"Mix it up?"
"I guess so," the maitre'd shrugged. "What's in it? Vanilla, rum, and raisins, I guess. We'll try. But you try to get it first."
"How much do you want?" asked the waiter.
"Better get a gallon. She ate three portions of king crab. That garbage pail'll probably eat the whole gallon."
Back at the table, Gerald O'Laughlin Flinn finished half of the first Bloody Mary and said, "Well, if this is business, what is this business about?"
"Rad Rex."
"Oh, yes," said Flinn, reminding himself to be cautious. "Very pleasant, fellow, Rad. But he seems to have some inflated ideas of the economics of daytime television." He looked at Wanda, blandly wondering what the Octopussy wanted with him and why she was interested in Rad Rex. Christ, the fruitcake wasn't even a stud for her.
Wanda smiled. "I suppose he gets those ideas from reading his thousands of fan letters each week."
Flinn shrugged. "You know the type who writes fan letters to soap opera stars. Demographically, zeroes. Not worth spit. They don't have enough money to buy anything, and even if they did, they couldn't find their way to the grocery store."
"Demographics is a lot of shit," said Wanda.
"Anyway," said Flinn, finishing off the rest of the first Bloody Mary neatly. "We're very close to a contract with Maurice Williams for Rad's services. How does it all interest you?"
"First. You're a liar. You and Maurice Williams are a million miles apart on a contract. Second. More important. Maurice Williams is out." She looked up from the plate, a tiny driblet of crabmeat sticking from the side of her mouth like the tail of a small fish being swallowed by a barracuda. "They're out. I'm in. I'm Rad's new agent."
The polish peeled off Gerald O'Laughlin Flinn as if he had just been dipped in lemon juice.
"Oh, shit," he said.
Wanda smiled. "Now, now, love. It might not be as bad as all that."
Flinn picked up the extra Bloody Mary. If he had drunk it, it would have been his third for lunch. But instead he fingered the glass, then placed it back down on the table, inches away from where it had been, but farther from him, symbolically out of reach. One did not swill down Bloody Marys when getting ready to negotiate with the Octopussy, or more blood might wind up being spilled.
He shrugged. "I didn't mean that against you," he said. "It's just that it's difficult to be negotiating for months with one agency and then have to start all over again with another. Do you know the minor points we've worked out? Hundreds probably. That's hundreds of points you and I'll have to start all over again on."
Wanda searched for another scrap of crabmeat. Finding none, she used the side of her fork to scoop some of the thick red horseradished cocktail sauce into her mouth. An errant spot of sauce dropped on her chin and remained there for a few seconds until Wanda could put down the fork and pick up the napkin. Flinn looked at the red droplet and said to himself, This women's going to kill me. This women's going to eat me alive.
Wanda answered the unspoken thought. "It just won't be that bad, Gerry. Not that bad."
"That's what you say."
She put her napkin down briskly. She pushed her plate away from her toward the center of the table. It clinked heavily against the base of the full Bloody Mary glass. She folded her hands on the table in front of her, like a seven-year-old sitting in church, waiting to make first Holy Communion.
"First," she said, "the hundreds of points you negotiated already. The hundreds. Thousands. I don't give a shit. They stand. All right by me."
Flinn's eyes widened slightly.
"Right," she said. "I don't care. They stand. Now. What's Rad making now in the series?"
"Sixteen hundred dollars a week," said Flinn.
"What's Maurice Williams been asking?" said Wanda.
"Three thousand a week."
"What have you offered?" asked Wanda. She kept her eyes riveted on Flinn's so he could not look away, could not turn his head to find a lie or half-truth floating around somewhere near the ceiling and snatch it up for use.
No point in lying, Flinn thought; She could check it out anyway.
"We've offered twenty-two hundred a week."
"We'll take it," said Wanda.
She smiled at Flinn's open look of shock. "Now that wasn't so difficult, was it?" She looked around. "Where is that cute little swordsman with my ice cream?"
Flinn did not care about her ice cream. Right then he did not care about anything except the prospect of rapidly getting Rad Rex's name on a contract. His right hand reached out and fondled the Bloody Mary. "Just like that? You'll take twenty-two hundred a week?"
''Just like that. We'll take twenty-two hundred a week."
Almost of its own volition, Flinn's right hand brought the full Bloody Mary up close to his mouth and he took a long swallow. He could not remember ever enjoying a taste more. So this was the great Wanda Reidel? The Octopussy? More like a kitty cat, he thought. She was easy. He smiled. She smiled back.
"But there are a couple of little things I need. Just to sweeten the pot. To show Rad I'm really working for him."
Flinn put the drink back down. "What kind of little things?"
"Rad's got to have some schedule flexibility, so that when I get him a picture, he'll be able to make it."
"What about the shows during that period?"
"I'm not asking for time off for him. He'll double up and tape extra shows before the movie filming starts. I don't want time off. I said flexibility. I mean flexibility."
"You got it," said Flinn. "Any other little things?"
Wanda shook her head. "Not that I can think of right now."
Ernie returned with the rum raisin ice cream he had bought in Baskin-Robbins.
"For Mademoiselle," he said, placing the china bowl in front of her.
She lifted it and sniffed. "Wonderful, love," she said. "Now I want whipped cream. Real whipped cream. None of that spray crap. And nuts. Walnuts. And chocolate syrup."
"As Mademoiselle wishes." The waiter walked away.
Behind him, Wanda Reidel met Gerald O'Laughlin Flinn's eyes again. She spooned a massive lump of ice cream, the size of a Great Dane dropping, into her mouth. With little streamlets of the ice cream slipping out of the corners of her mouth and dribbling down toward her chin like two tan fangs, she said slowly: "There is just one more little thing, come to think of it."
"You've sold me out. You've sold me out. You've sold me out." Rad Rex's litany started in his usual on-camera baritone and ended in an anguished soprano squeak.
He spun in the pink chair away from the mirror in his dressing room at the television studio on West Fifty-sixth Street in Manhattan, came around to face Wanda Reidel, and for emphasis, stamped his foot.
"You've sold me out," he complained again. "That's it. You're fired."
"Sorry, love, you can't fire me," said Wanda. "No-cut contract. Exclusive. Three years. Without me, you don't work."
"I won't sign with the network. Not for twenty-two hundred a week."
"You don't have to sign," said Wanda. "I already did. Your contract with me empowers me to approve and sign contracts."
"I won't work. I won't, I tell you." Rex's face brightened. "I'll get laryngitis. I'll get the longest case of laryngitis in history. Protracted. It'll go on for months."
"Try fucking around with fake laryngitis and I'll have Mr. Gordons take out your voice box to see if it can't be repaired," said Wanda sweetly. "Don't worry, You'd still be able to work. The silents might come back. Maybe you could even do the life of Marcel Marceau."
"You can't do this to me. This is America." Rad Rex's eyes glistened. His voice seemed to falter,
"No, love. To you, it's America. To me, it's the jungle. Now stop sniveling and look at the good side."
"There isn't any good side."