As soon as he sat down at the table he looked at their drinks, ordered a Perrier and then started fanning the air in front of him.
“Would you guys mind terribly not smoking?”
Harry stubbed his cigarette out in a hurry saying of course not, he was trying to quit anyway. Chili took another drag on his and blew it out past the empty chair at the table, toward the entrance to the room where a little guy with dark shiny hair was standing there looking around as the maître d’ hurried up to him, the maître d’ giving him the same treatment he had given Michael, though the guy was not a movie star or Chili would have known him. Chili believed ninety percent of the guys in Hollywood had dark hair and looking around the room confirmed it. What he saw was a lot of hair, dark hair on the guys, different shades of blond hair on the women; older guys with younger women, girls, which was what he had expected. He observed this as Michael was saying that, according to a study he read, smokers exercised less than nonsmokers, were not as likely to use seat belts, were more prone to argue, missed work more often than nonsmokers, and were two-point-two times more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives, not to mention they were two-point-six times more likely to have bronchitis and emphysema.
Harry was saying, “They made a study, huh? Gee, that’s interesting, I’d like to read it,” as the maître d’ was looking this way now and the little guy with the dark shiny hair was coming to the table. Chili noticed he had on a dark-gray shirt and tie with a dark-gray sport coat and light-gray pants that looked like pajamas. Drab colors, but the guy still had a shiny appearance. He pulled out the empty chair and sat down. A waiter tried to push his chair in and the guy waved him away, turning the chair and hunching toward Michael, his back to Chili. As this was happening Michael said, “Buddy—” sounding a little surprised.
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So this was Michael’s agent.
Buddy was supposed to know Harry, but didn’t even glance at him. He started right in with, “They want you to take a meeting with this producer they keep talking about. You believe it? The guy’s a fucking writer. I mean he writes books, not even screenplays, but he wants this broad as the producer. I never heard of this in my life.”
“I want the property,” Michael said.
“Don’t worry about it, you’ll get the property. I said to the guy’s agent, ‘The fuck is this, you trying to hold a gun to my head? We have to take the broad?’ Which is out of the question. I said, ‘What if there’s no communication between she and Michael? What’s she made, three pictures?’ One did okay, the other two barely earned back negative costs.”
“I want that book,” Michael said.
“Michael, you’ll get the book, soon as we get done with this pissing contest. If it was a director— yeah, I can understand he’s got a producer he likes to work with. But this is a fucking writer. I said to his agent, ‘Hey, Michael doesn’t have to option this book, you know.’ And the agent goes, ‘And we don’t have to sell it.’ I go, ‘Well, what the fuck is the guy writing for, he doesn’t want to sell his work?’ You ever hear anything like that?”
“You have to understand his motivation,” Michael said. “A writer can spend years working on a book he isn’t sure will ever sell. What makes him do it?”
“Money. The idea of hitting big,” Buddy said. “Selling one to Michael Weir. What else? Look, what we do, we say okay to the meeting. The broad arrives, we ask her to wait a minute, be right with you. I call the guy’s agent and I say, ‘Do we have a deal? Come on, we have a deal or not? We don’t have a deal, I’m sending the broad home.’ Put it to them like that, I guarantee you within five minutes we’ll have a deal.”
Chili watched Michael playing with a book of matches that would never be used for lighting cigarettes, Michael saying, “How you handle it is up to you.”
Buddy said, “I’ll give you a call.”
Getting up he seemed to notice Harry for the first time, Harry waiting to be recognized, Harry saying, “Buddy, how you doing?” The agent nodded, said yeah, great. Chili watched him glance this way now—like, what, another one? Where’d these guys come from? Michael didn’t tell him. He said one more time he wanted that book. Buddy told him it was his, and left.
Harry said, “Well now . . .”
But there was something Chili wanted to know and he said to Michael, “What he mentioned to you there . . . You mind my asking—what if the other agent says okay, you got a deal? Then will you have the meeting with the woman, the producer?”
“I don’t know, I suppose,” Michael said, “we’d talk to her. I’m not really involved in this.”
Harry said, “Chil, it has nothing to do with Michael.”
And now Michael was nodding. “All it amounts to is a power play, the dance of the agents, circling each other for position.”
“With the woman in the middle,” Chili said, “not knowing what’s going on. I was thinking she’s sitting there like a hostage. Use her to get what you want.”
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“Hey, come on, man. All I want is a book.”
“They say no deal, what do you do, shoot her?”
Chili smiled.
Michael didn’t.
He said, “Why is everybody giving me a hard time?”
It was dark and Catlett still hadn’t spoken to the Bear. Had been calling him since coming home and getting no answer, the Bear’s machine turned off. Right now Catlett was standing out on his deck looking at the night, trying to get his head to settle.
Looking at the view he started thinking about his great-great-grandfather with the cavalry sword, because that original Bo Catlett had lived on a mountain and must’ve had a view of his own, but without any lit-up swimming pools and girls laughing or, tonight, the cool sound of Jobim coming from down there. The original Bo Catlett had his view, had his sword, had his squaw wife—but what did he do? This Catlett’s grandmother said, that time before she died, “Oh, he had plenty to do,” but never said what. So this Catlett started thinking of western movies, wondering what people outside of cowboys did back then. They lived in little towns that had one street, wore six-guns and were always crossing the street going someplace, the extras in the movies. The stunt-men were always getting shot off of horses or off of roofs or falling through the railings on upstairs porches and balconies. Fall against the railing shot and it would give way every time, like the carpenters of the Old West didn’t know shit about putting up railings. Bump against a railing shot, man, you’re going through it . . .
And here he was leaning against a railing himself, his head having come all the way around a hundred years back to now.
You could bump against this railing all you wanted. It was California redwood, bolted together, built solid. The drop was about the same as looking down from a hotel room on the twelfth floor he had stayed in one time. If you fell through like in a movie, you wouldn’t come close to that swimming pool. You’d hit on the slope partway down and from there it would be like falling down stairs, only you’d land in the scrub and shit where the coyotes hid. . . . Seeing this and thinking, Invite Chili Palmer out here.
Thinking, I don’t know why, Officer, but it just give way on him.