldn’t that be an irony? The only thing Coburn
had said that made any sense was that the movie business, for the most part, was a roll of the dice. Guesswork. No one had
ever been right all the time, or even most of the time. But the rest… putting him and Farley at the helm. Preposterous. If
he even tried telling the story of this offer to his father, Mal would stop him after the first sentence and refuse to listen
to the rest. “The guy’s a horse’s ass,” he would say.

David was searching his mind for a way to get out of all this gracefully, when Bill Coburn stood.

“You don’t have to answer now,” he said. “Let’s go hit some tennis balls.”

Great, David thought. A little more time to formulate his polite no. As they walked across the lawn toward the tennis court,
which had been converted in the early morning from the candlelit, flower-filled ballroom of the night before, Coburn said
his last word on the subject. “I think it would be great to see you two kids beat the hell out of the faggots and kikes who
are running that town.”

David killed him on the tennis court. A few hours later he stood in the huge Mexican-tiled shower with his eyes closed, feeling
the jets from all four sides beat against him, when he heard the shower door open.

“I hope like hell it’s Kate,” he said.

“Well then, I guess it ain’t your day, asshole,” Farley answered.

“I’ve lived with you for two years,” David said, wiping the water out of his eyes with his fingers. “I can’t believe it took
you this long to get friendly. But then, you’ve always been a little slow.”

“Don’t fall in love with my sister, shit-heel, because once we’re running Hemisphere Studios, we’ll get all the pussy we can
eat, and then you’ll regret it.”

David turned off the faucets, reached for the thick white towel that was hanging on the door, and dried off while Farley lifted
himself up onto the counter between the sinks and perched there.

“Fars, I distinctly recall you telling me not twenty-four hours ago that the movie business was full of lowlifes, publicity
hounds, and whoremongers,” he said, noticing in the mirror that he probably should get a haircut as soon as he got back to
Philadelphia.

“You rang?” Farley said, grinning. A grin that had nothing to do with happiness. A grin David had seen him assume to mask
his pain when his father was around.

“Hey, Malcolm, how long’ve you known me? You think I’m gonna get a job this good anytime anyplace from anybody else as long
as I live? And my old man is right. Nobody knows what they’re doing in show business, so I’ve got as good a chance as anybody
else.” David wrapped the towel around his waist now and combed his hair. Farley watched for a while, then said, “Davey, we
could have the time of our lives. Imagine it, the family business. You could
even be
in
the family. Kate is bananas over you. Say the word and you could probably be my brother.”